I remember back in the day when people collected images for the mere sake that it looked cool to have a semi-recognizable picture on a computer screen. I can clearly recall calling my parents from the other room to look at Captain Kirk in EGA color and them not being at all as impressed as I was. Or when VGA hit, balloons, and those images of the rose, the clown, and that girl with the hot lips were on every single floppy shareware disc.
Those were weird times. Downloading images from BBS's merely because it was cool to have your monitor display images.
Has anyone ever come across an archive of those old BBS EGA/VGA images?
It's worse. Way worse. This guy on zug.com experimented with some..."creative" signatures:
Next I tried the old standby, "X." I was kind of nervous about this one, and had a long story prepared about how I had recently been involved in a motorcycle accident, and during my sixteen months in traction had only been able to sign with an X, a signature which grew on me. At the last minute, I chickened out and added an additional squiggly. I don't know why I was concerned; I was just buying a beer at Jillian's.
Signing X, incidentally, is not a bad idea -- it's quick and easy, and if someone wants you to "sign on the X," it's already signed.
Actually, I think EA is pretty much on time with most of their games. I worked at an EB for 3+ years, and I can't remember many times when an EA release date - for any of their games, sports or otherwise - changed. That could be different now, since I stopped working at EB in 2003 (thank God), but I doubt it.
Good points, but when the movie industry announces a date, it sticks. This is especially true when a movie leaves the pre-production phase (scheduling an actor, for example). There are exceptions, but those are rare. Yet, there are very few video game companies that can accurately predict their own release date, even in the very last stages of production. With Fantastic Four, the date didn't change four months. It changed a few weeks. Compare that to our industry's epitome of professionalism: Valve. Would a movie studio have announced a firm date for, say, Spider-man 2 in multiple magazines, let that date pass without saying a word, and then announce to weeks after that date that it wouldn't be out for another year?
Maybe the key is, as you indirectly suggest: secrecy. Game companies have time and again proved that they are incapable of keeping their projects under wraps when they don't have a specific date. Valve might have been an exception with their announcement of HL2 supposedly only a few months before September 30th, but even they were unable to keep this date.
EA and Nintendo are some of the few companies that have developed a practice of not announcing their game without a street date, and then sticking it (although Nintendo wasn't always this way). Where's the rest of the industry?
The basic problem is that the movie industry has developed a predictable efficiency, and the game industry has yet to do that. Perhaps that's why so many movie studios favor EA; they're mostly on time, and they get it done (granted, at the cost of overworked employees and p-oed wives).
I still contend that if the movie industry can more or less accurately predict a release date before even starting production, eventually so can the gaming industry. With the new consoles, this is going to hit critical mass. It's only going to get worse for the game industry. It needs to start developing better tools.
It seems that with every disaster that NASA or an astronomer discovers in the universe, the news always has to add, "If it were closer to Earth, we'd all be dead!"
Well, duh. I know that intergalactic disasters are a hard sell for primetime news, but is it really necessary to endanger Earth every f-ing time something in the universe blows up? As our ability to perceive and record these incidents gets better, it's going to get very tired, very fast. "Major sun flare on Alpha Centauri! If We Were Living on the Sun, We Would All Suffer First Degree Burns or More!"
Is it the news outlets adding the "If X was close to Earth we'd be dead" or is it the scientists seeking to justify their work? All this article writes is, "If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said." Did the reporter's mom say that? Grr.
Obviously not posted by a business owner of any sort. 4% loss may sound paltry
In retail, you're doing pretty damn well if you only have a 4% shrink rate. In fact, most mall stores hover at or under 10%, depending on the industry. It's their right to quibble over that 4%, it is their 4% - I'm just saying that it's not cost effective to worry about that 4% when there are other places to throw cash than Macrovision that might result in greater profits.
Actually, if I recall correctly FFX wasn't even announced when the PS2 launched. MGS2, yes, although that was a long ways off. Honestly, if there were titles that were pre-emptively driving system sales, it was the Bouncer (sadly) and GT3. For that period of after Christmas to the spring following, there was very little game expectation. I should know, because EB employees are partially evaluated on how many preorders a store gets, and it was hell to get anyone to preorder a damn thing for the first year or so after launch.
Besides, even the expectation - if it had an impact at all, which I say it didn't - was part of the branding. You said yourself that "everyone knew that Sony had the developers lined up," yet in the beginning Microsoft had nearly as many developers lined up as Sony did save perhaps Square (this is in a pre-GTA3 world where Rockstar mattered). People believed that Sony would bring them good games. Moreover, if game expectation had anything to do with it, gamers expectations for Xbox Live from Microsoft may have countered it slightly.
Listen, I want to say that it's about the games, but that's just not true. Even the expectation of good games for a system is part of branding, image, and identity.
I followed Square . . . Who cares about the brand?
Apparently, you.
Square are not gaminig gods (cf. Bouncer). Yet you referred to the brand, not even a series of games. It just so happens that Square sold you on their brand even better than Sony or Nintendo. But, even with that you're in the minority by following a publisher (save, perhaps, EA Sports). Secondly, Sony owns Square, at least in theory. So you're still connected to the brand of Sony, yes?
And remember what I said before? Nintendo was the major brand, yet the N64 was quite a big flop. Why did the two major brands fall so quickly, if the brand is all that matters?
Good point, but I contend it's still the brand. I'm not talking "Brand Loyalty," which is what you're referring to. I'm talking brand. What Nintendo failed to do was develop a brand that grew with their audience. The PSX had. Nintendo marketed the N64 to kids. Look at the design of the system; round edges, colorful buttons. Compare that to the PSX. Straight edges. Looks like a CD player that would have fit into with 5 other audio devices on an AV shelf. Which has to do directly with brand.
Even the games have something to do with brand, so I'm not discounting them entirely. But the games on both the N64 and the PSX built into the brands they had established. Mario 64 and Pilotwings catered to the kid image Nintendo was fostering, and Tomb Raider and Ridge Racer to the all growed up PSX image. Brand.
What might have hurt Xbox in round one is that it just was not an established brand. Those who knew about it kept saying (wrongly) that it was just a PC, or that it would bluescreen every five minutes (again: BRAND). Five years later, and it's clear they've mastered image/brand as well as Sony ever did. What do you always see in the tour bus of bands on MTV? Halo and Xbox. What am I always seeing in tuned cars? Nintendos? PS2s? Nope: xboxen.
Which is why round two of Xbox v. Playstation will be more interesting than one. I love Nintendo will all my gaming heart, but I swear to god this lame ass talk of revolution and changing things is the wrong way to go. Well, right as in creating good games - but in terms of winning the war? They're hopeless. And that makes me sad.
I assmaned - er, assistant managed - at a major EB during the launch of the Dreamcast, the PS2, the Xbox, and the Gamecube. That means that, at least in the geographical area of our store, I knew more about the people buying these systems than Ballmer, the EB President, or any of Sony's focus groups.
It's not all about the games. The Playstation2 launched with zero great games and I do mean zero. You have no idea how many times gamers would walk in our store during the first 3-5 months after the PS2 launch and just stare at the PS2 wall blankly, as if a great game would suddenly materialize on the shelf before their very eyes. SSX did ok, and so did Madden. But otherwise, the launch was dismal. It was such a game wasteland for the PS2 that people thought Onimusha was the best game since Super Mario. To make it worse, there was not only a shortage of systems, there was a shortage of memory cards. Logistically, the PS2 launch was a failure.
Yet, even before the good stuff starting showing up, it was clear that the PS2 was a better system seller than the Xbox. Was it the backwards compatibility? Nope. Most people who bought the PS2 would buy one or two PS1 games, come in two weeks later, and bitch about the crappiness of PS1 games on the PS2 and never buy another. DVD playback probably had something to do with it. GTA3? No - by then (Christmas) it was already clear that the PS2 was doing far better than the Xbox and GC combined.
It was merely that it was named the Playstation. In the end, it was brand, not games. I wish - I really wish - that it were the games that mattered. But in the end, it's not. What's sad is that with the beginning of the XBox, I saw this "it's all about the games stupid" philosophy in the Xbox coporate guard. The good news is that I think XBox2 will do better (and therefore provider better competition for Sony - always good). The bad news? I think the new guys in charge of Xbox know/learned that it's all about the brand stupid.
Further proof? Cf. Sega, who's last 5-7 years, from Dreamcast to 2K sports, has been a battle against brand.
Good games making a system, and bad games breaking it, is a myth. In the end, brand is almost all that matters (And maybe DVD playback).
Can you explain how the writing of this tv show transcends SF writing as we know it, and how it redefines SF writing?
Sure. It transcends sf writing because it actually isn't very science fiction-y. It excludes all the geeky lingo indicative of sf shows, like Farscape's emphasis on alien cultures and Star Trek's on technology. I should concede that Firefly did this ("Ok, repeat that in stupid captain speak"), but it just seems - to me anyway - that the writing on BSG is even tighter than Firefly. Although not as clever.
BSG redefines sf writing because it brings us to bow of a more Ray Bradbury sense of SF than an Assimovian one. The writing is about relationships in BSG, not robots, not warp drives, not Alien X. It's about a father's piss-poor relationship with his son, or a washed up XO with his controlling ex-wife. On a society wide scale, it's about a culture's relationship with their religion, and with their creations.
Also, it might help if I clarify: I was referring to the scifi genre or TV.
leaves behind all the lingo that we're still dredging from Star Trek. My wife is a good barometer of the level of this kind of language. Even shows like Farscape delve too far into describing things (in Farscape's case often alien cultures) that have no correlation to everyday life. Firefly was certainly a pioneer in this
You want to find the torrents that are so underground that only the people who are on it know of it. The way to do that is to Network Network Network.
Underground=technical obscurity. The harder it is to logistically download something, the more underground it is. So, go with the solution that has been working for 30+ years: just use newsgroups or IRC.
I'm a historian, and I've learned that this kind of interupted work flow is nothing new. In fact, for most of our history, humans have worked this kind of "interuptive" work flow as opposed to straight working. Rural work often meant short periods of hard work punctuated by frequent but shorter periods of rest. Many times, another task demanded priority, and the workflow would change again . Labor historian Herbert Gutman has written some fantastic essays on how people carried over these agrarian work habits into industrialization. For example, workers would pool money to hire someone to read the newspaper to them while they worked, they would drink on the job, or sing songs while on the line. Here's a typical work day for a New York City dock worker in the 1840s that Gutman dug up:
Begin work about 7:00am?.
8:30-9:30am - "Aunt Arlie McVane" arrives selling baked goods. (Work stops or slows during her visit).
10:30-11:00am - "Johnnie Gogean, an English candyman arrives to peddle his sweets. (15 minute break to consume candy),br>
11:00am - Whiskey break for the majority of the crew. (Length of break is not specified)
3:30pm "Uncle Jack Gridder" shows up to distribute a "cake lunch" to workers. (Length of break is not specified)
5:00pm "Johnnie Gogean" returns with more candy. (10 minute break to consume)
Continue work until sunset
The basic problem is that in a postindustrial society, we are told to associate this kind of workflow as unproductive or even lazy. It's not. It's how humans have been working for thousands of years. To work uninterupted, straight for 8 hours, is hard for us to do because it's an abnormal practice.
I learned to tell time by watching the original Battlestar Galactica. It came on in Edmonton at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons. I remember many times looking up at the oven clock hands trying to determine whether I should be parked in front of the TV or whether I had time left to play with legos. When it wasn't Sunday afternoon, my friends and I would pretend to be Viper pilots and inevitably end up fighting over who got to be Starbuck and who had to play Apollo.
So, over the last twenty years, a certain amount of nostalgia has accumulated around Battlestar Galactica in my heart, not at all unlike most of us here. So when Ron Moore and the ScFi channel finally got the rights to the show, everyone was excited - until Moore said that, quite plainly, that avid fans of the original fan may not appreciate his version, what he called a "reimagining." Moore made a number of changes that bothered me, but the seemingly most significant tore at the core of my identity: Starbuck would be a girl.
Starbuck and Han Solo were about as close to being models for masculinity as anyone besides my father could get. Ask me to word associate manliness, and Starbuck would fall fairly close to the top.
And Moore had ripped that from me, from my heart.
So imagine my surprise when I watched the mini series and it was not only good, but great. And Starbuck was still, somehow, Starbuck. Baltar, for all his moments of brilliance in this series, was still goofy Baltar. The vipers were still there. Adama was still hard nosed. Yet, I had doubts whether someone could maintain this level of quality in a TV series. The original Battlestar Galactica certainly didn't.
So imagine my surprise - again - when the first few episodes, which I watched courtesy Internet, were even better than the mini series. In fact, this new series renders the original Battlestar completely irrelevant. I realize now that there are only a couple of good things about the original Battlestar Galactica now. First, it provided my friends and I uncountable hours of playtime. Secondly, it somehow enabled this new re-imagination. Even Richard Hatch, the actor who played Apollo in the original series, acts better in this new series (this time as a revolutionary).
To be fair, the original Battlestar is very much a product of late seventies television. I used to argue that it wasn't, but honestly - the show really was an attempt to bring Star Wars to the small screen. But if this new Battlestar had similarly been a product of the 00s, it would've been a reality show set in a business environment where Adam eats scorpions to impress friends.
This new Battlestar Galactica not only transcends the science fiction genre and redefines it, it also takes television a step further. Even my darling Firefly, in all its civil war cum scifi greatness, feels conventional when put next to Moore's Battlestar.
I'm not sure what it means if we have a generation of kids basing their masculinity on a female Starbuck (although I'm not so sure kids should even be watching this new Battlestar). Regardless of the consequences, Moore's new Battlestar is easily the best TV show on right now, and maybe even one of the best shows of all time. My wife and I have both cried and cheered during the show, and she usually reserves that for shows like Project Runway. During episode ten, I sported a broad, beaming smile in sync with the emotion on the screen.
It's that good.
Good job Ron and friends. You should be proud, you managed to pull off the stunt of making my male model a female, and make me happy you did it.
To elaborate: this style of filming (or shooting if you're in TV) is supposed to replicate our own eye movements. If somewhere were to turn out iris into a camera, (the idea is that) it would resemble Cinema Verite.
That said, most of us spend most of our day staring at a screen, so maybe that's why we find it so unrealistic. Also funny is that most of modern TV has, on one level or another, adopted this style of filming as well. If I recall for American TV, NYPD Blue was the first, but ER quickly picked it. It's just that this is the first time geeks have seen it used on TV.
Steam offers an alternative. True, it requires an internet connection. (Oh no.) True, it's not perfect. But it's got a MUCH better future then the alternative.
So what happens to our precious Half Life 2 in ten years when Gabe Newell suddenly decides to start flying into space or kayaking instead of making computer games, and disbands Valve? Or when they decide to can Steam for Steam 2? While copy protection blows, Steam doesn't really help the consumer because they are as reliant on the company as they were with copy protection - perhaps even more so. For example, I have long since lost my code wheel to Starflight, now nearly a 20 year old game. For kicks, I tried contacting EA (the publisher) who had no idea what Starflight was. Thankfully, I had already found a crack on the net. The dependence is easily kicked.
But let's say that your dream of complete Steamed anti-piracy comes true. Let's say that with the next expansion pack, the only way you can possibly play it is by verifying with Steam's servers. Then, the next year, Gabe Nevell decides to start flying into space instead of working on games and shuts Valve down. So where's your precious Steam then, when it doesn't even exist and you can't play HL2 for old skool kicks? You have no physical product to even prove that you bought the game. Sure, ok; realistically someone somewhere would come up with a solution, but it would be akin to downloading a crack now. How does that solve anything? What's more is that I can lend Starflight to anyone I want. Can you do that with Steam? Nope. Is that exlusion in the EULA? Nope. Do I have a guarantee that as long as I own Half Life 2 and the PC to play it on, I can play it? Nope. You can only play HL2 on Valve's terms, and on Valve's timetable. How is that helping the consumer?
You talk about Valve software as if they're some kind of perfect Messiah sent to rescue gamers. Well, they can admittedly produce great games (two of them, to be exact). But Steam blew my system a four hour kiss, and then it took 4 more months - four months - until they released a patch that stopped the stuttering and made the game playable. Remember September 30th? They openly lied to you about their release date. They've also screwed the mod community several times over. Sorry bud, but they are as much the "corporate pointy-hairs" as Vivendi.
If there's a limited amount of "power" in this publisher-game studio-consumer relationship, all that's happened with Steam is a transfer of power from publisher to game studio. None of it comes down to the consumer. In fact, it seems to be robbing us of it. I prefer the "system" now in comparison Steam. I'm not an idiot for thinking so either, and if it means helping Vivendi so I have more control over products I rightfully purchased and own, than so be it.
In unreleated, more recent news, Del.icio.us just received a cease and desist letter from the MPAA. The MPAA told reporters, "All people had to do was look at del.icio.us most popular and they'd see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncovered new places to find the files they were looking for."
myukew wrote in to let us know about a viral marketing campaign by Nintendo that went awry.
So, I wonder what was actually the viral marketing campaign: posting a job on Monster.com where 90 people read it and then replied, or a bunch of games news sites like games.slashdot and gamesdaily rehashing a statement by a PR read by hundreds of gamers if not thousands?
Or, more eloquently: "Who's the more foolish...the fool or the fool who follows him?"
Slashdot Mirror
I remember back in the day when people collected images for the mere sake that it looked cool to have a semi-recognizable picture on a computer screen. I can clearly recall calling my parents from the other room to look at Captain Kirk in EGA color and them not being at all as impressed as I was. Or when VGA hit, balloons, and those images of the rose, the clown, and that girl with the hot lips were on every single floppy shareware disc.
Those were weird times. Downloading images from BBS's merely because it was cool to have your monitor display images.
Has anyone ever come across an archive of those old BBS EGA/VGA images?
It's worse. Way worse. This guy on zug.com experimented with some..."creative" signatures:
Next I tried the old standby, "X." I was kind of nervous about this one, and had a long story prepared about how I had recently been involved in a motorcycle accident, and during my sixteen months in traction had only been able to sign with an X, a signature which grew on me. At the last minute, I chickened out and added an additional squiggly. I don't know why I was concerned; I was just buying a beer at Jillian's.
Signing X, incidentally, is not a bad idea -- it's quick and easy, and if someone wants you to "sign on the X," it's already signed.
The Credit Card Prank
The Credit Card Prank II
Actually, I think EA is pretty much on time with most of their games. I worked at an EB for 3+ years, and I can't remember many times when an EA release date - for any of their games, sports or otherwise - changed. That could be different now, since I stopped working at EB in 2003 (thank God), but I doubt it.
Good points, but when the movie industry announces a date, it sticks. This is especially true when a movie leaves the pre-production phase (scheduling an actor, for example). There are exceptions, but those are rare. Yet, there are very few video game companies that can accurately predict their own release date, even in the very last stages of production. With Fantastic Four, the date didn't change four months. It changed a few weeks. Compare that to our industry's epitome of professionalism: Valve. Would a movie studio have announced a firm date for, say, Spider-man 2 in multiple magazines, let that date pass without saying a word, and then announce to weeks after that date that it wouldn't be out for another year?
Maybe the key is, as you indirectly suggest: secrecy. Game companies have time and again proved that they are incapable of keeping their projects under wraps when they don't have a specific date. Valve might have been an exception with their announcement of HL2 supposedly only a few months before September 30th, but even they were unable to keep this date.
EA and Nintendo are some of the few companies that have developed a practice of not announcing their game without a street date, and then sticking it (although Nintendo wasn't always this way). Where's the rest of the industry?
The basic problem is that the movie industry has developed a predictable efficiency, and the game industry has yet to do that. Perhaps that's why so many movie studios favor EA; they're mostly on time, and they get it done (granted, at the cost of overworked employees and p-oed wives).
I still contend that if the movie industry can more or less accurately predict a release date before even starting production, eventually so can the gaming industry. With the new consoles, this is going to hit critical mass. It's only going to get worse for the game industry. It needs to start developing better tools.
And maybe unions.
It seems that with every disaster that NASA or an astronomer discovers in the universe, the news always has to add, "If it were closer to Earth, we'd all be dead!"
Well, duh. I know that intergalactic disasters are a hard sell for primetime news, but is it really necessary to endanger Earth every f-ing time something in the universe blows up? As our ability to perceive and record these incidents gets better, it's going to get very tired, very fast. "Major sun flare on Alpha Centauri! If We Were Living on the Sun, We Would All Suffer First Degree Burns or More!"
Is it the news outlets adding the "If X was close to Earth we'd be dead" or is it the scientists seeking to justify their work? All this article writes is, "If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said." Did the reporter's mom say that? Grr.
I can't wait until EQ3, when the pizza guy will walk it over to your computer desk and put it in your mouth.
Have you tried contacting the EFF? My hunch is they're looking for a test case.
Obviously not posted by a business owner of any sort. 4% loss may sound paltry
In retail, you're doing pretty damn well if you only have a 4% shrink rate. In fact, most mall stores hover at or under 10%, depending on the industry. It's their right to quibble over that 4%, it is their 4% - I'm just saying that it's not cost effective to worry about that 4% when there are other places to throw cash than Macrovision that might result in greater profits.
Actually, if I recall correctly FFX wasn't even announced when the PS2 launched. MGS2, yes, although that was a long ways off. Honestly, if there were titles that were pre-emptively driving system sales, it was the Bouncer (sadly) and GT3. For that period of after Christmas to the spring following, there was very little game expectation. I should know, because EB employees are partially evaluated on how many preorders a store gets, and it was hell to get anyone to preorder a damn thing for the first year or so after launch.
Besides, even the expectation - if it had an impact at all, which I say it didn't - was part of the branding. You said yourself that "everyone knew that Sony had the developers lined up," yet in the beginning Microsoft had nearly as many developers lined up as Sony did save perhaps Square (this is in a pre-GTA3 world where Rockstar mattered). People believed that Sony would bring them good games. Moreover, if game expectation had anything to do with it, gamers expectations for Xbox Live from Microsoft may have countered it slightly.
Listen, I want to say that it's about the games, but that's just not true. Even the expectation of good games for a system is part of branding, image, and identity.
I followed Square . . . Who cares about the brand?
Apparently, you.
Square are not gaminig gods (cf. Bouncer). Yet you referred to the brand, not even a series of games. It just so happens that Square sold you on their brand even better than Sony or Nintendo. But, even with that you're in the minority by following a publisher (save, perhaps, EA Sports). Secondly, Sony owns Square, at least in theory. So you're still connected to the brand of Sony, yes?
And remember what I said before? Nintendo was the major brand, yet the N64 was quite a big flop. Why did the two major brands fall so quickly, if the brand is all that matters?
Good point, but I contend it's still the brand. I'm not talking "Brand Loyalty," which is what you're referring to. I'm talking brand. What Nintendo failed to do was develop a brand that grew with their audience. The PSX had. Nintendo marketed the N64 to kids. Look at the design of the system; round edges, colorful buttons. Compare that to the PSX. Straight edges. Looks like a CD player that would have fit into with 5 other audio devices on an AV shelf. Which has to do directly with brand.
Even the games have something to do with brand, so I'm not discounting them entirely. But the games on both the N64 and the PSX built into the brands they had established. Mario 64 and Pilotwings catered to the kid image Nintendo was fostering, and Tomb Raider and Ridge Racer to the all growed up PSX image. Brand.
What might have hurt Xbox in round one is that it just was not an established brand. Those who knew about it kept saying (wrongly) that it was just a PC, or that it would bluescreen every five minutes (again: BRAND). Five years later, and it's clear they've mastered image/brand as well as Sony ever did. What do you always see in the tour bus of bands on MTV? Halo and Xbox. What am I always seeing in tuned cars? Nintendos? PS2s? Nope: xboxen.
Which is why round two of Xbox v. Playstation will be more interesting than one. I love Nintendo will all my gaming heart, but I swear to god this lame ass talk of revolution and changing things is the wrong way to go. Well, right as in creating good games - but in terms of winning the war? They're hopeless. And that makes me sad.
I assmaned - er, assistant managed - at a major EB during the launch of the Dreamcast, the PS2, the Xbox, and the Gamecube. That means that, at least in the geographical area of our store, I knew more about the people buying these systems than Ballmer, the EB President, or any of Sony's focus groups.
It's not all about the games. The Playstation2 launched with zero great games and I do mean zero. You have no idea how many times gamers would walk in our store during the first 3-5 months after the PS2 launch and just stare at the PS2 wall blankly, as if a great game would suddenly materialize on the shelf before their very eyes. SSX did ok, and so did Madden. But otherwise, the launch was dismal. It was such a game wasteland for the PS2 that people thought Onimusha was the best game since Super Mario. To make it worse, there was not only a shortage of systems, there was a shortage of memory cards. Logistically, the PS2 launch was a failure.
Yet, even before the good stuff starting showing up, it was clear that the PS2 was a better system seller than the Xbox. Was it the backwards compatibility? Nope. Most people who bought the PS2 would buy one or two PS1 games, come in two weeks later, and bitch about the crappiness of PS1 games on the PS2 and never buy another. DVD playback probably had something to do with it. GTA3? No - by then (Christmas) it was already clear that the PS2 was doing far better than the Xbox and GC combined.
It was merely that it was named the Playstation. In the end, it was brand, not games. I wish - I really wish - that it were the games that mattered. But in the end, it's not. What's sad is that with the beginning of the XBox, I saw this "it's all about the games stupid" philosophy in the Xbox coporate guard. The good news is that I think XBox2 will do better (and therefore provider better competition for Sony - always good). The bad news? I think the new guys in charge of Xbox know/learned that it's all about the brand stupid.
Further proof? Cf. Sega, who's last 5-7 years, from Dreamcast to 2K sports, has been a battle against brand.
Good games making a system, and bad games breaking it, is a myth. In the end, brand is almost all that matters (And maybe DVD playback).
What? I lost you after Score:3, Insightful.
Can you explain how the writing of this tv show transcends SF writing as we know it, and how it redefines SF writing?
Sure. It transcends sf writing because it actually isn't very science fiction-y. It excludes all the geeky lingo indicative of sf shows, like Farscape's emphasis on alien cultures and Star Trek's on technology. I should concede that Firefly did this ("Ok, repeat that in stupid captain speak"), but it just seems - to me anyway - that the writing on BSG is even tighter than Firefly. Although not as clever.
BSG redefines sf writing because it brings us to bow of a more Ray Bradbury sense of SF than an Assimovian one. The writing is about relationships in BSG, not robots, not warp drives, not Alien X. It's about a father's piss-poor relationship with his son, or a washed up XO with his controlling ex-wife. On a society wide scale, it's about a culture's relationship with their religion, and with their creations.
Also, it might help if I clarify: I was referring to the scifi genre or TV. leaves behind all the lingo that we're still dredging from Star Trek. My wife is a good barometer of the level of this kind of language. Even shows like Farscape delve too far into describing things (in Farscape's case often alien cultures) that have no correlation to everyday life. Firefly was certainly a pioneer in this
A business reporter for Slate is asking whether ABC/Fortuneis poised to collapse, based on years of industry observation . . .
You want to find the torrents that are so underground that only the people who are on it know of it. The way to do that is to Network Network Network.
Underground=technical obscurity. The harder it is to logistically download something, the more underground it is. So, go with the solution that has been working for 30+ years: just use newsgroups or IRC.
There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them.
Bittorrent link please?
I'm a historian, and I've learned that this kind of interupted work flow is nothing new. In fact, for most of our history, humans have worked this kind of "interuptive" work flow as opposed to straight working. Rural work often meant short periods of hard work punctuated by frequent but shorter periods of rest. Many times, another task demanded priority, and the workflow would change again . Labor historian Herbert Gutman has written some fantastic essays on how people carried over these agrarian work habits into industrialization. For example, workers would pool money to hire someone to read the newspaper to them while they worked, they would drink on the job, or sing songs while on the line. Here's a typical work day for a New York City dock worker in the 1840s that Gutman dug up:
Begin work about 7:00am?.
8:30-9:30am - "Aunt Arlie McVane" arrives selling baked goods. (Work stops or slows during her visit).
10:30-11:00am - "Johnnie Gogean, an English candyman arrives to peddle his sweets. (15 minute break to consume candy),br> 11:00am - Whiskey break for the majority of the crew. (Length of break is not specified)
3:30pm "Uncle Jack Gridder" shows up to distribute a "cake lunch" to workers. (Length of break is not specified)
5:00pm "Johnnie Gogean" returns with more candy. (10 minute break to consume)
Continue work until sunset
The basic problem is that in a postindustrial society, we are told to associate this kind of workflow as unproductive or even lazy. It's not. It's how humans have been working for thousands of years. To work uninterupted, straight for 8 hours, is hard for us to do because it's an abnormal practice.
I learned to tell time by watching the original Battlestar Galactica. It came on in Edmonton at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons. I remember many times looking up at the oven clock hands trying to determine whether I should be parked in front of the TV or whether I had time left to play with legos. When it wasn't Sunday afternoon, my friends and I would pretend to be Viper pilots and inevitably end up fighting over who got to be Starbuck and who had to play Apollo.
So, over the last twenty years, a certain amount of nostalgia has accumulated around Battlestar Galactica in my heart, not at all unlike most of us here. So when Ron Moore and the ScFi channel finally got the rights to the show, everyone was excited - until Moore said that, quite plainly, that avid fans of the original fan may not appreciate his version, what he called a "reimagining." Moore made a number of changes that bothered me, but the seemingly most significant tore at the core of my identity: Starbuck would be a girl.
Starbuck and Han Solo were about as close to being models for masculinity as anyone besides my father could get. Ask me to word associate manliness, and Starbuck would fall fairly close to the top.
And Moore had ripped that from me, from my heart.
So imagine my surprise when I watched the mini series and it was not only good, but great. And Starbuck was still, somehow, Starbuck. Baltar, for all his moments of brilliance in this series, was still goofy Baltar. The vipers were still there. Adama was still hard nosed. Yet, I had doubts whether someone could maintain this level of quality in a TV series. The original Battlestar Galactica certainly didn't.
So imagine my surprise - again - when the first few episodes, which I watched courtesy Internet, were even better than the mini series. In fact, this new series renders the original Battlestar completely irrelevant. I realize now that there are only a couple of good things about the original Battlestar Galactica now. First, it provided my friends and I uncountable hours of playtime. Secondly, it somehow enabled this new re-imagination. Even Richard Hatch, the actor who played Apollo in the original series, acts better in this new series (this time as a revolutionary).
To be fair, the original Battlestar is very much a product of late seventies television. I used to argue that it wasn't, but honestly - the show really was an attempt to bring Star Wars to the small screen. But if this new Battlestar had similarly been a product of the 00s, it would've been a reality show set in a business environment where Adam eats scorpions to impress friends.
This new Battlestar Galactica not only transcends the science fiction genre and redefines it, it also takes television a step further. Even my darling Firefly, in all its civil war cum scifi greatness, feels conventional when put next to Moore's Battlestar.
I'm not sure what it means if we have a generation of kids basing their masculinity on a female Starbuck (although I'm not so sure kids should even be watching this new Battlestar). Regardless of the consequences, Moore's new Battlestar is easily the best TV show on right now, and maybe even one of the best shows of all time. My wife and I have both cried and cheered during the show, and she usually reserves that for shows like Project Runway. During episode ten, I sported a broad, beaming smile in sync with the emotion on the screen.
It's that good.
Good job Ron and friends. You should be proud, you managed to pull off the stunt of making my male model a female, and make me happy you did it.
To elaborate: this style of filming (or shooting if you're in TV) is supposed to replicate our own eye movements. If somewhere were to turn out iris into a camera, (the idea is that) it would resemble Cinema Verite.
That said, most of us spend most of our day staring at a screen, so maybe that's why we find it so unrealistic. Also funny is that most of modern TV has, on one level or another, adopted this style of filming as well. If I recall for American TV, NYPD Blue was the first, but ER quickly picked it. It's just that this is the first time geeks have seen it used on TV.
This link lets you experience the moon just as the Apollo missions' astronauts did -- almost as you were there
The moon blows. Who wants to see crosshairs everywhere?
Steam offers an alternative. True, it requires an internet connection. (Oh no.) True, it's not perfect. But it's got a MUCH better future then the alternative.
So what happens to our precious Half Life 2 in ten years when Gabe Newell suddenly decides to start flying into space or kayaking instead of making computer games, and disbands Valve? Or when they decide to can Steam for Steam 2? While copy protection blows, Steam doesn't really help the consumer because they are as reliant on the company as they were with copy protection - perhaps even more so. For example, I have long since lost my code wheel to Starflight, now nearly a 20 year old game. For kicks, I tried contacting EA (the publisher) who had no idea what Starflight was. Thankfully, I had already found a crack on the net. The dependence is easily kicked.
But let's say that your dream of complete Steamed anti-piracy comes true. Let's say that with the next expansion pack, the only way you can possibly play it is by verifying with Steam's servers. Then, the next year, Gabe Nevell decides to start flying into space instead of working on games and shuts Valve down. So where's your precious Steam then, when it doesn't even exist and you can't play HL2 for old skool kicks? You have no physical product to even prove that you bought the game. Sure, ok; realistically someone somewhere would come up with a solution, but it would be akin to downloading a crack now. How does that solve anything? What's more is that I can lend Starflight to anyone I want. Can you do that with Steam? Nope. Is that exlusion in the EULA? Nope. Do I have a guarantee that as long as I own Half Life 2 and the PC to play it on, I can play it? Nope. You can only play HL2 on Valve's terms, and on Valve's timetable. How is that helping the consumer?
You talk about Valve software as if they're some kind of perfect Messiah sent to rescue gamers. Well, they can admittedly produce great games (two of them, to be exact). But Steam blew my system a four hour kiss, and then it took 4 more months - four months - until they released a patch that stopped the stuttering and made the game playable. Remember September 30th? They openly lied to you about their release date. They've also screwed the mod community several times over. Sorry bud, but they are as much the "corporate pointy-hairs" as Vivendi.
If there's a limited amount of "power" in this publisher-game studio-consumer relationship, all that's happened with Steam is a transfer of power from publisher to game studio. None of it comes down to the consumer. In fact, it seems to be robbing us of it. I prefer the "system" now in comparison Steam. I'm not an idiot for thinking so either, and if it means helping Vivendi so I have more control over products I rightfully purchased and own, than so be it.
In unreleated, more recent news, Del.icio.us just received a cease and desist letter from the MPAA. The MPAA told reporters, "All people had to do was look at del.icio.us most popular and they'd see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncovered new places to find the files they were looking for."
myukew wrote in to let us know about a viral marketing campaign by Nintendo that went awry.
So, I wonder what was actually the viral marketing campaign: posting a job on Monster.com where 90 people read it and then replied, or a bunch of games news sites like games.slashdot and gamesdaily rehashing a statement by a PR read by hundreds of gamers if not thousands?
Or, more eloquently: "Who's the more foolish...the fool or the fool who follows him?"