Thank you for coughing up Wittgenstein. I forgot to bring him up. An interesting thought, I really need to go read some books now, damn it. I've been so busy dealing with continental thought that I completely neglected him. Interesting how well he ties both threads of contemporary thought together, while basically trying to destroy both.
I prefer to ring up Anthony Flew's idea of a "blik", a statement that cannot be proven or disproven. You could spend your whole life arguing about God lifting stones, and NEVER make progress just based on the structure of the proposition. It is (to be Wittgensteinian) a "game". I've noticed that all the contentious debates in philosophy (agency vs. determinism, god vs. science, eyc...) all have this structure, two positions that have innate unprovable natures against each other, and all dealing with experience in such a irrelevant way as to be laughable. You can't convince an atheist that there is a god, and you can't convince a deist that there isn't, so whats the point, either stance is a real feature of the world.
So, though, what is your view of the post philosophy world? What is the role of inquiry when most of the previous debates are empty noise?
As a philosophy person who pays attention to the current issues I've seen this argument come up almost as much as the "God Question", and dismiss it in much the same say as I dismiss the jabber about God.
I argued this extensively on my blog in response to an article in the humanist, which also (oddly) deals with criminality.
The gist is two fold, depending on the view of determinism, hard or soft. Hard determinism is the more philosophic/cogsci approach, springing from the laws of physics, this is a softer approach where our actions are from pure biologic process (though this would lead to harder forms with more thought). Both views arise from scientism, the unbridled faith in science, and sciences ability to deliver a complete and fully mechanistic, view of reality (and thus human agency), and that reductionism will eventually lead to a full bottom up model of the universe. This, in my view, is the weakness of determinism. Science itself is a problematic entity, we run into the problems presented by Rorty, Kuhn, and Nagel (not to mention Foucault), where science is fallible due to some human weaknesses, such as selection bias (we are limited on what we see by what we expect), social structures (paradigms, epistemes, etc...), and the fact that we are trying to mirror the world. I know this will be even less popular on/. than in anglophone philosophy as a whole, but the philosophic jury is still out on the abilities of science, and the primacy of science. That said, to keep myself from being viewed as offering a religious view, science is the best we have, though we should accept its limitations. Blind faith in anything is bad, be it religion or science.
My preferred argument is more existential in flavor, and springs from the fact that determinism is a rather silly stance, in that it is impossible to "live as if one was determined", free will (illusionary or not) is ever present in our minds, and I have yet to meet a determinist capable of fully (and actually) dismissing it in their day to day lives. Agency is an existential fact. Its like the people in the radical fringe of cognitive science who have fully denied the existence of self, it is an abstract fact, but not a real fact. We live in the realm of experience, experience is more real than theory in our existence. Doctrines such as determinism or the illusion of self-hood are incompatible with our actual lives, since we cannot live as if they were facts. If illusionary, they are so ingrained in our being that denying them is largely an empty gesture.
Sorry for seeming to argue against you, I misread you terribly when I started to post this, mostly because I cam across the name "Dennet". I am more mixed on Daniel Dennet than any other living philosopher, I respect him greatly since he is very very intelligent, but on the other hand he is prone to throwing out the baby with the bath water with somewhat flimsy proofs, and some of his books are dumbed down to the point of... Well go read his book on evolution and religion, very promising, but his "philosophy lite" approach almost destroyed any validity. And "Freedom Evolves" was just bizarre, he starts out trying to deny charges of determinism, only to promote (later, thanks to a very disjointed logical leap) an even stranger form of determinism (probabilistic/quantum), while presenting some arguable "facts" such as the 34ms "potential spike" before action.
Flip answer aside, what is so special about some suit getting richer at the cost of the community? The money sure as hell won't be passed back to us, so that isn't good for us, since we are paying more for less service. I'm not going to see any big market money, since most people (contrary to popular belief) has nothing in the stock market besides a meager 401k, more money for the rich. Said suit isn't going to reinvest in the community, so no benefit there. Said suit isn't going to go buy services in your city, since he doesn't live there (odd are), and that money is going into a bank, not to shopping at Sears.
So far I'm missing the bright side.
I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious, I've never quite understood the uber-capitalism thing, and how/.ers can be so rabidly anti-regulation on everything, even when removing regulation has generally lead to negative consequences.
I have asked asshats with their portaphones to shut up before (nicely, mind), but they generally scowl at me, and mutter something nasty to the person on the other end, they have the "right to talk as loud as they want, whenever they want". I've even had people on their stupid phones tell me to shut up, outdoors, in public. People (don't want to say Americans, since I really don't know if other countries have this problem too) are to caught up in their "rights", and not enough in any sense of civic responsibility. I'm getting sick of having to listen to other people's mindless chatter, and having people tell me to wait because they really NEED to "take this", when I am right there and they obviously have voice mail. How many good conversations have you even heard people have on their damn cellphones? Its generally "Yeah, I'm on the bus, I'll be home in an hour, I went to the store today, they have bologna on sale!" And now we get the honor of sitting on a five hour flight full of morons chitchatting for the sake of their "rights" and all-holy convenience.
I really do think your rights should end when it gets in the way of other people. And your convenience is secondary to the public good.
I'd rather live with the.002% chance of terrorism, than the 100% chance of being stuck next to some egotistical philistine talking to his moronic friends.
Who mentioned the Wii? The topic was the PS2 vs. the PS3, the Wii might be closer to the PS2, but the PS3 is still a rather large disappointment, and has a real risk of failing (to the fanboys, I said risk, not inevitability). The Wii might be like the PS2 (doubtful), I personally think that we have enough history to start predicting that it will repeat itself. We only have two truly modern launches for comparison, the PS1/N64/DC launch, and the PS2/GC/Xbox launch, both of which had very different results and circumstances than today.
Damn anonymous users posting insightful comments, would rather waste my mod points on real people.
You have a VERY good point though, most Americans do confuse "legality" with ethics, in a way were a bunch of greedy six year olds. We want our way, or else, we want everything the good of the whole be damned. But... the way our system is developed this works, which is the point of the first amendment. All of our individual self-interests get aired, weighed, and then compromised. Some greedy people want their gore and sex with no restrictions, and act self-righteous about it, and some other people want to protect their community and children and act self-righteous about it, and between these two forces of greed a compromise happens that makes both sides angery and indignant, but is generally best for the whole.
It's America's trick, we hate the idea of communal good, but work towards it inadvertently through our own greed and self-interest, since other people with opposing views are playing the same game.
Yes, it gets annoying, but still it works, dissent is the grease that makes America work./. is a bad example though, since your only generally getting one point of view, the highly libertarian "gimme my rights or else!" view, where the whole point is that these people have a foil and a role to play. I think the founding fathers were smart enough to realize that all of us can be right on points, and wrong on others, that no POV is 100% correct, nor 100% wrong, they told the masses "enlightened self-interest", while actually catering to the communal good through the back door.
You are wrong to a certain extent. Style CAN mean it performs better, sometimes style is a sign that the product was more thought out, in more aspects. When I got my iPod that was the first thing that stuck me, it was more than just superficial surface style, the thought put in to it extended to its GUI, and internals (4 years, and only now is the battery failing, many drops and no problems). I actually am a fan of style, I'm glad the days of "beige" boxes are passing away, if I have to have something sitting in my living room, I'd rather it look good, as well as function.
That said, yes, form can go over function, and that is a bad thing. If my iPod was a piece of barely functional crap then it's style alone wouldn't hold it up, or make it worthwhile.
If you had a choice between good design (meaning form and function), or just good function, what would you choose?
How did this end up on the front page? All I got from this is that "Japan has a big gaming magazine, that is biased, but Kotaku and Zonk like it. You should read it, but you probably don't speak Japanese". I think this is the worst front page story I have seen on/. in my umpteen years of sifting through drivel.
So what is the news? Japan has paid for review magazine like the US (and rest of the world), but people expect this and don't complain?
Actually since I've gotten used to non-maximized windows on a Mac, I stopped using them on a PC, that way I can have a chat window open, view my MP3 player, etc... at the same time as I'm on/. at home. Also long blocks of text hard harder to read, it helps to break things into shorter rows, it lets you read fast. I could have Firefox pretty much maximized (its called drag window to full screen), but would rather not, though in my first couple weeks after switching this is what I did.
Wow... I didn't even notice that I haven't heard that word in almost 10 years. Now I suddenly feel frustrated again, but sort of miss making long lists of used IRQs just to get something trivial to do something trivial.
Sorry... the original Zelda wins, still. I still have the fondest memories of that game, that and the first GB one. Hours wasted, the joy of beating the second quest. When the N64 ones came out I thought it lost something, I do't like worrying about camera angles, or meticulously aiming. Granted I did enjoy them, and am happy about paying and playing them, I still don't regret my $50 for TP, even if the controls are wonky (the silly flight minigame... grr. I still haven't touched it since then!), and Windwaker was surprisingly fun, even the sailing (reminded me of Skies of Arcadia, best DC game ever), but Zelda 1 still holds a place in my heart, as I said earlier, my play time on Zelda 1 is higher than on TP right now, its like rediscovering perfection, that game is FLAWLESS.
It is amusing, last weekend I downloaded Zelda and Sonic for my Wii, and now I'm actually playing them more than I am TP or Wii Sports. They have a simplicity that I never really realized I missed. Zelda is just perfect, it has some degree of complexity (exploration, ample items), but it doesn't require to much thought, you can just plug yourself in and play, and get even more wrapped up in the action. Sonic is still fun, even if you only really need 3 buttons to play it ( ->, V, and 2), it just makes me wonder where all my 2D twitch reflexes went since I was a kid, though the irony of playing the original Sonic on Nintendo hardware keeps me coming back.
In the real world cheaper development costs going down NEVER translate to cheaper for the customer, just more wallet padding for execs. I'm sure if they could sell cheap simple 2D games, they would in a heart beat since it just means more profit.
Based on the last couple years of elections, there are two potential readings you can take. The first, and most common one, is that the U.S. is becoming left/right polarized, with the population moving to both extremes. This is the view presented by the media and various pundits since it is more sensational, and allows for a decent "us vs. them" slant. The other possible interpretation is that the population is drifting more and more towards the center, which would give the same 51/49 vote skew, but this isn't good news, so it isn't presented.
Actual poll and survey data support the latter view, that more and more Americans are becoming ambivalent towards "petty" partisan politics, or picking and choosing what issues that are important, rather than subscribing to vast partisan dogmas. I think we can classify the polarization as a myth, partly propagated by the fact that the most notable public figures are loud extremists while the vast centrist majority are quiet and polite.
I do have an account on Blogspot, but blogging really doesn't fit my writing style. I would like to have nice, clean pages with links to some static documents, perhaps a small wiki, and some control over what I can have there (perhaps little forum, like YABB, if its still around). Mostly though I just need a place to plant text and doc files.
Am I the only person who likes this idea? I've been hunting for a free place to host a very small webpage to house some text files and jpgs, and perhaps host a small blog, but not enough to warrant getting my own domain/pay-per-month, that allows me to eschew nasty ads, and allows me to have some control over the format of the page. This seems nice, to me, even if some idiots try to take advantage of it, I'm sure they can cap bandwidth or something to keep tis from happening.
Being against a somewhat charitable (I'm sure someone will have to profit, eventually) action because someone can manipulate it is dubious. I'm sure more people will benefit than other people will use it to bad ends.
Now Apple can have a *NEW* UI "standard" competing with the other 6 floating around in the same UI, and perhaps even further bastardize their own usability standards...
What is wrong with Aqua? It still looks better than Aero, and much better than the Vista UI that people not running a $6k box. If it ain't broke... (yes, it is... but the cure is bringing all the iCrap software into one unified look, like UNO does.)
For the sake of argument, what is the ingredient "x"? Is it just being more creative, or anything else quantitative? By what metric can we judge creativity?
I can see dividing art between "great" art, and more pedestrian art. But I don't think an actual division is possible.
The manager of the local Target tipped off my dad last week that they were getting 30 that Sunday. He sized him up before giving the random insider tip, it seems. At 8am there were 6 people inside, in line, and about 16 consoles. It was all very orderly. But no camping, or such, I even missed the 8 opening thanks to a heinous traffic accident.
No. How does a painting become ART? Where is the magic moment? Does it come years after it was done, when it is "discovered" and lauded by academics and the art-world elite? Is there a magic ingredient that makes it art? Can I do this "magic" and marvel at how different it is?
Sure, its hard to call something a novice painter does in their living room "art", but then again can we call Emily Dickenson a poet? She didn't want anyone to read her stuff, there was no conscious "art intent" in it, same goes with authors such as Kafka and Burroughs. What about artists like Duchamp who made "anti-art", with whatever magic artistic elements conspicuously missing.
So... What divides an artist from a nonartist, when they are doing pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same end product?
Actually music is a form of what is classically known as art. Philosophically even theater and movies are art. Art is a creative act with aesthetics in mind, which music is. Beethoven and Bach would both be artists, can you deny this? Sure the line blurs when we get to Brittany Spears, and Slayer, but its hard to discount them, since we can still call Pollack and Warhol "artists" with a straight face.
To be honest, though I am a aesthetics/philosophy of art junkies, I must admit the the definition of what art is, is rather hard to pin down. I've been working on a decent definition for sometime, but it is a terribly hard task. After all Duchamp could call an upturned urinal art, and critics finally agreed. If that can be art, why not top 40 crap? Remember the latin root for "art", "ars, could also mean a trick or deception.
Even if 25% of homes have HD, there is a missing fact, 90% (or so) of homes have more than one TV. The house I'm in right now has 4. So even if there was an HD TV here (actually I think there is one, a small one hidden in a back bedroom, but ironically the main TV is just a good ol' television), there still would be the need for low-def media. Unless we're now expected to upgrade EVERY television that could ever have a media player attached to it to HD, which would be ridiculously expensive.
Personally I think this whole thing is a gimmick. My television is good enough, I really still can't tell the difference between LD and HD, especially when it comes to media. The only thing I like is the form factor of HD TVs, though a grand is too much to cough up for "real" wide screen. This whole game is just to eventually force everyone to buy a new gadget, making electronics companies billions of bucks, for no real reason other than making said companies billions of bucks.
A three-year-old computer is obsolete as a gaming machine in terms of CPU and graphics power
Not really true, I had homemade windows box that could play every game for a five year span, up until Doom3, and Oblivion. Half the time it could handle near max settings too, like in UT2k3, Morrowind, and Unreal2, and the rub was tha it really wasn't that special a box, I think it was a AMD 2600 or somesuch random number (1.8Ghz?), with 720 megs of RAM, and a forgettable ATI card. If the dorm I was in didn't enjoying frying PSUs (terrible surges), I'm sure I could have kept it somewhat up to daye with a minimum of work and expense (less than, say, a PS3). Yes, I'm pedantic, and citing a single, and personal, anecdote. Basically meaning I said nothing.
I wonder how bad the Wiis graphics actually are. They are better than the GC, but people don't see it since their comparing it to the HD consoles. I think the Wii is an incrimental improvement, probably in the same magnitude as the PS2 over the PS1, nothing revolutionary (*cough*), but still a step upwards. Sadly none of the launch, or early release games really try to capture what the Wii can do graphically, but try to exploit the new control scheme. Perhaps when the novelty wears off people will fully develop for the Wii as a whole. The graphics debate has been drawn as "meh" for the Wii, vs. "awsome!" for the 360 and PS3, where I think it might be best stated as "very decent" for the Wii, and "awsome!" for the PS3, and 360.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for coughing up Wittgenstein. I forgot to bring him up. An interesting thought, I really need to go read some books now, damn it. I've been so busy dealing with continental thought that I completely neglected him. Interesting how well he ties both threads of contemporary thought together, while basically trying to destroy both.
I prefer to ring up Anthony Flew's idea of a "blik", a statement that cannot be proven or disproven. You could spend your whole life arguing about God lifting stones, and NEVER make progress just based on the structure of the proposition. It is (to be Wittgensteinian) a "game". I've noticed that all the contentious debates in philosophy (agency vs. determinism, god vs. science, eyc...) all have this structure, two positions that have innate unprovable natures against each other, and all dealing with experience in such a irrelevant way as to be laughable. You can't convince an atheist that there is a god, and you can't convince a deist that there isn't, so whats the point, either stance is a real feature of the world.
So, though, what is your view of the post philosophy world? What is the role of inquiry when most of the previous debates are empty noise?
As a philosophy person who pays attention to the current issues I've seen this argument come up almost as much as the "God Question", and dismiss it in much the same say as I dismiss the jabber about God.
/. than in anglophone philosophy as a whole, but the philosophic jury is still out on the abilities of science, and the primacy of science. That said, to keep myself from being viewed as offering a religious view, science is the best we have, though we should accept its limitations. Blind faith in anything is bad, be it religion or science.
I argued this extensively on my blog in response to an article in the humanist, which also (oddly) deals with criminality.
The gist is two fold, depending on the view of determinism, hard or soft. Hard determinism is the more philosophic/cogsci approach, springing from the laws of physics, this is a softer approach where our actions are from pure biologic process (though this would lead to harder forms with more thought). Both views arise from scientism, the unbridled faith in science, and sciences ability to deliver a complete and fully mechanistic, view of reality (and thus human agency), and that reductionism will eventually lead to a full bottom up model of the universe. This, in my view, is the weakness of determinism. Science itself is a problematic entity, we run into the problems presented by Rorty, Kuhn, and Nagel (not to mention Foucault), where science is fallible due to some human weaknesses, such as selection bias (we are limited on what we see by what we expect), social structures (paradigms, epistemes, etc...), and the fact that we are trying to mirror the world. I know this will be even less popular on
My preferred argument is more existential in flavor, and springs from the fact that determinism is a rather silly stance, in that it is impossible to "live as if one was determined", free will (illusionary or not) is ever present in our minds, and I have yet to meet a determinist capable of fully (and actually) dismissing it in their day to day lives. Agency is an existential fact. Its like the people in the radical fringe of cognitive science who have fully denied the existence of self, it is an abstract fact, but not a real fact. We live in the realm of experience, experience is more real than theory in our existence. Doctrines such as determinism or the illusion of self-hood are incompatible with our actual lives, since we cannot live as if they were facts. If illusionary, they are so ingrained in our being that denying them is largely an empty gesture.
Sorry for seeming to argue against you, I misread you terribly when I started to post this, mostly because I cam across the name "Dennet". I am more mixed on Daniel Dennet than any other living philosopher, I respect him greatly since he is very very intelligent, but on the other hand he is prone to throwing out the baby with the bath water with somewhat flimsy proofs, and some of his books are dumbed down to the point of... Well go read his book on evolution and religion, very promising, but his "philosophy lite" approach almost destroyed any validity. And "Freedom Evolves" was just bizarre, he starts out trying to deny charges of determinism, only to promote (later, thanks to a very disjointed logical leap) an even stranger form of determinism (probabilistic/quantum), while presenting some arguable "facts" such as the 34ms "potential spike" before action.
Which is bad how, exactly?
/.ers can be so rabidly anti-regulation on everything, even when removing regulation has generally lead to negative consequences.
Which is good how, exactly?
Flip answer aside, what is so special about some suit getting richer at the cost of the community? The money sure as hell won't be passed back to us, so that isn't good for us, since we are paying more for less service. I'm not going to see any big market money, since most people (contrary to popular belief) has nothing in the stock market besides a meager 401k, more money for the rich. Said suit isn't going to reinvest in the community, so no benefit there. Said suit isn't going to go buy services in your city, since he doesn't live there (odd are), and that money is going into a bank, not to shopping at Sears.
So far I'm missing the bright side.
I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious, I've never quite understood the uber-capitalism thing, and how
Courteous? In modern America?
.002% chance of terrorism, than the 100% chance of being stuck next to some egotistical philistine talking to his moronic friends.
I have asked asshats with their portaphones to shut up before (nicely, mind), but they generally scowl at me, and mutter something nasty to the person on the other end, they have the "right to talk as loud as they want, whenever they want". I've even had people on their stupid phones tell me to shut up, outdoors, in public. People (don't want to say Americans, since I really don't know if other countries have this problem too) are to caught up in their "rights", and not enough in any sense of civic responsibility. I'm getting sick of having to listen to other people's mindless chatter, and having people tell me to wait because they really NEED to "take this", when I am right there and they obviously have voice mail. How many good conversations have you even heard people have on their damn cellphones? Its generally "Yeah, I'm on the bus, I'll be home in an hour, I went to the store today, they have bologna on sale!" And now we get the honor of sitting on a five hour flight full of morons chitchatting for the sake of their "rights" and all-holy convenience.
I really do think your rights should end when it gets in the way of other people. And your convenience is secondary to the public good.
I'd rather live with the
Well, quite a lot of people do seem to be fumbling it lately...
Statistically?
To be pedantic, actually my belt does have a large disclaimer saying "Not Intended for Climbing". Yes, its silly, but true.
Who mentioned the Wii? The topic was the PS2 vs. the PS3, the Wii might be closer to the PS2, but the PS3 is still a rather large disappointment, and has a real risk of failing (to the fanboys, I said risk, not inevitability). The Wii might be like the PS2 (doubtful), I personally think that we have enough history to start predicting that it will repeat itself. We only have two truly modern launches for comparison, the PS1/N64/DC launch, and the PS2/GC/Xbox launch, both of which had very different results and circumstances than today.
Damn anonymous users posting insightful comments, would rather waste my mod points on real people.
/. is a bad example though, since your only generally getting one point of view, the highly libertarian "gimme my rights or else!" view, where the whole point is that these people have a foil and a role to play. I think the founding fathers were smart enough to realize that all of us can be right on points, and wrong on others, that no POV is 100% correct, nor 100% wrong, they told the masses "enlightened self-interest", while actually catering to the communal good through the back door.
You have a VERY good point though, most Americans do confuse "legality" with ethics, in a way were a bunch of greedy six year olds. We want our way, or else, we want everything the good of the whole be damned. But... the way our system is developed this works, which is the point of the first amendment. All of our individual self-interests get aired, weighed, and then compromised. Some greedy people want their gore and sex with no restrictions, and act self-righteous about it, and some other people want to protect their community and children and act self-righteous about it, and between these two forces of greed a compromise happens that makes both sides angery and indignant, but is generally best for the whole.
It's America's trick, we hate the idea of communal good, but work towards it inadvertently through our own greed and self-interest, since other people with opposing views are playing the same game.
Yes, it gets annoying, but still it works, dissent is the grease that makes America work.
You are wrong to a certain extent. Style CAN mean it performs better, sometimes style is a sign that the product was more thought out, in more aspects. When I got my iPod that was the first thing that stuck me, it was more than just superficial surface style, the thought put in to it extended to its GUI, and internals (4 years, and only now is the battery failing, many drops and no problems). I actually am a fan of style, I'm glad the days of "beige" boxes are passing away, if I have to have something sitting in my living room, I'd rather it look good, as well as function.
That said, yes, form can go over function, and that is a bad thing. If my iPod was a piece of barely functional crap then it's style alone wouldn't hold it up, or make it worthwhile.
If you had a choice between good design (meaning form and function), or just good function, what would you choose?
How did this end up on the front page? All I got from this is that "Japan has a big gaming magazine, that is biased, but Kotaku and Zonk like it. You should read it, but you probably don't speak Japanese". I think this is the worst front page story I have seen on /. in my umpteen years of sifting through drivel.
So what is the news? Japan has paid for review magazine like the US (and rest of the world), but people expect this and don't complain?
Wow.
Actually since I've gotten used to non-maximized windows on a Mac, I stopped using them on a PC, that way I can have a chat window open, view my MP3 player, etc... at the same time as I'm on /. at home. Also long blocks of text hard harder to read, it helps to break things into shorter rows, it lets you read fast. I could have Firefox pretty much maximized (its called drag window to full screen), but would rather not, though in my first couple weeks after switching this is what I did.
Personal preference, not objective fact, mind.
IRQs...
Wow... I didn't even notice that I haven't heard that word in almost 10 years. Now I suddenly feel frustrated again, but sort of miss making long lists of used IRQs just to get something trivial to do something trivial.
Sorry... the original Zelda wins, still. I still have the fondest memories of that game, that and the first GB one. Hours wasted, the joy of beating the second quest. When the N64 ones came out I thought it lost something, I do't like worrying about camera angles, or meticulously aiming. Granted I did enjoy them, and am happy about paying and playing them, I still don't regret my $50 for TP, even if the controls are wonky (the silly flight minigame... grr. I still haven't touched it since then!), and Windwaker was surprisingly fun, even the sailing (reminded me of Skies of Arcadia, best DC game ever), but Zelda 1 still holds a place in my heart, as I said earlier, my play time on Zelda 1 is higher than on TP right now, its like rediscovering perfection, that game is FLAWLESS.
But that is my opinion...
It is amusing, last weekend I downloaded Zelda and Sonic for my Wii, and now I'm actually playing them more than I am TP or Wii Sports. They have a simplicity that I never really realized I missed. Zelda is just perfect, it has some degree of complexity (exploration, ample items), but it doesn't require to much thought, you can just plug yourself in and play, and get even more wrapped up in the action. Sonic is still fun, even if you only really need 3 buttons to play it ( ->, V, and 2), it just makes me wonder where all my 2D twitch reflexes went since I was a kid, though the irony of playing the original Sonic on Nintendo hardware keeps me coming back.
In the real world cheaper development costs going down NEVER translate to cheaper for the customer, just more wallet padding for execs. I'm sure if they could sell cheap simple 2D games, they would in a heart beat since it just means more profit.
Based on the last couple years of elections, there are two potential readings you can take. The first, and most common one, is that the U.S. is becoming left/right polarized, with the population moving to both extremes. This is the view presented by the media and various pundits since it is more sensational, and allows for a decent "us vs. them" slant. The other possible interpretation is that the population is drifting more and more towards the center, which would give the same 51/49 vote skew, but this isn't good news, so it isn't presented.
Actual poll and survey data support the latter view, that more and more Americans are becoming ambivalent towards "petty" partisan politics, or picking and choosing what issues that are important, rather than subscribing to vast partisan dogmas. I think we can classify the polarization as a myth, partly propagated by the fact that the most notable public figures are loud extremists while the vast centrist majority are quiet and polite.
I do have an account on Blogspot, but blogging really doesn't fit my writing style. I would like to have nice, clean pages with links to some static documents, perhaps a small wiki, and some control over what I can have there (perhaps little forum, like YABB, if its still around). Mostly though I just need a place to plant text and doc files.
Am I the only person who likes this idea? I've been hunting for a free place to host a very small webpage to house some text files and jpgs, and perhaps host a small blog, but not enough to warrant getting my own domain/pay-per-month, that allows me to eschew nasty ads, and allows me to have some control over the format of the page. This seems nice, to me, even if some idiots try to take advantage of it, I'm sure they can cap bandwidth or something to keep tis from happening.
Being against a somewhat charitable (I'm sure someone will have to profit, eventually) action because someone can manipulate it is dubious. I'm sure more people will benefit than other people will use it to bad ends.
Now Apple can have a *NEW* UI "standard" competing with the other 6 floating around in the same UI, and perhaps even further bastardize their own usability standards...
What is wrong with Aqua? It still looks better than Aero, and much better than the Vista UI that people not running a $6k box. If it ain't broke... (yes, it is... but the cure is bringing all the iCrap software into one unified look, like UNO does.)
For the sake of argument, what is the ingredient "x"? Is it just being more creative, or anything else quantitative? By what metric can we judge creativity?
I can see dividing art between "great" art, and more pedestrian art. But I don't think an actual division is possible.
The manager of the local Target tipped off my dad last week that they were getting 30 that Sunday. He sized him up before giving the random insider tip, it seems. At 8am there were 6 people inside, in line, and about 16 consoles. It was all very orderly. But no camping, or such, I even missed the 8 opening thanks to a heinous traffic accident.
No. How does a painting become ART? Where is the magic moment? Does it come years after it was done, when it is "discovered" and lauded by academics and the art-world elite? Is there a magic ingredient that makes it art? Can I do this "magic" and marvel at how different it is?
Sure, its hard to call something a novice painter does in their living room "art", but then again can we call Emily Dickenson a poet? She didn't want anyone to read her stuff, there was no conscious "art intent" in it, same goes with authors such as Kafka and Burroughs. What about artists like Duchamp who made "anti-art", with whatever magic artistic elements conspicuously missing.
So... What divides an artist from a nonartist, when they are doing pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same end product?
Actually music is a form of what is classically known as art. Philosophically even theater and movies are art. Art is a creative act with aesthetics in mind, which music is. Beethoven and Bach would both be artists, can you deny this? Sure the line blurs when we get to Brittany Spears, and Slayer, but its hard to discount them, since we can still call Pollack and Warhol
"artists" with a straight face.
To be honest, though I am a aesthetics/philosophy of art junkies, I must admit the the definition of what art is, is rather hard to pin down. I've been working on a decent definition for sometime, but it is a terribly hard task. After all Duchamp could call an upturned urinal art, and critics finally agreed. If that can be art, why not top 40 crap? Remember the latin root for "art", "ars, could also mean a trick or deception.
Even if 25% of homes have HD, there is a missing fact, 90% (or so) of homes have more than one TV. The house I'm in right now has 4. So even if there was an HD TV here (actually I think there is one, a small one hidden in a back bedroom, but ironically the main TV is just a good ol' television), there still would be the need for low-def media. Unless we're now expected to upgrade EVERY television that could ever have a media player attached to it to HD, which would be ridiculously expensive.
Personally I think this whole thing is a gimmick. My television is good enough, I really still can't tell the difference between LD and HD, especially when it comes to media. The only thing I like is the form factor of HD TVs, though a grand is too much to cough up for "real" wide screen. This whole game is just to eventually force everyone to buy a new gadget, making electronics companies billions of bucks, for no real reason other than making said companies billions of bucks.
A three-year-old computer is obsolete as a gaming machine in terms of CPU and graphics power
Not really true, I had homemade windows box that could play every game for a five year span, up until Doom3, and Oblivion. Half the time it could handle near max settings too, like in UT2k3, Morrowind, and Unreal2, and the rub was tha it really wasn't that special a box, I think it was a AMD 2600 or somesuch random number (1.8Ghz?), with 720 megs of RAM, and a forgettable ATI card. If the dorm I was in didn't enjoying frying PSUs (terrible surges), I'm sure I could have kept it somewhat up to daye with a minimum of work and expense (less than, say, a PS3). Yes, I'm pedantic, and citing a single, and personal, anecdote. Basically meaning I said nothing.
I wonder how bad the Wiis graphics actually are. They are better than the GC, but people don't see it since their comparing it to the HD consoles. I think the Wii is an incrimental improvement, probably in the same magnitude as the PS2 over the PS1, nothing revolutionary (*cough*), but still a step upwards. Sadly none of the launch, or early release games really try to capture what the Wii can do graphically, but try to exploit the new control scheme. Perhaps when the novelty wears off people will fully develop for the Wii as a whole. The graphics debate has been drawn as "meh" for the Wii, vs. "awsome!" for the 360 and PS3, where I think it might be best stated as "very decent" for the Wii, and "awsome!" for the PS3, and 360.