I don't know if PVR's have achieved maximum market penetration, though I doubt it. I do know that the PVR customer archetype is someone who might buy an XBox, in contrast to your statement...
... the hardcore adult gamer is a very small segment of the total console gamer population (Look nintendo is targetting kids... little kids... there's a reason for this)
As far as gaming population is concerned, the belief that no or very few adults are playing games, even console games, is a myth that's becoming less and less true. Check out the first decent data I found googling on this topic. The 4th table on the page holds the most interest for us, I think. The May 2001 figures for market penetration (right side of the table) for all >16 bit consoles (i.e. > SNES) show that of all households with a modern console, 33.9% didn't have children, 66.1% did. This is an increase from 23.7%
in the 16 bit era, 1995, on the left side of the table. I wouldn't call 33.9% "very small", and no doubt that 33.9% figure has increased in the past year. And all this doesn't account for households that may have kids, but where one of the parents still uses the console.
As far as Nintendo targeting kids is concerned, yeah, they're sticking with their traditional core market, but PS2 and XBox are not doing that. They're focusing on the 18-34 demographic of older teens, college students, and young adults.
Having read Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and "The Minority Report", and seen Scott's Blade Runner and Spielberg's Minority Report, I think I'm qualified to compare the books/short stories to their respective film versions.
Spielberg's film is much closer to the story than Blade Runner was, but that was a lot easier to do because The Minority Report is only about 30 pages, whereas DADoES is an actual novel. The short story isn't long enough to paint a very detailed picture of 2054 (comparatively; not knocking Dick's literary talents) -- it spends most of its time spinning out the pretty intricate plot. Since the screenplay's plot is pretty close to the short stories, Spielberg has a free hand to paint the rest of the movie how he wants to, since there's no direction from the story. I think from what I've read that his goal was more film-noir than SF... I'm not sure if the bleached-out effect he gave the film accomplished that.
Anyway, the gists of the movie and the story both end up being anti- government surveillance, etc., but the actual plotlines do it in sort of opposite ways. Without spoiling either the story or the film, I'll just say that Spielberg gets across the same point, but in a more uplifting way.
What may be important is not what we can do now, but what we'll be able to do n years from now. The LINEAR Program isn't designed for just a last-ditch, 3-day warning signal. Its purpose is to catalog all the dangerous crap flying around that could hit us at some point in the future. The longer we work at it, the better a handle we'll have on the state of the neighborhood.
I don't think it makes sense to say we have to wait and have technology advanced enough to stop a large asteroid/comet before we begin to compile a list of dangerous objects.
The problem is that the bastardized movie incarnation of Starship Troopers is not only vastly inferior to the printed subject matter, it actually perverts Heinlein's message in the book. For an analysis of that, see ChrisW's Starship Troopers page.
What Verhoeven and his cronies did with the movie was turn the Federation into an actual fascist state. As the linked webpage states, Verhoeven's statement that...
"The philosophy of Heinlein is certainly in the movie. Whether I adhere to that society myself is something else, but it is the philosophy of the world he described, and we took that from his book."
...is total bullshit. Purposely or not, Verhoeven et al got Heinlein's philosophy all fucked up. So the movie ends being a pretty good action flick, with a kinda anti-war message from its over-the-top portrayal of a fascist state, if you really try to analyze it. Of course, there's really no point in doing that, because Heinlein's novel discusses a lot more stuff a lot better, and Verhoeven didn't pick up any of it in the 5-minute read he gave it before directing the movie.
tho with that story a couple of weeks ago on photons being slowed down and stopped in a crystal, maybe there's more to "the law" than there appears to be.
Anyway, this story is definitely what it appears to be -- a scammer from Ireland who's just managed to get his crackpot scheme infinitely more attention than it deserves.
Hrmmm... am I wrong, or does RIAA stand for Recording Industry Association of America? So if you wanna flame, flame the right people: the MPAA. Though they haven't had a chance to pull much shit yet.
Anyway, I can't think of a single reason, including blindness, that should prevent you from GOING TO SEE THIS MOVIE!
Actually, I don't think there's much of a chance Jackson will cut out the Shire-scouring. Firstly, though we'll have to wait for tTT and tRotK movies, unless PJ drastically changes the entire scene with Gandalf and Saruman at Isengard after the Ents trash the place, then the hobbits need to confront Saruman and Gríma in the Shire at the end of tRotK.
Secondly, remember one of the visions Frodo saw in the Mirror of Galadriel in the film: the peaceful, tranquil Shire transformed into a nightmare of torches and frightened hobbits. Surely Jackson wouldn't have included this w/o a reason. Of course, the entire Shire sequence could still be changed drastically. IIRC the Shire vision was one of Sam's in the book, but he was cut out of the scene with Galadriel in the film. As to whether or not he got his box of magic earth, we'll have to wait and see...
You mean Elladan and Elrohir, Elrond's 2 sons... Elros was Elrond's brother, the First King of Númenor, and had been dead for 5895 years before the War of the Ring.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as gaming population is concerned, the belief that no or very few adults are playing games, even console games, is a myth that's becoming less and less true. Check out the first decent data I found googling on this topic. The 4th table on the page holds the most interest for us, I think. The May 2001 figures for market penetration (right side of the table) for all >16 bit consoles (i.e. > SNES) show that of all households with a modern console, 33.9% didn't have children, 66.1% did. This is an increase from 23.7% in the 16 bit era, 1995, on the left side of the table. I wouldn't call 33.9% "very small", and no doubt that 33.9% figure has increased in the past year. And all this doesn't account for households that may have kids, but where one of the parents still uses the console.
As far as Nintendo targeting kids is concerned, yeah, they're sticking with their traditional core market, but PS2 and XBox are not doing that. They're focusing on the 18-34 demographic of older teens, college students, and young adults.
Spielberg's film is much closer to the story than Blade Runner was, but that was a lot easier to do because The Minority Report is only about 30 pages, whereas DADoES is an actual novel. The short story isn't long enough to paint a very detailed picture of 2054 (comparatively; not knocking Dick's literary talents) -- it spends most of its time spinning out the pretty intricate plot. Since the screenplay's plot is pretty close to the short stories, Spielberg has a free hand to paint the rest of the movie how he wants to, since there's no direction from the story. I think from what I've read that his goal was more film-noir than SF... I'm not sure if the bleached-out effect he gave the film accomplished that.
Anyway, the gists of the movie and the story both end up being anti- government surveillance, etc., but the actual plotlines do it in sort of opposite ways. Without spoiling either the story or the film, I'll just say that Spielberg gets across the same point, but in a more uplifting way.
I don't think it makes sense to say we have to wait and have technology advanced enough to stop a large asteroid/comet before we begin to compile a list of dangerous objects.
What Verhoeven and his cronies did with the movie was turn the Federation into an actual fascist state. As the linked webpage states, Verhoeven's statement that...
"The philosophy of Heinlein is certainly in the movie. Whether I adhere to that society myself is something else, but it is the philosophy of the world he described, and we took that from his book."
...is total bullshit. Purposely or not, Verhoeven et al got Heinlein's philosophy all fucked up. So the movie ends being a pretty good action flick, with a kinda anti-war message from its over-the-top portrayal of a fascist state, if you really try to analyze it. Of course, there's really no point in doing that, because Heinlein's novel discusses a lot more stuff a lot better, and Verhoeven didn't pick up any of it in the 5-minute read he gave it before directing the movie.
tho with that story a couple of weeks ago on photons being slowed down and stopped in a crystal, maybe there's more to "the law" than there appears to be.
Anyway, this story is definitely what it appears to be -- a scammer from Ireland who's just managed to get his crackpot scheme infinitely more attention than it deserves.
Anyway, I can't think of a single reason, including blindness, that should prevent you from GOING TO SEE THIS MOVIE!
Secondly, remember one of the visions Frodo saw in the Mirror of Galadriel in the film: the peaceful, tranquil Shire transformed into a nightmare of torches and frightened hobbits. Surely Jackson wouldn't have included this w/o a reason. Of course, the entire Shire sequence could still be changed drastically. IIRC the Shire vision was one of Sam's in the book, but he was cut out of the scene with Galadriel in the film. As to whether or not he got his box of magic earth, we'll have to wait and see...
You mean Elladan and Elrohir, Elrond's 2 sons... Elros was Elrond's brother, the First King of Númenor, and had been dead for 5895 years before the War of the Ring.