Portal was not some deep work of art, it was an amazingly entertaining tech demo.
Portal does a lot with very little. It creates a complex, thoughtful puzzle game with it's "one trick pony" gameplay; it creates a memorable Douglas Adams-esque type villain using only disembodied speech. And one of the most memorable characters in Portal is inanimate (Please forgive me my Weighted Companion Cube!) That said, there was no deep artistic commentary about anything beyond the game. Art transcends its medium and gives insight into aspects of life, humanity, etc. Portal did not do this - it just provides a helluva fun time.
The thing I hate to see is that most review sites are docking points off their arbitrary number scales for its length.
Well review sites are there to serve as a guide for people looking on whether or not to purchase the game. In that respect it is understandable to dock some points for length, as "value for your money" plays a role in scoring.
Armless people are suing casinos because the slot machines aren't 'accessible' to them.
Modern slot machines have buttons you can push with your foot or nose... and I'm sure if you ask nicely the casino would be happy to have somebody help you drop quarters into the machine.
Why is it my job (metaphorically speaking) to ensure those who are disabled can use my facilities?
Because society says so, many believe a society is as good as how it treats its weakest people. Not saying I agree, but it is the reason why I have to pay for somebody else's retirement, or for somebody else's kids to get educated.
Why isn't it their job to somehow adapt? Is it my fault someone else can't see, hear, walk, or think clearly? Frankly, too bad on them. You got a shitty roll of the dice. Life sucks.
At some point almost everybody suffers a "life sucks" moment, and we create rules to try and fairly take care of people during those instances. If you have a genetic defect, why can't health insurance companies deny you coverage? If somehow you lose your job, why are you allowed to get out of debt by filing bankruptcy? Sure life sucks, that doesn't mean society can't help with "reasonable accomodation."
It's a good thing then that the US is *not* a democracy, where the majority rules, but a republic, where the *law* rules.
A republic with democraticly elected institutions that allow fundamentalist leadership to take power when the majority supports it.
Try giving the constitution a read one of these days. Maybe you might even want to find out what that whole war of independence was about. It's more than fireworks and tea!
The Declaration of Independence is a better indicator of the reason why the US war of Independence was fought; the Constitution was written as a series of compromises and fixes when the first government the US tried to establish failed. If you look at the declartation, it mentions "God" and "their Creator."
First off, the constitution is more than a piece of paper. It is our highest law and our most important statement of principles, and if you can't respect our law and our principles, you have no right to call yourself an American.
It is an idealistic document. I don't argue that it is an important statement of the principles of the country; I'm just mentioning that when push comes to shove the masses will always choose safety over ideals.
Lincoln fought a civil war. FDR got the country through the great depression. How can you compare them so favorably to Bush? Lincoln, on the one hand suspended habeus corpus because he was dealing with a heavily armed rebellion of millions and didn't have time to try all of the captured rebels while the war was ongoing. Aside from that he showed a great respect for the constitution. Bush on the other hand suspended habeus corpus out of a blatant power grab and disrespect for the law. The conflict and the men are in totally different categories.
The fact is that Lincoln & FDR both violated the Constitution, and the same "power grab" arguement was used by those who disagree with them during their eras. If the Constitution truly is the highest law, it should not be violated for any reason. Again I get back to the point that people want stability and safety over all else, which allowed Bush to use the "War on Terror" in the same way Lincoln used southern seccession, and FDR used the great depression & WWII.
In the 19th century extremist versions of Christianity were not nearly as powerful of a force in the US as they are today. Prior to the 20th century there were quite a few non Christian presidents. Religiously, the founding fathers especially were a mixed bag. Really, extreme forms of Christianity only came to power in the states during the cold war as a means of distinguishing ourselves ideologically from our communist enemies.
Perhaps you should read up on the "Great Awakenings," and how such religious movements resulted in new laws, reformation of government, and establishment of new institutions. Religion has always played a major role in US politics.
This is blatantly false, as I have just mentioned. Various forms of Christianity, most vary different from those practiced in America today, have been highly prevalent since colonization; however, until the 20th century many important statesmen were Deist. Christian leaders often try to give the impression that secular power is on the rise and must be combated, but this is historically false as it is extreme forms of Christianity that moved into the foreground and pushed secular ideals out of the way during recent decades.
Many of the founders of the US were Deists as well as following a mainstream Christian religion. It demonstrates their ability to temper various views, and follow their own philosophies. Such temperance has been under attack by fundamentalists throughout US history, read up on 19th century politics.
Generally the first kind are the better sort of leader. Anyone who has studied any history knows that a politician wh
This will continue as long as large numbers of religious leaders and religious voters continue to run the country.
Democracy sucks when you are in the minority.
You have to understand that about half this country believes that we are in a religious war to defeat an unholy enemy and that on both sides of this religiously motivated war will do whatever it takes to win.
You have to understand that the same level of animosity can be dictated by secular ideals - fight the tyrannical dictatorship for democracy, or defeat the evils of communism so people can be free.
So the doctrines in their purest form call for the suppression of all freedoms and the extermination of competing ideas.
I think you mean in their extremist form. Religion is like any other philosophy, unprovable and incompatible with conflicting ideas as it just has to be accepted. Ultimately how the individual accepts the philosophy and deals with those who do not agree is what is important. Libertarian extremists are just as likely to blow up a building in the US as Islamic extremists.
There were enough Americans who felt that following the dictates of their God was so important that they put people in power who believed as they did that religion was simply more important, and were willing to cast the constitution aside.
Lincoln and FDR both ignored the Constitution (according to strict contructionists) yet have been hailed as great leaders. People are more willing to follow a leader who shares their ideas than an old piece of paper.
As such, Religions like Christianity and Islam, and liberal free society are fundamentally incompatible
Yet oddly enough, the liberal free US society was established almost exclusively by Christians. It's not about religion, it's about the leaders. Some can downplay their religion and lead from a fair secular view, others allow religion to completely dictate their actions.
Even if you didn't like Neverwinter Nights, you should at least admit that it wasn't just some clone of other games out there.
I loved Neverwinter Nights (well the expansions, the original game was kinda lacking), but I would have to admit it is just a really well done D&D game clone. Bioware is a lot like Blizzard; neither creates something groundbreaking, they are popular because they learn from the mistakes of others and create high quality games.
It might be the same people, but the ultimate output of Obsidian isn't up to the same standards as Black Isle - KOTOR 2 & NWN 2 were released as buggy messes.
Hate to be pedantic, but I must say that I thought C&C III, which came about after EA's dismantling of Westwood, was a fantastic game, and the closest thing to a hardcore RTS I've seen in years
A broken clock is right twice a day.
I'm now wondering what happens to Obsidian, who generally produces all of Bio's sequels?
I'm wondering the same thing... though I'm not a huge fan of Obsidian who generally produce an inferior product to the original
Can't EA stop destroying good games and companies?
Can good game companies stop selling out? It's just like asking musicians to stop selling out to the RIAA, at the end of the day most of us will go for the money.
but if the Orion Nebula is undergoing rapid beta expansion, the measurements would be invalid. I don't know of any way to correct for this phenomenon...
The first is that there is a concept of 'best-use'. That is, there are some projects (such as SETI) that some people feel are less worthwhile than other projects.
In economic terms it's called "opportunity cost." The idea being that the cost of something is not just the price, but also the opportunity to use the resources towards something else. That is why you can have a business that makes monetary profit, but not economic profit (eg your business makes 3% profit, but you could have earned 4% on a CD)
If they spent $100mill on a telescope array, where did the money go? It went to some firms who do that, who in turn paid their employees and their suppliers, who paid their employees, etc. Those employees bought groceries, sent their kid to the dentist, sent their kid to college, bought a new car.. the money flowed through the economy. Assuming a large percentage of the firms and suppliers are in this country, then the money stayed in the national economy.
You have confused $100M with $100M worth of resources. The resources used to make the telescope don't just magically appear, it is value that is created by work, which gets represented in the form of money. If economics was just about the movement of money you would be correct, money could cycle seamlessly. In reality goods and services must be provided in exchange for money which are not unlimited.
A society based on the premise that the intellectually elite assume power is one in which benefits all and guarantees for future success are more legitimate.
Historically a society based on the intellectually elite assuming power is one which benefits the intellectually elite.
If you study history, you'd know that in fact they were ready to give up. Some of the generals didn't want to give up, but the emperor did and was ready to surrender. The nuclear bombs were entirely unnecessary and just caused a large and needless loss of civilian life.
If you study history you'd know even after the first atomic bomb was dropped, there was still a dead-lock amongst the military authority on whether to surrender. While surrender was being contemplated, it wasn't as if the allied planes were just sitting there waiting for a reply. Constant bombings, including devastating firebombings were continuing. Even after the emperor moved for surrender there was a coup attempt. So even then there were high ranking officials who were opposed to surrender. Surrender isn't just something that happens, i is a complex political process both internally and internationally. Look at peace discussions in the middle east, how many times have different sides "made peace" yet the same conflicts keep occurring.
Before I usualy downloaded what I had on my cd's or some obsucure tape I owned when I was in high school (late 80's) Now seeing RIAA tactics in the US and the fact that my last blank cdr stack purchase was 50% levy and rest was the purchase price. So being in Canada I said fuck it and been downloading pretty steady for the last 4 months.
Why download, how about just not listen to the music in any form? That way you are not padding the RIAA's wallet, nor giving them ammunition that downloading is hurting their sales.
how pathetic must you be to work overtime without being paid for it.
Maybe they choose to for the "love" of the job. Game programmers can get cushy jobs in other software segments, but there's that drive to make games. How many kids grow up thinking, "I want to learn programming so I can write a database program to manage toilet paper inventories." The number of people who want to break into the industry leads to workers making compromises. Just like acting, where you have to work a minimum wage job 95% of the time so you have the flexibility to stand in line for 5 hours to get the chance at landing a one time role that pays $50. Or professional sports where by age 6 you spend hour after hour practicing, most likely will end up in a $20k/year practice and will suffer life long physical pain, all for the chance of having a big league career that lasts less than 3 years.
I want to throw a phonebook at her and knock her off the podium.
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During modern days christian religion plagues issues like contraception and family planning to help the population problem.
So only Christian countries suffer from issues with overpopulation? Overpopulation has more to do with the fundamental drive of humans to reproduce, than any religious influence.
Its ideas oppose concepts like environmental destruction and climate change for man should be the master on earth.
Many Christians believe we are the stewards of the Earth, and are here to protect God's creations.
From this we can draw a rough timeline of opposition to first the astronomical and geological facts of science, then biological and now today the facts of ecology and sustainability.
It also inspired people to examine the universe to discover "God's Truth," and promoted public education.
It is christian dogma, which is keeping humanity from moving on from industrial civilization to a sustainable scientific way of life.
You confuse a religion with those who control it, and use it to control. I prefer to look at religion the way it is treated in "Civilization 4." Religion serves to make people happy, the religion itself has no direct effect on science, economics; it is the leaders who use religion who impact those aspects of society. Any religion can be used to form a theocratic society, any religion can be tolerant. Historically religions have gone back and forth between open scientific understanding and strict religious teachings. Religion is not unique, even secular ideals can be used to restrict people. "You can't speak against X, it's unpatriotic." or "Think of the Children!"
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Portal was not some deep work of art, it was an amazingly entertaining tech demo.
Portal does a lot with very little. It creates a complex, thoughtful puzzle game with it's "one trick pony" gameplay; it creates a memorable Douglas Adams-esque type villain using only disembodied speech. And one of the most memorable characters in Portal is inanimate (Please forgive me my Weighted Companion Cube!)
That said, there was no deep artistic commentary about anything beyond the game. Art transcends its medium and gives insight into aspects of life, humanity, etc. Portal did not do this - it just provides a helluva fun time.
At some point almost everybody suffers a "life sucks" moment, and we create rules to try and fairly take care of people during those instances. If you have a genetic defect, why can't health insurance companies deny you coverage? If somehow you lose your job, why are you allowed to get out of debt by filing bankruptcy?
Sure life sucks, that doesn't mean society can't help with "reasonable accomodation."
A republic with democraticly elected institutions that allow fundamentalist leadership to take power when the majority supports it.
The Declaration of Independence is a better indicator of the reason why the US war of Independence was fought; the Constitution was written as a series of compromises and fixes when the first government the US tried to establish failed. If you look at the declartation, it mentions "God" and "their Creator."
It is an idealistic document. I don't argue that it is an important statement of the principles of the country; I'm just mentioning that when push comes to shove the masses will always choose safety over ideals.
The fact is that Lincoln & FDR both violated the Constitution, and the same "power grab" arguement was used by those who disagree with them during their eras. If the Constitution truly is the highest law, it should not be violated for any reason. Again I get back to the point that people want stability and safety over all else, which allowed Bush to use the "War on Terror" in the same way Lincoln used southern seccession, and FDR used the great depression & WWII.
Perhaps you should read up on the "Great Awakenings," and how such religious movements resulted in new laws, reformation of government, and establishment of new institutions. Religion has always played a major role in US politics.
Many of the founders of the US were Deists as well as following a mainstream Christian religion. It demonstrates their ability to temper various views, and follow their own philosophies. Such temperance has been under attack by fundamentalists throughout US history, read up on 19th century politics.
You have to understand that the same level of animosity can be dictated by secular ideals - fight the tyrannical dictatorship for democracy, or defeat the evils of communism so people can be free.
I think you mean in their extremist form. Religion is like any other philosophy, unprovable and incompatible with conflicting ideas as it just has to be accepted. Ultimately how the individual accepts the philosophy and deals with those who do not agree is what is important. Libertarian extremists are just as likely to blow up a building in the US as Islamic extremists.
Lincoln and FDR both ignored the Constitution (according to strict contructionists) yet have been hailed as great leaders. People are more willing to follow a leader who shares their ideas than an old piece of paper.
Yet oddly enough, the liberal free US society was established almost exclusively by Christians. It's not about religion, it's about the leaders. Some can downplay their religion and lead from a fair secular view, others allow religion to completely dictate their actions.
Bioware is a lot like Blizzard; neither creates something groundbreaking, they are popular because they learn from the mistakes of others and create high quality games.
It might be the same people, but the ultimate output of Obsidian isn't up to the same standards as Black Isle - KOTOR 2 & NWN 2 were released as buggy messes.
I'm wondering the same thing... though I'm not a huge fan of Obsidian who generally produce an inferior product to the original
It's just like asking musicians to stop selling out to the RIAA, at the end of the day most of us will go for the money.
That is why you can have a business that makes monetary profit, but not economic profit (eg your business makes 3% profit, but you could have earned 4% on a CD)
Surrender isn't just something that happens, i is a complex political process both internally and internationally. Look at peace discussions in the middle east, how many times have different sides "made peace" yet the same conflicts keep occurring.
The number of people who want to break into the industry leads to workers making compromises. Just like acting, where you have to work a minimum wage job 95% of the time so you have the flexibility to stand in line for 5 hours to get the chance at landing a one time role that pays $50. Or professional sports where by age 6 you spend hour after hour practicing, most likely will end up in a $20k/year practice and will suffer life long physical pain, all for the chance of having a big league career that lasts less than 3 years.
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Many Christians believe we are the stewards of the Earth, and are here to protect God's creations.
It also inspired people to examine the universe to discover "God's Truth," and promoted public education.
You confuse a religion with those who control it, and use it to control.
I prefer to look at religion the way it is treated in "Civilization 4." Religion serves to make people happy, the religion itself has no direct effect on science, economics; it is the leaders who use religion who impact those aspects of society. Any religion can be used to form a theocratic society, any religion can be tolerant. Historically religions have gone back and forth between open scientific understanding and strict religious teachings.
Religion is not unique, even secular ideals can be used to restrict people. "You can't speak against X, it's unpatriotic." or "Think of the Children!"