He's stating his preference. Nowhere does he say that the original version should be censored.
Well, IMO there's a difference between his statement "a sex scene that never should have been there" and "a sex scene that I don't want to watch". The former does seem to smack of censorship, the latter doesn't.
My outrage at his statement wasn't simply that he was editing movies, it was the wording of his statement: "a sex scene that never should have been there". He didn't say "I'd rather not have to watch [such and such a scene]", he said "it shouldn't be in the movie at all".
To me, this indicates that he probably would favor censoring a film from the get-go. Hence the Walmart comment. But I could be wrong.
In any case, his company certainly has the right to modify the films people bring to him, and "The Phantom Edit" is permissible (lol, and in that case, desirable).
I'm ridiculously familiar with the books and movies, and I'm not sure what you're talking about. In the final theater cut, that I and everyone else saw, the Horn of Gondor remained uncloven, and Aragorn put it on the boat with Boromir's corpse, right?
What did Pippin have to do with the Horn, besides the fact that Boromir sounded it protecting him and Merry, and how does any of this affect the movie's rating?
Heh. That reminds me of a story several weeks ago (which I've spent 5 minutes searching for, in vain) about a Japanese man who wanted to be buried with several extremely expensive Gaugins (or Renoirs, or something). The art world thought that was odd, but didn't make a fuss about it because they thought his family would just dig them up after he was buried.
Then he died, and it turned out he wanted to be cremated, along with the paintings! That stirred up quite a bit of outrage, since the paintings are, naturally, priceless.
Obviously, this is a different situation from the/. article, since an original artwork is irreplaceable. Actually, I'm not sure why there's no comparable type of object in film, or music for that matter.... Why doesn't the master print (or whatever) of a film have value comparable to an original painting?
"'Jerry Maguire,' for instance, was a great show. Unfortunately, it had a little bit of bad language and a sex scene that never should have been there," said CleanFlicks president John Dixon, adding that no studio yet has threatened legal action.
Who the hell is this guy to determine what should and should not be in a particular movie? I'd hate to see his version of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- it'd be about half an hour long.
It's bad enough already that anything anyone could possibly consider objectionable gets cut out for TV broadcast. I'm sure this guy would love it if Walmart decided to start selling only his censored versions of movies in their stores, to avoid the inevitable objections of several random parents.
This guy is as paranoid as those freaks who have bomb shelters and 2 years of rations in their basements.
No; the most disturbing fact here is that Jack Valenti is not in the least paranoid. Let's all look at his most famous quote: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." That's from his 1982 testimony to a House subcommittee.
Does anyone really think Valenti and his MPAA cronies believe the bullshit propaganda they spew out? They know that, for whatever reason, no one with really high visibility is willing to call out their blatant lies. So, they feel free to take the most extreme stance imaginable (actually, I couldn't imagine some of the crap they've pulled). Valenti also knows that the more radical the MPAA's position is, the further to their side Congress will feel they have to legislate, away from the side of libertarian fair-use. I'd say something about the boy who cried 'wolf', except the media listens to him, every time! It seems blind to the fact that the "threat" he decries exists not even in his fevered imagination.
"the Golem scenes"? LOL. Damn, I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what you meant there, when it hit me...
Anyway, some pretty interesting info on the aforementioned scene with Gollum can be found here.
As far as inconsistencies are concerned, I think we should remember when talking about Tolkien that he always concerned himself to be a historian, telling the tale of the War of the Ring, and earlier, The Hobbit. There are several points in LotR that when Tolkien was questioned on, he was "uncertain" as to what exactly, was going on, until he took some time to do more "research." Example: it was unclear for a long time whether the Glorfindel that helps Aragorn and the hobbits at the end of Book I, in The Fellowship of the Ring, was indeed the same Glorfindel that fled the fall of the City of Gondolin in the First Age. Tolkien's notes (those published after his death in The History of Middle-earth) seemed to indicate that he had decided the characters were one and the same. However, it is certain he conceived of the characters separately, and he simply accidentally reused the name.
My point, then, seems to be that a good strategy for a writer is to claim he's merely interpreting ancient history, from dusty old notes, so no wonder if occasionally a few errors pop up in one's writing.... It worked for Tolkien -- when was the last time you saw anyone criticizing his works on the basis of internal inconsistencies? (not that there are many of them)
University staff were stunned by the size of the donation: upwards of 35,000 volumes dating back to the 19th century [...] It ranges from 19th century Jules Verne [...]
Kyzia said some of it should get to ibiblio, and since some of it is from the 19th century, that's eminently reasonable. That "very little science fiction" includes authors like Jules Verne, whose stuff is already available online, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. And while we're visiting the 19th century, though the article doesn't mention him, also freely available are the works of H.G. Wells.
We must be careful with our Star Wars nomenclature. Both in tactical operation area (um, the woods), size, and appearance, this wood-cutting thingy most closely resembles an AT-ST, not an AT-AT.
I think this may invalidate the numerous rebel grappling-hook jokes I see popping up. Unless that rope they used to trip 1 or 2 of the walkers in Return of the Jedi were grappling hooks....
This blocking thing is very good idea.. ISPs would then get money from internet giants like ebay, yahoo,... instead of users. It makes internet cheaper for us.
Are you really naive enough to think that a system where portal sites having to pay ISPs for access to viewers will:
have the ISPs take the money the portals give them and promptly refund their customers, instead of just keeping the customers' rates the same, and increasing their own profit margins?
not quickly devolve into a situation where increasingly smaller sites have to pay for access to ISPs' customers, until no one will see your shitdink personal webpage before you shell out n $ to the ISP Trade Association/equivalent?
These Indian ISPs sure as hell didn't come up with this brilliant scheme to help out their customers; they realized if they pooled their markets into a monopoly, they could charge both their customers for access to the Net, and outside Net sites for access to Indian customers through the firewall ISPs will build up around the Indian web domains.
If you cut out Microsoft from *consideration*, you cut out huge areas of the US service industry.
No one is cutting Microsoft out of consideration. No one was speaking, specifically, of Microsoft. Microsoft got into this when their regional president sent that letter to Congressman Villanueva. The bill encourages the use of Free software in the government to achieve:
Free access to public information by the citizen.
Permanence of public data.
Security of the State and citizens.
i.e., the bill says "we think this kind of software best suits our needs at this time". Microsoft isn't being cut from consideration more than any other company is; Microsoft just doesn't choose to produce the kind of software the Péruvian government is interested in.
Think about exactly how much of our technological economy is based on Microsoft. The world's leading computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.) ship Microsoft-based systems. They provide support (which means jobs) for those systems.
Many of those companies (plus IBM) ship free software-based systems as well. The more people that adopt Linux, the more money there is to be earned in the support industry.
Are their Linux IT companies to help the Peruvian government manage their systems? Yes. Are they chances good they'll be around in six months? It's iffy, given the poor track record of open-source company management and the relative unprofessionalism that the industry (perceptionally) seems mired in.
So the Péruvian government shouldn't use Free software because their vendor would collapse in six months? That's extreme. Is IBM going to collapse in six months?
A summary of your post: the U.S. economy relies on Microsoft (paragraph 2); Linux companies are all going to be bankrupt in half a year (paragraph 3); let different products compete for the business (paragraph 4). I don't see how [2] and [3] are true, first of all, and as for [4], Congressman Villanueva has let free software and Microsoft products compete: he compared them, and chose what looked like the best choice to be the government standard in his bill. Microsoft argued with his conclusions in the aforementioned letter,
and Congressman Villaneuva promptly annihilated those arguments in his response.
Well, Halo definitely is definitely not a game in the vein of Red Storm/Rainbow 6 "enemy dropped in 1 shot" realism. I think this way it's more fun; the game would go pretty quickly if 1 pistol shot took out an enemy. Even so, different aliens take different amounts of punishment -- those spiky-backed hunter dudes are total badasses, while 1 burst from the assault rifle will take out one of those annoying chattering Covenant foot soldiers.
Anyway, sorry you didn't like Halo. I basically only play PC games, and I liked it, even though I hadn't played a console FPS since Goldeneye for N64. Halo was a fun diversion, though I wouldn't say it's as much of a revelation as Half Life was.
I'd agree that console controllers, at least, are NOT made for aiming in an FPS. I put enough time into Halo to beat it on Legendary mode (the expanded ending cinematic isn't worth it, BTW) , and though I got used to the strafing/aiming scheme after a couple hours, you never get good enough control with it. The thumbsticks just don't have enough sensitivity for micro-adjustments, and the "top speed" you get for swinging your view around, by pushing the stick all the way over, is way too slow. Keyboard and mouse is definitely the superior interface.
The ability to drive and fly a bunch of bitch-ass vehicles
Innovative/cool guns to use (the needler, Covenant plasma pistol w/ charged homing shots) (heh, gotta love the zoom view on the sniper rifle)
AFAIK, the first 2 of those are totally unique to an FPS.
Halo is probably one of the worst XBox games I've played.
Jesus, how many XBox games have you played? Most of them aren't very good. Halo is easily one of the best currently available games for XBox.
It's just an FPS in the long tradition of Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc.
How does that translate into "worst"? All those games kicked ass.
...you aim, you shoot, you keep shooting and reload a few times (so much for realism) until you or he dies...
Yeah, there's reloading. What do mean "so much for realism"? Reloading is realism. What, the clip sizes are too large for you? I guess the 2 gun carrying limit was too much realism for you as well.
For me, nothing beats Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault.
Indeed, I think Alex Chiu's insight can help shed some light on this topic. This is somewhat-lucid prose from his year-old/. interview:
"I think the Chinese government is doing a great job right now. I support population control. I think USA should do the same. If you want to have more than 1 kid, you should pay more tax. The enemies of China always use "human rights issues" to attack China. But if USA has 1.3 billion people, USA would have the same human rights problem just like China. You cannot expect so much freedom in a land of 1.3 billion people. Chinese government is doing such a great job that China not only feeds its own people, it also feeds most of the Russians. Most of the food imported to Russia came from China. You guys always talk about human rights. But why can't you guys mention about "government rights"? Chinese government has the right to do whatever it must do to protect China. That includes population control and the liberation of Tibet. Do you know that before Tibet was liberated, you can buy and sell slaves in Tibet? In the old Tibet, you can have slaves, you can marry 4 wives, but you cannot take a bath for 1 whole year, and you cannot meet a foreigner. You can skin your slave alive, and you can kill your slave when ever you desire. The entire Tibet is ruled by a bunch of religious idiots. You can't take a bath for the entire year, and you can't trade with foreigners. Cummunists don't allow that! Liberated Tibet and kick out that stupid Dalai Lama, whatever that moron's name is. You guys don't know how much Tibet has changed. Most families in Tibet now has electricity. TV, VCR, stereo, micro-wave, you name it. Everything's made in China! They have shopping malls and super markets there. There's stock market brokers there. In fact, Tibet is one of the most popular European tourist attraction of asia. If Dalai idiot is still around, you be buying and selling slaves there right now! Everywhere would stink like hell because nobody teaches you the importance of taking a bath. If you say Tibetans are not Chinese because they have their own language and culture, let me ask you this: Is Hawaii part of USA? Is Okinawa part of Japan? Okinawa people have different language and culture than the Japanese. So should Okinawa gain independence from Japan?"
Re:It's called Leapfrogging.
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...while America drowns under the weight of it's enormous, wasteful military budget...
As far as "enormous" goes, the budget is pretty low compared to where it's been in the past. When you consider the budget as a percentage of GNP, it's even lower.
And while evaluating the budget's "wasteful"ness, you should remember that a fair bit of the ~$280 billion we spend each year goes into R&D -- the same R&D that produced the Internet's predecessor, the ARPANET. So at least some of the money is doing some good; the same goes for NASA's budget -- we get completely unexpected scientific discoveries out of directed research programs, that end up being incredibly useful. While other nations leapfrog past our initial technological advances... we discover new ones! And the cycle continues....
Should the public care? 2 dudes preceded Steve Fossett in going around the world nonstop. Fossett was just the first to do it alone.
OTOH, the public didn't care when they did it, either. Personally, I just don't think anyone finds ballooning exciting; it's been around for too long.
But would anyone disagree that the world population would tune out Britney to watch the first manned Mars landing? No one pays attention to space because no manned missions have gone anywhere new in 40 years.
Closed, proprietary systems (I'm not sure about "rigid intellectual property control") aren't evil -- they're just one kind of software. Um... maybe it's a different matter for hardware. But even on Slashdot, most people will agree that there is a role for proprietary software to play in the industry. Console/PC gaming is one of these roles.
We have to remember that it is all related. The "values" of the video game industry are the same as those of the MPAA, RIAA, and Microsoft.
Some things are related. In the case of the gaming industry, there is still much more fragmentation as regards developers and publishers than there is in both the movie and music industries. Even though this is beginning to change, with companies like Electronic Arts becoming multi-billion $ behemoths, there is still a great deal of opportunity for small game developers. Additionally, there is no organization for the gaming industry that (as yet) performs a role similar to the all-encompassing power that the MPAA and RIAA hold over their respective industries. The largest gaming organization is the Interactive Digital Software Association, but few of its activities resemble the Gestapo tactics of the *AAs.
So, while some publishers' "values" may resemble those of certain hated industry organizations, many developers' and publishers' don't. Would anyone criticize Sid Meier, Warren Spector, Chris Taylor, Peter Molyneux, etc.? These guys are like the big stars of the music industry -- except they reap the benefits of their talent, and they get control over their projects. They aren't beholden to industry executives in the same way that virtually all music stars are. Hell, I shouldn't use "they get control"; it makes it sound like they receive their rights from someone else -- which is not the case. They have the freedom to choose their own destinies.
Long post... if I'm reading you correctly, the gist of it seems to be that the hardcore Star Wars fans nitpicked Episode II to death, in anger over their perceived failure of Episode I, and that now nothing can save the prequel trilogy from their slings and arrows.
Face it. The 'net will never be happy with star wars. It was destined to be.
Let's get this straight: it wasn't destined to be. Let's look at the the first episode of the Lord of the Rings movie Trilogy: an insanely great success for Peter Jackson -- critically, commercially, and for the majority of fans. The most devoted Tolkien purists and nitpickers did what they could to sabotage the film, but it wasn't enough. Take a spin over to the twin Tolkien newsgroups, rec.arts.books.tolkien and alt.fan.tolkien, and you'll find a fair number of fans so blinded in their fanatacism, they were unable to accept the movie as the adaptation it was, and had to be, instead of some 12-hour visual recitation of the novel.
But these fans couldn't make a dent in Fellowship's success -- because it was a great movie. Peter Jackson proved that it is possible to live up to all but the very extremest of expectations, and hopefully The Two Towers will succeed just as spectacularly. Lesson: if your movie kicks ass, people won't hate it, loudly, to everyone they meet. Duh.
So long as the comic book guy wanna-be's have ammunition, they'll use it.
In this case, everyone has ammunition, and everyone should use it to voice their displeasure. George Lucas tanked with Episode I -- it was a shitty movie, just in general, and when compared to the original trilogy. When Episode II turned out be crap too, just not quite as crappy as the first one, the fans, rightfully, revolted. Lucas had 2 fucking chances, and he blew them both. It's not a case of nitpicking here... Lucas deserves to be called out, by everyone, for the poorly-acted, overdone, not-very-entertaining films he's spewed out for us. The public, hell, the Star Wars franchise, deserves better.
Episode III is everyone's last chance for a good Star Wars movie: since Lucas is incapable of producing a movie anyone actually wants to watch, it might be better for everyone if someone else got a chance at directing it.
I'll make this a meta-comment in response to the parent and the other responses.
There are several interpretations one can make as to which "Two Towers" Tolkien was talking about: Orthanc and Barad-Dûr, Minas Tirith (Anor) and Minas Morgul (Ithil)... I hadn't heard anyone say they were supposed to be the Argonath before, tho...
In any case, there is a very strong case (see item #3) that the one true interpretation, what Tolkien intended, is for the Two Towers to refer to Orthanc and Minas Morgul, because these are the goals of the split parties of the Fellowship in Books III and IV, respectively. This is in contrast to the above reply that state's Book IV's goal was Barad-Dûr; Frodo and Sam don't even really enter Mordor until Book V. Additionally, the note at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring in the 3-volume edition of LotR refers to Orthanc and Minas Morgul as "The Two Towers", and Tolkien's own illustration for The Two Towers was clearly of those 2 structures.
The reason to buy a gaming computer is because consoles don't work well for a whole lotta games -- and there are all kinds of games that are unavailable on consoles.
Tried playing Everquest on a console? Alright, that may change in the future-- well, no, because most console owners don't have keyboards for them.
What about any first-person-shooters? Those thumb-sticks can't come close to the accuracy of a mouse and keyboard.
Do you even want to think about playing Homeworld on a console? There aren't enough buttons on a controller to handle 3d strategy.
"snort" Can you say, simulation? No flight sim would be playable without a keyboard.
Conversely, some games work better on consoles -- or at least on a controller. You can always hook up a controller to your computer, but if you're mostly going to be playing those types of games, you may, indeed, want to dispense only $300 of your money.
Fighting games
Racing games
Hell, most any action game
And some styles of RPGs work well too
But the gaming world only uses software as an excuse -- I can't imagine being bereft of my beloved Civ III, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Deus Ex and Homeworld, but I think people tend to classify themselves as a console or PC gamer, and stick to one to the exclusion of the other. I'm a PC gamer, and my pet peeve is whenever someone refers to computer games in general as "videogames". Even though I should know better, I ignore most things happening in the console world, with the exception of some exceptional titles that remind me of my early days on the SNES -- like Metroid Prime. And for the past half decade I've been bereft of Metal Gear Solid, and every Final Fantasy after VI.
So, should I have forgone the complexities of my dual-boot Mandrake/WinMe system for the PSX, PS2 and XBox? Well, the consoles may be simpler, and cheaper, but it doesn't matter, because I can honestly say the PC games I've played are worth the thousands of dollars I spent to play them. My advice is, go into debt and buy everything, because games are more important than money.
I got a look at it from the French site; I also have the preview from March on my computer. The new teaser has a lot of footage from the preview, but maybe 1/3 of it is new -- most notably Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli's first meeting with Gandalf the White.
This teaser is an actual trailer, too. The preview was badass, but it wasn't really cut in a meaningful way, just a bunch of cool shots from the movie. This one seems pretty well done -- plus, it's designed to be seen on computer screens everywhere. The preview was a bootleg shot from someone's camcorder in the theater, then converted to format x.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's the first time that's happened. Thanks for clearing that up, everyone.
Well, IMO there's a difference between his statement "a sex scene that never should have been there" and "a sex scene that I don't want to watch". The former does seem to smack of censorship, the latter doesn't.
My outrage at his statement wasn't simply that he was editing movies, it was the wording of his statement: "a sex scene that never should have been there". He didn't say "I'd rather not have to watch [such and such a scene]", he said "it shouldn't be in the movie at all".
To me, this indicates that he probably would favor censoring a film from the get-go. Hence the Walmart comment. But I could be wrong.
In any case, his company certainly has the right to modify the films people bring to him, and "The Phantom Edit" is permissible (lol, and in that case, desirable).
What did Pippin have to do with the Horn, besides the fact that Boromir sounded it protecting him and Merry, and how does any of this affect the movie's rating?
Then he died, and it turned out he wanted to be cremated, along with the paintings! That stirred up quite a bit of outrage, since the paintings are, naturally, priceless.
Obviously, this is a different situation from the /. article, since an original artwork is irreplaceable. Actually, I'm not sure why there's no comparable type of object in film, or music for that matter.... Why doesn't the master print (or whatever) of a film have value comparable to an original painting?
Who the hell is this guy to determine what should and should not be in a particular movie? I'd hate to see his version of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- it'd be about half an hour long.
It's bad enough already that anything anyone could possibly consider objectionable gets cut out for TV broadcast. I'm sure this guy would love it if Walmart decided to start selling only his censored versions of movies in their stores, to avoid the inevitable objections of several random parents.
No; the most disturbing fact here is that Jack Valenti is not in the least paranoid. Let's all look at his most famous quote: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." That's from his 1982 testimony to a House subcommittee.
Does anyone really think Valenti and his MPAA cronies believe the bullshit propaganda they spew out? They know that, for whatever reason, no one with really high visibility is willing to call out their blatant lies. So, they feel free to take the most extreme stance imaginable (actually, I couldn't imagine some of the crap they've pulled). Valenti also knows that the more radical the MPAA's position is, the further to their side Congress will feel they have to legislate, away from the side of libertarian fair-use. I'd say something about the boy who cried 'wolf', except the media listens to him, every time! It seems blind to the fact that the "threat" he decries exists not even in his fevered imagination.
Anyway, some pretty interesting info on the aforementioned scene with Gollum can be found here.
As far as inconsistencies are concerned, I think we should remember when talking about Tolkien that he always concerned himself to be a historian, telling the tale of the War of the Ring, and earlier, The Hobbit. There are several points in LotR that when Tolkien was questioned on, he was "uncertain" as to what exactly, was going on, until he took some time to do more "research." Example: it was unclear for a long time whether the Glorfindel that helps Aragorn and the hobbits at the end of Book I, in The Fellowship of the Ring, was indeed the same Glorfindel that fled the fall of the City of Gondolin in the First Age. Tolkien's notes (those published after his death in The History of Middle-earth) seemed to indicate that he had decided the characters were one and the same. However, it is certain he conceived of the characters separately, and he simply accidentally reused the name.
My point, then, seems to be that a good strategy for a writer is to claim he's merely interpreting ancient history, from dusty old notes, so no wonder if occasionally a few errors pop up in one's writing.... It worked for Tolkien -- when was the last time you saw anyone criticizing his works on the basis of internal inconsistencies? (not that there are many of them)
Kyzia said some of it should get to ibiblio, and since some of it is from the 19th century, that's eminently reasonable. That "very little science fiction" includes authors like Jules Verne, whose stuff is already available online, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. And while we're visiting the 19th century, though the article doesn't mention him, also freely available are the works of H.G. Wells.
We must be careful with our Star Wars nomenclature. Both in tactical operation area (um, the woods), size, and appearance, this wood-cutting thingy most closely resembles an AT-ST, not an AT-AT. I think this may invalidate the numerous rebel grappling-hook jokes I see popping up. Unless that rope they used to trip 1 or 2 of the walkers in Return of the Jedi were grappling hooks....
- have the ISPs take the money the portals give them and promptly refund their customers, instead of just keeping the customers' rates the same, and increasing their own profit margins?
- not quickly devolve into a situation where increasingly smaller sites have to pay for access to ISPs' customers, until no one will see your shitdink personal webpage before you shell out n $ to the ISP Trade Association/equivalent?
These Indian ISPs sure as hell didn't come up with this brilliant scheme to help out their customers; they realized if they pooled their markets into a monopoly, they could charge both their customers for access to the Net, and outside Net sites for access to Indian customers through the firewall ISPs will build up around the Indian web domains.First link doesn't work for me... this appears to be correct.
- Free access to public information by the citizen.
- Permanence of public data.
- Security of the State and citizens.
i.e., the bill says "we think this kind of software best suits our needs at this time". Microsoft isn't being cut from consideration more than any other company is; Microsoft just doesn't choose to produce the kind of software the Péruvian government is interested in. Many of those companies (plus IBM) ship free software-based systems as well. The more people that adopt Linux, the more money there is to be earned in the support industry. So the Péruvian government shouldn't use Free software because their vendor would collapse in six months? That's extreme. Is IBM going to collapse in six months?A summary of your post: the U.S. economy relies on Microsoft (paragraph 2); Linux companies are all going to be bankrupt in half a year (paragraph 3); let different products compete for the business (paragraph 4). I don't see how [2] and [3] are true, first of all, and as for [4], Congressman Villanueva has let free software and Microsoft products compete: he compared them, and chose what looked like the best choice to be the government standard in his bill. Microsoft argued with his conclusions in the aforementioned letter, and Congressman Villaneuva promptly annihilated those arguments in his response.
Anyway, sorry you didn't like Halo. I basically only play PC games, and I liked it, even though I hadn't played a console FPS since Goldeneye for N64. Halo was a fun diversion, though I wouldn't say it's as much of a revelation as Half Life was.
I'd agree that console controllers, at least, are NOT made for aiming in an FPS. I put enough time into Halo to beat it on Legendary mode (the expanded ending cinematic isn't worth it, BTW) , and though I got used to the strafing/aiming scheme after a couple hours, you never get good enough control with it. The thumbsticks just don't have enough sensitivity for micro-adjustments, and the "top speed" you get for swinging your view around, by pushing the stick all the way over, is way too slow. Keyboard and mouse is definitely the superior interface.
- Intelligent (well...) Marine team members
- The ability to drive and fly a bunch of bitch-ass vehicles
- Innovative/cool guns to use (the needler, Covenant plasma pistol w/ charged homing shots) (heh, gotta love the zoom view on the sniper rifle)
AFAIK, the first 2 of those are totally unique to an FPS.Jesus, how many XBox games have you played? Most of them aren't very good. Halo is easily one of the best currently available games for XBox.
How does that translate into "worst"? All those games kicked ass. Yeah, there's reloading. What do mean "so much for realism"? Reloading is realism. What, the clip sizes are too large for you? I guess the 2 gun carrying limit was too much realism for you as well. I thought we were talking about XBox games...Indeed, I think Alex Chiu's insight can help shed some light on this topic. This is somewhat-lucid prose from his year-old /. interview:
"I think the Chinese government is doing a great job right now. I support population control. I think USA should do the same. If you want to have more than 1 kid, you should pay more tax. The enemies of China always use "human rights issues" to attack China. But if USA has 1.3 billion people, USA would have the same human rights problem just like China. You cannot expect so much freedom in a land of 1.3 billion people. Chinese government is doing such a great job that China not only feeds its own people, it also feeds most of the Russians. Most of the food imported to Russia came from China. You guys always talk about human rights. But why can't you guys mention about "government rights"? Chinese government has the right to do whatever it must do to protect China. That includes population control and the liberation of Tibet. Do you know that before Tibet was liberated, you can buy and sell slaves in Tibet? In the old Tibet, you can have slaves, you can marry 4 wives, but you cannot take a bath for 1 whole year, and you cannot meet a foreigner. You can skin your slave alive, and you can kill your slave when ever you desire. The entire Tibet is ruled by a bunch of religious idiots. You can't take a bath for the entire year, and you can't trade with foreigners. Cummunists don't allow that! Liberated Tibet and kick out that stupid Dalai Lama, whatever that moron's name is. You guys don't know how much Tibet has changed. Most families in Tibet now has electricity. TV, VCR, stereo, micro-wave, you name it. Everything's made in China! They have shopping malls and super markets there. There's stock market brokers there. In fact, Tibet is one of the most popular European tourist attraction of asia. If Dalai idiot is still around, you be buying and selling slaves there right now! Everywhere would stink like hell because nobody teaches you the importance of taking a bath. If you say Tibetans are not Chinese because they have their own language and culture, let me ask you this: Is Hawaii part of USA? Is Okinawa part of Japan? Okinawa people have different language and culture than the Japanese. So should Okinawa gain independence from Japan?"
And while evaluating the budget's "wasteful"ness, you should remember that a fair bit of the ~$280 billion we spend each year goes into R&D -- the same R&D that produced the Internet's predecessor, the ARPANET. So at least some of the money is doing some good; the same goes for NASA's budget -- we get completely unexpected scientific discoveries out of directed research programs, that end up being incredibly useful. While other nations leapfrog past our initial technological advances... we discover new ones! And the cycle continues....
OTOH, the public didn't care when they did it, either. Personally, I just don't think anyone finds ballooning exciting; it's been around for too long.
But would anyone disagree that the world population would tune out Britney to watch the first manned Mars landing? No one pays attention to space because no manned missions have gone anywhere new in 40 years.
Closed, proprietary systems (I'm not sure about "rigid intellectual property control") aren't evil -- they're just one kind of software. Um... maybe it's a different matter for hardware. But even on Slashdot, most people will agree that there is a role for proprietary software to play in the industry. Console/PC gaming is one of these roles.
Some things are related. In the case of the gaming industry, there is still much more fragmentation as regards developers and publishers than there is in both the movie and music industries. Even though this is beginning to change, with companies like Electronic Arts becoming multi-billion $ behemoths, there is still a great deal of opportunity for small game developers. Additionally, there is no organization for the gaming industry that (as yet) performs a role similar to the all-encompassing power that the MPAA and RIAA hold over their respective industries. The largest gaming organization is the Interactive Digital Software Association, but few of its activities resemble the Gestapo tactics of the *AAs.
So, while some publishers' "values" may resemble those of certain hated industry organizations, many developers' and publishers' don't. Would anyone criticize Sid Meier, Warren Spector, Chris Taylor, Peter Molyneux, etc.? These guys are like the big stars of the music industry -- except they reap the benefits of their talent, and they get control over their projects. They aren't beholden to industry executives in the same way that virtually all music stars are. Hell, I shouldn't use "they get control"; it makes it sound like they receive their rights from someone else -- which is not the case. They have the freedom to choose their own destinies.
Let's get this straight: it wasn't destined to be. Let's look at the the first episode of the Lord of the Rings movie Trilogy: an insanely great success for Peter Jackson -- critically, commercially, and for the majority of fans. The most devoted Tolkien purists and nitpickers did what they could to sabotage the film, but it wasn't enough. Take a spin over to the twin Tolkien newsgroups, rec.arts.books.tolkien and alt.fan.tolkien, and you'll find a fair number of fans so blinded in their fanatacism, they were unable to accept the movie as the adaptation it was, and had to be, instead of some 12-hour visual recitation of the novel.
But these fans couldn't make a dent in Fellowship's success -- because it was a great movie. Peter Jackson proved that it is possible to live up to all but the very extremest of expectations, and hopefully The Two Towers will succeed just as spectacularly. Lesson: if your movie kicks ass, people won't hate it, loudly, to everyone they meet. Duh.
In this case, everyone has ammunition, and everyone should use it to voice their displeasure. George Lucas tanked with Episode I -- it was a shitty movie, just in general, and when compared to the original trilogy. When Episode II turned out be crap too, just not quite as crappy as the first one, the fans, rightfully, revolted. Lucas had 2 fucking chances, and he blew them both. It's not a case of nitpicking here... Lucas deserves to be called out, by everyone, for the poorly-acted, overdone, not-very-entertaining films he's spewed out for us. The public, hell, the Star Wars franchise, deserves better.
Episode III is everyone's last chance for a good Star Wars movie: since Lucas is incapable of producing a movie anyone actually wants to watch, it might be better for everyone if someone else got a chance at directing it.
There are several interpretations one can make as to which "Two Towers" Tolkien was talking about: Orthanc and Barad-Dûr, Minas Tirith (Anor) and Minas Morgul (Ithil)... I hadn't heard anyone say they were supposed to be the Argonath before, tho...
In any case, there is a very strong case (see item #3) that the one true interpretation, what Tolkien intended, is for the Two Towers to refer to Orthanc and Minas Morgul, because these are the goals of the split parties of the Fellowship in Books III and IV, respectively. This is in contrast to the above reply that state's Book IV's goal was Barad-Dûr; Frodo and Sam don't even really enter Mordor until Book V. Additionally, the note at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring in the 3-volume edition of LotR refers to Orthanc and Minas Morgul as "The Two Towers", and Tolkien's own illustration for The Two Towers was clearly of those 2 structures.
The reason to buy a gaming computer is because consoles don't work well for a whole lotta games -- and there are all kinds of games that are unavailable on consoles.
Conversely, some games work better on consoles -- or at least on a controller. You can always hook up a controller to your computer, but if you're mostly going to be playing those types of games, you may, indeed, want to dispense only $300 of your money.
But the gaming world only uses software as an excuse -- I can't imagine being bereft of my beloved Civ III, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Deus Ex and Homeworld, but I think people tend to classify themselves as a console or PC gamer, and stick to one to the exclusion of the other. I'm a PC gamer, and my pet peeve is whenever someone refers to computer games in general as "videogames". Even though I should know better, I ignore most things happening in the console world, with the exception of some exceptional titles that remind me of my early days on the SNES -- like Metroid Prime. And for the past half decade I've been bereft of Metal Gear Solid, and every Final Fantasy after VI.
So, should I have forgone the complexities of my dual-boot Mandrake/WinMe system for the PSX, PS2 and XBox? Well, the consoles may be simpler, and cheaper, but it doesn't matter, because I can honestly say the PC games I've played are worth the thousands of dollars I spent to play them. My advice is, go into debt and buy everything, because games are more important than money.
What about "Hey Taco, how about a Lord of the Rings icon already? LotR kicks Star Wars ass!" etc...
Not true. See my above comment. This teaser has some footage from the 3/29 preview, and some completely new footage.
This teaser is an actual trailer, too. The preview was badass, but it wasn't really cut in a meaningful way, just a bunch of cool shots from the movie. This one seems pretty well done -- plus, it's designed to be seen on computer screens everywhere. The preview was a bootleg shot from someone's camcorder in the theater, then converted to format x.