How long will the battery last on these "book" things? Can I read them in the sun? What if they get wet, are they water proofed? Can I make notes on them? Can they display color? What is the resolution?
Ah, see! Your "book" tech just can't compete! Bring me something that runs for centuries without a recharge, has a DPI over 300, can do infinite colors, is shock resistant, can be cheaply produced, easily resold 2nd hand and I can use to swat a fly with.
We need the best and brightest for this! Maybe some tech from China improved by German engineering! We could test it on say the Bible, first runs might be worth a bit of money perhaps.
I just posted this in the "Anonymous cannot take down mega-corp Amazon" story, but it also fits extremely well here. Just add this, the TV/Radio/Newspapers became mega-corps. Now book-publishing might do the same along with the internet. And the mega-corp then decides what does and what does not get published. First they came for the incest writers. Who is next? There used to be small publishers like Olympia Press, funded by daring indivuduals operating on shoe string budgets that dared to publish what nobody else dared to. How can Olympia Press compete with Amazon? Hint: Olympia Press books are (or more likely were as they are often pornograhphic including incest themes) sold on Amazon, the company itself is gone.
What we are seeing here has been seen before. If you ever wondered just why TV, radio and the newspapers all seem to be controlled by a handfull of men, then you must realize that this was not always the case. The first newspapers were created by concerned citizens, reasonably well off concernced citizens who could afford to setup a new business but hardly the super rich.
First radio? Amateurs, geeks and nerds of their day who took their hobby of messing about with this new stuff to a new level. Ham radio to the max. Television? Same thing, done from peoples living room. Some dutch broadcasting license holders still got it in their name AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep) Veronica started as a pirate station to bring the new music of the age to the airwaves that the by then established AVRO and others didn't play. Or not enough.
But Veronica, the pirate, went commerical and were bought out. Nothing of its original nature remains, it is now a mere name in SBS Broadcasting. A soulless mega-corp were absolutely nothing counts but ad-revenue.
Yet how did this happen? How did we go from amateur and politically motivated Radio, TV and newspapers to the current mass-produced elite controlled bland media?
It is simple. Scale. Veronica tried to go commercial on its own (the dutch broadcasting system is inexplainable but briefly, Veronica became part of the public network by a system where air time is allocated according to the number of subscribers a broadcaster has, there also exist commercial stations that opperate without a license fee support (used to be collected same as for the BBC, now it is part of normal taxes)) and failed. To small to survive this mistake it was bought and split up. A troublesome station, silenced. Veronica ONCE had a rather good news program with one of the few tv-presentors that actually followed up with though questions. Now it is the beavus and butthead station. It ALWAYS was young but with hints of rebellion and some principles, now it is just an MTV light. The young and mindless.
As time moved on, radio stations, newspapers and tv broadcasters were bought up, consolidated with any small operator being unable to afford any stumble without it being preyed upon by richer soulless companies. Meanwhile the costs of starting a new newspaper, a new radio staton a new tv station became higher and higher. Who after all is going to run an add on a local station with no known talent or must-watch-tv when for the same money he can air his add nationwide?
It has lead to the situation that right now a lot of media is controlled by just a few people who have very disturbing connections. Do you really expect Ruper Murdoch to dive into a banking scandal when he is close mated with the bankers? Of course not.
BUT the internet is free... yeah, it used to be... but now, even a widely distrubuted site like Wikileaks can be severely hampered, raising the cost to Wikileaks to remain online. And how are they going to pay for it? Maybe use a small banker with high principles... oh but all the banks consolidated. Maybe use a small ISP with high principles.... oh but all the ISP's consolidated... maybe use a DNS provide
What we are seeing here has been seen before. If you ever wondered just why TV, radio and the newspapers all seem to be controlled by a handfull of men, then you must realize that this was not always the case. The first newspapers were created by concerned citizens, reasonably well off concernced citizens who could afford to setup a new business but hardly the super rich.
First radio? Amateurs, geeks and nerds of their day who took their hobby of messing about with this new stuff to a new level. Ham radio to the max. Television? Same thing, done from peoples living room. Some dutch broadcasting license holders still got it in their name AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep) Veronica started as a pirate station to bring the new music of the age to the airwaves that the by then established AVRO and others didn't play. Or not enough.
But Veronica, the pirate, went commerical and were bought out. Nothing of its original nature remains, it is now a mere name in SBS Broadcasting. A soulless mega-corp were absolutely nothing counts but ad-revenue.
Yet how did this happen? How did we go from amateur and politically motivated Radio, TV and newspapers to the current mass-produced elite controlled bland media?
It is simple. Scale. Veronica tried to go commercial on its own (the dutch broadcasting system is inexplainable but briefly, Veronica became part of the public network by a system where air time is allocated according to the number of subscribers a broadcaster has, there also exist commercial stations that opperate without a license fee support (used to be collected same as for the BBC, now it is part of normal taxes)) and failed. To small to survive this mistake it was bought and split up. A troublesome station, silenced. Veronica ONCE had a rather good news program with one of the few tv-presentors that actually followed up with though questions. Now it is the beavus and butthead station. It ALWAYS was young but with hints of rebellion and some principles, now it is just an MTV light. The young and mindless.
As time moved on, radio stations, newspapers and tv broadcasters were bought up, consolidated with any small operator being unable to afford any stumble without it being preyed upon by richer soulless companies. Meanwhile the costs of starting a new newspaper, a new radio staton a new tv station became higher and higher. Who after all is going to run an add on a local station with no known talent or must-watch-tv when for the same money he can air his add nationwide?
It has lead to the situation that right now a lot of media is controlled by just a few people who have very disturbing connections. Do you really expect Ruper Murdoch to dive into a banking scandal when he is close mated with the bankers? Of course not.
BUT the internet is free... yeah, it used to be... but now, even a widely distrubuted site like Wikileaks can be severely hampered, raising the cost to Wikileaks to remain online. And how are they going to pay for it? Maybe use a small banker with high principles... oh but all the banks consolidated. Maybe use a small ISP with high principles.... oh but all the ISP's consolidated... maybe use a DNS provider with high principles... oh but they can't afford to have their main business hurt by the DDOS attack from "unknown" sources, less the consoloidated banks that fund them recall their loans.
Freedom requires more then just a few words on a piece of paper or even an honest legal system. It requires the means to excercise the freedom or it becomes meaningless. Freedom to protest in your capitol means nothing if you have no means to get there. If taking a day to march means you are fired from your job, loose your mortage etc etc. This is nothing new. It has been common practice for the elite to use threath of unemployment, to stop workers from protesting, from forming unions, from voting for the wrong candidate. By all means vote left, just don't count on your local banker to grant you a mortage or to find a job at the local factory.
Respect that respected Science Fiction authors get when their thought provoking stories are turned into action flicks with rappers?
Respect Tolkien got when Elves appeared at Helms Deep?
Hollywood knows about respect, it is what is underneath their boots.
And what do you expect when they serve an audience that thinks Mass Effect has depth? What depth? Evil monster with no motivation appears and gets blown up by equally unmotivated guy/gal. Great literature this does NOT make. Granted it has depth if you grew up on superman comics but then Hollywood got you well covered.
Games to movies rarely will work because most games are simply NOT about story. Tomb Raider? It is about solving the puzzles and making the jumps. As much as I would like to see a well proportioned woman spending an hour and half flexing her body on the silver screen, it would have any depth. Except maybe her cleavage.
Tomb Raider, Doom, Mario Brothers: These are games, you play them for the game. NOT the story. Trying to bolt a story on top that becomes 90% of the content instead of 10% is going to require addition of stuff the player simply does not want. Case in point: Lara Croft in the original is a rather bland character with no boyfriend or past. In the movie she suddenly gets a love interest. HELLO! She was supposed to be MY fantasy, not some other guy.
But in a game, this doesn't matter. The little we know about the game Lara Croft is plenty, but jumped up movie directors think they GOT to tell a story. That is were Hollywood keeps going wrong, they still don't get that what they could produce is eye-candy porn. Take Transforms (please). Remove the humans and just gives us 1.5 hours of robots fighting. Zero attempt at story and even less at badly acted out emotions. I liked revenge of the fallen, just fastforward when a human shows up.
Tomb Raider the Story does not work. Tomb Raider the action-adventure does, but focus on action, not bolted on "depth". Give me a mindless 2D movie where I can park my brain at the door and just enjoy myself.
Hollywood isn't ruining game movies by not adding enough depth, but by adding to much. Pure 100% action, that is why I play games, add this to game movies and you are golden.
Yes a taxi is a car but you don't need a license to use one.
In the same tone: OSX is like using a chauffeur driving limo (but a male chauffeur since, well... you are gay)
BSD is like driving a bike through rain and wind because you damn well will be independent of those oil companies, then have everything delivered through your home with gass guzzling van's.
OS2 is like running that CV2, the ugly duckling BUT the cheapest car to do Paris-Dakar!
DOS is like riding the wheel from the B.C. cartoon.
Windows? That is like riding a nice posh car, in the trunk while the MS mafia is driving you towards whereever they damn well want to take you.
FFXIV was and is a disaster but at least Square is dealing with it, not in outright denial like some companies *cough*Funcom*cough*.
The problem with the games might however be beyond fixing. At its core the current game is a Korean Free to Play style grind-fest. NOT a western quest/story MMORPG. And yet they price it very high, the 10 or so bucks is only for the base game, without ANY character slots. You need a character to play and those are extra. An extra charge EACH and EVERY month. 3 chars is 18 euro. EACH month.
And what do you then get? A rather bare world designed on the idea of MORE OPEN SPACE WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN IT TO RUN BETWEEN, some lovely animation and lots of scripted scenes.
The combat itself is moronic and for a long time (until I stopped) unplayable. Take an action, wait minutes, see it hit. This wasn't lag anymore, this was insanity.
There are no quests and the story while intresting isn't related to the quests. It is more gain X levels, see a cut scene.
Anyone expected a western style MMO was deeply disappointed. This was a korean grind-fest with cat-girls. They are cute but there is only so many times you can/fume before it gets old (20432 times to be exact). Only fun thing in the game.
FFXIV is game that gives you the feeling it was designed by people who never ever played a MMO or a PC game and setout with a blueprint of the previous FF MMO and went, grind is good, content is bad. The game has so many wrongs in it, it is beyond believe. The cat-girls look nice. The ONLY good thing.
Simple same as the American's have LONG denied the holocaust against the natives and the concentration camps for Americans whose ancestors came from Japan. Or that those who wrote "All men are equal" really meant "White MEN, with sufficient standing, that we approve off, are equal, somewhat".
Being a cunt is not restricted to beard faces.
And really, does the US have any right to talk about the treatment of homosexuals? The republican cunts are now blocking reform of the "Do not ask, do not tell" policy until they get a tax cut for the super rich. I think we got a new arm race. Who can produce the biggest cunt in a suit.
A review is always written by another person, unless you are reading your own review which is just disturbing and probably costs a lot of puppy lives, who has other expectations, needs and wants.
Take a hole in the head, in don't need it. So if I were to review that product, I would be very negative, complain abouts it lack of use, the blinding pain and agony and the fact that the company failed to refund me for my funeral.
But if you are in the market for that product for whatever reason YOU might want it. Some people are after in need of a hole in the head and so would review it totally differently.
And what if the reviewer is not a user but a 3rd party, who just happens to get paid by ad revenue from Holes-R-Us? What if I bought it and now had to defend my purchase to myself so I review it glowingly rather then admit I had been delusional when buying it?
Amazon reviews are "famous" for being all over the place. Amazon itself has absolutely no quality control of any kind and anyone can post a review. Cue sellers writing their own reviews.
The way around this all is to check before you buy. Is there only one review that is glowing yet ratings are low, nobody else seems to have bought it? What about reviews on other sites. A good thing will be talked about.
Just checking one site for reviews, like the poster does, is just plain stupid. Does he only watch the BBC for his news? Only check one car dealer for his car?
Because I life in a custom build house with a half a dozen young ladies? Well yeah, partly but mostly because I get lost looking for the bathroom and pee my pants. Also my oven has a direct connection to the fire department.
If this guys life is GTA:SA, he should get a huge settlement and the chair.
And if the government has a reason to have someone locked up, that should be a secret to. After all, if you knew, it might endanger the state. Therefor I declare now that ArcherB is now an enemy of the state, the reason is secret but you can trust me, so kill him at the first opportunity. ArcherB, fully believing that others do not have to explain their actions agrees fully with this. If he does not allow himself to be killed he just proves he is an enemy of the state.
That government needs secrets is a bullshit argument only used by those who wish to life in la-la land. Without full knowledge about the state and its business, how can the voter choose what to vote for? No, the actuall nuclear codes are not at risk, but how can the voter choose wether nukes are handled safe enough if he doesn't know the safety procedures. Which ARE known in quite some detail.
The current cable leaks show how the US officials elected by the voters are TRULY behaving, not what they say in public speeches. So now the voters of the USA can base their next vote on this info instead of lies.
He who says that governments need secrets says the voter has to be lied to.
Only a willing slave, the uncle Tom's of the world say this.
There are plenty of examples where old footage is mixed with new. THAT is not what this is about. This is NEW footage of DEAD people being created from scratch.
The Mona Lisa has been "redone" thousand of times with the face being changed to whatever. But nobody has put the model of Mona Lisa into a computer to recreate her to make new pictures with pretending to be the real person.
mixing old and new is perfectly fine, recreating the old, pretending it is the same is not. If I recreated the Mona Lisa and tried to sell it as real, I would be in jail. So why should I be able to recreate Bogart, pretend it is real and get away with it?
If you REALLY want to compare it to existing usage, then Band of Brothers and such do it. They do not recreate dead actors but do recreate long lost places and vehicles. But this is done to tell a historic tale. Recreating dead people has always been done in movies, it is the actors work to recreate a person who either never existed or no longer exist. But this is not about a fictional or historical figure but about recreating an actor as a new actor. It would be like having an actor pretend to be an ex-actor politician and go for Reagan 2.0. Just NO.
You are correct, critizing other peoples work is part of the scientific process since it was invented. Just that the public expects our best and brightest to use better debating skills then:
Scientist A: You suck.
Scientist B: No, you suck.
Scientist A: No, you suck.
Scientist B: No, you suck.
etc
Don't know why the general population expects this. It essentially how we all debate. Only diplomats do it better since they know the secret of diplomacy is to tell the other to go to hell in such a way that he looks forward to the journey.
You can see it with Wikileaks. They are under huge strain to keep their site up, at enormous cost. You can say what you want on the internet, as long as you can pay for the DDOS attack, the security and rape charges. Freedom of speech? Only if you can outshout the megacorp.
Some claim the TSA is hurting travel, but few are actually stopped from travelling and that only at great expense. A far more effective method of stopping people from travelling is to make it to expensive. A farmer who needs to spend every day tending his cow can't spend a week travelling the to capitol to make his voice heard. Only the rich farmer with plenty of staff can afford to do that. So the rich farmer is heard, the poor one is not. But EVERYONE is free to have their say in the capitol, nobody's fault that not everyone can afford to... just very handy.
Congress doesn't have to sign any laws to ban porn from the net. The public buys more and more devices closed of by public companies that do all the work for the christian puritans. How convenient and in return the government keeps the patent system in place that makes it impossible for a small competitor to get started without endless patent battles.
It is not just the web. Farmers have been sued for growing crops cross-polinated by accident with patented crops. Be a farmer as long as the mega-corp wants you to.
We are at fundemental risk to loose freedoms that we won't miss until it is to late.
Forbidden for Jews. Remember that one? Or "No blacks allowed"? Do you think every store that carried that sign was run by a racist biggotted asswipe? No, but if they didn't, then they wouldn't be supplied, couldn't get a loan etc etc. The power of the business to control society has grown enormously since then and we depend on it far more. Just think how depended you are on the bank system. How does a office clerk switch back to the barter system when the shit hits his fan?
The telephone companies were NOT allowed to censor the use of their telephone network. Hookers could NOT be prevented from getting a phone line. Why do we now accept that Apple does censor its service network? When does a service become a utiltiy? When do we not want our use of a public service to be restricted by a board director?
Apple and others are offering services that become so widespread they become common usage but still under control of a handfull of people with no public accountability. Your electricty manager dictates that you cannot use his electricity to watch porn. Turn of that computer NOW.
It is what happens to slashdotters. When they have sex, it is suprising.
Or for the girl involved, depressing. If I was a woman and found myself having have had sex with a nerd, I would call the cops too. Somethings just can't go unpunished?
Not funny? No indeed, the entire collapse of our illusion of freedom is NOT funny.
Lots of people stay in a relationship NOT out of love but out of convenience. Taking a stand is hard. You are basically saying "fuck this relationship I invested so much time in, I choose the bitterness of being alone with no sex over false comfort". Maybe it helps you to sleep through the lonely cold nights, but many just don't want to.
I agree with your stance. I rather take the hurt now then spread it out. But many choose not to. Their choice.
The FCC is not the government, strange as it may sound. THAT case is EXACTLY what I was talking about. No elected official was responsible for that ruling. They could claim whatever they wanted about it depending on their audience. The FCC is independent.
Yeah, you stand up for your rights... I will be right behind you... around the block. But you go and stand in front of a tank.
A pistol can hold say six rounds. Want to bet I can make a dozen people do what I want with it? Are YOU going to be the one to take the bullet?
Thought not.
THAT is how the system works. The right has been working very hard at making it impossible (read inconvenient) for people to protest. No unions, so no strikes because if you do, you can't make the car payments and bye bye SUV.
The current Dutch government is in for no other reason then they want to keep mortages tax deducatable. Rents go up, so more people buy and voila are tied to rightwing policies because if the mortage deduction (largest subsidy) is removed, they are in financial trouble.
Bread and circusses is old hat. Living month to month with debt is FAR more effective to keep people in control. You owe your sole to the company store. Proof me wrong. STRIKE!
Amazon wants to be a publisher, well there was a time publishers stood for freedom and published books regardless of treats, some even risking jail to publish books the powers that be did not want published.
Amazon wants to publish everything but never ever take a stand. It is the ultimate result of the business society. You are free to say anything you want, just as long as it does not upset the sponsors. You can run any website, as long as you can pay for the bandwidth needed to fight of the DDOS attack.
Democracy and freedom needs more then words. It needs action. Amazon has shown were it stands. So have you. Whore, indeed. (see parents nick)
Slashdot Mirror
How long will the battery last on these "book" things? Can I read them in the sun? What if they get wet, are they water proofed? Can I make notes on them? Can they display color? What is the resolution?
Ah, see! Your "book" tech just can't compete! Bring me something that runs for centuries without a recharge, has a DPI over 300, can do infinite colors, is shock resistant, can be cheaply produced, easily resold 2nd hand and I can use to swat a fly with.
We need the best and brightest for this! Maybe some tech from China improved by German engineering! We could test it on say the Bible, first runs might be worth a bit of money perhaps.
I just posted this in the "Anonymous cannot take down mega-corp Amazon" story, but it also fits extremely well here. Just add this, the TV/Radio/Newspapers became mega-corps. Now book-publishing might do the same along with the internet. And the mega-corp then decides what does and what does not get published. First they came for the incest writers. Who is next? There used to be small publishers like Olympia Press, funded by daring indivuduals operating on shoe string budgets that dared to publish what nobody else dared to. How can Olympia Press compete with Amazon? Hint: Olympia Press books are (or more likely were as they are often pornograhphic including incest themes) sold on Amazon, the company itself is gone.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1910334&cid=34557794
What we are seeing here has been seen before. If you ever wondered just why TV, radio and the newspapers all seem to be controlled by a handfull of men, then you must realize that this was not always the case. The first newspapers were created by concerned citizens, reasonably well off concernced citizens who could afford to setup a new business but hardly the super rich.
First radio? Amateurs, geeks and nerds of their day who took their hobby of messing about with this new stuff to a new level. Ham radio to the max. Television? Same thing, done from peoples living room. Some dutch broadcasting license holders still got it in their name AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep) Veronica started as a pirate station to bring the new music of the age to the airwaves that the by then established AVRO and others didn't play. Or not enough.
But Veronica, the pirate, went commerical and were bought out. Nothing of its original nature remains, it is now a mere name in SBS Broadcasting. A soulless mega-corp were absolutely nothing counts but ad-revenue.
Yet how did this happen? How did we go from amateur and politically motivated Radio, TV and newspapers to the current mass-produced elite controlled bland media?
It is simple. Scale. Veronica tried to go commercial on its own (the dutch broadcasting system is inexplainable but briefly, Veronica became part of the public network by a system where air time is allocated according to the number of subscribers a broadcaster has, there also exist commercial stations that opperate without a license fee support (used to be collected same as for the BBC, now it is part of normal taxes)) and failed. To small to survive this mistake it was bought and split up. A troublesome station, silenced. Veronica ONCE had a rather good news program with one of the few tv-presentors that actually followed up with though questions. Now it is the beavus and butthead station. It ALWAYS was young but with hints of rebellion and some principles, now it is just an MTV light. The young and mindless.
As time moved on, radio stations, newspapers and tv broadcasters were bought up, consolidated with any small operator being unable to afford any stumble without it being preyed upon by richer soulless companies. Meanwhile the costs of starting a new newspaper, a new radio staton a new tv station became higher and higher. Who after all is going to run an add on a local station with no known talent or must-watch-tv when for the same money he can air his add nationwide?
It has lead to the situation that right now a lot of media is controlled by just a few people who have very disturbing connections. Do you really expect Ruper Murdoch to dive into a banking scandal when he is close mated with the bankers? Of course not.
BUT the internet is free... yeah, it used to be... but now, even a widely distrubuted site like Wikileaks can be severely hampered, raising the cost to Wikileaks to remain online. And how are they going to pay for it? Maybe use a small banker with high principles... oh but all the banks consolidated. Maybe use a small ISP with high principles.... oh but all the ISP's consolidated... maybe use a DNS provide
What we are seeing here has been seen before. If you ever wondered just why TV, radio and the newspapers all seem to be controlled by a handfull of men, then you must realize that this was not always the case. The first newspapers were created by concerned citizens, reasonably well off concernced citizens who could afford to setup a new business but hardly the super rich.
First radio? Amateurs, geeks and nerds of their day who took their hobby of messing about with this new stuff to a new level. Ham radio to the max. Television? Same thing, done from peoples living room. Some dutch broadcasting license holders still got it in their name AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep) Veronica started as a pirate station to bring the new music of the age to the airwaves that the by then established AVRO and others didn't play. Or not enough.
But Veronica, the pirate, went commerical and were bought out. Nothing of its original nature remains, it is now a mere name in SBS Broadcasting. A soulless mega-corp were absolutely nothing counts but ad-revenue.
Yet how did this happen? How did we go from amateur and politically motivated Radio, TV and newspapers to the current mass-produced elite controlled bland media?
It is simple. Scale. Veronica tried to go commercial on its own (the dutch broadcasting system is inexplainable but briefly, Veronica became part of the public network by a system where air time is allocated according to the number of subscribers a broadcaster has, there also exist commercial stations that opperate without a license fee support (used to be collected same as for the BBC, now it is part of normal taxes)) and failed. To small to survive this mistake it was bought and split up. A troublesome station, silenced. Veronica ONCE had a rather good news program with one of the few tv-presentors that actually followed up with though questions. Now it is the beavus and butthead station. It ALWAYS was young but with hints of rebellion and some principles, now it is just an MTV light. The young and mindless.
As time moved on, radio stations, newspapers and tv broadcasters were bought up, consolidated with any small operator being unable to afford any stumble without it being preyed upon by richer soulless companies. Meanwhile the costs of starting a new newspaper, a new radio staton a new tv station became higher and higher. Who after all is going to run an add on a local station with no known talent or must-watch-tv when for the same money he can air his add nationwide?
It has lead to the situation that right now a lot of media is controlled by just a few people who have very disturbing connections. Do you really expect Ruper Murdoch to dive into a banking scandal when he is close mated with the bankers? Of course not.
BUT the internet is free... yeah, it used to be... but now, even a widely distrubuted site like Wikileaks can be severely hampered, raising the cost to Wikileaks to remain online. And how are they going to pay for it? Maybe use a small banker with high principles... oh but all the banks consolidated. Maybe use a small ISP with high principles.... oh but all the ISP's consolidated... maybe use a DNS provider with high principles... oh but they can't afford to have their main business hurt by the DDOS attack from "unknown" sources, less the consoloidated banks that fund them recall their loans.
Freedom requires more then just a few words on a piece of paper or even an honest legal system. It requires the means to excercise the freedom or it becomes meaningless. Freedom to protest in your capitol means nothing if you have no means to get there. If taking a day to march means you are fired from your job, loose your mortage etc etc. This is nothing new. It has been common practice for the elite to use threath of unemployment, to stop workers from protesting, from forming unions, from voting for the wrong candidate. By all means vote left, just don't count on your local banker to grant you a mortage or to find a job at the local factory.
Amazon is
Respect that respected Science Fiction authors get when their thought provoking stories are turned into action flicks with rappers?
Respect Tolkien got when Elves appeared at Helms Deep?
Hollywood knows about respect, it is what is underneath their boots.
And what do you expect when they serve an audience that thinks Mass Effect has depth? What depth? Evil monster with no motivation appears and gets blown up by equally unmotivated guy/gal. Great literature this does NOT make. Granted it has depth if you grew up on superman comics but then Hollywood got you well covered.
Games to movies rarely will work because most games are simply NOT about story. Tomb Raider? It is about solving the puzzles and making the jumps. As much as I would like to see a well proportioned woman spending an hour and half flexing her body on the silver screen, it would have any depth. Except maybe her cleavage.
Tomb Raider, Doom, Mario Brothers: These are games, you play them for the game. NOT the story. Trying to bolt a story on top that becomes 90% of the content instead of 10% is going to require addition of stuff the player simply does not want. Case in point: Lara Croft in the original is a rather bland character with no boyfriend or past. In the movie she suddenly gets a love interest. HELLO! She was supposed to be MY fantasy, not some other guy.
But in a game, this doesn't matter. The little we know about the game Lara Croft is plenty, but jumped up movie directors think they GOT to tell a story. That is were Hollywood keeps going wrong, they still don't get that what they could produce is eye-candy porn. Take Transforms (please). Remove the humans and just gives us 1.5 hours of robots fighting. Zero attempt at story and even less at badly acted out emotions. I liked revenge of the fallen, just fastforward when a human shows up.
Tomb Raider the Story does not work. Tomb Raider the action-adventure does, but focus on action, not bolted on "depth". Give me a mindless 2D movie where I can park my brain at the door and just enjoy myself.
Hollywood isn't ruining game movies by not adding enough depth, but by adding to much. Pure 100% action, that is why I play games, add this to game movies and you are golden.
Yes a taxi is a car but you don't need a license to use one.
In the same tone: OSX is like using a chauffeur driving limo (but a male chauffeur since, well... you are gay)
BSD is like driving a bike through rain and wind because you damn well will be independent of those oil companies, then have everything delivered through your home with gass guzzling van's.
OS2 is like running that CV2, the ugly duckling BUT the cheapest car to do Paris-Dakar!
DOS is like riding the wheel from the B.C. cartoon.
Windows? That is like riding a nice posh car, in the trunk while the MS mafia is driving you towards whereever they damn well want to take you.
There you are, the ULTIMATE car anology.
MS for the security holes, MSN for the exploits. One stop shopping! We have you rooted the fastest! Where do you want someone to make you go today!
Now everytime I LFG, I will feel dirty :P
Anyway, if you are a guy, you are supposed to get 7 chicks! That is were you went wrong. Trust me, you find it a while different experience.
Try this.
Wife: I stayed home and got all hot and bothered and screwed the mail man.
Husband: Bitch!
vs
Wife: I stayed home and got all hot and bothered and screwed the cheerleader from next door, she is waiting for us upstairs.
Husband: I love you!
FFXIV was and is a disaster but at least Square is dealing with it, not in outright denial like some companies *cough*Funcom*cough*.
The problem with the games might however be beyond fixing. At its core the current game is a Korean Free to Play style grind-fest. NOT a western quest/story MMORPG. And yet they price it very high, the 10 or so bucks is only for the base game, without ANY character slots. You need a character to play and those are extra. An extra charge EACH and EVERY month. 3 chars is 18 euro. EACH month.
And what do you then get? A rather bare world designed on the idea of MORE OPEN SPACE WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN IT TO RUN BETWEEN, some lovely animation and lots of scripted scenes.
The combat itself is moronic and for a long time (until I stopped) unplayable. Take an action, wait minutes, see it hit. This wasn't lag anymore, this was insanity.
There are no quests and the story while intresting isn't related to the quests. It is more gain X levels, see a cut scene.
Anyone expected a western style MMO was deeply disappointed. This was a korean grind-fest with cat-girls. They are cute but there is only so many times you can /fume before it gets old (20432 times to be exact). Only fun thing in the game.
FFXIV is game that gives you the feeling it was designed by people who never ever played a MMO or a PC game and setout with a blueprint of the previous FF MMO and went, grind is good, content is bad. The game has so many wrongs in it, it is beyond believe. The cat-girls look nice. The ONLY good thing.
Simple same as the American's have LONG denied the holocaust against the natives and the concentration camps for Americans whose ancestors came from Japan. Or that those who wrote "All men are equal" really meant "White MEN, with sufficient standing, that we approve off, are equal, somewhat".
Being a cunt is not restricted to beard faces.
And really, does the US have any right to talk about the treatment of homosexuals? The republican cunts are now blocking reform of the "Do not ask, do not tell" policy until they get a tax cut for the super rich. I think we got a new arm race. Who can produce the biggest cunt in a suit.
A review is always written by another person, unless you are reading your own review which is just disturbing and probably costs a lot of puppy lives, who has other expectations, needs and wants.
Take a hole in the head, in don't need it. So if I were to review that product, I would be very negative, complain abouts it lack of use, the blinding pain and agony and the fact that the company failed to refund me for my funeral.
But if you are in the market for that product for whatever reason YOU might want it. Some people are after in need of a hole in the head and so would review it totally differently.
And what if the reviewer is not a user but a 3rd party, who just happens to get paid by ad revenue from Holes-R-Us? What if I bought it and now had to defend my purchase to myself so I review it glowingly rather then admit I had been delusional when buying it?
Amazon reviews are "famous" for being all over the place. Amazon itself has absolutely no quality control of any kind and anyone can post a review. Cue sellers writing their own reviews.
The way around this all is to check before you buy. Is there only one review that is glowing yet ratings are low, nobody else seems to have bought it? What about reviews on other sites. A good thing will be talked about.
Just checking one site for reviews, like the poster does, is just plain stupid. Does he only watch the BBC for his news? Only check one car dealer for his car?
Buyer beware. Always been true, always will be.
So Amazon doesn't agree with Wikileaks cause and blocked their business. But that is fair in your eyes, but the same can not be done in reverse?
My my, how you grovel at your masters feed as the perfect sheep unwilling to question anything.
Basically you claim that you are free, just as long as you don't upset anyone in power.
Are you saying that the US government is trying to supress freedom by setting up rape charges on its enemies?
OR are you saying we can get laid by upsetting the US? Someone give me a flag and some matches. I am going to get LAID!
Because I life in a custom build house with a half a dozen young ladies? Well yeah, partly but mostly because I get lost looking for the bathroom and pee my pants. Also my oven has a direct connection to the fire department.
If this guys life is GTA:SA, he should get a huge settlement and the chair.
And if the government has a reason to have someone locked up, that should be a secret to. After all, if you knew, it might endanger the state. Therefor I declare now that ArcherB is now an enemy of the state, the reason is secret but you can trust me, so kill him at the first opportunity. ArcherB, fully believing that others do not have to explain their actions agrees fully with this. If he does not allow himself to be killed he just proves he is an enemy of the state.
That government needs secrets is a bullshit argument only used by those who wish to life in la-la land. Without full knowledge about the state and its business, how can the voter choose what to vote for? No, the actuall nuclear codes are not at risk, but how can the voter choose wether nukes are handled safe enough if he doesn't know the safety procedures. Which ARE known in quite some detail.
The current cable leaks show how the US officials elected by the voters are TRULY behaving, not what they say in public speeches. So now the voters of the USA can base their next vote on this info instead of lies.
He who says that governments need secrets says the voter has to be lied to.
Only a willing slave, the uncle Tom's of the world say this.
There are plenty of examples where old footage is mixed with new. THAT is not what this is about. This is NEW footage of DEAD people being created from scratch.
The Mona Lisa has been "redone" thousand of times with the face being changed to whatever. But nobody has put the model of Mona Lisa into a computer to recreate her to make new pictures with pretending to be the real person.
mixing old and new is perfectly fine, recreating the old, pretending it is the same is not. If I recreated the Mona Lisa and tried to sell it as real, I would be in jail. So why should I be able to recreate Bogart, pretend it is real and get away with it?
If you REALLY want to compare it to existing usage, then Band of Brothers and such do it. They do not recreate dead actors but do recreate long lost places and vehicles. But this is done to tell a historic tale. Recreating dead people has always been done in movies, it is the actors work to recreate a person who either never existed or no longer exist. But this is not about a fictional or historical figure but about recreating an actor as a new actor. It would be like having an actor pretend to be an ex-actor politician and go for Reagan 2.0. Just NO.
You are correct, critizing other peoples work is part of the scientific process since it was invented. Just that the public expects our best and brightest to use better debating skills then:
Scientist A: You suck.
Scientist B: No, you suck.
Scientist A: No, you suck.
Scientist B: No, you suck.
etc
Don't know why the general population expects this. It essentially how we all debate. Only diplomats do it better since they know the secret of diplomacy is to tell the other to go to hell in such a way that he looks forward to the journey.
You can see it with Wikileaks. They are under huge strain to keep their site up, at enormous cost. You can say what you want on the internet, as long as you can pay for the DDOS attack, the security and rape charges. Freedom of speech? Only if you can outshout the megacorp.
Some claim the TSA is hurting travel, but few are actually stopped from travelling and that only at great expense. A far more effective method of stopping people from travelling is to make it to expensive. A farmer who needs to spend every day tending his cow can't spend a week travelling the to capitol to make his voice heard. Only the rich farmer with plenty of staff can afford to do that. So the rich farmer is heard, the poor one is not. But EVERYONE is free to have their say in the capitol, nobody's fault that not everyone can afford to... just very handy.
Congress doesn't have to sign any laws to ban porn from the net. The public buys more and more devices closed of by public companies that do all the work for the christian puritans. How convenient and in return the government keeps the patent system in place that makes it impossible for a small competitor to get started without endless patent battles.
It is not just the web. Farmers have been sued for growing crops cross-polinated by accident with patented crops. Be a farmer as long as the mega-corp wants you to.
We are at fundemental risk to loose freedoms that we won't miss until it is to late.
Forbidden for Jews. Remember that one? Or "No blacks allowed"? Do you think every store that carried that sign was run by a racist biggotted asswipe? No, but if they didn't, then they wouldn't be supplied, couldn't get a loan etc etc. The power of the business to control society has grown enormously since then and we depend on it far more. Just think how depended you are on the bank system. How does a office clerk switch back to the barter system when the shit hits his fan?
The telephone companies were NOT allowed to censor the use of their telephone network. Hookers could NOT be prevented from getting a phone line. Why do we now accept that Apple does censor its service network? When does a service become a utiltiy? When do we not want our use of a public service to be restricted by a board director?
Apple and others are offering services that become so widespread they become common usage but still under control of a handfull of people with no public accountability. Your electricty manager dictates that you cannot use his electricity to watch porn. Turn of that computer NOW.
Dutch PowNed runs its own mirror. Major newspapers work closely together with Wikileaks on the leaks to properly redact them.
So most US media and the BBC and the NOS have shown their true colors. Nobody in their right mind trusted those anyway.
It is what happens to slashdotters. When they have sex, it is suprising.
Or for the girl involved, depressing. If I was a woman and found myself having have had sex with a nerd, I would call the cops too. Somethings just can't go unpunished?
Not funny? No indeed, the entire collapse of our illusion of freedom is NOT funny.
Lots of people stay in a relationship NOT out of love but out of convenience. Taking a stand is hard. You are basically saying "fuck this relationship I invested so much time in, I choose the bitterness of being alone with no sex over false comfort". Maybe it helps you to sleep through the lonely cold nights, but many just don't want to.
I agree with your stance. I rather take the hurt now then spread it out. But many choose not to. Their choice.
Or is Fox News not mainstream?
Since when does Glen Beck run interference for the Democrats?
I bet you are a teabagger, you got their talent for twisting the universe.
Yes, freedom doesn't mean you are free. How nicely argued.
What is a freedom you can't exercise worth?
Free to travel, just can't afford to.
Free to read, just can't afford the books.
Free to speak, just can't be heard.
I don't think I want your idea of freedom.
Now go back to your fellow teabaggers.
Dig deeper into that incident.
Yeah, you stand up for your rights... I will be right behind you... around the block. But you go and stand in front of a tank.
A pistol can hold say six rounds. Want to bet I can make a dozen people do what I want with it? Are YOU going to be the one to take the bullet?
Thought not.
THAT is how the system works. The right has been working very hard at making it impossible (read inconvenient) for people to protest. No unions, so no strikes because if you do, you can't make the car payments and bye bye SUV.
The current Dutch government is in for no other reason then they want to keep mortages tax deducatable. Rents go up, so more people buy and voila are tied to rightwing policies because if the mortage deduction (largest subsidy) is removed, they are in financial trouble.
Bread and circusses is old hat. Living month to month with debt is FAR more effective to keep people in control. You owe your sole to the company store. Proof me wrong. STRIKE!
Amazon wants to be a publisher, well there was a time publishers stood for freedom and published books regardless of treats, some even risking jail to publish books the powers that be did not want published.
Amazon wants to publish everything but never ever take a stand. It is the ultimate result of the business society. You are free to say anything you want, just as long as it does not upset the sponsors. You can run any website, as long as you can pay for the bandwidth needed to fight of the DDOS attack.
Democracy and freedom needs more then words. It needs action. Amazon has shown were it stands. So have you. Whore, indeed. (see parents nick)