Previous poster said: People need to learn that having to change and adapt in order to survive is a fact of life.
My response:
Except that the technology and works we keep producing keep requiring more education and resources on the part of the worker into near infinity until a split and more specialization occurs, but at our current rate people are being wrung out for every last drop of time they have. More and more coroporations and businesses are the ones that establish the rules and contracts and more and more of them are sucking up peoples time while the workers standard of living is increasingly dropping. Blanket statements like "it will all work out" or "suck it up" is short sighted stupidity, tell that to a 3rd world country in the midst of economic development where they take protectionist measures so that they dont devestate peoples ability to support themselves. The desire for maximizing profit is antithetical to producing happy productive workers, when the time they've invested in their education and skills is enormous but the market is changing so fast that having to reinvest the same amount of time (4-6+ years or more) is just not an alternative in countries where you have to pay for your education, look at student loan default rates, they are only going to increase. Someone who's in debt and can't get an entry level job to pay off his already existing debt for his education is going to be stuck in a lifetime of debt or he will have learned his lesson that education is just not worth it and less and less people will go to higher education because the economic incentive is no longer their, and the price of education is actually non-competitive in their home country so if they are smart they will move to another country where they can exploit the lower costs of education, and the institutions at home will suffer. There are a myriad of complex inter-relations you're simply ignoring and that for many people the huge system they are a part of straps them into lifes that they will not escape because the causes, effects and problems are generational.
There is a human cost that taking capitalist principles to the extreme will eventually backfire. This assuems advances in education and the speed at which people learn will keep up with what is economically valuable in the job/skills market.
You ignore that those 'other jobs' are not high paying. Therefore the value of their work is depreciated and healthcare, environment protection laws, etc and standards of living that they worked so hard for (by the way which cost enormous amounts of resources and money) backslide assuming that technology and human advances in education and key areas do not keep up with or can't keep up with those who are willing to work for lower pay due to gross differences in the work and output you can buy in a cheaper country.
The way the current capitalist system works is like a game of risk where you go in exploit the low costs of the country, and lack of protection laws, slowly raise the standards of living as the people realize they're getting exploited the put laws into effect, etc,etc. Increasing the costs for businesses, then the capitalist go back to countries that they have devastated/reduced peoples wages and standard of living so badly so that they can no start the exploitation process again.
When you put the economy first before people sooner or later you're asking for a backlash or revolution if there is not technology/advances to keep humans up to speed with these enormous economic behemoths without having sacrificed their entire lives to education/training systems just to have a life of constant debt/economic hardship.
... won't become a better longterm (and ultimately cheaper and quicker) alternative then backing up enormous amounts of data onto discs who's reliability is increasingly questionable due the easy at which the data can be made unreadable. The amount of data is exploding but not the speed at which we are backing it up.
In my opinion DVD burners have very few uses: Burning backups of critical data, warez, movies and music. Also the problem with CDR/DVDR-Rot will most likely rear its ugly head. I have cd's less then 2-3 years old that can no longer be read in its entirety theres always some file or portion of the disc (no matter how small) that becomes unreadable over the years. While CD's or DVD's that I've actually purchased last nearly forever if taken good care of. If the quality of burnable media does not get more reliable I can easily see hard drives RAID/internet backup solutions taking their place.
Not every student is fast...also the cash strapped
on
Cheating Made Easy
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· Score: 1
IMHO my time at university I would be swamped with writing research papers and whatnot I always 'skimped' on the thick books they'd assign for me to read, I always looked at the table of contents read the chapters that would make good arguments and wrote my paper without reading 80% of the book. It was ridiculous the amount of work I recieved. There's just no humanly possible way to 'read it all', I think people at the universities or whoever is doing the curriculum needs their friggin heads read. I suspect many students do the same thing.
I think if the university professors themselves could give the students a more manageable workload they wouldn't want to cheat, especially for those that are cash strapped. Look into the causes of why such things are occuring and you'd be surprised that some students would like to do the work but they don't have the time to do it in.
I think you're ignoring the natural laws/causes and their effects. Take an idiot savant and compare him to someone who's struggled years to acquire the level of master a savant has at the same chosen instrument of choice. Both can be true: Ability can be inherited or acquired. I think both have their place but the current bent is towards 'fixed' causes and also so these people can make money off them. But you have to respect the limitations of the tools and ability to measure the causes in the age which you live.
Abilities, propensities, inclinations to behaviours are biological, dietary and enviornmental. To say otherwise is pure ignorance. Many peoples behaviour, abilities can be categorized, predicted, etc. Our ability to determine peoples potential acdemically, skillwise, weaknesses and propensity to make certain choices is only going to increase with time.
This is a philosophical argument and you seem to be implying that we have 'free will'. Take for example: Why is it so difficult to be celibate for a lot of people? Simple answer: Biology.
Cheating = by product of capitalist system
on
Cheating Made Easy
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· Score: 0, Troll
Again folks cheating is a by product of the almighty dollar, welcome to capitalism 101.
Where people compete for the best jobs/marks, you can bet many people are not going to get their on merit alone. Even assuming one legitimately got through the system. The quality of teaching and what is being taught varies so widely (even in countries that have 'good education'). Rich or popular people are especially 'favored' in academia, your marks are as good as as much money you're willing to throw at the school in question. Many teachers know that money has too much negative influence in higher education. But when the sole purpose many people pursue it is for money - you've got two competing contradictory interests at work.
Might not be a bad idea if done correctly considering most humans are blind to the grossness and negligence much of their behaviour causes.
Self-responsbility and self-government (in regard to the individual) has proven that it doesn't work. Take for instance religious fundamentalists vs. evolutionists, who is causing more 'harm' by their insistance that their version of the truth is correct? The fact that we allow certain forms of ignorance in our society and the world as a whole is negligence.
Of course you'd have a riot/civil war if you didn't allow people to live in theirs, this is the sad state of the majority of humanity, is that they prefer ignorance.
Give me a break socialism never promised utopia. Only certain theorists thought this way. It remains yet to be demonstrated that utopia means that the machines and technology we invent and automation can do all the work we can do but better while everyone eats, sleeps, and does anything they want to due to the abundance of resources.
They promised an end to the gross inequality that exists under the current system. Socialism and capitalism are not fixed ideas either, einstein himself agreed that only parts of the economy should be socialized, while we continue to work and find the best systems for other parts of it. Other countries have proven socialist ideas work in many areas of government and the economy, its finding the best solutions that end poverty, war and oppression that are difficult while trying to prevent humans from over consuming or taking resources away from another group.
You must be blind to the invasions and wars that are a direct result of the higher standard of living in the rich countries *companies want to keep other nations poor so the cost of living in our home countries and standard of living goes up* this is the way capitalism truly works on a global scale.
Just wait until big business and government orchestrate a glut of educated people who can be payed much less then you and you can't afford to pay back the loans you took out for school in your home country, all in the name of capitalism. It's not capitalism thats evil per se its that the entire economic system cannot be capitalistic, we must find the best system for each segment that prevents destruction of the environment, wars, overpopulation, and too much consumption of goods and strategic resources for luxury.
Not at all DIGITAL can be just as good as analog, the only thing that holds back digital in the world of sound and image magnification is the the sampling rate/quality/ratio. This is hardly a problem. At some point the sampling rate for digital becomes so good and fine that the benefits of digital reproduction/data storage and transmission outweigh its analog counterparts.
... people! Christ, people with no time can just turn on god mode to go through the game in much less time (in the games that have them). It does not take a genius to figure it out. You still get to experience the content and not waste time at usually 10x the speed of the non-cheater. You want a challenge still you say? Gimme a break, anyone that wants to whip through gamecontent that fast surely does not want the challenge of restarting the same level over and over and dying wasting their precious time. The challenge is simply an illusion they just want to consume the content and the good movie-like-esque parts and the ending. I remember playing games for one reason: To see how good the friggin ending was, teh ending was like the be all and end all of many games for me back in the NES/SNES days. Once you 'finish it' (with all singleplayer games) it sits on your shelf and collects dust especially if you're working and have a family.
Case in point: A game like ikaruga is all about challenge and mastery it is a hardcore game but it is also *the perfect game* for someone who works a lot and has no time, you can finish the game in under 20 minutes each level is between 2-5 minutes in length. This is taste dependent of course but think about it. How deep can gameplay really get in a game thats only a few hours in length? It can only be superficial or very simplified at best. And games have already been taking the challenge out of games (especially most console ones) for a long time now. At some point the game stops being challenging, interesting and fun because there is no length and quality of content that you can justify spending $60-80 on.
Define "shortly" (in reference to your sig)... lol.:)
Yes but I believe awareness and being tied up financially due to time is a significant factor. We are too busy and too focused on work and the economy rather then realizing that:
1) Not all industries or human activities can be economically viable or profitable
2) That some necessary institutions must run at a 'loss' or must be maintained *at all costs* (An example would be the military in a hostile world although I dont necessarily agree with using it frivolously).
3) Not all people can work all the time due to improvements, technological innovations and discoveries that displace the worker or need for human labour in areas that formerly needed it. Everyone needs to eat and a roof over their head or else you end up with massive social problems, crimes, and homelessness.
4) Education needs to be susidized by the government for the unemployed and financially strapped or else you constantly have a mass of unemployed people using time (and government money) being very unproductive during the greatest duration of their time (i.e. welfare, or exploiting disability and social services programs).
The fact that money is a barrier to education, employment, etc. And there should be laws *requiring* one to work to be re-educated if one is unemployed.
Fun stuff but still the point holds that for *working people* and especially families time is at a premium. Also it would help if the educational system actually got kids enthusiastic or exposed to how the political system works. Most people, even university educated, have very little idea how it works because its methods and processes are so far from understood because it was *never required* in school. THE place to be teaching it. Also where would YOU start to learn about 'the issues' if you weren't taught about the system and where to find information in school, many of which require generations of time to solve?
Also yes, there are tonnes of unemployed more interested in videogaming and sex but thats why they are unemployed. Many of them chose not to work. And its difficult to employ everyone 100% of the time when we keep inventing things that displace jobs. With the development of AI there will be a *lot* of unemlpoyed educated people.
I think you're missing the point: There is too much knowledge to learn in too little time for your average 'ignorant voter' (by the way that includes you and the 'most educated' of society). No one has the time to stay on top of all the issues because of the increasing amount of people, industries, policies, etc. This is a side-effect of specialization and having to spend 90% of your time working just to feed yourself and put a roof over your head. If you want to change the world, make the cost of the basics free/subsidized by government and leave the luxury/transportation and other 'works better under capitlalist' industries under the capitalistic system. People are limited beings with limited memories, storage capacity and time to think and until you recognize and appreciate this. As interesting as your argument is, the increasing specialization of society and having to spend more and more time at work is in fact behind the cause of all this ignorance you speak of. How can you expect 'the masses' to know the intricacies of such things if they dont have the time to put towards understanding them because they have to work 40-60 hour work weeks with a family just to feed themselves, put a roof over their head and put junior through college?
Thats because they are too busy working to live and caught up in 'daily living' (work) to think about their state of affairs and doing anything to chance it. IMHO people get set in their ways through the culture they were born into. The culture dictactes who these people will become what they will do and what they are forced to accept.
Economic development isn't the be all and end all of solving our problems. There are more deeper and fundamental problems that are in fact *global* in their scope. Rich countries exploit the poor countries to keep their countries rich when the under the rich become to expensive to maintain they 'outsource' to cheaper countries exploiting the differences in currency, product and services valu. Take a look at what the WTO (world trade orginization) has been doing lately with their trade agreements in the '3rd world' and the 'loans' they've been making expecting them to pay them back (when developing a country and a people will *always* be overbudget and most likely *at a loss* if the people themselves have not much in the way of skill or education).
As long as currency disparity exists between other countries and the trade values of foreign currencies are severely offbase and unfair, especially 'devleping' ones. Wwhich makes economic development a 'joke' when the trade discrepencies are so high to benefit the corporations/exploiters its ridiculous. Taking a look at human greed is all you need to know about why much of the '3rd world' is in the state it's in.
Also don't you think the these countries are responsible for a lot of their problems? Who keeps bringing kids into that world? Their own ignorance and shortsightedness is part of the problem as well.
Thats what they've been saying for ages. I remember reading about MRAM every year in some article that predicts that next year or two will 'be the year' of MRAM. Until a major company like INTEL or AMD has this on their roadmaps MRAM and actually designes a 'consumer' motherboard chipset around it, it is just all a nice fantasy. You can be sure these companies know the viability and likely cost of this technology better then we do.
... for your average joe. I know when I signed up for the 7 day trial (I think it was 7). It was difficult for me to figure out and 'start off' having fun straight away. I tried it out for the first few days doing the first couple quests was not easy as the interface was not intuitive, I couldn't figure out where to put the item or items I was carring for my missions and target the right planet and whatnot. I think I ended up figuring it out eventually but only after a long time grapplign with the complex interface issues. I might give eve another go round but I'd need my hand held and someone to get me up to speed because my trial was a frustrating and boring experience.
Eve is a 'hardcore' game and hte pacing is pretty monotonous and boring for more action oriented gamers or console gamers who expect to be things within short distances to interact with.
In MMO's Travelling is too time consuming and boring... This is the thing I hated the most about Zelda windwaker for example. The stupid sailing on the sea where you're running around for 5-15 minutes at a time not engaging or *doing* anything fun, interesting or interacting with the environment. The key thing that made video games famous was *action* and *interaction* not the passivity thats starting to crop up more and more in modern games.
Theres no way out of the 'level grind' system. It is the system entire genres are built upon and a gameplay convention thats fromulaic and financially successful. There is no other proven gameplay mechanic which has sold *single player games* as well as multiplayer games that has proven successful other then FPS.
That is *the whole game*. Things that you can only 'consume once' like quests or games in which experience content too fast lose subscribes after the first few months without any content updates. Take a look at the types of games today. In each and every genre they boil down the player doing one of two things:
1) Action/twitch interactivity (skill based) requiring your constant/immediate attention and practice to get better.
2) Passive interaction with you turning on automatically controlled features of your character with little control over your avatar.
3) Skill allocation and item finding/hunting.
4) Goals and challenges that are fun and interesting *for a long time*. The for a long time part is the hard part. Everything suffers from the law familiarity and of diminishing returns even for 'fun' things.
There is just no way to make a game fun for any length of time without some sort of goal or level system. Diablo II is probably the BEST example of a game where people are burnt the hell out but still play anyway. Why? Despite the fact that its free, item finding and making different builds with characters are pretty much the *only* reason you'd continue to play diablo II four or so years after release. The "phat loot" and gamling for better items are essentially the whole game now-adays. That is the only thing that draws people back is finding better stuff otherwise people would have stopped playing it ages ago after the first few weeks or months online.
As a former FFXI player I vouch for the fact that MMO's pacing is too slow and too much of a timesink for most adult people who have jobs.
... then I could see the justification for a 19.99 price point. This is probably the most frustrating part about re-releases, emulated re-releases or 'ports'. Is that they don't try to enhance the game or add to it to update it for the modern era. This where all game companies could learn from squaresoft. When they released Final Fantasy Origns with the original final fantasy 'updated' and also with the Japanese Final fantasy II/w SNES graphics. FF1 may have been a port of the wondersawn version (I dont know, does someone know?) but at least I know I was getting something then milked to buy anotehr copy of FF1. Since I bought the original for the NES why would I buy it again if there was not something new, different, or significantly modified and updated in the game itself?
I just picked up starfox adventures for 29.99, so if I really wanted these in cart format I'd wait a year or so or until the price drops toless then 10 bucks. Paying for the same games you've already owned/rented in the past is kinda stupid you have to be a real sucker to do so. With emulation widespread on the internet at least videogame companies are getting the message that if they try to milk us we'll milk them right back.
How is Halo realistic? How is Zelda WW realistic? How is F-Zero GX realistic? No game is realistic. And I really think thats not the prime goal of most game designers, they want their games too 1) Look good 2) be fun and immersive 3) sell lots (not necessarilly in that order).
No gamer wants purely 'realistic' games. Take FF tactics or advance wars on the GBA (all 'cartoony' btw). Prime examples are GTA and FF, I mean come on look at the summons in FF series they are the furthers thing from realism, in fact look at the dichotomous design in FF8 'real' character models vs. 'cartoony' enemies and you can't say that the enemies and summons were striving for realism, they were striving to look good and for a consistent artistic style. No one really wants things to "look real" they want things to look good and mimic the real world with some artistic liscense. Take "doom3" it looks nowhere near 'real' or photorealistic it looks like really great art but I wouldn't call it real. (how real are zombies/monsters anyway?). IMHO they are striving for 'exagerrated realism' where artistic liscense plays a huge role. Not pure realism.
Yes but pirating for the DC and GC is much less common (at least in North america) when you make the method of piracy difficult an inaccesable to the 'masses' then pirating for PS2 and xbox because they share media with PC DVD/CD-R burners. I have not been easily able "mod" a gc, then burn discs to pirate my gamecube games where you can do that with PS2 and Xbox games. Case in point: I have to buy all my GC games and its kept me from looking for alternatives, I wait a year or so and buy older good games for 29-35 or less. With the PS2 and Xbox I can just mod and burn. With DVD burners at all time lows and with games costing upwards of 50$ a shot, 1 DVD burner + mod chip equals the cost of maybe 2-3 games and enables you to rent and burn every game. Where as with the GC they do not have easily accessable "GC burners". Emulation of modern consoles usually takes until after the end of the life of the console before it effects sales and then it doesn't matter anyway.
My point was - the hardware and software developers have to start taking IP seriously if they dont want to end up worse then the music industry, software is much more expensive then music and Video games are still a little 'niche' with GC having somethng like 13 million installed base, xboxx having 13 million and PS2 having ~30-40 million worlwide. Compare that NES and SNES sold over 45million units each.
... be able to be overtaken by people with little regard for anyone else but their own people and nationalistic ideals. If history has proven anything its that without 'physical' might your culture will be taken advantage of sooner or later when push comes to shove and the intention of an entire nation to take by force another nations wealth/resource/power or what have you.
We have war today except its purely "economic". You can bet your ass when the economy and the people in rich countries who are used to a high standard of living and the system they use to consume most of the worlds resources breaks down that war is not far away when times become desperate.
It is no surprise here - the "free market" is nothing but an illusion for the people and businesses with lots of money who are entwined with the banks and financiers. Check out the financing and bank industry and see how much real "comeptition" there is if you trace the ownership of all the banks subsidiaries or "daughter companies" many companies and industries are little more then a "cell" of a larger body or a "finger" of the hand of major banks and financial institutions.
I don't know about you but games that are not challenging are not fun.
For instance, what is a game like Ikaruga for instance without the added challenge? It gets old really fast once you've gotten infinite continues the fact that the game gives you infinite continues whether you want them or not by playing long enough without a way to revert the settings in the options without having to wipe the savegames and all those highscores you've earned is kinda lame.
Or for instance the whole Draw IMHO in hardcore or non-hardcore Diablo2 is the challenge, challenge to find the best items for your character or the challenge of not dying the entire game. Whole games are built around challenge without any goals to conquer or if the goals are too easy you're enjoyment with the product will not last... period.
I can understand the comments about work and wanting games to make the most of the little time you have BUT I do not think going to the "fast food" model of short "excellen"t video games is the right move for the entire game industry. Most work-a-holic gamers that say they want shorter games would complain I bet if they finished a game and found out it was only "X" hours long or only had "X" hours worth of content. I agree shorter games need to be released BUT only if theres a significant price drop for games because they do not have the content to keep you entertained for hours.
Also short games for working adults might end up being a double edged sword, why buy when you can finish a game on a rental fee? What would a cost-conscious adult do for his gaming addiction if we had a lot of short highquality games would any singleplayer play-once type of game even warrant a purchase?
I wouldn't say Need for speed series is an awful game, the best NFS have been Porsche unleashed, Hot pursuit (For its time remember, these were voodoo1 days), HP2 for the PC/PS2 and NFSU.
NFSU was more of the same yes, but the control was tight and the tracks were good and they did try to come up with new gameplay modes (drag, etc). Although I think Midnight club II is a game that is really pushing the gameplay department but it lacks atmosphere and different tracks (besides just going aroudn the same cities) and I think thats the sole reason why it can't compete in sales with NFS series is because the way the game looks is well sub-par compared to stuff like NFSU.
Some people don't want to have to worry about their batteries running out and making a trip to the store to buy new ones. It just adds an extra expense most people don't want or need. If you've got the cash $$$ to burn that's great but I think its more convenient to have controllers that will always work/w no interference from multiple wireless controllers. So the cords may get wound up or knotted from time to time but this could be alleviated using better plastic casing around the wire so that isn't prone to twist and knot.
Slashdot Mirror
Previous poster said: People need to learn that having to change and adapt in order to survive is a fact of life.
My response:
Except that the technology and works we keep producing keep requiring more education and resources on the part of the worker into near infinity until a split and more specialization occurs, but at our current rate people are being wrung out for every last drop of time they have. More and more coroporations and businesses are the ones that establish the rules and contracts and more and more of them are sucking up peoples time while the workers standard of living is increasingly dropping. Blanket statements like "it will all work out" or "suck it up" is short sighted stupidity, tell that to a 3rd world country in the midst of economic development where they take protectionist measures so that they dont devestate peoples ability to support themselves. The desire for maximizing profit is antithetical to producing happy productive workers, when the time they've invested in their education and skills is enormous but the market is changing so fast that having to reinvest the same amount of time (4-6+ years or more) is just not an alternative in countries where you have to pay for your education, look at student loan default rates, they are only going to increase. Someone who's in debt and can't get an entry level job to pay off his already existing debt for his education is going to be stuck in a lifetime of debt or he will have learned his lesson that education is just not worth it and less and less people will go to higher education because the economic incentive is no longer their, and the price of education is actually non-competitive in their home country so if they are smart they will move to another country where they can exploit the lower costs of education, and the institutions at home will suffer. There are a myriad of complex inter-relations you're simply ignoring and that for many people the huge system they are a part of straps them into lifes that they will not escape because the causes, effects and problems are generational.
There is a human cost that taking capitalist principles to the extreme will eventually backfire. This assuems advances in education and the speed at which people learn will keep up with what is economically valuable in the job/skills market.
You ignore that those 'other jobs' are not high paying. Therefore the value of their work is depreciated and healthcare, environment protection laws, etc and standards of living that they worked so hard for (by the way which cost enormous amounts of resources and money) backslide assuming that technology and human advances in education and key areas do not keep up with or can't keep up with those who are willing to work for lower pay due to gross differences in the work and output you can buy in a cheaper country.
The way the current capitalist system works is like a game of risk where you go in exploit the low costs of the country, and lack of protection laws, slowly raise the standards of living as the people realize they're getting exploited the put laws into effect, etc,etc. Increasing the costs for businesses, then the capitalist go back to countries that they have devastated/reduced peoples wages and standard of living so badly so that they can no start the exploitation process again.
When you put the economy first before people sooner or later you're asking for a backlash or revolution if there is not technology/advances to keep humans up to speed with these enormous economic behemoths without having sacrificed their entire lives to education/training systems just to have a life of constant debt/economic hardship.
... won't become a better longterm (and ultimately cheaper and quicker) alternative then backing up enormous amounts of data onto discs who's reliability is increasingly questionable due the easy at which the data can be made unreadable. The amount of data is exploding but not the speed at which we are backing it up.
In my opinion DVD burners have very few uses: Burning backups of critical data, warez, movies and music. Also the problem with CDR/DVDR-Rot will most likely rear its ugly head. I have cd's less then 2-3 years old that can no longer be read in its entirety theres always some file or portion of the disc (no matter how small) that becomes unreadable over the years. While CD's or DVD's that I've actually purchased last nearly forever if taken good care of. If the quality of burnable media does not get more reliable I can easily see hard drives RAID/internet backup solutions taking their place.
IMHO my time at university I would be swamped with writing research papers and whatnot I always 'skimped' on the thick books they'd assign for me to read, I always looked at the table of contents read the chapters that would make good arguments and wrote my paper without reading 80% of the book. It was ridiculous the amount of work I recieved. There's just no humanly possible way to 'read it all', I think people at the universities or whoever is doing the curriculum needs their friggin heads read. I suspect many students do the same thing.
I think if the university professors themselves could give the students a more manageable workload they wouldn't want to cheat, especially for those that are cash strapped. Look into the causes of why such things are occuring and you'd be surprised that some students would like to do the work but they don't have the time to do it in.
I think you're ignoring the natural laws/causes and their effects. Take an idiot savant and compare him to someone who's struggled years to acquire the level of master a savant has at the same chosen instrument of choice. Both can be true: Ability can be inherited or acquired. I think both have their place but the current bent is towards 'fixed' causes and also so these people can make money off them. But you have to respect the limitations of the tools and ability to measure the causes in the age which you live.
Abilities, propensities, inclinations to behaviours are biological, dietary and enviornmental. To say otherwise is pure ignorance. Many peoples behaviour, abilities can be categorized, predicted, etc. Our ability to determine peoples potential acdemically, skillwise, weaknesses and propensity to make certain choices is only going to increase with time.
This is a philosophical argument and you seem to be implying that we have 'free will'. Take for example: Why is it so difficult to be celibate for a lot of people? Simple answer: Biology.
Again folks cheating is a by product of the almighty dollar, welcome to capitalism 101.
Where people compete for the best jobs/marks, you can bet many people are not going to get their on merit alone. Even assuming one legitimately got through the system. The quality of teaching and what is being taught varies so widely (even in countries that have 'good education'). Rich or popular people are especially 'favored' in academia, your marks are as good as as much money you're willing to throw at the school in question. Many teachers know that money has too much negative influence in higher education. But when the sole purpose many people pursue it is for money - you've got two competing contradictory interests at work.
Might not be a bad idea if done correctly considering most humans are blind to the grossness and negligence much of their behaviour causes.
Self-responsbility and self-government (in regard to the individual) has proven that it doesn't work. Take for instance religious fundamentalists vs. evolutionists, who is causing more 'harm' by their insistance that their version of the truth is correct? The fact that we allow certain forms of ignorance in our society and the world as a whole is negligence.
Of course you'd have a riot/civil war if you didn't allow people to live in theirs, this is the sad state of the majority of humanity, is that they prefer ignorance.
Give me a break socialism never promised utopia. Only certain theorists thought this way. It remains yet to be demonstrated that utopia means that the machines and technology we invent and automation can do all the work we can do but better while everyone eats, sleeps, and does anything they want to due to the abundance of resources.
They promised an end to the gross inequality that exists under the current system. Socialism and capitalism are not fixed ideas either, einstein himself agreed that only parts of the economy should be socialized, while we continue to work and find the best systems for other parts of it. Other countries have proven socialist ideas work in many areas of government and the economy, its finding the best solutions that end poverty, war and oppression that are difficult while trying to prevent humans from over consuming or taking resources away from another group.
You must be blind to the invasions and wars that are a direct result of the higher standard of living in the rich countries *companies want to keep other nations poor so the cost of living in our home countries and standard of living goes up* this is the way capitalism truly works on a global scale.
Just wait until big business and government orchestrate a glut of educated people who can be payed much less then you and you can't afford to pay back the loans you took out for school in your home country, all in the name of capitalism. It's not capitalism thats evil per se its that the entire economic system cannot be capitalistic, we must find the best system for each segment that prevents destruction of the environment, wars, overpopulation, and too much consumption of goods and strategic resources for luxury.
Not at all DIGITAL can be just as good as analog, the only thing that holds back digital in the world of sound and image magnification is the the sampling rate/quality/ratio. This is hardly a problem. At some point the sampling rate for digital becomes so good and fine that the benefits of digital reproduction/data storage and transmission outweigh its analog counterparts.
... people! Christ, people with no time can just turn on god mode to go through the game in much less time (in the games that have them). It does not take a genius to figure it out. You still get to experience the content and not waste time at usually 10x the speed of the non-cheater. You want a challenge still you say? Gimme a break, anyone that wants to whip through gamecontent that fast surely does not want the challenge of restarting the same level over and over and dying wasting their precious time. The challenge is simply an illusion they just want to consume the content and the good movie-like-esque parts and the ending. I remember playing games for one reason: To see how good the friggin ending was, teh ending was like the be all and end all of many games for me back in the NES/SNES days. Once you 'finish it' (with all singleplayer games) it sits on your shelf and collects dust especially if you're working and have a family.
Case in point: A game like ikaruga is all about challenge and mastery it is a hardcore game but it is also *the perfect game* for someone who works a lot and has no time, you can finish the game in under 20 minutes each level is between 2-5 minutes in length. This is taste dependent of course but think about it. How deep can gameplay really get in a game thats only a few hours in length? It can only be superficial or very simplified at best. And games have already been taking the challenge out of games (especially most console ones) for a long time now. At some point the game stops being challenging, interesting and fun because there is no length and quality of content that you can justify spending $60-80 on.
Define "shortly" (in reference to your sig)... lol. :)
Yes but I believe awareness and being tied up financially due to time is a significant factor. We are too busy and too focused on work and the economy rather then realizing that:
1) Not all industries or human activities can be economically viable or profitable
2) That some necessary institutions must run at a 'loss' or must be maintained *at all costs* (An example would be the military in a hostile world although I dont necessarily agree with using it frivolously).
3) Not all people can work all the time due to improvements, technological innovations and discoveries that displace the worker or need for human labour in areas that formerly needed it. Everyone needs to eat and a roof over their head or else you end up with massive social problems, crimes, and homelessness.
4) Education needs to be susidized by the government for the unemployed and financially strapped or else you constantly have a mass of unemployed people using time (and government money) being very unproductive during the greatest duration of their time (i.e. welfare, or exploiting disability and social services programs).
The fact that money is a barrier to education, employment, etc. And there should be laws *requiring* one to work to be re-educated if one is unemployed.
Fun stuff but still the point holds that for *working people* and especially families time is at a premium. Also it would help if the educational system actually got kids enthusiastic or exposed to how the political system works. Most people, even university educated, have very little idea how it works because its methods and processes are so far from understood because it was *never required* in school. THE place to be teaching it. Also where would YOU start to learn about 'the issues' if you weren't taught about the system and where to find information in school, many of which require generations of time to solve?
Also yes, there are tonnes of unemployed more interested in videogaming and sex but thats why they are unemployed. Many of them chose not to work. And its difficult to employ everyone 100% of the time when we keep inventing things that displace jobs. With the development of AI there will be a *lot* of unemlpoyed educated people.
I think you're missing the point: There is too much knowledge to learn in too little time for your average 'ignorant voter' (by the way that includes you and the 'most educated' of society). No one has the time to stay on top of all the issues because of the increasing amount of people, industries, policies, etc. This is a side-effect of specialization and having to spend 90% of your time working just to feed yourself and put a roof over your head. If you want to change the world, make the cost of the basics free/subsidized by government and leave the luxury/transportation and other 'works better under capitlalist' industries under the capitalistic system. People are limited beings with limited memories, storage capacity and time to think and until you recognize and appreciate this. As interesting as your argument is, the increasing specialization of society and having to spend more and more time at work is in fact behind the cause of all this ignorance you speak of. How can you expect 'the masses' to know the intricacies of such things if they dont have the time to put towards understanding them because they have to work 40-60 hour work weeks with a family just to feed themselves, put a roof over their head and put junior through college?
Thats because they are too busy working to live and caught up in 'daily living' (work) to think about their state of affairs and doing anything to chance it. IMHO people get set in their ways through the culture they were born into. The culture dictactes who these people will become what they will do and what they are forced to accept.
Economic development isn't the be all and end all of solving our problems. There are more deeper and fundamental problems that are in fact *global* in their scope. Rich countries exploit the poor countries to keep their countries rich when the under the rich become to expensive to maintain they 'outsource' to cheaper countries exploiting the differences in currency, product and services valu. Take a look at what the WTO (world trade orginization) has been doing lately with their trade agreements in the '3rd world' and the 'loans' they've been making expecting them to pay them back (when developing a country and a people will *always* be overbudget and most likely *at a loss* if the people themselves have not much in the way of skill or education).
As long as currency disparity exists between other countries and the trade values of foreign currencies are severely offbase and unfair, especially 'devleping' ones. Wwhich makes economic development a 'joke' when the trade discrepencies are so high to benefit the corporations/exploiters its ridiculous. Taking a look at human greed is all you need to know about why much of the '3rd world' is in the state it's in.
Also don't you think the these countries are responsible for a lot of their problems? Who keeps bringing kids into that world? Their own ignorance and shortsightedness is part of the problem as well.
Thats what they've been saying for ages. I remember reading about MRAM every year in some article that predicts that next year or two will 'be the year' of MRAM. Until a major company like INTEL or AMD has this on their roadmaps MRAM and actually designes a 'consumer' motherboard chipset around it, it is just all a nice fantasy. You can be sure these companies know the viability and likely cost of this technology better then we do.
... for your average joe. I know when I signed up for the 7 day trial (I think it was 7). It was difficult for me to figure out and 'start off' having fun straight away. I tried it out for the first few days doing the first couple quests was not easy as the interface was not intuitive, I couldn't figure out where to put the item or items I was carring for my missions and target the right planet and whatnot. I think I ended up figuring it out eventually but only after a long time grapplign with the complex interface issues. I might give eve another go round but I'd need my hand held and someone to get me up to speed because my trial was a frustrating and boring experience.
Eve is a 'hardcore' game and hte pacing is pretty monotonous and boring for more action oriented gamers or console gamers who expect to be things within short distances to interact with.
In MMO's Travelling is too time consuming and boring... This is the thing I hated the most about Zelda windwaker for example. The stupid sailing on the sea where you're running around for 5-15 minutes at a time not engaging or *doing* anything fun, interesting or interacting with the environment. The key thing that made video games famous was *action* and *interaction* not the passivity thats starting to crop up more and more in modern games.
Theres no way out of the 'level grind' system. It is the system entire genres are built upon and a gameplay convention thats fromulaic and financially successful. There is no other proven gameplay mechanic which has sold *single player games* as well as multiplayer games that has proven successful other then FPS.
That is *the whole game*. Things that you can only 'consume once' like quests or games in which experience content too fast lose subscribes after the first few months without any content updates. Take a look at the types of games today. In each and every genre they boil down the player doing one of two things:
1) Action/twitch interactivity (skill based) requiring your constant/immediate attention and practice to get better.
2) Passive interaction with you turning on automatically controlled features of your character with little control over your avatar.
3) Skill allocation and item finding/hunting.
4) Goals and challenges that are fun and interesting *for a long time*. The for a long time part is the hard part. Everything suffers from the law familiarity and of diminishing returns even for 'fun' things.
There is just no way to make a game fun for any length of time without some sort of goal or level system. Diablo II is probably the BEST example of a game where people are burnt the hell out but still play anyway. Why? Despite the fact that its free, item finding and making different builds with characters are pretty much the *only* reason you'd continue to play diablo II four or so years after release. The "phat loot" and gamling for better items are essentially the whole game now-adays. That is the only thing that draws people back is finding better stuff otherwise people would have stopped playing it ages ago after the first few weeks or months online.
As a former FFXI player I vouch for the fact that MMO's pacing is too slow and too much of a timesink for most adult people who have jobs.
... then I could see the justification for a 19.99 price point. This is probably the most frustrating part about re-releases, emulated re-releases or 'ports'. Is that they don't try to enhance the game or add to it to update it for the modern era. This where all game companies could learn from squaresoft. When they released Final Fantasy Origns with the original final fantasy 'updated' and also with the Japanese Final fantasy II /w SNES graphics. FF1 may have been a port of the wondersawn version (I dont know, does someone know?) but at least I know I was getting something then milked to buy anotehr copy of FF1. Since I bought the original for the NES why would I buy it again if there was not something new, different, or significantly modified and updated in the game itself?
I just picked up starfox adventures for 29.99, so if I really wanted these in cart format I'd wait a year or so or until the price drops toless then 10 bucks. Paying for the same games you've already owned/rented in the past is kinda stupid you have to be a real sucker to do so. With emulation widespread on the internet at least videogame companies are getting the message that if they try to milk us we'll milk them right back.
How is Halo realistic? How is Zelda WW realistic? How is F-Zero GX realistic? No game is realistic. And I really think thats not the prime goal of most game designers, they want their games too 1) Look good 2) be fun and immersive 3) sell lots (not necessarilly in that order).
No gamer wants purely 'realistic' games. Take FF tactics or advance wars on the GBA (all 'cartoony' btw). Prime examples are GTA and FF, I mean come on look at the summons in FF series they are the furthers thing from realism, in fact look at the dichotomous design in FF8 'real' character models vs. 'cartoony' enemies and you can't say that the enemies and summons were striving for realism, they were striving to look good and for a consistent artistic style. No one really wants things to "look real" they want things to look good and mimic the real world with some artistic liscense. Take "doom3" it looks nowhere near 'real' or photorealistic it looks like really great art but I wouldn't call it real. (how real are zombies/monsters anyway?). IMHO they are striving for 'exagerrated realism' where artistic liscense plays a huge role. Not pure realism.
Yes but pirating for the DC and GC is much less common (at least in North america) when you make the method of piracy difficult an inaccesable to the 'masses' then pirating for PS2 and xbox because they share media with PC DVD/CD-R burners. I have not been easily able "mod" a gc, then burn discs to pirate my gamecube games where you can do that with PS2 and Xbox games. Case in point: I have to buy all my GC games and its kept me from looking for alternatives, I wait a year or so and buy older good games for 29-35 or less. With the PS2 and Xbox I can just mod and burn. With DVD burners at all time lows and with games costing upwards of 50$ a shot, 1 DVD burner + mod chip equals the cost of maybe 2-3 games and enables you to rent and burn every game. Where as with the GC they do not have easily accessable "GC burners". Emulation of modern consoles usually takes until after the end of the life of the console before it effects sales and then it doesn't matter anyway.
My point was - the hardware and software developers have to start taking IP seriously if they dont want to end up worse then the music industry, software is much more expensive then music and Video games are still a little 'niche' with GC having somethng like 13 million installed base, xboxx having 13 million and PS2 having ~30-40 million worlwide. Compare that NES and SNES sold over 45million units each.
... be able to be overtaken by people with little regard for anyone else but their own people and nationalistic ideals. If history has proven anything its that without 'physical' might your culture will be taken advantage of sooner or later when push comes to shove and the intention of an entire nation to take by force another nations wealth/resource/power or what have you.
We have war today except its purely "economic". You can bet your ass when the economy and the people in rich countries who are used to a high standard of living and the system they use to consume most of the worlds resources breaks down that war is not far away when times become desperate.
It is no surprise here - the "free market" is nothing but an illusion for the people and businesses with lots of money who are entwined with the banks and financiers. Check out the financing and bank industry and see how much real "comeptition" there is if you trace the ownership of all the banks subsidiaries or "daughter companies" many companies and industries are little more then a "cell" of a larger body or a "finger" of the hand of major banks and financial institutions.
I don't know about you but games that are not challenging are not fun.
For instance, what is a game like Ikaruga for instance without the added challenge? It gets old really fast once you've gotten infinite continues the fact that the game gives you infinite continues whether you want them or not by playing long enough without a way to revert the settings in the options without having to wipe the savegames and all those highscores you've earned is kinda lame.
Or for instance the whole Draw IMHO in hardcore or non-hardcore Diablo2 is the challenge, challenge to find the best items for your character or the challenge of not dying the entire game. Whole games are built around challenge without any goals to conquer or if the goals are too easy you're enjoyment with the product will not last... period.
I can understand the comments about work and wanting games to make the most of the little time you have BUT I do not think going to the "fast food" model of short "excellen"t video games is the right move for the entire game industry. Most work-a-holic gamers that say they want shorter games would complain I bet if they finished a game and found out it was only "X"
hours long or only had "X" hours worth of content. I agree shorter games need to be released BUT only if theres a significant price drop for games because they do not have the content to keep you entertained for hours.
Also short games for working adults might end up being a double edged sword, why buy when you can finish a game on a rental fee? What would a cost-conscious adult do for his gaming addiction if we had a lot of short highquality games would any singleplayer play-once type of game even warrant a purchase?
I wouldn't say Need for speed series is an awful game, the best NFS have been Porsche unleashed, Hot pursuit (For its time remember, these were voodoo1 days), HP2 for the PC/PS2 and NFSU.
NFSU was more of the same yes, but the control was tight and the tracks were good and they did try to come up with new gameplay modes (drag, etc). Although I think Midnight club II is a game that is really pushing the gameplay department but it lacks atmosphere and different tracks (besides just going aroudn the same cities) and I think thats the sole reason why it can't compete in sales with NFS series is because the way the game looks is well sub-par compared to stuff like NFSU.
Some people don't want to have to worry about their batteries running out and making a trip to the store to buy new ones. It just adds an extra expense most people don't want or need. If you've got the cash $$$ to burn that's great but I think its more convenient to have controllers that will always work /w no interference from multiple wireless controllers. So the cords may get wound up or knotted from time to time but this could be alleviated using better plastic casing around the wire so that isn't prone to twist and knot.