But the solution here is easy. This isn't something like "only people with expensive cars get to drive on the nice roads," which hurts people who can't do anything realistic about it. All the person needs to do is install a web browser that blocks the popups. This doesn't cost any money (other than bandwidth, which can easily be made up by blocking many future ads), and is available on AFAIK any platform with a browser that allows ads like this.
And of course, this even usually gives other benefits (a faster browsing experience, more standards on the web which leads to better pages, etc.). Anyone can win this game.
Okay, I understand your intentions then. But your comment confused me - I wasn't sure if CDs somehow really were lossy, and I was just an idiot, or what.:P
But still, I think we do a disservice to formats like audio CDs if we call them lossy. I agree lossy isn't always bad, but especially for stuff like music, which can require a lot of 'media changes', it is important to note what is lossy and what isn't.
Third, do you really think a coke slut is thinking about DRM when she's sucking cock for the camera?
You have an...interesting view of the porn industry. Fact is, beautiful women (ie not 'coke sluts', unless you are in the minority where that is your thing) are always in short supply in the porn industry (which is international, I would note). I don't even look at porn much, but often I still see the same half-pretty blond girls over and over. The quest for more porn models is always ongoing.
And you are wrong about DRM. I am not generally a fan of it, but DRM doesn't have to be only controlled by the photographer, etc. in this situation. The idea behind making the industry more regulated is that the girl would only sign a contract (and hence allow pics) if it allowed her to later remove the pics from circulation, say after a minimum period of five years or so. In theory, DRM would allow this. If the company didn't go along with the girl's wishes, she could then sue for breach of contract. Removing them wouldn't be a big deal financially, as most money in porn is on new content, not old.
This is all assuming the tech is workable and non-intrusive, which is certainly debatable. But the idea is sound. If you could get 3 times more girls modeling through DRM, that could really boost the industry's growth.
If you are saying that CDs are lossy, then vinyl is just as lossy (if not more). Both of them remove certain frequency ranges, which is the closest I can figure what people are referring to when they call compact discs 'lossy' (since lossy is a term used to describe compression, which does not affect vinyl or cds).
The term 'lossy' has nothing to do with sound quality.
I agree with your basic point, but I would like to point out that some in the porn industry think it would do even better with more regulation. I cannot for the life of me find the article now unfortunately, but one webmaster suggested the biggest problem was attracting fresh 'performers'. If the standard image format had some form of DRM, more girls would be willing to appear in porn, because they would know that five years later when they wanted to be a mother, CEO, etc. the license for the photo could be revoked. This would, in theory, skyrocket the number of women willing to appear in porn, and more money would be made by all. I am not sure if this increased 'product' would make up for the financial turn-offs associated with DRM-equipped pictures, but it is possible.
Piracy (and just free pics, period) is also considered a huge problem by many adult webmasters, BTW. Just wanted to point out that at least some people in the adult industry do disagree with your point that lack of regulations really help the business. It could just be that porn is such a huge business area anyway, lost profits from piracy etc. are soaked easily enough.
If you consider a CD to be in a lossy format, what music media do you consider to be not lossy? I think you are distorting the traditional meanings of lossy and lossless quite a bit. The way you are using the term, you could argue every form of music is lossy, including a live band (since your ears can't pick up all of the sonic frequencies being generated). Seems kind of silly to me.
The problem is that a lot of the whiners who say that they'd buy more CDs if they were priced better, or that they'd buy more music if they could buy per track are just lying about it.
The real problem is that these 'whiners' you mention are two very different groups, with very different musical needs. This plan only serves one of them (the "I just want a single song or two" group). The "I love music (and want it high quality, too)" group does not benefit at all from Apple's plan.
I think a lot of Slashdot readers maybe didn't get a chance to use Audiogalaxy, so they don't realize just how superior to other file-sharing programs it was, and why.
This is an excellent, detailed article on its merits. I highly recommend it. But briefly, this is why I found it best:
A. It was webbrowser-based. The actual client ran by itself (and it was a wonderful little tool, non-obtrusive and efficient), but the search engine could be accessed from any webbrowser. You could add songs to your queue from a friend's house, for example. The system kept track of everything that was traded on Audiogalaxy, so rare tracks could be found whenever you searched for it, and it would just wait on your queue until someone started sharing it again. B. Related to the above: you could find almost anything on the system. I would read about a cool song somewhere, and an hour or so later I could probably listen to it. I am interested in a huge variety of music (especially from outside the US), and it constantly had what I wanted. The variety was amazing. C. It was convenient. Very few ads, the system was fast and responsive, the client was minimal. I usually used it while on a 56K connection, and it still worked well (certainly better than Napster, etc. ever had). D. It had a gigantic userbase. The variety and scope of the music shared was amazing. It had a decent recommendation system. I tried out all sorts of new types/genres of music. The system made it all convenient. Audiogalaxy managed to massively expand my taste in music, and it seemed to do the same for all of my friends, too.
I know some other P2P apps are starting to get to where Audiogalaxy was more than two years ago. But they still have a long ways to go, and I am not convinced one of them will ever manage to achieve such a gigantic library of music. Audiogalaxy was, in many ways, truly the 'celestial jukebox' that we had all been waiting for.
Yeah, I think you are right about the Xbox version not having squads to command. I still think some of the levels will be the same, sans friendlies, but you are right that a lot of the ET content is just getting flushed down the toilet apparently.
Too bad, as the working with friendlies idea could have been really fun. I suspect they are saving it for the sequel, probably to be shown off at this coming E3...
Yeah, great precedent. My question is what exactly would you prefer instead? These are action roles we are talking about here - they don't show males in a particularly good light, either, often making them at least borderline psychotic. The whole action hero is pretty much by definition violent, oversexed (and oversexualized), callous, young, antisocial, aggressive. I think the better action films really critique or confront this image, but even they can't seem to do without it.
I am not necessarily criticizing your statement. But your description just sounds exactly how male action heroes are portrayed, too. You don't see too many action films that refer to how small the male hero's penis is, do you? So what are you realistically suggesting? I suspect, probably wrongly, that you may be really just against the very agressive sexuality, though I think usually the ad campaigns emphasize it far more than the films do.
For the record, I think even popcorn films like Charlie's Angels do a bang-up job of presenting good female action heroes. I don't think the sexuality is overpowering, the characters are intelligent and funny, they are all very adept at combat, etc., their sexual relationships run a nice gamut from slutty to stable to tentative, and they feel just as 'real' as good male action heroes do, like Tequila from Hard Boiled or Morpheus from the Matrix. It did feature the overused 'daddy issues', but they affected the males as well, so I will let it slide. I am not sure what more could be expected considering the genre.
I thought Tomb Raider was a boring piece of garbage, BTW.
Ehhh. I agree that it is hard to write that poorly, but I am not convinced that it is something to praise.:P I attributed a lot of it to the fact that (AFAIK) the developers were not native English speakers, though that may not be true of the writer. But as I pointed out to NonSequor here, I am just not convinced that they were successful in their parody.
And if nothing else, it annoyed the shit out of me and my friends.:P
Wait, I thought he didn't kill his wife in Max Payne? Or are you talking about Memento (where he did, probably - WEEEE for unreliable narrators!)? I am confused! You are right, though, they certainly are similar. Never thought about that. At least Memento had some good dialogue, though.:)
I agree that it was probably trying to celebrate and parody the genre, but I really don't think it pulled it off, for a few reasons:
A. It was parodying the wrong genre. The game was obviously a 'John Woo rip-off'. But hell, most of John Woo's stuff is already parody. Witness how much even a lesser Woo film like Mission Impossible 2 is parody. It mocks Tom Cruise (the hero) the whole time - it cinematically undermines him throughout the film. It is constantly deconstruction the masculinity of the protagonist. But Max Payne's stupid writing was a parody of Western hard-boiled detective noir, which is a very different genre. It didn't fit together cohesively, IMO.
B. The writing was inconsistent. Some of the lines were extremely over-the-top in their poor writing ("ice pitchforks") - by themselves they are parody. But a lot of the lines (I am thinking of that "lit up like a Christmas tree" one for example) just sound like bad writing. Then you have other lines which I seriously think were intended to sound cool ("personal apocalypses," which actually is a cool line, just not in a game like this). The mixture of ridiculously bad writing, just plain bad writing, and attempts to be cool still makes me question sometimes how much of the 'parody' was intentional.
C. None of the rest of the game supports the parody. Maybe some of the areas referencing other games/movies, but those were usually secret. The rest of the game is ridiculously serious, from the photorealistic textures to the actual plot (graphic murder of wife). It doesn't even seem to me like they are trying to make humor out of the dichotomy - it just feels like two different games.
D. It was just annoying; it pushed things too far. A little of that humor can be funny, but the game practically assaults you with it. It has one joke ("man, this writing is ridiculous!"), and it tells it again and AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND... Being stuck with an idiot can work in a film, for example (something like Zoolander, maybe). But for a ten or so hour game?
Of course humor is highly subjective. I just know Max Payne drove me, as well as the people in my vicinity unfortunate enough to have to listen to me going through it, absolutely nuts.
But put that idea to rest and just make a movie straight from Max Payne. That storyline was just incredible.
...
I especially enjoyed the excellent writing! "Punchinello wanted Payne. He'd see the pain."
"Sooner or later it was going to catch up with you. You'd find that Lady Luck was really a hooker, and you were fresh out of cash."
"Outside, the mercury was falling fast. It was colder than the devil's heart, raining ice pitchforks as if the heavens were ready to fall."
"In the belly of the plant, molten metal boiled and bubbled like a witch's brew."
This next one is especially 'great' in context of the game: "There are only personal apocalypses. Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you."
Gamespy's review quip is a pretty good indicator: "A great down and dirty shooter that's horribly written and incredibly short."
Seriously, I agree some of the dialogue was a little funny, but the game's story was horrendous. Just cliché after cliché, and just because the game knew it didn't make sitting through them any more bearable. I think it was reaching for some of the ridiculous operatic heights John Woo films reach sometimes, but it just really failed at that and sounded stupid and predictable instead.
For thousands of years, the whole point of human existence was to perpetuate and improve both quality and quantity of life.
Says who?
I am serious. Your basic assumption is flawed. There is no real evidence of this. Regardless of that, many MANY MANY people would disagree with your asssumption, for many different reasons.
I myself would take issue with the idea that boosting quantity of life is even remotely positively connected to improving quality. It seems to me that history has shown it to be the opposite, that an increase in population generally leads to a decrease in quality of life. We can't have both.
Not everyone is a Progress Junkie like you, and many of us don't trust people that are to make ethical decisions for everyone else. You obviously don't have the perspective or historical background to speak with authority on issues like this. I am not suggesting you can't say what you want to (please do!), but you have to understand that the rest of us are being perfectly sensible in ignoring your advice.
(I am also not suggesting that I am the authority on these subjects, but I am not suggesting that everyone should go along with what I believe, either.)
But remember, ET took place at least partially in Egypt, as a prequel to RtCW. This is also where and when at least some of the extra missions in the Xbox version take place. So it is containing at least a little of the content that was supposed to be in ET.
I am just worried they may not release the cooperative play patch for the PC version in an effort to boost the Xbox version's sales.
But you have to cut off large parts of the picture to watch it on IMAX. The pan and scan version of EPII on IMAX simply didn't look right (for example, the 'zoomed out' explosion near the beginning), since the film was created to be in widescreen.
Forced pan and scan and also forcing films to be a certain max length certainly drops IMAX down a few notches in my book. Yeah, it can look great, but it isn't the actual film, only certain pieces of it.
Microsoft don't want people playing games on 'their' PCs, that much is clear. PEOPLE, generally, don't want to play games on PC when they could rather do it on a console. PC gaming has for years been doing a great job committing suicide all by itself. Only the most casual games (Zoo Tycoon, Sims) or the most hardcore games (UT2K3, etc.) have any place right now, and even that is disappearing. MS' 'help' isn't needed.
And you need to double-check your sources. iD was never offered a deal to make DoomIII not come out for the PC. And Halo was not almost ready for PC, either.
I do actually agree completely with your basic point. Too late after I posted I realized I probably should have noted that, my apologies. You can even look at my post as defending your point, in a skewed way, as you note.
No, I can't substantiate any of that at the moment, but I seriously think that ancient people are not given enough credit for intelligence. I couldn't agree more. So much of our knowledge is around to preserve the status quo, as you state, to make us believe in this whole meme of PROGRESS, I think.
Actually, the idea that most people believed the earth was flat is a true "willful suspension of disbelief". Some quick sources I found googling are here here and here
Obviously the 'who started the myth' question does not have a clear answer, and there have been groups that have believed the Earth to be flat (such as the Hebrews, apparently). But there are so many things that give evidence of the earth's roundness (easy example: stand on a tall hill and look towards the horizon) that of course most people have never believed the Earth to be flat. Saying otherwise is usually just standard "Isn't (Western) modern man so clever and civilized!" propoganda.
Traditionally I would not call something like Final Fantasy an RPG, but that's what it is in computer game terms.
I agree, which is why I recently coined a new term for games like Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, etc.: Stats-Heavy-Interactive-Movies, or SHIMs for short. I think it rolls off the tongue nicely, is fairly catchy, and the term itself isn't really nasty (though I was tempted - these games are not my thing).
Maybe if more people start using the term SHIM to describe games like Final Fantasy, real RPG fans will have an easier time finding games with actual RPG elements. It might even encourage additional coverage of more pure RPG games, as they won't be so much in the shadow of games like Final Fantasy X2 or Pokemon.
Slashdot Mirror
But the solution here is easy. This isn't something like "only people with expensive cars get to drive on the nice roads," which hurts people who can't do anything realistic about it. All the person needs to do is install a web browser that blocks the popups. This doesn't cost any money (other than bandwidth, which can easily be made up by blocking many future ads), and is available on AFAIK any platform with a browser that allows ads like this.
And of course, this even usually gives other benefits (a faster browsing experience, more standards on the web which leads to better pages, etc.). Anyone can win this game.
Well, on a positive spin, maybe some of us could then get new jobs.
... but I think it is interesting that Arthur C. Clarke thought HAL reading lips was the only implausible scene in the film. You know, as opposed to the whole aliens thing. :P Just goes to show you the perils of trying to predict the future...
Okay, I understand your intentions then. But your comment confused me - I wasn't sure if CDs somehow really were lossy, and I was just an idiot, or what. :P
But still, I think we do a disservice to formats like audio CDs if we call them lossy. I agree lossy isn't always bad, but especially for stuff like music, which can require a lot of 'media changes', it is important to note what is lossy and what isn't.
Third, do you really think a coke slut is thinking about DRM when she's sucking cock for the camera?
You have an...interesting view of the porn industry. Fact is, beautiful women (ie not 'coke sluts', unless you are in the minority where that is your thing) are always in short supply in the porn industry (which is international, I would note). I don't even look at porn much, but often I still see the same half-pretty blond girls over and over. The quest for more porn models is always ongoing.
And you are wrong about DRM. I am not generally a fan of it, but DRM doesn't have to be only controlled by the photographer, etc. in this situation. The idea behind making the industry more regulated is that the girl would only sign a contract (and hence allow pics) if it allowed her to later remove the pics from circulation, say after a minimum period of five years or so. In theory, DRM would allow this. If the company didn't go along with the girl's wishes, she could then sue for breach of contract. Removing them wouldn't be a big deal financially, as most money in porn is on new content, not old.
This is all assuming the tech is workable and non-intrusive, which is certainly debatable. But the idea is sound. If you could get 3 times more girls modeling through DRM, that could really boost the industry's growth.
If you are saying that CDs are lossy, then vinyl is just as lossy (if not more). Both of them remove certain frequency ranges, which is the closest I can figure what people are referring to when they call compact discs 'lossy' (since lossy is a term used to describe compression, which does not affect vinyl or cds).
The term 'lossy' has nothing to do with sound quality.
I agree with your basic point, but I would like to point out that some in the porn industry think it would do even better with more regulation. I cannot for the life of me find the article now unfortunately, but one webmaster suggested the biggest problem was attracting fresh 'performers'. If the standard image format had some form of DRM, more girls would be willing to appear in porn, because they would know that five years later when they wanted to be a mother, CEO, etc. the license for the photo could be revoked. This would, in theory, skyrocket the number of women willing to appear in porn, and more money would be made by all. I am not sure if this increased 'product' would make up for the financial turn-offs associated with DRM-equipped pictures, but it is possible.
Piracy (and just free pics, period) is also considered a huge problem by many adult webmasters, BTW. Just wanted to point out that at least some people in the adult industry do disagree with your point that lack of regulations really help the business. It could just be that porn is such a huge business area anyway, lost profits from piracy etc. are soaked easily enough.
If you consider a CD to be in a lossy format, what music media do you consider to be not lossy? I think you are distorting the traditional meanings of lossy and lossless quite a bit. The way you are using the term, you could argue every form of music is lossy, including a live band (since your ears can't pick up all of the sonic frequencies being generated). Seems kind of silly to me.
The problem is that a lot of the whiners who say that they'd buy more CDs if they were priced better, or that they'd buy more music if they could buy per track are just lying about it.
The real problem is that these 'whiners' you mention are two very different groups, with very different musical needs. This plan only serves one of them (the "I just want a single song or two" group). The "I love music (and want it high quality, too)" group does not benefit at all from Apple's plan.
No problem. Glad I could (attempt to) help!
I think a lot of Slashdot readers maybe didn't get a chance to use Audiogalaxy, so they don't realize just how superior to other file-sharing programs it was, and why.
This is an excellent, detailed article on its merits. I highly recommend it. But briefly, this is why I found it best:
A. It was webbrowser-based. The actual client ran by itself (and it was a wonderful little tool, non-obtrusive and efficient), but the search engine could be accessed from any webbrowser. You could add songs to your queue from a friend's house, for example. The system kept track of everything that was traded on Audiogalaxy, so rare tracks could be found whenever you searched for it, and it would just wait on your queue until someone started sharing it again.
B. Related to the above: you could find almost anything on the system. I would read about a cool song somewhere, and an hour or so later I could probably listen to it. I am interested in a huge variety of music (especially from outside the US), and it constantly had what I wanted. The variety was amazing.
C. It was convenient. Very few ads, the system was fast and responsive, the client was minimal. I usually used it while on a 56K connection, and it still worked well (certainly better than Napster, etc. ever had).
D. It had a gigantic userbase. The variety and scope of the music shared was amazing. It had a decent recommendation system. I tried out all sorts of new types/genres of music. The system made it all convenient. Audiogalaxy managed to massively expand my taste in music, and it seemed to do the same for all of my friends, too.
I know some other P2P apps are starting to get to where Audiogalaxy was more than two years ago. But they still have a long ways to go, and I am not convinced one of them will ever manage to achieve such a gigantic library of music. Audiogalaxy was, in many ways, truly the 'celestial jukebox' that we had all been waiting for.
Yeah, I think you are right about the Xbox version not having squads to command. I still think some of the levels will be the same, sans friendlies, but you are right that a lot of the ET content is just getting flushed down the toilet apparently.
Too bad, as the working with friendlies idea could have been really fun. I suspect they are saving it for the sequel, probably to be shown off at this coming E3...
Yeah, great precedent.
My question is what exactly would you prefer instead? These are action roles we are talking about here - they don't show males in a particularly good light, either, often making them at least borderline psychotic. The whole action hero is pretty much by definition violent, oversexed (and oversexualized), callous, young, antisocial, aggressive. I think the better action films really critique or confront this image, but even they can't seem to do without it.
I am not necessarily criticizing your statement. But your description just sounds exactly how male action heroes are portrayed, too. You don't see too many action films that refer to how small the male hero's penis is, do you? So what are you realistically suggesting? I suspect, probably wrongly, that you may be really just against the very agressive sexuality, though I think usually the ad campaigns emphasize it far more than the films do.
For the record, I think even popcorn films like Charlie's Angels do a bang-up job of presenting good female action heroes. I don't think the sexuality is overpowering, the characters are intelligent and funny, they are all very adept at combat, etc., their sexual relationships run a nice gamut from slutty to stable to tentative, and they feel just as 'real' as good male action heroes do, like Tequila from Hard Boiled or Morpheus from the Matrix. It did feature the overused 'daddy issues', but they affected the males as well, so I will let it slide. I am not sure what more could be expected considering the genre.
I thought Tomb Raider was a boring piece of garbage, BTW.
Ehhh. I agree that it is hard to write that poorly, but I am not convinced that it is something to praise. :P I attributed a lot of it to the fact that (AFAIK) the developers were not native English speakers, though that may not be true of the writer. But as I pointed out to NonSequor here, I am just not convinced that they were successful in their parody.
:P
And if nothing else, it annoyed the shit out of me and my friends.
Wait, I thought he didn't kill his wife in Max Payne? Or are you talking about Memento (where he did, probably - WEEEE for unreliable narrators!)? I am confused! You are right, though, they certainly are similar. Never thought about that. At least Memento had some good dialogue, though. :)
I agree that it was probably trying to celebrate and parody the genre, but I really don't think it pulled it off, for a few reasons:
A. It was parodying the wrong genre. The game was obviously a 'John Woo rip-off'. But hell, most of John Woo's stuff is already parody. Witness how much even a lesser Woo film like Mission Impossible 2 is parody. It mocks Tom Cruise (the hero) the whole time - it cinematically undermines him throughout the film. It is constantly deconstruction the masculinity of the protagonist. But Max Payne's stupid writing was a parody of Western hard-boiled detective noir, which is a very different genre. It didn't fit together cohesively, IMO.
B. The writing was inconsistent. Some of the lines were extremely over-the-top in their poor writing ("ice pitchforks") - by themselves they are parody. But a lot of the lines (I am thinking of that "lit up like a Christmas tree" one for example) just sound like bad writing. Then you have other lines which I seriously think were intended to sound cool ("personal apocalypses," which actually is a cool line, just not in a game like this). The mixture of ridiculously bad writing, just plain bad writing, and attempts to be cool still makes me question sometimes how much of the 'parody' was intentional.
C. None of the rest of the game supports the parody. Maybe some of the areas referencing other games/movies, but those were usually secret. The rest of the game is ridiculously serious, from the photorealistic textures to the actual plot (graphic murder of wife). It doesn't even seem to me like they are trying to make humor out of the dichotomy - it just feels like two different games.
D. It was just annoying; it pushed things too far. A little of that humor can be funny, but the game practically assaults you with it. It has one joke ("man, this writing is ridiculous!"), and it tells it again and AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND... Being stuck with an idiot can work in a film, for example (something like Zoolander, maybe). But for a ten or so hour game?
Of course humor is highly subjective. I just know Max Payne drove me, as well as the people in my vicinity unfortunate enough to have to listen to me going through it, absolutely nuts.
But put that idea to rest and just make a movie straight from Max Payne. That storyline was just incredible.
...
:P
I especially enjoyed the excellent writing!
"Punchinello wanted Payne.
He'd see the pain."
"Sooner or later it was going to catch up with you.
You'd find that Lady Luck was really a hooker, and you were fresh out of cash."
"Outside, the mercury was falling fast. It was colder than the devil's heart, raining ice pitchforks as if the heavens were ready to fall."
"In the belly of the plant, molten metal boiled and bubbled like a witch's brew."
This next one is especially 'great' in context of the game:
"There are only personal apocalypses. Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you."
Gamespy's review quip is a pretty good indicator:
"A great down and dirty shooter that's horribly written and incredibly short."
Seriously, I agree some of the dialogue was a little funny, but the game's story was horrendous. Just cliché after cliché, and just because the game knew it didn't make sitting through them any more bearable. I think it was reaching for some of the ridiculous operatic heights John Woo films reach sometimes, but it just really failed at that and sounded stupid and predictable instead.
All IMHO, of course.
Classic. You rock. :)
For thousands of years, the whole point of human existence was to perpetuate and improve both quality and quantity of life. Says who? I am serious. Your basic assumption is flawed. There is no real evidence of this. Regardless of that, many MANY MANY people would disagree with your asssumption, for many different reasons. I myself would take issue with the idea that boosting quantity of life is even remotely positively connected to improving quality. It seems to me that history has shown it to be the opposite, that an increase in population generally leads to a decrease in quality of life. We can't have both. Not everyone is a Progress Junkie like you, and many of us don't trust people that are to make ethical decisions for everyone else. You obviously don't have the perspective or historical background to speak with authority on issues like this. I am not suggesting you can't say what you want to (please do!), but you have to understand that the rest of us are being perfectly sensible in ignoring your advice. (I am also not suggesting that I am the authority on these subjects, but I am not suggesting that everyone should go along with what I believe, either.)
But remember, ET took place at least partially in Egypt, as a prequel to RtCW. This is also where and when at least some of the extra missions in the Xbox version take place. So it is containing at least a little of the content that was supposed to be in ET. I am just worried they may not release the cooperative play patch for the PC version in an effort to boost the Xbox version's sales.
But you have to cut off large parts of the picture to watch it on IMAX. The pan and scan version of EPII on IMAX simply didn't look right (for example, the 'zoomed out' explosion near the beginning), since the film was created to be in widescreen. Forced pan and scan and also forcing films to be a certain max length certainly drops IMAX down a few notches in my book. Yeah, it can look great, but it isn't the actual film, only certain pieces of it.
Then why would MS be doing this?
Microsoft don't want people playing games on 'their' PCs, that much is clear.
PEOPLE, generally, don't want to play games on PC when they could rather do it on a console. PC gaming has for years been doing a great job committing suicide all by itself. Only the most casual games (Zoo Tycoon, Sims) or the most hardcore games (UT2K3, etc.) have any place right now, and even that is disappearing. MS' 'help' isn't needed.
And you need to double-check your sources. iD was never offered a deal to make DoomIII not come out for the PC. And Halo was not almost ready for PC, either.
I do actually agree completely with your basic point. Too late after I posted I realized I probably should have noted that, my apologies. You can even look at my post as defending your point, in a skewed way, as you note.
No, I can't substantiate any of that at the moment, but I seriously think that ancient people are not given enough credit for intelligence.
I couldn't agree more. So much of our knowledge is around to preserve the status quo, as you state, to make us believe in this whole meme of PROGRESS, I think.
You make excellent points.
At one time, the Earth was substantially flat.
Actually, the idea that most people believed the earth was flat is a true "willful suspension of disbelief". Some quick sources I found googling are here here and here
Obviously the 'who started the myth' question does not have a clear answer, and there have been groups that have believed the Earth to be flat (such as the Hebrews, apparently). But there are so many things that give evidence of the earth's roundness (easy example: stand on a tall hill and look towards the horizon) that of course most people have never believed the Earth to be flat. Saying otherwise is usually just standard "Isn't (Western) modern man so clever and civilized!" propoganda.
I agree, which is why I recently coined a new term for games like Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, etc.: Stats-Heavy-Interactive-Movies, or SHIMs for short. I think it rolls off the tongue nicely, is fairly catchy, and the term itself isn't really nasty (though I was tempted - these games are not my thing).
Maybe if more people start using the term SHIM to describe games like Final Fantasy, real RPG fans will have an easier time finding games with actual RPG elements. It might even encourage additional coverage of more pure RPG games, as they won't be so much in the shadow of games like Final Fantasy X2 or Pokemon.