"but I think there is a very viable difference here."
There is no viable difference. It's a public building/landmark and many games have used illustrations or pictures of landmarks *both inside and out* to help art teams make level art, etc. I used bad dudes because it was just the one that stuck out with a very visible landmark that I recognized, I'm sure other games have had other not-so-famous landmarks which not enough people know about to be widespread. Next, it sounds like you have *never* played the game that feature's the building so in my opinion are speaking without context. The people are just being trivial and anal retentive. If it was some other landmark it would not even get a mention.
"Either way Sony really should have asked for permission, if only to be kind. You can be sure that, if any game included a model of, say, the White House, without permission it would be attacked venomously."
Wrong games *have modelled the whitehouse* and many other landmarks (or pieces of them) without reprocussions, even if only in parts or in 2D, take the old 2D game "Bad dudes" for instance, the whitehoue was featured there. I think people take the whole "private (and/or) intellectual property" law regarding monuments and such way too seriously.
Are we goingto start to sue for road modelling textures, some random pictures of someones house or cities downtown skyscrapers and trees? At some point the whole property thing is out of control, private property is there for convenience of solving complex problems, it's not there to abuse the public with silly crap like this.
"He believes "that if the gene [for homosexuality] were discovered and a woman decided not to give birth to a child that may have a tendency to become homosexual, she should be able to abort the fetus." Not to put too fine a point on it, but that strikes me as being rather too close to Third Reich thinking for my liking."
Aborting a homosexual fetus is a little like aborting an Asperger fetus, someone who is just different and who certain segments of society shun, but in the case with Aspergers, the shunning is much more widespread.
People are prejudiced and racist, its built in, you may not think you are racist/prejudice, but what exactly is friend and mate selection if not a form of *natural* prejudice based, eugenics? you look for the traits in others you favor or that do not cause your nervous system revulsion or aggravation. 90% of the people on earth associate with others based on 1) How they look 2) How they behave and 3) What value it adds to their life goals.
In this world discrimination is the norm, the fact that Eugenics got associated with the 3rd reich should not mean much since almost all nations were in on eugenics before that point. Designer people are the future whether you want to admit it or not, and capitalism and market society are leading the way. You only have to look at many successful people to realize that eugenic selecting is already happening.
I'm sorry but there is just too much GOOD USE for information to hold onto out-moded notions of privacy, as if it wasn't already very easy to track people, very soon you will be able to be tracked via satellite and other 'distant' and non intrusive technologies all the time.
Sorry but technology + Private sextor interest in the most accurate "market data" (i.e. personal information, habits, likes, dislikes, level of education, income, etc).
Privacy is being squeezed out by private corporate interests, ironically if Orwell was still alive today he would see it's not just the government we should be afraid but the market and the businesses (corporations) themselves.
"but it's interesting to hear they're considering it, though probably not taking it seriously."
If they were to MMO starcraft I think they'd have a hard time finding quality developers, to make it. Not only that blizzard's reputation would get dragged through the mud in korea. There is no way they could fuck up starcraft as an MMO because they would simply abandon their fanbase completely.
"For the most part, this is a good thing, the freedom to associate with people that think like you and want to live life like you. But you should be aware what happens when you let your highly distilled social circles decide your social norms as opposed to checking out what your average neighbor and townsfolk are thinking about it."
Unfortunately most "normal" people border on crazy if history is anything to go by, north americans have crazy religious ancestors who would today be considered mentally ill and truly fucked in the head, so what is considered "normal" is really just peoples racist prejudice against things they percieve (irrationally) as disgusting. Rationally there is no reason to be offended by sex between a male and female regardless of their relations.
In ancient greece and other cultures pederasty and other forms of what today would be considered incest were common, it's the cultural prejudice that determines what is "ok" versus "not ok". Group sex, bi sexualism, and gay sex is ok, but somehow incest is just "wrong" or "icky", it makes no sense what-so-ever.
Incest is a taboo only because it's a taboo, it's culturally transmitted like religion. If you rewind evolution *everyone* is the result of incest, you don't have many options causally speaking from a scientific standpoint. Many evolutionists might try to "cover it up" with gene-speak gobbledygook but at some point genetics points to the fact that people are the result of incest if chimps share 98% of our DNA what does that do for the arugments *against* consensual incest between siblins or adults? In my opinion incest is more common then you might think during pre-pubescent years among families with male/female siblings during sexually experimental years, due to auto-erotic behaviour, just that kids are very good at hiding that kind of thing.
"Currently, the governments in so called "free countries" are doing pretty much everything to work AGAINST these requirements, passing laws that benefit large corporations at the expense of smaller competitors, customers and suppliers.
That's anything BUT free market."
Yes but lets not forget that the FREE MARKET has *NEVER EXISTED*, period. There has never been a free market and never will be a free market, human beings, being the intelligent and predatory creatures the are do not give a rats ass about the technicalities of how the market should work according to some neoclassical theory existing only in platonic heaven(tm). Most people function by simply trying to find a decent paying job or small business and make purchases and other economic decisions in partly rational and irrational fashion due to gross asymmetry of information. How many products have you bought in which the markup was insane or could have been much lower? How many products have you bought based on gross exploitation of others without your knowledge or consent, but by buying said product are therefore indirectly responsible for supporting such exploitation?
More importantly if you actually read the wealth of nations you would realize that Adam smith himself would be apalled at the state of modern economies and most likely would write a new book on about how the concentration of certain societal resources, human limitations and our concepts of current primitive concepts of ownership make free markets impossible because of the difficulties and circumstances surrounding certain social resources or unforseen complexity of employer or production leverage over non-owning non-selfsufficient modern workers.
Unfortunately all too often in our modern "free market" society, people just squat on critical or indispensable items/technology everyone needs, and so they are in a position to extort people of their money. (i.e. ISP's overselling bandwidth) and sit on their old technology ("investments") as long as possible to extort every single cent possible.
"Privacy is MORE important and will receive greater focus in an increasingly technological society."
It is if you assume the people alive today are a model for people for the future, but like I said there are methods to figure out who you are and what you're doing just based on simply existing in the world without your knowledge. You can't trust that businesses will not leak data or have problems (i.e. offshoring work, data, etc) or simply be evil.
Next is the problem of wanting to predict and model markets with scientific accuracy for profit, this by itself will erode privacy over time, there is no way you can stop someone with that kind of financial power. Just like how Wal-mart has been caught selling cheap knock offs and imitations of other peoples products but they have so many stores that it's wack-a-mole game. There's serious research being done in financial engineering and predicting markets not to mention advertising. The only way you can truly model a market for maximum profit is by having *very accurate personal data* about what each individual does in the market system.
On the internet with a little sophistication you can start deducing who a person is simply basedon their IP address, cookies and other datamining techniques and tools.
My main point was technology makes privacy damn near impossible unless you are rich or in a position of power.
"And that is what "privacy is just a religion" and "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" lemmings just don't get. "
Unfortunately technology and business make privacy impossible, most of your daily actions can be recorded/deduced via technology not in your presence (sattelites, microscopic cameras, etc). With the great UK experiment (CCTV cams, etc), I'm certain the invasiveness will only get better and better from here on out.
In a way it's a good thing because... the only way you need privacy is if you live in a world of idiots and irrational people, that is really the only reason "to protect yourself" from some person, group or power (corporate or government). But the internet and electronic money, and other technology (black boxes in cars, debit cards, cell phones, RFID, etc) benefits are going to outweigh any concern of privacy, we're moving towards a completely scientific society and as such at some point privacy will have to go the way of the dodo.
Speak for yourself. In NO WAY does the planet "belong to everyone", if we really believed that our social structure would not put profits over people, we would have much less homelessness and poverty and the Walton's daughter could never afford to spend 68,000,000 on a painting.
"That's not to say they're both not completely incredible games, which they are. They're just totally square in spite of being so awesome."
I think the really big issue you're missing is timing and market saturation. There can only be a few games a person can spend their time on at any one time, and people tend to pick the ones that give them the most fun or at least feel like it because they are without prior gaming experience.
Never underestimate the power of demographics (kids/youngins) who have no experience with older games. I'm in my late 20's and I realize that many turds of a game sell simply because of demographic shifts and lack of experience with prior games.
"Piracy costs businesses money, as well as making it unfair to people who actually purchase legitimate goods."
While I agree with the sentiment there is a public good to piracy -- the infinite extension of copyright by corporations, off products that required only a finite amount of work to produce -- they can resell indefinitely. It's a form of social engineering and commercial tyranny when you have a product that has infinite supply and only has a small one time cost to produce and then you can sit there and literally tax the population forever simply because of the LOOPHOLES of ownership and property in copyright law.
I think you forget that goods that have infinite supply can be used by corporations to dominate society through tax and encourages corporate lazyness, which IMHO is very dangerous. As if commercial entities didn't already have enough control over government.
The only way the modern citizen can fight the man is by hitting him in his pocket, since politicians are bought and paid for. There is no capitalist utopia sorry to say it, capitalism in its current form is not a free market, it's a tyranny of economic warlords because major players are simply too big and have too much control over the polity and market in many instances.
Sorry but eliminating serious diseases "because we can" and preventing children from being horribly and mounstrously ugly is *ALWAYS* the best answer. Designer children will be the future and those who dont will be left behind and fade away into historical obscurity. You think someone is going to resist life extension technology? I can see many wars being fought once life extension is possible, I can only imagine what its going to be like not to be able to afford life extension for the millions of poor people who will be consigned to "death" in a market society.
"This will suck. Those who do will never know a moments peace, being connected to everyone else 24/7. And those who don't will feel or be 'left behind'."
Note you are reading way too much into this, obviously the technology would be designed so that you can disconnected it or turn it off.
"Distribute 10 $10 million fortunes (a good size fortune) equally among the residents of a medium size city, and everyone gets $100. Whee! Now everyone is poor."
Again you read into what I was saying, there are many easy ways to eliminate poverty and hint: you're thinking about the problem from a monetary standpoint alone. That's your first flaw.
Your next flaw is that you never took into account the rest of what I said about human beings being still too primitive to eliminate war and poverty because of biobehavioural evolutionary baggage they have inherited which effects why they behave and interpret the world stimulus in the way they do (biobehaviourl prejudice, or programmed evolutionary prejudice), that has no basis in reason or rationaliy. Only in the feral backward mind of an animal.
One doesn't have to look far to see the feral nature of humanity in its current form (biological, unaugmented) when I walk down my street and see 3-5 bedroom homes housing two occupents that is an atrocious waste of space and energy, all to service the whims of tribal humans who are enormously inefficient and whos nervous system cannot siphon out or filter out data that aggravates their nervou system, they preach 'economic efficiency' in theory when applied to businesses/workers but in practice of how people really are thats not how it is. How the CNS (central nervous system) in human beings is designed, people are very racist/prejudice against others occupying territory/space near them for outmoded evolutionary reasons. When people tell me poverty can't be solved when we could simply be better people, just as a quick and dirty example (not that this is entirely thought through) give people a place to stay without charging them to make a profit so they can actually get ahead. The reason why the poor are poor is because money is always going out, their wages are stagnant and inflation always keeps rising, there is no solution to this problem from any inane and insipid economic theorist. When walton's daughter can buy a painting for 68,000,000 and someone on disability commits suicide there is something truly fucked up about the nature of man, if you don't agree thats fine. But please acknowledge that the unequal access to a limited suppply of money is the reason poverty exists and its part and parcel of the market system (or perhaps just the current form of human nature as a result of outdated biological programming), certain industries and markets want poor people. i.e. offshoring, sweatshops, slave labour, etc, informal economy.
There are many ways to solve poverty given the actual circumstances and it is not through an theory of economics when its fundamentally a human problem.
"Nonsense. What you're saying is, the amount of 'money' is static. We have exactly the same amount of 'money' as we did in the 1920's. Or 1870's. Right.""
No what I said was the amount of money is limited, and you know that the money supply simply cannot expand arbitrarily.
"These all seem like breast implants for technology nerds anyway."
Tell that to me when your daughter is born blind or a boy is born autistic and there is no way for you to communicate to him, but with human augmentation we can make him healthy again or enable him to communicate directly with you via telepathic technology.
The next great advance will be the direct linking of human minds, imagine having access to a minds eye that you can both share when connected together, you can manipulate the data in the minds eye vis space of the other persons imagination and vice versa, it opens up a whole new level of personal and professional communication, not only that I have no doubt it would bring people closer together as they would have direct access to each others thoughts if they so allowed. IMHO, mankind in its current for is the reason war and poverty will never be wiped out, the are not constructed to be moral beings, they are for the most part tribal barbarians, who are stupid, inane, insipid, predatory and oppressively greedy.
Dont think so? In any economy the money supply is limited, so if you want to "eliminate poverty" then all you really need to do is redistribute the wealth from the top most to the bottom most. These facts never change, I laugh whenever I hear about "wiping out poverty" among countries like Canada and the US. The poor exist because of humans own barbaric and unethical nature, not because its impossible to achieve.
"The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false pretences. It is about our soldiers dying not for our safety, to keep the country free, or to liberate an oppressed people, but simply for oil interests."
And have you ever considered how oil is crucial to your standard of living? Have you ever considered that if america did not invade iraq to protect oil interests that it would mean giving power and benefit to emerging (economic) threats to your way of life and standard of living? (i.e. china, india). History has not shown well those who were former underdogs as they have gained power, being nice to those that let there power grow.
I think the whole point people miss is that they are responsible for the iraq war, directly and indirectly just through their mass adoption of "high living standards" (cars, DVD's, CD's, etc, etc) because they feed the very corporation and capitalist machine by buying goods that use enormous amounts of it (cars, plastics, packaging, etc, etc). We know the war is about corporate interests, well why are corporations interested in IRAQ? You are not independent from the corporations you buy goods from. Most people are not willing to boycot their way of life and reny corporations profits because they are really in permanent state of debt because the do not own their own means of producing food, nor energy, hence the rampant political corruption.
The apathetic and stupid capitalistic americans have no one to blame but themselves. I'm sick of this lack of will power, this is a war in violation of international law, so why did you not riot in the streets and disrupt the economy? Oh yes I keep forgetting most people dont care and ar mentally and morally challenged in the US. You are in effect owned by your employers and we can't go for any length of time enduring economic hardship or going without TV or Xbox, or risking our lives for sane reasons like you know stopping an illegal war and an economic system that needs to be purged of its bad elements.
War is part and parcel of our modern consmption market lifestyle, its too painful for most people to think about but its nonetheless true. We consume many products that are made with what amounts to illegal labour practices and we benefit from it, other times we do not and the middlemen (corporations) just gouge us more.
"In conclusion, I don't agree with the original article's sentiment, and believe that Wikipedia Science articles are, in general, readable enough to laymen, and have enough information for experts."
The good thing about wikipedia that is missed is that its on the internet, and by that, I mean you can link to introductory tutorials and introductory explanations that go into more elaborate detail to build a framework. I wouldn't be surprised if many autodidacts can become self taught experts this way, books are static and are not linked to one another instantaneously. Wikipedia is just a click away from enormous volumes of data explaining the "hard to understand" concepts.
"The combat system was, in my opinion, the best part of FFXII. "
Ouch, all you had to do in FF12 was navigate, the computer would do everything for you. This is *NOT* my idea of gaming. Why did they not have the computer navigate for you too and you just sit back and watch?
I must vehemently state that people that like FF12's combat system are one of the reasons gaming is going to tank in the future, all the interactivity is being dumbed down or driven out (automated) entirely, people complan of "button mashing" or "grinding" but at some point you've automated the decision making process and taken yourself completely out of the loop of actually interacting and gone into complete passivity, the exact opposite of what gaming is supposed to be about.
"But I do agree than in general Western games, well PC games in particular, have always been sophisticated, at least on the back-end. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that those games are move fun."
I have yet to experience any earth shattering games like civilization from Japan. IMHO many of the best games are american. Japan has lost the title for best games, many japanese companiesare international now and are more "american" / western.
"Kind of expected in a state of overly paranoid affairs. Paranoia is where rationality gets thrown out of the window."
If american culture is anything to go buy ir proves: The paranoid survive! I've been to america and there is an instantaneous shift on how people behave and think there. Americans are frequently very easy stirred, very emotional and paranoid people. It's little wonder they are a country reknowned for its christian fundamentalism. This is not to say all americans are bad people, but you can definitely tell a cultural difference between canadians and americans in atmosphere being around them.
"The best thing that the music industry, or indeed the movie industry could do to stamp out piracy is to ignore it and release a superior product."
Unfortunately the real world is not as simple as that, most superior products take more time and money. The truth is the human population (market size) is for all intents and purposes *finite*, out of 6 billion people in the world say only 50 million are potentially able to buy your product (for this example I'll use video games). Out of say 20 million-30 million xbox and gamecube owners, how many would be willing to purchase your particular game?
Many excellent games don't do well financially and take more money (energy) and time to create then what the recieve in return, making a good product is not a MAGIC BULLET for good return on investment, the games industry proves this again and again. Enterainment is the most fickle of all industries because: The are luxury goods, not necessities.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's odd. I would have expected the fourth one to be "Madden""
It doesn't make sense, since Football is a SPORT and there are other sports games out there besides madden.
"but I think there is a very viable difference here."
There is no viable difference. It's a public building/landmark and many games have used illustrations or pictures of landmarks *both inside and out* to help art teams make level art, etc. I used bad dudes because it was just the one that stuck out with a very visible landmark that I recognized, I'm sure other games have had other not-so-famous landmarks which not enough people know about to be widespread. Next, it sounds like you have *never* played the game that feature's the building so in my opinion are speaking without context. The people are just being trivial and anal retentive. If it was some other landmark it would not even get a mention.
"Either way Sony really should have asked for permission, if only to be kind. You can be sure that, if any game included a model of, say, the White House, without permission it would be attacked venomously."
Wrong games *have modelled the whitehouse* and many other landmarks (or pieces of them) without reprocussions, even if only in parts or in 2D, take the old 2D game "Bad dudes" for instance, the whitehoue was featured there. I think people take the whole "private (and/or) intellectual property" law regarding monuments and such way too seriously.
Are we goingto start to sue for road modelling textures, some random pictures of someones house or cities downtown skyscrapers and trees? At some point the whole property thing is out of control, private property is there for convenience of solving complex problems, it's not there to abuse the public with silly crap like this.
"He believes "that if the gene [for homosexuality] were discovered and a woman decided not to give birth to a child that may have a tendency to become homosexual, she should be able to abort the fetus." Not to put too fine a point on it, but that strikes me as being rather too close to Third Reich thinking for my liking."
Aborting a homosexual fetus is a little like aborting an Asperger fetus, someone who is just different and who certain segments of society shun, but in the case with Aspergers, the shunning is much more widespread.
People are prejudiced and racist, its built in, you may not think you are racist/prejudice, but what exactly is friend and mate selection if not a form of *natural* prejudice based, eugenics? you look for the traits in others you favor or that do not cause your nervous system revulsion or aggravation. 90% of the people on earth associate with others based on 1) How they look 2) How they behave and 3) What value it adds to their life goals.
In this world discrimination is the norm, the fact that Eugenics got associated with the 3rd reich should not mean much since almost all nations were in on eugenics before that point. Designer people are the future whether you want to admit it or not, and capitalism and market society are leading the way. You only have to look at many successful people to realize that eugenic selecting is already happening.
I'm sorry but there is just too much GOOD USE for information to hold onto out-moded notions of privacy, as if it wasn't already very easy to track people, very soon you will be able to be tracked via satellite and other 'distant' and non intrusive technologies all the time.
Sorry but technology + Private sextor interest in the most accurate "market data" (i.e. personal information, habits, likes, dislikes, level of education, income, etc).
Privacy is being squeezed out by private corporate interests, ironically if Orwell was still alive today he would see it's not just the government we should be afraid but the market and the businesses (corporations) themselves.
"but it's interesting to hear they're considering it, though probably not taking it seriously."
If they were to MMO starcraft I think they'd have a hard time finding quality developers, to make it. Not only that blizzard's reputation would get dragged through the mud in korea. There is no way they could fuck up starcraft as an MMO because they would simply abandon their fanbase completely.
"For the most part, this is a good thing, the freedom to associate with people that think like you and want to live life like you. But you should be aware what happens when you let your highly distilled social circles decide your social norms as opposed to checking out what your average neighbor and townsfolk are thinking about it."
Unfortunately most "normal" people border on crazy if history is anything to go by, north americans have crazy religious ancestors who would today be considered mentally ill and truly fucked in the head, so what is considered "normal" is really just peoples racist prejudice against things they percieve (irrationally) as disgusting. Rationally there is no reason to be offended by sex between a male and female regardless of their relations.
In ancient greece and other cultures pederasty and other forms of what today would be considered incest were common, it's the cultural prejudice that determines what is "ok" versus "not ok". Group sex, bi sexualism, and gay sex is ok, but somehow incest is just "wrong" or "icky", it makes no sense what-so-ever.
Incest is a taboo only because it's a taboo, it's culturally transmitted like religion. If you rewind evolution *everyone* is the result of incest, you don't have many options causally speaking from a scientific standpoint. Many evolutionists might try to "cover it up" with gene-speak gobbledygook but at some point genetics points to the fact that people are the result of incest if chimps share 98% of our DNA what does that do for the arugments *against* consensual incest between siblins or adults? In my opinion incest is more common then you might think during pre-pubescent years among families with male/female siblings during sexually experimental years, due to auto-erotic behaviour, just that kids are very good at hiding that kind of thing.
"Currently, the governments in so called "free countries" are doing pretty much everything to work AGAINST these requirements, passing laws that benefit large corporations at the expense of smaller competitors, customers and suppliers.
That's anything BUT free market."
Yes but lets not forget that the FREE MARKET has *NEVER EXISTED*, period. There has never been a free market and never will be a free market, human beings, being the intelligent and predatory creatures the are do not give a rats ass about the technicalities of how the market should work according to some neoclassical theory existing only in platonic heaven(tm). Most people function by simply trying to find a decent paying job or small business and make purchases and other economic decisions in partly rational and irrational fashion due to gross asymmetry of information. How many products have you bought in which the markup was insane or could have been much lower? How many products have you bought based on gross exploitation of others without your knowledge or consent, but by buying said product are therefore indirectly responsible for supporting such exploitation?
More importantly if you actually read the wealth of nations you would realize that Adam smith himself would be apalled at the state of modern economies and most likely would write a new book on about how the concentration of certain societal resources, human limitations and our concepts of current primitive concepts of ownership make free markets impossible because of the difficulties and circumstances surrounding certain social resources or unforseen complexity of employer or production leverage over non-owning non-selfsufficient modern workers.
Unfortunately all too often in our modern "free market" society, people just squat on critical or indispensable items/technology everyone needs, and so they are in a position to extort people of their money. (i.e. ISP's overselling bandwidth) and sit on their old technology ("investments") as long as possible to extort every single cent possible.
"Privacy is MORE important and will receive greater focus in an increasingly technological society."
It is if you assume the people alive today are a model for people for the future, but like I said there are methods to figure out who you are and what you're doing just based on simply existing in the world without your knowledge. You can't trust that businesses will not leak data or have problems (i.e. offshoring work, data, etc) or simply be evil.
Next is the problem of wanting to predict and model markets with scientific accuracy for profit, this by itself will erode privacy over time, there is no way you can stop someone with that kind of financial power. Just like how Wal-mart has been caught selling cheap knock offs and imitations of other peoples products but they have so many stores that it's wack-a-mole game. There's serious research being done in financial engineering and predicting markets not to mention advertising. The only way you can truly model a market for maximum profit is by having *very accurate personal data* about what each individual does in the market system.
On the internet with a little sophistication you can start deducing who a person is simply basedon their IP address, cookies and other datamining techniques and tools.
My main point was technology makes privacy damn near impossible unless you are rich or in a position of power.
... Actuary (insurance, etc)
"And that is what "privacy is just a religion" and "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" lemmings just don't get. "
Unfortunately technology and business make privacy impossible, most of your daily actions can be recorded/deduced via technology not in your presence (sattelites, microscopic cameras, etc). With the great UK experiment (CCTV cams, etc), I'm certain the invasiveness will only get better and better from here on out.
In a way it's a good thing because... the only way you need privacy is if you live in a world of idiots and irrational people, that is really the only reason "to protect yourself" from some person, group or power (corporate or government). But the internet and electronic money, and other technology (black boxes in cars, debit cards, cell phones, RFID, etc) benefits are going to outweigh any concern of privacy, we're moving towards a completely scientific society and as such at some point privacy will have to go the way of the dodo.
"After all, this planet belongs to everyone,"
Speak for yourself. In NO WAY does the planet "belong to everyone", if we really believed that our social structure would not put profits over people, we would have much less homelessness and poverty and the Walton's daughter could never afford to spend 68,000,000 on a painting.
"That's not to say they're both not completely incredible games, which they are. They're just totally square in spite of being so awesome."
I think the really big issue you're missing is timing and market saturation. There can only be a few games a person can spend their time on at any one time, and people tend to pick the ones that give them the most fun or at least feel like it because they are without prior gaming experience.
Never underestimate the power of demographics (kids/youngins) who have no experience with older games. I'm in my late 20's and I realize that many turds of a game sell simply because of demographic shifts and lack of experience with prior games.
"Piracy costs businesses money, as well as making it unfair to people who actually purchase legitimate goods."
While I agree with the sentiment there is a public good to piracy -- the infinite extension of copyright by corporations, off products that required only a finite amount of work to produce -- they can resell indefinitely. It's a form of social engineering and commercial tyranny when you have a product that has infinite supply and only has a small one time cost to produce and then you can sit there and literally tax the population forever simply because of the LOOPHOLES of ownership and property in copyright law.
I think you forget that goods that have infinite supply can be used by corporations to dominate society through tax and encourages corporate lazyness, which IMHO is very dangerous. As if commercial entities didn't already have enough control over government.
The only way the modern citizen can fight the man is by hitting him in his pocket, since politicians are bought and paid for. There is no capitalist utopia sorry to say it, capitalism in its current form is not a free market, it's a tyranny of economic warlords because major players are simply too big and have too much control over the polity and market in many instances.
"Because we can" isn't always the best answer"
Sorry but eliminating serious diseases "because we can" and preventing children from being horribly and mounstrously ugly is *ALWAYS* the best answer. Designer children will be the future and those who dont will be left behind and fade away into historical obscurity. You think someone is going to resist life extension technology? I can see many wars being fought once life extension is possible, I can only imagine what its going to be like not to be able to afford life extension for the millions of poor people who will be consigned to "death" in a market society.
"This will suck. Those who do will never know a moments peace, being connected to everyone else 24/7. And those who don't will feel or be 'left behind'."
Note you are reading way too much into this, obviously the technology would be designed so that you can disconnected it or turn it off.
"Distribute 10 $10 million fortunes (a good size fortune) equally among the residents of a medium size city, and everyone gets $100. Whee! Now everyone is poor."
Again you read into what I was saying, there are many easy ways to eliminate poverty and hint: you're thinking about the problem from a monetary standpoint alone. That's your first flaw.
Your next flaw is that you never took into account the rest of what I said about human beings being still too primitive to eliminate war and poverty because of biobehavioural evolutionary baggage they have inherited which effects why they behave and interpret the world stimulus in the way they do (biobehaviourl prejudice, or programmed evolutionary prejudice), that has no basis in reason or rationaliy. Only in the feral backward mind of an animal.
One doesn't have to look far to see the feral nature of humanity in its current form (biological, unaugmented) when I walk down my street and see 3-5 bedroom homes housing two occupents that is an atrocious waste of space and energy, all to service the whims of tribal humans who are enormously inefficient and whos nervous system cannot siphon out or filter out data that aggravates their nervou system, they preach 'economic efficiency' in theory when applied to businesses/workers but in practice of how people really are thats not how it is. How the CNS (central nervous system) in human beings is designed, people are very racist/prejudice against others occupying territory/space near them for outmoded evolutionary reasons. When people tell me poverty can't be solved when we could simply be better people, just as a quick and dirty example (not that this is entirely thought through) give people a place to stay without charging them to make a profit so they can actually get ahead. The reason why the poor are poor is because money is always going out, their wages are stagnant and inflation always keeps rising, there is no solution to this problem from any inane and insipid economic theorist. When walton's daughter can buy a painting for 68,000,000 and someone on disability commits suicide there is something truly fucked up about the nature of man, if you don't agree thats fine. But please acknowledge that the unequal access to a limited suppply of money is the reason poverty exists and its part and parcel of the market system (or perhaps just the current form of human nature as a result of outdated biological programming), certain industries and markets want poor people. i.e. offshoring, sweatshops, slave labour, etc, informal economy.
There are many ways to solve poverty given the actual circumstances and it is not through an theory of economics when its fundamentally a human problem.
"Nonsense. What you're saying is, the amount of 'money' is static. We have exactly the same amount of 'money' as we did in the 1920's. Or 1870's. Right.""
No what I said was the amount of money is limited, and you know that the money supply simply cannot expand arbitrarily.
"These all seem like breast implants for technology nerds anyway."
Tell that to me when your daughter is born blind or a boy is born autistic and there is no way for you to communicate to him, but with human augmentation we can make him healthy again or enable him to communicate directly with you via telepathic technology.
The next great advance will be the direct linking of human minds, imagine having access to a minds eye that you can both share when connected together, you can manipulate the data in the minds eye vis space of the other persons imagination and vice versa, it opens up a whole new level of personal and professional communication, not only that I have no doubt it would bring people closer together as they would have direct access to each others thoughts if they so allowed. IMHO, mankind in its current for is the reason war and poverty will never be wiped out, the are not constructed to be moral beings, they are for the most part tribal barbarians, who are stupid, inane, insipid, predatory and oppressively greedy.
Dont think so? In any economy the money supply is limited, so if you want to "eliminate poverty" then all you really need to do is redistribute the wealth from the top most to the bottom most. These facts never change, I laugh whenever I hear about "wiping out poverty" among countries like Canada and the US. The poor exist because of humans own barbaric and unethical nature, not because its impossible to achieve.
"The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false pretences. It is about our soldiers dying not for our safety, to keep the country free, or to liberate an oppressed people, but simply for oil interests."
And have you ever considered how oil is crucial to your standard of living? Have you ever considered that if america did not invade iraq to protect oil interests that it would mean giving power and benefit to emerging (economic) threats to your way of life and standard of living? (i.e. china, india). History has not shown well those who were former underdogs as they have gained power, being nice to those that let there power grow.
I think the whole point people miss is that they are responsible for the iraq war, directly and indirectly just through their mass adoption of "high living standards" (cars, DVD's, CD's, etc, etc) because they feed the very corporation and capitalist machine by buying goods that use enormous amounts of it (cars, plastics, packaging, etc, etc). We know the war is about corporate interests, well why are corporations interested in IRAQ? You are not independent from the corporations you buy goods from. Most people are not willing to boycot their way of life and reny corporations profits because they are really in permanent state of debt because the do not own their own means of producing food, nor energy, hence the rampant political corruption.
The apathetic and stupid capitalistic americans have no one to blame but themselves. I'm sick of this lack of will power, this is a war in violation of international law, so why did you not riot in the streets and disrupt the economy? Oh yes I keep forgetting most people dont care and ar mentally and morally challenged in the US. You are in effect owned by your employers and we can't go for any length of time enduring economic hardship or going without TV or Xbox, or risking our lives for sane reasons like you know stopping an illegal war and an economic system that needs to be purged of its bad elements.
War is part and parcel of our modern consmption market lifestyle, its too painful for most people to think about but its nonetheless true. We consume many products that are made with what amounts to illegal labour practices and we benefit from it, other times we do not and the middlemen (corporations) just gouge us more.
"In conclusion, I don't agree with the original article's sentiment, and believe that Wikipedia Science articles are, in general, readable enough to laymen, and have enough information for experts."
The good thing about wikipedia that is missed is that its on the internet, and by that, I mean you can link to introductory tutorials and introductory explanations that go into more elaborate detail to build a framework. I wouldn't be surprised if many autodidacts can become self taught experts this way, books are static and are not linked to one another instantaneously. Wikipedia is just a click away from enormous volumes of data explaining the "hard to understand" concepts.
"The combat system was, in my opinion, the best part of FFXII. "
Ouch, all you had to do in FF12 was navigate, the computer would do everything for you. This is *NOT* my idea of gaming. Why did they not have the computer navigate for you too and you just sit back and watch?
I must vehemently state that people that like FF12's combat system are one of the reasons gaming is going to tank in the future, all the interactivity is being dumbed down or driven out (automated) entirely, people complan of "button mashing" or "grinding" but at some point you've automated the decision making process and taken yourself completely out of the loop of actually interacting and gone into complete passivity, the exact opposite of what gaming is supposed to be about.
... our capitalist overlords!
"But I do agree than in general Western games, well PC games in particular, have always been sophisticated, at least on the back-end. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that those games are move fun."
I have yet to experience any earth shattering games like civilization from Japan. IMHO many of the best games are american. Japan has lost the title for best games, many japanese companiesare international now and are more "american" / western.
"Kind of expected in a state of overly paranoid affairs. Paranoia is where rationality gets thrown out of the window."
If american culture is anything to go buy ir proves: The paranoid survive! I've been to america and there is an instantaneous shift on how people behave and think there. Americans are frequently very easy stirred, very emotional and paranoid people. It's little wonder they are a country reknowned for its christian fundamentalism. This is not to say all americans are bad people, but you can definitely tell a cultural difference between canadians and americans in atmosphere being around them.
"The best thing that the music industry, or indeed the movie industry could do to stamp out piracy is to ignore it and release a superior product."
Unfortunately the real world is not as simple as that, most superior products take more time and money. The truth is the human population (market size) is for all intents and purposes *finite*, out of 6 billion people in the world say only 50 million are potentially able to buy your product (for this example I'll use video games). Out of say 20 million-30 million xbox and gamecube owners, how many would be willing to purchase your particular game?
Many excellent games don't do well financially and take more money (energy) and time to create then what the recieve in return, making a good product is not a MAGIC BULLET for good return on investment, the games industry proves this again and again. Enterainment is the most fickle of all industries because: The are luxury goods, not necessities.