No, that's pretty much the group consensus. Halo is a multiplayer game at heart, with a single player mode attached for practice and late-nights when your friends are asleep. It's just been taken as such a given that few XBox players even mention it, so many PC version purchasers don't know.
Well, really, most languages work out the same: get a good textbook, get some language tapes, and put your nose to the grindstone. Find some place, any place, where you can practice (a tutor, of course, is easiest). Learn some words/phrases, and then use them ASAP so that they stick (it's MUCH easier to remember a word/expression when you use it in real life). Make some flash cards, listen to the tapes, etc. It seems straightforward, but, especially at the start, it's the best way to go.
Perhaps more useful is the unadvice.
Don't use the Jordan textbook (a very famous one used in many universities). It's nice that it avoids written Japanese, but it makes you learn a whole new system for phonetics, which takes just as long and is totally useless later.
Don't bother trying to learn from listening to music. People sing very differently than they speak.
Don't try to learn from comedies. The whole point of comedy is the unexpected, making it incredibly hard to follow.
Oh, and as far as offending people: Just make sure you use the "desu/masu" form, and you'll be fine. You won't need to know the really polite form until your Japanese is already pretty darn good, and you won't need to learn the casual form until you make Japanese friends, and, as they're your friends, they'll help you learn it.
Actually, I probably just started noticing all the weird stuff Americans do, so the "weird bar" just got higher:) I don't think I'll ever find the adult industry here normal though.
Hypothetical:
John Talentless McBad has a plan to destroy civilization.
He discovers how to make music that causes people to become absolute evil. The problem is, the music sounds awful. There's no way he can get signed to a major label.
So what does he do? Put his music on mp3.com and wait as people randomly download his music. By his estimates, in 10 years enough people will have downloaded "Gotta Make U Sweat (in an evil way baby)" to destroy society.
He hides out in a bunker until 2013.
But, unbeknowst to him (no internet in deep underground bunkers), mp3.com is wiped out and all files destroyed!! The world is saved!! In 10 years he'll come out to find a planet filled with happy people skipping, giving eachother flowers, and smiling at strangers.
John will just be another great villain you never heard of. Guess he'll go back to waiting tables.
Or, uh, you know, we could just stop giving dirt-stupid hypothetical examples.
As an expat living in Japan for 8 years, and a former English teacher, I can say: it's partly the teachers, but mostly the students. I've taught kids that rocked in English. They had the same teachers, the same textbooks, the same resources. The difference was, they really wanted it. They studied with the goal of long term memorization, not just enough to pass the midterm test. They watched English language TV. They voluntarily talked to native speaker English teachers.
99% of Japanese will tell you that they want to be able to speak English. Suggest to them that they study vocab, or watch a movie in English, or practice speaking, or go overseas, and all of a sudden they don't seem so interested.
I've heard plenty of people blame the education system, but from my experience, it's more likely that they just weren't paying attention, and figured one day the language fairy would give them fluency in their sleep.
I most certainly wouldn't say "excuse me" to my neighbour when I sneeze in my own apartment, even if my neighbour can hear me. And a non-japanese neighbour will most certainly not say "it's okay I didn't hear you".
Good thing, neither would the Japanese.
I can see to some extent where you're coming from, though I get the idea that you think the Japanese are a lot stranger than they really are (I know I had pretty high expectations of weirdness when I came to Tokyo, which I realized were unfounded the longer I lived here). I'm not sure where you're from, but as an American, I'd say that Indians and Chinese seem the most different from me. And, somehow, I suspect that FPS are not the game of choice in India.
So, yes, the Japanese are culturally different than Americans, and as such like different games than the Americans.
What I think is a more interesting issue is: If Japanese don't buy American games because of the cultural differences, why do Americans buy so many Japanese games?
One of the aspects of Halo that is so well known among XBox owners that it's taken for granted is: Halo is a multiplayer game. Sure, there's a single player mode, but that's just for practice and for playing when your friends are busy. Apparently, though, since everyone who plays knows this, nobody goes through to effort to say it, so it must have come as a big suprise to people who bought Halo PC.
Just their copies. Mp3.com never had exclusive rights, and most people put their tracks on mp3.com as well as their own private home pages, etc. The music isn't being lost, but is being scattered to the 4 winds. (By the way, IAAmp3.comA (I Am An mp3.com Artist))
Why my filters have ranked a blatant troll a "2", I have no idea, but while I am an electronica fan with a fondnewss for Cocteau Twins and a dislike of modern radio and hip-hop as well, you have to admit: grindcore is cute. Grindcore bands somehow always remind me of hello kitty.
Though I agree with you, I feel the need to amend a little inaccuracy: you said "If the data is of no commercial interest to them, why would they not allow it's distribution on another forum?".
I'm an artist on mp3.com, but hosting music there does not give exclusive rights. I can distribute it wherever I want. And they're not deleting "master recordings", per se, just mp3s which are the exact same as what I have on my hard disk.
I would, however, agree that they're making it excessively difficult to transfer the current library to somewhere else, though, and by buying out and then deleting the inventory of the largest independent mp3 distribution site, getting mighty close to anti-trust law infractions.
So if I want to watch DVDs and play Xbox games, I should buy an XBox and a DVD player?
Besides which, your question was "And, of course, Halo and KOTOR are no longer exclusive to the Xbox. So that means the $179 paperweight near your TV is good for what, exactly?"
Well, I can still play games on it, and I can still play DVDs on it. So that's what it's good for. This isn't exactly rocket science.
And this is exactly the point. It's the equivalent of hard-core gamers in the U.S. not owning N-Gages or not planning on buying Phantoms when they come out. Japanese consider X-Box to not even be in the running.
The issue is not ownership of games that weren't aimed at the foreign market, but games that were. Extraordinarily few US market leading games are even sold in Japan, but the difference is that Japanese gamers show no interest in these American games, while American gamers tend to leap over Final Fantasy's, Resident Evils, Marios, and the like.
What would you call restriction of the right to protest then? Administrative guidance? Anger displacement orientation? Maybe we could even work in the word "paradigm"...
Judging from the Japanese model (which I think is fair, as the countries share similar population densities and the like), the answer is probably "no". I have a 100 Mbps optic fiber line to my house for just under $40 a month, and there are no bandwidth restrictions (not even those hazy restrictions against using undefined "unreasonable amounts" of bandwidth).
Not to say the same thing again, but: I have a 100 Mb fiber connection in my apartment, and it runs me less than $40 a month. When I had 12 Mb DSL (yes, DSL comes in 12 Mb flavors here, and with VDSL I think you can get 30 or so), I paid less than $20 a month.
The digital divide is between countries like South Korea/Japan and countries like the United States. This is just widening the divide. Which is fine by me, considering where I live.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that's pretty much the group consensus. Halo is a multiplayer game at heart, with a single player mode attached for practice and late-nights when your friends are asleep. It's just been taken as such a given that few XBox players even mention it, so many PC version purchasers don't know.
In a study of the word "Eminem", I found that 92% of 1,427 files on the peer-to-peer site contained Eminem songs. Those figures don't surprise me.
Perhaps more useful is the unadvice.
Oh, and as far as offending people: Just make sure you use the "desu/masu" form, and you'll be fine. You won't need to know the really polite form until your Japanese is already pretty darn good, and you won't need to learn the casual form until you make Japanese friends, and, as they're your friends, they'll help you learn it.
Actually, I probably just started noticing all the weird stuff Americans do, so the "weird bar" just got higher :) I don't think I'll ever find the adult industry here normal though.
Hypothetical: John Talentless McBad has a plan to destroy civilization.
He discovers how to make music that causes people to become absolute evil. The problem is, the music sounds awful. There's no way he can get signed to a major label.
So what does he do? Put his music on mp3.com and wait as people randomly download his music. By his estimates, in 10 years enough people will have downloaded "Gotta Make U Sweat (in an evil way baby)" to destroy society.
He hides out in a bunker until 2013.
But, unbeknowst to him (no internet in deep underground bunkers), mp3.com is wiped out and all files destroyed!! The world is saved!! In 10 years he'll come out to find a planet filled with happy people skipping, giving eachother flowers, and smiling at strangers.
John will just be another great villain you never heard of. Guess he'll go back to waiting tables.
Or, uh, you know, we could just stop giving dirt-stupid hypothetical examples.
As an expat living in Japan for 8 years, and a former English teacher, I can say: it's partly the teachers, but mostly the students. I've taught kids that rocked in English. They had the same teachers, the same textbooks, the same resources. The difference was, they really wanted it. They studied with the goal of long term memorization, not just enough to pass the midterm test. They watched English language TV. They voluntarily talked to native speaker English teachers.
99% of Japanese will tell you that they want to be able to speak English. Suggest to them that they study vocab, or watch a movie in English, or practice speaking, or go overseas, and all of a sudden they don't seem so interested.
I've heard plenty of people blame the education system, but from my experience, it's more likely that they just weren't paying attention, and figured one day the language fairy would give them fluency in their sleep.
Good thing, neither would the Japanese.
I can see to some extent where you're coming from, though I get the idea that you think the Japanese are a lot stranger than they really are (I know I had pretty high expectations of weirdness when I came to Tokyo, which I realized were unfounded the longer I lived here). I'm not sure where you're from, but as an American, I'd say that Indians and Chinese seem the most different from me. And, somehow, I suspect that FPS are not the game of choice in India.
So, yes, the Japanese are culturally different than Americans, and as such like different games than the Americans.
What I think is a more interesting issue is: If Japanese don't buy American games because of the cultural differences, why do Americans buy so many Japanese games?
One of the aspects of Halo that is so well known among XBox owners that it's taken for granted is: Halo is a multiplayer game. Sure, there's a single player mode, but that's just for practice and for playing when your friends are busy. Apparently, though, since everyone who plays knows this, nobody goes through to effort to say it, so it must have come as a big suprise to people who bought Halo PC.
Nice link, misleading title.
How about: Internet Archive has offered to host files. No reponse from Vivendi yet.
And to add to that, SSX Tricky, Tony Hawk Underground, Hitman 2, GTA3.
It would be pretty tough today to say with a straight face "Halo is the only fun game on XBox".
Because it can be played on the XBox...
Just their copies. Mp3.com never had exclusive rights, and most people put their tracks on mp3.com as well as their own private home pages, etc. The music isn't being lost, but is being scattered to the 4 winds. (By the way, IAAmp3.comA (I Am An mp3.com Artist))
Why my filters have ranked a blatant troll a "2", I have no idea, but while I am an electronica fan with a fondnewss for Cocteau Twins and a dislike of modern radio and hip-hop as well, you have to admit: grindcore is cute. Grindcore bands somehow always remind me of hello kitty.
Though I agree with you, I feel the need to amend a little inaccuracy: you said "If the data is of no commercial interest to them, why would they not allow it's distribution on another forum?".
I'm an artist on mp3.com, but hosting music there does not give exclusive rights. I can distribute it wherever I want. And they're not deleting "master recordings", per se, just mp3s which are the exact same as what I have on my hard disk.
I would, however, agree that they're making it excessively difficult to transfer the current library to somewhere else, though, and by buying out and then deleting the inventory of the largest independent mp3 distribution site, getting mighty close to anti-trust law infractions.
So if I want to watch DVDs and play Xbox games, I should buy an XBox and a DVD player?
Besides which, your question was "And, of course, Halo and KOTOR are no longer exclusive to the Xbox. So that means the $179 paperweight near your TV is good for what, exactly?"
Well, I can still play games on it, and I can still play DVDs on it. So that's what it's good for. This isn't exactly rocket science.
And this is exactly the point. It's the equivalent of hard-core gamers in the U.S. not owning N-Gages or not planning on buying Phantoms when they come out. Japanese consider X-Box to not even be in the running.
The issue is not ownership of games that weren't aimed at the foreign market, but games that were. Extraordinarily few US market leading games are even sold in Japan, but the difference is that Japanese gamers show no interest in these American games, while American gamers tend to leap over Final Fantasy's, Resident Evils, Marios, and the like.
Playing games and DVDs. You know, the same reason I bought it.
Somehow I get the idea you're right. Gosh darn filters set too high!
My humblest apologies.
For?
Somehow I get the feeling we have another poster who doesn't know the difference between North Korea (communist...ish) and South Korea (capitalist).
Don't you have a knowledge of geography? There are two Koreas, you know.
Reminds me of people who complain about all those people trying to enter the United States from New Mexico.
What would you call restriction of the right to protest then? Administrative guidance? Anger displacement orientation? Maybe we could even work in the word "paradigm"...
Good point, though I don't know where the math came from. I got a total of $23 per month for each person to get 100 Mbps in 7 years.
Judging from the Japanese model (which I think is fair, as the countries share similar population densities and the like), the answer is probably "no". I have a 100 Mbps optic fiber line to my house for just under $40 a month, and there are no bandwidth restrictions (not even those hazy restrictions against using undefined "unreasonable amounts" of bandwidth).
Not to say the same thing again, but: I have a 100 Mb fiber connection in my apartment, and it runs me less than $40 a month. When I had 12 Mb DSL (yes, DSL comes in 12 Mb flavors here, and with VDSL I think you can get 30 or so), I paid less than $20 a month.
The digital divide is between countries like South Korea/Japan and countries like the United States. This is just widening the divide. Which is fine by me, considering where I live.