Actually, the first experiance I had with gaming as a spectator sport was with the Myth games (Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter) by Bungie. They were probably the best tactical games ever made, didn't involve collecting resources or building, just troop movements. I was pretty active in the Myth community while it was in its heyday.
Anyway, Myth had a system where games could be automatically recorded and saved, this contained a huge amount of information about the game in a tiny file. All of the chat was retained, so one could follow discussions or jokes in games, and one could see teams discuss strategy amongst themselves. The game played out like you were playing it yourself except you could see all the units and move the camera wherever you wanted. I haven't seen a game recording system better than this.
This system was used in the various Myth tournaments when game results were released. One would be able to download and watch the final game, whenever you wanted! So I disagree that Strategy games cannot make good spectator material, I think that if it takes the form I described, it can be more entertaining than some of the televised FPS playoffs I've seen, where one can't get an overall sense of what the hell is going on.
"That's no ordinary Dark Lord! It's a viscious eyeball Dark Lord with big pointy teeth..."
And upon Gandalf's return, he shall introduce himself as "Tim."
Gandalf: "You shall not pass! Until you answer me these questions three, what is your name?"
Balrog: "I am a demon of the old gods, the balrog."
Gandalf: "What is your quest?"
Balrog: "I seek to crush your fellowship and burn them.
Gandalf: "What is your favorite color?"
Balrog: "Flame orange! No, blue - AAAEEEIIIII!!!!!!"
There are lots of possibilities, I could go on but then I'd just drive it into the ground.
Well, I would see a lot of merit in what you say, except that Peter Jackson, in the second film, injected a lot of really dumb, really boring bull that wasn't in the book at the expense of the better material. I'm not saying this on purist grounds that it needs to be word for word perfect adaptation of the book, for instance I thought they made completley the right move by ditching Tom Bombadil. But when good material that people would like is cut for a bunch of standard romance novel calibre scenes involving a stupid love story take precedence, I no longer think it's my kind of movie. Fine for some, not my thing anymore, shame though, because it stated being my kind of thing with the first film:)
Wrong, the iTunes music service includes the album art on each song file, viewable in iTunes by a button on the bottom-left, under the playlists. The album art lives on! Seriously, that's the ONE good thing about buying a physical CD and it's been retained. I don't mind spending money for just a file, I haven't used a CD for anything other than ripping in ages...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/14 21223&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=187
My HTML skills really suck, sorry for not formatting it, but it was the first thing to jump into my head when I read the article.
Remember the slashdot story a couple days ago (Cannot find link right now) about the Microsoft employee who got fired for posting pics of MS's new G5s on his blog? Who knows, maybe there will be hidden "features" in this that will only help MS. Then again, I'm paranoid.
DVDs, Music, Video games, software, computers, cars and almost every single mass produced consumer product is still cheaper in the US. I understand that this is especially bad price fixing but it is one of the few cases of it in America, consider also that an American tuition is also more pricy than a tuition in a UK university, so Americans are already paying more just by attending college in America. (Ramen noodle companies rejoice!)
Price fixing is happening all over europe by the same types of big companies, here in Ireland a new music CD is $25. And yeah, we in the UK / Ireland still have lousy weather, I'm looking out my window at loads of hail coming down. Yay.
Like others noted, sounds like publicity to me. Remember when the movie Signs came out, and Disney offered a sweepstakes where the winner would be sent to a "real" crop circle to help investigate it?
This is pretty transparent, as the Sci-Fi channel aren't exactly in the documentary business, it would be more dramatic for them to say "We tried to get them to tell us, but Big Brother is keeping UFOs a secret." Imagine if, in response, the DoD declassifies and releases the files and they turn out to be REALLY anticlimactic, and only classified because they were using some new radar recievers at the time or something.
I can't really see this working too well. Sure retunring tapes and DVDs is a pain in the ass, but limited systems such as this don't exactly have a good history of success. Remember those DivX boxes that could play movies that would expire after a couple days? Crashed and burned, all it did for the world was provide an amusing angry character for Penny Arcade. I'm betting we won't really hear much about this again.
With the exception of places like the EU, it is not unusual for foreigners to just pack up and grab a job someplace else. I doubt people will be surprised by this, considering that what happened three years ago today reminded people to tighten Visa restrictions. Who knows, it may have been much easier five years ago, but today that's just the way it is. Here in Ireland there are immigrants who are qualified doctors, but because they aren't allowed to work here as anything other than a fast food counter-person, their skills are totally wasted.
It's not discrimination, it's just the way the world works.
I watched the first arm mpeg video while listening to a rather funky remix of the original Metal Gear theme (From Overclocked Remix if you're curious) and as the guy waved the object in front of the arm and it responded, it looked very funky as it moved to the beat. I think we have our next avant garde music video.
To get around it you simply need to set up a stateside bank account and a remailer address with a friend. No Problem.
Already got it. Here in Ireland VAT is an astounding 21% (Actually, they reently made a big deal about moving it down to 20% and a month later they quietly moved it back up) but, lucky for me, being the dual citizen that I am, I have an NY billing address.
Don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but my main point is that it also lets me use the Apple Music Store. So, in conclusion, get a US billing address, it's worth it.
Cinsidering the system wasn't originally designed to be a music / movie swapping system, would you have any qualms with working with, rather than against, the record and movie industry to make the program less contraversial? What are your views on their attitude towards Biotorrent (IE: Do you think they'll ever make compramises with those that make these systems)
Sorry if that question is too long / complicated, but it could be interesting.
On the issue of punishing companies for unsafe practices like this, sometimes it's 50/50. Depends how much sway they have. I'm not anti-capitalist über-left cynical jaded moron, but after reading Fast Food Nation recently, I don't have a whole lot of faith in the government's ability to control this kind of activity on a large scale. The government used to have a lot more power over companies since Theodore Roosevelt's time, but the book seems to point the finger at the Reagon era for the change.
Anyway, it wouldn't have been bad PR to admit a mistake, hell it's only human to make mistakes, even when something is as serious as this. The problem shouldn't have been there at all, but it was caught before anyone was hurt, so they should have just apologised and fixed it. Cover-ups make me sick.
Well I for one am being optimistic about this. It's really the only way I can look at it. I've seen a lot of pessimism here and a friend of mine is doing nothing but whining about how bad it will be. He's saying how all the actors should be Japanese or he'll lose all faith in Hollywood or something.
Well, for one I don't care what nationality the actors are. Asuka, a German, looked just the same, stylistically as Shinji and co. No problems there.
Yes, it should be strange and wierd, like the series, because that's what ultimately stays with me about the series. Sure it was at times silly, perhaps a little too much so, but if it wasn't it would be SO depressing! Also, I think the casting will have to be spot on. Get some competent child actors in there. Perhaps haley Joel Osment, though he seems to have lost his magic. Also, Gendo will have to be completely badass.
If there's one thing I have confidence in it's the visual FX. As bad as I thought the Two Towers was compared to the Fellowship, it did LOOK fantastic, and it didn't seem to scream "LOOK AT ME I'M CGI!"
So here's my shortlist of hopes that I haven't covered already: Should be set someplace unrecognisable, Tokyo 3 was post second impact, a fictional city with buildings that could go underground. Essential to make the place familiar, yet alien. I mention this because I hear that the live action Akira movie planned will be set in New York. Blech.
The sense of scale is 50% of the visual experiance. Even from the start of the series, each step and Eva took smashed nearby glass windows, and they can move incredibly fast. This overall feeling was perfected, in my opinion, during the fight sequence in End of Eva when Asuka fights the production EVAs. So in short, I hope that I can see something worth putting the DVD of next to my Evangelion DVD boxset and DVD movies. Yes I am a fan of it. Oh oh! And keep SEELE's Kubrick style monoliths! They were cool...:)
I discovered this yesterday, so I evaded the/. effect by a good 24 hours, and thus have all the episodes.
It's extremely witty stuff, basically, why are there people sitting in a gulch fighting each other? What if they were just grunts who didn't care about fighting the other team? What if they were simply involved in a long stalemate rather than a no-holds-barred war?
It really makes me think about those long hours I spent playing Halo multiplayer.
Sort of.
Okay, iTunes music store is only available in the US. I figured that out after I downloaded it and it gave me iTunes 3, which I already have.
I'm a US citizen just LIVING in Ireland... okay so I try DLing it selecting the US as my country. Still gives me iTunes 3. They're clever, but annoying. What's worst is that at the bottom, it meantions the many languages iTunes 4 supports, including Swedish, Danish, Finnish, etc. Why bother if they won't let anyone from europe even DOWNLOAD IT?
The thing is, I've been waiting for this service for a long time, I want to support Apple every step of the way, but with this kind of thing happening, I'm frustrated.
I'll bet God and Santa Claus are on some very rich kids' space-mailing-lists now. Of course, in God's case, the letters shouldn't come back down, just get jettisonned Simpsons-style.
From the website: Verse 1:
You're Soft
You're Wet
You Smell So Good...
Chorus:
I Love You Moist Towelettes
I Love You Moist Towelettes
I Love You Moist Towelettes
Verse 2:
You're Pretty
The Way They Dress You Up
Wanna Take You Home
Open You Up
(Chorus)
Outro:
Can't Wait To Get My Hands On You
Can't Wait To Rub My Hands On You
Can't Wait To Get My Hands On You
Tear Open, Unfold, and Use ...
You know, if you replace "moist towlette" with someone's name, you have a potential serial rapist on your hands.
This is scary.
What would make me happier is a European release. Or more specifically an Irish release. Anime is still very niche here (Although seeing The End of Evangelion on the shelves next to other new DVD releases in mainstream stores Virgin in the UK is very encouraging) and according to the IMDB website there isn't even a European release date announced for the Cowboy Bebop movie.
I hope I don't sound like some whiney loser, but the only thing that's sustained my anime interest is the fact that I have access to American releases and have a region free player (two actually, including my computer) but many people here have neither.
Any way, big releases like this, judging by Princess Monoke's treatment, usually get a nice DVD release here at least, so I am a bit encouraged:)
If the encryption software is open source, doesn't that mean that hostiles who want to break the encryption can use the source to make sonething to counter the encryption?
I have a vague idea on why that's not so, but nothing definate. I heard it being compared to trying to put a sausage into a meat grinder backwards to make a pig.
Well, I think that like any other medium there is the potential for art. In the written word, there are tabloids and there are novels like War and Peace. On the screen there is Lawrence of Arabia or there is Dude, Where's My Car? Some is trashy, or just designed for entertainment but some is art.
As a relatively new medium video games don't have many axamples of "art" yet, but there are some exceptions. ICO for instance, on the Playstation2 was a mind blowing experiance, not because of snazzy visuals or any particular aspect of the game, but the overall love that was put into the game was above and beyond what one normally sees.
Other contenders could be the Myst series, some role playing games like the better Final Fantasies or Bungie's Marathon series. Of course the last 2 examples are mentioned mainly, but not entirely because of their storytelling. Thing is, Games can tell stories but as a medium they're capable of a lot more, and it's a great opportunity for us to watch it evolve.
Anyway, back on the topic at hand, I love GTA but it's hard to say it's art. Then again, it is a very satirical work and even the visuals are intentionally caricatured. It's content is questionable, but it is something more than trash.
I'm against censoring, but I do think they need an adequate ratings system that really explains itself on the package, so that parents buying things for their kids will not just see "M" but the reasons for the rating. I think this is one of the main issues here, parents buying games for kids. They control the pocketbook, they are usually above any age limit set by ratings, so really the only option is to inform them.
Slashdot Mirror
"This seems like a good trend for the environment too..."
"...You don't have to shower, or dress up..."
How is not showering good for the environment?
Actually, the first experiance I had with gaming as a spectator sport was with the Myth games (Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter) by Bungie. They were probably the best tactical games ever made, didn't involve collecting resources or building, just troop movements. I was pretty active in the Myth community while it was in its heyday.
Anyway, Myth had a system where games could be automatically recorded and saved, this contained a huge amount of information about the game in a tiny file. All of the chat was retained, so one could follow discussions or jokes in games, and one could see teams discuss strategy amongst themselves. The game played out like you were playing it yourself except you could see all the units and move the camera wherever you wanted. I haven't seen a game recording system better than this.
This system was used in the various Myth tournaments when game results were released. One would be able to download and watch the final game, whenever you wanted! So I disagree that Strategy games cannot make good spectator material, I think that if it takes the form I described, it can be more entertaining than some of the televised FPS playoffs I've seen, where one can't get an overall sense of what the hell is going on.
"That's no ordinary Dark Lord! It's a viscious eyeball Dark Lord with big pointy teeth..."
And upon Gandalf's return, he shall introduce himself as "Tim."
Gandalf: "You shall not pass! Until you answer me these questions three, what is your name?"
Balrog: "I am a demon of the old gods, the balrog."
Gandalf: "What is your quest?"
Balrog: "I seek to crush your fellowship and burn them.
Gandalf: "What is your favorite color?"
Balrog: "Flame orange! No, blue - AAAEEEIIIII!!!!!!"
There are lots of possibilities, I could go on but then I'd just drive it into the ground.
Well, I would see a lot of merit in what you say, except that Peter Jackson, in the second film, injected a lot of really dumb, really boring bull that wasn't in the book at the expense of the better material. I'm not saying this on purist grounds that it needs to be word for word perfect adaptation of the book, for instance I thought they made completley the right move by ditching Tom Bombadil. But when good material that people would like is cut for a bunch of standard romance novel calibre scenes involving a stupid love story take precedence, I no longer think it's my kind of movie. Fine for some, not my thing anymore, shame though, because it stated being my kind of thing with the first film :)
Wrong, the iTunes music service includes the album art on each song file, viewable in iTunes by a button on the bottom-left, under the playlists. The album art lives on! Seriously, that's the ONE good thing about buying a physical CD and it's been retained. I don't mind spending money for just a file, I haven't used a CD for anything other than ripping in ages...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/14 21223&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=187
My HTML skills really suck, sorry for not formatting it, but it was the first thing to jump into my head when I read the article.
Remember the slashdot story a couple days ago (Cannot find link right now) about the Microsoft employee who got fired for posting pics of MS's new G5s on his blog? Who knows, maybe there will be hidden "features" in this that will only help MS. Then again, I'm paranoid.
Except one would have to change a couple words. Because that's the way the world begins, not with a Bang, but with a Whimper.
DVDs, Music, Video games, software, computers, cars and almost every single mass produced consumer product is still cheaper in the US. I understand that this is especially bad price fixing but it is one of the few cases of it in America, consider also that an American tuition is also more pricy than a tuition in a UK university, so Americans are already paying more just by attending college in America. (Ramen noodle companies rejoice!) Price fixing is happening all over europe by the same types of big companies, here in Ireland a new music CD is $25. And yeah, we in the UK / Ireland still have lousy weather, I'm looking out my window at loads of hail coming down. Yay.
Like others noted, sounds like publicity to me. Remember when the movie Signs came out, and Disney offered a sweepstakes where the winner would be sent to a "real" crop circle to help investigate it? This is pretty transparent, as the Sci-Fi channel aren't exactly in the documentary business, it would be more dramatic for them to say "We tried to get them to tell us, but Big Brother is keeping UFOs a secret." Imagine if, in response, the DoD declassifies and releases the files and they turn out to be REALLY anticlimactic, and only classified because they were using some new radar recievers at the time or something.
I can't really see this working too well. Sure retunring tapes and DVDs is a pain in the ass, but limited systems such as this don't exactly have a good history of success. Remember those DivX boxes that could play movies that would expire after a couple days? Crashed and burned, all it did for the world was provide an amusing angry character for Penny Arcade. I'm betting we won't really hear much about this again.
With the exception of places like the EU, it is not unusual for foreigners to just pack up and grab a job someplace else. I doubt people will be surprised by this, considering that what happened three years ago today reminded people to tighten Visa restrictions. Who knows, it may have been much easier five years ago, but today that's just the way it is. Here in Ireland there are immigrants who are qualified doctors, but because they aren't allowed to work here as anything other than a fast food counter-person, their skills are totally wasted. It's not discrimination, it's just the way the world works.
I watched the first arm mpeg video while listening to a rather funky remix of the original Metal Gear theme (From Overclocked Remix if you're curious) and as the guy waved the object in front of the arm and it responded, it looked very funky as it moved to the beat. I think we have our next avant garde music video.
To get around it you simply need to set up a stateside bank account and a remailer address with a friend. No Problem.
Already got it. Here in Ireland VAT is an astounding 21% (Actually, they reently made a big deal about moving it down to 20% and a month later they quietly moved it back up) but, lucky for me, being the dual citizen that I am, I have an NY billing address.
Don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but my main point is that it also lets me use the Apple Music Store. So, in conclusion, get a US billing address, it's worth it.
Cinsidering the system wasn't originally designed to be a music / movie swapping system, would you have any qualms with working with, rather than against, the record and movie industry to make the program less contraversial? What are your views on their attitude towards Biotorrent (IE: Do you think they'll ever make compramises with those that make these systems) Sorry if that question is too long / complicated, but it could be interesting.
On the issue of punishing companies for unsafe practices like this, sometimes it's 50/50. Depends how much sway they have. I'm not anti-capitalist über-left cynical jaded moron, but after reading Fast Food Nation recently, I don't have a whole lot of faith in the government's ability to control this kind of activity on a large scale. The government used to have a lot more power over companies since Theodore Roosevelt's time, but the book seems to point the finger at the Reagon era for the change.
Anyway, it wouldn't have been bad PR to admit a mistake, hell it's only human to make mistakes, even when something is as serious as this. The problem shouldn't have been there at all, but it was caught before anyone was hurt, so they should have just apologised and fixed it. Cover-ups make me sick.
Well I for one am being optimistic about this. It's really the only way I can look at it. I've seen a lot of pessimism here and a friend of mine is doing nothing but whining about how bad it will be. He's saying how all the actors should be Japanese or he'll lose all faith in Hollywood or something. :)
Well, for one I don't care what nationality the actors are. Asuka, a German, looked just the same, stylistically as Shinji and co. No problems there.
Yes, it should be strange and wierd, like the series, because that's what ultimately stays with me about the series. Sure it was at times silly, perhaps a little too much so, but if it wasn't it would be SO depressing! Also, I think the casting will have to be spot on. Get some competent child actors in there. Perhaps haley Joel Osment, though he seems to have lost his magic. Also, Gendo will have to be completely badass.
If there's one thing I have confidence in it's the visual FX. As bad as I thought the Two Towers was compared to the Fellowship, it did LOOK fantastic, and it didn't seem to scream "LOOK AT ME I'M CGI!"
So here's my shortlist of hopes that I haven't covered already: Should be set someplace unrecognisable, Tokyo 3 was post second impact, a fictional city with buildings that could go underground. Essential to make the place familiar, yet alien. I mention this because I hear that the live action Akira movie planned will be set in New York. Blech.
The sense of scale is 50% of the visual experiance. Even from the start of the series, each step and Eva took smashed nearby glass windows, and they can move incredibly fast. This overall feeling was perfected, in my opinion, during the fight sequence in End of Eva when Asuka fights the production EVAs. So in short, I hope that I can see something worth putting the DVD of next to my Evangelion DVD boxset and DVD movies. Yes I am a fan of it. Oh oh! And keep SEELE's Kubrick style monoliths! They were cool...
Sounds a lot like that scene in the End of Evangelion when Gendo puts his hand inside of Rei. Even to hardcore anime types, that was weird...
I discovered this yesterday, so I evaded the /. effect by a good 24 hours, and thus have all the episodes.
It's extremely witty stuff, basically, why are there people sitting in a gulch fighting each other? What if they were just grunts who didn't care about fighting the other team? What if they were simply involved in a long stalemate rather than a no-holds-barred war?
It really makes me think about those long hours I spent playing Halo multiplayer.
Sort of.
Okay, iTunes music store is only available in the US. I figured that out after I downloaded it and it gave me iTunes 3, which I already have. I'm a US citizen just LIVING in Ireland... okay so I try DLing it selecting the US as my country. Still gives me iTunes 3. They're clever, but annoying. What's worst is that at the bottom, it meantions the many languages iTunes 4 supports, including Swedish, Danish, Finnish, etc. Why bother if they won't let anyone from europe even DOWNLOAD IT? The thing is, I've been waiting for this service for a long time, I want to support Apple every step of the way, but with this kind of thing happening, I'm frustrated.
I'll bet God and Santa Claus are on some very rich kids' space-mailing-lists now. Of course, in God's case, the letters shouldn't come back down, just get jettisonned Simpsons-style.
From the website:
...
Verse 1:
You're Soft
You're Wet
You Smell So Good...
Chorus:
I Love You Moist Towelettes
I Love You Moist Towelettes
I Love You Moist Towelettes
Verse 2:
You're Pretty
The Way They Dress You Up
Wanna Take You Home
Open You Up
(Chorus)
Outro:
Can't Wait To Get My Hands On You
Can't Wait To Rub My Hands On You
Can't Wait To Get My Hands On You
Tear Open, Unfold, and Use
You know, if you replace "moist towlette" with someone's name, you have a potential serial rapist on your hands.
This is scary.
What would make me happier is a European release. Or more specifically an Irish release. Anime is still very niche here (Although seeing The End of Evangelion on the shelves next to other new DVD releases in mainstream stores Virgin in the UK is very encouraging) and according to the IMDB website there isn't even a European release date announced for the Cowboy Bebop movie. I hope I don't sound like some whiney loser, but the only thing that's sustained my anime interest is the fact that I have access to American releases and have a region free player (two actually, including my computer) but many people here have neither. Any way, big releases like this, judging by Princess Monoke's treatment, usually get a nice DVD release here at least, so I am a bit encouraged :)
If the encryption software is open source, doesn't that mean that hostiles who want to break the encryption can use the source to make sonething to counter the encryption?
I have a vague idea on why that's not so, but nothing definate. I heard it being compared to trying to put a sausage into a meat grinder backwards to make a pig.
Well, I think that like any other medium there is the potential for art. In the written word, there are tabloids and there are novels like War and Peace. On the screen there is Lawrence of Arabia or there is Dude, Where's My Car? Some is trashy, or just designed for entertainment but some is art. As a relatively new medium video games don't have many axamples of "art" yet, but there are some exceptions. ICO for instance, on the Playstation2 was a mind blowing experiance, not because of snazzy visuals or any particular aspect of the game, but the overall love that was put into the game was above and beyond what one normally sees. Other contenders could be the Myst series, some role playing games like the better Final Fantasies or Bungie's Marathon series. Of course the last 2 examples are mentioned mainly, but not entirely because of their storytelling. Thing is, Games can tell stories but as a medium they're capable of a lot more, and it's a great opportunity for us to watch it evolve. Anyway, back on the topic at hand, I love GTA but it's hard to say it's art. Then again, it is a very satirical work and even the visuals are intentionally caricatured. It's content is questionable, but it is something more than trash. I'm against censoring, but I do think they need an adequate ratings system that really explains itself on the package, so that parents buying things for their kids will not just see "M" but the reasons for the rating. I think this is one of the main issues here, parents buying games for kids. They control the pocketbook, they are usually above any age limit set by ratings, so really the only option is to inform them.