This isn't really a troll-- whether you love or hate the games he's made recently, it's more than a little disingenuous for the summary to cite his name in the context of making a new, innovative Castlevania... In most interviews he expounds on how he really wants to continue making games in the same formula regardless of the critical reception, or accusations of milking the franchise.
Since these developers clearly don't really know that much, the question is really asking how much they believe whatever marketing hype or hearsay they've encountered. I'd be more interested in finding out what they think about Microsoft potentially shafting OpenGL, or if they even care at all about vendor lock-in.
Your first set of statements seem to be a little confusing. You say that "successful books require a level in depth and detail that is virtually impossible to achieve on screen," which I would agree with-- but then also say, "The reason both usually fail is because they are adaptations." In adapting a book to movie, you're taking the core themes and ideas, and playing to the strengths of the movie medium.
I also read LOTR every year, and I found the movies far from disappointing. The book, though I find it to be the finest fantasy novel series written to date, is utterly unfit for screen in its current state. The Battle of the Hornburg in TTT lasts a few pages at most, which would make for an anticlimactic and boring movie. While I was likewise shocked at the movie Faramir, I fully understand that in the books, that entire plot thread is devoid of conflict for a long time, which simply does not create a compelling narrative.
It seems like you're saying that media are different from each other, and therefore we shouldn't even try... But why can't we take the themes and ideas we find really cool about a game and make a great movie about it? Maybe we can, but it won't silence the people who complain character X was changed, or plot events happened in a different order than in the books. Some friends of mine have even complained that the Middle Earth map was different in the movie (when IIRC, the "original" map in the books wasn't even drawn by Tolkien himself, but extracted from his geographical descriptions). The point is, fans need to view these things a little more objectively.
And now, back on topic... If they can keep the great things we like about Halo while still making it Halo, I don't see why the movie won't be spectacular. I think the single greatest danger would be if they decided to leave off the Covenant side of the story, or neglect the criticism of theocracy and zealotry, which is highly relevant to the world we live in today. I do hope they leave out the excruciating and repetitive Library level, though.
Let me preface this by saying IANA Environmental Scientist, and my "training" in the field consists of a single 300-level EVSC course in Atmosphere in weather. My first few weeks of class, the other professors in the department all came to fill in for my professor, who was on travel, but from all of them, as well as my main professor told a story that is oversimplified by the media and global warming zealots: namely that the earth is experiencing a warming trend, and that there is little doubt that it is related to human factors. According to them, basically the scientific community is all in agreement on this, yet the environmentalists seem to pretend that the debate on global warming is whether or not it is occurring at all. The debate (which occurs in academia, rather than politicians making documentaries, or oil companies funding studies) is the degree to which human CO2 emissions have an effect on global climate patterns, which are significantly more complex than people think, and what our recent trends mean in the context of geological time scales. A major environmental concern before global warming came to the forefront was global cooling, seeing as how the cyclical occurence of ice ages seemed to indicate that we were due for one. To rephrase, some scientists think that the causal relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming is clear, and the consequences of this will be a catastrophic permanent warming trend. Scientists on the other side of the issue think that there is currently not enough data to draw any such meaningful conclusions. It's disingenuous to say that there are global warming proponents on one side, and global warming deniers on the other. I can't stand it when neoconservatives say that you're either for the war in Iraq, or you're not a patriot, and I think it's equally disgusting for environmentalists to try to polarize this issue and get away from the science, which is at the crux of this dilemma.
My beef is not with scientists who publish papers in support of the theory that the current warming trend is anthropogenic, but rather the radical environmentalists who parrot this without understanding the science, and intentionally simplify the issue to win this argument because it coincides with their worldview. I think the problem with the public discourse on global warming, if it can even be called that, is that people look at it as a political battle to be won, rather than a scientific problem to be solved.
Not at all. I considered the value of privacy and weighed it against the need for accountability before posting. Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia that attempts to catalogue facts, would gain a great deal in the way of reliability if people were held accountable for the things they posted. People have replied to my original comment that the concept of a "real source" is nebulous at best. That's true, but the first rule in critically examining anything is "check the source." If the source is unknown
Wikipedia is not a place where people need anonymity to make assertions because those assertions should be backed up by facts and evidence as much as circumstances and the topic allows. It's also not a place where people should be anonymously expressing their opinions like a message board because that's not the goal of Wikipedia. I think privacy should be protected as much as possible, and Wilde was right when he said "Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth," but in this case there are considerations that outweigh those. The accountability I was referring to was more in the academic sense, rather than any legal sense.
XBox 360 is certainly out, but it has all the hallmarks of a product rushed to market. The Live integration seems to have been well polished, but what else? The overheating issues may or may not be as widespread as they are reported, but are a sad reality of the video game industry: you can sell a poorly designed 1st gen system that has an awful MTBF curve, and the consumers will still push old ladies out of line to buy it. Microsoft takes a huge loss on each system sold, and probably won't have a killer app until Halo 3. The backwards compatibility is a spotty work-in-progress. Given that we have yet to see whether or not the first-launched 360 has legs is not cause for "worry" about the Revolution. Sony is probably not behind the development curve, they just have to make claims to keep up in the press war like "Oh, we'll have backwards compatibility too!" and "PS3 will be a very expensive system!" Given the amount of FUD and marketing and questionable profitability of the economic models at work here, I'm looking forward to seeing if Nintendo's gamble pays off. To be worried at vague conjecture by the empty press releases, the gaming media that makes a mountain out of every molehill, and the warring fanboys is absurd.
In the interest of accountability, shouldn't it have been this way in the first place? Then again, I'm a crazy person who thinks real sources (not just websites) need to be cited in a Wikipedia article for it to have real credibility.
Of course a college student doesn't really need a landline. If you want DSL though, you have to pay for local phone service on top of the DSL charge. Cable modem service likewise requires basic cable. These companies thrive on bundled charges and forcing packages on you so you have to pay for things you don't need. Their profits would be a lot lower, especially in college towns like where I live.
Moral relativism is necessary when trying to examine history within its own cultural context, but I'll agree with you that it's no way to justify an action.
Whether you take a utilitarian...
I'd disagree with you here, if the slavery of one could produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number, Utilitarianism would advocate slavery... That's where I think Utilitarianism fails as opposed to a Kant-ian rights-based system.
I'm running Linux on my Xbox right now, I use it to watch movies, and I recently wrote my thesis on it with LaTeX. It also happens to play XBox games when I feel the need. I suppose you're going to tell me I should have bought a PC with a shiny box of Windows Media Center Edition or something else "commercially viable"?
The point is I buy things that do cool stuff; with Linux, I can make them do MORE cool stuff. Sinking money and effort into owning appliances that only do one thing is sometimes not the best solution for everyone, just because it is for you.
Funny that you should mention "commercially viable," aren't PDAs losing market share to multitasking cellphones/laptops?
You can't seriously believe that. I think there definitely is a pro-Apple bias around here, but this really isn't an example of that. If we can all agree that both this incident and publishing DeCSS were ILLEGAL, that's fine, we're on the same page. Whether or not one was wrong and the other wasn't is largely a matter of perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't really a troll-- whether you love or hate the games he's made recently, it's more than a little disingenuous for the summary to cite his name in the context of making a new, innovative Castlevania... In most interviews he expounds on how he really wants to continue making games in the same formula regardless of the critical reception, or accusations of milking the franchise.
Since these developers clearly don't really know that much, the question is really asking how much they believe whatever marketing hype or hearsay they've encountered. I'd be more interested in finding out what they think about Microsoft potentially shafting OpenGL, or if they even care at all about vendor lock-in.
I also read LOTR every year, and I found the movies far from disappointing. The book, though I find it to be the finest fantasy novel series written to date, is utterly unfit for screen in its current state. The Battle of the Hornburg in TTT lasts a few pages at most, which would make for an anticlimactic and boring movie. While I was likewise shocked at the movie Faramir, I fully understand that in the books, that entire plot thread is devoid of conflict for a long time, which simply does not create a compelling narrative.
It seems like you're saying that media are different from each other, and therefore we shouldn't even try... But why can't we take the themes and ideas we find really cool about a game and make a great movie about it? Maybe we can, but it won't silence the people who complain character X was changed, or plot events happened in a different order than in the books. Some friends of mine have even complained that the Middle Earth map was different in the movie (when IIRC, the "original" map in the books wasn't even drawn by Tolkien himself, but extracted from his geographical descriptions). The point is, fans need to view these things a little more objectively.
And now, back on topic... If they can keep the great things we like about Halo while still making it Halo, I don't see why the movie won't be spectacular. I think the single greatest danger would be if they decided to leave off the Covenant side of the story, or neglect the criticism of theocracy and zealotry, which is highly relevant to the world we live in today. I do hope they leave out the excruciating and repetitive Library level, though.
My beef is not with scientists who publish papers in support of the theory that the current warming trend is anthropogenic, but rather the radical environmentalists who parrot this without understanding the science, and intentionally simplify the issue to win this argument because it coincides with their worldview. I think the problem with the public discourse on global warming, if it can even be called that, is that people look at it as a political battle to be won, rather than a scientific problem to be solved.
Not at all. I considered the value of privacy and weighed it against the need for accountability before posting. Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia that attempts to catalogue facts, would gain a great deal in the way of reliability if people were held accountable for the things they posted. People have replied to my original comment that the concept of a "real source" is nebulous at best. That's true, but the first rule in critically examining anything is "check the source." If the source is unknown Wikipedia is not a place where people need anonymity to make assertions because those assertions should be backed up by facts and evidence as much as circumstances and the topic allows. It's also not a place where people should be anonymously expressing their opinions like a message board because that's not the goal of Wikipedia. I think privacy should be protected as much as possible, and Wilde was right when he said "Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth," but in this case there are considerations that outweigh those. The accountability I was referring to was more in the academic sense, rather than any legal sense.
XBox 360 is certainly out, but it has all the hallmarks of a product rushed to market. The Live integration seems to have been well polished, but what else? The overheating issues may or may not be as widespread as they are reported, but are a sad reality of the video game industry: you can sell a poorly designed 1st gen system that has an awful MTBF curve, and the consumers will still push old ladies out of line to buy it. Microsoft takes a huge loss on each system sold, and probably won't have a killer app until Halo 3. The backwards compatibility is a spotty work-in-progress. Given that we have yet to see whether or not the first-launched 360 has legs is not cause for "worry" about the Revolution. Sony is probably not behind the development curve, they just have to make claims to keep up in the press war like "Oh, we'll have backwards compatibility too!" and "PS3 will be a very expensive system!" Given the amount of FUD and marketing and questionable profitability of the economic models at work here, I'm looking forward to seeing if Nintendo's gamble pays off. To be worried at vague conjecture by the empty press releases, the gaming media that makes a mountain out of every molehill, and the warring fanboys is absurd.
In the interest of accountability, shouldn't it have been this way in the first place? Then again, I'm a crazy person who thinks real sources (not just websites) need to be cited in a Wikipedia article for it to have real credibility.
Of course a college student doesn't really need a landline. If you want DSL though, you have to pay for local phone service on top of the DSL charge. Cable modem service likewise requires basic cable. These companies thrive on bundled charges and forcing packages on you so you have to pay for things you don't need. Their profits would be a lot lower, especially in college towns like where I live.
Neither are Trekkies. Warp nacelles come in pairs!
Moral relativism is necessary when trying to examine history within its own cultural context, but I'll agree with you that it's no way to justify an action.
Whether you take a utilitarian...
I'd disagree with you here, if the slavery of one could produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number, Utilitarianism would advocate slavery... That's where I think Utilitarianism fails as opposed to a Kant-ian rights-based system.
I'm running Linux on my Xbox right now, I use it to watch movies, and I recently wrote my thesis on it with LaTeX. It also happens to play XBox games when I feel the need. I suppose you're going to tell me I should have bought a PC with a shiny box of Windows Media Center Edition or something else "commercially viable"?
The point is I buy things that do cool stuff; with Linux, I can make them do MORE cool stuff. Sinking money and effort into owning appliances that only do one thing is sometimes not the best solution for everyone, just because it is for you.
Funny that you should mention "commercially viable," aren't PDAs losing market share to multitasking cellphones/laptops?
You can't seriously believe that. I think there definitely is a pro-Apple bias around here, but this really isn't an example of that. If we can all agree that both this incident and publishing DeCSS were ILLEGAL, that's fine, we're on the same page. Whether or not one was wrong and the other wasn't is largely a matter of perspective.