What is the product? The music? Of course not. One argument is that the product is herself. Britney's body. Britney's voice. Britney's sugary production. Britney's image. It's a total package.
Then we have the "Britney as medium" argument that I quite like. Britney has become a medium for content delivery unto her own. She delivers a musical production. She delivers the lyrics of others. She is the box that the product comes in, the item inside the box and the marketing splash on the front of the box (Yes, I do enjoy talking about Britney's box, thanks for asking).
Then we get to Windows as portal. Let us assume that the non-intuitive nature of Windows is ingrained so much into us that it has become intuitive. It is transparent and no longer about using windows, it is about what it brings to us. Movies. Music. Word Processors. The Internet. Now MSN Search is a way to frame the Internet by Microsoft, which is quite ingenius. Google has already begun doing this, GMail, blogger, froogle, answers. The search page has become a way to deliver their product (Much like Windows delivers Microsoft product).
God, I lost my Half Life key years ago and it was a complete nightmare. I just resigned myself to pirating the game and whenever the pirated copies expired, I'd give it another go and eventually I just quit playing it.
Even worse is what I went through with Norton. I paid to upgrade to Norton 2004 when one of my license keys was due to expire for that year. Norton 2004 fucked my PC up to a horrible degree, couldn't click it, couldn't do anything. I had to uninstall and went through some horrible clueless helpdesk calls (Which they tried to bill me for!) before they sent me a boxed copy, which cost me EXTRA. Which also didn't work. I then requested that I be downgraded to 2003. They refused. They refused to sell me software I had purchased the year prior. At this stage, I went ahead and pirated Norton 2003. When my license expired this year, I went and bought NOD32 and I haven't had a problem.
Hopefully, eventually, all this runaround due to "anti-piracy" measures will put these companies in the ground.
I agree with you to a point, the functionality of my PC is what comes first. But looking at the aesthetic of Apple computers and the growing amount of pretty cases out there, people want their appliances to look nice, or at least not look completely out of place in their homes.
Now there are some pretty ugly cases out there, giant flashing LED monstrocities with bad car paintjobs and racing stripes, but some people are making interactive sculptures that have computers inside them and I don't think that's negative at all.
I find it horrifying that someone of Clarke's calibre referenced one of the worst sci-fi films ever produced, The Day After Tomorrow. Run, quickly, the cold is coming to get us!
If this happened to America, I wonder who they would bomb?
I've followed the Daily Show for about 3 years now. As a New Zealander, I spotted it on CNN International at 5:30am on a Monday. It was a cobbled together clip show of that week on the Daily Show, often it would get pre-empted by George Bush choking on something and since the US feed would take over, it would never come back.
I just downloaded this clip off a forum and was incredibly surprised to be honest. Only the week prior, Jon played reasonably nice with Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor, as well as with O'Reilly on the Daily Show. I understand a fundamental difference in O'Reilly and in Crossfire though. With Crossfire, these two theatrical characters are meant to be embody the two sides to the social and political spectrum in America. Furthermore, rather than asking any important questions, both of them just pander to their guests based upon their political bias. They accept bullshit when it is slung at them and lap it up.
Although the point on Crossfire regarding Jon throwing softballs to John Kerry during their interview, Jon's assumption was that the real news media should be held to a higher standard than a comedy show that used to do parody news segments from the Weekly World News (During Kilborn's Daily Show era).
The hard questions aren't asked and if they are, you either get complete bullshit or you get offense. Take for example Stewart's lampooning of Zel Miller (sp?), the democratic senator that delivered the keynote address at the RNC. When interviewed by Russert, Miller took such offense to moving away from the republican talking points, or even questioning his use of metaphor and asking what it referred to, that he challenged Russert to a duel and stormed off the set.
Crossfire, to Jon, epitomised the pandering to the two-party system and their bag of dirty tricks. They are part of the system as opposed to part of the supposedly subjective media. Crossfire tried to hold Jon to a higher standard than the news media. Perhaps now that Stewart is popular, he does indeed have a duty to inform (That he has played down in many interviews)? People go to him for news, that he markets as a side-effect to the comedy.
Crossfire epitomises the passive media that has plagued the United States. Not just passive, but passively arrogant. Nasty little men who ask ridiculous questions and either cheer or smirk at the bollocks that is delivered to them. Jon does a better job and it isn't even his job, his job primarily is to make us laugh. It is a scary statement on the media in general, but perhaps with the legitimacy that he is being bestowed with, maybe, just maybe things can improve.
Slashdot has a strange focus on issues of free software, an accident that killed one developer and could have potentially killed one of the founding fathers of the movement (Stallman aka Mr. GNU, Mr. GPL) makes it news. Even though Slashdot isn't generally an obituary site, I'd like to question why the person would have to be "important" for you to mourn them, a man with a girlfriend and a family passed away tragically. Do you need to know anymore to feel a pang of sorrow? Does he have to be a celebrity to make it important?
Sorry for the moral/ethical tirade, but maybe it'll give the moderators of this post and the poster himself something to think about.
My biggest issue with time drainers like EverQuest is the notion of risk vs reward coupled with lack of player/player interactivity. Post-Ultima Online, the notion of player killing, as well as certain notions of freedom to operate within a gaming environment, have disappeared. I have always thought the greatest risk and rewards took place in that kind of combat. There was no difference in EverQuest for me, new monsters sure, but everything remained the same, I found that bots could have taken the place of the other players. It was the world's most boring single player game, except I paid for the privellege of having an IRC window tacked onto it.
This also brings about ideas of "death" in games, like in games like SWG where you would get warped back to the nearest city, or lose stats/skills upon death, or even those ever-elusive "permenant death" games. I always thought that games that encouraged cowardice never captured my interest, you could lose all this WORK (because on the MMORPG treadmill, you are working) that you did if you attack a monster that is above your level.
Sadly, I don't quite have a solution. But the second year of Ultima Online is pretty much the perfect game of that type, as the treadmill wasn't as emphasised, death wasn't that important, but the rewards weren't out of proportion either. There was a freedom in that game, it wasn't just whacking monsters like a single player game, there was true player interaction. Early Ultima Online was a fine gaming social experiment.
Is it completely necessary to reference The Core? It makes me remember it all over again. My poor, feeble mind will implode if I even try to comprehend the physics behind that film, let alone the acting. Oh god, the acting...
Slashdot Mirror
and it's called a slot machine.
What makes this different from Rotten Tomatoes? And I am genuinely asking this question, not being a horrible sarcastic person.
What is the product? The music? Of course not. One argument is that the product is herself. Britney's body. Britney's voice. Britney's sugary production. Britney's image. It's a total package.
Then we have the "Britney as medium" argument that I quite like. Britney has become a medium for content delivery unto her own. She delivers a musical production. She delivers the lyrics of others. She is the box that the product comes in, the item inside the box and the marketing splash on the front of the box (Yes, I do enjoy talking about Britney's box, thanks for asking).
Then we get to Windows as portal. Let us assume that the non-intuitive nature of Windows is ingrained so much into us that it has become intuitive. It is transparent and no longer about using windows, it is about what it brings to us. Movies. Music. Word Processors. The Internet. Now MSN Search is a way to frame the Internet by Microsoft, which is quite ingenius. Google has already begun doing this, GMail, blogger, froogle, answers. The search page has become a way to deliver their product (Much like Windows delivers Microsoft product).
Bazing.
God, I lost my Half Life key years ago and it was a complete nightmare. I just resigned myself to pirating the game and whenever the pirated copies expired, I'd give it another go and eventually I just quit playing it. Even worse is what I went through with Norton. I paid to upgrade to Norton 2004 when one of my license keys was due to expire for that year. Norton 2004 fucked my PC up to a horrible degree, couldn't click it, couldn't do anything. I had to uninstall and went through some horrible clueless helpdesk calls (Which they tried to bill me for!) before they sent me a boxed copy, which cost me EXTRA. Which also didn't work. I then requested that I be downgraded to 2003. They refused. They refused to sell me software I had purchased the year prior. At this stage, I went ahead and pirated Norton 2003. When my license expired this year, I went and bought NOD32 and I haven't had a problem. Hopefully, eventually, all this runaround due to "anti-piracy" measures will put these companies in the ground.
I agree with you to a point, the functionality of my PC is what comes first. But looking at the aesthetic of Apple computers and the growing amount of pretty cases out there, people want their appliances to look nice, or at least not look completely out of place in their homes.
Now there are some pretty ugly cases out there, giant flashing LED monstrocities with bad car paintjobs and racing stripes, but some people are making interactive sculptures that have computers inside them and I don't think that's negative at all.
I sat next to him on a bus once (so close that we were hip to hip) and as far as I knew it wasn't being sold...
I find it horrifying that someone of Clarke's calibre referenced one of the worst sci-fi films ever produced, The Day After Tomorrow. Run, quickly, the cold is coming to get us!
If this happened to America, I wonder who they would bomb?
Generally when I'm going camping, I like to take fire. To, you know, warm food and myself and occasionally beverages derived from beans.
My GBA SP has lasted at least 16 with the light off as I used it on a flight from London to Auckland almost the entire way.
I've followed the Daily Show for about 3 years now. As a New Zealander, I spotted it on CNN International at 5:30am on a Monday. It was a cobbled together clip show of that week on the Daily Show, often it would get pre-empted by George Bush choking on something and since the US feed would take over, it would never come back.
I just downloaded this clip off a forum and was incredibly surprised to be honest. Only the week prior, Jon played reasonably nice with Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor, as well as with O'Reilly on the Daily Show. I understand a fundamental difference in O'Reilly and in Crossfire though. With Crossfire, these two theatrical characters are meant to be embody the two sides to the social and political spectrum in America. Furthermore, rather than asking any important questions, both of them just pander to their guests based upon their political bias. They accept bullshit when it is slung at them and lap it up.
Although the point on Crossfire regarding Jon throwing softballs to John Kerry during their interview, Jon's assumption was that the real news media should be held to a higher standard than a comedy show that used to do parody news segments from the Weekly World News (During Kilborn's Daily Show era).
The hard questions aren't asked and if they are, you either get complete bullshit or you get offense. Take for example Stewart's lampooning of Zel Miller (sp?), the democratic senator that delivered the keynote address at the RNC. When interviewed by Russert, Miller took such offense to moving away from the republican talking points, or even questioning his use of metaphor and asking what it referred to, that he challenged Russert to a duel and stormed off the set.
Crossfire, to Jon, epitomised the pandering to the two-party system and their bag of dirty tricks. They are part of the system as opposed to part of the supposedly subjective media. Crossfire tried to hold Jon to a higher standard than the news media. Perhaps now that Stewart is popular, he does indeed have a duty to inform (That he has played down in many interviews)? People go to him for news, that he markets as a side-effect to the comedy.
Crossfire epitomises the passive media that has plagued the United States. Not just passive, but passively arrogant. Nasty little men who ask ridiculous questions and either cheer or smirk at the bollocks that is delivered to them. Jon does a better job and it isn't even his job, his job primarily is to make us laugh. It is a scary statement on the media in general, but perhaps with the legitimacy that he is being bestowed with, maybe, just maybe things can improve.
Slashdot has a strange focus on issues of free software, an accident that killed one developer and could have potentially killed one of the founding fathers of the movement (Stallman aka Mr. GNU, Mr. GPL) makes it news. Even though Slashdot isn't generally an obituary site, I'd like to question why the person would have to be "important" for you to mourn them, a man with a girlfriend and a family passed away tragically. Do you need to know anymore to feel a pang of sorrow? Does he have to be a celebrity to make it important?
Sorry for the moral/ethical tirade, but maybe it'll give the moderators of this post and the poster himself something to think about.
Excellent! I figure by about noon tomorrow I'll download a patch that "officially" makes me a 16 year old girl.
Does that mean that 3d Realms will in fact show us all in the end? How about Team Fortress 2?
My biggest issue with time drainers like EverQuest is the notion of risk vs reward coupled with lack of player/player interactivity. Post-Ultima Online, the notion of player killing, as well as certain notions of freedom to operate within a gaming environment, have disappeared. I have always thought the greatest risk and rewards took place in that kind of combat. There was no difference in EverQuest for me, new monsters sure, but everything remained the same, I found that bots could have taken the place of the other players. It was the world's most boring single player game, except I paid for the privellege of having an IRC window tacked onto it.
This also brings about ideas of "death" in games, like in games like SWG where you would get warped back to the nearest city, or lose stats/skills upon death, or even those ever-elusive "permenant death" games. I always thought that games that encouraged cowardice never captured my interest, you could lose all this WORK (because on the MMORPG treadmill, you are working) that you did if you attack a monster that is above your level.
Sadly, I don't quite have a solution. But the second year of Ultima Online is pretty much the perfect game of that type, as the treadmill wasn't as emphasised, death wasn't that important, but the rewards weren't out of proportion either. There was a freedom in that game, it wasn't just whacking monsters like a single player game, there was true player interaction. Early Ultima Online was a fine gaming social experiment.
You found Benny Hill funny.
The InQuirer is reporting that the .iq domain should be released. Well played, journalists, well played...
Is it completely necessary to reference The Core? It makes me remember it all over again. My poor, feeble mind will implode if I even try to comprehend the physics behind that film, let alone the acting. Oh god, the acting...
Was Robert Frost cremated?
I think fire is the solution.