Yes, but the difference is that this is somebody who has been in the industry for a LONG time, continues to be an important name, and is credibly on the bleeding edge of all the stuff he's talking about. IE, it's not just idle speculation - this is a guy in a position to KNOW what's going on.
Do you know what a FICO score is? It is a measure of credit worthiness designed by a company based on statistics and probability. It is the product that is sold by a company, the Fair Isaac Corporation. It is the opinion of that company how likely you are to pay back a loan. Why do you feel you should be provided with this for free?
Because they are THE company that pretty much everyone turns to for determining this information and you, as a single person, have virtually no recourse against them if their data is wrong or inaccurate. Most of the time you don't even know WHAT they say about you. Because if it IS wrong, you can't do anything TO them. They just say "oops, not our fault!" and blame agencies reporting to them. Even though clearly, with the position of incredible power they hold, there should be some responsibility on THEM to verify the data they're sending out.
Whether they asked for this power or not is absolutely irrelevant. They DO hold the power to prevent millions upon millions of people from purchasing things or today, even getting jobs. Arguably they are, in terms of daily personal effect upon people, the single most powerful corporation in the country.
Yet they have ZERO accountability.
If the solution to this isn't to allow people unfettered complete access to their own credit records, I'm not sure what it could possibly be. Well, besides the dismantling of the company, which at times sounds like the best course of action.
Come on, did we honestly expect them to release every A-list title immediately upon launch? How in the world would they sustain the service? The bunch they've got there seems fine to me, and the Sega selection is especially strong.
What I'm miffed at is the delay for the new Smash Bros. It was SUPPOSED to be a launch title; and the one I was most looking forward to. I'm sure I'll still get a Wii, but it's kind of irritating.
Gametap and its ilk scare me. A lot of businesses are trying to blur the lines between "owning" and "renting" and that's something I don't support. Virtually every media company in the world has wet dreams about the day that they never SELL anything. That there are no "fair use" rights to music or movies. That they can shut down your OS if you haven't upgraded it recently. That your game collection can be wiped out by a failure to pay your monthly bill.
People rejected this exact same model of getting MP3s. Why embrace it for video games? I've bought plenty of retro-compilations over the years. Want to shovel a couple dozen old Sega games onto a CD? I'll probably buy it. But I won't keep buying it month after month, just for the privledge of continuing to use it.
How is it not a waste to win a case against something that did not exist anymore? It makes as much sense as trying a dead man in court.
Because the law DID exist when they filed the case. The reason it "doesn't exist" anymore is that there was a sunset (ie expiration) clause built into the bill. Congress could have chosen to reauthorize PATRIOT 100% exactly as it had been passed before. Instead, they rewrote sections of it to give back some of the civil rights they had previously taken. In all likelihood it was the ACLU's initial court victory that convinced the government that it needed to tweak section 215 to make it more constitutional.
A case doesn't HAVE to get to the SCOTUS to convince Congress to rewrite a law, you know. If they see the writing on the wall, they're free to change it before they get ordered to. And therein lies the victory here.
Didn't you read the other comments? It's because clearly he DOESN'T have the right to refuse to reveal his sources or give up his private property. The Constitution doesn't say ANYTHING about that, and it's the defining document of all human rights worldwide. So the inclusion of that odious lawbreaker just shows how this study is really another hatchet-job to bring down the greatest bastion of FREEDOM the world has ever known. The RSF and all its contributors need to be locked up, and then investigated for aiding the terrorists.
You know, I *was* going to reply to you point-by-point, until I saw you refer to the Fourth Estate as "overprotected." Then I figured it wasn't worth the effort.
Return to your home, citizen. The Government will protect you and feed you.
To this day, I'm not sure there's been a bigger, more immersive game experience. The sense of REALITY in the game (and its sequel) is absolutely incredible. Yes, it's a bit slow-paced. Yes, it can become (in the words of one reviewer), "the world's greatest soda-drinking simulator." But that is, I think, the point. Out of innumerable games that promise new experiences, or to transport you to a new world, or suchlike, Shenmue is the only one I know that really DELIVERS on that promise.
Also, it's interesting that even though the plot is pretty much on rails and you're led through it, it creates a great illusion of you (player) dictating the plot anyway. This is something they missed in the sequel, actually. Ryo was so clearly dragged through the plot of that one that a sense of interactivity was lost.
Just don't go in expecting an action game. Yes, there's some action at the end, but 90% of the game is spent walking around, talking to people, and solving puzzles. That's my only real complaint with it, really. As huge and customizable as the battle system is, you end up fighting so infrequently that most players will just button-mash past those encounters.
It's a matter of value for money. Just imagine you're walking into Best Buy (or your big box of choice) with $40. All things being equal, would you be likely to buy:
A)A TV season box set with 13-24 episodes....
B)A video game which is likely, depending on your bent, to provide anywhere from 20 to 100 hours of entertainment. (the latter reserved for JRPGs and The Sims...)
Or C)A couple of recently released Hollywood blockbusters, both in the 2 hour range...?
Now, if your personal OMG BEST MOVIE EVAR just came out on DVD, then C is probably an OK answer. But otherwise, theatrical films on DVD are one of the WORST value-for-money home entertainment deals out there. Realistically, only CDs provide even less value.
That's what Lucas is talking about. And the same thing Peter Jackson was talking about a few days ago. There is virtually nothing that movies can do that either TV shows or Video Games cannot do better.
It might not be a doomed format, but its days of dominance are almost certainly waning.
Yes, it's easy to make jokes about the Prequels prompting this, except for one little thing - he made buckets of money on them.
However, it's pretty clear that Hollywood is getting into a self-destructive cycle. Bigger movies, worse scripts, and ever-dropping returns due to too many OTHER forms of entertainment competing for your dollar. Yes, the SW Prequels and the Matrices and LOTR all made money... but in the past 7 years, how many summer mega-movies have bombed terribly? It's a much higher number, and most of them titles we don't even remember a couple years later.
What he's advocating IS the rational move. And if he can get a few more high-profile directors to join him, he could make a real difference in the industry. (again)
And it'd be terribly ironic (and Campbellian) that the man who basically invented the summer blockbuster would be the same man to end its death throws.
Same thing happened to me two previous times that I tried to read it. I finally hit on a solution. Find a weekend where you have nothing else to do, plop your butt down, and just plow through it. The trick is to read it in AS FEW sessions as possible.
And don't try to memorize character/place names; that way lies madness. Just go with the flow and digest the tales as a whole, rather than worrying about the details.
Then, once you've done that, if you REALLY want to be a Tolkien geek, you can go back and re-read it for the details. But once was enough for me.
Sony has ZERO credibility when it comes to demos. The fact that so many people accepted this story pretty much proves it. They fake demos left and right. (remember the "PS3" demo from LAST E3?) And when you're a tech company, and people won't even believe your PR any more, you've got MAJOR problems.
I worked there about three years ago. Which center were you in? I was at Trinity Mills, working Road Runner.
I'm embarassed to say, but, looking back it may have been the best job I've ever had. The pay was more than enough to live on, and since my AHT was low (you know what I mean) I had virtually no responsibilities or oversight. So I got paid $10+ an hour to surf the web and listen to music.
I've also heard there's an officially sanctioned Dreamcast port of it. I've seen a number of pages referencing it, but no links to an actual working copy.
Anyone happen to know where it can actually be obtained?
Since most people don't know that shit like this happens on a regular basis, once it starts getting reported regularly, the news media is going to pick up and run with it.
GOOD!
You say that like it's a bad thing. People NEED to be aware of this.
Vader and the droids are almost never in the same room together throughout the trilogy. He *never* re-meets Artoo, and the only time he shares a scene with Threepio is the carbon freeze sequence. (where Threepio is just a squawking mess of metal on Chewie's back, across the room, and as such, is probably occupying a whole.0001% of Vader's attention)
The problem, actually, is explaining how Obi-Wan doesn't recognize them. By Ep 3, he clearly knows Artoo and is used to working with him.
/sad geek
There are some on every system...
on
Flashback NES
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· Score: 1
I mean, Katamari Damacy is one of the best family-friendly games ever created, and it's a PS2 exclusive. (due to its controls, although one COULD port it to GC if one really wanted) I would go so far to say, in fact, I think the NUMBER of innovative / creative games on each platform is about the same. The difference is that the GC has a much higher ratio of these games due to less of the really violent ones coming out for it.
The other half is that their hardware devision is only thinking about, "How can we make sure that this new piece of gear can never, ever, under any circumstances, be used without us making money off of it?"
Every. Single. Time. that Sony has introduced a proprietary piece of hardware, it has failed miserably. The only exception, to a certain extent, was the PSX... except that by comparison to its competition at the time, it was the open format, with incredibly loose requirements for developers. (as compared to Nintendo's lingering draconian measures, and Sega's general insanity at the time)
Every other device they've put out there, they've tried to lock people in to their format, and make sure they pay at both ends, and have fallen on their faces.
What in the world is your definition of "cheap"? I see a few small ones on Best Buy for $500-$600. I assure you, sir, for quite a large percentage of the public, that ain't "cheap." And if you think it is, you're living in a fantasy world. (right alongside the Sony and Toshiba execs who think their new technologies are going to sell as well as DVD did)
Oh, we DO spend a lot in "minor" humanitarian aid. Sending food and meds and such. And that's a good thing. But then we go and invade a country and kill a whole lot of innocent people, and then say "but look at all the food we give you!" It just doesn't fly.
WHhhaaaatttt? Ok, as (I would hazard to guess) your hero would say, put the pipe down.
Let's look at those:
Afghanistan in the 1980s? That was THE TALIBAN! The evil theocracy that turned their nation into one of the most repressive hellholes on earth, who we had to turn around and oust just to fix our own mistake. You're counting that as helping them? Soviet Russia was a PARADISE compared to what the Taliban set up.
And Kosovo? You know why we got into Kosovo, right? It was because of Clinton's idiotic decision to do some bombing in Iraq in the middle of Ramadan. This rather pissed the Muslims off. So to placate them, he got us into the middle of a war which has been raging for decades, and pretty much arbitrarily picked a side to call the "good guys" even though, once you study the history of it, you see that there was no such thing. And in the process, we actively bombed cities from the air and killed untold numbers of innocents. (precision bombing my ass... we hit so many schools it's hard to believe it wasn't deliberate... and many believe it WAS.)
And you cite the "defense" of Saudi Arabia? Number 1 - FROM WHO? Number 2 - the Saudis are one of the most powerful groups in the middle east, and number 3 - THEY ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM! If we wanted to overthrow a repressive regime that was keeping its people in squallor and misery, the House of Saud would be one of the best targets I can think of. Instead, since their our oil buddy-buddies, we look the other way while they bleed their population dry.
And Kuwait? Yes, liberating Kuwait wasn't a bad thing. Except, seeing as how it's one of the more technologically advanced nations in the area, it's not part of OBL's target audience. Plus, counterbalancing that is GHWB's complete screwing over of Iraqis in the wake of that war. We WERE going to march to Baghdad during that war, and prepared huge numbers of tribal leaders and dissidents to wage civil war. Except we pulled out at the last minute, left them high and dry, and allowed Saddam to exact his revenge on them with impunity.
Quite frankly, fact that you even cite some of those suggests you have no knowledge whatsoever of the area, or the geopolitics involved.
Oh, but Bosnia wasn't bad, I'll give you that one.
So, in short, if that is your idea of "help" then perhaps we'd do better to leave them alone entirely.
...that maybe - just MAYBE - if, rather than spending billions of dollars on propaganda to convince the Muslims that we're nice to them, we instead took those billions of dollars to ACTUALLY be nice to them, something might be accomplished?
You want to know why people listen to Bin Ladan and his ilk? Because there are a lot of poor, miserable, hungry people over there whose lives suck, and he (and Zarquai and all the rest) are managing to successfully convince them to blame an innocent third party. Ok, not ENTIRELY innocent *cough*assassinations*cough* but still, the theocrats and fascists sitting in power are FAR more to blame than the US.
And when people are hungry enough, and desperate enough, and you tell them, "THAT guy! HE'S to blame!" They'll believe you.
Especially if That Guy has never done a damn thing they've ever seen to help them.
Based on your.sig, I bow to your level of Disney geekitude.;-)
You are right, though, just not micro-managing WILL help a lot in the day-to-day stuff. But what about the quality of movies that Disney puts out? I haven't seen anything to suggest it's going to get better. (but then, it'll be another year or two before the first Iger-stamped film comes out)
I'll personally be VERY happy if the parks get better (considering my mom works there) but the question of how they'll treat Pixar is the on-topic part.
Don't be too excited. Bob Iger was Eisner's little lackey for more than a decade, and that's his biggest claim to fame. He got the job mainly because he and Eisner had squeezed out (or pissed off) everyone else more qualified.
I think the simple fact of being Not Eisner will give him some help in dealing with those that Eisner alienated, but I'm expecting no major shifts in Disney policy or much of a reduction in its general trend towards heat death.
Slashdot Mirror
The parent post really should be updated advising of that.
Yes, but the difference is that this is somebody who has been in the industry for a LONG time, continues to be an important name, and is credibly on the bleeding edge of all the stuff he's talking about. IE, it's not just idle speculation - this is a guy in a position to KNOW what's going on.
Because they are THE company that pretty much everyone turns to for determining this information and you, as a single person, have virtually no recourse against them if their data is wrong or inaccurate. Most of the time you don't even know WHAT they say about you. Because if it IS wrong, you can't do anything TO them. They just say "oops, not our fault!" and blame agencies reporting to them. Even though clearly, with the position of incredible power they hold, there should be some responsibility on THEM to verify the data they're sending out.
Whether they asked for this power or not is absolutely irrelevant. They DO hold the power to prevent millions upon millions of people from purchasing things or today, even getting jobs. Arguably they are, in terms of daily personal effect upon people, the single most powerful corporation in the country.
Yet they have ZERO accountability.
If the solution to this isn't to allow people unfettered complete access to their own credit records, I'm not sure what it could possibly be. Well, besides the dismantling of the company, which at times sounds like the best course of action.
What I'm miffed at is the delay for the new Smash Bros. It was SUPPOSED to be a launch title; and the one I was most looking forward to. I'm sure I'll still get a Wii, but it's kind of irritating.
People rejected this exact same model of getting MP3s. Why embrace it for video games? I've bought plenty of retro-compilations over the years. Want to shovel a couple dozen old Sega games onto a CD? I'll probably buy it. But I won't keep buying it month after month, just for the privledge of continuing to use it.
Because the law DID exist when they filed the case. The reason it "doesn't exist" anymore is that there was a sunset (ie expiration) clause built into the bill. Congress could have chosen to reauthorize PATRIOT 100% exactly as it had been passed before. Instead, they rewrote sections of it to give back some of the civil rights they had previously taken. In all likelihood it was the ACLU's initial court victory that convinced the government that it needed to tweak section 215 to make it more constitutional.
A case doesn't HAVE to get to the SCOTUS to convince Congress to rewrite a law, you know. If they see the writing on the wall, they're free to change it before they get ordered to. And therein lies the victory here.
You idiot.
Return to your home, citizen. The Government will protect you and feed you.
Also, it's interesting that even though the plot is pretty much on rails and you're led through it, it creates a great illusion of you (player) dictating the plot anyway. This is something they missed in the sequel, actually. Ryo was so clearly dragged through the plot of that one that a sense of interactivity was lost.
Just don't go in expecting an action game. Yes, there's some action at the end, but 90% of the game is spent walking around, talking to people, and solving puzzles. That's my only real complaint with it, really. As huge and customizable as the battle system is, you end up fighting so infrequently that most players will just button-mash past those encounters.
A)A TV season box set with 13-24 episodes....
B)A video game which is likely, depending on your bent, to provide anywhere from 20 to 100 hours of entertainment. (the latter reserved for JRPGs and The Sims...)
Or C)A couple of recently released Hollywood blockbusters, both in the 2 hour range...?
Now, if your personal OMG BEST MOVIE EVAR just came out on DVD, then C is probably an OK answer. But otherwise, theatrical films on DVD are one of the WORST value-for-money home entertainment deals out there. Realistically, only CDs provide even less value.
That's what Lucas is talking about. And the same thing Peter Jackson was talking about a few days ago. There is virtually nothing that movies can do that either TV shows or Video Games cannot do better.
It might not be a doomed format, but its days of dominance are almost certainly waning.
However, it's pretty clear that Hollywood is getting into a self-destructive cycle. Bigger movies, worse scripts, and ever-dropping returns due to too many OTHER forms of entertainment competing for your dollar. Yes, the SW Prequels and the Matrices and LOTR all made money... but in the past 7 years, how many summer mega-movies have bombed terribly? It's a much higher number, and most of them titles we don't even remember a couple years later.
What he's advocating IS the rational move. And if he can get a few more high-profile directors to join him, he could make a real difference in the industry. (again)
And it'd be terribly ironic (and Campbellian) that the man who basically invented the summer blockbuster would be the same man to end its death throws.
And don't try to memorize character/place names; that way lies madness. Just go with the flow and digest the tales as a whole, rather than worrying about the details.
Then, once you've done that, if you REALLY want to be a Tolkien geek, you can go back and re-read it for the details. But once was enough for me.
Sony has ZERO credibility when it comes to demos. The fact that so many people accepted this story pretty much proves it. They fake demos left and right. (remember the "PS3" demo from LAST E3?) And when you're a tech company, and people won't even believe your PR any more, you've got MAJOR problems.
I'm embarassed to say, but, looking back it may have been the best job I've ever had. The pay was more than enough to live on, and since my AHT was low (you know what I mean) I had virtually no responsibilities or oversight. So I got paid $10+ an hour to surf the web and listen to music.
I've also heard there's an officially sanctioned Dreamcast port of it. I've seen a number of pages referencing it, but no links to an actual working copy. Anyone happen to know where it can actually be obtained?
GOOD!
You say that like it's a bad thing. People NEED to be aware of this.
The problem, actually, is explaining how Obi-Wan doesn't recognize them. By Ep 3, he clearly knows Artoo and is used to working with him.
I mean, Katamari Damacy is one of the best family-friendly games ever created, and it's a PS2 exclusive. (due to its controls, although one COULD port it to GC if one really wanted) I would go so far to say, in fact, I think the NUMBER of innovative / creative games on each platform is about the same. The difference is that the GC has a much higher ratio of these games due to less of the really violent ones coming out for it.
Every. Single. Time. that Sony has introduced a proprietary piece of hardware, it has failed miserably. The only exception, to a certain extent, was the PSX... except that by comparison to its competition at the time, it was the open format, with incredibly loose requirements for developers. (as compared to Nintendo's lingering draconian measures, and Sega's general insanity at the time)
Every other device they've put out there, they've tried to lock people in to their format, and make sure they pay at both ends, and have fallen on their faces.
What in the world is your definition of "cheap"? I see a few small ones on Best Buy for $500-$600. I assure you, sir, for quite a large percentage of the public, that ain't "cheap." And if you think it is, you're living in a fantasy world. (right alongside the Sony and Toshiba execs who think their new technologies are going to sell as well as DVD did)
Oh, we DO spend a lot in "minor" humanitarian aid. Sending food and meds and such. And that's a good thing. But then we go and invade a country and kill a whole lot of innocent people, and then say "but look at all the food we give you!" It just doesn't fly.
Let's look at those:
Afghanistan in the 1980s? That was THE TALIBAN! The evil theocracy that turned their nation into one of the most repressive hellholes on earth, who we had to turn around and oust just to fix our own mistake. You're counting that as helping them? Soviet Russia was a PARADISE compared to what the Taliban set up.
And Kosovo? You know why we got into Kosovo, right? It was because of Clinton's idiotic decision to do some bombing in Iraq in the middle of Ramadan. This rather pissed the Muslims off. So to placate them, he got us into the middle of a war which has been raging for decades, and pretty much arbitrarily picked a side to call the "good guys" even though, once you study the history of it, you see that there was no such thing. And in the process, we actively bombed cities from the air and killed untold numbers of innocents. (precision bombing my ass... we hit so many schools it's hard to believe it wasn't deliberate... and many believe it WAS.)
And you cite the "defense" of Saudi Arabia? Number 1 - FROM WHO? Number 2 - the Saudis are one of the most powerful groups in the middle east, and number 3 - THEY ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM! If we wanted to overthrow a repressive regime that was keeping its people in squallor and misery, the House of Saud would be one of the best targets I can think of. Instead, since their our oil buddy-buddies, we look the other way while they bleed their population dry.
And Kuwait? Yes, liberating Kuwait wasn't a bad thing. Except, seeing as how it's one of the more technologically advanced nations in the area, it's not part of OBL's target audience. Plus, counterbalancing that is GHWB's complete screwing over of Iraqis in the wake of that war. We WERE going to march to Baghdad during that war, and prepared huge numbers of tribal leaders and dissidents to wage civil war. Except we pulled out at the last minute, left them high and dry, and allowed Saddam to exact his revenge on them with impunity.
Quite frankly, fact that you even cite some of those suggests you have no knowledge whatsoever of the area, or the geopolitics involved.
Oh, but Bosnia wasn't bad, I'll give you that one.
So, in short, if that is your idea of "help" then perhaps we'd do better to leave them alone entirely.
You want to know why people listen to Bin Ladan and his ilk? Because there are a lot of poor, miserable, hungry people over there whose lives suck, and he (and Zarquai and all the rest) are managing to successfully convince them to blame an innocent third party. Ok, not ENTIRELY innocent *cough*assassinations*cough* but still, the theocrats and fascists sitting in power are FAR more to blame than the US.
And when people are hungry enough, and desperate enough, and you tell them, "THAT guy! HE'S to blame!" They'll believe you.
Especially if That Guy has never done a damn thing they've ever seen to help them.
You are right, though, just not micro-managing WILL help a lot in the day-to-day stuff. But what about the quality of movies that Disney puts out? I haven't seen anything to suggest it's going to get better. (but then, it'll be another year or two before the first Iger-stamped film comes out)
I'll personally be VERY happy if the parks get better (considering my mom works there) but the question of how they'll treat Pixar is the on-topic part.
I think the simple fact of being Not Eisner will give him some help in dealing with those that Eisner alienated, but I'm expecting no major shifts in Disney policy or much of a reduction in its general trend towards heat death.