They ought to have a best voice actor category. Acting involves actual expression with the body and face, while voice acting is giving life to a fake character, much like muppeteering.
Yes, they aught to. But Andy Serkis did act with his whole body, just as if he was in a costume. The whole thing was motion-captured, including some leading-edge stuff with the hands and face (usually ignored in your traditional mo-cap).
Every time Gollum came on screen it knocked me out of the illusion.
Not to pick nits... (hey, it's Slahdot! I guess I will pick nits! c'mere, nits!)
... but maybe you've never seen a severly malformed hobbit under the influence of an evil magic ring who's been living in a cave for hundreds of years before?
I'm not trying to be flip.
There is an inherent problem in portraying something like Gollum on the screen. He's not going to ever look really 'real', in a sense, because you've never seen a real one.
I spoke last year with a friend who had worked on some of the CG in Spider-man. It too was criticized quite a bit for looking 'cartoony', not moving right, etc. This friend went to great lengths to explain to me that the problem was physics. You've never seen a guy move 3x faster than a normal human, while doing flips and handstands and generally flinging himself all over the place. Guess what? It looks really weird. He was quite disappointed that none of the hardcore fans had picked up on this, and actually felt slighted: here was the Spider-man CG team, actually sticking to the described physical limits of the character, and of course it looks a little strange.
Now, as far as Gollum goes, I can't buy that he looked cartoony, or that the motion was 'off'. It all looked pretty damn perfect to me. (If anything, they needed to grain him up a bit as sometimes the CG looks a little too clear.) Of course I know its not real, but that's because I know.
I saw this at first and like many others went 'oooh' at the nice Quartz rendering, and the graphical quality of the widgets. Then I turned it off after about 5 minutes.
The problem with ideas like this (and don't get me wrong this is a nice implementation; it's the concept I have a problem with), is that they assume your desktop is going to be visible to you. In fact, that is not true very often in modern computing circumstances, as you are almost always running something that is taking up most of your screen.
After all, why wouldn't you? This is why we want big screens in the first place. Even if you're Aaron Sorkin and you have a 17" PowerBook, you're using that width to show two scripts side-by-side.
So the problem with Konfabulator is that, to access the widgets, you have to 'switch' to the desktop, which means its no faster than any other application you could switch context to. The desktop becomes an infinitely configurable tabla rosa, which is cool, but it gets hidden by whatever app(s) you're using regularly. (I find this is less of a problem on the Mac by the way. On my Windows machine at work I tend to maximize everything, but on OS X I always leave room around windows... anyways...)
Now, to take another Mac example, the top-right toolbar widgets. These, I love, and they are the real answer to Konfabulator-type flexibility. They are always visible and always 'live'. I mine alone, I have a CPU/Net monitor (Spy), the weather (WeatherPop), battery, Airport strength, Bluetooth status, iSync trigger, monitor rez, sound volume, and date/time. In a line appox. 15 pixels high. They may not be as lickable as Konfab's widgets but they are much more readily available, and easier to hit with the mouse (top-right corner, Fitt's Law mouse-flinging).
So you're back to Active Desktop, which no one uses. I think the context-switching is the reason.
One side-note.. the only really cool thing I want fron Konfab is the webcam feature. I really like the idea of placing borderless, floating webcam images around my desktop...
Seems to me, that the fuctionality offered by threedegrees is almost exactly the same as iChat + iTunes on the Mac.
When I first read the article, I thought 'how is this a big deal'? It sounds just like Messenger, with another module. You know, all those little useless things in the menu on the right side (Win version): drawing board, surf together (ha!), etc.
Now, if only Apple would bloody well release the Rendezvous-enabled iTunes, we'd have a standards-compliant, streaming, ZeroConf version. If you believe the rumours about the next iChat having video capabilities, and supporting the other flavours ala Trillian/Fire (hell I'd settle for just Jabber).... then add mod_rendezvous.... mmmmmmmm.
(btw I'm not trying to start an Apple vs MS comparison, it's just curious to notice how both MS and Apple are looking for other ways to integrate 'live' net communications, all of a sudden.)
With 2.2 million credit card numbers to check, how do they know that the cards haven't been compromised?
Of course, they don't know. They won't know for a while. But the answer is Nothing Stolen, and the answer will always be Nothing Stolen.
Credit card companies are like insurance companies, it's all about playing the odds, and statistics, and consumer behavioural models. Personally I've stopped trusting them a long time ago. While the public meme is that credit card theft is on the rise due to Internet transactions, I really wonder sometimes. As seen with other examples, the Internet is actually becoming an invaluable tool for revealing nefarious activity (patterns of activity that is) that would have been otherwise obfuscated by natural physical barriers. The media are hardly reliably objective in this sense.
"Unlike with the beta for the inital release they are acually allowing the macintosh uses to test this time...." Ooo that's good news for a handful of people!
*laughter (it's funny.)
"Unlike with the beta for the inital release they are acually allowing the linux uses to test this time...." Ooo that's good news for a handful of people!
Anybody know if they fixed the bug in mail where if you mistakenly create two accounts with the same email address and delete one it deletes all the associated emails?
Actually, I fixed that bug myself.
Here's the patch: don't do that again.
Sorry for the flip comment, but c'mon... did you really want to test that particular 'feature' again just to see if they fixed it?
"Charlie Kaufman, a previous screenwriting nominee for Being John Malkovich, scored a first of sorts. He was nominated for adapted screenplay for Adaptation, along with fictional twin brother Donald, who shares the writing credit.
It was the first nomination ever for a fictional entity. In the past, filmmakers have received nominations under assumed names, such as Joel and Ethan Coen as Roderick Jaynes, their film-editing pseudonym, or Robert Towne, who shared a screenwriting nomination for 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes under the name of his sheepdog, P.H. Vazak.
Academy officials say if Adaptation wins, only one Oscar will be awarded, for Charlie Kaufman.
Hired to adapt Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Kaufman struggled with the script, then whimsically wrote an incarnation of himself and a nonexistent twin into the story. Cage plays both characters.
No way. Moulin Rouge revived the musical in a big way, as much as I hated and detested that film. It's totally hip in Hollywood right now. I give it a 50% chance at Best Picture. I haven't seen it.
Gangs of New York. Three hours long, directed by Martin Scorsesie, has a Titanic feel to it, and touches on new ground (civil war era New York). Stands a good chance.
Directed by Scorcese. Not good chances. They gave Best Picture to Dances With Wolves, for the love of god, over Goodfellas, his best flick. Wouldn't count on it.
The Hours. Women with problems. Stands a chance, barely.
A period piece, and a drama, AND women with problems, AND with Meryl nominated-more-than-anyone-ever Streep. Excellent chances. The other 50% of my guess for BP.
The Pianist. Jewish Artist vs. the Nazis. Should be a shoo-in, but we'll see.
Shound be, except that it simply wasn't all that good. Meets the criteria for sure.
A lot of people have mentioned that. It's actually a really tricky problem, in light of how the Academy is set up.
Think; which of the following apply to Gollum's performance in TTT?:
- acting (definitely, so best/supporting actor)
- costume (digital?)
- production design (how Gollum looks.. which is partly Andy Serkis and partly.. a designer..)
- special effects (because he is digital, but also all these other things... and SFX used to be only physical)
I think the Academy is going to have to address some of these multidisciplinary efforts in the future, as it cannot be easily lumped into one category.
You're saying that speed matters. (It doesn't - performance does.)
Sorry, I should have clarified; I meant speed == performance. Actual speed. Clock speeds mean nothing to me.
He's saying that whoever steps off the faster-chip merry go round first will clean up in the next round, not that the world will never need faster processors.
That's an interesting point, but would that have been Apple about 1.5 years ago? It hasn't helped the perception of their performance much.
I wouldn't read too much into the Google statement, for reasons stated above much more eloquantly than I can. Simple version, Google might not need Itanium now, certainly not at launch.
No, the real story here is that this is another article added to the pile of 'does CPU speed matter anymore?' Of course it does, for those people running DV or protein-folding or what have you. Someone quoted 75% of the computer-using population not needing that power. I think that's underestimated.
If you really think about it, I'd conservatively guess 95%... factoring in everyone. 95% of users would buy a computer today that is much faster than anything they will ask of it. Office bloat counts for much but I think Intel/AMD have even outrun that race.
Which means we are rounding an inflection point in computer history. It makes you wonder, where that point was with (as much as I hate the analogy), say, cars... when did people stop obsessing about horsepower, and start to concentrate on the stereo, styling, heated seats?
Personally I would much rather see improvements in memory bandwidth (which is happening), and drive speed. Or FGPAs.
Actually, yes, I use one every time I turn on my laptop
Heh, yes, okay... you're right... although that is obviously a trade-off for the sake of portability. It also helps that the laptop is below you, so to speak (the W looks raised above where a laptop screen would normally begin).
I guess my point was that it doesn't seem to serve a purpose. They could have still had a fold-up keyboard that detached.
Somebody mod this up, and then go look at the thing nuxx is talking about. It's ingenious - and as near as I can tell, every bit as elegant as the Xbox solution, if not more so. If you really want your media on your TV, why even bother with the complexity of a separate 'computer'? This thing will stream anything to your PS2 from your existing computer.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I like this solution a whole lot better, philosophically. It's cheap too.
While mildly interesting, I can't help but think that the attached keyboard would be a disaster. Seriously, can any of you imagine using a keyboard that was bolted to the bottom of your monitor?
I think the last time I used something like that, it was called a Commodore PET.
What the hell metric are you looking at? You can't say that two interlaced frames use anywhere near the same amount of cycles that a single frame uses.
That would make some sense if the computer actually calculated individual fields (which is the term you're looking for).
The CPU calculates each full frame internally as one progressive pass - this applies to any console BTW - and the video hardware translates this to NTSC. The television is responsible for drawing the frame, which it does as two interlaced fields. CPU cycles don't enter into it.
RatBastard, I couldn't have said it better myself.
I chimed in on another gaming-related theme a little while back to ask Why... and how... these guys justify spending so much money on what I consider to be only marginally superior systems.
I'm all for the purist who wants absolute quality, however. The audiophile who dumps $3000 on their system does not puzzle me, because for those people, the listening provides such great enjoyment that they feel the expense is worth it. That's cool. You could say the same thing about gaming computers, I suppose, but the crucial difference: these fanboys don't know what quality is, they just know specs, by and large. Hell, most of these clowns keep quoting stuff like 'games that run at 60 frames per second' without knowing that their fucking TV only shows them 30.
I mean, 90% of the people in 1st-world nations cannot discern the difference between Windows and Mac. They cannot see it. Physically cannot see it. Does anyone seriously think that these people look at the side-by-side displays of the GC, PS2 and XBOX in Toys'r'us and proclaim the XBOX as the hands-down winner? No damn way. *i* can barely tell the difference, and I am a graphic designer. Sure, I know to look for antialiased edges, poly counts, etc. but the average gamer dude just wants to know if the latest NFL roster is included.
I also echo your other comment on older games. I still plunk in WipeOut XL on my PS2 and it's a blast.
I admire the PC Gaming Afficionado's tenacity, but I'd rather spend the extra $500-1000 on, oh, say, another 10-20 quality games.
Apologies upfront - Okay, I've got a little bone to pick. I know its OT, but it's relevant.(and its a slashvertisement anyways.)
Apple has fallen drastically behind in the speaker-wattage department.
It's a real issue. This Logitech speaker system is capable of 1000 watts. 1000! Thats a gigawatt! Meanwhile, my pathetic Apple SoundSticks - which they still sell on the AppleStore, are capable of a mere 65 watts.
Absolutely brutal. Never mind the quality, or the aesthetics... it is plainly obvious to myself (and indeed, everyone here) that the higher number of watts clearly indicates complete superiority in my listening productivity. It is folly to argue otherwise; I mena, there is the number. 1000 watts vs. 65.
Apple better damn well come up with some 1500 watt speakers in the next 10 seconds otherwise I'm going to go buy some JBL gear and really maximize my hearing of music.
Apple engineering
on
Baked Apple
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Apple has always built really, really tough machines, esp. under the aegis of Jonathan Ives. There are a lot of stories floating around about Apple employees dragging prototypes around the parking lot behind their cars, dropping off rooftops, etc. O'Grady's Powerpage used to have an 'Extreme mac' section with pics of people who had parked on their PowerBooks, shot at them, been soaking in an aquarium for a week, nailed with an Argon laser, etc.
Remember the Space Clam iBook? The corners were double-shod rubber wrapped around the two frontmost corners, which (on this model) were the likeliest impact points in the event of a drop. The newer iBooks have an HD that is encased in a brick of rubber. Aluminum/titanium frames. This is the stuff you want in a laptop.
... watching the various reactions to Sims Online on Slashdot. It's pretty negative.
EA is gonna take a bath on this if it doesn't pick up... man... there's a huge dev effort involved and they are counting on it to bring a significant chunk of coin.
I haven't played the released version yet, but it looks like they've forgotten to make a game. The Sims singleplayer was more like a really sophiticated toy than a game (or as Wright himself put it, a Virtual Dollhouse). An online virtual dollhouse isn't much more interesting than an offline one.
The thing that gets me is, I had this whole other idea of what EA was doing with the Sims, and I thought it was terribly clever, and now I realize that it very likely was all in my head.
EA spoke of Internet functions within the Sims. Like, check your email and surf, and whatnot, inside the Sims. Think about that for a second; what an absolutely perfect interface for the AOL-type crowd. You take Sims Online, put it on something locked-down like a console, tout it as the way you access the net. It's a game! Your house is your homepage! People are walking around, chatting, you can go to the little Sim theatre which would download movies to your drive, or go to Sim eBay and actually see who's bidding in live auctions. You know?
That would have been interesting. Sims as interface rather than stunted virtual dollhouse. As it is, it sounds like something that could have been added to the extant Sims with a plug-in.
Me likey Sarari! Make good for browse on web of courageous large smarts!
I'll just toss this on the pile: Seriously, in the name of all that is holy, Slashdot editors.. get some advanced spell checking technology. Do it. Do it now. You need it. Badly.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they aught to. But Andy Serkis did act with his whole body, just as if he was in a costume. The whole thing was motion-captured, including some leading-edge stuff with the hands and face (usually ignored in your traditional mo-cap).
Not to pick nits... (hey, it's Slahdot! I guess I will pick nits! c'mere, nits!)
I'm not trying to be flip.
There is an inherent problem in portraying something like Gollum on the screen. He's not going to ever look really 'real', in a sense, because you've never seen a real one.
I spoke last year with a friend who had worked on some of the CG in Spider-man. It too was criticized quite a bit for looking 'cartoony', not moving right, etc. This friend went to great lengths to explain to me that the problem was physics. You've never seen a guy move 3x faster than a normal human, while doing flips and handstands and generally flinging himself all over the place. Guess what? It looks really weird. He was quite disappointed that none of the hardcore fans had picked up on this, and actually felt slighted: here was the Spider-man CG team, actually sticking to the described physical limits of the character, and of course it looks a little strange.
Now, as far as Gollum goes, I can't buy that he looked cartoony, or that the motion was 'off'. It all looked pretty damn perfect to me. (If anything, they needed to grain him up a bit as sometimes the CG looks a little too clear.) Of course I know its not real, but that's because I know.
The problem with ideas like this (and don't get me wrong this is a nice implementation; it's the concept I have a problem with), is that they assume your desktop is going to be visible to you. In fact, that is not true very often in modern computing circumstances, as you are almost always running something that is taking up most of your screen.
After all, why wouldn't you? This is why we want big screens in the first place. Even if you're Aaron Sorkin and you have a 17" PowerBook, you're using that width to show two scripts side-by-side.
So the problem with Konfabulator is that, to access the widgets, you have to 'switch' to the desktop, which means its no faster than any other application you could switch context to. The desktop becomes an infinitely configurable tabla rosa, which is cool, but it gets hidden by whatever app(s) you're using regularly. (I find this is less of a problem on the Mac by the way. On my Windows machine at work I tend to maximize everything, but on OS X I always leave room around windows... anyways...)
Now, to take another Mac example, the top-right toolbar widgets. These, I love, and they are the real answer to Konfabulator-type flexibility. They are always visible and always 'live'. I mine alone, I have a CPU/Net monitor (Spy), the weather (WeatherPop), battery, Airport strength, Bluetooth status, iSync trigger, monitor rez, sound volume, and date/time. In a line appox. 15 pixels high. They may not be as lickable as Konfab's widgets but they are much more readily available, and easier to hit with the mouse (top-right corner, Fitt's Law mouse-flinging).
So you're back to Active Desktop, which no one uses. I think the context-switching is the reason.
One side-note.. the only really cool thing I want fron Konfab is the webcam feature. I really like the idea of placing borderless, floating webcam images around my desktop...
When I first read the article, I thought 'how is this a big deal'? It sounds just like Messenger, with another module. You know, all those little useless things in the menu on the right side (Win version): drawing board, surf together (ha!), etc.
Now, if only Apple would bloody well release the Rendezvous-enabled iTunes, we'd have a standards-compliant, streaming, ZeroConf version. If you believe the rumours about the next iChat having video capabilities, and supporting the other flavours ala Trillian/Fire (hell I'd settle for just Jabber).... then add mod_rendezvous.... mmmmmmmm.
(btw I'm not trying to start an Apple vs MS comparison, it's just curious to notice how both MS and Apple are looking for other ways to integrate 'live' net communications, all of a sudden.)
Of course, they don't know. They won't know for a while. But the answer is Nothing Stolen, and the answer will always be Nothing Stolen.
Credit card companies are like insurance companies, it's all about playing the odds, and statistics, and consumer behavioural models. Personally I've stopped trusting them a long time ago. While the public meme is that credit card theft is on the rise due to Internet transactions, I really wonder sometimes. As seen with other examples, the Internet is actually becoming an invaluable tool for revealing nefarious activity (patterns of activity that is) that would have been otherwise obfuscated by natural physical barriers. The media are hardly reliably objective in this sense.
I commend your linguistic acrobatics.
"Unlike with the beta for the inital release they are acually allowing the macintosh uses to test this time...." Ooo that's good news for a handful of people!
*laughter (it's funny.)
"Unlike with the beta for the inital release they are acually allowing the linux uses to test this time...." Ooo that's good news for a handful of people!
*it's about time those bastards let us in!!
Actually, I fixed that bug myself.
Here's the patch: don't do that again.
Sorry for the flip comment, but c'mon... did you really want to test that particular 'feature' again just to see if they fixed it?
... is included. Handy.
I didn't have any problems with my network settings after upgrading (DHCP Ethernet).
"Charlie Kaufman, a previous screenwriting nominee for Being John Malkovich, scored a first of sorts. He was nominated for adapted screenplay for Adaptation, along with fictional twin brother Donald, who shares the writing credit. It was the first nomination ever for a fictional entity. In the past, filmmakers have received nominations under assumed names, such as Joel and Ethan Coen as Roderick Jaynes, their film-editing pseudonym, or Robert Towne, who shared a screenwriting nomination for 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes under the name of his sheepdog, P.H. Vazak.
Academy officials say if Adaptation wins, only one Oscar will be awarded, for Charlie Kaufman.
Hired to adapt Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Kaufman struggled with the script, then whimsically wrote an incarnation of himself and a nonexistent twin into the story. Cage plays both characters.
"
Chicago. A musical. Forget it.
No way. Moulin Rouge revived the musical in a big way, as much as I hated and detested that film. It's totally hip in Hollywood right now. I give it a 50% chance at Best Picture. I haven't seen it.
Gangs of New York. Three hours long, directed by Martin Scorsesie, has a Titanic feel to it, and touches on new ground (civil war era New York). Stands a good chance.
Directed by Scorcese. Not good chances. They gave Best Picture to Dances With Wolves, for the love of god, over Goodfellas, his best flick. Wouldn't count on it.
The Hours. Women with problems. Stands a chance, barely.
A period piece, and a drama, AND women with problems, AND with Meryl nominated-more-than-anyone-ever Streep. Excellent chances. The other 50% of my guess for BP.
The Pianist. Jewish Artist vs. the Nazis. Should be a shoo-in, but we'll see.
Shound be, except that it simply wasn't all that good. Meets the criteria for sure.
Think; which of the following apply to Gollum's performance in TTT?:
- acting (definitely, so best/supporting actor)
- costume (digital?)
- production design (how Gollum looks.. which is partly Andy Serkis and partly.. a designer..)
- special effects (because he is digital, but also all these other things... and SFX used to be only physical)
I think the Academy is going to have to address some of these multidisciplinary efforts in the future, as it cannot be easily lumped into one category.
Sorry, I should have clarified; I meant speed == performance. Actual speed. Clock speeds mean nothing to me.
He's saying that whoever steps off the faster-chip merry go round first will clean up in the next round, not that the world will never need faster processors.
That's an interesting point, but would that have been Apple about 1.5 years ago? It hasn't helped the perception of their performance much.
No, the real story here is that this is another article added to the pile of 'does CPU speed matter anymore?' Of course it does, for those people running DV or protein-folding or what have you. Someone quoted 75% of the computer-using population not needing that power. I think that's underestimated.
If you really think about it, I'd conservatively guess 95%... factoring in everyone. 95% of users would buy a computer today that is much faster than anything they will ask of it. Office bloat counts for much but I think Intel/AMD have even outrun that race.
Which means we are rounding an inflection point in computer history. It makes you wonder, where that point was with (as much as I hate the analogy), say, cars... when did people stop obsessing about horsepower, and start to concentrate on the stereo, styling, heated seats?
Personally I would much rather see improvements in memory bandwidth (which is happening), and drive speed. Or FGPAs.
Jessop cautioned that GRid is not designed, nor is it intended for, keeping track of songs that wind up on online file-sharing networks
So really, they have just figured out a way to do this:
resellers would be charged an annual fee of 150 pounds ($245.10)
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Heh, yes, okay... you're right... although that is obviously a trade-off for the sake of portability. It also helps that the laptop is below you, so to speak (the W looks raised above where a laptop screen would normally begin).
I guess my point was that it doesn't seem to serve a purpose. They could have still had a fold-up keyboard that detached.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I like this solution a whole lot better, philosophically. It's cheap too.
I think the last time I used something like that, it was called a Commodore PET.
That would make some sense if the computer actually calculated individual fields (which is the term you're looking for).
The CPU calculates each full frame internally as one progressive pass - this applies to any console BTW - and the video hardware translates this to NTSC. The television is responsible for drawing the frame, which it does as two interlaced fields. CPU cycles don't enter into it.
Thanks for proving my point though.
I chimed in on another gaming-related theme a little while back to ask Why... and how... these guys justify spending so much money on what I consider to be only marginally superior systems.
I'm all for the purist who wants absolute quality, however. The audiophile who dumps $3000 on their system does not puzzle me, because for those people, the listening provides such great enjoyment that they feel the expense is worth it. That's cool. You could say the same thing about gaming computers, I suppose, but the crucial difference: these fanboys don't know what quality is, they just know specs, by and large. Hell, most of these clowns keep quoting stuff like 'games that run at 60 frames per second' without knowing that their fucking TV only shows them 30.
I mean, 90% of the people in 1st-world nations cannot discern the difference between Windows and Mac. They cannot see it. Physically cannot see it. Does anyone seriously think that these people look at the side-by-side displays of the GC, PS2 and XBOX in Toys'r'us and proclaim the XBOX as the hands-down winner? No damn way. *i* can barely tell the difference, and I am a graphic designer. Sure, I know to look for antialiased edges, poly counts, etc. but the average gamer dude just wants to know if the latest NFL roster is included.
I also echo your other comment on older games. I still plunk in WipeOut XL on my PS2 and it's a blast.
I admire the PC Gaming Afficionado's tenacity, but I'd rather spend the extra $500-1000 on, oh, say, another 10-20 quality games.
Apple has fallen drastically behind in the speaker-wattage department.
It's a real issue. This Logitech speaker system is capable of 1000 watts. 1000! Thats a gigawatt! Meanwhile, my pathetic Apple SoundSticks - which they still sell on the AppleStore, are capable of a mere 65 watts.
Absolutely brutal. Never mind the quality, or the aesthetics... it is plainly obvious to myself (and indeed, everyone here) that the higher number of watts clearly indicates complete superiority in my listening productivity. It is folly to argue otherwise; I mena, there is the number. 1000 watts vs. 65.
Apple better damn well come up with some 1500 watt speakers in the next 10 seconds otherwise I'm going to go buy some JBL gear and really maximize my hearing of music.
Remember the Space Clam iBook? The corners were double-shod rubber wrapped around the two frontmost corners, which (on this model) were the likeliest impact points in the event of a drop. The newer iBooks have an HD that is encased in a brick of rubber. Aluminum/titanium frames. This is the stuff you want in a laptop.
EA is gonna take a bath on this if it doesn't pick up... man... there's a huge dev effort involved and they are counting on it to bring a significant chunk of coin.
I haven't played the released version yet, but it looks like they've forgotten to make a game. The Sims singleplayer was more like a really sophiticated toy than a game (or as Wright himself put it, a Virtual Dollhouse). An online virtual dollhouse isn't much more interesting than an offline one.
The thing that gets me is, I had this whole other idea of what EA was doing with the Sims, and I thought it was terribly clever, and now I realize that it very likely was all in my head.
EA spoke of Internet functions within the Sims. Like, check your email and surf, and whatnot, inside the Sims. Think about that for a second; what an absolutely perfect interface for the AOL-type crowd. You take Sims Online, put it on something locked-down like a console, tout it as the way you access the net. It's a game! Your house is your homepage! People are walking around, chatting, you can go to the little Sim theatre which would download movies to your drive, or go to Sim eBay and actually see who's bidding in live auctions. You know?
That would have been interesting. Sims as interface rather than stunted virtual dollhouse. As it is, it sounds like something that could have been added to the extant Sims with a plug-in.
I'll just toss this on the pile: Seriously, in the name of all that is holy, Slashdot editors.. get some advanced spell checking technology. Do it. Do it now. You need it. Badly.