Here's a good example, I'm a science fiction character traveling in my FTL spaceship to Alpha Centuri. Trouble is, according to modern understandings of science, that's not possible!
"Impossible by modern understandings of science" is a poor standard for what does or doesn't qualify as SF. Taken seriously, damn near all SF is "just fantasy dressed in Science Fiction clothes" according to such a rule:
Time travel - Out with The Time Machine and all its descendents.
Big black rock slabs that provide an instant evolutionary level-up to any monkey that touches it - Out with the 2001 series.
FTL travel, teleportation, psionics, etc - Out with...almost everything else
It's basically making the rather huge assumption that modern science is wrong.
It's supposed to. Modern science is always wrong about something (regardless of the value of "modern"), and almost all SF stories are, at some level, exercises in the question "What if we're wrong about X?".
Chess: A game in which you are encouraged to send blindly loyal soldiers of varying specialties to their untimely deaths all in the name of protecting a single political figure.
I believe they are "captured." Except for pawns. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to "redeem" one of the pieces with a pawn.
Admit it, you're just an apologist for the necromancy lobby that's trying to push its sick message on our children.
MGS managed to have a believable AI for stealth gameplay more than 10 years ago.
Would this be the same MGS where I could:
10 Punch a guy in the back of the head
20 Hide around the corner before he turns around to see who punched him
30 Watch him shrug his shoulders and resume his patrol route
40 GOTO 10
And we, of course, know everything about biochemistry and can prove that the chemical pathways involved in his cure are in no way related to the brown recluse spider toxin.
The phrase "burden of proof" is something with which you might want to familiarize yourself.
While this law is thoroughly stupid, it isn't the same one that keeps getting shot down by the courts. The previous batch tried to outright forbid the sale of violent games to minors; this one only provides for penalties when you make such a sale when you publicly claim not to.
This, of course, only means that it's toothless as well as being unconstitutional.
How much will you bet that Darkfall (pvp with consequences), Aion (graphic heavy), Champions Online (niche market)... will fail?
Seeing as how EVE online (pvp with consequences), Everquest II (graphic heavy) and City of Heroes (niche market) aren't anywhere near failing, not a whole lot. Unless you define failure by the ridiculous standard of "not a WOW-killer".
Well, Darkfall still might well and truly fail, since its "pvp consequences" look pretty obnoxious. But that would be an indictment of Darkfall's implementation rather than the concept.
The RIAA has been suing people for distributing unauthorized copies of songs. Having the CD wouldn't help you here, as it doesn't give you permission to give out copies.
I don't see how you can equate a simple statement like "Ozgnikt stabbed Frumbumnìr" with a moving image showing blood spurting everywhere and shit and giblets all falling out.
That's because you're taking the most minimal text description you can think of and comparing it to the goriest visual film image you can think of, instead of recognizing the fact that both media are capable of the same range of detail.
Both the movies and the books make it a fairly important plot point that Isildur (a human, who if I recall correctly was also half-elven) was made invisible by the ring.
Strangely, the only one who doesn't turn invisible when wearing the ring is Sauron himself. I suppose one might speculate that he damn well could have been invisible if he wanted, and that he was suppressing that particular effect for the sake of intimidation.
That "stupid, stupid reason" would be that the game doesn't know what other people are saying, on account of it not containing neither a sentient AI nor magical fairy dust.
This allows parents to better control what games their children play.
No it doesn't. That's impossible, because parents already have that control. These ill-conceived laws provide them with nothing but a convenience to which they are not entitled.
Except that it isn't "a game without the chance for failure". It's a game where failure isn't expressed as the death of the protagonist, and the retry process is automated and integrated into the narrative. In no way, however, do these things keep failure from being a possibility.
That isn't really true anymore. City of Heroes, for example, is a very easy game to play in short bursts. MMO's have been trending towards casual-friendliness for a good few years now.
Well, American ones have, anyway. I think the Asian games are still in the "you will spend ten hours questing with a carefully chosen selection of classes and LIKE IT!" mentality.
I would actually be in favor of a surveillance state if (and *only* if) the camera points both ways. They get to see what goes on through cameras on our streets and outside every home and we get to see everything that goes on around every police car and inside every government meeting.
Even if that could work it would be a terrible idea. A camera in the Oval Office does not justify a camera in my living room.
40K and Shadowrun are both great fictional settings, but I think they would make poor MMO's due to the permadeath issue. Permadeath is poison for MMO's, but absolutely necessary to keep the thematic feel of those settings.
Shadowrun, for example, loses a lot of steam when death is merely an inconvenience. What's the big deal about getting betrayed by your teammate when it just means you spend 5 minutes running back from the hospital? Yeah, Trauma Teams, sure, but that only goes so far before you have to accept that there's no getting up from getting an auto-shotgun unloaded into your face. If you can't be properly killed, it's just not Shadowrun.
And 40K? That's nothing but death. You're a scary motherfucker, Commissar, but when that Tyranid bites you in half, you're done - Emperor or no Emperor.
I don't look forward to the Fallout MMO for the same reason, despite being a huge fan of Fallout.
So instead of a massive (and unreadable) paragraph, it is now a very simple bullet point saying that Obama strongly supports network neutrality. How on earth is this "downplaying" network neutrality?
Well for starters, it deliberately ignores an opportunity to explain the meaning of "network neutrality" (and why it matters) to the thousands-to-millions of people who only know it as some kind of vague techie buzzword. Before the change, at least a perfunctory effort was being made.
Slashdot Mirror
"Impossible by modern understandings of science" is a poor standard for what does or doesn't qualify as SF. Taken seriously, damn near all SF is "just fantasy dressed in Science Fiction clothes" according to such a rule:
It's supposed to. Modern science is always wrong about something (regardless of the value of "modern"), and almost all SF stories are, at some level, exercises in the question "What if we're wrong about X?".
Admit it, you're just an apologist for the necromancy lobby that's trying to push its sick message on our children.
Would this be the same MGS where I could:
10 Punch a guy in the back of the head
20 Hide around the corner before he turns around to see who punched him
30 Watch him shrug his shoulders and resume his patrol route
40 GOTO 10
The phrase "burden of proof" is something with which you might want to familiarize yourself.
While this law is thoroughly stupid, it isn't the same one that keeps getting shot down by the courts. The previous batch tried to outright forbid the sale of violent games to minors; this one only provides for penalties when you make such a sale when you publicly claim not to.
This, of course, only means that it's toothless as well as being unconstitutional.
Seeing as how EVE online (pvp with consequences), Everquest II (graphic heavy) and City of Heroes (niche market) aren't anywhere near failing, not a whole lot. Unless you define failure by the ridiculous standard of "not a WOW-killer".
Well, Darkfall still might well and truly fail, since its "pvp consequences" look pretty obnoxious. But that would be an indictment of Darkfall's implementation rather than the concept.
The RIAA has been suing people for distributing unauthorized copies of songs. Having the CD wouldn't help you here, as it doesn't give you permission to give out copies.
Probably "lower prices" doesn't necessarily mean lower-than-dialup prices, just lower-than-broadband-currently-is prices.
That's because you're taking the most minimal text description you can think of and comparing it to the goriest visual film image you can think of, instead of recognizing the fact that both media are capable of the same range of detail.
So none at all, then.
Both the movies and the books make it a fairly important plot point that Isildur (a human, who if I recall correctly was also half-elven) was made invisible by the ring.
Strangely, the only one who doesn't turn invisible when wearing the ring is Sauron himself. I suppose one might speculate that he damn well could have been invisible if he wanted, and that he was suppressing that particular effect for the sake of intimidation.
That "stupid, stupid reason" would be that the game doesn't know what other people are saying, on account of it not containing neither a sentient AI nor magical fairy dust.
No it doesn't. That's impossible, because parents already have that control. These ill-conceived laws provide them with nothing but a convenience to which they are not entitled.
And the fact that this bill is sponsored by a Democrat does precious little to dissuade us from that notion.
No, he won't. Because such steps do not and cannot exist, for the very simple reason that parents already can determine what their kids watch on TV.
It isn't whether you trust Barack Obama with those powers, but whether you trust the next George Bush (or vice versa, for the righties).
Hopefully not your geography teacher.
Except that it isn't "a game without the chance for failure". It's a game where failure isn't expressed as the death of the protagonist, and the retry process is automated and integrated into the narrative. In no way, however, do these things keep failure from being a possibility.
That isn't really true anymore. City of Heroes, for example, is a very easy game to play in short bursts. MMO's have been trending towards casual-friendliness for a good few years now.
Well, American ones have, anyway. I think the Asian games are still in the "you will spend ten hours questing with a carefully chosen selection of classes and LIKE IT!" mentality.
bsDaemon: "I'll take 'Simple Answers To Complex Questions' for $200, Alex"
Alex Trebek: "For the last time, bsDaemon, there is no such category"
Even if that could work it would be a terrible idea. A camera in the Oval Office does not justify a camera in my living room.
And what good is that plane-proof roof going to be when the Mole People come tunneling up through your foundation?
40K and Shadowrun are both great fictional settings, but I think they would make poor MMO's due to the permadeath issue. Permadeath is poison for MMO's, but absolutely necessary to keep the thematic feel of those settings.
Shadowrun, for example, loses a lot of steam when death is merely an inconvenience. What's the big deal about getting betrayed by your teammate when it just means you spend 5 minutes running back from the hospital? Yeah, Trauma Teams, sure, but that only goes so far before you have to accept that there's no getting up from getting an auto-shotgun unloaded into your face. If you can't be properly killed, it's just not Shadowrun.
And 40K? That's nothing but death. You're a scary motherfucker, Commissar, but when that Tyranid bites you in half, you're done - Emperor or no Emperor.
I don't look forward to the Fallout MMO for the same reason, despite being a huge fan of Fallout.
You saw the word "instant" and blew your top. You don't know what instant-runoff voting is. Start here.
Well for starters, it deliberately ignores an opportunity to explain the meaning of "network neutrality" (and why it matters) to the thousands-to-millions of people who only know it as some kind of vague techie buzzword. Before the change, at least a perfunctory effort was being made.