Simple gameplay requirements wrapped around plot used as quests to further a "story"? D2 Check, WoW Check
No actual change to world within persistence of software? D2 Check, WoW Check
Carrot and Stick Item Collection with non-guaranteed psychology reward system? D2 Check, WoW Check
"Lots of options" that enable you kill everything in the game in the same end result (0 hp)? D2 Check, WoW Check
Repeating content for lack of anything better to do? D2 Check, WoW Check
Increased difficulty of game in "epic" areas accomplished by giving the bad guys more hit points and making them do more damage (or letting them just kill players outright)? D2 Check, WoW Check
Expansion packs claiming new awesome features that don't actually add new awesome features and really is just a rehashing of the same game with different graphics? D2 Check, WoW Check
And the last, but you get the point...
No way for the players to ACTUALLY influence the progress and development of the world? D2 Check, WoW Check
I was whistling in the dark for a while but seeing a TMBG reference on/. makes me want to flood Istanbul's (not Constantinople) women and men with sapphire bullets of pure love and then go see Road Movie to Berlin.
Which is why it would be great to setup a market regulation that says infrastructure providers aren't allowed to be service providers on the former infrastructure.
You want to control the wires and towers? Fine. You want to control the bits and bytes? Fine. Pick one. You don't get to do both.
As soon as you give the lock and key away, you have nothing. By letting these companies control both the infrastructure and the service, we've actually lost two huge pools of competition. No one's competing for a cheaper infrastructure because the costs to get in are prohibitive. As well, no one's competing for service because your options are stay with the crap you have or take the crap from someone else. Last time I checked, red dog food and blue dog food is still dog food.
Can it be legal to separate services from infrastructure? Can we put forth legislation for this? What can we ('mericans) start doing to take back our country? I'd rather not have to go back to firearm diplomacy.
You're pretty much right about a lot of those points. Except for the fact that you forgot about the biggest copy protection mechanism on Consoles. The console itself. Maybe its a dongle that accepts software. Maybe its a large pretty dongle that looks good by your TV. Maybe its even a dongle that does things other than execute software that was written for it. But in the end, the console itself IS a copy protection mechanism.
So you've had to worry about your DVD drive, at least you can change it yourself without voiding a warranty. Is PC gaming becoming a hassle? No, its really just about as much hassle as its been. Depending on the product you buy, its actually probably less than a hassle. Auto-configuring settings based on specs has replaced the horrors of EMM386 and SET BLASTER. Casual games are just as easy as browsing to a website.
On a PC, when something hardware related goes wrong, you have to dig a bit deeper to get the answers you need from the game's support team. With a console, when you have a hardware problem, you ship it back to the manufacturer hoping its under warranty. I'm not saying one or the other is better, but its still a trade-off and I don't think its anywhere near as cut and dry as you think.
Also, about razor thin margins... Its caused by the same problem as the whole copy protection issue. Its not the developers. Its the publishers. Go look at any relatively small indie studio and their anti-piracy measures. More than likely its a key that's emailed to you after you buy the game. Just like the whole music debacle, rarely are you hearing the artists crying out over piracy. Its the same thing for the video game industry but instead of artists and labels you have development studios and publishers.
As someone looking into the industry I have a couple ideas on "fixing the problem." Unfortunately, it doesn't fit with the big publisher/investor model. If you want to look at why some companies have razor thin margins, look into the whole "shotgun" approach to financing a video game project.
Actually, I'm not. They don't want to hit me with that checkbox because I do pay attention to what comes up on my screen. So instead of getting an extra incidental hit for whatever they're pushing, they now have an annoyed customer. The people they're targeting with this is the people who won't notice that they're installing extra software.
So far Apple, Sun, and Daemon-Tools have all edged me away from their products because of this choice. Though I suppose you really can't be concerned with the dolphins getting caught in the net when the profit from the mindless tuna is just so high.
Recently, the Java update software has begun asking for the Open Office installer to be installed on the system during an update for Java. Several users at my company have clicked straight through and added more crap to their desktop/registry/uninstall information.
Can we blame the users for not reading every detail and not unchecking a checkbox? Yes. Can we also blame software vendors who are relying on the aforementioned user behavior to add their software to your computer on the sly? Yes.
Its a bad practice and it needs to stop.
If something is required for the operation of a software package, default to selected. If something is optional or not required for the operation of a software package, default to unselected.
Why are we allowing marketing to override good engineering?
Ok, then by that same broad stick. We should ban books of the same caliber. I've read just as many terribly written and knock off books as I've played video games. At least the video games have the advantage of differing game styles and input methods.
Honestly, given the state of both of those franchises I'd pay a couple bucks to see those ingenious furry bastards tackle an army of self-aware killer robots.
So long as there is the exclusion of Yub-nub. There is no love for Yub-nub.
You still haven't answered the question the person was asking.
He didn't ask why he shouldn't vote for Obama. He asked why he should vote for McCain. Those are two different questions regardless of what the "we only have 2 parties" camp says. I for one, as an Obama supporter, would love to hear some concrete arguments for McCain as well as I don't actually know any. My time has been spent reading up on Obama since in the primaries I got to choose between him and Clinton.
I apologize for not explicitly defining every single absolute. Obviously I, and the submitter of the article, were not perfectly clear in such statements. I will attempt to fix this issue immediately.
The article, the first link in the submission, which ultimately leads down to http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/13597 is a tech piece from May 2004 describing a hardware device for deploying sound along a narrow beam and being able to control and direct it. This first article describes the technology behind the device that is listed in the second link of the submission which leads to http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/05/loudhailer-or-weapon.html, a product review as of May 2008.
Here is where the disconnection has occurred and again I apologize. Both articles are speaking of the same thing. The first article relates to the technology in a general scope that the product in the second article is based off of. While the May 2004 article doesn't explicitly discuss that the technology can be used to modify behavior, it is indeed the same technology being used for the LRAD product being sold currently.
For future correspondence, instead of using so many words for personal attacks, assumptions, and generally unintelligent conversation you should concentrate on looking at the sources displayed. I understand that today's Slashdot may be suffering from some quality control issues but that is a far cry from being able to pen every reader into the same field. I hope I've been able to clear up this inconsistency for you.
I would like to know what to classify you as. First, you immediately begin ranting that the article is entirely false and claim that no one has read the article. Second, you're making claims that words don't exist in an article that do actually exist. Go read the article you just linked and use your browser's search function on the word 'weapon'. I count 7 not including tags and comments. So, what are you? A shill? A troll? Angry at something? Politically motivated? I can't really understand what I'm replying to but I felt it must be done.
Why don't you go to ATC's website and check out the specs? 100+ dB @ 300 meters, which by common standards will cause lasting hearing damage after only 15 minutes. If you go to one of the reSELLers of ATC's products you'll see that there are at least 2 LRAD products that specifically list that they can be used for "behavior modification" in addition to their communications benefits. Both the 500 and the 1000 series product list a sustained power output of 146dB, which equates to hearing damage in seconds.
So I'm really not sure where the confusion about this "device" is coming about. This was designed for "behavior modification" directly. It has offensive capabilities. Its a weapon and an American company is selling it to China. How much Koolaid have you been drinking? This is a Bad Thing(tm).
At the Game Developer's Conference 2008 there was an inter species game design and Steve Meretzky's game idea helps further our bacterial/human relations.
Make their own game and have it become wildly popular so the publishers can copy it.
I wish I was joking but the golden age of risk takers is dead.
Look at Portal. You think EA would've green-lighted that project? "No, sorry, too small in scope. We're going to dump money on an FPS with bigger explosions because that's what's been selling."
They're not entirely wrong though. How many people soapbox about something, but when finally given that choice will actually go through with it?
Back in the day I remember a couple fighting games put out for the computer. (This was on my 286 mind you) I guess they didn't sell well enough for the publishers to risk doing it again now.
That and you have your licensing and exclusivity lock-ins with the individual products. Did they ever put Tekken on the XBox? Has DoA gone to the PS yet?
Because that's what the publisher said to release on.
Why does Apple not release an uncocked-up version of OSX that can be run on beige boxes? Its certainly not a technical limitation.
Shipping a game for Windows isn't any different than shipping it for the consoles. Its another platform. They probably made the call that testing and shipping a fighting game for a PC wouldn't have an acceptable ROI.
I would've loved for some console games to be released for PC as I didn't own a console after the SNES and before the Wii.
Sometimes businesses make choices that aren't apparently logical.
And that argument works fine for certain specific titles on Consoles but certainly not all of them.
There are a handful of games (and more to follow) that don't have a side-by-side multi-player option. So if you want to play with multiple people at the same time, you need 4 Consoles. And, if you want to play with someone remotely (an intrinsic effect of playing games online) you still need to buy the hardware anyway.
PCs are more single user centric because they network together really well. I have played side-by-side games on a computer before however. Its an issue of software design, not hardware limitation.
Heck, even "complex interface" games can at least hotseat multiple people on a session (see Civilization 4) but that doesn't work for every game.
Serious Sam (2 as well possibly) had a 4 player split screen mode for the PC.
Yes, these are exceptions and not the rules but its a far cry from having to say that you need to multiply your costs by 4 just to play something multiplayer.
"They then encode a message in the polarization state by applying birefringent phase shifts with a pair of liquid crystals."
Just say you reversed the polarity! We've been waiting to hear it for decades now. Just come out and say it already! Enough of the cock teasing. This is science damn it, I want my compensator. I want to flux my capacitors!
This is the exact concept I've been trying to instill on my cohorts. Design the engine and its power source separate. With an electric motor we have this choice. Make the power source modular so that you can hook in your batteries for around town or throw in the ICE for longer drives.
Making a prototype of this engine would be trivial compared to "engineering an entire car"
Why are we still thinking that everything HAS to be done as one single lump? Start with a beat up frame, an extension cord, and your parking lot.
If you know anything about electric motors then we should make this happen. I can only assume that a majority of the other people on Slashdot are just as sick of our current auto tech as we are. Why does it seem like we're waiting for someone to tell us that we can do this?
Alright. I read your statement. I agree entirely with you. How do we get un-screwed? What's our plan? We're all smart people right? I mean, we can at least put sentences together and add punctuation to our sentences. That gives us a leg up against pretty much everyone else around here.
How do we change this? I'm a kowtowing pussy. I rely on a monopoly to do my job. Dial-up is the only choice I have if not for Comcast. I can't just "stick it to the man" and "vote with my wallet." I'm already screwed. I'm sure there's a lot of other people out there in the same situation as me.
So where do we go from here? You're angry. I'm not pleased. It looks like we're on the losing side of the war. What can we do? What can anyone do? How do we grassroot a new broadband movement? Can we replace the infrastructure? What does it cost to get access into a backbone? Can we spider wireless through neighborhoods? Can we sue the telecoms/cable providers?
I agree that we've got problems but the time for just saying that is over. We need answers now. This is a bandwagon I'm all about jumping on but I can't find anything to jump onto right now.
Well, scratch SimCity Societies off your list. I've been a long standing addict of the series and this is the deal breaker.
Why I'd recommend the game: 1. It has the name SimCity. 2. It looks like a city simulator.
Why I (can't recommend/would recommend avoiding) the game: 1. Created by Tilted Mill. Throw yourself against Children of the Nile for a couple hours before you even consider SimCity. 2. Terrible website. The "About the game" is scant and rather meaningless. There are a couple screenshots that show nothing and some relatively unhelpful video clips. 3. I can't even ask the question "What's the game like?" because in order to get posting "rights" on their forum, you have to register an account and activate it using a game code from the purchased game.
Sorry guys. You dropped the ball on this one. Congratulations EA-suits, you've killed another franchise.
Firaxis, where are you now in this our darkest hour? City Simulation can be saved, hear my cry, be our light!
Not really. Anyone who has taken even a year of some form of martial arts training, even one of the cookie cutter schools that may let you just pay money for a black belt will probably be in a relatively ok state of mind to recognize a lethal threat and remain in a capacity to deal with that threat.
And then you have people who are just big, strong, and angry. You'd better be damn sure that box cutter incapacitates the raging Bubba on the first swipe because I'm sure there's a lot of people just looking for an excuse to blow off some steam these days.
And to your point, I don't mind involuntary and messy if it saves my plane from being flown into a building. If I'm the hostage? I'll do what I can to protect myself but I sure as hell expect random angry passengers to get up from their seats and dismantle the hostile in as violent a way as they see fit and functional to perform. Will I die? Maybe. But what's my life compared to the multitudes of people in a plane?
Seriously though, you're right. This is the real world and all the flights that I go on these days (SouthWestern), there's really no room to perform a hijacking. The elbow space is terrible.
The Cinteq http://www.wacom.com/ has all that you're asking for (though not cheap) in a large format size, the 21UX. It is fully supported by OSX and from having worked with Wacom in the past on Windows/Photoshop/Painter, their sensitivity support is good enough for my illustration graduate girlfriend. I guess that means its more than functional.
As an American, I am outraged by this news. I have sent a letter to my representative recommending a course of action. Anyone wishing to use this as a template for their own letters, by all means, please copy it. If you need to find out who your Congressman/woman is, use this site. http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Dear Representative,
It has recently come to my attention that FEMA has directly deceived the American public with a false news conference designed solely to "make themselves look better." They have acknowledged this and in light of being caught have chosen to simply say sorry. This is not enough. Their organization, as a government body, has a duty to uphold the truth and not deceive its citizens. An apology is not sufficient recourse for this action. Those directly responsible for this inexcusable action and those responsible for letting this happen need to be removed from their posts because they are no longer fit to serve the good of the American people.
Please do all you can to make my voice, and the voice of all other Americans that desire a government free of corruption and misdirection, heard and acted upon.
Respectfully,
We need to start taking action, we need to start making mountains of molehills. This is OUR country. We can't let it slip away any more.
PS. Not posted anonymously, because I'm not afraid to be an American.
I guess I shouldn't say penalty either. Penalties stifle creativity and lower the joy-joy feelings don't they. I'm sorry. The next time I see someone acting in a sub-human fashion, with little regard to his fellow man, I will be sure to hug him and tell him that I think he can achieve anything that he wants.
Over-reaching optimism can only help! Why suffer the pains of reality?
Slashdot Mirror
Simple gameplay requirements wrapped around plot used as quests to further a "story"?
D2 Check, WoW Check
No actual change to world within persistence of software?
D2 Check, WoW Check
Carrot and Stick Item Collection with non-guaranteed psychology reward system?
D2 Check, WoW Check
"Lots of options" that enable you kill everything in the game in the same end result (0 hp)?
D2 Check, WoW Check
Repeating content for lack of anything better to do?
D2 Check, WoW Check
Increased difficulty of game in "epic" areas accomplished by giving the bad guys more hit points and making them do more damage (or letting them just kill players outright)?
D2 Check, WoW Check
Expansion packs claiming new awesome features that don't actually add new awesome features and really is just a rehashing of the same game with different graphics?
D2 Check, WoW Check
And the last, but you get the point...
No way for the players to ACTUALLY influence the progress and development of the world?
D2 Check, WoW Check
I was whistling in the dark for a while but seeing a TMBG reference on /. makes me want to flood Istanbul's (not Constantinople) women and men with sapphire bullets of pure love and then go see Road Movie to Berlin.
Which is why it would be great to setup a market regulation that says infrastructure providers aren't allowed to be service providers on the former infrastructure.
You want to control the wires and towers? Fine. You want to control the bits and bytes? Fine. Pick one. You don't get to do both.
As soon as you give the lock and key away, you have nothing. By letting these companies control both the infrastructure and the service, we've actually lost two huge pools of competition. No one's competing for a cheaper infrastructure because the costs to get in are prohibitive. As well, no one's competing for service because your options are stay with the crap you have or take the crap from someone else. Last time I checked, red dog food and blue dog food is still dog food.
Can it be legal to separate services from infrastructure? Can we put forth legislation for this? What can we ('mericans) start doing to take back our country? I'd rather not have to go back to firearm diplomacy.
You're pretty much right about a lot of those points. Except for the fact that you forgot about the biggest copy protection mechanism on Consoles. The console itself. Maybe its a dongle that accepts software. Maybe its a large pretty dongle that looks good by your TV. Maybe its even a dongle that does things other than execute software that was written for it. But in the end, the console itself IS a copy protection mechanism.
So you've had to worry about your DVD drive, at least you can change it yourself without voiding a warranty. Is PC gaming becoming a hassle? No, its really just about as much hassle as its been. Depending on the product you buy, its actually probably less than a hassle. Auto-configuring settings based on specs has replaced the horrors of EMM386 and SET BLASTER. Casual games are just as easy as browsing to a website.
On a PC, when something hardware related goes wrong, you have to dig a bit deeper to get the answers you need from the game's support team. With a console, when you have a hardware problem, you ship it back to the manufacturer hoping its under warranty.
I'm not saying one or the other is better, but its still a trade-off and I don't think its anywhere near as cut and dry as you think.
Also, about razor thin margins... Its caused by the same problem as the whole copy protection issue. Its not the developers. Its the publishers. Go look at any relatively small indie studio and their anti-piracy measures. More than likely its a key that's emailed to you after you buy the game. Just like the whole music debacle, rarely are you hearing the artists crying out over piracy. Its the same thing for the video game industry but instead of artists and labels you have development studios and publishers.
As someone looking into the industry I have a couple ideas on "fixing the problem." Unfortunately, it doesn't fit with the big publisher/investor model. If you want to look at why some companies have razor thin margins, look into the whole "shotgun" approach to financing a video game project.
Well, at least I got a breeze. What exactly was the point of your comment then? Obviously I missed something.
Actually, I'm not. They don't want to hit me with that checkbox because I do pay attention to what comes up on my screen. So instead of getting an extra incidental hit for whatever they're pushing, they now have an annoyed customer. The people they're targeting with this is the people who won't notice that they're installing extra software.
So far Apple, Sun, and Daemon-Tools have all edged me away from their products because of this choice. Though I suppose you really can't be concerned with the dolphins getting caught in the net when the profit from the mindless tuna is just so high.
Yes.
Recently, the Java update software has begun asking for the Open Office installer to be installed on the system during an update for Java. Several users at my company have clicked straight through and added more crap to their desktop/registry/uninstall information.
Can we blame the users for not reading every detail and not unchecking a checkbox? Yes.
Can we also blame software vendors who are relying on the aforementioned user behavior to add their software to your computer on the sly? Yes.
Its a bad practice and it needs to stop.
If something is required for the operation of a software package, default to selected.
If something is optional or not required for the operation of a software package, default to unselected.
Why are we allowing marketing to override good engineering?
Ok, then by that same broad stick. We should ban books of the same caliber. I've read just as many terribly written and knock off books as I've played video games. At least the video games have the advantage of differing game styles and input methods.
Honestly, given the state of both of those franchises I'd pay a couple bucks to see those ingenious furry bastards tackle an army of self-aware killer robots.
So long as there is the exclusion of Yub-nub. There is no love for Yub-nub.
You still haven't answered the question the person was asking.
He didn't ask why he shouldn't vote for Obama. He asked why he should vote for McCain. Those are two different questions regardless of what the "we only have 2 parties" camp says. I for one, as an Obama supporter, would love to hear some concrete arguments for McCain as well as I don't actually know any. My time has been spent reading up on Obama since in the primaries I got to choose between him and Clinton.
Anyone?
I apologize for not explicitly defining every single absolute. Obviously I, and the submitter of the article, were not perfectly clear in such statements. I will attempt to fix this issue immediately.
The article, the first link in the submission, which ultimately leads down to http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/13597 is a tech piece from May 2004 describing a hardware device for deploying sound along a narrow beam and being able to control and direct it. This first article describes the technology behind the device that is listed in the second link of the submission which leads to http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/05/loudhailer-or-weapon.html, a product review as of May 2008.
Here is where the disconnection has occurred and again I apologize. Both articles are speaking of the same thing. The first article relates to the technology in a general scope that the product in the second article is based off of. While the May 2004 article doesn't explicitly discuss that the technology can be used to modify behavior, it is indeed the same technology being used for the LRAD product being sold currently.
For future correspondence, instead of using so many words for personal attacks, assumptions, and generally unintelligent conversation you should concentrate on looking at the sources displayed. I understand that today's Slashdot may be suffering from some quality control issues but that is a far cry from being able to pen every reader into the same field. I hope I've been able to clear up this inconsistency for you.
I would like to know what to classify you as. First, you immediately begin ranting that the article is entirely false and claim that no one has read the article. Second, you're making claims that words don't exist in an article that do actually exist. Go read the article you just linked and use your browser's search function on the word 'weapon'. I count 7 not including tags and comments. So, what are you? A shill? A troll? Angry at something? Politically motivated? I can't really understand what I'm replying to but I felt it must be done.
Why don't you go to ATC's website and check out the specs? 100+ dB @ 300 meters, which by common standards will cause lasting hearing damage after only 15 minutes. If you go to one of the reSELLers of ATC's products you'll see that there are at least 2 LRAD products that specifically list that they can be used for "behavior modification" in addition to their communications benefits. Both the 500 and the 1000 series product list a sustained power output of 146dB, which equates to hearing damage in seconds.
So I'm really not sure where the confusion about this "device" is coming about. This was designed for "behavior modification" directly. It has offensive capabilities. Its a weapon and an American company is selling it to China. How much Koolaid have you been drinking? This is a Bad Thing(tm).
At the Game Developer's Conference 2008 there was an inter species game design and Steve Meretzky's game idea helps further our bacterial/human relations.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17562
I for one will be pre-ordering a TrayStation to do my part in natural selection.
Make their own game and have it become wildly popular so the publishers can copy it.
I wish I was joking but the golden age of risk takers is dead.
Look at Portal. You think EA would've green-lighted that project? "No, sorry, too small in scope. We're going to dump money on an FPS with bigger explosions because that's what's been selling."
They're not entirely wrong though. How many people soapbox about something, but when finally given that choice will actually go through with it?
Back in the day I remember a couple fighting games put out for the computer. (This was on my 286 mind you) I guess they didn't sell well enough for the publishers to risk doing it again now.
That and you have your licensing and exclusivity lock-ins with the individual products. Did they ever put Tekken on the XBox? Has DoA gone to the PS yet?
Because that's what the publisher said to release on.
Why does Apple not release an uncocked-up version of OSX that can be run on beige boxes? Its certainly not a technical limitation.
Shipping a game for Windows isn't any different than shipping it for the consoles. Its another platform. They probably made the call that testing and shipping a fighting game for a PC wouldn't have an acceptable ROI.
I would've loved for some console games to be released for PC as I didn't own a console after the SNES and before the Wii.
Sometimes businesses make choices that aren't apparently logical.
And that argument works fine for certain specific titles on Consoles but certainly not all of them.
There are a handful of games (and more to follow) that don't have a side-by-side multi-player option. So if you want to play with multiple people at the same time, you need 4 Consoles. And, if you want to play with someone remotely (an intrinsic effect of playing games online) you still need to buy the hardware anyway.
PCs are more single user centric because they network together really well. I have played side-by-side games on a computer before however. Its an issue of software design, not hardware limitation.
Heck, even "complex interface" games can at least hotseat multiple people on a session (see Civilization 4) but that doesn't work for every game.
Serious Sam (2 as well possibly) had a 4 player split screen mode for the PC.
Yes, these are exceptions and not the rules but its a far cry from having to say that you need to multiply your costs by 4 just to play something multiplayer.
"They then encode a message in the polarization state by applying birefringent phase shifts with a pair of liquid crystals." Just say you reversed the polarity! We've been waiting to hear it for decades now. Just come out and say it already! Enough of the cock teasing. This is science damn it, I want my compensator. I want to flux my capacitors!
This is the exact concept I've been trying to instill on my cohorts. Design the engine and its power source separate. With an electric motor we have this choice. Make the power source modular so that you can hook in your batteries for around town or throw in the ICE for longer drives.
Making a prototype of this engine would be trivial compared to "engineering an entire car"
Why are we still thinking that everything HAS to be done as one single lump? Start with a beat up frame, an extension cord, and your parking lot.
If you know anything about electric motors then we should make this happen. I can only assume that a majority of the other people on Slashdot are just as sick of our current auto tech as we are. Why does it seem like we're waiting for someone to tell us that we can do this?
Ok, can we come up with some kind of deployable warning sign for when mixed analogies become physically painful?
I think part of my brain squirted out of my ear and I kinda need that right now.
"If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."
--The Most "Get Off My Lawn" Being Ever, Lewis Black
Alright. I read your statement. I agree entirely with you. How do we get un-screwed? What's our plan? We're all smart people right? I mean, we can at least put sentences together and add punctuation to our sentences. That gives us a leg up against pretty much everyone else around here.
How do we change this? I'm a kowtowing pussy. I rely on a monopoly to do my job. Dial-up is the only choice I have if not for Comcast. I can't just "stick it to the man" and "vote with my wallet." I'm already screwed. I'm sure there's a lot of other people out there in the same situation as me.
So where do we go from here? You're angry. I'm not pleased. It looks like we're on the losing side of the war. What can we do? What can anyone do? How do we grassroot a new broadband movement? Can we replace the infrastructure? What does it cost to get access into a backbone? Can we spider wireless through neighborhoods? Can we sue the telecoms/cable providers?
I agree that we've got problems but the time for just saying that is over. We need answers now. This is a bandwagon I'm all about jumping on but I can't find anything to jump onto right now.
Well, scratch SimCity Societies off your list. I've been a long standing addict of the series and this is the deal breaker.
Why I'd recommend the game:
1. It has the name SimCity.
2. It looks like a city simulator.
Why I (can't recommend/would recommend avoiding) the game:
1. Created by Tilted Mill. Throw yourself against Children of the Nile for a couple hours before you even consider SimCity.
2. Terrible website. The "About the game" is scant and rather meaningless. There are a couple screenshots that show nothing and some relatively unhelpful video clips.
3. I can't even ask the question "What's the game like?" because in order to get posting "rights" on their forum, you have to register an account and activate it using a game code from the purchased game.
Sorry guys. You dropped the ball on this one. Congratulations EA-suits, you've killed another franchise.
Firaxis, where are you now in this our darkest hour? City Simulation can be saved, hear my cry, be our light!
Not really. Anyone who has taken even a year of some form of martial arts training, even one of the cookie cutter schools that may let you just pay money for a black belt will probably be in a relatively ok state of mind to recognize a lethal threat and remain in a capacity to deal with that threat.
And then you have people who are just big, strong, and angry. You'd better be damn sure that box cutter incapacitates the raging Bubba on the first swipe because I'm sure there's a lot of people just looking for an excuse to blow off some steam these days.
And to your point, I don't mind involuntary and messy if it saves my plane from being flown into a building. If I'm the hostage? I'll do what I can to protect myself but I sure as hell expect random angry passengers to get up from their seats and dismantle the hostile in as violent a way as they see fit and functional to perform. Will I die? Maybe. But what's my life compared to the multitudes of people in a plane?
Seriously though, you're right. This is the real world and all the flights that I go on these days (SouthWestern), there's really no room to perform a hijacking. The elbow space is terrible.
The Cinteq http://www.wacom.com/ has all that you're asking for (though not cheap) in a large format size, the 21UX. It is fully supported by OSX and from having worked with Wacom in the past on Windows/Photoshop/Painter, their sensitivity support is good enough for my illustration graduate girlfriend. I guess that means its more than functional.
As an American, I am outraged by this news. I have sent a letter to my representative recommending a course of action. Anyone wishing to use this as a template for their own letters, by all means, please copy it. If you need to find out who your Congressman/woman is, use this site. http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Dear Representative,
It has recently come to my attention that FEMA has directly deceived the American public with a false news conference designed solely to "make themselves look better." They have acknowledged this and in light of being caught have chosen to simply say sorry. This is not enough. Their organization, as a government body, has a duty to uphold the truth and not deceive its citizens. An apology is not sufficient recourse for this action. Those directly responsible for this inexcusable action and those responsible for letting this happen need to be removed from their posts because they are no longer fit to serve the good of the American people.
Please do all you can to make my voice, and the voice of all other Americans that desire a government free of corruption and misdirection, heard and acted upon.
Respectfully,
We need to start taking action, we need to start making mountains of molehills. This is OUR country. We can't let it slip away any more.
PS. Not posted anonymously, because I'm not afraid to be an American.
I guess I shouldn't say penalty either. Penalties stifle creativity and lower the joy-joy feelings don't they. I'm sorry. The next time I see someone acting in a sub-human fashion, with little regard to his fellow man, I will be sure to hug him and tell him that I think he can achieve anything that he wants.
Over-reaching optimism can only help! Why suffer the pains of reality?