" But this guy's Sunshine retrospective took a huge credibility dive when he called Yoshi's Island ridiculous with no other explanation than the graphical style, then followed it up with a lame disclaimer about how he doesn't have anything against kiddy games."
Seems like he's entirely missed the point of both games. I didn't really appreciate Yoshi's Island until I got it for my GBA. What made that game fun was that it constantly threw new challenges at you that you really kind of had to think your way through. Not so much puzzle type of challenges, but challenges that tested your control over the game. Yoshi's Island was brilliant for that.
And you know what? Mario Sunshine was too. It was so much richer in so many ways. Was Sunshine to Mario 64 the same as Mario 64 to SMW? No. Still exciting none the less. (I do agree with his comments about the camera in SMS causing problems, ran into that myself.)
If somebody's in a bad mood, I could see ripping Sunshine apart. But for somebody who sits down waiting to enjoy themselves, it really does pack quite a bit of fun in there. The addition of the water pump was brilliant. You really have to think to beat some of those challenges.
Okay, I'm done defending Sunshine. Not sure why I posted this. I usually get negative responses where people have oversimplified the game and try to tell me it's just like M64.
"Why shouldn't Take-Two be allowed to make scans of public property? Defacing it with your 'art' doesn't make it yours. "
That's a touchy aspect of public work. If I'm making a movie and there's a copyrighted poster on the wall of the set that was there when I arrived, am I breaching copyright?
When I read your post here, the first thing I thought of was the makers of the Spiderman movie getting into legal trouble because they digitally removed adverts in NYC. So if you use the work, you're in trouble, if you don't, then you're in trouble. WTF?
I'm an artist. Copyright's supposed to help me. But to this point it's simply scared me.
"I think the point is the scanned HIS images off of HIS site, or at least thats what i got out of this. "
Actually it was too vague to really get that out. They were saying that they should have known he was an artist because he was publiscized.
It's not clear where the photos came from. If they scanned from a mag or grabbed from his site, they're busted. If they took a photo in the city, then it's not so black and white. They could still potentially be in trouble, but they could still worm out of it. It's just not clear.
"Graffiti artist? Oh you mean person who vandalizes property that doesn't belong to them costing the city money to clean up their crap. "
Graffiti is art, not vandalism. Vandalism is when you paint all over somebody's property without consent. There are a lot of graffiti artists out there who are paid to do that by the people who own the property.
Don't immediately assume somebody who paints a wall is a criminal. You sound just as knowledgable as the RIAA when you do that.
"here's no requirement for the creator an a work (public or private) to put a copyright notice on his work "
For the record, that's not what I was referring to. What I was saying was that graffiti artists (the illegal graffiti specifically) would rather not have their name plastered on their work so the police can rack up a series of charges for them. If this guy was doing legal graffiti then it was a bad idea for him NOT to put a copyright notice on there. "Hey, I'm a special case here. I'm a proud artist and this is my canvas. I'm not a tagger."
Actually I am an artist. And yeah, I would be upset about it. However, that's not related to what I said. If I drew my logo on the side of a building and didn't put copyright info or anything, I'd feel like a big dumbass if shirts with my logo on them started floatin around. I'd be upset to a degree, but I can't imagine feeling like anybody owed me anything if I failed to let them know I claimed ownership of that image.
Lots of the textures in both GTA games are photographic. Since there's little to go on from the article (i.e. which graphic and where it came from) I can only hypothesize.
What I think probably happened was they took some photos of graffiti they found and used them as textures. If so, they probably assumed that graffiti artists (in many cases being vandals) aren't going to step forward and take credit for it. In that case, was Take 2 really that much in the wrong? Yeah yeah, his work is in magazines and stuff. But unless there's a copyright notice, I don't think it's all that surprising that they wouldn't have knowna bout it.
Sounds to me like he should have approached them and said "uh that's my art, can I get some compensation for it?" but now it's a legal battle.
As I said, though, there's little to no info. For all I know, Take 2 scanned his work from a magazine and used it. Since the article didn't go into detail, then everybody's own views of Take 2 are going to surface. "Well, even though I've never played it, I know from what CNN tells me that Take 2 makes immoral games. It's therefore logical that they'd have no moral objections to steal some artist's work. Yep, they better lose badly!"
"A very good question. I'm thinking about the time he learns how to drive. When you hit 16 and are driving, a parent has to loosen up on the strings quite a bit and trust that what you've tried to teach him will come into play."
My advice here: don't be too strict about when i.e. setting a date. The way my dad raised me was akin to a trust relationship. He'd trust me with something, and if I passed I'd earn more trust. (or if I messed up I'd lose some trust...) As a result, I never needed a curfew. My dad had a rule like "just let me know where you are." I was always good about that and never came home with bad news, like the police.
Just a thought anyway. I came out pretty good. I'm 25, always had stable jobs. Been at my current one for 6 years. My grades were good, not outstanding, but I was able to earn art-based scholarships. Clean criminal and driving record. Etc.
I hope that makes sense. I honestly owe a lot of my good nature to my dad.
(note: sorry to sound like I'm tooting my own horn here, but I feel that I lucked out in the dad department.)
"I also, do NOT teach my son that guns are bad."
My dad did that too. My dad's taken me to the shooting range a few times. Thanks to him, violence in movies (they do actually teach you that guns kill in those movies, a perspective that the media NEVER covers), and education in school, I've never had the urge to find any of his guns to play with. Sounds to me like you're on the right track here.
"But it seems everyone feels that kids are basically if-then statements in a program: if they are exposed to guns, then they will kill. if the parents are good parents, then they are good kids. It's simply not that way. "
Agreed. But just remember that the variable you have absolute control over is yourself as a parent. Shit happens. Nobody denies that. Think about this, though: Every time you get a chance to tell your son that something is good or bad, and explain why, you are giving him a lot of information to work with. It's for that reason I'm not big on saying "You can't play this game", my preference would be to say "see how you ran over this guy in GTA? In real life, you'd not only ruin that person's family's lives, but your own..." That's preference, not a rule. A good deal of that depends on your son. (I should be fair and mention that I'm not a parent.)
"In my experience there are no answers, only choices."
Yep yep.
Hope what I said gives you something to think about.
"Personally, I hate the entire GTA series. I think the glorification of violence is a bad idea, and that the game makers show a lack of social conscience."
You should acutally sit down and play that game before you decide you hate it. Part of this is that you sound like you're parroting what the ill-informed media has said, and part of it is that I think if you played the game you'd see a different side of it.
The media classicly points out "you can beat up an old lady with a golf club! That's wrong!!". But what they don't mention is that when you beat up that lady, the cops come after you. Run over a pedestrian? The cops come after you. Run into a cop? The cops come after you. Go firing your gun around the place? The cops come after you.
While the cops are chasing you, the difficulty of completing your mission dramatically increases. The game gets harder if you 'glorify violence'. So what happens to experienced players in GTA? They avoid pedestrians like the plague. You don't go running around killing lil old ladies.
Like I said, take a look at the game before you let the media tell you what to like or dislike. Remember that the media's only motivation is not journalistic integrity, it's to get you watching the story. Who cares if the facts are disputable?
"'I didn't want to hurt anyone' said one of the kids.....you were shooting at them!!"
That could be a problem in their case. When you shoot people in Vice City, they die. They have no reason to think from this game that anybody wouldn't get hurt.
" Now, having said this, it's STILL the parent's responsibility to ensure that the kids do not misuse the weapon (It's allowed for the purposes of HUNTING...)"
One thing that really bugs me about using Take Two as a scapegoat is that when you shoot somebody in GTA Vice City, they die. Those kids would have had no reason whatsoever to believe that somebody'd climb out of their car and say "oh man, you got me good!"
I use Coldfusion at work, and while I would possibly choose other methods of web application development if it were up to me, it still remains a good, solid Web application development tool, which is easy to learn and quite powerful. It runs fine on linux, as well! "
It's not off-topic when it's a joke about the topic.
"So scan the stories---or maybe just the headlines. It's not like (at least in this case) you can't tell from the friggin' headline whether anything has happened, after all."
In other words, read what I don't want to read. In the mean time, they could be posting more interesting stuff.
"Then it is just a matter of the student running their crap writing through the compiler until it compiles. No effort to improve the content."
You sure about that? From what I've seen, programmers learn how to avoid those pesky problems that cause compiling issues. Why would somebody writing a paper be any different?
I don't understand what's so 'overrated' by my (parent) post. If it's an essay based English/Grammar test that's one thing, but what about History? Since when's a history teacher care about anything but the idea?
Man I was sick of that shit. I was dinged pretty harshly for a research paper I did because my gramar wasn't up to stnuff. I guess that's okay, seeing as how it was an English paper, but I was also up all night writing that. If I had known gramar was so important I would've skipped the reasearch bit and just wrote some nice clean demo of my grammatical skillz.
"Is this a good thing... just as soon as the students get wind of the software the teachers are using to grade their papers how much are you willing to bet the students will get a copy for them selves?"
That's a good point. Why not give the students the software? Why not have them learn the grammar/spelling as they're writing it instead of possibly glancing at it when they read whatever letter the teacher puts on it?
I thought the point of an essay was to grade the ideas and how well they're expressed. I didn't realize they were spelling/grammar tests.
Maybe I'm just a bit jaded by this because of all the stupid grammar and spelling nitpicking that goes on here on Slashdot. Evidentally, it's much easier to criticize my spelling than it is to provided a rebuttal to my point.
"Well, DON'T CLICK IT ON SCO STORIES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM!"
Yeah, real useful advice when the story's already there.
Consider this: lots of people are SICK of the round and round "uh SCO is wrong" stories, but they still want to read the one that says SCO won or lost.
Slashdot needs to cool it a bit. Though, I am glad that the anti-MS bs has died down. (Note: my comment there excludes the important stuff like coverage of the Blaster worm.)
" Intel added value over the Mac, the IBM PC clones added value over the Mac, Windows' installed base and software developers added value, but Windoss 95 added no value whatsoever. "
Slashdot Mirror
" But this guy's Sunshine retrospective took a huge credibility dive when he called Yoshi's Island ridiculous with no other explanation than the graphical style, then followed it up with a lame disclaimer about how he doesn't have anything against kiddy games."
Seems like he's entirely missed the point of both games. I didn't really appreciate Yoshi's Island until I got it for my GBA. What made that game fun was that it constantly threw new challenges at you that you really kind of had to think your way through. Not so much puzzle type of challenges, but challenges that tested your control over the game. Yoshi's Island was brilliant for that.
And you know what? Mario Sunshine was too. It was so much richer in so many ways. Was Sunshine to Mario 64 the same as Mario 64 to SMW? No. Still exciting none the less. (I do agree with his comments about the camera in SMS causing problems, ran into that myself.)
If somebody's in a bad mood, I could see ripping Sunshine apart. But for somebody who sits down waiting to enjoy themselves, it really does pack quite a bit of fun in there. The addition of the water pump was brilliant. You really have to think to beat some of those challenges.
Okay, I'm done defending Sunshine. Not sure why I posted this. I usually get negative responses where people have oversimplified the game and try to tell me it's just like M64.
"Why shouldn't Take-Two be allowed to make scans of public property? Defacing it with your 'art' doesn't make it yours. "
That's a touchy aspect of public work. If I'm making a movie and there's a copyrighted poster on the wall of the set that was there when I arrived, am I breaching copyright?
When I read your post here, the first thing I thought of was the makers of the Spiderman movie getting into legal trouble because they digitally removed adverts in NYC. So if you use the work, you're in trouble, if you don't, then you're in trouble. WTF?
I'm an artist. Copyright's supposed to help me. But to this point it's simply scared me.
"I think the point is the scanned HIS images off of HIS site, or at least thats what i got out of this. "
Actually it was too vague to really get that out. They were saying that they should have known he was an artist because he was publiscized.
It's not clear where the photos came from. If they scanned from a mag or grabbed from his site, they're busted. If they took a photo in the city, then it's not so black and white. They could still potentially be in trouble, but they could still worm out of it. It's just not clear.
"So, wait a minute. If I go out and spraypaint a building and get caught... does this mean that I sue the makers of GTA or this retard? "
Apparently you can sue Take 2 if you run a red light.
"Graffiti artist? Oh you mean person who vandalizes property that doesn't belong to them costing the city money to clean up their crap. "
Graffiti is art, not vandalism. Vandalism is when you paint all over somebody's property without consent. There are a lot of graffiti artists out there who are paid to do that by the people who own the property.
Don't immediately assume somebody who paints a wall is a criminal. You sound just as knowledgable as the RIAA when you do that.
"here's no requirement for the creator an a work (public or private) to put a copyright notice on his work "
For the record, that's not what I was referring to. What I was saying was that graffiti artists (the illegal graffiti specifically) would rather not have their name plastered on their work so the police can rack up a series of charges for them. If this guy was doing legal graffiti then it was a bad idea for him NOT to put a copyright notice on there. "Hey, I'm a special case here. I'm a proud artist and this is my canvas. I'm not a tagger."
Actually I am an artist. And yeah, I would be upset about it. However, that's not related to what I said. If I drew my logo on the side of a building and didn't put copyright info or anything, I'd feel like a big dumbass if shirts with my logo on them started floatin around. I'd be upset to a degree, but I can't imagine feeling like anybody owed me anything if I failed to let them know I claimed ownership of that image.
Lots of the textures in both GTA games are photographic. Since there's little to go on from the article (i.e. which graphic and where it came from) I can only hypothesize.
What I think probably happened was they took some photos of graffiti they found and used them as textures. If so, they probably assumed that graffiti artists (in many cases being vandals) aren't going to step forward and take credit for it. In that case, was Take 2 really that much in the wrong? Yeah yeah, his work is in magazines and stuff. But unless there's a copyright notice, I don't think it's all that surprising that they wouldn't have knowna bout it.
Sounds to me like he should have approached them and said "uh that's my art, can I get some compensation for it?" but now it's a legal battle.
As I said, though, there's little to no info. For all I know, Take 2 scanned his work from a magazine and used it. Since the article didn't go into detail, then everybody's own views of Take 2 are going to surface. "Well, even though I've never played it, I know from what CNN tells me that Take 2 makes immoral games. It's therefore logical that they'd have no moral objections to steal some artist's work. Yep, they better lose badly!"
"A very good question. I'm thinking about the time he learns how to drive. When you hit 16 and are driving, a parent has to loosen up on the strings quite a bit and trust that what you've tried to teach him will come into play."
My advice here: don't be too strict about when i.e. setting a date. The way my dad raised me was akin to a trust relationship. He'd trust me with something, and if I passed I'd earn more trust. (or if I messed up I'd lose some trust...) As a result, I never needed a curfew. My dad had a rule like "just let me know where you are." I was always good about that and never came home with bad news, like the police.
Just a thought anyway. I came out pretty good. I'm 25, always had stable jobs. Been at my current one for 6 years. My grades were good, not outstanding, but I was able to earn art-based scholarships. Clean criminal and driving record. Etc.
I hope that makes sense. I honestly owe a lot of my good nature to my dad.
(note: sorry to sound like I'm tooting my own horn here, but I feel that I lucked out in the dad department.)
"I also, do NOT teach my son that guns are bad."
My dad did that too. My dad's taken me to the shooting range a few times. Thanks to him, violence in movies (they do actually teach you that guns kill in those movies, a perspective that the media NEVER covers), and education in school, I've never had the urge to find any of his guns to play with. Sounds to me like you're on the right track here.
"But it seems everyone feels that kids are basically if-then statements in a program: if they are exposed to guns, then they will kill. if the parents are good parents, then they are good kids. It's simply not that way. "
Agreed. But just remember that the variable you have absolute control over is yourself as a parent. Shit happens. Nobody denies that. Think about this, though: Every time you get a chance to tell your son that something is good or bad, and explain why, you are giving him a lot of information to work with. It's for that reason I'm not big on saying "You can't play this game", my preference would be to say "see how you ran over this guy in GTA? In real life, you'd not only ruin that person's family's lives, but your own..." That's preference, not a rule. A good deal of that depends on your son. (I should be fair and mention that I'm not a parent.)
"In my experience there are no answers, only choices."
Yep yep.
Hope what I said gives you something to think about.
"Personally, I hate the entire GTA series. I think the glorification of violence is a bad idea, and that the game makers show a lack of social conscience."
You should acutally sit down and play that game before you decide you hate it. Part of this is that you sound like you're parroting what the ill-informed media has said, and part of it is that I think if you played the game you'd see a different side of it.
The media classicly points out "you can beat up an old lady with a golf club! That's wrong!!". But what they don't mention is that when you beat up that lady, the cops come after you. Run over a pedestrian? The cops come after you. Run into a cop? The cops come after you. Go firing your gun around the place? The cops come after you.
While the cops are chasing you, the difficulty of completing your mission dramatically increases. The game gets harder if you 'glorify violence'. So what happens to experienced players in GTA? They avoid pedestrians like the plague. You don't go running around killing lil old ladies.
Like I said, take a look at the game before you let the media tell you what to like or dislike. Remember that the media's only motivation is not journalistic integrity, it's to get you watching the story. Who cares if the facts are disputable?
"'I didn't want to hurt anyone' said one of the kids.....you were shooting at them!!"
That could be a problem in their case. When you shoot people in Vice City, they die. They have no reason to think from this game that anybody wouldn't get hurt.
"What kind of society are we in that takes pleasure out of simulating murder? "
Those poor, innocent, non-sentient sprites.
" Now, having said this, it's STILL the parent's responsibility to ensure that the kids do not misuse the weapon (It's allowed for the purposes of HUNTING...)"
One thing that really bugs me about using Take Two as a scapegoat is that when you shoot somebody in GTA Vice City, they die. Those kids would have had no reason whatsoever to believe that somebody'd climb out of their car and say "oh man, you got me good!"
"We do NOT let him play any games with guns. "
At what age are you going to lighten up on that rule?
"Coldfusion (Score:0, Offtopic)
I use Coldfusion at work, and while I would possibly choose other methods of web application development if it were up to me, it still remains a good, solid Web application development tool, which is easy to learn and quite powerful.
It runs fine on linux, as well! "
It's not off-topic when it's a joke about the topic.
"What do you think powers my flying car? "
A motion control rig?
"So scan the stories---or maybe just the headlines. It's not like (at least in this case) you can't tell from the friggin' headline whether anything has happened, after all."
In other words, read what I don't want to read. In the mean time, they could be posting more interesting stuff.
Yep, great solution.
"Then it is just a matter of the student running their crap writing through the compiler until it compiles. No effort to improve the content."
You sure about that? From what I've seen, programmers learn how to avoid those pesky problems that cause compiling issues. Why would somebody writing a paper be any different?
I don't understand what's so 'overrated' by my (parent) post. If it's an essay based English/Grammar test that's one thing, but what about History? Since when's a history teacher care about anything but the idea?
Man I was sick of that shit. I was dinged pretty harshly for a research paper I did because my gramar wasn't up to stnuff. I guess that's okay, seeing as how it was an English paper, but I was also up all night writing that. If I had known gramar was so important I would've skipped the reasearch bit and just wrote some nice clean demo of my grammatical skillz.
"Is this a good thing... just as soon as the students get wind of the software the teachers are using to grade their papers how much are you willing to bet the students will get a copy for them selves?"
That's a good point. Why not give the students the software? Why not have them learn the grammar/spelling as they're writing it instead of possibly glancing at it when they read whatever letter the teacher puts on it?
I thought the point of an essay was to grade the ideas and how well they're expressed. I didn't realize they were spelling/grammar tests.
Maybe I'm just a bit jaded by this because of all the stupid grammar and spelling nitpicking that goes on here on Slashdot. Evidentally, it's much easier to criticize my spelling than it is to provided a rebuttal to my point.
"Well, DON'T CLICK IT ON SCO STORIES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM!"
Yeah, real useful advice when the story's already there.
Consider this: lots of people are SICK of the round and round "uh SCO is wrong" stories, but they still want to read the one that says SCO won or lost.
Slashdot needs to cool it a bit. Though, I am glad that the anti-MS bs has died down. (Note: my comment there excludes the important stuff like coverage of the Blaster worm.)
"Don't read them."
Fine, don't read my post telling you that you're an idiot.
Mods: Before you hit that troll button, am I trolling or am I making a point?
Thanks for writing that. Just wanted to let ya know I read it and am absorbing it. Thank you. :)
" Intel added value over the Mac, the IBM PC clones added value over the Mac, Windows' installed base and software developers added value, but Windoss 95 added no value whatsoever. "
Yeah I'd think that too if I hated Microsoft.