This goes a long way to legitimize the sport of professional gaming. This in it's very essence will attract sponsors which will mushroom the industry faster than anything you could have possibly imagined. You're right, provided they figure out one more thing. The in-game action is what's important, not the guy at the keyboard. I've yet to see any kind of televised gaming event where they figured out that shots of the guy at the keyboard are useless. Shots of the player at the keyboard are the functional equivalent of cutting to a closeup of a football coach in the middle of a play.
Unless they can get the audience at large into the game, and not focus on the physical players, it's just a bunch of shots of pale kids badly lit by the glow of their monitors. Does that sound like something you want to watch?
Sadly, I don't have a lot of confidence that the guys down at CBS will be able to figure this out anytime soon.
I found their statistics to be interesting:
The group surveyed 1,430 third, fourth, and fifth-grade children and their parents and found that the two groups' responses to restricting gaming varied widely. For instance, while 1 percent of parents said they never helped decide what games to buy or rent, 25 percent of children said the parents didn't get involved in those decisions. Although more than 60 percent of parents said they had rules about how long their kids can spend playing games, only 36 percent of children said their gameplay was time restricted. The group attributed the disparity in responses to "parental optimism."One read, the one NIMF took, is that the parents are "optimistic" about their involvement, which is a nice way of saying they lied on the survey. However, I think the more intereesting, and possibly more accurate conclusion that can be drawn from those number is that 9 to 11 year olds can't reliably determine the actions of their parents.
The child might not percieve that the parent is involved in the decision of what games to buy, because the child picked the game off the shelf, and the parent only said yes or no, or perhaps the parent has raised the child in such a way that the child almost never picks an unacceptable game, thus the child has never had the parent negate a game selection. In both those cases, the parent was clearly involved, but the child might not percieve it that way.
The statistic about restricted gameplay is even easyer to explain. If a child must do homework immediatly after getting home from school, that is indeed a restriction on game time, but the child sees it as a rule unrelated to games. The same would be true of a bedtime, or a rule about coming to the table for dinner. Also, as with the first statistic, it may be that the child does a fairly good job of self-regulating game time, so although the parent is keeping an active eye on the situation, the child doesn't percieve any parental involvement.
The point is that I don't think these statistics are definitive enough to have them say anything, and the NIMF has only used them to draw the conclusions that they wanted in the first place.
Because video games aren't a chemicaly adictive and chemicaly harmful substance. They are a fundamentaly different thing, to lump creative content together with controlled substances is a fairly large and scary step, and I can't see how it can be justified.
Go ahead and scientificaly prove that M-rated games to physical damage to every underage person who plays them, and then you can start comparing them to controlled substances.
I'll throw a few numbers out there, though there is too little exact data to do a rigorous statistical calculation.
First, the average galaxy has 10 million to 1 trillion stars in it. Second, there are on the order of 100 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. That leads to, roughly, 10^18 to 10^23 stars in the observable universe. Add to that that the observable universe is likely only have as big as the probable lower bound for the size of the total universe. There just simply isn't any such thing as a unique situation in that kind of context. That was the GP's point.
Honestly, I don't see how it damages the institution of marrage either. However, the fact that you and I, as well as many others, disagree with something that group feels is so fundamentaly important is the reason the issue gets so much attention.
It's not the details of the issue itself that gives it such a high priority in the public eye, it's the fact that one or more sides feels that it is of vital importance.
I'm also going to have to add a disclaimer that I don't believe the position I am about to state is the logical and correct one, but it does illustrate why priorities might differ in such drastic ways.
Marriage is the very cornerstone of American civilization, and to allow same sex marriages would fundamentally damage the institution of marriage, and by extension fundamentally damage American civilization. By that reasoning, it must take priority over any external issue.
Again, I, personally, don't believe that to be a logical viewpoint, but there are others out there who do. To just dismiss those people out of hand is not fair or right. Any statement of priorities should, implicitly or explicitly, include the words "to me". There, unfortunately, is no universal, absolute set of priorities.
The real issue, and the major downside to a cloak of this nature, is how do you see where you're going while you are wearing it?
If it's diverting all the light around you, there's no light to get in and hit your eye so you can see.
The solution would be much more complex than the basic cloak. You'd have to let some light in, but make sure it didn't get back out again. I can see that being problimatic.
While you have a point, it is one I intentionaly disregard in most cases, as I don't think it's a useful distinction on the subject.
If you count chemicals produced by your own body as being part of a chemical addiction, you lose all distinction between chemical and psychological addictions, and they are two very different things.
When discussing game addiction, I think it's important to remember that there is no chemical addiction going on here. There is only the psychological addiction. It's not like alchahol, or cigarettes, it's simply a pleasureable activity that people prone to obsessive or addictive behavior may do too much of.
My point is that there isn't anything inherantly wrong with the game, or playing it, for most people. The vast majority will be able to balance their play time with the rest of their life with no trouble whatsoever. When we focus on the relativly few cases of real obsession with the game, we miss the point. It makes it look like Blizzard is at fault, and that anyone who plays their evil game will become addicted and suffer the consiquences. Attatudes like that are of no help to anyone. What we should be asking is: "What about this person made him become addicted to a game?" Not: "What about this game made this person become addicted to it?"
I agree that game addiction is a real issue, but the focus should be the person, not the game, since that is where the problem lies.
I agree, this is less likely to be censorship than it is poor network administration. There are sites that a university would legitimatly want to block: porn, piracy sites, sites known to contain virii, among others. However, whoever is in charge of websense clearly doesn't have the good sense, or is just too lazy, to administer it properly.
Most things that look like malace are really just simple incompetance.
for the final ramp, a mountain like that might be good enough, but you're still going to need many, many miles of runup track.
By the way, the 2000g's mentioned from the article isn't due to acceleration of the pod along the track, it's due to the fact that you're going in a circle at mach 10.
Yea, I compleatly forgot to factor in carrying the fuel. So it is signifigantly cheaper in that respect.
I don't know the numbers for efficency of burning rocket fuel myself, but I imagine, much like an internal combustion engine, much of the engergy is wasted through heat. Secondly, I'm sure this device wouldn't be running off the grid, it would have it's own local power generation method, which theoreticaly could be anything. If it was in the right spot, given enough area, and enough time between launches, it could even concievably be solar powered. That's probably not practical, but it could theoreticaly work.
I don't recall the name of the weapons system ( I saw it on the military channel ), but it was a GPS guided artillery shell that still hit a 5 meter target when it was fired 45 degrees off angle.
Probably hard to get your hands on a bit of real estate that's the right shape and size for a straight track. At least that's what I imagine the advantage of the ring to be: An arbitrarialy long track within a fixed ammount of physical space.
To your first point, no. The expensiveness of launches has been a problem that needed solveing for quite some time now, this may be one solution to that problem, possibly not the best, but it is definitly not a solution without a problem.
As for your second point, the total energy required would be exactly the same, with the benifit of the loop being that you could supply that energy with means more efficent than the combustion of rocket fuel.
Sure, you usually can't see 100% of a game on an average playthrough. But I guarantee if you get three guys to sit down and finish every product, you can learn a lot more about what these games contain than from watching a bunch of highlight reels, which, remember, are edited by companies who have huge stakes in what the ratings turn out to be -- talk about conflict of interest!
Shoe is of course correct in his opinion here. A playthrough will show much more than a highlight reel. The problem is that there is a fundamental difference between a normal playthrough and a 100% playthrough, and I'm not sure Senator Brownback, nor any other ledguslators, know what that difference is. It's never a good idea to have people authoring bills on subjects that they don't understand.
8 people taking 3 months is only slightly long for development of a really good map, but is incredibly short for development of even the most rudementary independant game of an FPS nature.
I wish the article would have included more information about the game itself, because it really isn't clear exactly what they're talking about. It could be a standard CS map, some sort of mod for CS or another engine, or a compleatly independant game. The rest of the article is of limited value when it's not clear what the subject is.
That'd be great if I worked or lived anywhere near a stop, and my schedule matched theirs.
The point is that public transportation is great for a specific group of cercumstances, and horrible for everything else. If you are really in one of those situations where public transport really is more convinient than a car, then you probably already use it. Not every transportation goal can be accomplished with public transportation. For most people, some sort of personaly controlled transportation is still required.
You keep blowing my statement way out of preportion. I'm not making a "sweeping definitive statement about the entire population of a country", I'm simply saying that someone else's sweeping statement is questionable. I didn't even say it was wrong, I said questionable.
I said that I belive that we have sufficent anacdotal evedence to suggest the statement "In these territories, the prices we announced were very well accepted." may not be entirely true. I didn't say I had absolute proof that Phil was lying and we should throw him in jail for false advertisement.
Then again, it probably makes it easier to argue when you turn questioning that you dissagree with into "sweeping definitive statements about the entire population of a country"
Yes, information can be learned from the fact that three people don't know anyone who is happy about a price. You're being silly to assert otherwise. No, the information gained is not as valuble as a real study with a viable sample size, that's why I said it was anecdotal evidence, and not flat out proof.
Lets say each of we three have discussed the matter with 10 people, now clearly that's not a really good sample size, so our margin for error is quite high, but it is fairly random, so that helps. Now the fact that apparently not a single one of those 30 people can be said to be happy about the price means that even with a huge error rate, the original quote is still questionable.
But really, the argument is irrelivant. You've got to have your head in the sand to think that in general, people are very happy with the PS3 price point.
Do you know anyone who is really happy with the price? Because if you don't, and I don't, and GP doesn't, sure that's not market research, but it's pretty strong anecdotal evidence, and makes Phil's quote worth questioning.
The in game dialog, among other things would have to be matched to both versions. You can't very well have someone tell you to go west when you should be going east. I'm sure it's technicaly possible, but not very feasable to correct for all the problems the two versions would cause. Particularly not to have 85% of your audience never touch the setting.
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Unless they can get the audience at large into the game, and not focus on the physical players, it's just a bunch of shots of pale kids badly lit by the glow of their monitors. Does that sound like something you want to watch?
Sadly, I don't have a lot of confidence that the guys down at CBS will be able to figure this out anytime soon.
The child might not percieve that the parent is involved in the decision of what games to buy, because the child picked the game off the shelf, and the parent only said yes or no, or perhaps the parent has raised the child in such a way that the child almost never picks an unacceptable game, thus the child has never had the parent negate a game selection. In both those cases, the parent was clearly involved, but the child might not percieve it that way.
The statistic about restricted gameplay is even easyer to explain. If a child must do homework immediatly after getting home from school, that is indeed a restriction on game time, but the child sees it as a rule unrelated to games. The same would be true of a bedtime, or a rule about coming to the table for dinner. Also, as with the first statistic, it may be that the child does a fairly good job of self-regulating game time, so although the parent is keeping an active eye on the situation, the child doesn't percieve any parental involvement.
The point is that I don't think these statistics are definitive enough to have them say anything, and the NIMF has only used them to draw the conclusions that they wanted in the first place.
Go ahead and scientificaly prove that M-rated games to physical damage to every underage person who plays them, and then you can start comparing them to controlled substances.
First, the average galaxy has 10 million to 1 trillion stars in it. Second, there are on the order of 100 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. That leads to, roughly, 10^18 to 10^23 stars in the observable universe. Add to that that the observable universe is likely only have as big as the probable lower bound for the size of the total universe. There just simply isn't any such thing as a unique situation in that kind of context. That was the GP's point.
You can, in fact, still buy gold with US currency, and do so at the US Mint.
It's not the details of the issue itself that gives it such a high priority in the public eye, it's the fact that one or more sides feels that it is of vital importance.
Marriage is the very cornerstone of American civilization, and to allow same sex marriages would fundamentally damage the institution of marriage, and by extension fundamentally damage American civilization. By that reasoning, it must take priority over any external issue.
Again, I, personally, don't believe that to be a logical viewpoint, but there are others out there who do. To just dismiss those people out of hand is not fair or right. Any statement of priorities should, implicitly or explicitly, include the words "to me". There, unfortunately, is no universal, absolute set of priorities.
If it's diverting all the light around you, there's no light to get in and hit your eye so you can see.
The solution would be much more complex than the basic cloak. You'd have to let some light in, but make sure it didn't get back out again. I can see that being problimatic.
If you count chemicals produced by your own body as being part of a chemical addiction, you lose all distinction between chemical and psychological addictions, and they are two very different things.
My point is that there isn't anything inherantly wrong with the game, or playing it, for most people. The vast majority will be able to balance their play time with the rest of their life with no trouble whatsoever. When we focus on the relativly few cases of real obsession with the game, we miss the point. It makes it look like Blizzard is at fault, and that anyone who plays their evil game will become addicted and suffer the consiquences. Attatudes like that are of no help to anyone. What we should be asking is: "What about this person made him become addicted to a game?" Not: "What about this game made this person become addicted to it?"
I agree that game addiction is a real issue, but the focus should be the person, not the game, since that is where the problem lies.
Most things that look like malace are really just simple incompetance.
By the way, the 2000g's mentioned from the article isn't due to acceleration of the pod along the track, it's due to the fact that you're going in a circle at mach 10.
I don't know the numbers for efficency of burning rocket fuel myself, but I imagine, much like an internal combustion engine, much of the engergy is wasted through heat. Secondly, I'm sure this device wouldn't be running off the grid, it would have it's own local power generation method, which theoreticaly could be anything. If it was in the right spot, given enough area, and enough time between launches, it could even concievably be solar powered. That's probably not practical, but it could theoreticaly work.
I don't recall the name of the weapons system ( I saw it on the military channel ), but it was a GPS guided artillery shell that still hit a 5 meter target when it was fired 45 degrees off angle.
Probably hard to get your hands on a bit of real estate that's the right shape and size for a straight track. At least that's what I imagine the advantage of the ring to be: An arbitrarialy long track within a fixed ammount of physical space.
As for your second point, the total energy required would be exactly the same, with the benifit of the loop being that you could supply that energy with means more efficent than the combustion of rocket fuel.
Yea, that's where I went first. Lofstrom Loops is what he called them, I belive.
I wish the article would have included more information about the game itself, because it really isn't clear exactly what they're talking about. It could be a standard CS map, some sort of mod for CS or another engine, or a compleatly independant game. The rest of the article is of limited value when it's not clear what the subject is.
IANAP, but I have read up on the subject, and that was my understanding as well.
The point is that public transportation is great for a specific group of cercumstances, and horrible for everything else. If you are really in one of those situations where public transport really is more convinient than a car, then you probably already use it. Not every transportation goal can be accomplished with public transportation. For most people, some sort of personaly controlled transportation is still required.
I said that I belive that we have sufficent anacdotal evedence to suggest the statement "In these territories, the prices we announced were very well accepted." may not be entirely true. I didn't say I had absolute proof that Phil was lying and we should throw him in jail for false advertisement.
Then again, it probably makes it easier to argue when you turn questioning that you dissagree with into "sweeping definitive statements about the entire population of a country"
Lets say each of we three have discussed the matter with 10 people, now clearly that's not a really good sample size, so our margin for error is quite high, but it is fairly random, so that helps. Now the fact that apparently not a single one of those 30 people can be said to be happy about the price means that even with a huge error rate, the original quote is still questionable.
But really, the argument is irrelivant. You've got to have your head in the sand to think that in general, people are very happy with the PS3 price point.
Do you know anyone who is really happy with the price? Because if you don't, and I don't, and GP doesn't, sure that's not market research, but it's pretty strong anecdotal evidence, and makes Phil's quote worth questioning.
The in game dialog, among other things would have to be matched to both versions. You can't very well have someone tell you to go west when you should be going east. I'm sure it's technicaly possible, but not very feasable to correct for all the problems the two versions would cause. Particularly not to have 85% of your audience never touch the setting.