Probably they'll have to start having plots beyond "you are on mars with a lot of guns, and demons are attacking you." Even the stupidest fucking action movies have a better plot than that, and nobody is calling Vin Diesel movies "art."
Except: the Sims is mostly about people buying a new fucking couch. Storytelling is such an enormous part of our culture, and has been for so long, that referring it as "cold," compared to the "hot" entertainment of couch-buying-simulators, is just a strange form of arrogance.
Regardless, whole areas of study and art depend on people critiquing or referring or drawing inspiration from other artworks. Calling it "passive" is a bit of a misnomer. If a person at a party talks to me about the latest action movie or Sidney Sheldon novel I'm interested, and if they talk about Wong Kar-Wai or Jean-Luc Godard, I'll probably talk that around for a while. If a person at a party starts talking about their experience playing the Sims, I'm out of there before they finish the sentence.
Yeah, I'm sure if DVD players were being manufactured in the US in the first place, and then were forced to be sold to US specs even in foreign countries, that would probably be a factor, and you'd have a legitimate gripe against "US legislators." But since that's not the case, it's just another example of how anti-government rants with no basis in reality can get modded +5 insightful.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the new HP iPaq is manufactured in China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). If such is the case, we should boycott this product.
No problem, I was planning on boycotting any $550 Pocket PC anyway.
Well in point of fact, Amazon sells two different editions of the "Hellboy" DVD, one for $15 and the other for the odd price of $26.21 (they probably cost more at your local video store). It's easy to believe that a similar movie would sell at the same prices a year or two ago, while I can't believe the DVDs would have cost $30 & $52 a year or two go.
But CDs and DVDs haven't always been widely pirated. It's not like prices got halved since bittorrent got released.
Re:Keeping it simple: answer to all astroturf post
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
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· Score: 1
Have you been paying attention to court cases recently? Obviously there's a legal precedent that what Lokitorrent is doing is illegal.
Whether or not you personally don't accept it, our legal system isn't based on a Mr. Catbeller's personal opinions. It isn't entirely based on what slave-owners from 200 years ago believed, either. So ranting in such a way is off-topic.
Claiming the conspiracy theory that anybody who disagrees with you is an agent of the RIAA or MPAA is just odd - about on level with wearing tinfoil hats.
Sure, because we all know that there wasn't a drop of alcohol sold or consumed in the US between 1919 and 1933.
Just because one government law (and the example you chose is more than 70 years old) doesn't work, in no way means that all government laws won't work. That's ridiculous - why would there even be laws if none of them worked? Absinthe, for instance, was banned about a decade before prohibition, and is still pretty difficult to get a hold of in the United States.
That's true. That's why major science labs and reasearch facilities will never employ large teams of people to research and work together on a problem. Similarly, that's why use of outside research, consulting with other experts in the field, or use of the Internet, is so strongly discouraged in academic fields. It's because all great achievments come from lone solitary figures, such as Harry MacElhone or the Unabommer.
Generally true, and it's also generally true that video game sequals are pretty good. But that's also due to the nature of the entertainment.
If a movie sequel is nothing but more of the same with a fancier special effects budget, the movie will be justly derided. However, perfectly sucessful video games sequels can be nothing more than a graphical update of the original. People don't like it when developers mess with the original formula too much - they're looking for an update rather than a re-invention.
The Star Wars re-makes show that better graphic engines don't make for better movies. Whereas, Doom 3 shows that graphic engines are more important to video games than fresh new plots.
now it seems people are really starting to appreciate the music for its own sake.
Well, it remains to be seen if these concerts will attract general attention. I would guess not, that the audience will be almost entirely Final Fantasy fanboys, interested in the music because they played the game.
Thomas Jefferson also believed in pedophilic rape of your slaves, believed that the US should be a nation of gentlemen farmers, believed that we shouldn't have national monetary policy, believed we should have armed rebellion at regular intervals. You apparently view him as some sort of god, whose word is scripture, because I don't see why else you would post such a long, boring quote, that's too antiquitated to be relevant.
For a Chinese person, Tibet is a popular tourist destination that has been a part of China for 1300 years or so. It's quite possible that people are interested in an aspect of Tibet besides its brief CIA-supported revolt in the 50's. The recent Chinese movie "Zhou Yu's Train" has a character dilly-dallying about in Tibet as a tourist and teacher, with no reference to the revolution 50 years ago.
For most Americans, Tibet is merely part of a slogan commonly found on bumper stickers, and they don't really know anything about its history or current situation, and have no reason or interest in viewing related web pages. They seem to think of Tibet as an area where people are constantly in revolt and have nothing else going on in their lives or their region. It would make sense that a search engine aimed at Americans and Chinese would yield different results.
Yeah right. Nobody even bothers trading beginning bands on file-sharing networks. Even the most popular indie bands aren't much represented - look up Belle & Sebastian on suprnova. With pop music, essentially only the 2% of music that's RIAA-owned is getting traded. It makes sense that they'd be the 2% to get upset about it.
Really due to the nature of bittorrent, there's no difficulty in non RIAA record-labels or artists making their albums freely available. krecs.com could post the bittorrents on their webpage if they wanted. They don't - I can only presume they'd rather sell the albums than give them away.
Just because they both make money doesn't mean they're comparable mediums. Even simple action movies rely on heroes accomplishing one-time impossible tasks with neat resolution. This simply doesn't work in the context of a game, where mistakes and repeated content is a necessary part of the game. And there's so few comparison points between an art movie and a video game, why even bother?
If they put a screen capture of "Half Life 2" on a movie screen for two hours, of course the audience would be bored silly, however good the video game.
Honestly, you're scared and shudder at the thought you might know a person who cheats at a video game? This isn't like they cheat on their wife or they cheat on their taxes, or something that carries actual moral weight. It's just a video game. If I found one of my friends used a bug in a video game to make a dwarf run really fast, I wouldn't care in the slightest.
Though, in a country where they refuse to call non-black people born in Africa and then emigrating to the U.S. "African-Americans" I suppose this is to be expected.
Perhaps because the "African" in "African-American" refers to ethnicity, not nation of birth? Isn't that completely obvious?
According to Wikipedia, your Elementary School teacher was right - Pilgrims did Thanksgiving, it persisted as a regional holiday and as a one-shot deal for a long time (for instance, a Thansgiving Day was declared after 1812). Eventually Lincoln formalized it into an annual event on the last Thursday of November, that was changed to the 4th Thursday of November.
Washington didn't start the tradition, nor finalize it. He was the first president to declare Thanksgiving only because he was the first president.
Re:What's the point?
on
Internet Hunting
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
For most people, hunting is a source of amusement. If it wasn't, there'd be no interest in Internet hunting, which bears little relationship to the points you bring up. Or the video game "Deer Hunter," for that matter. And some of your points are a stretch for anyone - "the lengths you will go to feed your family." Jesus you can get a whopper for 99 cents. There's very few hunters for whom it's about a cheap source of food.
You seem so passionate about the subject, I'm glad you stopped waxing on before you started mentioning your cock.
Powell is a politician, and you're too impressed by his political manner. In terms of substance, Stern was just saying it the way it is, and didn't lie or obfuscate once, while Powell did so repeatedly. Claiming there's no reason for Viacom to protest the FCC ruling is ridiculous. Was he suggesting Viacom is just too lazy to get around to it?
Stern did seem childish and on attack, but that doesn't mean h isn't right.
You seem to confuse dogmatic philosophy with how the world works. First, saying "yes" in bold isn't an argument, and comparing "cars should be safe" to "the terrorists have won" is just odd.
Secondly, cars are already regulated. Airbags are now standard, cars have lights indicating the brake. SUVs with high bumpers need a system to avoid automatically killing passengers of the other car. In short there is already a precedent for cars to have regulated safety measures, and most people approve of it, feeling it makes driving safer. Why should banning the watching of TV while driving, which is obviously unsafe, be any different? Because it has a vaguely high-tech aura about it?
If you're going to reply, please actually answer, instead of just posting some BS. I wonder if you're capable?
Slashdot Mirror
Probably they'll have to start having plots beyond "you are on mars with a lot of guns, and demons are attacking you." Even the stupidest fucking action movies have a better plot than that, and nobody is calling Vin Diesel movies "art."
Regardless, whole areas of study and art depend on people critiquing or referring or drawing inspiration from other artworks. Calling it "passive" is a bit of a misnomer. If a person at a party talks to me about the latest action movie or Sidney Sheldon novel I'm interested, and if they talk about Wong Kar-Wai or Jean-Luc Godard, I'll probably talk that around for a while. If a person at a party starts talking about their experience playing the Sims, I'm out of there before they finish the sentence.
Yeah, I'm sure if DVD players were being manufactured in the US in the first place, and then were forced to be sold to US specs even in foreign countries, that would probably be a factor, and you'd have a legitimate gripe against "US legislators." But since that's not the case, it's just another example of how anti-government rants with no basis in reality can get modded +5 insightful.
No problem, I was planning on boycotting any $550 Pocket PC anyway.
Well in point of fact, Amazon sells two different editions of the "Hellboy" DVD, one for $15 and the other for the odd price of $26.21 (they probably cost more at your local video store). It's easy to believe that a similar movie would sell at the same prices a year or two ago, while I can't believe the DVDs would have cost $30 & $52 a year or two go.
But CDs and DVDs haven't always been widely pirated. It's not like prices got halved since bittorrent got released.
Whether or not you personally don't accept it, our legal system isn't based on a Mr. Catbeller's personal opinions. It isn't entirely based on what slave-owners from 200 years ago believed, either. So ranting in such a way is off-topic.
Claiming the conspiracy theory that anybody who disagrees with you is an agent of the RIAA or MPAA is just odd - about on level with wearing tinfoil hats.
Just because one government law (and the example you chose is more than 70 years old) doesn't work, in no way means that all government laws won't work. That's ridiculous - why would there even be laws if none of them worked? Absinthe, for instance, was banned about a decade before prohibition, and is still pretty difficult to get a hold of in the United States.
That's true. That's why major science labs and reasearch facilities will never employ large teams of people to research and work together on a problem. Similarly, that's why use of outside research, consulting with other experts in the field, or use of the Internet, is so strongly discouraged in academic fields. It's because all great achievments come from lone solitary figures, such as Harry MacElhone or the Unabommer.
Generally true, and it's also generally true that video game sequals are pretty good. But that's also due to the nature of the entertainment.
If a movie sequel is nothing but more of the same with a fancier special effects budget, the movie will be justly derided. However, perfectly sucessful video games sequels can be nothing more than a graphical update of the original. People don't like it when developers mess with the original formula too much - they're looking for an update rather than a re-invention.
The Star Wars re-makes show that better graphic engines don't make for better movies. Whereas, Doom 3 shows that graphic engines are more important to video games than fresh new plots.
Well, it remains to be seen if these concerts will attract general attention. I would guess not, that the audience will be almost entirely Final Fantasy fanboys, interested in the music because they played the game.
Thomas Jefferson also believed in pedophilic rape of your slaves, believed that the US should be a nation of gentlemen farmers, believed that we shouldn't have national monetary policy, believed we should have armed rebellion at regular intervals. You apparently view him as some sort of god, whose word is scripture, because I don't see why else you would post such a long, boring quote, that's too antiquitated to be relevant.
So, you're new to the world of technology?
For most Americans, Tibet is merely part of a slogan commonly found on bumper stickers, and they don't really know anything about its history or current situation, and have no reason or interest in viewing related web pages. They seem to think of Tibet as an area where people are constantly in revolt and have nothing else going on in their lives or their region. It would make sense that a search engine aimed at Americans and Chinese would yield different results.
Of course in a world where multi-tracking devices go for $100, there's going to be exceptions to any categorical statement you make about indie music.
Really due to the nature of bittorrent, there's no difficulty in non RIAA record-labels or artists making their albums freely available. krecs.com could post the bittorrents on their webpage if they wanted. They don't - I can only presume they'd rather sell the albums than give them away.
If they put a screen capture of "Half Life 2" on a movie screen for two hours, of course the audience would be bored silly, however good the video game.
Honestly, you're scared and shudder at the thought you might know a person who cheats at a video game? This isn't like they cheat on their wife or they cheat on their taxes, or something that carries actual moral weight. It's just a video game. If I found one of my friends used a bug in a video game to make a dwarf run really fast, I wouldn't care in the slightest.
Perhaps because the "African" in "African-American" refers to ethnicity, not nation of birth? Isn't that completely obvious?
Washington didn't start the tradition, nor finalize it. He was the first president to declare Thanksgiving only because he was the first president.
You seem so passionate about the subject, I'm glad you stopped waxing on before you started mentioning your cock.
And yes, I have hunted. Pigs. Yum.
Why is Penny Arcade so popular when your comics are no funnier than random words strung together?
Or a puppy first learning to walk?
Stern did seem childish and on attack, but that doesn't mean h isn't right.
Secondly, cars are already regulated. Airbags are now standard, cars have lights indicating the brake. SUVs with high bumpers need a system to avoid automatically killing passengers of the other car. In short there is already a precedent for cars to have regulated safety measures, and most people approve of it, feeling it makes driving safer. Why should banning the watching of TV while driving, which is obviously unsafe, be any different? Because it has a vaguely high-tech aura about it?
If you're going to reply, please actually answer, instead of just posting some BS. I wonder if you're capable?