Heh, I love how people rib on PC gamers for not getting to play stuff like GTA or Halo until months or years after release. They mercilessly rub it in our face. Then when we try telling them how much better the PC version is with cleaner textures, higher resolution, better draw distance, MP3 playlists, etc. they tell us to shut the hell up.
I think the issue of clarity has to do with your choice of words. I understand your point now (I hope) but it wasn't clear or concise at all. Word choice has a huge impact on how people are percieved, or to put it in a more "pedestrian" way - You explain to me the difference between "whilst" and "while" and I'll stop calling you an elitist bastard.
More to the point, speaking as someone who works at a place with an animal lab (don't get me wrong, I hate it), we have no way at all to tell what kind of effects a drug will have on living tissue. All we have are assumptions and hypotheses based on past research but that's about it. Until we see what it does to a living thing and categorize ALL of its side effects it is not allowed anywhere near human test subjects. That's not a moral decision on our part because we get off on torturing little helpless bunnies, that's federal law and it's there for a good reason.
So it's fine for you to condemn medical advances gained through animal suffering while at the same time taking full advantage of them. Somehow I get the impression that you don't truly believe in the convictions of your statements because of that. I don't like animal testing either, I just realize that it's a necessary evil.
Let's say they decide to skip animal testing and go straight to human testing for a drug without first figuring out if it turns living tissue to jelly. Will you sign up for that? Would you want anyone you know signing up for that? If you truly believed everything you just said you'd be first in line. After all, your suffering is no different or more relevant than an animal's right? Or would you rather humankind as a whole just stop trying to cure things because in order to do so we may have to harm some animals?
I'm not even going to bother with the "center of the exhalted universe" statement because I honestly can't understand where you got that impression.
It's all well and good to say that now, being a reasonably healthy person, but think about it. Without animal testing you shouldn't have survived much past birth because babies are suceptible to all kinds of diseases. Mortality rates were insanely high before the advent of modern medicine. Fortunately for you we've developed vaccines for most childhood diseases. Oh, and mom probably wouldn't have managed to survive childbirth without current medical technology.
And I'm willing to bet that if you came down with something that was easily treated using modern medicine you wouldn't think twice about accepting treatment. Be thankful you live in this day and age where we're able to treat almost anything that can go wrong before you get all high and mighty and start looking down your nose at everybody.
Halo is an awesome online game. Every now and then you get a server with TKers but it's becoming easier and easier to find a good server. The vehicles add a nice twist as does the regenerating shield, making combat a little more tactical.
My only major gripe with this otherwise great game is how bloody powerful the pistol is in online play. You can empty 3 full clips of your machine gun at someone from 25 meters and not even deplete their shield yet someone from 100 yards away can plink you in the head twice with a pistol and you're dead.
The Grand Theft Auto series was meant for people with enough maturity and common sense to realize it's just a game and not reality, just as movies like The Godfather and Scarface are for those mature enough to see them as works of fiction. Obviously you can't be counted among them.
I fail to see how you can rationalize statements like "This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy". I know this was said to shock a reaction out of people (at least I hope it was) but it was still a poor judgement call, especially for someone who writes for a news outlet such as the Post. There are scant few things in this world worse or more deserving of the harshest punishment available than child molestation and publishing computer games doesn't even come close.
Perhaps the biggest issue I have with your editorial is that you demonize a company for taking the same creative liberties that movie creators have taken for decades. I know you have a moral issue with the games, that's your prerogative, but your point was lost on me when you started making radically untrue blanket statements and comparisons (see above). If you're not mature enough to handle such content, at least have the respect to let those of us who are enjoy our entertainment without being compared to pedophiles.
Good link. I simply can't understand what she's talking about. I took my girl to this movie over the weekend and she cried several times and she's not that big of a geek. She's never read any of the books and didn't know any of the story going into the trilogy. In fact I had to drag her kicking and screaming to Fellowship. It wasn't the "Viggo Effect" either, she was more interested in Arwen than Aragorn.
Maybe the reviewer didn't like it because she needs some deep psychological trauma in order for it to be interesting to her. Maybe if we found out that Denethor was molesting Faramir or something she'd have been happier.
Quite a ballsy move on Turbine's part. There was speculation in the AC community as to whether or not the games (specifically AC2) were going to be shut down. By doing this, Turbine is not only showing their commitment to the franchise but they are also dumping the company that:
- was responsible for four months of borked chat because they wanted to showcase their new.NET platform.
- was responsible for the server disaster in Jan/Feb.
- would not market the game!! Thus keeping the server populations dropping because of the first two problems.
I think you really hit on something there. you mentioned two of, what I think, are the best shooters ever, DOOM and Halo. I think part of what makes them so great is being able to turn your enemies into permanent parts of the scenery. There's some visceral pleasure you get walking back through a tough fought battleground littered with the bodies of your enemies.
I remember doing the blood splatters on the floor. Only problem was all those sprites on the screen at once would make my poor lil 486 SCREAM. It was so satisfying to see huge pools of the stuff after you took out a Hell Knight with your last 20 shotgun shells. One other thing I remember doing was making all of the "explodable" enemies' death animations into an endless loop of exploding piles of slop. The sound generated by a roomfull of those was pretty disgusting...That's it! I'm gonna go download DHE again!
I remember first learning how to lead with my rocket shots and getting a SWEET kill on my bud from across the level.
I used to use a program called DeHackEd that would let you utilize all of the information referenced in the doom.exe file. I remember spending days and days building the perfect DeHackEd patch and bringing it to my friend's dorm to try it out on him, only to be trumped by his semi-invisible "trip mines" that would sit on the ground and explode when you walked into em. They also had a negative mass so if you shot them they'd rocket towards you and you had to move the hell out of the way. Sure, we started out with the usual one-hit-kills-everything-you-see kind of weapons but they gradually got more unique and more strategic. GOD I loved DOOM hacking!
This survey acts as if the purpose and mission of the gaming industry is to produce socially relevant material. It's not gaming's responsibility to make sure that minors have the right context put to what they see on screen and it certainly isn't gaming's responsibility to make sure that their consumers get out and play a while.
To give an entire industry a report card based on how enriching their products are to children is like grading members of the public as human beings based on how much money they gave to charity.
I'm really curious, does the music industry have to endure this crap? How about the movie industry? Publishers? C'mon people, games are an entertainment media and have never pretended to be anything different. How the gaming industry got all the worries about American youth piled on their backs is beyond me.
I truly feel sorry for those who can't watch a movie and enjoy it because they feel the need to nitpick every damn thing. That being said I think they need keep it to themselves and spare those of us who don't care that the lead actress has blue-gray eyeshadow in one scene then green-gray eyeshadow in the next.
I think you're missing the point. Yes it's illegal and yes people need to be taught a lesson. The comment was more directed at the laws, written with the entertainment lobbyists looking over congress' shoulders, that allow corporations already making disgusting amounts of money to basically ruin the lives of ordinary citizens. Given how easy it is to come up with a false positive or simply fake "proof" of infringement, there may well be innocent people caught up in a lawsuit with no choice but to pay a settlement or hire a lawyer (which costs more than the settlement) in order to prove that they did nothing wrong.
Even for those who did break the law, do you really think the industry lost $150,000 per song? Do you think it's right for them to go after people, not just children, anyone, for an amount that is orders of magnitude more than they will EVER see in their lifetime? That's what's wrong with what the industry is doing and that's why regular, decent people have a problem with it.
I think you've hit the exact problem with these laws right on their collective heads. There's no way for the defendant to be considered innocent until they hire a lawyer. So therefore the burden of proof, which was thought to be something the prosecution had to deal with, is now on the defendant. They have to fight and pay a LOT of money in order to prove to the judge what they knew all along. This isn't right and it certainly isn't civil. Copyright law, as it stands today, is purely in the interest of corporate political donors.
I think he's commenting on the fact that the "male" character looks like an 11 year old girl. The female looks like an 11 year old girl too, she just has the boobs of an 18 year old.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it was called The Power Team, and it would be at the beginning and the end of a weird game show segment called Video Power.
All I remember about it was Mr. Big was trying to blast the characters back to their game worlds using some kind of magic cartridge thingy.
Heh, I love how people rib on PC gamers for not getting to play stuff like GTA or Halo until months or years after release. They mercilessly rub it in our face. Then when we try telling them how much better the PC version is with cleaner textures, higher resolution, better draw distance, MP3 playlists, etc. they tell us to shut the hell up.
I think the issue of clarity has to do with your choice of words. I understand your point now (I hope) but it wasn't clear or concise at all. Word choice has a huge impact on how people are percieved, or to put it in a more "pedestrian" way - You explain to me the difference between "whilst" and "while" and I'll stop calling you an elitist bastard.
More to the point, speaking as someone who works at a place with an animal lab (don't get me wrong, I hate it), we have no way at all to tell what kind of effects a drug will have on living tissue. All we have are assumptions and hypotheses based on past research but that's about it. Until we see what it does to a living thing and categorize ALL of its side effects it is not allowed anywhere near human test subjects. That's not a moral decision on our part because we get off on torturing little helpless bunnies, that's federal law and it's there for a good reason.
So it's fine for you to condemn medical advances gained through animal suffering while at the same time taking full advantage of them. Somehow I get the impression that you don't truly believe in the convictions of your statements because of that. I don't like animal testing either, I just realize that it's a necessary evil.
Let's say they decide to skip animal testing and go straight to human testing for a drug without first figuring out if it turns living tissue to jelly. Will you sign up for that? Would you want anyone you know signing up for that? If you truly believed everything you just said you'd be first in line. After all, your suffering is no different or more relevant than an animal's right? Or would you rather humankind as a whole just stop trying to cure things because in order to do so we may have to harm some animals?
I'm not even going to bother with the "center of the exhalted universe" statement because I honestly can't understand where you got that impression.
It's all well and good to say that now, being a reasonably healthy person, but think about it. Without animal testing you shouldn't have survived much past birth because babies are suceptible to all kinds of diseases. Mortality rates were insanely high before the advent of modern medicine. Fortunately for you we've developed vaccines for most childhood diseases. Oh, and mom probably wouldn't have managed to survive childbirth without current medical technology.
And I'm willing to bet that if you came down with something that was easily treated using modern medicine you wouldn't think twice about accepting treatment. Be thankful you live in this day and age where we're able to treat almost anything that can go wrong before you get all high and mighty and start looking down your nose at everybody.
Halo is an awesome online game. Every now and then you get a server with TKers but it's becoming easier and easier to find a good server. The vehicles add a nice twist as does the regenerating shield, making combat a little more tactical.
My only major gripe with this otherwise great game is how bloody powerful the pistol is in online play. You can empty 3 full clips of your machine gun at someone from 25 meters and not even deplete their shield yet someone from 100 yards away can plink you in the head twice with a pistol and you're dead.
Oh! Got one on the hook, just gotta reel him in.
Jesus Christ, lighten up and learn to take a joke.
Just imagine how many new factories Realdolls would have to open if these people started making serious money?
Good link. I simply can't understand what she's talking about. I took my girl to this movie over the weekend and she cried several times and she's not that big of a geek. She's never read any of the books and didn't know any of the story going into the trilogy. In fact I had to drag her kicking and screaming to Fellowship. It wasn't the "Viggo Effect" either, she was more interested in Arwen than Aragorn.
Maybe the reviewer didn't like it because she needs some deep psychological trauma in order for it to be interesting to her. Maybe if we found out that Denethor was molesting Faramir or something she'd have been happier.
Wow you're totally right! White middle-class males have it SO TOUGH nowadays!
WAH!
Sauron was already destroyed at that point
Heh no, I didn't realize my sig was formatted in the same way until I posted....that's why they tell us to use the preview button.
Quite a ballsy move on Turbine's part. There was speculation in the AC community as to whether or not the games (specifically AC2) were going to be shut down. By doing this, Turbine is not only showing their commitment to the franchise but they are also dumping the company that:
.NET platform.
- was responsible for four months of borked chat because they wanted to showcase their new
- was responsible for the server disaster in Jan/Feb.
- would not market the game!! Thus keeping the server populations dropping because of the first two problems.
I think you really hit on something there. you mentioned two of, what I think, are the best shooters ever, DOOM and Halo. I think part of what makes them so great is being able to turn your enemies into permanent parts of the scenery. There's some visceral pleasure you get walking back through a tough fought battleground littered with the bodies of your enemies.
I remember doing the blood splatters on the floor. Only problem was all those sprites on the screen at once would make my poor lil 486 SCREAM. It was so satisfying to see huge pools of the stuff after you took out a Hell Knight with your last 20 shotgun shells. One other thing I remember doing was making all of the "explodable" enemies' death animations into an endless loop of exploding piles of slop. The sound generated by a roomfull of those was pretty disgusting...That's it! I'm gonna go download DHE again!
I remember first learning how to lead with my rocket shots and getting a SWEET kill on my bud from across the level.
I used to use a program called DeHackEd that would let you utilize all of the information referenced in the doom.exe file. I remember spending days and days building the perfect DeHackEd patch and bringing it to my friend's dorm to try it out on him, only to be trumped by his semi-invisible "trip mines" that would sit on the ground and explode when you walked into em. They also had a negative mass so if you shot them they'd rocket towards you and you had to move the hell out of the way. Sure, we started out with the usual one-hit-kills-everything-you-see kind of weapons but they gradually got more unique and more strategic. GOD I loved DOOM hacking!
This survey acts as if the purpose and mission of the gaming industry is to produce socially relevant material. It's not gaming's responsibility to make sure that minors have the right context put to what they see on screen and it certainly isn't gaming's responsibility to make sure that their consumers get out and play a while.
To give an entire industry a report card based on how enriching their products are to children is like grading members of the public as human beings based on how much money they gave to charity.
I'm really curious, does the music industry have to endure this crap? How about the movie industry? Publishers? C'mon people, games are an entertainment media and have never pretended to be anything different. How the gaming industry got all the worries about American youth piled on their backs is beyond me.
I truly feel sorry for those who can't watch a movie and enjoy it because they feel the need to nitpick every damn thing. That being said I think they need keep it to themselves and spare those of us who don't care that the lead actress has blue-gray eyeshadow in one scene then green-gray eyeshadow in the next.
I'd call you a cynical SOB if it weren't so damn true. But then, I'm a cynical SOB.
I think you're missing the point. Yes it's illegal and yes people need to be taught a lesson. The comment was more directed at the laws, written with the entertainment lobbyists looking over congress' shoulders, that allow corporations already making disgusting amounts of money to basically ruin the lives of ordinary citizens. Given how easy it is to come up with a false positive or simply fake "proof" of infringement, there may well be innocent people caught up in a lawsuit with no choice but to pay a settlement or hire a lawyer (which costs more than the settlement) in order to prove that they did nothing wrong.
Even for those who did break the law, do you really think the industry lost $150,000 per song? Do you think it's right for them to go after people, not just children, anyone, for an amount that is orders of magnitude more than they will EVER see in their lifetime? That's what's wrong with what the industry is doing and that's why regular, decent people have a problem with it.
I think you've hit the exact problem with these laws right on their collective heads. There's no way for the defendant to be considered innocent until they hire a lawyer. So therefore the burden of proof, which was thought to be something the prosecution had to deal with, is now on the defendant. They have to fight and pay a LOT of money in order to prove to the judge what they knew all along. This isn't right and it certainly isn't civil. Copyright law, as it stands today, is purely in the interest of corporate political donors.
It was pretty recent, no more than a few weeks ago.
I think he's commenting on the fact that the "male" character looks like an 11 year old girl. The female looks like an 11 year old girl too, she just has the boobs of an 18 year old.