Re:seeing as it's the directors saying it...
on
Star Wars Minutiae
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· Score: 1
But it had realism, in the sense that the universe felt lived-in. There were other parts that could be called realistic compared to something like Star Trek, like that the aliens actually looked alien, but the big deal was that all sorts of stuff was really dirty and old. The Millenium Falcon didn't look like it just came off of an assembly line (and oftentimes it barely worked), the films were filled with broken/malfunctioning droids, and it featured all sorts of run-down 'bad part of town' areas. It may not seem special now, but that was a big deal when Star Wars came out!
But try playing in 1024x768 at Ultra quality on a Radeon 9800 card. Even a Radeon 9800XT will struggle to maintain 15 frames per second. And trust me it's very noticeable -- I have a Radeon 9800XT and I've pretty much given up on playing DOOM III on that card. (I could use a faster CPU, but unless I completely retool for a 64-bit system, the effects will be minimal.)
There is very little visual difference between Ultra and High. It just turns off the compression on some of the bump maps - big deal, and in most of the game you have to actively look for the visual difference. Don't make the silly assumption that you are missing the Doom3 experience if you don't play at Ultra. id themselves have said no current vidcards are able to do that mode justice anyway, though perhaps the very newest ones can. Be very happy with high detail - the developers didn't intend for anyone to use Ultra Quality yet.
(Even medium looks nearly as good, which gives rock-solid high framerates on my lowly 9600.)
Now, I believe you can output your XBox to HD, but I've never seen this happen, and I don't know if it's really HD-quality. (I mean broadcast HD quality, which is sharper than a DVD for instance.)
It is 'broadcast HD quality' - a minimum of 480p (basically just as good as a real VGA signal). Some games (not enough, sadly) run into the higher resolutions. Amped 2 is one example that goes up to 720p (you don't really want or need 1080i - it actually puts out less pixels than 720p). I would be shocked if any of the next-gen console games (so in two years or less) don't support 720p at a mimimum.
Even if they both decide on the same policy the fact that one has proven himself to be incompetent at carrying out the said policy important.
And the other one proved himself too incompetent to stand against any of this. It isn't like it is some recent revelation that Bush and the neocons behind him are a bunch of overtly idealistic religious fanatics. Kerry is complicit in this whole Iraq mess too!
In the clamor for overall product quality the politicians will establish a certification system.
Uhh, no. Just more PC-only gamers will leave for the game consoles, exactly what has been happening for the last three or so years.
Do you honestly think the PC gaming market is big enough to push Congress into doing this kind of stuff, especially in the weakened (and getting weaker...) state it is in now?
Maken X was - and no fully-working CD-ROM hacked version was ever released. Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Greed was (both discs were bigger than CD-ROM size). Some of the Sega sports games. There are lots of other examples, as some have noted.
I like them, especially AOTC, which is my favorite of all 6 (yeah, even ESB, so suck on it). I am looking forward to Episode 3...
Just wanted to say you aren't alone. AOTC is my favorite (though ANH and ESB are damn close in my mind), and I first saw the films back in the early 80s. Dressed up as Luke Skywalker (Return of the Jedi cloak-style) for one of my first Halloweens, etc.:D
All of the Star Wars films have cheesy writing, hammy acting, lame jokes, obviously marketable machines and creatures (that's the same thing that makes them so memorable!), and silly plot devices. I think just a lot of people didn't click with the type of romantic relationship displayed in AOTC. I thought it had a good portrayal of some of that awkward silly melodramatic adolescent romance at least a lot of us go through. You don't see it portrayed in American film much anymore (even in the various teen sex comedies the character's act almost completely like adults - totally experienced in relationships, just not sex. Probably partially because the actors are all so old). Nearly all of us are corny sometime in our life!
Come on now! The Force lets you feel all sorts of things. If Luke has enough Force power to see a few dead guys, surely he can sense "Hey, that's my dad!":D The past has nothing to do with it.
And not that I necessarily agree with it, but Lucas has said in the newest Entertainment Weekly that he expects new viewers to start with Episode 1. Makes sense to me.
As an aside: it was a good interview too, a lot of Slashdotters would enjoy it (a shame it doesn't seem to be available online). At one point (with no real push by the interviewer) he goes straight out and says he is a terrible writer, that he isn't surprised that a lot of people disliked the intentionally old-fashioned corny romance of Episode 2 (for the record, I am apparently one of the few it clicked with and I enjoyed it for what it was), etc. Lucas is a lot more down-to-earth than a lot of his 'fans' realize.
(And selling a whopping half million Gamecube consoles in Japan this year is not a good defense either, unless perhaps you live in Japan or only play Japanese-region games.)
And you know what? None of this console sales numbers garbage should matter! Console sales numbers have nothing to do with how fun its games are, so to defend Gamecube as still selling close to (or even above!) the Xbox in the US is just ridiculous. It is about the games! I mean christ, the original poster (now modded as flamebait) you are attacking was talking about how much they love Nintendo's games and hope they start selling better again - shouldn't you be agreeing instead of spewing old console sales myths?
It is especially silly with how cheap the consoles are now getting. A Gamecube is what, the price of two games? Most gamers in the US can afford at least two consoles now, and the current numbers of existing consoles is high enough to make a decent profit on any of the systems. You don't need to win market share at the expense of another console right now!
(And please don't complain about biased sources, though some of the PR does make me gag too.:) All the stuff I linked to uses the standard NPD data, and it is available on plenty of other sites like Gamespot, etc. I am not going to spend several hours finding perfectly unbiased webpages just because you can't follow basic console news.;p Or just post some Nintendo PR that states they are ahead with the Cube in the USA in the past year or so - I didn't find any at Nintendo's site, but it could very well be there.)
As another posted noted, Sony does allow some 2D games nowadays. But more importantly, Sony of America is the only part of Sony this stupid (and unfortunately, it really hasn't hurt them - they have been doing is since the original PSX, and I suspect that is part of the reason why 2D games are no longer very popular in America. Anyone who didn't own a Saturn missed out on them for pretty much a whole console generation, especially people new to gaming, and even the better 2D Saturn games didn't even come to the US...). Gamers in Japan still get the variety of great 2D games like Espgaluda, etc., so the variety approach still helps Sony.
I wonder how many more are like me out there. Considering both of those games sold really well on Xbox, and still do to this day, I would say not many.:D
Also, I don't know about KOTOR (didn't like the game myself), but Halo is better in a lot of ways on the Xbox. A lot of people (like myself) even prefer the controls, believe it or not...
Also, a point my friend just made, how's Luke supposed to recognize the young Anakin as his father, he's never met the guy, he's only seen old Anakin.
Did your friend miss that whole 'Force' thing in the series? Or was he confused in the many sequences where Luke doesn't use his sight while doing something (or uses normal vision when augmentation is needed, like in the attack run on the Death Star)?
Also, even for games that didn't require it, it improved the graphics quality. Mario 64, for example, would use the additional video memory (as would most of the 3D games) to extend the range you could see -- push back the "fog of war."
This is patently false. Nintendo's own webpage states that games need to have a specific icon on them if they work with the memory expansion - games that don't (and Mario64 doesn't) get no improvement from the expansion whatsoever. Some specifically-programmed games could optionally use it (like Pod Racer or Perfect Dark), which might be what you are thinking of.
I can find no reference anywhere to an N64 with the memory expansion built-in, but I suppose it is possible in certain territories.
I was really looking forward to this set until I read this. The music changes (ie cuts) are especially galling, as apparently some of my favorite musical parts have been cut. (For example, that thread has some MP3s demonstrating the removal of the "Force theme" when the Xwings attack the Death Star - that is one of the best parts of the score, both thematically and musically!)
I am hoping that maybe just certain copies are messed up, though that is probably just naive. But did anyone else notice them in the DVDs?
Uh, don't most Final Fantasy games use that "Active Time Battle" system they came out with in IV? Technically that works more on time than it does conventional (non-realtime) turns. The only major turn-based RPG Atlus puts out is Shin Megami Tensei (Tactics Ogre isn't an RPG) AFAIK, and the Advance Wars series definitely, definitely aren't RPGs.
Very few console games are turn-based nowadays - the grandparent poster was completely correct in calling them rare. (They are slightly more popular in Japan and on PCs.)
Uh, EA has released at least two Xbox Live titles prior to this (their two football games). First one game out back in July. This is just standard EA ineptitude/laziness, and justification for exactly why MS originally required Xbox Live hosting to be done by them. A shame they surrendered to EA.
(Oh yeah, and Burnout 3 has a nice little warning on the back. EA can cancel all Live play with 30 days notice. Wonderful...thanks, EA!)
Unfortunately the timedemo won't really help test the impact of unpacking. You need to run the timedemo once anyway before doing any real testing, and that essentially caches it all for the real tests. The timedemo really isn't testing anything but raw graphical performance, whereas the unpacking is supposed to help remove those annoying stalls you can get when going into a new area.
I personally found it smoothed things out a little - I simply don't get those brief staggers that I see on a lot of people's computers (and that I would see from time to time before I unpacked).
More info on this free Sony repair can be found in the "Disc Read Error Sony Repair FAQ" at Gamefaqs.com (which doesn't allow direct FAQ linking). Tells you how to know if you qualify, what you need, what you should say, etc. Pretty handy.
Sony lost a class-action lawsuit in the USA because the PS2 disc drives were so shoddy and prone to breakage. (That is why they will repair them for free - that was the main terms of the settlement.) For the record, half of the PS2 owners I know have had their PS2 disc drive break ("Disc Read Error" on CD-ROM games seems particularly common - it happened to mine, too.). So it is likely that you are the lucky one.:P
(Or more likely you have a newer PS2. The same is true for my friends who haven't lost a PS2. Apparently Sony decided it was cheaper to make the drive good to begin with - I imagine the need to repair them for free helped. They made some nice change on repairs prior to that!)
Mulholland Dr's plot is really, really simple, though it might not seem like it at first.
Spoilers abound: The film is divided into three parts, all clearly separated: the quick part in the beginning, pre-credits (with the head falling towards the bed - apparently post-suicide), the middle section (which is a dying dream/hallucination - a fantasy constructed out of bits of reality), and the third section after the box is opened (which is a flashback to the real events leading up to that suicide). Once you understand that this is how the parts fit together, the film becomes pretty clear, though thankfully not completely transparent. Obvious questions remain, like who or what is the 'monster' in the alleyway and what do they represent, does the cowboy represent her father or someone in a similar role, who are the scary old people, etc. But the core of the story is completely clear and makes perfect sense.
When I'm watching a movie or a TV show, I really don't WANT to HAVE to analyse what I'm watching to derive its meaning. It's called "entertainment" and I'm watching it because-GASP-I want to be ENTERTAINED. If I want to think, I'll pick up a book.
I find this viewpoint very bizarre. Are you saying that only books are artistic enough to require thinking? Regardless, you are really selling cinema and television short - plenty of great art is made in both mediums, and it can enrich your life in specific ways art like books can't.
And if you aren't able to be entertained by a beautiful, funny, scary, sexy, well-acted film like Mulholland Drive without completely "understanding it" - well, maybe you need to reexamine what you are looking for in films, and why you have this need to fully understand something to enjoy it.
I know you are trolling, but the parent poster was talking almost entirely about Mac OSX. Are you honestly suggesting Windows XP "Just Works" better than a modern-day Mac?
Why was it bad to talk about candidates' experiences (or lack thereof) serving in the military in 1992 and 1996, and somewhat taboo in 2000, but suddenly it's the only thing that anyone talks about? This is ridiculous.
I think the main reason is just that no one really trusts the candidates will do what they say, so voters are more interested in what they have done in the past. Dubya said all sorts of stuff in 2000 that he completely went against when he got into office - it would be silly to trust what he says now. Even ignoring the "is Kerry a flip-flopper" argument, a challenger can say pretty much anything they want - there is no real record to look at like we have for Bush (and experience with Bush doesn't help another candidate in the reliability contest!).
I am not saying I necessarily agree with this argument, or think it is complete (I think the media's need for contraversy and a certain metanarrative is a big factor). But with how dishonest politicians almost always are, you can see why voters would want to hear more about how they have acted in the past. Sure, they will try and lie about that, too, but at least we can maybe get some kind of accurate view of actual actions.
Unlike a capital tax it would not stop a single person from becoming very very rich during their lifetime (e.g. bill gates) but it would stop countless future generations of the family from living a life in luxury without any contribution to society.
Actually, it very well would have stopped Bill Gates from being rich. His parents were rich before he was even born, of course.
I do agree with your basic point, though. Just being nitpicky.:D
Any halfway independent movie like, for example Star Was Episode 4 would never include THX for the simple reasons that it would be a) too expensive and b) many theators, especially those showing independent stuff don't have THX.
Huh? The original Star Wars was fully funded by Fox. How is that remotely independent? In fact, the new films are far, far more independent. Lucas paid for all of them.
(You could maybe argue Empire, etc. were, because Lucas became non-union after all of the problems he had not having traditional credits in front of Star Wars.)
You know that Gord isn't actually a god, right? Just like he was wrong with the Gamecube, he is wrong about the PS2 (though less so, at least). To make it to the US release on time, most of the PS2 consoles were quickly shipped by air. Needless to say, this is very very expensive, and Sony in no way recouped that cost when selling the initial PS2 shipments.
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But it had realism, in the sense that the universe felt lived-in. There were other parts that could be called realistic compared to something like Star Trek, like that the aliens actually looked alien, but the big deal was that all sorts of stuff was really dirty and old. The Millenium Falcon didn't look like it just came off of an assembly line (and oftentimes it barely worked), the films were filled with broken/malfunctioning droids, and it featured all sorts of run-down 'bad part of town' areas. It may not seem special now, but that was a big deal when Star Wars came out!
But try playing in 1024x768 at Ultra quality on a Radeon 9800 card. Even a Radeon 9800XT will struggle to maintain 15 frames per second. And trust me it's very noticeable -- I have a Radeon 9800XT and I've pretty much given up on playing DOOM III on that card. (I could use a faster CPU, but unless I completely retool for a 64-bit system, the effects will be minimal.)
There is very little visual difference between Ultra and High. It just turns off the compression on some of the bump maps - big deal, and in most of the game you have to actively look for the visual difference. Don't make the silly assumption that you are missing the Doom3 experience if you don't play at Ultra. id themselves have said no current vidcards are able to do that mode justice anyway, though perhaps the very newest ones can. Be very happy with high detail - the developers didn't intend for anyone to use Ultra Quality yet.
(Even medium looks nearly as good, which gives rock-solid high framerates on my lowly 9600.)
Now, I believe you can output your XBox to HD, but I've never seen this happen, and I don't know if it's really HD-quality. (I mean broadcast HD quality, which is sharper than a DVD for instance.)
It is 'broadcast HD quality' - a minimum of 480p (basically just as good as a real VGA signal). Some games (not enough, sadly) run into the higher resolutions. Amped 2 is one example that goes up to 720p (you don't really want or need 1080i - it actually puts out less pixels than 720p). I would be shocked if any of the next-gen console games (so in two years or less) don't support 720p at a mimimum.
Even if they both decide on the same policy the fact that one has proven himself to be incompetent at carrying out the said policy important.
And the other one proved himself too incompetent to stand against any of this. It isn't like it is some recent revelation that Bush and the neocons behind him are a bunch of overtly idealistic religious fanatics. Kerry is complicit in this whole Iraq mess too!
That doesn't even make sense. Who in the whole freaking world thinks the USA doesn't have WMD? Even American school children know we have nukes.
In the clamor for overall product quality the politicians will establish a certification system.
Uhh, no. Just more PC-only gamers will leave for the game consoles, exactly what has been happening for the last three or so years.
Do you honestly think the PC gaming market is big enough to push Congress into doing this kind of stuff, especially in the weakened (and getting weaker...) state it is in now?
Maken X was - and no fully-working CD-ROM hacked version was ever released. Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Greed was (both discs were bigger than CD-ROM size). Some of the Sega sports games. There are lots of other examples, as some have noted.
I like them, especially AOTC, which is my favorite of all 6 (yeah, even ESB, so suck on it). I am looking forward to Episode 3...
:D
Just wanted to say you aren't alone. AOTC is my favorite (though ANH and ESB are damn close in my mind), and I first saw the films back in the early 80s. Dressed up as Luke Skywalker (Return of the Jedi cloak-style) for one of my first Halloweens, etc.
All of the Star Wars films have cheesy writing, hammy acting, lame jokes, obviously marketable machines and creatures (that's the same thing that makes them so memorable!), and silly plot devices. I think just a lot of people didn't click with the type of romantic relationship displayed in AOTC. I thought it had a good portrayal of some of that awkward silly melodramatic adolescent romance at least a lot of us go through. You don't see it portrayed in American film much anymore (even in the various teen sex comedies the character's act almost completely like adults - totally experienced in relationships, just not sex. Probably partially because the actors are all so old). Nearly all of us are corny sometime in our life!
Come on now! The Force lets you feel all sorts of things. If Luke has enough Force power to see a few dead guys, surely he can sense "Hey, that's my dad!" :D The past has nothing to do with it.
And not that I necessarily agree with it, but Lucas has said in the newest Entertainment Weekly that he expects new viewers to start with Episode 1. Makes sense to me.
As an aside: it was a good interview too, a lot of Slashdotters would enjoy it (a shame it doesn't seem to be available online). At one point (with no real push by the interviewer) he goes straight out and says he is a terrible writer, that he isn't surprised that a lot of people disliked the intentionally old-fashioned corny romance of Episode 2 (for the record, I am apparently one of the few it clicked with and I enjoyed it for what it was), etc. Lucas is a lot more down-to-earth than a lot of his 'fans' realize.
in the US, figures put the GC and XBox running either neck-and-neck in 2nd place or with the GC slightly ahead
:D
:) All the stuff I linked to uses the standard NPD data, and it is available on plenty of other sites like Gamespot, etc. I am not going to spend several hours finding perfectly unbiased webpages just because you can't follow basic console news. ;p Or just post some Nintendo PR that states they are ahead with the Cube in the USA in the past year or so - I didn't find any at Nintendo's site, but it could very well be there.)
Hey, late-2002 called, they want their sales figures back.
Exact specific numbers are hard to come by nowadays (pay attention after the coming holidays!), but all sorts of info is out there showing the Xbox ahead. Gamecube hasn't outsold the Xbox in more than a year. Xbox in this period has even managed to outsell the PS2 in some months. Back in January 2003 the Xbox was already outselling the Gamecube 2 to 1. As of March the Xbox was only video game system to experience console unit growth in 2004 in the United States (it was only 2%, but the Gamecube was down 18%). In June 2004 the Xbox's total percentage of the US console market share was around 33% - with the PS2 in the lead by quite a large margin still, it is obvious that the Gamecube is not "neck-and-neck" with Xbox!
(And selling a whopping half million Gamecube consoles in Japan this year is not a good defense either, unless perhaps you live in Japan or only play Japanese-region games.)
And you know what? None of this console sales numbers garbage should matter! Console sales numbers have nothing to do with how fun its games are, so to defend Gamecube as still selling close to (or even above!) the Xbox in the US is just ridiculous. It is about the games! I mean christ, the original poster (now modded as flamebait) you are attacking was talking about how much they love Nintendo's games and hope they start selling better again - shouldn't you be agreeing instead of spewing old console sales myths?
It is especially silly with how cheap the consoles are now getting. A Gamecube is what, the price of two games? Most gamers in the US can afford at least two consoles now, and the current numbers of existing consoles is high enough to make a decent profit on any of the systems. You don't need to win market share at the expense of another console right now!
(And please don't complain about biased sources, though some of the PR does make me gag too.
As another posted noted, Sony does allow some 2D games nowadays. But more importantly, Sony of America is the only part of Sony this stupid (and unfortunately, it really hasn't hurt them - they have been doing is since the original PSX, and I suspect that is part of the reason why 2D games are no longer very popular in America. Anyone who didn't own a Saturn missed out on them for pretty much a whole console generation, especially people new to gaming, and even the better 2D Saturn games didn't even come to the US...). Gamers in Japan still get the variety of great 2D games like Espgaluda, etc., so the variety approach still helps Sony.
I wonder how many more are like me out there. :D
Considering both of those games sold really well on Xbox, and still do to this day, I would say not many.
Also, I don't know about KOTOR (didn't like the game myself), but Halo is better in a lot of ways on the Xbox. A lot of people (like myself) even prefer the controls, believe it or not...
Also, a point my friend just made, how's Luke supposed to recognize the young Anakin as his father, he's never met the guy, he's only seen old Anakin.
Did your friend miss that whole 'Force' thing in the series? Or was he confused in the many sequences where Luke doesn't use his sight while doing something (or uses normal vision when augmentation is needed, like in the attack run on the Death Star)?
Also, even for games that didn't require it, it improved the graphics quality. Mario 64, for example, would use the additional video memory (as would most of the 3D games) to extend the range you could see -- push back the "fog of war."
This is patently false. Nintendo's own webpage states that games need to have a specific icon on them if they work with the memory expansion - games that don't (and Mario64 doesn't) get no improvement from the expansion whatsoever. Some specifically-programmed games could optionally use it (like Pod Racer or Perfect Dark), which might be what you are thinking of.
I can find no reference anywhere to an N64 with the memory expansion built-in, but I suppose it is possible in certain territories.
I was really looking forward to this set until I read this. The music changes (ie cuts) are especially galling, as apparently some of my favorite musical parts have been cut. (For example, that thread has some MP3s demonstrating the removal of the "Force theme" when the Xwings attack the Death Star - that is one of the best parts of the score, both thematically and musically!)
I am hoping that maybe just certain copies are messed up, though that is probably just naive. But did anyone else notice them in the DVDs?
Uh, don't most Final Fantasy games use that "Active Time Battle" system they came out with in IV? Technically that works more on time than it does conventional (non-realtime) turns. The only major turn-based RPG Atlus puts out is Shin Megami Tensei (Tactics Ogre isn't an RPG) AFAIK, and the Advance Wars series definitely, definitely aren't RPGs.
Very few console games are turn-based nowadays - the grandparent poster was completely correct in calling them rare. (They are slightly more popular in Japan and on PCs.)
Uh, EA has released at least two Xbox Live titles prior to this (their two football games). First one game out back in July. This is just standard EA ineptitude/laziness, and justification for exactly why MS originally required Xbox Live hosting to be done by them. A shame they surrendered to EA.
(Oh yeah, and Burnout 3 has a nice little warning on the back. EA can cancel all Live play with 30 days notice. Wonderful...thanks, EA!)
Unfortunately the timedemo won't really help test the impact of unpacking. You need to run the timedemo once anyway before doing any real testing, and that essentially caches it all for the real tests. The timedemo really isn't testing anything but raw graphical performance, whereas the unpacking is supposed to help remove those annoying stalls you can get when going into a new area.
I personally found it smoothed things out a little - I simply don't get those brief staggers that I see on a lot of people's computers (and that I would see from time to time before I unpacked).
More info on this free Sony repair can be found in the "Disc Read Error Sony Repair FAQ" at Gamefaqs.com (which doesn't allow direct FAQ linking). Tells you how to know if you qualify, what you need, what you should say, etc. Pretty handy.
Sony lost a class-action lawsuit in the USA because the PS2 disc drives were so shoddy and prone to breakage. (That is why they will repair them for free - that was the main terms of the settlement.) For the record, half of the PS2 owners I know have had their PS2 disc drive break ("Disc Read Error" on CD-ROM games seems particularly common - it happened to mine, too.). So it is likely that you are the lucky one. :P
(Or more likely you have a newer PS2. The same is true for my friends who haven't lost a PS2. Apparently Sony decided it was cheaper to make the drive good to begin with - I imagine the need to repair them for free helped. They made some nice change on repairs prior to that!)
Mulholland Dr's plot is really, really simple, though it might not seem like it at first.
Spoilers abound:
The film is divided into three parts, all clearly separated: the quick part in the beginning, pre-credits (with the head falling towards the bed - apparently post-suicide), the middle section (which is a dying dream/hallucination - a fantasy constructed out of bits of reality), and the third section after the box is opened (which is a flashback to the real events leading up to that suicide). Once you understand that this is how the parts fit together, the film becomes pretty clear, though thankfully not completely transparent. Obvious questions remain, like who or what is the 'monster' in the alleyway and what do they represent, does the cowboy represent her father or someone in a similar role, who are the scary old people, etc. But the core of the story is completely clear and makes perfect sense.
A very detailed breakdown can be found at Salon.
When I'm watching a movie or a TV show, I really don't WANT to HAVE to analyse what I'm watching to derive its meaning. It's called "entertainment" and I'm watching it because-GASP-I want to be ENTERTAINED. If I want to think, I'll pick up a book.
I find this viewpoint very bizarre. Are you saying that only books are artistic enough to require thinking? Regardless, you are really selling cinema and television short - plenty of great art is made in both mediums, and it can enrich your life in specific ways art like books can't.
And if you aren't able to be entertained by a beautiful, funny, scary, sexy, well-acted film like Mulholland Drive without completely "understanding it" - well, maybe you need to reexamine what you are looking for in films, and why you have this need to fully understand something to enjoy it.
I know you are trolling, but the parent poster was talking almost entirely about Mac OSX. Are you honestly suggesting Windows XP "Just Works" better than a modern-day Mac?
Why was it bad to talk about candidates' experiences (or lack thereof) serving in the military in 1992 and 1996, and somewhat taboo in 2000, but suddenly it's the only thing that anyone talks about? This is ridiculous.
I think the main reason is just that no one really trusts the candidates will do what they say, so voters are more interested in what they have done in the past. Dubya said all sorts of stuff in 2000 that he completely went against when he got into office - it would be silly to trust what he says now. Even ignoring the "is Kerry a flip-flopper" argument, a challenger can say pretty much anything they want - there is no real record to look at like we have for Bush (and experience with Bush doesn't help another candidate in the reliability contest!).
I am not saying I necessarily agree with this argument, or think it is complete (I think the media's need for contraversy and a certain metanarrative is a big factor). But with how dishonest politicians almost always are, you can see why voters would want to hear more about how they have acted in the past. Sure, they will try and lie about that, too, but at least we can maybe get some kind of accurate view of actual actions.
Unlike a capital tax it would not stop a single person from becoming very very rich during their lifetime (e.g. bill gates) but it would stop countless future generations of the family from living a life in luxury without any contribution to society.
:D
Actually, it very well would have stopped Bill Gates from being rich. His parents were rich before he was even born, of course.
I do agree with your basic point, though. Just being nitpicky.
Any halfway independent movie like, for example Star Was Episode 4 would never include THX for the simple reasons that it would be a) too expensive and b) many theators, especially those showing independent stuff don't have THX.
Huh? The original Star Wars was fully funded by Fox. How is that remotely independent? In fact, the new films are far, far more independent. Lucas paid for all of them.
(You could maybe argue Empire, etc. were, because Lucas became non-union after all of the problems he had not having traditional credits in front of Star Wars.)
You know that Gord isn't actually a god, right? Just like he was wrong with the Gamecube, he is wrong about the PS2 (though less so, at least). To make it to the US release on time, most of the PS2 consoles were quickly shipped by air. Needless to say, this is very very expensive, and Sony in no way recouped that cost when selling the initial PS2 shipments.