I'm going to assume these laws apply only to the possessive apostrophe? Because it's fairly standard and proper French to take a noun beginning with a vowel and merge it with its article in a contraction.
A random sampling:
L'eglise = the church
L'elephant = the elephant
L'oiel = the eye
L'accent = the accent
L'oreille = the ear
L'autobus = the bus
L'informatique = the computer
Disclosure: My qualifications are 6 years of French classes, ending 5 years ago.
Moores Law doesn't apply to everything just computer speed
It doesn't even apply to that. It applies to transistor density. And, now more than ever, speed gains aren't directly proportional to transistor density increases.
So your point might even be stronger than you intended it to be.
It's just like saying "I'm an used car salesman, I sold junk all my life, but now I'm having trouble selling these brand new non-polluting high-power low-price machines I just got".
Not exactly like that. Because these games, like it or not, are not desirable to the "unwashed masses" that own a console for the sole purpose of playing the newest annual incarnations of EA's sports franchises. Okay, maybe not literally to that extent, but you know I'm speaking of the infamous "MTV demographic" that didn't become "hardcore" gamers until the last couple years. Alas, this is a huge amount of the market right now.
So, to make your analogy more accurate, you'd have to add that these great cars have mediocre horsepower, at best, and look like they were designed by the the same guys who came up with the Isetta. It may be the best car on the road in any number of respects, but people aren't going to even give it a test drive if it looks like a Fisher-Price toy.
The same goes for video games. This issue is by far not restricted to the video game market. Pick just about any commercial product industry and you will find that the vast majority of product sold is mediocre in quality, at best. While the "good stuff" is purchased by rich people and/or afficianados: the elite. For video games, we are that elite. And as such, it's tough to get the stuff we like. I personally don't think we will ever get our production values into the mainstream. Or if we do, we'll have moved on by that time anyway and our tastes will remain elite.
You're missing the point. Lucas-style budgets and mass-appealing, relatively unoriginal, effects-driven extravaganzas are exactly what the author is railing against.
The point is not that everyone should be like George Lucas. The point is that if we take the focus off the superficial stuff, we could get some quality development done without the Lucas-style budgets budgets.
Yes, there's risk. But it needn't be as huge as the publishers want us to think. The problem is that they have strict (though misguided) standards for their output, which require a certain level of monetary input. Changing the output standards necessarily changes the necessary input resources.
It has nothing at all to do with patents, it is just an ordinary case of contract law.
Indeed that should be the case.
So this is just a beatup by Slashdot.
Not just Slashdot. Lots of people are up in arms about this because it appears most of the reporting has failed to mention the "prebate" program this relates to.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. ("We" being independently-minded tech-savvy consumers who like to be able to do what we want with our products, and are suspicious of the tactics of big corporations.) In our zeal to protect our freedoms and privacy, and in our paranoia that big corporations are intent on stealing them away, we appear to be jumping on every little thing that sticks out as potentially "worrisome", without examinging the situation critically and intelligently.
In short, shame on us. We've done exactly what we so often berate others for doing: not researching the issue before coming to a decision.
No, but exchanging money for goods (called "consideration", in legal terms) is entering into a contract. The fact that the rebated price was clearly stated as only available under specific conditions simply means only that it is a bit more complicated than a normal merchandise sale. Not that it is illegal.
By your exact same logic, it could be argued that Lexmark has no legal obligation to actually provide a traditional rebate (i.e. send in receipt copy and proof of purchase) to a customer even if they fulfil the stated requirements.
It doesn't matter what you think, it's been true in Common Law for hundreds of years: purchasing something from a vendor is a contractual exchange of consideration. Terms may be added or subtracted to a typical purchase contract as long as they are explicit. And if it was clear to the customer that a rebate was available, you can bet it was clear what they had to do to get it, or else the rebate would be totally ineffective at selling units altogether.
But having a BS-CE, and having done a senior project involving USB back in school, I can't just let the inaccuracy of that statement slide...
<pedantry> The power capacity or amperage of the power supply will have no effect on an individual port-powered USB device. The USB standard divides devices into two power classes: low-power (less than 0.25A) and high-power (between 0.25A and 0.5A). And IIRC, one powered USB port can only source a maximum of 1A to all devices connected through that port at any given time. If you need more, you've got to use a self-powered hub. </pedantry>
Phew. I almost posted that myself, but I didn't want to be redundant so I'm glad I saw your post.
IMHO, one of the great tragedies of the popularization of the concepts of Einstein's Relativity is the loss of that equation. The ignorance of the origin of E=mc^2 from the equation you posted is what causes thousands of armchair theoreticians around the world to come up with the ideas such as photons having rest mass, and to post their misguided theories on science forums, and to get angry when people correct them.
I'm not certain we in the U.S. have much right to complain about human overpopulation and overcrowding. Considering we have one of the largest (landwise) nations in the world, and the average population density of the nation is so ridiculously low compared to nations in Europe or in western, southern, and eastern Asia.
Though taking into account our current fertility rate and the rate of immigration, we should probably start thinking about the issue in a preventative sense.
Those are both examples of animals people traditionally eat.
How many people in the U.S. actually eat hunted deer or rabbit on a regular basis? Game should be a much bigger part of our diet, IMHO. It could reduce the agricultural stress of cattle farming in the midwest and California, in addition to helping control the population of the game concerned. With close monitors on game populations, the state DNRs could make rules that nudge hunters toward the types of game that are overpopulated in a given year, or away from hunting if the herds are thinning.
Finally, while I agree to a point with the idea of humans being part of nature and letting nature take its course, there is reason to worry about the end of such laissez-faire attitudes. The process of evolution is related in a way to chaos theory and thermodynamics. Given a closed system, which the earth pretty much is, and which the ecologies on separate continents can approximate, the system will tend to settle into a "stable" state over time. Humans, however, have the ability to change ourselves and our environment faster than it can settle. We are spurring along global entropy faster than it would otherwise happen. So if we continue the way we do, we're soon going to end up with the most stable configuration of all: a dead, lifeless planet. But I'm afraid that efforts to change the environment back to what we think "it should be", without first reducing our own effects, will only introduce more disorder, more entropy, and worsen things. It's like overdampening shock absorbers. A little dampening eases the ride, right? But a lot of dampening is no better than having none at all.
The best thing to do, as the parent noted, is to use our intelligence and ability to reduce our effect on the environment as much as possible, and let the world recover a stable state that includes us, rather than just going on as we always have, making the mess and cleaning it up after the fact, and then trying to force the environment back to the way it used to be. By doing so, we're causing damage, and then counteracting the evolutionary nature of the environment to attempt to cope with what we're doing. When I talk about letting things be, I'm not saying we shouldn't clean up pollution we've already made. But I am saying we shouldn't be messing with the animals and where they live. Haven't we humans had enough bad experiences with species transplantation? We've illustrated time after time after time that we simply cannot predict the end effect of doing this. The world's ecology is simply too complex to think we can experiment with this stuff. We know from past experience what has bad effects, so let's first concentrate on avoiding that in the future. So far, we can't even do that much right! What makes us think we know how to actively improve what nature has already done???
We first need to quit damaging, and then stand back and let the ecology adjust by itself. Losing species is always saddening to those who appreciate nature's beauty. And I don't think it's harmful to perpetuate them in zoos if they can't survive in the wild. But nature will continue to be beautiful in new ways if we can just lessen our effects, and step out of the way to let it do its thing. Right now, we are outside "the cycle" because we have a huge aff
Interesting point regarding foster care. However the sentence that follows it betrays a common conception of "what it takes" to raise a child, which I don't agree with.
Here's another question, just out of curiosity:
How many kids' loving biological or foster parents provide them with a car for their 16th birthday and support them through college?
I had no car until I was 19. In fact, I had no license at all until I was 18 because my parents couldn't afford to pay for driver's ed. If I needed to go somewhere, I took my bike or a bus. And when I got my first job, my parents began to transition fiscal responsibility for me, to me. By the time I entered college, I bought my own clothes, my own food, etc. The only support I had from my parents was shelter and health insurance. I even paid the deductible for my wisdom teeth to be removed at the age of 21, still in college. And, above all, my parents never contributed a single red cent to my college tuition. What I didn't get via loans, scholarships, and grants, I paid out of my own pocket... At a school where tuition was $22,000 per year. And despite all of this "adversity", as some might call it, I graduated with honors.
Anyway, I'm probably an unusual case, but that's the point. I think most people over-estimate the monetary investment it takes to raise a child into a responsible, functional adult. To achieve (but not guarantee) the same result, money can take up the slack in the case of parents who have no business being parents, to allow the kids to "get by". But if you are a responsible and caring parent, the money isn't strictly necessary.
But, I'll give you that most people in the scenario under debate aren't the children of responsible and/or caring parents, and so they don't know how to be that themselves.
having backwards compatibility is one of the ways they'll use to entice us to do so
Yes, it might entice you, or I, to do so. But what about everyone else? It's just as arrogant to think that Sony owes it to you to meet your obscure demands as it is for a company to put out a product without doing market research. Don't like it? Don't buy it. But in this particular case, I doubt it will be any skin off Sony's nose if vintage game geeks like you and I don't buy, or buy late. And therefore, it's not stupid of them.
I'd like to find out what percentage of the people who own PS2's actually use its PS1 compatibility. I can guarantee that the guys who are running out annually to buy the latest version of EA's sports games don't care, by and large. They and those like them are the big boon of the games industry right now.
As for me? I'm not buying the system until I know there are good PS3 games out for it already. Why should backwards compatibility change that? It's not like they're going to stop selling PS2's the day the PS3 hits the shelves. And it's not like you can't still find used PS1's in good shape. I'm not dropping $300 (or $400) on a brand spanking new system just to play old games, that I could play on a still available $30 or $75 machine (or better yet, which I already own). Especially when I don't know if the games that actually use the new technology will be good or not. No, that would make me the stupid one, helping line Sony's pockets for no guaranteed ROI.
Maybe this doesn't matter to the "look shiny" crowd who doesn't play 100+ hour strategy games...
In the interest of clarification, I'm not in the "look shiny" crowd. I got my first PlayStation for free from a friend who was done with his. That was just 4 years ago. I recently picked up a used PSOne (for $30) at Gamestop because that old one broke. I bought my first (and only) PS2 just 1 year ago.
And the reason I even bought the systems at all was so that I could play through all the great SquareSoft RPGs, including the re-released NES and SNES games. Although these are arguably not usually 100+ hour games, it can approach that amount of time investment in order to "get everything" in the newer ones.
Anyway, I understand where you're coming from. My solution has always been to be satisfied with being a late adopter. Yeah, it means I don't get to play the exciting new stuff. But it also means I never have to buy a game wondering whether it will be worth the money or not.
They aren't "this stupid". "This stupid" would be to guarantee full backward compatility at every step, tying themselves indefinitely to ancient, obsolete hardware and software.
We should be thanking Sony for even bothering to support the PS1 at all. It's two generations back now. Heaven forbid you should have to start a game over. We're lucky we'll even be able to play them at all. I certainly was surprised.
I have games from the PS1 that I haven't finished...
PS1 machines aren't going to magically stop working once the PS3 comes out. Keep your PS1.
...and a lot of games on the PS2 in progress
PS2 machines aren't going to magically stop working once the PS3 comes out. Keep your PS2.
Sorry to sound snide. I just don't understand where you're coming from with this complaint. Are you really outraged, or just disappointed? Either way, I don't think it's fair, or correct, to call it a stupid move.
It's not the parents (yet?), it's the teachers. I have a few good friends who are going to college (here in the states) for teaching, and the ethics of self-esteem, validation, ego-protection, etc. underlies the entire curriculum. The ultimate priority of the teacher, as taught in these schools, is to make sure the kids don't feel bad about their progress or accomplishments (or lack thereof). Negative reinforcement in nearly all forms has been thrown out, treated now with the same air of disdain as "corporal punishment".
Fortunately this attitude hasn't seeped into parental society quite as deeply as some fear. If for no other reason than that parents are resistant to taking parenting tips from condescending teachers. Though the depth of penetration does appear to vary depending on location, economic stratum, etc. And I would be surprised if it did not continue to spread.
The only way that any parent has even close to a valid claim of blamelessness:
1) The store sold the game directly to a kid, with no adult present. Or, another adult stood in and provided the "adult supervision" the store required.
2) The parent regularly monitors the movies/games/music/etc. that the child consumes, and never once witnessed them playing this game. I.e., the kid hid it from the parent.
If one of those is not satisfied, then the parent must take some blame. They weren't involved enough. But if, and only if, both these conditions are satisfied, the parents did their due diligence. Then, and only then, it's the fault one of three people:
1) The store who sold the game to the minor.
2) The adult who supervised the purchase.
3) The kid who played the game.
Notice the game-maker is not in the list. Unless it's got child porn in it or something else just plain illegal, the game can be as tasteless as they want, and they have every legal right to make and sell it. Even if no one buys it because it's so horribly tasteless.
Yes, it's a net-importing country at the moment. But still a big, big exporter. You can't just remove such a gargantuan trading partner from the system and expect it to carry on without negative global consequences.
I had an insight while reading part three of this series of articles. I realized why it was that I enjoyed Final Fantasy X (FFX) so much, despite it being so different from the other Final Fantasy games.
While playing the game, I noticed differences, such as the fact that I never had to take a side-track from the story for the exclusive purpose of boosting stats. I cruised along at a relatively quick pace through the story. But I did notice the culmination of a trend in my reactions to RPGs over the years. Random encounters have become increasingly annoying to me, because they slow down progression of the story. If FFX had had many more random encounters than it did, or if I'd had to go on stat-boosting side-tracks from the story, I would probably not have finished the game. Furthermore, the game felt short. It wasn't particularly short, but it felt like it was. In a way this was nice, because I knew the missing time was just the annoying grinding. But it left me wishing there had been a bit "more", though more of what, I didn't know.
I ruminated on this for a while after finishing the game. I liked it a lot, but I knew it wasn't as good as it could have been. So I thought to myself, "What would have made this more enjoyable for me?" I decided that random encounters could probably be removed from the game. Monsters provide a nice story element, but let's face it-- In most every RPG every made, the use of monsters causes a trade-off between reliable plot-driver and a consistent world. If these worlds really had as many monsters as random battles would imply, then there'd be no way a regular person could survive in it.
With random encounters removed, a lot of what makes an RPG an RPG is gone. So I thought this idea was a failure. But what I didn't realize is that what we have left is much closer to "Adventure". With a few more modifications, we'd have a full-fledged Adventure game.
In short, I think that if the Adventure genre and the RPG genre took a look at each other they could learn a few good lessons from each other and join to become an improved amalgamation genre that would be even better than the originals. RPG, ease back on the stat-obsession, and cut the random encounters. Adventure, get used to 3D, develop more robust motion control, and don't shy away from multi- or many-use items and abilities.
Imagine how great it would be. A truly dynamic, interactive, maybe even open-ended, player-driven story. At the same time it could be audiovisually immersive (not just pretty), and avoid unrealistic grinding and stat-obsession that require constant "suspension of disbelief".
Slashdot Mirror
A random sampling:
Disclosure: My qualifications are 6 years of French classes, ending 5 years ago.
Moores Law doesn't apply to everything just computer speed
It doesn't even apply to that. It applies to transistor density. And, now more than ever, speed gains aren't directly proportional to transistor density increases.
So your point might even be stronger than you intended it to be.
It's just like saying "I'm an used car salesman, I sold junk all my life, but now I'm having trouble selling these brand new non-polluting high-power low-price machines I just got".
Not exactly like that. Because these games, like it or not, are not desirable to the "unwashed masses" that own a console for the sole purpose of playing the newest annual incarnations of EA's sports franchises. Okay, maybe not literally to that extent, but you know I'm speaking of the infamous "MTV demographic" that didn't become "hardcore" gamers until the last couple years. Alas, this is a huge amount of the market right now.
So, to make your analogy more accurate, you'd have to add that these great cars have mediocre horsepower, at best, and look like they were designed by the the same guys who came up with the Isetta. It may be the best car on the road in any number of respects, but people aren't going to even give it a test drive if it looks like a Fisher-Price toy.
The same goes for video games. This issue is by far not restricted to the video game market. Pick just about any commercial product industry and you will find that the vast majority of product sold is mediocre in quality, at best. While the "good stuff" is purchased by rich people and/or afficianados: the elite. For video games, we are that elite. And as such, it's tough to get the stuff we like. I personally don't think we will ever get our production values into the mainstream. Or if we do, we'll have moved on by that time anyway and our tastes will remain elite.
The point is not that everyone should be like George Lucas. The point is that if we take the focus off the superficial stuff, we could get some quality development done without the Lucas-style budgets budgets.
Yes, there's risk. But it needn't be as huge as the publishers want us to think. The problem is that they have strict (though misguided) standards for their output, which require a certain level of monetary input. Changing the output standards necessarily changes the necessary input resources.
Indeed that should be the case.
So this is just a beatup by Slashdot.
Not just Slashdot. Lots of people are up in arms about this because it appears most of the reporting has failed to mention the "prebate" program this relates to.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. ("We" being independently-minded tech-savvy consumers who like to be able to do what we want with our products, and are suspicious of the tactics of big corporations.) In our zeal to protect our freedoms and privacy, and in our paranoia that big corporations are intent on stealing them away, we appear to be jumping on every little thing that sticks out as potentially "worrisome", without examinging the situation critically and intelligently. In short, shame on us. We've done exactly what we so often berate others for doing: not researching the issue before coming to a decision.
No, but exchanging money for goods (called "consideration", in legal terms) is entering into a contract. The fact that the rebated price was clearly stated as only available under specific conditions simply means only that it is a bit more complicated than a normal merchandise sale. Not that it is illegal.
By your exact same logic, it could be argued that Lexmark has no legal obligation to actually provide a traditional rebate (i.e. send in receipt copy and proof of purchase) to a customer even if they fulfil the stated requirements.
It doesn't matter what you think, it's been true in Common Law for hundreds of years: purchasing something from a vendor is a contractual exchange of consideration. Terms may be added or subtracted to a typical purchase contract as long as they are explicit. And if it was clear to the customer that a rebate was available, you can bet it was clear what they had to do to get it, or else the rebate would be totally ineffective at selling units altogether.
Dangit!!!
I meant their! I really did!
You missed an "M".
People in glass houses... should... watch they're own spelling... or something...
;)
That was my first thought upon reading the post.
If I had mod points, you'd have a +1 Insightful from me!
The OP did:
now I can get that USB powered Stargate I've had my eye on.
Nice try. Good thing you posted AC.
=) Good joke.
But having a BS-CE, and having done a senior project involving USB back in school, I can't just let the inaccuracy of that statement slide...
<pedantry>
The power capacity or amperage of the power supply will have no effect on an individual port-powered USB device. The USB standard divides devices into two power classes: low-power (less than 0.25A) and high-power (between 0.25A and 0.5A). And IIRC, one powered USB port can only source a maximum of 1A to all devices connected through that port at any given time. If you need more, you've got to use a self-powered hub.
</pedantry>
Phew. I almost posted that myself, but I didn't want to be redundant so I'm glad I saw your post.
IMHO, one of the great tragedies of the popularization of the concepts of Einstein's Relativity is the loss of that equation. The ignorance of the origin of E=mc^2 from the equation you posted is what causes thousands of armchair theoreticians around the world to come up with the ideas such as photons having rest mass, and to post their misguided theories on science forums, and to get angry when people correct them.
I'm not certain we in the U.S. have much right to complain about human overpopulation and overcrowding. Considering we have one of the largest (landwise) nations in the world, and the average population density of the nation is so ridiculously low compared to nations in Europe or in western, southern, and eastern Asia.
Though taking into account our current fertility rate and the rate of immigration, we should probably start thinking about the issue in a preventative sense.
(Check it out: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0303/people earth94_usda_big.gif)
Those are both examples of animals people traditionally eat.
How many people in the U.S. actually eat hunted deer or rabbit on a regular basis? Game should be a much bigger part of our diet, IMHO. It could reduce the agricultural stress of cattle farming in the midwest and California, in addition to helping control the population of the game concerned. With close monitors on game populations, the state DNRs could make rules that nudge hunters toward the types of game that are overpopulated in a given year, or away from hunting if the herds are thinning.
Finally, while I agree to a point with the idea of humans being part of nature and letting nature take its course, there is reason to worry about the end of such laissez-faire attitudes. The process of evolution is related in a way to chaos theory and thermodynamics. Given a closed system, which the earth pretty much is, and which the ecologies on separate continents can approximate, the system will tend to settle into a "stable" state over time. Humans, however, have the ability to change ourselves and our environment faster than it can settle. We are spurring along global entropy faster than it would otherwise happen. So if we continue the way we do, we're soon going to end up with the most stable configuration of all: a dead, lifeless planet. But I'm afraid that efforts to change the environment back to what we think "it should be", without first reducing our own effects, will only introduce more disorder, more entropy, and worsen things. It's like overdampening shock absorbers. A little dampening eases the ride, right? But a lot of dampening is no better than having none at all.
The best thing to do, as the parent noted, is to use our intelligence and ability to reduce our effect on the environment as much as possible, and let the world recover a stable state that includes us, rather than just going on as we always have, making the mess and cleaning it up after the fact, and then trying to force the environment back to the way it used to be. By doing so, we're causing damage, and then counteracting the evolutionary nature of the environment to attempt to cope with what we're doing. When I talk about letting things be, I'm not saying we shouldn't clean up pollution we've already made. But I am saying we shouldn't be messing with the animals and where they live. Haven't we humans had enough bad experiences with species transplantation? We've illustrated time after time after time that we simply cannot predict the end effect of doing this. The world's ecology is simply too complex to think we can experiment with this stuff. We know from past experience what has bad effects, so let's first concentrate on avoiding that in the future. So far, we can't even do that much right! What makes us think we know how to actively improve what nature has already done???
We first need to quit damaging, and then stand back and let the ecology adjust by itself. Losing species is always saddening to those who appreciate nature's beauty. And I don't think it's harmful to perpetuate them in zoos if they can't survive in the wild. But nature will continue to be beautiful in new ways if we can just lessen our effects, and step out of the way to let it do its thing. Right now, we are outside "the cycle" because we have a huge aff
with an increase in average temperatures of some 3C in the last 40 years
;)
Funny, I wasn't aware temperature was measured in Coulombs.
Here's another question, just out of curiosity:
How many kids' loving biological or foster parents provide them with a car for their 16th birthday and support them through college?
I had no car until I was 19. In fact, I had no license at all until I was 18 because my parents couldn't afford to pay for driver's ed. If I needed to go somewhere, I took my bike or a bus. And when I got my first job, my parents began to transition fiscal responsibility for me, to me. By the time I entered college, I bought my own clothes, my own food, etc. The only support I had from my parents was shelter and health insurance. I even paid the deductible for my wisdom teeth to be removed at the age of 21, still in college. And, above all, my parents never contributed a single red cent to my college tuition. What I didn't get via loans, scholarships, and grants, I paid out of my own pocket... At a school where tuition was $22,000 per year. And despite all of this "adversity", as some might call it, I graduated with honors.
Anyway, I'm probably an unusual case, but that's the point. I think most people over-estimate the monetary investment it takes to raise a child into a responsible, functional adult. To achieve (but not guarantee) the same result, money can take up the slack in the case of parents who have no business being parents, to allow the kids to "get by". But if you are a responsible and caring parent, the money isn't strictly necessary.
But, I'll give you that most people in the scenario under debate aren't the children of responsible and/or caring parents, and so they don't know how to be that themselves.
I bet it's not. A lot of people toss out or sell their old games/systems when they get old.
Yes, it might entice you, or I, to do so. But what about everyone else? It's just as arrogant to think that Sony owes it to you to meet your obscure demands as it is for a company to put out a product without doing market research. Don't like it? Don't buy it. But in this particular case, I doubt it will be any skin off Sony's nose if vintage game geeks like you and I don't buy, or buy late. And therefore, it's not stupid of them.
I'd like to find out what percentage of the people who own PS2's actually use its PS1 compatibility. I can guarantee that the guys who are running out annually to buy the latest version of EA's sports games don't care, by and large. They and those like them are the big boon of the games industry right now.
As for me? I'm not buying the system until I know there are good PS3 games out for it already. Why should backwards compatibility change that? It's not like they're going to stop selling PS2's the day the PS3 hits the shelves. And it's not like you can't still find used PS1's in good shape. I'm not dropping $300 (or $400) on a brand spanking new system just to play old games, that I could play on a still available $30 or $75 machine (or better yet, which I already own). Especially when I don't know if the games that actually use the new technology will be good or not. No, that would make me the stupid one, helping line Sony's pockets for no guaranteed ROI.
In the interest of clarification, I'm not in the "look shiny" crowd. I got my first PlayStation for free from a friend who was done with his. That was just 4 years ago. I recently picked up a used PSOne (for $30) at Gamestop because that old one broke. I bought my first (and only) PS2 just 1 year ago.
And the reason I even bought the systems at all was so that I could play through all the great SquareSoft RPGs, including the re-released NES and SNES games. Although these are arguably not usually 100+ hour games, it can approach that amount of time investment in order to "get everything" in the newer ones.
Anyway, I understand where you're coming from. My solution has always been to be satisfied with being a late adopter. Yeah, it means I don't get to play the exciting new stuff. But it also means I never have to buy a game wondering whether it will be worth the money or not.
They aren't "this stupid". "This stupid" would be to guarantee full backward compatility at every step, tying themselves indefinitely to ancient, obsolete hardware and software.
We should be thanking Sony for even bothering to support the PS1 at all. It's two generations back now. Heaven forbid you should have to start a game over. We're lucky we'll even be able to play them at all. I certainly was surprised.
I have games from the PS1 that I haven't finished...
PS1 machines aren't going to magically stop working once the PS3 comes out. Keep your PS1.
PS2 machines aren't going to magically stop working once the PS3 comes out. Keep your PS2.
Sorry to sound snide. I just don't understand where you're coming from with this complaint. Are you really outraged, or just disappointed? Either way, I don't think it's fair, or correct, to call it a stupid move.
It's not the parents (yet?), it's the teachers. I have a few good friends who are going to college (here in the states) for teaching, and the ethics of self-esteem, validation, ego-protection, etc. underlies the entire curriculum. The ultimate priority of the teacher, as taught in these schools, is to make sure the kids don't feel bad about their progress or accomplishments (or lack thereof). Negative reinforcement in nearly all forms has been thrown out, treated now with the same air of disdain as "corporal punishment".
Fortunately this attitude hasn't seeped into parental society quite as deeply as some fear. If for no other reason than that parents are resistant to taking parenting tips from condescending teachers. Though the depth of penetration does appear to vary depending on location, economic stratum, etc. And I would be surprised if it did not continue to spread.
The only way that any parent has even close to a valid claim of blamelessness:
1) The store sold the game directly to a kid, with no adult present. Or, another adult stood in and provided the "adult supervision" the store required.
2) The parent regularly monitors the movies/games/music/etc. that the child consumes, and never once witnessed them playing this game. I.e., the kid hid it from the parent.
If one of those is not satisfied, then the parent must take some blame. They weren't involved enough. But if, and only if, both these conditions are satisfied, the parents did their due diligence. Then, and only then, it's the fault one of three people:
1) The store who sold the game to the minor.
2) The adult who supervised the purchase.
3) The kid who played the game.
Notice the game-maker is not in the list. Unless it's got child porn in it or something else just plain illegal, the game can be as tasteless as they want, and they have every legal right to make and sell it. Even if no one buys it because it's so horribly tasteless.
Yes, it's a net-importing country at the moment. But still a big, big exporter. You can't just remove such a gargantuan trading partner from the system and expect it to carry on without negative global consequences.
Of course you mean, "Huge... tracts of land!"
While playing the game, I noticed differences, such as the fact that I never had to take a side-track from the story for the exclusive purpose of boosting stats. I cruised along at a relatively quick pace through the story. But I did notice the culmination of a trend in my reactions to RPGs over the years. Random encounters have become increasingly annoying to me, because they slow down progression of the story. If FFX had had many more random encounters than it did, or if I'd had to go on stat-boosting side-tracks from the story, I would probably not have finished the game. Furthermore, the game felt short. It wasn't particularly short, but it felt like it was. In a way this was nice, because I knew the missing time was just the annoying grinding. But it left me wishing there had been a bit "more", though more of what, I didn't know.
I ruminated on this for a while after finishing the game. I liked it a lot, but I knew it wasn't as good as it could have been. So I thought to myself, "What would have made this more enjoyable for me?" I decided that random encounters could probably be removed from the game. Monsters provide a nice story element, but let's face it-- In most every RPG every made, the use of monsters causes a trade-off between reliable plot-driver and a consistent world. If these worlds really had as many monsters as random battles would imply, then there'd be no way a regular person could survive in it.
With random encounters removed, a lot of what makes an RPG an RPG is gone. So I thought this idea was a failure. But what I didn't realize is that what we have left is much closer to "Adventure". With a few more modifications, we'd have a full-fledged Adventure game.
In short, I think that if the Adventure genre and the RPG genre took a look at each other they could learn a few good lessons from each other and join to become an improved amalgamation genre that would be even better than the originals. RPG, ease back on the stat-obsession, and cut the random encounters. Adventure, get used to 3D, develop more robust motion control, and don't shy away from multi- or many-use items and abilities.
Imagine how great it would be. A truly dynamic, interactive, maybe even open-ended, player-driven story. At the same time it could be audiovisually immersive (not just pretty), and avoid unrealistic grinding and stat-obsession that require constant "suspension of disbelief".
Would that be a bad thing? ;)