the setbacks are part and parcel of such a complicated effort
True. But could there be additional complications? To compare it to another grandiose project, the Three Gorges Dam. For starters, it's a prestige project so the Party cannot allow it to fail without losing much face. Second, if there are any technical shortcomings in the design, they will be covered up due to the pressure from on-high. Third, there's theft by contractors in the substitution of inferior materials, allegations of defective workmanship, and so forth. And again, these issues would be covered up to prevent embarrassment of the national government which is funny in funny-uh-oh way because tearing things up and fixing the problem now would be less costly and embarrassing and lethal than finishing the dam, flaws and all, and letting it fail years later during a quake with a full head of water in the reservoir.
So, what's the Hardon's problem? (Yeah, I keep calling it the Large Hardon Collider. It's funny.) Anything worth doing is going to be complicated. That's the one I'm hoping for. Is the design sound? Are there defects in workmanship? Any corruption from subcontractors?
SciFi Channel to SyFy Channel. Potential FAIL. Palm to PalmOne and that other confusing crap. FAIL. ValueJet to AirTRan. FAIL? Maybe not. I know I have to look up the name every time I fly to make sure I'm not accidentally flying them. Maybe it is a success. Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC. FAIL? Has their business improved? Arthur Anderson to Accenture. FAIL? We all know they still suck but people keep doing business with them so maybe a wash? Puff Daddy to P Diddy to Diddy.
I guess it's hard to separate the WIN from the FAIL here. Is a rebranding the cause of the failure or a symptom? Probably a symptom most of the time. If the company still exists after rebranding, can that be attributed to the branding or other factors? Dunno. But it still seems like the kind of stupid, ineffectual, expensive yet mostly symbolic empty gesture made by companies in trouble who have nothing left in the idea bin.
I've never done any studies or analysis of what people like and why but it seems a lot of people like something after hearing more often and if someone else likes it or if it is trendy. Think about it, teens twenty years ago were listening to 80's music and loving it. Why aren't teens listening to 80's music now? If Eddie Grant's Electric Avenue was good and a number one hit then, shouldn't it be good and a popular hit now? Did humans somehow evolve and now naturally like some other type of music?
The good stuff keeps getting listened to. Half the music I liked as a kid was from my dad's collection. I'm still finding gems from that generation, just like I'm finding good stuff now. Kids today will go through that same process. They'll pick up some Zeppelin, some pre-sellout Metallica, take a walk on over to the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and discover there's much more to them than just swing, and so forth. There's way too much hip-hop out there and most of it is pop-shite but there's the occasional gem like Immortal Technique. He gets lost in the debris of embarrassing gangsta bullshit the same way the uninformed might dismiss Iron Maiden as just another hair metal band.
You'll find the stuff that goes away is the stuff that just wasn't good. Look at the list for Billboard hits of Academy Awards from years gone by. You don't remember most of it.
But the other thing is that many people don't listen to the music deeply and really don't care about it. That's part of what drives the numbers for stuff that time has shown to not be worth remembering. Fashion is driven by herd instinct, not common sense. It's fashionable to wear bellbottoms, have hairspray freak hair in the 80's, etc. All of those fashions were picked up because others were doing it and dropped later because there was no merit to them. When people talk about "timeless" fashion that "never goes out of style" they mean things that make so much sense that they remain in use even after the fad wears off.
The trend makes something "good" in pop music. How does the music industry take advantage of this? Pick a few artists to promote (get them interviews, guest appearances on popular tv shows, special contests with soda makers etc...). The music industry can only promote so many dumb blonds or a limited amount of any genre at a time. The music did not find the diamond in the rough with many of these stars, they promoted them to that position. Those artists would have the same talent with or without the music industries blessing. With less involvement of the music industry,the trendy part would change but I don't think the there would be a lack or good quality music. People might have to figure out what they consider good for themselves and not let the music industry do it for them.
The real interest for going with dumb blondes and stupid artists is that the studio can retain greater control. They don't want to raise someone up and invest all the time and promotion into them only for that asset to suddenly start thinking for himself. Much as I detest Madonna, she's an excellent businesswoman and cannot be taken advantage of easily. Someone like a Britney is a train-wreck and can be walked over at will. If she gets uppity, she can be easily replaced with the next templated bimbo.
The "industry" the GP refers to is the big labels that screw over everybody -- artists and listeners -- in the guise that there's barriers or a scarcity that's just not there anymore. Those are the companies that go away.
If there aren't natural barriers to entry in a market (Wanna get into chip fabrication and go up against Intel? Hope you have billions backing you up) then the industry players will collaborate and make sure that artificial ones are kept nice and high. Even if it's nothing more than making sure the right people won't talk to you and you're frozen out, they'll do it if that's what it takes.
The thing that makes the net so disruptive is that the marketing model is fucked as well as the distribution model. You used to need the studios to make the records and get them in the stores but you also needed their military-industrial-entertainment complex to get your name on the air and get pushed to the public. Now that kids can talk to each other and let their own tastes develop without taste-makers from MTV and the radio telling them what they like, they're free to find and download their own music. This is the growing irrelevance the record companies are trying to fight.
Movie studios still have significant barriers on their side, both in production and marketing. While contemporary comedies might be threatened by low-budget indie productions, the Clerks and such of the world, it's still tough to get the capital together to film a giant blockbuster. But I wouldn't count on this state of affairs to remain for very long.
Those are some of the finest examples of actual Orwellian doublespeak in the real world. Read 1984 sometime, and perhaps you'll get a glimmer of understanding. The Ministry of Peace is engaged in making war, the Ministry of Truth falsifies history, the Ministry of Love tortures and punishes those who do not love Big Brother, and the Ministry of Plenty oversees poverty and shortages.
There were some doozies under the Bush administration. If I recall correctly the Clear Skies Initiative was about loosening the air pollution standards, Healthy Forests Act was about expanding logging, and No Child Left Behind was about hurting education. Oh, and the Patriot Act was about taking away the freedoms and liberties the country was founded upon.
I hope you're done having kids. Because if you ever explain that that the baby will come out of mommy's belly...
Shit, my sister and I were both c-sections and the scar was ginormous. Being a Christian household, we weren't told that much about the birds and the bees but I did happen to see Alien one night when trying to catch a rerun of Fraggle Rock on HBO late at night and put two and two together... Gave me creepy visions of my little baby sister bursting out of the tummy, all blood and gnashing teeth.
The Nostromo was diverted to the planet where they found the Xenomorph because someone in the company knew it was there. How they knew has not been explained in the films, to date. Presumably there was some prior contact that was covered up. The AvP series showed how the company could know that the aliens existed, but no reason to know where they could be found.
The Colonial Marines Tech Manual explained things pretty thoroughly. As I recall, they had a whole section in the back where company execs and scientists tried to piece together just what the hell happened. They had the initial info from the Nostromo encounter and then later retrieved data from the Sulaco disaster. That the Nostromo was sent there deliberately was established in the first movie. How did they know? I think the non-canon Manual stated that a French flyby probe detected the alien transmission from the planet. Ash had orders to bring the alien back to Earth with the crew being expendable. Did all ships operate with a secret android or was Ash a plant specifically for this purpose? Had other alien ships been encountered so they knew what to expect? Unknown. But the fun part of the whole Tech Manual bull session was how the scientists were reasonably discounting what Ripley said she experienced because it wasn't possible. "How could a creature grow from a worm capable of living in someone's chest to two meters fall? No, the creature she encountered should be no larger than a medium dog."
While there are plenty of good stories that could be told in the Aliens setting, most of them sucked and this movie will suck, too. The best Aliens stuff I read were the original Dark Horse sequel to Aliens with Newt and Marine guy on Earth having survived the escape and Ripley in places unknown and the original AVP comic. The Aliens sequel was great because it really ramped things up to the next level. Stupid scientists bring the aliens to Earth, are so arrogant they think they can control it, and all goes to hell. The Earth is overrun. And the AVP comic was just such a tight little story, would have translated to the screen perfectly.
Unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure that the Virgin experience is completely suborbital. Basically it's $200K for a parabolic rocket ride. I don't understand the appeal. OK, so you left Earth's atmosphere for a couple of minutes.
Where's my 2001 space station?
This is creating a paying way to get there. Of course, there needs to be a use for the 2001-style space station. It's rather useless if it's only an orbital hotel. I'd say the killer app for space tech right now would be the solar power sats followed eventually by space-based mining and manufacture. You move the industry off into space, the surface of Earth can be left for living.
I just got back from the Mission Viejo store. They're serving free beer! At least, they said it was beer, I've never had bright-red, fruit-flavored beer served with ice in a glass pitcher before.
There's just so many jokes to make here I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll go with the non-obvious and ask if they promised there would be punch and pie. Sounds like they got the punch right but where's the pie?
It's rare that we even hear about Joe Computerguy fucking up by accidentally sharing his homemade porn stash by accident. The only examples I can think of were not accidental at all but jilted boyfriends trying to burn the ex. But ok, I can buy an accidental release -- you store your homemade porn in a default media directory, the p2p app does a scan for shareable media and autoselects it, ok, it's possible. The guy's an idiot but it's possible. But for government shit like this to make it out, the plans for Obama's canceled Marine One replacement, the stuff in TFA today? I know they say never attribute to malice what can best be explained by incompetence but this seems too deliberately stupid.
Capitalism has a tendency towards monopoly. This was pointed out by Marx in the 19th century, and expanded upon by Lenin 95 years ago [marxists.org]. T
I have a broader theory than that. Things tend towards shit over time. The longer the period of time, the greater the likelihood all will be shit. Finally that shit hits the fan, people get mad enough to do something about it, and they put together something that isn't shit; it might even be quite good. But then they relax and time goes on and things start going to shit again.
Capitalism sucks. Marx and his buddies saw that, tried to come up with a better idea. It turned to shit. Capitalism has had a few reversals thanks to the threat of socialism/communism but now that the threat has gone away, things are sliding to shit again.
Microsoft products suck. But some hippies and computer scientists tried coming up with a better idea and Microsoft said "Oh, shit." So they were able to actually reverse the shittification process of the 9x series and came up with Win2k. Brilliant. But then the slide towards shit resumed. Some people liked XP, some people hated it, but everyone hated Vista. W7, a reversal or a further slide down the shit chute? Only time will tell.
So, to somehow get back on topic. Company makes a game machine. It's great. Company gets greedier and graspy and ends up alienating customers, turning to shit. Eventually people won't want to use their shitty products anymore and they go away. Atari exists only as a brand name used by another company. Sega is a shadow of its former self. Nintendo remains but people argue as to whether they've declined or are stronger than ever. Certainly they don't dominate the market as they did in the NES/SNES era. Sony came onto the scene out of nowhere with the PSX, reigned supreme with the PS2, and became an also-ran with the PS3.
It's hard to say what the future will hold but I do think the console makers are lusting after digital distro. The only question is whether the market would bite. I thought Circuit City's Div-X would have been more popular than it was and was pleased when it failed. Will customers make the right choice here?
Teleoperated machines have a colloquial term in two syllables, the "Waldo". This from an old Heinlein story "Waldo & Magic Incorporated".
And most people think it's a guy in a striped shirt and a funny hat.
I confess that when I think "waldo" I think robotic arm such as a manipulator attached to a deep sea suit or something in a dangerous environment operated by a scientist behind foot-thick glass. I think "drone" does a better job of conveying the idea of a teleoperated machine. Robot conveys the sense of autonomous behavior, even though it can also accept orders from a human. If a human has to control every part of the way it operates, I think "drone" is more accurate. My roomba is a robot, my rc car is not. (though I can steer the roomba manually with the remote if I want to.)
This is making me think of homeless MMO players. Red Dwarf had an electronic drug that was essentially a VR life simulation. You get to live out the life you always dreamed of. The best part, of course, is that one of the characters trapped in the game was so full of neuroses and hangups that even his fantasies were a miserable wreck. But for those who had normal fantasies, they'd end up hooked into the game ignoring their own bodies as they slowly starved while lying in a puddle of their own waste. There was also a similar device featured in Star Trek, a game that got people so hooked they wouldn't notice aliens stealing the Enterprise.
When MUD's first became popular, I thought "Surely unemployment would be the addict's best friend. Get fired, lose the house, thus nowhere to plug in the computer, you're going cold turkey!" But the devices are getting so small, so power-friendly, and with games like EVE you can earn game-time just by playing a bunch, it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine paying for wifi access via selling in-game gold and now the homeless guy living in the cardboard box might not be a wino but a game-o.
As for sending all the work over to Bangalore, I think that there's still going to be cultural barriers to doing so. Companies I've worked at, management has trouble figuring out where to go to lunch with a face-to-face meeting, let alone actually planning things in sufficient detail that a design doc could be sent overseas. At bare minimum an excellent project manager is needed to translate from vagueness to something the techs can understand, whether they're on this coast or overseas. Plus there's the pain in the ass of the differing time schedule. My dad had worked night shift at the phone company garage, a brilliant idea of management where the trucks get worked on at night and thus have greater availability during the day. The only problem is that the parts houses are only open during the day. A truck might be in and out same day on the day shift but for night shift they have to place the part order in the morning, let it arrive during the day, then wait for the next shift to do the work. That's the same sort of thing you're dealing with when working with India. Very delayed turnaround unless you can convince the Indians to work nightshift to fit American hours, a sure recipe for burnout.
So why was he so good with it? Punch cards are quaint from my perspective but I wouldn't know where to start with them. Is he also proficient with using a morse code transmitter?
Dual solo campaigns (rebels and empire) and massive multiplayer dogfights, complete with capital ships. Hell yeah.
The thing is, the computers could really support something like this these days. I never really got into Freespace but at least they had proper huge ships there.
X-Wing Alliance was the last best example of the series. Improvements I would like to see on top of that:
1. True scaling of ship sizes. They were better at it here than the sprite-based Wing Commanders but I want to see ships that feel bloody HUGE. Star Destroyers still felt too small. 2. Realistic damage modeling. I want to see ships shot up, pieces falling off, hulls venting flaming atmosphere, etc. 3. Second part of damage modeling -- show degrading performance. It always struck me as funny that a Star Destroyer operated at 100% efficiency when shields and hull were 100% and did so all the way until hull was 1%. Then one final laser blast and BOOM! it goes up in flames with midi drumbeats for explosions. You should be able to mission-kill a ship by blasting the engines but properly exploding it should require proton torps hitting the reactor or getting torn to pieces by turbo-lasers from another capship.
They did a good job of integrating a better storyline in Alliance and they also retained the huge library of ships. Nothing makes the universe feel big like having hundreds of possible ships to encounter.
I thought the old Microprose Pirates! game could use a reboot. Missed it the first time around on Apple, caught it during the PC remake in the 90's. Lo and behold, it was remake a few years back. Very faithful to the original. The version for Xbox is even more streamlined and playable. It just goes to show you really can modernize the old classics.
I'd love to see an improved X-Com. There's a Steam version of the old one available so you know it'll work on modern hardware without hiccups. I don't know if the turn-based nature would survive a modernization, though. I don't think it would test well with the focus groups or may just be ruled out from the outset by the suits. It really wouldn't be quite the same game without that, less strategic.
Syndicate would probably benefit handsomely from an update. It was already real-time from the start. The only question would be if they could 3D the environments without making it a waste. RTS games that embraced full 3D could end up being unplayable if you zoomed in to the ground-level fights they liked showing in the trailers. But if they did do 3D Syndicate, they'd also have to introduce destructable environments. It always bugged me that we could get such giant booms with the time bombs and gauss guns and the buildings would remain intact.
I used to make the same argument, but it seems to me like that isn't true any more.
Ever since they got hard drives, console games routinely get installed to hard drive first. I.e., there goes that "just want to put the disk in and play." It's only true in the same way as for a PC game.
The biggest advantage for a console is you at least know games designed for the console will run fast as long as you own it. PC games tend to leave your rig in the dust sooner. But consoles are getting damned expensive these days.
The biggest advantage of the PC is that you can run a more bleeding edge than the console so long as you're willing to pay for it. PC games also have a bigger modding scene. Oblivion, for example, is seen as almost unplayable in the vanilla version and many fans consider the tweaked version to be sublime. And the PC gamer can run it at a higher resolution with more doodads enabled.
Same reason people buy high-level MMO accounts - so they can skip all that tedious playing and get on with the all-important posturing.
But at least in an MMO the higher accounts can do more. As I understand it, the only possible thing you get from a high gamescore is a bigger e-peen. I suppose there might be some marginal value with having all parts of a game unlocked the moment you plug it in but shit, aren't there already cheat codes for that? The day after GTAIV shipped people were already running around every island. Some of the multiplayer stuff requires a higher score for matchmaking I think but if you aren't good enough to be there in the first place, you're just going to get creamed.
Which was pretty inexplicable in the context of the Terminator. The visual processing system derived information about the environment, then integrated it as text into the signal from which it was derived such that it had to be processed a second time to be acted upon?
For the benefit of the audience. I can forgive it for Terminator. Less easy to gloss over is something like the original Battlestar Gaalactica with robots sitting inside starfighters flying it manually -- even better, communicating via vibrating the atmosphere. Now some will say "The dialog is just for the benefit of the audience, who wants to watch computers bleeping at each other with subtitles?" And to that I would say embrace the alien otherness of machines. Don't explain their motivation, leave it as something to be speculated over by the heroes. Amidst all the other stuff they got wrong in the new Galactica, I liked that they at least didn't have robots sitting inside cockpits flying the new Raiders.
OK, the bluetooth headset seems to be winning out over the HUD as the main UI device. Other than that, how is a smartphone not a wearable computer?
Wearable computers are supposed to make you look like a clumsy ass when using them. Smart phones typically don't unless you use a bluetooth headset.
Honestly, I think the conceit is a holdover of older technology where you ended up looking borgified with all the hardware you had strapped to your body. You used to have to wear heavy-duty batteries strapped to your waist, a funky keyboard strapped to your arm, doofy goggles, and the computer itself was on your back. Heady stuff for people who were used to computers having to be plugged into walls but this was even before laptops became practical, when luggables were still the latest and hottest shit.
The iPhone is pretty much representing the ideal of the Tricorder or the PADD from Star Trek. Pretty screen, touch interface, wireless everything, sound and video, cool stuff! The only way it could get any better is if you didn't even need to hold anything in your hands (or pay out the ass for the data plan). That'd be an ear piece that tucks away invisibly in your ear like a hearing aid, bone induction microphone imbedded inside the earpiece, and a display that either sits on contact lenses in your eyes or would be built into your glasses and either projects information onto the glass or shoots it onto your retina with low-powered lasers. Where would the computer be? Maybe still clipped to your hip like an iphone feeding data via wireless, or maybe it'll be small enough to be built into the hearing aid or contact lenses.
What's the ultimate UI goal? Terminator vision. Integrated lowlight vision, thermal vision, object tagging like a fighter plane's HUD, etc. The early concepts were mocked up for military maintenance crews, you could watch a video showing you what you're supposed to do as you do it.
I noticed that when I tried to come up with a "Matrix RP" idea. It was easy to write the rules (you could easily adjust GURPS to encompany some of the Matrix specials, stack it on GURPS Martial-Arts and you're set). It was insanely hard to come up with good ideas for stories. Basically:
What the heck are we doing here?
Let's face it. The Matrix is no place to hang out. There's no good reason to go in except two:
1. Find "The One". 2. Meet the Oracle.
That's it. Any fight, anything you could accomplish, anything at all is meaning- and pointless. It's insanely dangerous (not only can you get killed inside, your body is a sitting duck outside while you're in) and there's nothing sensible to do.
That's actually what killed the second two movies. (Yes, I know "There are no sequels.")
The first movie was driven by "Just what the hell is going on here?" There were new revelations each and every step of the way up until Neo becoming godlike. That's the end of the story, there really wouldn't have been much to tell subsequently. It's like trying to make a sequel to Lord of the Rings. Yes, things did indeed happen after the destruction of the Ring. And since the Scouring of the Shire was left out of the movie there's always that, but it still feels like part of the falling action and denouement. The subsequent wars of the King and the rebuilding of Gondor certainly occurred but anything there would rightfully belong to a new story, not the story of the Ring. But if Hollywood wanted to make a sequel like that it wouldn't be about the rebuilding of the realm, we'd find out that Sauron really wasn't destroyed.
As for what the rebels would be doing in the Matrix aside from looking for the One, someone it seems many in Zion did not believe in, I think they'd be looking for more recruits to liberate. The goal of the resistance would first and foremost be survival, only secondly would it be destroying the machines. It appears that the Matrix is not just the shared hallucination of the human prisoners but also serves as the interface metaphor for the machines. The rebels, if they had any sense to them, would know that the Earth has no biosphere left to support everyone who is still plugged in to the Matrix. To liberate the human race, the rebels would have to seize control of the Matrix and, if possible, the AI's themselves, or take over the machines the AI's are controlling. And from there they could see about trying to rehabilitate the Earth.
But when it all comes down to it, all of the above feels dramatically unnecessary. Every bit of the essential Matrix story was told in one movie and trying to add to it will just be a mess, just like the sequels, just like the game.
Slashdot Mirror
is also usually hard to do
the setbacks are part and parcel of such a complicated effort
True. But could there be additional complications? To compare it to another grandiose project, the Three Gorges Dam. For starters, it's a prestige project so the Party cannot allow it to fail without losing much face. Second, if there are any technical shortcomings in the design, they will be covered up due to the pressure from on-high. Third, there's theft by contractors in the substitution of inferior materials, allegations of defective workmanship, and so forth. And again, these issues would be covered up to prevent embarrassment of the national government which is funny in funny-uh-oh way because tearing things up and fixing the problem now would be less costly and embarrassing and lethal than finishing the dam, flaws and all, and letting it fail years later during a quake with a full head of water in the reservoir.
So, what's the Hardon's problem? (Yeah, I keep calling it the Large Hardon Collider. It's funny.) Anything worth doing is going to be complicated. That's the one I'm hoping for. Is the design sound? Are there defects in workmanship? Any corruption from subcontractors?
SciFi Channel to SyFy Channel. Potential FAIL.
Palm to PalmOne and that other confusing crap. FAIL.
ValueJet to AirTRan. FAIL? Maybe not. I know I have to look up the name every time I fly to make sure I'm not accidentally flying them. Maybe it is a success.
Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC. FAIL? Has their business improved?
Arthur Anderson to Accenture. FAIL? We all know they still suck but people keep doing business with them so maybe a wash?
Puff Daddy to P Diddy to Diddy.
I guess it's hard to separate the WIN from the FAIL here. Is a rebranding the cause of the failure or a symptom? Probably a symptom most of the time. If the company still exists after rebranding, can that be attributed to the branding or other factors? Dunno. But it still seems like the kind of stupid, ineffectual, expensive yet mostly symbolic empty gesture made by companies in trouble who have nothing left in the idea bin.
I've never done any studies or analysis of what people like and why but it seems a lot of people like something after hearing more often and if someone else likes it or if it is trendy. Think about it, teens twenty years ago were listening to 80's music and loving it. Why aren't teens listening to 80's music now? If Eddie Grant's Electric Avenue was good and a number one hit then, shouldn't it be good and a popular hit now? Did humans somehow evolve and now naturally like some other type of music?
The good stuff keeps getting listened to. Half the music I liked as a kid was from my dad's collection. I'm still finding gems from that generation, just like I'm finding good stuff now. Kids today will go through that same process. They'll pick up some Zeppelin, some pre-sellout Metallica, take a walk on over to the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and discover there's much more to them than just swing, and so forth. There's way too much hip-hop out there and most of it is pop-shite but there's the occasional gem like Immortal Technique. He gets lost in the debris of embarrassing gangsta bullshit the same way the uninformed might dismiss Iron Maiden as just another hair metal band.
You'll find the stuff that goes away is the stuff that just wasn't good. Look at the list for Billboard hits of Academy Awards from years gone by. You don't remember most of it.
But the other thing is that many people don't listen to the music deeply and really don't care about it. That's part of what drives the numbers for stuff that time has shown to not be worth remembering. Fashion is driven by herd instinct, not common sense. It's fashionable to wear bellbottoms, have hairspray freak hair in the 80's, etc. All of those fashions were picked up because others were doing it and dropped later because there was no merit to them. When people talk about "timeless" fashion that "never goes out of style" they mean things that make so much sense that they remain in use even after the fad wears off.
The trend makes something "good" in pop music. How does the music industry take advantage of this? Pick a few artists to promote (get them interviews, guest appearances on popular tv shows, special contests with soda makers etc...). The music industry can only promote so many dumb blonds or a limited amount of any genre at a time. The music did not find the diamond in the rough with many of these stars, they promoted them to that position. Those artists would have the same talent with or without the music industries blessing. With less involvement of the music industry,the trendy part would change but I don't think the there would be a lack or good quality music. People might have to figure out what they consider good for themselves and not let the music industry do it for them.
The real interest for going with dumb blondes and stupid artists is that the studio can retain greater control. They don't want to raise someone up and invest all the time and promotion into them only for that asset to suddenly start thinking for himself. Much as I detest Madonna, she's an excellent businesswoman and cannot be taken advantage of easily. Someone like a Britney is a train-wreck and can be walked over at will. If she gets uppity, she can be easily replaced with the next templated bimbo.
The "industry" the GP refers to is the big labels that screw over everybody -- artists and listeners -- in the guise that there's barriers or a scarcity that's just not there anymore. Those are the companies that go away.
If there aren't natural barriers to entry in a market (Wanna get into chip fabrication and go up against Intel? Hope you have billions backing you up) then the industry players will collaborate and make sure that artificial ones are kept nice and high. Even if it's nothing more than making sure the right people won't talk to you and you're frozen out, they'll do it if that's what it takes.
The thing that makes the net so disruptive is that the marketing model is fucked as well as the distribution model. You used to need the studios to make the records and get them in the stores but you also needed their military-industrial-entertainment complex to get your name on the air and get pushed to the public. Now that kids can talk to each other and let their own tastes develop without taste-makers from MTV and the radio telling them what they like, they're free to find and download their own music. This is the growing irrelevance the record companies are trying to fight.
Movie studios still have significant barriers on their side, both in production and marketing. While contemporary comedies might be threatened by low-budget indie productions, the Clerks and such of the world, it's still tough to get the capital together to film a giant blockbuster. But I wouldn't count on this state of affairs to remain for very long.
Those are some of the finest examples of actual Orwellian doublespeak in the real world. Read 1984 sometime, and perhaps you'll get a glimmer of understanding. The Ministry of Peace is engaged in making war, the Ministry of Truth falsifies history, the Ministry of Love tortures and punishes those who do not love Big Brother, and the Ministry of Plenty oversees poverty and shortages.
There were some doozies under the Bush administration. If I recall correctly the Clear Skies Initiative was about loosening the air pollution standards, Healthy Forests Act was about expanding logging, and No Child Left Behind was about hurting education. Oh, and the Patriot Act was about taking away the freedoms and liberties the country was founded upon.
And these same companies will refund the money to the government spent to subsidize connecting rural people to the grid?
These fuckers want to have the cake and eat it to. I say we cram it up the ass, tie 'em to chairs and kick 'em down the stairs.
I hope you're done having kids. Because if you ever explain that that the baby will come out of mommy's belly...
Shit, my sister and I were both c-sections and the scar was ginormous. Being a Christian household, we weren't told that much about the birds and the bees but I did happen to see Alien one night when trying to catch a rerun of Fraggle Rock on HBO late at night and put two and two together... Gave me creepy visions of my little baby sister bursting out of the tummy, all blood and gnashing teeth.
The Nostromo was diverted to the planet where they found the Xenomorph because someone in the company knew it was there. How they knew has not been explained in the films, to date. Presumably there was some prior contact that was covered up. The AvP series showed how the company could know that the aliens existed, but no reason to know where they could be found.
Funny reference: Nostromo is a book by Joseph Conrad and Sulaco was the mining town it took place in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo
The Colonial Marines Tech Manual explained things pretty thoroughly. As I recall, they had a whole section in the back where company execs and scientists tried to piece together just what the hell happened. They had the initial info from the Nostromo encounter and then later retrieved data from the Sulaco disaster. That the Nostromo was sent there deliberately was established in the first movie. How did they know? I think the non-canon Manual stated that a French flyby probe detected the alien transmission from the planet. Ash had orders to bring the alien back to Earth with the crew being expendable. Did all ships operate with a secret android or was Ash a plant specifically for this purpose? Had other alien ships been encountered so they knew what to expect? Unknown. But the fun part of the whole Tech Manual bull session was how the scientists were reasonably discounting what Ripley said she experienced because it wasn't possible. "How could a creature grow from a worm capable of living in someone's chest to two meters fall? No, the creature she encountered should be no larger than a medium dog."
While there are plenty of good stories that could be told in the Aliens setting, most of them sucked and this movie will suck, too. The best Aliens stuff I read were the original Dark Horse sequel to Aliens with Newt and Marine guy on Earth having survived the escape and Ripley in places unknown and the original AVP comic. The Aliens sequel was great because it really ramped things up to the next level. Stupid scientists bring the aliens to Earth, are so arrogant they think they can control it, and all goes to hell. The Earth is overrun. And the AVP comic was just such a tight little story, would have translated to the screen perfectly.
Naw, this is gonna suck.
Unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure that the Virgin experience is completely suborbital. Basically it's $200K for a parabolic rocket ride. I don't understand the appeal. OK, so you left Earth's atmosphere for a couple of minutes.
Where's my 2001 space station?
This is creating a paying way to get there. Of course, there needs to be a use for the 2001-style space station. It's rather useless if it's only an orbital hotel. I'd say the killer app for space tech right now would be the solar power sats followed eventually by space-based mining and manufacture. You move the industry off into space, the surface of Earth can be left for living.
or maybe it's the pound. Most carriers let you skip the message with that.
Such interesting theories these corporate flaks come up with. Here's another one: Piracy means never having to feel sorry about the DRM.
I just got back from the Mission Viejo store. They're serving free beer! At least, they said it was beer, I've never had bright-red, fruit-flavored beer served with ice in a glass pitcher before.
There's just so many jokes to make here I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll go with the non-obvious and ask if they promised there would be punch and pie. Sounds like they got the punch right but where's the pie?
It's rare that we even hear about Joe Computerguy fucking up by accidentally sharing his homemade porn stash by accident. The only examples I can think of were not accidental at all but jilted boyfriends trying to burn the ex. But ok, I can buy an accidental release -- you store your homemade porn in a default media directory, the p2p app does a scan for shareable media and autoselects it, ok, it's possible. The guy's an idiot but it's possible. But for government shit like this to make it out, the plans for Obama's canceled Marine One replacement, the stuff in TFA today? I know they say never attribute to malice what can best be explained by incompetence but this seems too deliberately stupid.
Who can't get satellite Internet?
North Korea. They're so poor and backwards, even electromagnetic waves don't propagate properly.
Capitalism has a tendency towards monopoly. This was pointed out by Marx in the 19th century, and expanded upon by Lenin 95 years ago [marxists.org]. T
I have a broader theory than that. Things tend towards shit over time. The longer the period of time, the greater the likelihood all will be shit. Finally that shit hits the fan, people get mad enough to do something about it, and they put together something that isn't shit; it might even be quite good. But then they relax and time goes on and things start going to shit again.
Capitalism sucks. Marx and his buddies saw that, tried to come up with a better idea. It turned to shit. Capitalism has had a few reversals thanks to the threat of socialism/communism but now that the threat has gone away, things are sliding to shit again.
Microsoft products suck. But some hippies and computer scientists tried coming up with a better idea and Microsoft said "Oh, shit." So they were able to actually reverse the shittification process of the 9x series and came up with Win2k. Brilliant. But then the slide towards shit resumed. Some people liked XP, some people hated it, but everyone hated Vista. W7, a reversal or a further slide down the shit chute? Only time will tell.
So, to somehow get back on topic. Company makes a game machine. It's great. Company gets greedier and graspy and ends up alienating customers, turning to shit. Eventually people won't want to use their shitty products anymore and they go away. Atari exists only as a brand name used by another company. Sega is a shadow of its former self. Nintendo remains but people argue as to whether they've declined or are stronger than ever. Certainly they don't dominate the market as they did in the NES/SNES era. Sony came onto the scene out of nowhere with the PSX, reigned supreme with the PS2, and became an also-ran with the PS3.
It's hard to say what the future will hold but I do think the console makers are lusting after digital distro. The only question is whether the market would bite. I thought Circuit City's Div-X would have been more popular than it was and was pleased when it failed. Will customers make the right choice here?
Teleoperated machines have a colloquial term in two syllables, the "Waldo". This from an old Heinlein story "Waldo & Magic Incorporated".
And most people think it's a guy in a striped shirt and a funny hat.
I confess that when I think "waldo" I think robotic arm such as a manipulator attached to a deep sea suit or something in a dangerous environment operated by a scientist behind foot-thick glass. I think "drone" does a better job of conveying the idea of a teleoperated machine. Robot conveys the sense of autonomous behavior, even though it can also accept orders from a human. If a human has to control every part of the way it operates, I think "drone" is more accurate. My roomba is a robot, my rc car is not. (though I can steer the roomba manually with the remote if I want to.)
This is making me think of homeless MMO players. Red Dwarf had an electronic drug that was essentially a VR life simulation. You get to live out the life you always dreamed of. The best part, of course, is that one of the characters trapped in the game was so full of neuroses and hangups that even his fantasies were a miserable wreck. But for those who had normal fantasies, they'd end up hooked into the game ignoring their own bodies as they slowly starved while lying in a puddle of their own waste. There was also a similar device featured in Star Trek, a game that got people so hooked they wouldn't notice aliens stealing the Enterprise.
When MUD's first became popular, I thought "Surely unemployment would be the addict's best friend. Get fired, lose the house, thus nowhere to plug in the computer, you're going cold turkey!" But the devices are getting so small, so power-friendly, and with games like EVE you can earn game-time just by playing a bunch, it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine paying for wifi access via selling in-game gold and now the homeless guy living in the cardboard box might not be a wino but a game-o.
As for sending all the work over to Bangalore, I think that there's still going to be cultural barriers to doing so. Companies I've worked at, management has trouble figuring out where to go to lunch with a face-to-face meeting, let alone actually planning things in sufficient detail that a design doc could be sent overseas. At bare minimum an excellent project manager is needed to translate from vagueness to something the techs can understand, whether they're on this coast or overseas. Plus there's the pain in the ass of the differing time schedule. My dad had worked night shift at the phone company garage, a brilliant idea of management where the trucks get worked on at night and thus have greater availability during the day. The only problem is that the parts houses are only open during the day. A truck might be in and out same day on the day shift but for night shift they have to place the part order in the morning, let it arrive during the day, then wait for the next shift to do the work. That's the same sort of thing you're dealing with when working with India. Very delayed turnaround unless you can convince the Indians to work nightshift to fit American hours, a sure recipe for burnout.
A "keyboard"... how quaint.
So why was he so good with it? Punch cards are quaint from my perspective but I wouldn't know where to start with them. Is he also proficient with using a morse code transmitter?
Dual solo campaigns (rebels and empire) and massive multiplayer dogfights, complete with capital ships. Hell yeah.
The thing is, the computers could really support something like this these days. I never really got into Freespace but at least they had proper huge ships there.
X-Wing Alliance was the last best example of the series. Improvements I would like to see on top of that:
1. True scaling of ship sizes. They were better at it here than the sprite-based Wing Commanders but I want to see ships that feel bloody HUGE. Star Destroyers still felt too small.
2. Realistic damage modeling. I want to see ships shot up, pieces falling off, hulls venting flaming atmosphere, etc.
3. Second part of damage modeling -- show degrading performance. It always struck me as funny that a Star Destroyer operated at 100% efficiency when shields and hull were 100% and did so all the way until hull was 1%. Then one final laser blast and BOOM! it goes up in flames with midi drumbeats for explosions. You should be able to mission-kill a ship by blasting the engines but properly exploding it should require proton torps hitting the reactor or getting torn to pieces by turbo-lasers from another capship.
They did a good job of integrating a better storyline in Alliance and they also retained the huge library of ships. Nothing makes the universe feel big like having hundreds of possible ships to encounter.
I thought the old Microprose Pirates! game could use a reboot. Missed it the first time around on Apple, caught it during the PC remake in the 90's. Lo and behold, it was remake a few years back. Very faithful to the original. The version for Xbox is even more streamlined and playable. It just goes to show you really can modernize the old classics.
I'd love to see an improved X-Com. There's a Steam version of the old one available so you know it'll work on modern hardware without hiccups. I don't know if the turn-based nature would survive a modernization, though. I don't think it would test well with the focus groups or may just be ruled out from the outset by the suits. It really wouldn't be quite the same game without that, less strategic.
Syndicate would probably benefit handsomely from an update. It was already real-time from the start. The only question would be if they could 3D the environments without making it a waste. RTS games that embraced full 3D could end up being unplayable if you zoomed in to the ground-level fights they liked showing in the trailers. But if they did do 3D Syndicate, they'd also have to introduce destructable environments. It always bugged me that we could get such giant booms with the time bombs and gauss guns and the buildings would remain intact.
I used to make the same argument, but it seems to me like that isn't true any more.
Ever since they got hard drives, console games routinely get installed to hard drive first. I.e., there goes that "just want to put the disk in and play." It's only true in the same way as for a PC game.
The biggest advantage for a console is you at least know games designed for the console will run fast as long as you own it. PC games tend to leave your rig in the dust sooner. But consoles are getting damned expensive these days.
The biggest advantage of the PC is that you can run a more bleeding edge than the console so long as you're willing to pay for it. PC games also have a bigger modding scene. Oblivion, for example, is seen as almost unplayable in the vanilla version and many fans consider the tweaked version to be sublime. And the PC gamer can run it at a higher resolution with more doodads enabled.
Same reason people buy high-level MMO accounts - so they can skip all that tedious playing and get on with the all-important posturing.
But at least in an MMO the higher accounts can do more. As I understand it, the only possible thing you get from a high gamescore is a bigger e-peen. I suppose there might be some marginal value with having all parts of a game unlocked the moment you plug it in but shit, aren't there already cheat codes for that? The day after GTAIV shipped people were already running around every island. Some of the multiplayer stuff requires a higher score for matchmaking I think but if you aren't good enough to be there in the first place, you're just going to get creamed.
Which was pretty inexplicable in the context of the Terminator. The visual processing system derived information about the environment, then integrated it as text into the signal from which it was derived such that it had to be processed a second time to be acted upon?
For the benefit of the audience. I can forgive it for Terminator. Less easy to gloss over is something like the original Battlestar Gaalactica with robots sitting inside starfighters flying it manually -- even better, communicating via vibrating the atmosphere. Now some will say "The dialog is just for the benefit of the audience, who wants to watch computers bleeping at each other with subtitles?" And to that I would say embrace the alien otherness of machines. Don't explain their motivation, leave it as something to be speculated over by the heroes. Amidst all the other stuff they got wrong in the new Galactica, I liked that they at least didn't have robots sitting inside cockpits flying the new Raiders.
OK, the bluetooth headset seems to be winning out over the HUD as the main UI device. Other than that, how is a smartphone not a wearable computer?
Wearable computers are supposed to make you look like a clumsy ass when using them. Smart phones typically don't unless you use a bluetooth headset.
Honestly, I think the conceit is a holdover of older technology where you ended up looking borgified with all the hardware you had strapped to your body. You used to have to wear heavy-duty batteries strapped to your waist, a funky keyboard strapped to your arm, doofy goggles, and the computer itself was on your back. Heady stuff for people who were used to computers having to be plugged into walls but this was even before laptops became practical, when luggables were still the latest and hottest shit.
The iPhone is pretty much representing the ideal of the Tricorder or the PADD from Star Trek. Pretty screen, touch interface, wireless everything, sound and video, cool stuff! The only way it could get any better is if you didn't even need to hold anything in your hands (or pay out the ass for the data plan). That'd be an ear piece that tucks away invisibly in your ear like a hearing aid, bone induction microphone imbedded inside the earpiece, and a display that either sits on contact lenses in your eyes or would be built into your glasses and either projects information onto the glass or shoots it onto your retina with low-powered lasers. Where would the computer be? Maybe still clipped to your hip like an iphone feeding data via wireless, or maybe it'll be small enough to be built into the hearing aid or contact lenses.
What's the ultimate UI goal? Terminator vision. Integrated lowlight vision, thermal vision, object tagging like a fighter plane's HUD, etc. The early concepts were mocked up for military maintenance crews, you could watch a video showing you what you're supposed to do as you do it.
I noticed that when I tried to come up with a "Matrix RP" idea. It was easy to write the rules (you could easily adjust GURPS to encompany some of the Matrix specials, stack it on GURPS Martial-Arts and you're set). It was insanely hard to come up with good ideas for stories. Basically:
What the heck are we doing here?
Let's face it. The Matrix is no place to hang out. There's no good reason to go in except two:
1. Find "The One".
2. Meet the Oracle.
That's it. Any fight, anything you could accomplish, anything at all is meaning- and pointless. It's insanely dangerous (not only can you get killed inside, your body is a sitting duck outside while you're in) and there's nothing sensible to do.
That's actually what killed the second two movies. (Yes, I know "There are no sequels.")
The first movie was driven by "Just what the hell is going on here?" There were new revelations each and every step of the way up until Neo becoming godlike. That's the end of the story, there really wouldn't have been much to tell subsequently. It's like trying to make a sequel to Lord of the Rings. Yes, things did indeed happen after the destruction of the Ring. And since the Scouring of the Shire was left out of the movie there's always that, but it still feels like part of the falling action and denouement. The subsequent wars of the King and the rebuilding of Gondor certainly occurred but anything there would rightfully belong to a new story, not the story of the Ring. But if Hollywood wanted to make a sequel like that it wouldn't be about the rebuilding of the realm, we'd find out that Sauron really wasn't destroyed.
As for what the rebels would be doing in the Matrix aside from looking for the One, someone it seems many in Zion did not believe in, I think they'd be looking for more recruits to liberate. The goal of the resistance would first and foremost be survival, only secondly would it be destroying the machines. It appears that the Matrix is not just the shared hallucination of the human prisoners but also serves as the interface metaphor for the machines. The rebels, if they had any sense to them, would know that the Earth has no biosphere left to support everyone who is still plugged in to the Matrix. To liberate the human race, the rebels would have to seize control of the Matrix and, if possible, the AI's themselves, or take over the machines the AI's are controlling. And from there they could see about trying to rehabilitate the Earth.
But when it all comes down to it, all of the above feels dramatically unnecessary. Every bit of the essential Matrix story was told in one movie and trying to add to it will just be a mess, just like the sequels, just like the game.