Just out of curiosity...why has nobody developed a weapons system for fighters that can swivel ala the A-Wing or rear-fire ala the movie Firefox? Perhaps some combat avionics experts can clue me in as to what exactly would prevent a system like this from working. I realize it might be a bit difficult with heat-seekers seeing as how the missile would go right past the jets own exhaust...but there are plenty of other weapons options.
What's that? You want to interfere with the government's newly legal surveillance program to defend us against terrorists? Well..surely you are interfering with law enforcement...toss him in Gitmo boys!
"Isn't there anybody speaking out against the fearmongering media over there ?"
While there are a few with a loud voice speaking out against the fearmongering (Jon Stewart is a great example), unfortunately the mass media realized early on that terrorism can be extremely profitable to them because it meshes perfectly with their well-honed fearmongering tactics that they've polished on past stories such as "Could you die in your sleep?!?!?!?!", "Eggs...the next killer food?!?!?!?!?", "Will video games cause teens to run amok?!?!?!?!"
So unfortunately, it is in their best interest to further the fearmongering as it draws naive viewers which sadly, is most of the country.
What we need is mass media to be on our side, but until there is more of a profit incentive in that, I don't see it happening in the immediate (or distant for that matter) future.
No kidding. There comes a point in every launch buildup...where the vast majority of the console facts are on the table, and it becomes pointless to analyze it further until the systems are all actually playable by the average Joe and they get to see the mass market's reaction.
I for one will not be buying a system until I can demo all 3. And until then, I'll continue to stick my fingers in my ears and make absurd noises at all these hacks who have nothing better to write about than "Can Sony save itself after what could be called the potentially worst console release buildup in history?"
I was extremely excited about the Wii, but like you, have now tempered my excitement with the fact that these games may be extremely awkward for me to play if they do not allow me to play as a left-hander.
I'm honestly shocked that for a system that depends so much on hand movement that this isn't coming to the surface until now. I know plenty of games will be handedness-neutral, but to pigeon-hole players into a certain hand configuration when it is their actual friggin hands controlling the game is ridiculous.
"I mean, a true genius would be eager to use his cognitive abilities for the advancement of mankind."
I'm really curious why you think there is only one "acceptable" path for a true genius. Who the hell are you to determine for this kid what is and is not an acceptable use of his genius? As another poster earlier pointed out we sure as hell could use some good patent lawyers out there who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. And who knows, maybe he will use his law degree to help enable him to make the money he needs for his startup which will cure cancer. I mean, thats a big what-if, but honestly, you have not a clue as to why this kid is making the decisions he is, nor are you in a position to pass judgement on him for making those decisions.
While the general idea is that it is immoral to be greedy, what is wrong with wanting a career that allows him to live financially comfortably for the rest of his life, or perhaps use that money for a just cause? Honestly, I'm really getting sick of the people mocking him for wanting to be a lawyer. Its his life, his choices, and he is the only one who can decide how noble his path is. Honestly, it sounds like many of the people whining about this are just jealous of the potential this kid has and wish they had the ability to do the things they think he is obligated to do.
Don't you think it should be up to him to determine what would or would not be a waste of his genius? No offense, but I have a feeling he is a bit more qualified than you to determine that, even aside from his intelligence.
It depends on how you define an ad then I guess. I view an ad as content that contains a brand or selling message. When I think of people buying licensed products, I see them as buying something that relates to a media property they enjoy. I mean, technically ANYTHING based on ANY existing idea is an ad for it, but its more of a grey area that depends on who has more clout. For example if a manufacturer has the hot product that everybody wants to get their content on, they would be accepting offers from content owners. But typically it works the other way around.
"They could start by not using the word creative as a noun. It makes them sound like a stupid."
Actually, you know what REALLY makes someone sound stupid? Making ignorant comments about an industry who's jargon they know nothing about. In advertising, a creative (n) refers to art directors, copywriters, etc. who basically come up with the creative ideas and execute them. A basic agency is split into their account people and their creatives. Account people being Account Managers, Account Coordinators, Account Supervisors etc. who manage and interact with the clients and delegate tasks to the creatives. The creatives I explained above. Don't bother responding, you'll probably just make yourself look even more ignorant.
"Try to buy a kid a puzzle with a generic picture on it. No can do, all they have is stuff enblazoned with some franchise character or another. Almost half of the toy aisle is stuff co-branded with a TV show or movie. Now go to the clothing dept and find a childrens shirt without a franchise character or an outright product ad on it. If you look you can still find un branded stuff, but that isn't what is selling, just look at the other customers."
Hate to break it to you but those company's are doing something called "licensing content". They pay through the nose to be able to put characters from a TV show or movie on something. Why? Because thats what hot and per your own comment, that's what sells. Don't blame the company's, they'd love to be able to sell generic crap and have people buy it. Blame mainstream consumers who are obsessed with whats hot.
"So please, ad people, continue bringing us your Wazzaaaaaa's and your Geico Gekkos and your dancing transforming cars, and whatever else you can think of, blatant or not. Make me laugh. Make me yell. Make me think about buying your products, or of discontinuing service with your competitors. I will continue to temper my decisions with research and past experiences as my guides, but if you have a truely superior product or service to offer, then I will appreciate a truely superior ad campaign to tell me of it.
If only it were that easy. I'm in advertising, and believe me, there is not a single creative in this industry who DOESN'T want to put out great creative that people love. They want the fame, they want the glory, they want the Addy, and they want the money. Unfortunately they fight several factors that basically give you the ads we've all come to know and hate. Those factors are budget, deadline, and the client. Neither of which we have much, if any control over.
Fortunately, as clients start to realize the mantra of "you can't MAKE a viral video, it BECOMES viral" the only real change they have of getting a shot at it is to really let the creatives go balls out and do something crazy. Often times this can be done on a very limited budget. Just thought I'd shed a little light on things from this side of the table.
"So at once you get the clarity of DV, and the splotchiness of recompressed MPEG, and every pimple, blackhead, scar, and abcess one's had since birth stands out in living color."
Good, maybe now people will realize that movie stars are regular, imperfect people like you and me, just with a lot of makeup on.
Nevermind that it is no longer possible for citizens to amass sufficient force to overthrow the government. Who do you think will win? Citizens with hunting rifles or tanks, bombers, and nukes?
You know...I would never advocate assasination, however if someone were to knock off bush, lets just say I don't think a large portion of America (or the world for that matter) would be too sad over it. In fact, I think they would be more sad over who would be filling his shoes.
Spore brings up an interesting point. Yeah, Wil Wright demoed it and basically made the collective geek society cream itself. However he highlighted certain parts of gameplay, and we all know how gameplay is so much different when you are sitting there playing for a few hours on your own. So far I'm going to buy Spore, but I'm really curious to see if it can really hold my attention as long as I hope it will, and that the rest of the game is as polished as the parts he showed us.
We've all seen what happens when innovative and earth-shattering new software developments utterly disappoint due to poor execution *cough*Black & White*cough*.
Just out of curiosity, and this is not meant to offend you in any way...it is a real serious question...what do you intend to do when your son reaches puberty assuming he does not have an arm capable of the dexterity required to um...."explore his maturity"...? I know this is a very strange question but your sons unique situation for some reason made it pop into my head. Hopefully he'll be a confident lad who won't have any problem finding a girl to do the experimenting for him, but in all seriousness, what will you do?
I ran into the same problem. Part of the issue with Facebook is that it basically completely locked out people who graduated before it was released who didn't get a free email from their school afterwards, which is quite a large group of users. Personally, I think it could have become a much more "prestidigous" service had it resolved that issue as I'm sure many alums would have loved to use it to get in touch with old school friends. Terrible mistake on their behalf because guess what target demographic has the REAL disposable income now? That's right, baby boomers. Coincidentally, they're also more likely (read: too stupid to know better) to buy random crap they see in ads online.
"Why can't site operators (even those that pay millions for established market share) realize that they can make a reasonable profit within niche markets? That was the entire purpose behind the original "Virtual Community" concept of the late 90s. People can belong to multiple niches and can receive targeted messages based on the site they are currently visiting. "
As an advertising professional, let me sum it up for you.
Yes, niche markets are where its at right now. What these sites do is enable people to create their own niche communities within the framework of their overarching service. Couple that with todays online advertising technology that lets you narrowcast your message to MANY small niche groups at once, and you see that the reason they are doing this is because they can still reach those niche markets, but they now have the ability to reach MANY more niche markets, which means more ad dollars which means $$$ and hello new yacht.
"I got on the subway this morning with just such a pack of yes-men. I couldn't tell them apart. Suits, hairdos, shiny little shoes, bland ties. They are all dead, unimportant, lost to history, no matter how big their bank accounts. They don't even matter to their friends or families beyond being "breadwinner." They could just as easily be any other hollow suit."
Just out of curiosity, what were you basing your sweeping assumptions of their personal lives, their bank accounts, their friends and their family relationships on besides what they were wearing? And please don't tell me it was "a vacant stare". It was the subway, in the morning.
Its funny, I dress fairly bland when I go to work, yeah, I try to mix it up with something stylish every now and then, but I honestly don't care what I wear to work, whatever is cheapest works since they're my work clothes, as long as they look presentable. But you wouldn't guess for a moment that I'm listening to some pounding drum & bass music on my iPod, or that when I'm staring out the window vacantly I'm actually daydreaming about last night and the wild time I had with my girlfriend. Nor would you know that while I dress well and my clothes and watch LOOK expensive, its actually stuff I acquired from my family who insist on buying me the best even if I can't afford it myself yet.
I don't know whats worse, the people who truly are hollow suits, or you, who assumes that everybody who is not a unique and idiotically quirky snowflake like yourself is a mindless drone that nobody cares about. Perhaps they don't put any effort into seeming less hollow when on the subway because they don't care about YOU.
Um...I'm assuming that if you found dirt on someone saying they were in a porno you would at least investigate as far as looking at a box cover to make match a face. So yes, names are not unique, but faces and penises sure are.
"They did not understand how the internet works?
They did not publish their personal information on some website, they sent it to someone who had published an ad in a suitable forum! This has nothing to do with "how the internet works" but is all about "how people work"!"
Bingo. This is actually quite an interesting excercise in social engineering. The internet provides the ability to conceal our identity and transfer information quickly while spreading it around a large number of people. That means you should be a lot more wary of trusting people and be careful of giving them information you wouldn't want spread. In the old days something like this might be contained to a pervert faking an ad to get pictures for himself to whack off to, these days you'll become an unwilling internet porn star and despite whatever measures you take against him, the damage done will be permanent and reoccuring as your contact info and image are now out there for the world to abuse. I believe some major lessons will be learned on both sides of this.
The only thing your solution would do is introduce barriers to get in the way of people who want to post real comments, and while it would certainly get rid of the spam, it would most likely get rid of the commenters too, unless of course you are EXTREMELY well established like MetaFilter which has a model exactly like that, except its a permanent $5 membership fee.
Slashdot Mirror
While there are a few with a loud voice speaking out against the fearmongering (Jon Stewart is a great example), unfortunately the mass media realized early on that terrorism can be extremely profitable to them because it meshes perfectly with their well-honed fearmongering tactics that they've polished on past stories such as "Could you die in your sleep?!?!?!?!", "Eggs...the next killer food?!?!?!?!?", "Will video games cause teens to run amok?!?!?!?!"
So unfortunately, it is in their best interest to further the fearmongering as it draws naive viewers which sadly, is most of the country.
What we need is mass media to be on our side, but until there is more of a profit incentive in that, I don't see it happening in the immediate (or distant for that matter) future.
I for one will not be buying a system until I can demo all 3. And until then, I'll continue to stick my fingers in my ears and make absurd noises at all these hacks who have nothing better to write about than "Can Sony save itself after what could be called the potentially worst console release buildup in history?"
Short answer? No. Now go away.
I'm honestly shocked that for a system that depends so much on hand movement that this isn't coming to the surface until now. I know plenty of games will be handedness-neutral, but to pigeon-hole players into a certain hand configuration when it is their actual friggin hands controlling the game is ridiculous.
I'm really curious why you think there is only one "acceptable" path for a true genius. Who the hell are you to determine for this kid what is and is not an acceptable use of his genius? As another poster earlier pointed out we sure as hell could use some good patent lawyers out there who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. And who knows, maybe he will use his law degree to help enable him to make the money he needs for his startup which will cure cancer. I mean, thats a big what-if, but honestly, you have not a clue as to why this kid is making the decisions he is, nor are you in a position to pass judgement on him for making those decisions.
While the general idea is that it is immoral to be greedy, what is wrong with wanting a career that allows him to live financially comfortably for the rest of his life, or perhaps use that money for a just cause? Honestly, I'm really getting sick of the people mocking him for wanting to be a lawyer. Its his life, his choices, and he is the only one who can decide how noble his path is. Honestly, it sounds like many of the people whining about this are just jealous of the potential this kid has and wish they had the ability to do the things they think he is obligated to do.
Don't you think it should be up to him to determine what would or would not be a waste of his genius? No offense, but I have a feeling he is a bit more qualified than you to determine that, even aside from his intelligence.
Actually, you know what REALLY makes someone sound stupid? Making ignorant comments about an industry who's jargon they know nothing about. In advertising, a creative (n) refers to art directors, copywriters, etc. who basically come up with the creative ideas and execute them. A basic agency is split into their account people and their creatives. Account people being Account Managers, Account Coordinators, Account Supervisors etc. who manage and interact with the clients and delegate tasks to the creatives. The creatives I explained above. Don't bother responding, you'll probably just make yourself look even more ignorant.
Hate to break it to you but those company's are doing something called "licensing content". They pay through the nose to be able to put characters from a TV show or movie on something. Why? Because thats what hot and per your own comment, that's what sells. Don't blame the company's, they'd love to be able to sell generic crap and have people buy it. Blame mainstream consumers who are obsessed with whats hot.
If only it were that easy. I'm in advertising, and believe me, there is not a single creative in this industry who DOESN'T want to put out great creative that people love. They want the fame, they want the glory, they want the Addy, and they want the money. Unfortunately they fight several factors that basically give you the ads we've all come to know and hate. Those factors are budget, deadline, and the client. Neither of which we have much, if any control over.
Fortunately, as clients start to realize the mantra of "you can't MAKE a viral video, it BECOMES viral" the only real change they have of getting a shot at it is to really let the creatives go balls out and do something crazy. Often times this can be done on a very limited budget. Just thought I'd shed a little light on things from this side of the table.
Good, maybe now people will realize that movie stars are regular, imperfect people like you and me, just with a lot of makeup on.
Yes, but at least he's linking directly to the article this time and the only mention of his website is in his submitter name, where it should be.
We've all seen what happens when innovative and earth-shattering new software developments utterly disappoint due to poor execution *cough*Black & White*cough*.
Yeah, unlike the animated company logos which keep lasting LONG and LONGER and for some reason have increasingly become impossible to skip...
As an advertising professional, let me sum it up for you.
Yes, niche markets are where its at right now. What these sites do is enable people to create their own niche communities within the framework of their overarching service. Couple that with todays online advertising technology that lets you narrowcast your message to MANY small niche groups at once, and you see that the reason they are doing this is because they can still reach those niche markets, but they now have the ability to reach MANY more niche markets, which means more ad dollars which means $$$ and hello new yacht.
Just out of curiosity, what were you basing your sweeping assumptions of their personal lives, their bank accounts, their friends and their family relationships on besides what they were wearing? And please don't tell me it was "a vacant stare". It was the subway, in the morning.
Its funny, I dress fairly bland when I go to work, yeah, I try to mix it up with something stylish every now and then, but I honestly don't care what I wear to work, whatever is cheapest works since they're my work clothes, as long as they look presentable. But you wouldn't guess for a moment that I'm listening to some pounding drum & bass music on my iPod, or that when I'm staring out the window vacantly I'm actually daydreaming about last night and the wild time I had with my girlfriend. Nor would you know that while I dress well and my clothes and watch LOOK expensive, its actually stuff I acquired from my family who insist on buying me the best even if I can't afford it myself yet.
I don't know whats worse, the people who truly are hollow suits, or you, who assumes that everybody who is not a unique and idiotically quirky snowflake like yourself is a mindless drone that nobody cares about. Perhaps they don't put any effort into seeming less hollow when on the subway because they don't care about YOU.
Bingo. This is actually quite an interesting excercise in social engineering. The internet provides the ability to conceal our identity and transfer information quickly while spreading it around a large number of people. That means you should be a lot more wary of trusting people and be careful of giving them information you wouldn't want spread. In the old days something like this might be contained to a pervert faking an ad to get pictures for himself to whack off to, these days you'll become an unwilling internet porn star and despite whatever measures you take against him, the damage done will be permanent and reoccuring as your contact info and image are now out there for the world to abuse. I believe some major lessons will be learned on both sides of this.