Are these pure subscriptions, paying full price? Or are these subscriptions that come with something else or are heavily discounted? Most times, companies like this seem to include people who have print subscriptions that have accessed the website, essentially for free, or other methods of obtaining a subscription as a "subscriber." This is blatantly misleading when counting figures of how many people are actually willing to PAY in excess of what they have already paid (if anything) to obtain a subscription.
If it's a pure subscriber number, as in, 100k people have plunked down the full price of the subscription, I'd say that fairly decent. If it's including other "subscribers" who didn't have to pay or paid a fraction of the cost, I'd say they are dishonest and are trying to bolster their numbers to look good.
Why use a MiFi when you can just turn your phone into a wifi access point?
This is what I do currently... but it really kills the battery life of my phone, which already has pretty crappy battery life to begin with. It's ok if I'm able to plug my phone in and/or charge it, but if I'm out and about, I try to use the wifi AP option very sparingly.
My covered wagon still does everything it was designed to do (I'm going on the Oregon Trail)... but it's still sadly obsolete./sigh No more cholera for me.
As a PS3 Owner it's my right to own theese and use them on my hardware as I see fit.
And you are the kind of fuckwit that keeps companies like Sony in business. They keep pulling this shit and it's people like you who are directly to blame. What Sony is doing is YOUR fault.
In other news, not a shit was given that at the interview...
Megapixels are meaningless if they aren't coupled with a larger sensor and better glass. Cheap plastic and a tiny sensor still make it a shitty camera. It's the same picture whether it's 4Mp or 8Mp. Now if they put a real Xenon flash on it, that might be something interesting.
1) I was making the point that McAfee hasn't been worth a shit since before the turn of the millienium OR they haven't ever been worth a shit. 2) Aggravating douchebags like yourself who aren't smart enough to figure out number 1.
It's not the simplicity that's the problem. For me, it's the lack of white space in relation to the massive font size. Make the font smaller, and space the 'paragraphs' out a little bit more. Also, it could stand to be a little wider... on my screen he could easily fit three columns of the article's size on the screen. He still has plenty of horizontal white space to work with; he should use it. Just my $.02
You can fix it yourself... Hold down your control key and scroll your mouse wheel... fixed right up for you.
This is news? McAfee hasn't been secure or even any good at anti-virus since... like... the DOS days. If they ever were. Wern't they the ones who put out a DOS anti-virus kit? Or am I thinking of someone else? If it's someone else, then McAfee has always sucked.
I had a Y710 Lenovo laptop. One of the mouse buttons went out on the palm rest.
Have you ever tried to buy a part from Lenovo? It's fucking impossible. Literally, it's impossible. They have a website with miscellaneous parts that may be problem parts, but it's for a scattering of different laptops and it's hard to find the part you want if it exists at all. If it's not on that site, you can't buy it. Period. So with thousands of parts that might need to be replaced, they have a few tens of parts available for a random selection of laptops with no possible pay to purchase a part otherwise.
Try calling them and be shunted around to 10+ different offices and 15+ different people for each one of them to tell you that you have to talk to someone else. Eventually you'll be told that if a part needs to be replaced, you need to send it into the depot to have the machine evaluated. But if your laptop is out of warranty, you're out of luck... even if you're willing to pay for the replacement.
But wait! If you want to pay $80 to send the laptop in, that's ok. They will assess it for $80, and if the part is available, they will replace it and charge the difference (if there is one), but no, they can't tell you if the part is available... so you will have to pay $80 to know if it's worth $80 to send it in. Maybe it'll cost more to get your laptop back. They won't tell you.
I agree that the "high resolution" portion of the gaming mice are complete bunk. After a certain point, it doesn't matter much unless you are playing on a really odd surface (like nearly unblemished glass). What matters most is the features.
I can play equally well in terms of accuracy on a cheap dell laser mouse as I can with my $100 mouse. I have the $100 mouse because I use the buttons/features (adjustable palm, thumb, etc...) which the cheap dell mouse doesn't have. If I switch out for a different mouse, I go back to a $30/$40 Logitech MX series mouse and it's fine. It's all about the other features on the mouse, not the resolution of the laser.
So you're claiming that any system caught a still image on any device and could preview said picture while viewing a video feed should automatically invalidate the Kodak claim?
Whether or not it should can be set aside in this instance, because Kodak is claiming that cell phones violate the patent. The fact that I have used a system that does essentially the *exact* same thing in 1990, 7 years prior to Kodak filing for a patent, invalidates the claim Kodak is making. I suppose if you wanted to quibble, the difference would be the phones capture and display in color while the system I was using did it in greyscale.
If I took one of the phones that Kodak is complaining about back to 1990 and made it greyscale and put it side by side with the system I used, operation would be virtually identical (with the exception of resolution of course).
From someone that has done this and used a Galaxy tab for a short time... It's not the same, not even close. the Nook Color is slow as molasses compared to the Galaxy tab or even a 1st gen ipad.
It's a great hack for the poor, but useability is very low due to the limited ram and really slow processor.
IF all you want to do is run the facebook app and the twitter app along with your ebooks, it's great. If you think you will use it as a full-on tablet.... well get used to S-L-O-W.....
My rooted Nook Color has replaced the iPad (1st gen) tablet that I had and has done everything I wanted to do with a tablet. With the Groupon deal, $125 for the Nook Color was a steal and it allowed me sell the iPad before the price drop, recouping my investment and I couldn't be happier. I had thought the screen being smaller would be a problem, but honestly, the ability to hold the tablet in one hand outweighs the extra screen real estate. I thought I would be compromising the tablet experience I had with the iPad going to the Nook, but it turns out it was an upgrade in almost every way.
I would like to try out a Galaxy Tab to compare it, though. There's definitely some room for improvement, but for a quick, easily handled tablet to keep around the house and car, the Nook Color is really kick ass for the price.
Odd. I always thought that a specific process done by specific hardware qualified as a patent. But since you obviously have no interest in expounding on your claims I guess there isn't much to discuss.
You have always thought wrong then. Just because a specific process is done on new hardware doesn't mean it's not *still the same process*. If that were the case, then you could say since I have this piece of software that runs on ARM and the same software that runs on x86, there should be two different patents. That's not the case, otherwise Java and any interpreted language would have a major problem.
The problem with Kodak's patent in this particular instance is almost every part of the patent has prior art. There may be a couple line items that don't have prior art, but you can't patent a multi-line patent based off of only one or two changes... because again, I could twiddle a few things in how an iPhone works and then start selling an iPhone. Apple would probably have a problem with this.
A patent has to be *significantly* new/different to be a new patent. In Kodaks case with this patent, it's not significantly new or different than existing products.
But does it finally support 24 and 32 bit color depth on the desktop? That was a huge stopping/stumbling block for me on integrating Zen into our datacenter. We ended up going with VMWare's ESXi because it's the only hypervisor that supports 24 bit color depth that I found. I would really have preferred Xen but they seem to have completely ignored the video memory segment of their product.
Anyone know why this is? It seems like it would be a simple addition.
Wait.. what? What about prior art? How is this even a patent? I was using an electronic system to capture still images while previewing a motion image back in the early 90's. In fact, I made a still image "movie" of just such a thing of part of "Harlem Knights." It was a black and white, low resolution digitizer, but it still is the same principal.
I forget what the brand/name of the device was, but I was using it for a myriad of things back in 1990 or 1991 at the latest. That right there should invalidate the patent, since the patent was filed in 1997.
Oh Motorola, you are the Sony of the mobile world. You want so bad to be the coolest kid on the block but you come off as just another kid who tries too hard and fails miserably with your wacky ideas that never quite pan out.
Motorola and Sony should partner up and then we can look forward to two companies putting out all sorts of crappy proprietary junk that never takes off and lots of privacy invasion and a ton of sad attempts to lock down their crappy IP so that even the people that are so misguided as to buy or advocate for their products end up hating them. It would sure solve a lot of problems for consumers... then they'd only have to avoid one company instead of two.
Motorola and Sony... Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (or is it's Tweedle Dumber?) of the Tech World.
N900 is a 3 year old phone. call me when Nokia makes a modern version.... of which they will not because they are now a all Microsoft shop. Nokia's dead man, the body just hasn't stopped moving.
You should amend that to when they make a modern version with a UI that doesn't suck. They haven't been able to develop a decent UI since... um... well. I guess they've never been able to handle that end of the market. Even their dumbphone UI's were some of the worst UI's ever invented. How you screw that up is a mystery but Nokia managed that. I wasn't touching Nokia phones at the start of Symbian because of the horrible performance of their pre-(semi)smartphones, so maybe Symbian was good when it first rolled out, but circa mid 2000's Symbian was old, slow and crappy and hasn't improved a bit since.
Because it was 1951 and they couldn't handle/afford it.
It was a remake of The Thing which was based off the story. If Carpenter wanted it to be an envisioning of the story, he would have named it something else... perhaps "Who goes there," no?
Man, you know, that is so true. I hadn't really considered that as a viable option, but it would be a perfect medium.
We'd still have the problem of a script though... how many writers can write for a long(ish) miniseries and maintain quality writing, even with the book(s) as guide(s)? Few... look what happened to Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica/Craprica, Farscape, etc... Writers seem to go off on a tangent or think they can improve on the story in the book and then it all goes off the rails and crashes in a firery heap. Firefly is so great because it didn't have a chance to go off the rails... look what Weedon did subsequently... nothing nearly as good - or was it? If his later stuff ended after 13 episodes, would it be considered as good? I dunno... I was never a Buffy fan to begin with, so I can't really comment on that part of his career.
The script would be tough, but if someone could work out solid writers that are willing to be faithful to the script throughout the whole run, it could work.
I just can't see how you can translate that to the screen in under 10 hours and still have a coherent, interesting story that is true to the original. I fear the movie is going to suck something fierce.
Isn't that what they said about LotR?
It's also, what, 9 hours long? Longer? Hell I don't even remember how long it is, but it's at least 9 hours but probably closer to 12... AND they still cut stuff out. Bombadil anyone?
When the hell is someone worth a fuck going to make a Ringworld movie?
There's so much great SF that no one will touch; Heinlein got raped with Starship Troopers, but The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a much better story.
Or maybe Lazarus Long...
James P. Hogan's Giant's series would make a great set of movies; it seems like all hollywood wants to do is regurgitate crap.
How could you translate the Ringworld stuff to the screen? You'd need like 5 hours of setup just to get into the main plot line. That is really the crux of the problem with Scifi and movies. There's so much supporting material that needs to be in place to make good Scifi that you just can't do it on the screen in any reasonable amount of movie time. I would love to see those you listed translated to the screen, but even The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would need to be 4 to 5 hours long to be done properly. The others... much longer. Think LotR at best.
The same goes for Enders Game... I just can't see how you can translate that to the screen in under 10 hours and still have a coherent, interesting story that is true to the original. I fear the movie is going to suck something fierce.
And there is the fact that the author thinks John Carpenter was original when he made the 1982 REMAKE of the 1951 "The Thing."
Any geek with any cred in the SciFi horror genre would know Carpenters movie was a total ripoff of Nyby's original with better special effects. It's like saying the Tom Cruise version of War of the World was original.
District 9 was an interesting idea (hey, aliens! Wait, the dregs of alien society?), but I found the execution was, well, "earthly." In the end is wasn't much more than a tale of mistreated refugees. I can watch that on CNN.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head and I agree with you. I also wanted to point out a couple things you didn't, though.
Video games (at least some of them) are appreciated as "high art" by those able to appreciate the aspects of the game most people are not. Just like the Sistine Chapel and other pieces of "great art," how do you know they are great? Because someone told you they were? Most great pieces of art from our history fall into this category. If you knew nothing of the Mona Lisa and happened to pass it in the mall, would you stop and say "Holy shit, that is epic art?" Most people probably wouldn't; They would say "Huh, interesting," or "Hey, that's nice" and then move on. It reminds me of an "experiment" that Joshua Bell did at a metro station. He is widely regarded as a virtuoso and an amazing violinist. He is the definition of an artist and produces great art - anyway, he played in a Metro station in Washington DC. Very few if any people stopped to appreciate the fact that he was playing one of the most intricate pieces of violin music on a 3.5 million dollar violin. Why? Because they wern't TOLD it was great art.
I would bet dollars to donuts that if someone with "authority" (whomever that might be in this case) said "This game here, this is great art. It's amazing art. The best ever." suddenly games would be art.
It all boils down to the fact that many/most people don't even understand why a game would be great, art wise vs one that's just fun to play. Ebert et al. simply don't understand what makes a game great art, not that some games aren't great art. Those of us who are more attune to what makes a game great and what simply makes it good are far more qualified to judge if a game is art or not. But it is absolutely ludicrous to say that at least some games are not great art, simply because you don't understand what great art in the realm of games truly is. Chances are, you don't know what great art is in other areas, either - but it's there, too.
I don't quite understand the trajectory of the probe. For example in the last shot, it swoops past Mimas zooming straight toward the Saturnian surface, then appears to change direction curving vertically, passing through the rings (why no hail of ice damage?), then swoops back around and turns around heading toward Encledatus at top speed. How is this even possible?
Yeah, that was what I was wondering. If that's only from pictures, it wasn't from a sequence of pictures that are in order.
Slashdot Mirror
Are these pure subscriptions, paying full price? Or are these subscriptions that come with something else or are heavily discounted? Most times, companies like this seem to include people who have print subscriptions that have accessed the website, essentially for free, or other methods of obtaining a subscription as a "subscriber." This is blatantly misleading when counting figures of how many people are actually willing to PAY in excess of what they have already paid (if anything) to obtain a subscription.
If it's a pure subscriber number, as in, 100k people have plunked down the full price of the subscription, I'd say that fairly decent. If it's including other "subscribers" who didn't have to pay or paid a fraction of the cost, I'd say they are dishonest and are trying to bolster their numbers to look good.
Why use a MiFi when you can just turn your phone into a wifi access point?
This is what I do currently... but it really kills the battery life of my phone, which already has pretty crappy battery life to begin with. It's ok if I'm able to plug my phone in and/or charge it, but if I'm out and about, I try to use the wifi AP option very sparingly.
My covered wagon still does everything it was designed to do (I'm going on the Oregon Trail)... but it's still sadly obsolete. /sigh No more cholera for me.
As a PS3 Owner it's my right to own theese and use them on my hardware as I see fit.
And you are the kind of fuckwit that keeps companies like Sony in business. They keep pulling this shit and it's people like you who are directly to blame. What Sony is doing is YOUR fault.
In other news, not a shit was given that at the interview...
Megapixels are meaningless if they aren't coupled with a larger sensor and better glass. Cheap plastic and a tiny sensor still make it a shitty camera. It's the same picture whether it's 4Mp or 8Mp. Now if they put a real Xenon flash on it, that might be something interesting.
Well, take your pick:
1) I was making the point that McAfee hasn't been worth a shit since before the turn of the millienium OR they haven't ever been worth a shit.
2) Aggravating douchebags like yourself who aren't smart enough to figure out number 1.
It's not the simplicity that's the problem. For me, it's the lack of white space in relation to the massive font size. Make the font smaller, and space the 'paragraphs' out a little bit more. Also, it could stand to be a little wider... on my screen he could easily fit three columns of the article's size on the screen. He still has plenty of horizontal white space to work with; he should use it. Just my $.02
You can fix it yourself... Hold down your control key and scroll your mouse wheel... fixed right up for you.
This is news? McAfee hasn't been secure or even any good at anti-virus since... like... the DOS days. If they ever were. Wern't they the ones who put out a DOS anti-virus kit? Or am I thinking of someone else? If it's someone else, then McAfee has always sucked.
I had a Y710 Lenovo laptop. One of the mouse buttons went out on the palm rest.
Have you ever tried to buy a part from Lenovo? It's fucking impossible. Literally, it's impossible. They have a website with miscellaneous parts that may be problem parts, but it's for a scattering of different laptops and it's hard to find the part you want if it exists at all. If it's not on that site, you can't buy it. Period. So with thousands of parts that might need to be replaced, they have a few tens of parts available for a random selection of laptops with no possible pay to purchase a part otherwise.
Try calling them and be shunted around to 10+ different offices and 15+ different people for each one of them to tell you that you have to talk to someone else. Eventually you'll be told that if a part needs to be replaced, you need to send it into the depot to have the machine evaluated. But if your laptop is out of warranty, you're out of luck... even if you're willing to pay for the replacement.
But wait! If you want to pay $80 to send the laptop in, that's ok. They will assess it for $80, and if the part is available, they will replace it and charge the difference (if there is one), but no, they can't tell you if the part is available... so you will have to pay $80 to know if it's worth $80 to send it in. Maybe it'll cost more to get your laptop back. They won't tell you.
Fuck you Lenovo.
I agree that the "high resolution" portion of the gaming mice are complete bunk. After a certain point, it doesn't matter much unless you are playing on a really odd surface (like nearly unblemished glass). What matters most is the features.
I can play equally well in terms of accuracy on a cheap dell laser mouse as I can with my $100 mouse. I have the $100 mouse because I use the buttons/features (adjustable palm, thumb, etc...) which the cheap dell mouse doesn't have. If I switch out for a different mouse, I go back to a $30/$40 Logitech MX series mouse and it's fine. It's all about the other features on the mouse, not the resolution of the laser.
So you're claiming that any system caught a still image on any device and could preview said picture while viewing a video feed should automatically invalidate the Kodak claim?
Whether or not it should can be set aside in this instance, because Kodak is claiming that cell phones violate the patent. The fact that I have used a system that does essentially the *exact* same thing in 1990, 7 years prior to Kodak filing for a patent, invalidates the claim Kodak is making. I suppose if you wanted to quibble, the difference would be the phones capture and display in color while the system I was using did it in greyscale.
If I took one of the phones that Kodak is complaining about back to 1990 and made it greyscale and put it side by side with the system I used, operation would be virtually identical (with the exception of resolution of course).
From someone that has done this and used a Galaxy tab for a short time... It's not the same, not even close. the Nook Color is slow as molasses compared to the Galaxy tab or even a 1st gen ipad.
It's a great hack for the poor, but useability is very low due to the limited ram and really slow processor.
IF all you want to do is run the facebook app and the twitter app along with your ebooks, it's great. If you think you will use it as a full-on tablet.... well get used to S-L-O-W.....
My rooted Nook Color has replaced the iPad (1st gen) tablet that I had and has done everything I wanted to do with a tablet. With the Groupon deal, $125 for the Nook Color was a steal and it allowed me sell the iPad before the price drop, recouping my investment and I couldn't be happier. I had thought the screen being smaller would be a problem, but honestly, the ability to hold the tablet in one hand outweighs the extra screen real estate. I thought I would be compromising the tablet experience I had with the iPad going to the Nook, but it turns out it was an upgrade in almost every way.
I would like to try out a Galaxy Tab to compare it, though. There's definitely some room for improvement, but for a quick, easily handled tablet to keep around the house and car, the Nook Color is really kick ass for the price.
Odd. I always thought that a specific process done by specific hardware qualified as a patent. But since you obviously have no interest in expounding on your claims I guess there isn't much to discuss.
You have always thought wrong then. Just because a specific process is done on new hardware doesn't mean it's not *still the same process*. If that were the case, then you could say since I have this piece of software that runs on ARM and the same software that runs on x86, there should be two different patents. That's not the case, otherwise Java and any interpreted language would have a major problem.
The problem with Kodak's patent in this particular instance is almost every part of the patent has prior art. There may be a couple line items that don't have prior art, but you can't patent a multi-line patent based off of only one or two changes... because again, I could twiddle a few things in how an iPhone works and then start selling an iPhone. Apple would probably have a problem with this.
A patent has to be *significantly* new/different to be a new patent. In Kodaks case with this patent, it's not significantly new or different than existing products.
But does it finally support 24 and 32 bit color depth on the desktop? That was a huge stopping/stumbling block for me on integrating Zen into our datacenter. We ended up going with VMWare's ESXi because it's the only hypervisor that supports 24 bit color depth that I found. I would really have preferred Xen but they seem to have completely ignored the video memory segment of their product.
Anyone know why this is? It seems like it would be a simple addition.
Wait.. what? What about prior art? How is this even a patent? I was using an electronic system to capture still images while previewing a motion image back in the early 90's. In fact, I made a still image "movie" of just such a thing of part of "Harlem Knights." It was a black and white, low resolution digitizer, but it still is the same principal.
I forget what the brand/name of the device was, but I was using it for a myriad of things back in 1990 or 1991 at the latest. That right there should invalidate the patent, since the patent was filed in 1997.
Oh Motorola, you are the Sony of the mobile world. You want so bad to be the coolest kid on the block but you come off as just another kid who tries too hard and fails miserably with your wacky ideas that never quite pan out.
Motorola and Sony should partner up and then we can look forward to two companies putting out all sorts of crappy proprietary junk that never takes off and lots of privacy invasion and a ton of sad attempts to lock down their crappy IP so that even the people that are so misguided as to buy or advocate for their products end up hating them. It would sure solve a lot of problems for consumers... then they'd only have to avoid one company instead of two.
Motorola and Sony... Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (or is it's Tweedle Dumber?) of the Tech World.
N900 is a 3 year old phone. call me when Nokia makes a modern version.... of which they will not because they are now a all Microsoft shop. Nokia's dead man, the body just hasn't stopped moving.
You should amend that to when they make a modern version with a UI that doesn't suck. They haven't been able to develop a decent UI since... um... well. I guess they've never been able to handle that end of the market. Even their dumbphone UI's were some of the worst UI's ever invented. How you screw that up is a mystery but Nokia managed that. I wasn't touching Nokia phones at the start of Symbian because of the horrible performance of their pre-(semi)smartphones, so maybe Symbian was good when it first rolled out, but circa mid 2000's Symbian was old, slow and crappy and hasn't improved a bit since.
Because it was 1951 and they couldn't handle/afford it.
It was a remake of The Thing which was based off the story. If Carpenter wanted it to be an envisioning of the story, he would have named it something else... perhaps "Who goes there," no?
Man, you know, that is so true. I hadn't really considered that as a viable option, but it would be a perfect medium.
We'd still have the problem of a script though... how many writers can write for a long(ish) miniseries and maintain quality writing, even with the book(s) as guide(s)? Few... look what happened to Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica/Craprica, Farscape, etc... Writers seem to go off on a tangent or think they can improve on the story in the book and then it all goes off the rails and crashes in a firery heap. Firefly is so great because it didn't have a chance to go off the rails... look what Weedon did subsequently... nothing nearly as good - or was it? If his later stuff ended after 13 episodes, would it be considered as good? I dunno... I was never a Buffy fan to begin with, so I can't really comment on that part of his career.
The script would be tough, but if someone could work out solid writers that are willing to be faithful to the script throughout the whole run, it could work.
I just can't see how you can translate that to the screen in under 10 hours and still have a coherent, interesting story that is true to the original. I fear the movie is going to suck something fierce.
Isn't that what they said about LotR?
It's also, what, 9 hours long? Longer? Hell I don't even remember how long it is, but it's at least 9 hours but probably closer to 12... AND they still cut stuff out. Bombadil anyone?
When the hell is someone worth a fuck going to make a Ringworld movie?
There's so much great SF that no one will touch; Heinlein got raped with Starship Troopers, but The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a much better story.
Or maybe Lazarus Long...
James P. Hogan's Giant's series would make a great set of movies; it seems like all hollywood wants to do is regurgitate crap.
How could you translate the Ringworld stuff to the screen? You'd need like 5 hours of setup just to get into the main plot line. That is really the crux of the problem with Scifi and movies. There's so much supporting material that needs to be in place to make good Scifi that you just can't do it on the screen in any reasonable amount of movie time. I would love to see those you listed translated to the screen, but even The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would need to be 4 to 5 hours long to be done properly. The others... much longer. Think LotR at best.
The same goes for Enders Game ... I just can't see how you can translate that to the screen in under 10 hours and still have a coherent, interesting story that is true to the original. I fear the movie is going to suck something fierce.
And there is the fact that the author thinks John Carpenter was original when he made the 1982 REMAKE of the 1951 "The Thing."
Any geek with any cred in the SciFi horror genre would know Carpenters movie was a total ripoff of Nyby's original with better special effects. It's like saying the Tom Cruise version of War of the World was original.
District 9 was an interesting idea (hey, aliens! Wait, the dregs of alien society?), but I found the execution was, well, "earthly." In the end is wasn't much more than a tale of mistreated refugees. I can watch that on CNN.
That was kind of the point of the movie...
You pretty much hit the nail on the head and I agree with you. I also wanted to point out a couple things you didn't, though.
Video games (at least some of them) are appreciated as "high art" by those able to appreciate the aspects of the game most people are not. Just like the Sistine Chapel and other pieces of "great art," how do you know they are great? Because someone told you they were? Most great pieces of art from our history fall into this category. If you knew nothing of the Mona Lisa and happened to pass it in the mall, would you stop and say "Holy shit, that is epic art?" Most people probably wouldn't; They would say "Huh, interesting," or "Hey, that's nice" and then move on.
It reminds me of an "experiment" that Joshua Bell did at a metro station. He is widely regarded as a virtuoso and an amazing violinist. He is the definition of an artist and produces great art - anyway, he played in a Metro station in Washington DC. Very few if any people stopped to appreciate the fact that he was playing one of the most intricate pieces of violin music on a 3.5 million dollar violin. Why? Because they wern't TOLD it was great art.
I would bet dollars to donuts that if someone with "authority" (whomever that might be in this case) said "This game here, this is great art. It's amazing art. The best ever." suddenly games would be art.
It all boils down to the fact that many/most people don't even understand why a game would be great, art wise vs one that's just fun to play. Ebert et al. simply don't understand what makes a game great art, not that some games aren't great art. Those of us who are more attune to what makes a game great and what simply makes it good are far more qualified to judge if a game is art or not. But it is absolutely ludicrous to say that at least some games are not great art, simply because you don't understand what great art in the realm of games truly is. Chances are, you don't know what great art is in other areas, either - but it's there, too.
I don't quite understand the trajectory of the probe. For example in the last shot, it swoops past Mimas zooming straight toward the Saturnian surface, then appears to change direction curving vertically, passing through the rings (why no hail of ice damage?), then swoops back around and turns around heading toward Encledatus at top speed. How is this even possible?
Yeah, that was what I was wondering. If that's only from pictures, it wasn't from a sequence of pictures that are in order.