that reflects my thinking too. this scientist has spectacularly misplaced priorities. we let corporations and our consumer culture piss all over the jewel of the solar system, but want to keep Mars free from a cubic meter of spacecraft?
The word "bias" gets tossed around a little too much in American discourse these days. How, pray tell, might we honestly construe this man as biased?
It isn't "biased" to be educated or to have the experience necessary to provide a thoughtful and determinative analysis.
Indeed, this man's entire lifetime has been dedicated to editing a series of books whose entire modus operendi is to present information factually and to be explicitly aware of their own limitations. An encyclopaedia is by defination a reference work, a limited collection of reliable information that leads you to further study. That is the opposite of "biased", which is to present self-serving conclusions based on a self-serving assemblage of information.
One thing many Western societies lack right now (but, I would offer, America in particular), is widely accepted basis for producing legitimate knowledge. There are serious concerns with the Wikipedia as a source of authoritative information that exacerbate this problem, not address it.
I welcome this man's comments rather than condemn them.
there isnt a problem with digital records so long as you keep your formats up to date and have backups. generally, it seems like you should revisit data that is two years old to check if the format needs to be brought up to date before its too late.
another good idea is to avoid anythign proprietary, including weird Microsfot implementations of common standards. saving digital photos as simple.jpgs is a better idea than saving them as photoshop documents for example.
also, dont forget that scripting can be your friend. i use all kinds of applescripts to manage and batch-process my colleciton 1000's of digital photos so that i dont have to drop them into something proprietary like iPhoto.
i hear what you are saying about business consolidation, but do you really feel that the video game industry is experiencing a nadir of quality right now? what strikes me about the names "sierra", "acclaim" is that they produced a lot of garbage the market wasnt buying, adn that their demise is not an indicator of things gone astray but things going right.
the games i've been playing the last year or two have been the best ever, and the sheer number of quality titles is greater than ive ever known in the past. the quality of the art is great, gameplay is solid, new technology gives us better physics and cleaner graphics.
i do agree that gameplay in the mainstream can be quite derivative, and that there are many examples in well-established genres that really beg the question "what more is there to do?" but that said, i wouldnt declare the FPS genre stiltified when i play something like Doom3 or grand theft auto, or the RPG genre lame when i see stuff like Jade and baten Kaitos coming down the pipe. and beside those most obvious of blockbuster games, there is also a plentitude of great, quirky games like never before: donkey konga, that crazy mat game that people use as an aerobics workout, the innovation of open-ended titles like Grand Theft Auto, Morrowind, or some MMORPGs, and some nintendo novelties like Viewtiful Joe, Paper Mario 2, or Pikmin 2. there are many many more (have you tried Gish?) but those came to mind first for the sake of arguement.
honestly, i'm being kind when i declare this particular invention a complete POS - piece of sh1t.
why?
this vehicle tries to mix the best of inter-urban mass transportation (which will accept as being rail) with the best of intra-urban transportation - the car. but the failure is that you have a stack of passengers all seeking particular - rather than common - destinations.
good effort, but not really the solution, which is a system of inter-urban (rail) transportation with intra-urban individualized personal transportation (something electrically run annd commonly owned, like Amsterdam's public and freely interchangeable system of bicycle sharing, but with high-tech golfcarts.)
maybe the developers, liscencers and money people all got into the World of Warcraft beta and discovered that their product sucked in comparison.
why else would you drop a three year investment without even trying to see if it would achieve a modicum of success?
"Does IGN/GameSpy accurately represent the mainstream?"
Does IGN accurately represent anything? their writting has become horribly boring over the last few years, and the publication lacks any personality. when i am talking about something as meaningless as videogames, i tend to like a little fun, attiude and bombastic editorializing. gamespy is a lot better than IGN in this respect, but i fear tht it has been purchased (oh, sorry, merged) just for its subscriber base and technology, not for its culture or writting style.
i consider the saviours of game journalism to be some of the smaller blog sites like Gamegrrl, Penny Arcade, or even Waterthread (the later only if you are into MMORPGs).
hey dude, i used to be you, and three interdisciplinary degrees later, i still have my tendencies.
but intelligence isn't that useful if it doesn't accomplish anything. few people or places are going to pay you for the apples you pluck from the brilliance tree and toss their way. neither will half-completed projects get you much recognition. what i've learned is to stop playing "Good Will Hunting", to stop romanticizing myself and blaming human existence for its banality, and to just get down to work. you will also quickly find that people admire that more than most things. what intelligence really gives a person is the free time to persue their own interest after their work is done. that is the gift in itself.
the worst thing an intelligent person can allow themselves to do is to slide into cynicism. without a work ethic to balance it out, cynicism + intelligence = underachivement.
sounds like the entire Phantom "console" business model has been pre-empted by a web-based interface running on PCs (and for a lower fee too).
what were they thinking?
its so funny how they tout as a wonderful new feature what are effectively just D&D spells like daze or true sight. put a "force" in front of it and its cause for a litany of sequels, when in reality you've just got a multiclassed fighter / wizard with a couple more spells.
unless they prove to me otherwise that the engine has been made a whole lot better, they should be selling this game as an "expansion pack" and at an appropriately discounted rate.
ha ha ha ha. this piece is premised on so many biases a few of them deserve attention at least.
"First, the humankind does benefit enormously from faster processors and if you are forced to buy a new Intel or AMD every 4 or 5 years, so be it."
I guess by "humankind" you actually mean people who can afford the time and money and patience to invest in a future that is always immanent and which forces standards compliance upon them.
"Second, there is a huge potential for further software (OS in particular) development and if MS is going to catch up, so much the better."
why should this cost be exernalized by MS onto the consumer? only a monopolist can do this, set its own price, and have it all appear normal.
"We need your computer to keep track of everything you see, say, hear, write or do (for you)."
ummm, 1 - 2- 3 no. i can't even trust my MS machine to be free of malicious spyware much less more trustable than than my best friends. this, and all that stuff about bluetoothing every possible device in your home, speaks more about your techno-lust than a normative directive for personal computing.
"but they are still the number one software company in the world. Trust them at least a little bit, won't you?"
are you just plain naive? your unthinking faith in hegemonic authority is amusing at best and dangerous at worst. buying MS products is one thing, but seriously stop to think what it means to other people before voting Bush in the next election.
ahh yes, the indefatigable influence and political power of a chap sitting behind his computer all day playing games...
this osunds more like the matrix trying to cover itself. "Liberate yourself through games!" LOL.
it is interesting to read your comments.
replying to some friends who were arguing that creativity is stagnant in the videogame industry, i said that until the utilitarian bottom-line management types understood that programming is itself an art and start giving the artists what they are due in terms of money and freedom , all your gonna get is boring, derivative schlock.
there was some talk for the while that gamers thought something could be salvaged from Shadowbane that it could move to a "quarterly model" where the servers would get wiped every couple of months. this would then give the players something more substantive to work towards than simply keeping a war going in perpetuity.
the idea never really went far with shadowbane since it is centred around RPGing. but i think the concept could work with a game that has a more militaristic theme.
a) mandatory rat and zombie killing
b) no new ideas
c) cross-media tie-ins to cellphones ("for a small fee")
d) PK kiddy griefers
e) "a robust and dynamic" leveling treadmill
f) only two character classes: males, and males playing as females
g) all of the above
this sounds like a great way to make money of course ("Buy cellphone X and serive provider Y to unlock more SW: Galaxies content and exciting gameplay!!"), but i'm not sure the gamer benefits as much as do the corporations.
how does this add to the gameplay experience, other than simply multiplying a beloved franchise's content? Animal Crossing was neat, and i havnt yet played FinalFantasy Crystal Chronicles, but as far as i can tell not even Nintendo has answered this question despite a sustained effort for a few years.
people want a new experience, not new variations on a theme.
seems to me that game companies had a much *better* chance this xmas than previous ones. this christmas, we had no Half-Life 2, no Doom, no new Zelda, no new Mario, no Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, no Fable, no Halo 2.
this season there was a *lack* of premier titles of the kind that are likely to drown out the smaller ones.
my guess is that other game companies, expecting huge games like Half-Life 2 and Doom to make their ship dates, scaled back their marketing in anticipation of being overlooked. big mistake. 2004 is going to be a far more competitive year than xmas 2003 would ever be considered.
i agree. if this was really innovative (patent pending and all), there shouldnt be any seams between monitors, or they should at least be very minimal. as it is, it looks like a panorama from a jail cell window.
Exactly!! who gives a sh1t what eidos thinks? to quote: "ts latest Tomb Raider instalment, and unveiled a product line-up for the coming 12 months that includes the ultra-violent Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This At Home and a game based on the move The Italian Job."
anyone give a d4mn about any of these franshises? no. did you look at the eidos financials? they are peanuts compared to the nintendo complex. anyone who honestly thinks that eidos matters one but to nintendo is a non-thinking, momma b00bie-sucka. start thinking for yourselves fools!
because of the sarcasm distortion field, i'm not 100% sure what you mean here, but to be clear, that was possibly one of The Worst book reviews i've ever read.
"Now, if they could only invent an anti-scratch coating for game rental discs... "
there is one, its called "responsible renters."
if blockbuster gave away a free rental to customers who return five game rentals without a scratch (zero tolerance policy), i bet the amount of disk abuse would drop measurably.
Slashdot Mirror
that reflects my thinking too. this scientist has spectacularly misplaced priorities. we let corporations and our consumer culture piss all over the jewel of the solar system, but want to keep Mars free from a cubic meter of spacecraft?
Whatever!
The word "bias" gets tossed around a little too much in American discourse these days. How, pray tell, might we honestly construe this man as biased?
It isn't "biased" to be educated or to have the experience necessary to provide a thoughtful and determinative analysis.
Indeed, this man's entire lifetime has been dedicated to editing a series of books whose entire modus operendi is to present information factually and to be explicitly aware of their own limitations. An encyclopaedia is by defination a reference work, a limited collection of reliable information that leads you to further study. That is the opposite of "biased", which is to present self-serving conclusions based on a self-serving assemblage of information.
One thing many Western societies lack right now (but, I would offer, America in particular), is widely accepted basis for producing legitimate knowledge. There are serious concerns with the Wikipedia as a source of authoritative information that exacerbate this problem, not address it.
I welcome this man's comments rather than condemn them.
there isnt a problem with digital records so long as you keep your formats up to date and have backups. generally, it seems like you should revisit data that is two years old to check if the format needs to be brought up to date before its too late. another good idea is to avoid anythign proprietary, including weird Microsfot implementations of common standards. saving digital photos as simple .jpgs is a better idea than saving them as photoshop documents for example.
also, dont forget that scripting can be your friend. i use all kinds of applescripts to manage and batch-process my colleciton 1000's of digital photos so that i dont have to drop them into something proprietary like iPhoto.
i hear what you are saying about business consolidation, but do you really feel that the video game industry is experiencing a nadir of quality right now? what strikes me about the names "sierra", "acclaim" is that they produced a lot of garbage the market wasnt buying, adn that their demise is not an indicator of things gone astray but things going right. the games i've been playing the last year or two have been the best ever, and the sheer number of quality titles is greater than ive ever known in the past. the quality of the art is great, gameplay is solid, new technology gives us better physics and cleaner graphics. i do agree that gameplay in the mainstream can be quite derivative, and that there are many examples in well-established genres that really beg the question "what more is there to do?" but that said, i wouldnt declare the FPS genre stiltified when i play something like Doom3 or grand theft auto, or the RPG genre lame when i see stuff like Jade and baten Kaitos coming down the pipe. and beside those most obvious of blockbuster games, there is also a plentitude of great, quirky games like never before: donkey konga, that crazy mat game that people use as an aerobics workout, the innovation of open-ended titles like Grand Theft Auto, Morrowind, or some MMORPGs, and some nintendo novelties like Viewtiful Joe, Paper Mario 2, or Pikmin 2. there are many many more (have you tried Gish?) but those came to mind first for the sake of arguement.
i saw one of these at a garage sale some months ago and my first thought was "what an amazing casemod this would be!".
admittedly, it doesnt look like much in these pictures, but in real life the thing would look totally wicked as your digital entertainment hub.
nintendo has something bill gates never has, and never will have: the creativity to innovate.
honestly, i'm being kind when i declare this particular invention a complete POS - piece of sh1t.
why?
this vehicle tries to mix the best of inter-urban mass transportation (which will accept as being rail) with the best of intra-urban transportation - the car. but the failure is that you have a stack of passengers all seeking particular - rather than common - destinations.
good effort, but not really the solution, which is a system of inter-urban (rail) transportation with intra-urban individualized personal transportation (something electrically run annd commonly owned, like Amsterdam's public and freely interchangeable system of bicycle sharing, but with high-tech golfcarts.)
maybe the developers, liscencers and money people all got into the World of Warcraft beta and discovered that their product sucked in comparison. why else would you drop a three year investment without even trying to see if it would achieve a modicum of success?
"Does IGN/GameSpy accurately represent the mainstream?"
Does IGN accurately represent anything? their writting has become horribly boring over the last few years, and the publication lacks any personality. when i am talking about something as meaningless as videogames, i tend to like a little fun, attiude and bombastic editorializing. gamespy is a lot better than IGN in this respect, but i fear tht it has been purchased (oh, sorry, merged) just for its subscriber base and technology, not for its culture or writting style.
i consider the saviours of game journalism to be some of the smaller blog sites like Gamegrrl, Penny Arcade, or even Waterthread (the later only if you are into MMORPGs).
hey dude, i used to be you, and three interdisciplinary degrees later, i still have my tendencies.
but intelligence isn't that useful if it doesn't accomplish anything. few people or places are going to pay you for the apples you pluck from the brilliance tree and toss their way. neither will half-completed projects get you much recognition. what i've learned is to stop playing "Good Will Hunting", to stop romanticizing myself and blaming human existence for its banality, and to just get down to work. you will also quickly find that people admire that more than most things. what intelligence really gives a person is the free time to persue their own interest after their work is done. that is the gift in itself.
the worst thing an intelligent person can allow themselves to do is to slide into cynicism. without a work ethic to balance it out, cynicism + intelligence = underachivement.
sounds like the entire Phantom "console" business model has been pre-empted by a web-based interface running on PCs (and for a lower fee too). what were they thinking?
if you have a point or practical solution, please just say it instead of indulging in this undergrad BS.
"...force confusion and force sight..."
its so funny how they tout as a wonderful new feature what are effectively just D&D spells like daze or true sight. put a "force" in front of it and its cause for a litany of sequels, when in reality you've just got a multiclassed fighter / wizard with a couple more spells.
unless they prove to me otherwise that the engine has been made a whole lot better, they should be selling this game as an "expansion pack" and at an appropriately discounted rate.
ha ha ha ha. this piece is premised on so many biases a few of them deserve attention at least.
"First, the humankind does benefit enormously from faster processors and if you are forced to buy a new Intel or AMD every 4 or 5 years, so be it."
I guess by "humankind" you actually mean people who can afford the time and money and patience to invest in a future that is always immanent and which forces standards compliance upon them.
"Second, there is a huge potential for further software (OS in particular) development and if MS is going to catch up, so much the better."
why should this cost be exernalized by MS onto the consumer? only a monopolist can do this, set its own price, and have it all appear normal.
"We need your computer to keep track of everything you see, say, hear, write or do (for you)."
ummm, 1 - 2- 3 no. i can't even trust my MS machine to be free of malicious spyware much less more trustable than than my best friends. this, and all that stuff about bluetoothing every possible device in your home, speaks more about your techno-lust than a normative directive for personal computing.
"but they are still the number one software company in the world. Trust them at least a little bit, won't you?"
are you just plain naive? your unthinking faith in hegemonic authority is amusing at best and dangerous at worst. buying MS products is one thing, but seriously stop to think what it means to other people before voting Bush in the next election.
ahh yes, the indefatigable influence and political power of a chap sitting behind his computer all day playing games... this osunds more like the matrix trying to cover itself. "Liberate yourself through games!" LOL.
it is interesting to read your comments.
replying to some friends who were arguing that creativity is stagnant in the videogame industry, i said that until the utilitarian bottom-line management types understood that programming is itself an art and start giving the artists what they are due in terms of money and freedom , all your gonna get is boring, derivative schlock.
there was some talk for the while that gamers thought something could be salvaged from Shadowbane that it could move to a "quarterly model" where the servers would get wiped every couple of months. this would then give the players something more substantive to work towards than simply keeping a war going in perpetuity. the idea never really went far with shadowbane since it is centred around RPGing. but i think the concept could work with a game that has a more militaristic theme.
this sounds like a great way to make money of course ("Buy cellphone X and serive provider Y to unlock more SW: Galaxies content and exciting gameplay!!"), but i'm not sure the gamer benefits as much as do the corporations. how does this add to the gameplay experience, other than simply multiplying a beloved franchise's content? Animal Crossing was neat, and i havnt yet played FinalFantasy Crystal Chronicles, but as far as i can tell not even Nintendo has answered this question despite a sustained effort for a few years. people want a new experience, not new variations on a theme.
seems to me that game companies had a much *better* chance this xmas than previous ones. this christmas, we had no Half-Life 2, no Doom, no new Zelda, no new Mario, no Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, no Fable, no Halo 2. this season there was a *lack* of premier titles of the kind that are likely to drown out the smaller ones. my guess is that other game companies, expecting huge games like Half-Life 2 and Doom to make their ship dates, scaled back their marketing in anticipation of being overlooked. big mistake. 2004 is going to be a far more competitive year than xmas 2003 would ever be considered.
this looks like the 3D sequel to River City Ransom that ive been wanting for years.
i agree. if this was really innovative (patent pending and all), there shouldnt be any seams between monitors, or they should at least be very minimal. as it is, it looks like a panorama from a jail cell window.
Exactly!! who gives a sh1t what eidos thinks? to quote: "ts latest Tomb Raider instalment, and unveiled a product line-up for the coming 12 months that includes the ultra-violent Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This At Home and a game based on the move The Italian Job." anyone give a d4mn about any of these franshises? no. did you look at the eidos financials? they are peanuts compared to the nintendo complex. anyone who honestly thinks that eidos matters one but to nintendo is a non-thinking, momma b00bie-sucka. start thinking for yourselves fools!
because of the sarcasm distortion field, i'm not 100% sure what you mean here, but to be clear, that was possibly one of The Worst book reviews i've ever read.
"Now, if they could only invent an anti-scratch coating for game rental discs... "
there is one, its called "responsible renters."
if blockbuster gave away a free rental to customers who return five game rentals without a scratch (zero tolerance policy), i bet the amount of disk abuse would drop measurably.