Also completely aggravating? Working my ass off to beat the boss, and then watching a cutscene that assumes I lost. GRRR!
You remind me of an experience I had a long time ago playing Phantasy Star II, for the Genesis. One of the characters, Nei, gets forcably killed partway through the game in a bass battle. I happened to have a one-of-a-kind item that allowed me to raise a fallen character during combat, and I used it to bring her back to life. We then beat the bad guy with her alive, only to have the game treat her as dead as soon as we left combat. It was one of the most annoying experiences I've ever suffered while gaming.
I bet if they packed Halo 3 in with it (and of course charged a slightly higher price) they'd unload a pile of systems at a decent enough profit.
While I share your opinion that their currently bundled games themselves aren't very compelling, but I doubt we'll see a Halo 3 pack-in because I suspect Microsoft isn't terribly worried about moving systems this Christmas season. Wii's are still seeing supply fall short of demand and PS3 systems have fewer games at a higher price. And Halo 3 (and Mass Effect and other soon-to-be-released titles) will move plenty of systems even being sold separately. The system is starting to move under its own momentum.
By NOT packing in Halo 3, they'll still sell lots of units and they'll additionally rake in tons of cash by selling Halo 3 separately. And making loads of cash and perhaps finally showing that Microsoft's game division is profitable sounds like a pretty good strategy.
Having a music label (or CEO of a company that owns said music label) complain that someone else's contract terms are indecent is hilarious. It's like a nudist calling someone else underdressed.
This is the most entertaining news I've read all day! Thank you, submitter.
And without some of the iPhone applications, including the Notepad, if my eyes don't deceive me. Why remove the Notepad from the iPod Touch? That's just bizarre.
Its EASY for people to transfer from iPod to iPod and near impossible to transfer from iPod to some other mp3 player.
I don't know that it's quite as difficult as you make it out to be. You can burn music purchased from the iTunes music store to CD, and then import that CD back back to your computer in MP3 format.
Granted, if you have a particularly large collection of music purchased from the iTMS, this process would be very time consuming and annoying.
Don't believe the crap around here that "open drm" isn't possible. Thats exactly what MS has done, and exactly what the labels want out of apple.
Only that's not what MS has done. You'll note that MicroSoft didn't use their own "open" PlaysForSure DRM once they had their own Zune music player and music store. Instead they set up their own proprietary DRM that was incompatible with PlaysForSure.
Chances are they ended up in a contract that would hold them responsible if DRMed music sold for the Zune got cracked and pirated. If their contract is anything like Apple's, they could lose access to their entire music library if they can't plug the hole fast. And they can't ensure they can do that if other companies are involved with the maintenance of the same DRM.
MS only has only proven Apple's point. Anyone with a real stake in this game can't risk using an open DRM. (MS can license PlaysForSure to other companies because MS has no significant risk if PlaysForSure gets cracked.)
If you pay attention to what the music execs are actually saying, they're not saying they don't want DRM, they're saying they want Jobs to open Apple's DRM up (make it accessable to other companies that sell DRM music or digital music players). Which they know Apple can't do, as Apple would be subjected to a much greater risk of the DRM being cracked in a way they couldn't quickly fix (which contractually could cost Apple access to their entire music library).
If the music execs were serious about wanting Apple to open up Apple's DRM, they could renegotiate to reduce Apple's risk. But since there appears to be no actual effort on that front, it sounds more like diversionary finger-pointing by the music labels.
If passing on genes for destructive, anti-social behaviour isn't something that you can attribute to people, you can't really attribute ANY heritable qualities to the parents at all. Height, nice high cheek bones, good teeth, eye colour, all of it is just the luck of the draw -- and there's no justification for taking any pride in any of it.
Whoa there. I've already established that I'm not saying you can't pass on genes for destructive or anti-social behavior. I'm saying that's different than being responsible for them. It sounds like we're using this word to mean different things. When I say the parents are not responsible if their kid has bad genetic code that led to him to do something horrible, I'm using the word to mean that they are not to be held answerable or accountable for this.
You seem to be using the word in the same way I am, but also to mean the primary cause of. As in "the parents are responsible (the primary cause) for the child's bad genes." Which is also a perfectly legitimate use of the word, but you seem to be using it interchangeably with the other meaning. For example, we could say "because the parents are the primary cause for the child's bad genes, they are accountable for the child's destructive behavior." It seems to me that this is essentially what you are saying, and this is where I disagree with you.
I'm not laying the burden of sin on the parents. I'm just saying that the parents are as responsible for the genetic defects in their children as they are for the genetic gifts -- and since parents do take responsibility for their childrens' genetic gifts, they are by default taking responsibility for their childrens' genetic flaws. Add in their rather substantial degree of responsibility for their childrens' nurturing, and you have parents that are heavily to blame for the things that their children do.
You start that paragraph by saying you're not laying the burden of sin on the parents, but you end it by saying that parents are heavily to blame for the things their children do. How to you reconcile these statements?
Everyone knows that they "could" be carrying destructive genes (everyone has, on average, 9 to 20 fatal recessive alleles, which is why inbreeding is so destructive).
Shall we blame everyone for how their kids turn out then? "You knew there were risks when you decided to breed" is not a good argument because in most cases those risks are small or commonplace. You might well say "you knew you might get hit by meteorite when you stepped outside, so it's your fault for taking the risk". It's one thing if you decide to have kids when you know you're likely to pass down a seriously bad genetic trait. In that case, sure, the parents really did know the dangers and I would have no problem with someone saying "the parents chose to pass on their shitty genes." But in the context of this story, you've said exactly that about a couple parents regarding the behavior of a child that there is no evidence could have reasonably predicted. And therein lies my beef.
Tendencies towards depression, APD, generosity, happiness, intelligence, stupidity, gullibility, risk-taking, even things as abstract as patriotism and religosity (basically synonymous with the aforementioned gullibility) are all very much genetic in origin. But for some reason, we let parents get away with taking credit only for the good genes...
That's a fantastic argument for genetics contributing not only towards an individual's health and appearance, but also behavior. I don't dispute that. I also don't dispute that parents often enjoy taking credit for having good or smart kids, yet typically shy away from taking credit if their child has bad traits.
Where I disagree with you is not with such generalities, but purely how you're applying them within the context of this Slashdot conversation, where you say (among other things)"The parents chose to pass on their shitty genes.", as if the family somehow had some established predilection towards murder or other lousy behaviors, and they were attached to a recessive gene that they chose to pass on. There's nothing to support that here, so I think attaching a portion of blame to the parents is an enormous stretch, at least without knowing more than we do. And since are plenty of things about kids you just can't predict, I don't think it's fair to lay the burden of this child's sins on the parents' door simply for the act of having a child.
How are the parents not responsible for the nature aspect of the child? If anything, they're MORE responsible for the nature side, since only about 1 or 2 new mutations in Child's entire genome are NOT inherited from the parents. The parents chose to pass on their shitty genes.
You've got to be kidding! Is your argument really that crappy kids come from crappy parents? Seriously? By your reasoning, it sounds like we could end entire bloodlines because, heck, they're bad, right? Why even investigate individuals who may have been involved in a crime when we can just compare the kid to their parents! "Oh, the parents were good? Golly, it couldn't have been this kid! Let's start looking somewhere else."
I realize this is a ridiculous extension of your argument, but what I'm trying to remind you of is that kids are not clones of their parents. That is to say, while they certainly inherit genes from their parents, they don't inherit all of them. They inherit a subset from the mother and subset from the father. Different children from the same parents will inherit different subsets, and it's pretty tough to guess whether a combination is going to be "bad" in advance. Further variations are introduced to the physical makeup of the individual during and after pregnancy from nutrients derived from the mother and diet. As a result, children born of the same parents can be remarkably diverse even if raised in nearly identical environments and exposed to similar social pressures.
You can verify my daring "non clone" theory yourself by leaving your home, finding a child and then comparing that child to their parents. Heck, even forgoing such observation and staying entirely within the bounds of the existing discussion, we can see that the other child of the same parents is described as a sweet and well adjusted kid.
After reading the "stepmother's" reply I have to say yea it probably was the parent's fault. This kid seems to have been tossed back and forth between the "father" and the mother. The stepmother's language in her reply was what I would expect for a high school kid and not a parent of a child. In all the discussion of what they did and didn't do, I at no time heard the word love. I heard hate a lot but not love. Yea this kid might have had issues from the start but I have to say that didn't sound like he had much of a chance with the parents he had.
Yes he was unmanageable at 15 but what about at two? How about at five? How much love and time did he get at seven?
I really don't understand how you can blame the parents based on the information provided. Sure, the parents split up, but there are plenty of parents who divorce or separate and still have well-adjusted children. Beyond that, we simply have no idea what this kid's childhood was like. We also have no idea how long the stepmother has been on the scene, so I don't see how you can expect her to comment on how much love the child received at any specific age, much less support any conclusions based on the presence or absence of the word "love" in a letter.
It seems like a great modern fad (and fallacy) to blame parents for every lousy thing a kid does, as if people have become desperate to take nature out of the classic "nature vs. nurture" argument. But none of us are shaped purely by our environment, as the mention of the kid's younger brother being reasonably well-adjusted supports. We all have judgement and free will, so unless some actual evidence surfaces to support the notion that the parents somehow meaningfully contributed to these horrible acts, let's place blame back on the kid who committed them, shall we?
Hold on a sec. You say they want to see the tape, but let's not forget that (according to the article) he offered to show the judge the tape rather than the D.A., so that the judge could determine whether there was either evidence or pertinent information. That sounded reasonable-enough-to-me, but he was refused.
Now I'm not unsympathetic to the fact that an officer has been attacked, but let's let's go over some of these details, and then talk about what "they" are trying to do. Let's remember that "they" in this instance is not the State of California, even though this skull-cracking happened to a state police officer. The feds have managed to involve themselves because of possible damage to a police cruiser, which the feds partially paid for. So, at the very least, this sounds like they want investigate the attack on an Californian officer by making a creative end-run around California journalist shield laws. An alternative possibility is that the feds might be using this as a pretense to gather the names of dissenters, as the journalist darkly suggests. Neither of these options sit terribly well with me.
And let's also not forget that the journalist wasn't the person who did the skull cracking. He has not been accused of any crime, yet he's the one sitting in prison. Ostensibly the reason for this incarceration is to encourage him to talk, yet he's been sitting there longer than any journalist in American history. So is this actually encouragement? Or is it instead punishment? (Last I checked, we weren't supposed to do the latter without a trial.)
Can't deauthorize one song without deauthorizing them all.
Of all the (excellent) reasons that others have provided to explain why my idea was inadequate, I think this one is arguably the best. It shows that my idea isn't just impractical, it's completely unworkable.
I never thought I'd say this but... thank you, Ananymous Coward!
I would imagine Apple would de-authorize that song for all your computers and prevent you from re-authorizing it. The "evil of DRM" would allow for this service to comsumers I think.
[Me] Broadcast TV shows are free to consumers. Maybe you pay a monthly fee for cable access, but at the end of the day nobody is paying $8.99 for an episode of Malcolm.
[lazyl] The network does. And they base that buying decision on the ratings (or anticipated ratings).
[paragraph snipped]
[lazyl] The point is that it's exactly like TV. I think the analogy confused you because in the case of TV the consumer is a combination of the network and the viewer.
I understand that TV shows to not spring forth fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. When I say "nobody pays for TV shows", I'm referring to viewers, which I had hoped was clear from my context. Of course the network actually pays for them, that's my point exactly. In particular, I'm arguing that it's important to note who is paying for them and this changes the underlying economic model in a fundamentally important way. And when you change the model in this way, it is no longer "exactly like TV."
This doesn't mean I'm "confused", it means I'm disagreeing with the underlying premiss behind the argument that episodic video games have the same opportunity for success as TV shows (even though I do agree that they share certain other similarities).
It's simpler than that... he just was too dumb to differentiate between "the most pervasive system on which to play games" and "the most pervasive system on which games are played".
That is really excellently stated. I'll watch for your posts in the future.
Yeah, they cost money, but are you really not going to own one?
In truth I do already own one. But I don't really subscribe to the model of thought that supposes that I purchased my computer for non-gaming reasons and any gaming ability can be considered a free bonus. My machine exists for a lot a reasons, including gaming. Yes, it has a lot of functionality above and beyond that which a console offers, but that functionality comes with a price tag. A big one. It's an expensive piece of hardware, MUCH more expensive than any console. And sure, you can get a cheaper computer than mine, but if you're trying to price yourself around the price of a console, you're almost certainly not going to be able to play games of the same graphical caliber.
As such, I consider your post as a fantastic argument for trying Sam and Max if you already own a PC, but not such a great argument for disregarding the price of a PC in any comparisons. If indeed such comparisons even belong in the discussion of episodic gaming in the first place. With the recent wave of consoles all having internet capability and on-line stores either already present or soon-to-arrive, a game like Sam & Max could probably do fine for itself as Live Arcade game for the Xbox, for example.
The author of the article, Rick Sanchez, is special. Like, short bus special. And by that I mean a simpering moron. This may sound like idle flamebait, so I'll try to back up this opinion. Here's an example from the article:
In the world of television, my favorite example of this is a show like "Malcolm in the Middle." I loved the early episodes, but my wife hated them. As the show evolved, the writers and actors developed a better sense of what the show was about, what jokes made sense and what you could do with the characters. That evolution won my wife over. Episodic games have this same opportunity.
This is a seriously bogus comparison. Apples and oranges. Broadcast TV shows are free to consumers. Maybe you pay a monthly fee for cable access, but at the end of the day nobody is paying $8.99 for an episode of Malcolm. If people don't like the first episode of a video game they had to pay for, are they really going to buy the next episode to "give it a chance"? Not for my dollar. Not the same thing, not the same opportunity.
For another example, check out the third page of his article where the author provides numbers to show that there are nearly twice as many PCs as there are consoles in american homes. He then states that "the PC is, bar none, the most pervasive system on which to play games." Then he goes on to say how "odd" it is that console revenues are more than four times that of PC game revenues. Does it not occur to the author that maybe a lot of these PCs are ancient and most people don't feel like paying Pong or Zork anymore? Or that a more fair comparison might be to compare the number of PCs and consoles sold to families only in the past year or three?
The author goes on to slam the Wii by claiming that "at the end of the day, Nintendo is still selling $40 dollar-plus software that requires a fairly expensive piece of consumer electronics to run it." Riiiight, like anyone is buying a Wii just to play Wii sports. The deeper implication being "why by an expensive Wii when you can already play games on your PC?" Like everyone already magically owns a PC at no cost. Yet if the author made even a little effort to be objective, he might notice that game consoles are a lot cheaper than most PCs. The Wii especially, retailing for only $250.
I hope Gamasutra felt they got their $5 worth (or whatever they paid) for that article.
Someone1234: If light existed only for 14.7 billion years, then objects couldn't be farther than 14.7 billion light years, in fact, much less. As the maximum speed they could have (relative to us) is the speed of light.
LionKimbro: No; There's no reason to believe things didn't start beyond us. Furthermore, there is the expansion of space.
In addition to what Lion said, it's important not to assume that light existed since the beginning of the universe. According to the chart linked to below (which the orignal article also links to), it took about 400 million years for objects to start projecting light.
So when someone asks "Can you support your argument?" your reply is "Support it yourself"? That's kind of a loser defense.
Fellow slashdotter "dentford" was good enough to reply with the link that you were probably referring to. As dentford states in that post, Bev Harris is not described there as a phoney at all, but instead is described as difficult and perhaps as abusive in some of her posting on the DU message board.
Switching to Google, as you suggested, a search on "Bev Harris phony" yields plenty of links, but most of them seem to reporting positively on Bev Harris and her work, with the word "phony" being used in this context to describe many electronic voting machines and their accuracy. I only saw one site that detailed some difficulty obtaining an IRS financial filing from her, but even that didn't describer her as a "phony".
Oh, but now I see that you've switched from calling her a "phony" (meaning not genuine, fraudulent) to "crackpot" (meaning an eccentric or foolish person).
In light of your inability to support your own argument, in light of the fact that your "argument" is vague at best, in light of the fact that your posting history shows that this is not the first materially unsupported attack post against Bev Harris and Black Box Voting, and in light of the fact that the very search you recommended tends to support Bev Harris rather than undermine her, I've decided not to give up on her, but to instead give up on you. You are now my first/. foe. Thank you and goodbye.
Slashdot Mirror
And this is Modded 'Insightful'?? Scary.
If by "scary" you mean "awesome", I'm in complete agreement. I can only hope this choice receives favorable meta-moderation.
You remind me of an experience I had a long time ago playing Phantasy Star II, for the Genesis. One of the characters, Nei, gets forcably killed partway through the game in a bass battle. I happened to have a one-of-a-kind item that allowed me to raise a fallen character during combat, and I used it to bring her back to life. We then beat the bad guy with her alive, only to have the game treat her as dead as soon as we left combat. It was one of the most annoying experiences I've ever suffered while gaming.
While I share your opinion that their currently bundled games themselves aren't very compelling, but I doubt we'll see a Halo 3 pack-in because I suspect Microsoft isn't terribly worried about moving systems this Christmas season. Wii's are still seeing supply fall short of demand and PS3 systems have fewer games at a higher price. And Halo 3 (and Mass Effect and other soon-to-be-released titles) will move plenty of systems even being sold separately. The system is starting to move under its own momentum.
By NOT packing in Halo 3, they'll still sell lots of units and they'll additionally rake in tons of cash by selling Halo 3 separately. And making loads of cash and perhaps finally showing that Microsoft's game division is profitable sounds like a pretty good strategy.
Just my uninformed 2 cents.
This is the most entertaining news I've read all day! Thank you, submitter.
And without some of the iPhone applications, including the Notepad, if my eyes don't deceive me. Why remove the Notepad from the iPod Touch? That's just bizarre.
I don't know that it's quite as difficult as you make it out to be. You can burn music purchased from the iTunes music store to CD, and then import that CD back back to your computer in MP3 format.
Granted, if you have a particularly large collection of music purchased from the iTMS, this process would be very time consuming and annoying.
Only that's not what MS has done. You'll note that MicroSoft didn't use their own "open" PlaysForSure DRM once they had their own Zune music player and music store. Instead they set up their own proprietary DRM that was incompatible with PlaysForSure.
Chances are they ended up in a contract that would hold them responsible if DRMed music sold for the Zune got cracked and pirated. If their contract is anything like Apple's, they could lose access to their entire music library if they can't plug the hole fast. And they can't ensure they can do that if other companies are involved with the maintenance of the same DRM.
MS only has only proven Apple's point. Anyone with a real stake in this game can't risk using an open DRM. (MS can license PlaysForSure to other companies because MS has no significant risk if PlaysForSure gets cracked.)
If the music execs were serious about wanting Apple to open up Apple's DRM, they could renegotiate to reduce Apple's risk. But since there appears to be no actual effort on that front, it sounds more like diversionary finger-pointing by the music labels.
Whoa there. I've already established that I'm not saying you can't pass on genes for destructive or anti-social behavior. I'm saying that's different than being responsible for them. It sounds like we're using this word to mean different things. When I say the parents are not responsible if their kid has bad genetic code that led to him to do something horrible, I'm using the word to mean that they are not to be held answerable or accountable for this.
You seem to be using the word in the same way I am, but also to mean the primary cause of. As in "the parents are responsible (the primary cause) for the child's bad genes." Which is also a perfectly legitimate use of the word, but you seem to be using it interchangeably with the other meaning. For example, we could say "because the parents are the primary cause for the child's bad genes, they are accountable for the child's destructive behavior." It seems to me that this is essentially what you are saying, and this is where I disagree with you.
I'm not laying the burden of sin on the parents. I'm just saying that the parents are as responsible for the genetic defects in their children as they are for the genetic gifts -- and since parents do take responsibility for their childrens' genetic gifts, they are by default taking responsibility for their childrens' genetic flaws. Add in their rather substantial degree of responsibility for their childrens' nurturing, and you have parents that are heavily to blame for the things that their children do.
You start that paragraph by saying you're not laying the burden of sin on the parents, but you end it by saying that parents are heavily to blame for the things their children do. How to you reconcile these statements?
Everyone knows that they "could" be carrying destructive genes (everyone has, on average, 9 to 20 fatal recessive alleles, which is why inbreeding is so destructive).
Shall we blame everyone for how their kids turn out then? "You knew there were risks when you decided to breed" is not a good argument because in most cases those risks are small or commonplace. You might well say "you knew you might get hit by meteorite when you stepped outside, so it's your fault for taking the risk". It's one thing if you decide to have kids when you know you're likely to pass down a seriously bad genetic trait. In that case, sure, the parents really did know the dangers and I would have no problem with someone saying "the parents chose to pass on their shitty genes." But in the context of this story, you've said exactly that about a couple parents regarding the behavior of a child that there is no evidence could have reasonably predicted. And therein lies my beef.
Okay, that line was hilariously great.
That's a fantastic argument for genetics contributing not only towards an individual's health and appearance, but also behavior. I don't dispute that. I also don't dispute that parents often enjoy taking credit for having good or smart kids, yet typically shy away from taking credit if their child has bad traits.
Where I disagree with you is not with such generalities, but purely how you're applying them within the context of this Slashdot conversation, where you say (among other things)"The parents chose to pass on their shitty genes.", as if the family somehow had some established predilection towards murder or other lousy behaviors, and they were attached to a recessive gene that they chose to pass on. There's nothing to support that here, so I think attaching a portion of blame to the parents is an enormous stretch, at least without knowing more than we do. And since are plenty of things about kids you just can't predict, I don't think it's fair to lay the burden of this child's sins on the parents' door simply for the act of having a child.
You've got to be kidding! Is your argument really that crappy kids come from crappy parents? Seriously? By your reasoning, it sounds like we could end entire bloodlines because, heck, they're bad, right? Why even investigate individuals who may have been involved in a crime when we can just compare the kid to their parents! "Oh, the parents were good? Golly, it couldn't have been this kid! Let's start looking somewhere else."
I realize this is a ridiculous extension of your argument, but what I'm trying to remind you of is that kids are not clones of their parents. That is to say, while they certainly inherit genes from their parents, they don't inherit all of them. They inherit a subset from the mother and subset from the father. Different children from the same parents will inherit different subsets, and it's pretty tough to guess whether a combination is going to be "bad" in advance. Further variations are introduced to the physical makeup of the individual during and after pregnancy from nutrients derived from the mother and diet. As a result, children born of the same parents can be remarkably diverse even if raised in nearly identical environments and exposed to similar social pressures.
You can verify my daring "non clone" theory yourself by leaving your home, finding a child and then comparing that child to their parents. Heck, even forgoing such observation and staying entirely within the bounds of the existing discussion, we can see that the other child of the same parents is described as a sweet and well adjusted kid.
I really don't understand how you can blame the parents based on the information provided. Sure, the parents split up, but there are plenty of parents who divorce or separate and still have well-adjusted children. Beyond that, we simply have no idea what this kid's childhood was like. We also have no idea how long the stepmother has been on the scene, so I don't see how you can expect her to comment on how much love the child received at any specific age, much less support any conclusions based on the presence or absence of the word "love" in a letter.
It seems like a great modern fad (and fallacy) to blame parents for every lousy thing a kid does, as if people have become desperate to take nature out of the classic "nature vs. nurture" argument. But none of us are shaped purely by our environment, as the mention of the kid's younger brother being reasonably well-adjusted supports. We all have judgement and free will, so unless some actual evidence surfaces to support the notion that the parents somehow meaningfully contributed to these horrible acts, let's place blame back on the kid who committed them, shall we?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19cricht on.html?ei=5088&en=9addb806498d2739&ex=1300424400
Now I'm not unsympathetic to the fact that an officer has been attacked, but let's let's go over some of these details, and then talk about what "they" are trying to do. Let's remember that "they" in this instance is not the State of California, even though this skull-cracking happened to a state police officer. The feds have managed to involve themselves because of possible damage to a police cruiser, which the feds partially paid for. So, at the very least, this sounds like they want investigate the attack on an Californian officer by making a creative end-run around California journalist shield laws. An alternative possibility is that the feds might be using this as a pretense to gather the names of dissenters, as the journalist darkly suggests. Neither of these options sit terribly well with me.
And let's also not forget that the journalist wasn't the person who did the skull cracking. He has not been accused of any crime, yet he's the one sitting in prison. Ostensibly the reason for this incarceration is to encourage him to talk, yet he's been sitting there longer than any journalist in American history. So is this actually encouragement? Or is it instead punishment? (Last I checked, we weren't supposed to do the latter without a trial.)
Of all the (excellent) reasons that others have provided to explain why my idea was inadequate, I think this one is arguably the best. It shows that my idea isn't just impractical, it's completely unworkable.
I never thought I'd say this but... thank you, Ananymous Coward!
Or am I missing something?
[lazyl] The network does. And they base that buying decision on the ratings (or anticipated ratings).
[paragraph snipped]
[lazyl] The point is that it's exactly like TV. I think the analogy confused you because in the case of TV the consumer is a combination of the network and the viewer.
I understand that TV shows to not spring forth fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. When I say "nobody pays for TV shows", I'm referring to viewers, which I had hoped was clear from my context. Of course the network actually pays for them, that's my point exactly. In particular, I'm arguing that it's important to note who is paying for them and this changes the underlying economic model in a fundamentally important way. And when you change the model in this way, it is no longer "exactly like TV."
This doesn't mean I'm "confused", it means I'm disagreeing with the underlying premiss behind the argument that episodic video games have the same opportunity for success as TV shows (even though I do agree that they share certain other similarities).
That is really excellently stated. I'll watch for your posts in the future.
In truth I do already own one. But I don't really subscribe to the model of thought that supposes that I purchased my computer for non-gaming reasons and any gaming ability can be considered a free bonus. My machine exists for a lot a reasons, including gaming. Yes, it has a lot of functionality above and beyond that which a console offers, but that functionality comes with a price tag. A big one. It's an expensive piece of hardware, MUCH more expensive than any console. And sure, you can get a cheaper computer than mine, but if you're trying to price yourself around the price of a console, you're almost certainly not going to be able to play games of the same graphical caliber.
As such, I consider your post as a fantastic argument for trying Sam and Max if you already own a PC, but not such a great argument for disregarding the price of a PC in any comparisons. If indeed such comparisons even belong in the discussion of episodic gaming in the first place. With the recent wave of consoles all having internet capability and on-line stores either already present or soon-to-arrive, a game like Sam & Max could probably do fine for itself as Live Arcade game for the Xbox, for example.
In the world of television, my favorite example of this is a show like "Malcolm in the Middle." I loved the early episodes, but my wife hated them. As the show evolved, the writers and actors developed a better sense of what the show was about, what jokes made sense and what you could do with the characters. That evolution won my wife over. Episodic games have this same opportunity.
This is a seriously bogus comparison. Apples and oranges. Broadcast TV shows are free to consumers. Maybe you pay a monthly fee for cable access, but at the end of the day nobody is paying $8.99 for an episode of Malcolm. If people don't like the first episode of a video game they had to pay for, are they really going to buy the next episode to "give it a chance"? Not for my dollar. Not the same thing, not the same opportunity.
For another example, check out the third page of his article where the author provides numbers to show that there are nearly twice as many PCs as there are consoles in american homes. He then states that "the PC is, bar none, the most pervasive system on which to play games." Then he goes on to say how "odd" it is that console revenues are more than four times that of PC game revenues. Does it not occur to the author that maybe a lot of these PCs are ancient and most people don't feel like paying Pong or Zork anymore? Or that a more fair comparison might be to compare the number of PCs and consoles sold to families only in the past year or three?
The author goes on to slam the Wii by claiming that "at the end of the day, Nintendo is still selling $40 dollar-plus software that requires a fairly expensive piece of consumer electronics to run it." Riiiight, like anyone is buying a Wii just to play Wii sports. The deeper implication being "why by an expensive Wii when you can already play games on your PC?" Like everyone already magically owns a PC at no cost. Yet if the author made even a little effort to be objective, he might notice that game consoles are a lot cheaper than most PCs. The Wii especially, retailing for only $250.
I hope Gamasutra felt they got their $5 worth (or whatever they paid) for that article.
LionKimbro: No; There's no reason to believe things didn't start beyond us. Furthermore, there is the expansion of space.
In addition to what Lion said, it's important not to assume that light existed since the beginning of the universe. According to the chart linked to below (which the orignal article also links to), it took about 400 million years for objects to start projecting light.
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2 006-22/ssc2006-22b.shtml
Disclaimer: I don't know jack about this subject, I'm just passing on what I'm reading.
Darth, I just wanted to thank you for that well composed rebuttal. I'd mod you up if you weren't already +5 Informative.
I suspect they meant they'd be caught up with wherever Intel is at that point, not merely catching up with where Intel is now.
Fellow slashdotter "dentford" was good enough to reply with the link that you were probably referring to. As dentford states in that post, Bev Harris is not described there as a phoney at all, but instead is described as difficult and perhaps as abusive in some of her posting on the DU message board.
Switching to Google, as you suggested, a search on "Bev Harris phony" yields plenty of links, but most of them seem to reporting positively on Bev Harris and her work, with the word "phony" being used in this context to describe many electronic voting machines and their accuracy. I only saw one site that detailed some difficulty obtaining an IRS financial filing from her, but even that didn't describer her as a "phony".
Oh, but now I see that you've switched from calling her a "phony" (meaning not genuine, fraudulent) to "crackpot" (meaning an eccentric or foolish person).
In light of your inability to support your own argument, in light of the fact that your "argument" is vague at best, in light of the fact that your posting history shows that this is not the first materially unsupported attack post against Bev Harris and Black Box Voting, and in light of the fact that the very search you recommended tends to support Bev Harris rather than undermine her, I've decided not to give up on her, but to instead give up on you. You are now my first /. foe. Thank you and goodbye.
Maybe you could back that claim up with a supporting link so that we can judge for ourselves?