Hero deaths in futures that aren't part of the standard Marvel universe are very common. "Days of Future Past", "The Last Avengers Story"*, "Death's Head II Miniseries", "Earth X" etc are all books that show the death of a character or set of characters in a way that does not affect the continuity of the Marvel Comics universe. "Hulk: The End" fits into that category. Hulk dies but it's a story set in a future that likely will never happen in any of Marvel's other monthly titles (or even in the Incredible Hulk monthly titles). Captain America's death is part of the mainstream continuity and all characters and titles must deal with it. Captain America can't guest star in Iron Man anymore. He can't be in any non-flashback Avengers stories. He's dead to the Marvel Universe. That's a lot more significant a change than the Hulk's death in a possible future timeline.
* This is quite possibly the best alternate future title I've even read just because of blind Hawkeye.
So the Red Skull assassinating Captain America is a slam on government? The arrest and surrounding Civil War hullabaloo is most likely a slam on government but Captain America's death is nothing more than a cash grab. They're just exchanging one live character with poor monthly sales and the occasional strong moment in ensemble titles for a martyr who can help bolster sales across the board. He'll be like Hal Jordan: more popular dead than he ever was alive. If this were really a slam on government, then the government would have a lot more to do with his actual death instead of it being a Red Skull masterminded event.
I did, and the 2600 version of Missile Command absolutely sucked compared to the arcade machine in all its multi-button trackball glory. If anything, Missile Command would be far better suited to an update on the Wii where at least the Wiimote would be more interesting than moving crosshairs around with a joystick.
"They make people assume that ANY movie/tv-to-game tie in must be bad and ultimately erode consumer confidence."
That's not limited to games. Ever had Donald Duck orange juice or Dagwood luncheon meat? They're terrible. From my personal experience, I've learned that if a product is good, it doesn't usually need some sort of tie-in for it. Three Stooges beer sucks and you know it sucks because if it were any good, they wouldn't bother to license the Three Stooges name to put on the label. Granted, video games have been some of the worst offenders (ET, MASH for the 2600, or any number of spaceship battle simulators that slap Star Trek on the label), but this has been a problem long before video games came into the equation, and it will continue to be a problem even if video game tie-ins suddenly become a lot better.
I buy my consoles at Sam's Club or Wal-Mart. Broken 360? Drive to the store and exchange it. Not happy about getting 5th broken 360? Drive to the store and get my money back. No waiting for Microsoft to ship a working unit. No worrying about receiving a refurbished unit to replace the broken one (Some companies do this. Not sure about Microsoft). I personally came to this epiphany when people were discussing PSP dead pixel policies at several different retailers. People who bought from Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Costco or Target just took them back for exchange/refund. Costco is too far away and Target usually has a shorter return window so I'll go to Wal-Mart or Sam's.
So what size engine is in a 1985 325e? The same 2.7L engine that's in the 1985 528e. BMW is generally pretty close in its naming convention but it does fall apart under scrutiny, especially when minor engine revisions drive up the displacement. Personally, I'd take a 320 (old or new) since there's no way I'd ever own the piece of tin that is the 1.8L BMW 4-cylinder engine ever again.
"What makes you think there is a "too far". As far as I can tell if the public was going to revolt over IP issues..."
And what makes you think revolt would be the end product of pushing IP restrictions too far? I don't think there is going to be any tea in the harbor over this or any DRM. Most likely people will act with their wallets and simply not buy products that are too DRM encumbered for their tastes. Since everyone's tastes are different, not everyone will stop buying over the same issue but as DRM becomes more and more obtrusive, there will be less interest in the DRMd product.
$1000 PC silliness has already been covered but since I did just buy a new PC, I feel the need to chime in. My most recent PC was an Athlon Dual Core that I bought off of Dell's outlet for $250 shipped. And that included XP Media Center. Granted, to be a decent high definition HTPC I'll need a better video card (maybe $150) and probably a bit more disk space ($100). For standard definition, I have more than enough horsepower and disk-space. I'll just need a TV tuner ($100 for a good standard def one or $30 for one that requires my computer to do all the processing work).
But that's not even the argument that compelled me to respond in the first place. My main beef with your assessment is that you're only considering the Tivo service for one year. Why? Do you only have one year left to live? Are you planning on not watching TV anymore after the first year? Do you suspect Tivo will suddenly alter their business model and stop charging monthly fees after one year? Or are you just being incredibly shortsighted in the financial sense?
How many years do you plan on keeping your Tivo? Maybe 3-4 years? If you bought a PC and financed the sum minus the initial $200*, for the same payments you're making to Tivo you could buy a $700 PC in 3 years. You could buy an $800 PC in 4 years. So all things being equal, I'll take the PC and the cash each month (or year if you prepay yearly).
* Yes, I know financing a PC makes absolutely no sense given its rapid depreciation and I'd never actually do that but I would rather compare apples to pears than apples to 19th Century British Prime Ministers and I thought the financing angle at least makes the comparison more balanced. Oh, and I am assuming 8% interest on financing and the Tivo monthly amount of $14.95 for a year pre-paid.
A friend with a boob job? This is Slashdot so you're obviously not talking about a female (I'll ignore the "her" and assume it's a typo.). Who got the boob job? Is his name Robert Paulson?
"So he moves it to the recipient's "spam" folder, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to move it to the recipient's inbox, or they'll never see it.
Does the ISP have the right to do that? If not, why not?"
You don't have to use your ISP's email. Not everyone has a bevy of choices for their ISP but everyone on the Internet has plenty of e-mail options. An ISP has the right to do such a thing as far as I can tell but if they actually tried pulling a stunt like that, they'd see how quickly they can get people to jump ship on their email services. I wouldn't recommend tying your email into your ISP anyways. You don't always have the option to take your ISP-based email with you when you move or change ISPs.
And that's not even taking into account that Goodmail is a complete sham. The only people using this will be spammers with money looking to get around your spam filter.
Remember the secret level of Rise of the Triad that had a bunch of wall tiles with "You do not Belong Here" written on them? That was just creepy.
Then there's the Holy Grail game where after the Black Knight kills you it asks if you want to go back to the moment before you die. If you select yes, it shows you keel over and die again. Then the game asks if you'd like to go back to a few minutes before you die and you can continue as normal.
"I mean, think about it, all Nixon did was send some spooks into the Watergate Hotel to snoop on the Democratic Convention. Suddenly he was Satan incarnate, and the whole country was on him like a cheap suit."
No, the whole country wasn't on him like a cheap suit until well after wrong-doing had been established. Until that point, most either didn't care or thought Nixon was innocent of the accusations. It did sound more than a wee bit like a tin-foil-hat conspiracy. It didn't help that Nixon's political enemies had been hounding him for years. Remember all the fuss over accepting a frickin dog as a gift? Nixon's downfall started years before his near-impeachment and most of it revolved around enemies he made while he was politically involved with McCarthy.
I thought the same thing. It's like using the Rocky theme "Gonna Fly Now" during a sporting event. Rocky lost that one, folks. Playing that song in support of your team is the musical equivalent of loser talk.
"What I find offensive is that some appliance parts (refrigerator and dishwasher) from some manufacturers are not available to the general public - at least in my experience."
It's generally up to the parts supplier to decide whether or not to sell to the general public. The company that I recently bought a dishwasher timer from has several branches but only the one nearest me sells to the general public. The other branches in that same company do not.
And for what it's worth, my $250 Frigidaire dishwasher came with schematics but they were in a plastic bag clipped under the faceplate so I didn't know I'd have them until I started poking around in there.
Seems like ansibles would be a bad idea. Sure you could have faster than light communications but at the expense of the Buggers hearing every word of it.
"How the hell do you tax email? What if you run your own server?"
And for that matter, what constitutes "email?" Is reading and posting to a site like Slashdot considered email? What about a chat room? What about messages sent via some non-standard port? What about general file transfer? I could be passing text docs to someone else. Any attempt to tax "email" a la carte will be about as effective as the Nixon Administration's attempts to price fix meat. The definition of email will change to avoid the tax just like we got new cuts of mean when they tried to price fix the old cuts of meat.
"...anyone who wants a pirated copy..." (emphasis mine)
Aha, but that's the key. Most people don't necessarily want a pirated copy. They just want a copy. If the copy protection can be difficult enough to get around to not make it worth the average person's time, then they won't bother getting a pirated version. People who make a conscious effort to pirate the material cannot be stopped, but if you can make it difficult enough to pirate nobody else will bother. I think the movie industry massively failed in that regard with DVDs. It became far too easy to pirate them. I also think they'll also fail here, but I do see why they keep trying. If they can just make it hard enough, most people won't bother.
The Watchmen pulled it off much better. For starters, Ozzymandius wasn't some pawn and didn't trust his entire plan to someone with reservations about the crisis. There's no reason to even tell Nathan about the plot since Peter is the one who's going to explode. And then not only did the big event not even happen in Heroes, but it played out almost exactly how Peter dreamed it would play out earlier in the season! It was very anti-climatic.
I imagine Sylar is still alive because of the bloody manhole shot. That REALLY annoys me because Mr. Sulu's kid and his friend both know Sylar survives the sword stabbing Sulu's kid initially gives him. Sylar should've been hacked to bits while there was still time.
I'm still interested in following the show, but I was very let down at the finale.
If you're counting the 1996 movie then you should also count "The Scream of Shalka" that was going to be pave the way for an animated series that was axed to make room for the new live-action series.
Slashdot Mirror
Hero deaths in futures that aren't part of the standard Marvel universe are very common. "Days of Future Past", "The Last Avengers Story"*, "Death's Head II Miniseries", "Earth X" etc are all books that show the death of a character or set of characters in a way that does not affect the continuity of the Marvel Comics universe. "Hulk: The End" fits into that category. Hulk dies but it's a story set in a future that likely will never happen in any of Marvel's other monthly titles (or even in the Incredible Hulk monthly titles). Captain America's death is part of the mainstream continuity and all characters and titles must deal with it. Captain America can't guest star in Iron Man anymore. He can't be in any non-flashback Avengers stories. He's dead to the Marvel Universe. That's a lot more significant a change than the Hulk's death in a possible future timeline.
* This is quite possibly the best alternate future title I've even read just because of blind Hawkeye.
So the Red Skull assassinating Captain America is a slam on government? The arrest and surrounding Civil War hullabaloo is most likely a slam on government but Captain America's death is nothing more than a cash grab. They're just exchanging one live character with poor monthly sales and the occasional strong moment in ensemble titles for a martyr who can help bolster sales across the board. He'll be like Hal Jordan: more popular dead than he ever was alive. If this were really a slam on government, then the government would have a lot more to do with his actual death instead of it being a Red Skull masterminded event.
Pac-Man CE claims to have "the first new Pac-Man mazes in more than 26 years." I didn't realize 1996 was 26 years ago.
I did, and the 2600 version of Missile Command absolutely sucked compared to the arcade machine in all its multi-button trackball glory. If anything, Missile Command would be far better suited to an update on the Wii where at least the Wiimote would be more interesting than moving crosshairs around with a joystick.
"They make people assume that ANY movie/tv-to-game tie in must be bad and ultimately erode consumer confidence."
That's not limited to games. Ever had Donald Duck orange juice or Dagwood luncheon meat? They're terrible. From my personal experience, I've learned that if a product is good, it doesn't usually need some sort of tie-in for it. Three Stooges beer sucks and you know it sucks because if it were any good, they wouldn't bother to license the Three Stooges name to put on the label. Granted, video games have been some of the worst offenders (ET, MASH for the 2600, or any number of spaceship battle simulators that slap Star Trek on the label), but this has been a problem long before video games came into the equation, and it will continue to be a problem even if video game tie-ins suddenly become a lot better.
"The only way you could possibly get more evil than that would be to make a pact with the Devil himself."
How do you think I find parking?
I buy my consoles at Sam's Club or Wal-Mart. Broken 360? Drive to the store and exchange it. Not happy about getting 5th broken 360? Drive to the store and get my money back. No waiting for Microsoft to ship a working unit. No worrying about receiving a refurbished unit to replace the broken one (Some companies do this. Not sure about Microsoft). I personally came to this epiphany when people were discussing PSP dead pixel policies at several different retailers. People who bought from Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Costco or Target just took them back for exchange/refund. Costco is too far away and Target usually has a shorter return window so I'll go to Wal-Mart or Sam's.
It's not the VIAA. It's the Video And Gaming Industry North American Association.
So what size engine is in a 1985 325e? The same 2.7L engine that's in the 1985 528e. BMW is generally pretty close in its naming convention but it does fall apart under scrutiny, especially when minor engine revisions drive up the displacement. Personally, I'd take a 320 (old or new) since there's no way I'd ever own the piece of tin that is the 1.8L BMW 4-cylinder engine ever again.
"What makes you think there is a "too far". As far as I can tell if the public was going to revolt over IP issues..."
And what makes you think revolt would be the end product of pushing IP restrictions too far? I don't think there is going to be any tea in the harbor over this or any DRM. Most likely people will act with their wallets and simply not buy products that are too DRM encumbered for their tastes. Since everyone's tastes are different, not everyone will stop buying over the same issue but as DRM becomes more and more obtrusive, there will be less interest in the DRMd product.
$1000 PC silliness has already been covered but since I did just buy a new PC, I feel the need to chime in. My most recent PC was an Athlon Dual Core that I bought off of Dell's outlet for $250 shipped. And that included XP Media Center. Granted, to be a decent high definition HTPC I'll need a better video card (maybe $150) and probably a bit more disk space ($100). For standard definition, I have more than enough horsepower and disk-space. I'll just need a TV tuner ($100 for a good standard def one or $30 for one that requires my computer to do all the processing work).
But that's not even the argument that compelled me to respond in the first place. My main beef with your assessment is that you're only considering the Tivo service for one year. Why? Do you only have one year left to live? Are you planning on not watching TV anymore after the first year? Do you suspect Tivo will suddenly alter their business model and stop charging monthly fees after one year? Or are you just being incredibly shortsighted in the financial sense?
How many years do you plan on keeping your Tivo? Maybe 3-4 years? If you bought a PC and financed the sum minus the initial $200*, for the same payments you're making to Tivo you could buy a $700 PC in 3 years. You could buy an $800 PC in 4 years. So all things being equal, I'll take the PC and the cash each month (or year if you prepay yearly).
* Yes, I know financing a PC makes absolutely no sense given its rapid depreciation and I'd never actually do that but I would rather compare apples to pears than apples to 19th Century British Prime Ministers and I thought the financing angle at least makes the comparison more balanced. Oh, and I am assuming 8% interest on financing and the Tivo monthly amount of $14.95 for a year pre-paid.
5) Karl Malden and Michael Douglas
A friend with a boob job? This is Slashdot so you're obviously not talking about a female (I'll ignore the "her" and assume it's a typo.). Who got the boob job? Is his name Robert Paulson?
"So he moves it to the recipient's "spam" folder, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to move it to the recipient's inbox, or they'll never see it.
Does the ISP have the right to do that? If not, why not?"
You don't have to use your ISP's email. Not everyone has a bevy of choices for their ISP but everyone on the Internet has plenty of e-mail options. An ISP has the right to do such a thing as far as I can tell but if they actually tried pulling a stunt like that, they'd see how quickly they can get people to jump ship on their email services. I wouldn't recommend tying your email into your ISP anyways. You don't always have the option to take your ISP-based email with you when you move or change ISPs.
And that's not even taking into account that Goodmail is a complete sham. The only people using this will be spammers with money looking to get around your spam filter.
Right. Stupid id never makes gaming engines that run natively under Linux.
Q: "Is wireless [Wi-Fi-based] VoIP worth the bother?"
A: "Generally, no."
Sponsored by AT&T
Remember the secret level of Rise of the Triad that had a bunch of wall tiles with "You do not Belong Here" written on them? That was just creepy.
Then there's the Holy Grail game where after the Black Knight kills you it asks if you want to go back to the moment before you die. If you select yes, it shows you keel over and die again. Then the game asks if you'd like to go back to a few minutes before you die and you can continue as normal.
"I mean, think about it, all Nixon did was send some spooks into the Watergate Hotel to snoop on the Democratic Convention. Suddenly he was Satan incarnate, and the whole country was on him like a cheap suit."
No, the whole country wasn't on him like a cheap suit until well after wrong-doing had been established. Until that point, most either didn't care or thought Nixon was innocent of the accusations. It did sound more than a wee bit like a tin-foil-hat conspiracy. It didn't help that Nixon's political enemies had been hounding him for years. Remember all the fuss over accepting a frickin dog as a gift? Nixon's downfall started years before his near-impeachment and most of it revolved around enemies he made while he was politically involved with McCarthy.
"Clouseau was a terrible detective"
I thought the same thing. It's like using the Rocky theme "Gonna Fly Now" during a sporting event. Rocky lost that one, folks. Playing that song in support of your team is the musical equivalent of loser talk.
"What I find offensive is that some appliance parts (refrigerator and dishwasher) from some manufacturers are not available to the general public - at least in my experience."
It's generally up to the parts supplier to decide whether or not to sell to the general public. The company that I recently bought a dishwasher timer from has several branches but only the one nearest me sells to the general public. The other branches in that same company do not.
And for what it's worth, my $250 Frigidaire dishwasher came with schematics but they were in a plastic bag clipped under the faceplate so I didn't know I'd have them until I started poking around in there.
Seems like ansibles would be a bad idea. Sure you could have faster than light communications but at the expense of the Buggers hearing every word of it.
"How the hell do you tax email? What if you run your own server?"
And for that matter, what constitutes "email?" Is reading and posting to a site like Slashdot considered email? What about a chat room? What about messages sent via some non-standard port? What about general file transfer? I could be passing text docs to someone else. Any attempt to tax "email" a la carte will be about as effective as the Nixon Administration's attempts to price fix meat. The definition of email will change to avoid the tax just like we got new cuts of mean when they tried to price fix the old cuts of meat.
"...anyone who wants a pirated copy..." (emphasis mine)
Aha, but that's the key. Most people don't necessarily want a pirated copy. They just want a copy. If the copy protection can be difficult enough to get around to not make it worth the average person's time, then they won't bother getting a pirated version. People who make a conscious effort to pirate the material cannot be stopped, but if you can make it difficult enough to pirate nobody else will bother. I think the movie industry massively failed in that regard with DVDs. It became far too easy to pirate them. I also think they'll also fail here, but I do see why they keep trying. If they can just make it hard enough, most people won't bother.
SPOILERS (You've been warned):
The Watchmen pulled it off much better. For starters, Ozzymandius wasn't some pawn and didn't trust his entire plan to someone with reservations about the crisis. There's no reason to even tell Nathan about the plot since Peter is the one who's going to explode. And then not only did the big event not even happen in Heroes, but it played out almost exactly how Peter dreamed it would play out earlier in the season! It was very anti-climatic.
I imagine Sylar is still alive because of the bloody manhole shot. That REALLY annoys me because Mr. Sulu's kid and his friend both know Sylar survives the sword stabbing Sulu's kid initially gives him. Sylar should've been hacked to bits while there was still time.
I'm still interested in following the show, but I was very let down at the finale.
If you're counting the 1996 movie then you should also count "The Scream of Shalka" that was going to be pave the way for an animated series that was axed to make room for the new live-action series.