I mean, come on. Don't you guys remember the ribald jokes told as early as the first grade, and the whole fascination with that mysterious, taboo subject that nobody who talked about it really understood, and nobody who understood it talked about it?
I must have had really cool parents. They introduced me to James Bond movies at a very early age, and my dad and I watched lots of violent kung fu films. I could seduce sexy Russian double agents and break a man's spine with my index finger by the age of 10, although I admit the opportunities to do so were few and far between.
My mom taught me to play blackjack at age 12, and we had a rollup felt Craps "table" that was the most requested item for family game night. I started counting cards on my own by age 14 when I noticed that the player had an advantage when the deck was heavy with face cards.
Somehow, some way, I managed to steep clear of organized crime and general ne'er-do-wellism in later life.
People are understanding that SCIENTISTS are as likely as anyone to be venal, petty, biased, partisan, and above all the previous 8 year administration showed us: political.
I can't figure out where the pure and perfect image of scientists came from in the first place. Pick a scientific field and read a good history of it. It'll be rife with personality clashes, stolen work, wholesale persecution (as opposed to healthy skepticism) of new ideas, hostility, jealousy, politically motivated funding (or defunding) and even a few outright crimes here and there. It goes all the way back to Aristotle's fear of the number zero.
The BADa OS? Is this like when a Western company releases a product in the mysterious East or that there Southern Hemisphere place, and it turns out their made up product name translates to "rat feces" or "your mother is a whore" or something?
instead of the gray inked Kindle's energy conscious display.
"None of that namby pamby green shit for us," shouted Rupert 'The Dominator' Murdoch. "Our reader will run on leaded gasoline fuel cells, arsenic paste and mercury vapor canisters!" When asked about the environmental impact of such a device, Murdoch ripped out the reporter's heart and ate it in a single bite.
"Argh!" said Murdoch, and brought the press conference to a close by pissing on the press corps and killing fifty puppies.
Yes (X360 in my case), and the fact that the shooting segment ignored the y-axis setting in the rest of the game, so it was completely opposite what I am used to in every single game I play, including the rest of Dead Space itself. It was amazing that I did it in as *few* as seven tries. I saw people online who returned the game after hitting that part.
PC version used mouse? Point and click? Damn! For the consoles they should have just added a small side quest to locate an auto targeting circuit and have the guns fire themselves or something.
I really need to build a new gaming rig. Hitting the same problem with Dragon Age. You can micromanage the characters on the XBox, but, oh my the interface makes it tedious. I'm at the half way mark and I'm tempted to just switch to casual and use the tactics scripts. A game simply isn't worth this much annoyance.
Squadron Leader: "Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter dicky-birded, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie."
Computer: WTF?
Pilot: "Bunch of monkeys on your ceiling, sir! Grab your egg and fours and let's get the bacon delivered."
I got through the part in just six or seven tries, but it was like falling into a time warp to the 8-bit days, and suddenly I'm playing a cheap Star Raiders rip off with a four direction joystick.
The biggest problem was that shooter part didn't obey the y-axis inversion setting for the rest of the game. It really felt like something they shoehorned in at the last moment for whatever reason.
I saw some people on gaming boards who stopped playing the game because they could not get past that part. That would win EA a "No Twinkie!" award over at Gamasutra. You *NEVER* make a minigame a show stopper.
On of the tricks in many 3rd person games is to ignore the person, especially if there is a reticle. After the first level, the character sort of melted away perceptually, and I only noticed him to check the health bar. I bounce back and forth between 1st and 3rd person games, so maybe that helped. I don't really have a preference. Whatever works best for the developer on a particular game.
Not to mention the way all important information (health, ammo, etc) was incorporated right into the onscreen graphics, so no room was wasted on a HUD.
..but no more clunky asteroid shooting sequences, please. That was like checking into an elegant hotel and then finding a steaming turd in the toilet that took way too many tries to flush. Made me not want to replay it. Add more zero gee bits instead.
Eh? Did I even mention "right and wrong"? I was talking about the increasingly insular nature of people's mentalities and the automatic wholesale demonization of others not considered "pure". The problem is that many of the ideological tribes have decent, workable ideas, but we can't have them because people cling to tribes instead of ideas.
You look for things that work, and not follow some strict ideological agenda. You recognize that what works in one location might not work in another location, even one just a few neighborhoods away. One size never fits all.
WTF is wrong with people? Why is this line of argument so hard to understand? Why is it always interpreted as some sort of nihilism? Cripes, you try to advocate a moderate, open minded position and people start wondering if you think eating orphans in a light kitten sauce should be legal.
To address your tangent, in many cases "right and wrong" *is* a false dichotomy driven solely by emotion, religious memes or slavish devotion to an imaginary political ideal. So there.;-)
not to be totally gloomy about Hollywood's immediate future
Why would I even care? Seriously. I like movies, but if the big centralized studios vanished and we just had independent filmmakers left I don't think I'd shed any tears. I might actually welcome that just to see what happens.
I think some of the cyberpunk writers had it right. Has the "information" age made people better equipped with, well, information? Are people more knowledgeable? Or are they retreating further and further into their own private virtual reality bubbles. Are they seeing the infinite shades of gray in this world, or is it all just angels and demons, black and white and us versus them?
And none of this finger pointing at one side or the other. Just aboput everyone is guilty. The moment you start identifying with a political party or an ideological label, or thinking you're better because of your choice of operating system or the car you drive or books you read you have become part of the problem.
All this tech has done is feed into the antiquated tribal mentality that might have served us well 20,000 years ago, but now it's just ripping everything apart. Watch yourselves closely for the next couple of days as news stories appear. See if you catch yourself just making huge, broadly based assumptions about certain people. Question every assumption. Be skeptical about *everything* just for a while.
It's impossible to be an independent thinker any more. If I praise Obama on one thing, I get called a socialist. If I criticize him on another thing, I'm called a right wingnut. There is no correct side here- they are all profoundly effed in the head.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, the Stargate-Universe folks really need to control their script leaks.
I mean, come on. Don't you guys remember the ribald jokes told as early as the first grade, and the whole fascination with that mysterious, taboo subject that nobody who talked about it really understood, and nobody who understood it talked about it?
I must have had really cool parents. They introduced me to James Bond movies at a very early age, and my dad and I watched lots of violent kung fu films. I could seduce sexy Russian double agents and break a man's spine with my index finger by the age of 10, although I admit the opportunities to do so were few and far between.
My mom taught me to play blackjack at age 12, and we had a rollup felt Craps "table" that was the most requested item for family game night. I started counting cards on my own by age 14 when I noticed that the player had an advantage when the deck was heavy with face cards.
Somehow, some way, I managed to steep clear of organized crime and general ne'er-do-wellism in later life.
...; Seal little Johnny away in a hermetic reality bubble lest he experience anything that might alarm him or his parents; ...
People are understanding that SCIENTISTS are as likely as anyone to be venal, petty, biased, partisan, and above all the previous 8 year administration showed us: political.
I can't figure out where the pure and perfect image of scientists came from in the first place. Pick a scientific field and read a good history of it. It'll be rife with personality clashes, stolen work, wholesale persecution (as opposed to healthy skepticism) of new ideas, hostility, jealousy, politically motivated funding (or defunding) and even a few outright crimes here and there. It goes all the way back to Aristotle's fear of the number zero.
They will even quarrel amongst each other about which of them is the intelligent, when in reality they are all idiots.
So it's much like Slashdot then? :-)
The BADa OS? Is this like when a Western company releases a product in the mysterious East or that there Southern Hemisphere place, and it turns out their made up product name translates to "rat feces" or "your mother is a whore" or something?
instead of the gray inked Kindle's energy conscious display.
"None of that namby pamby green shit for us," shouted Rupert 'The Dominator' Murdoch. "Our reader will run on leaded gasoline fuel cells, arsenic paste and mercury vapor canisters!" When asked about the environmental impact of such a device, Murdoch ripped out the reporter's heart and ate it in a single bite.
"Argh!" said Murdoch, and brought the press conference to a close by pissing on the press corps and killing fifty puppies.
Yes (X360 in my case), and the fact that the shooting segment ignored the y-axis setting in the rest of the game, so it was completely opposite what I am used to in every single game I play, including the rest of Dead Space itself. It was amazing that I did it in as *few* as seven tries. I saw people online who returned the game after hitting that part.
PC version used mouse? Point and click? Damn! For the consoles they should have just added a small side quest to locate an auto targeting circuit and have the guns fire themselves or something.
I really need to build a new gaming rig. Hitting the same problem with Dragon Age. You can micromanage the characters on the XBox, but, oh my the interface makes it tedious. I'm at the half way mark and I'm tempted to just switch to casual and use the tactics scripts. A game simply isn't worth this much annoyance.
Kudos on the informative mod, prob should be funny thou.
I'm as astonished as everyone else when that happens. :-)
Are we world leaders in anything anymore? Sheesh!
C'mon, team USA! Get out there and spam one for the Gipper!
No.
Squadron Leader: "Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter dicky-birded, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie."
Computer: WTF?
Pilot: "Bunch of monkeys on your ceiling, sir! Grab your egg and fours and let's get the bacon delivered."
Computer: (explodes)
Now, now! We want controversy, not a singularity.
What happens when the system is compromised? How do I change my password?
You don't. You get that face changing surgery and spend the rest of your life looking like John Travolta or Nicolas Cage.
What is a "biometric visual scan of their face"?
I heard the "Hot Or Not" website folks are consulting.
I got through the part in just six or seven tries, but it was like falling into a time warp to the 8-bit days, and suddenly I'm playing a cheap Star Raiders rip off with a four direction joystick.
The biggest problem was that shooter part didn't obey the y-axis inversion setting for the rest of the game. It really felt like something they shoehorned in at the last moment for whatever reason.
I saw some people on gaming boards who stopped playing the game because they could not get past that part. That would win EA a "No Twinkie!" award over at Gamasutra. You *NEVER* make a minigame a show stopper.
We can construct a topic that will generate the lowest signal to noise ratio EVER! Proceed, gentlemen, proceed!
On of the tricks in many 3rd person games is to ignore the person, especially if there is a reticle. After the first level, the character sort of melted away perceptually, and I only noticed him to check the health bar. I bounce back and forth between 1st and 3rd person games, so maybe that helped. I don't really have a preference. Whatever works best for the developer on a particular game.
Not to mention the way all important information (health, ammo, etc) was incorporated right into the onscreen graphics, so no room was wasted on a HUD.
..but no more clunky asteroid shooting sequences, please. That was like checking into an elegant hotel and then finding a steaming turd in the toilet that took way too many tries to flush. Made me not want to replay it. Add more zero gee bits instead.
Were they texting at the same time? Sexting?
Play nice, you two.
Eh? Did I even mention "right and wrong"? I was talking about the increasingly insular nature of people's mentalities and the automatic wholesale demonization of others not considered "pure". The problem is that many of the ideological tribes have decent, workable ideas, but we can't have them because people cling to tribes instead of ideas.
You look for things that work, and not follow some strict ideological agenda. You recognize that what works in one location might not work in another location, even one just a few neighborhoods away. One size never fits all.
WTF is wrong with people? Why is this line of argument so hard to understand? Why is it always interpreted as some sort of nihilism? Cripes, you try to advocate a moderate, open minded position and people start wondering if you think eating orphans in a light kitten sauce should be legal.
To address your tangent, in many cases "right and wrong" *is* a false dichotomy driven solely by emotion, religious memes or slavish devotion to an imaginary political ideal. So there. ;-)
not to be totally gloomy about Hollywood's immediate future
Why would I even care? Seriously. I like movies, but if the big centralized studios vanished and we just had independent filmmakers left I don't think I'd shed any tears. I might actually welcome that just to see what happens.
I think some of the cyberpunk writers had it right. Has the "information" age made people better equipped with, well, information? Are people more knowledgeable? Or are they retreating further and further into their own private virtual reality bubbles. Are they seeing the infinite shades of gray in this world, or is it all just angels and demons, black and white and us versus them?
And none of this finger pointing at one side or the other. Just aboput everyone is guilty. The moment you start identifying with a political party or an ideological label, or thinking you're better because of your choice of operating system or the car you drive or books you read you have become part of the problem.
All this tech has done is feed into the antiquated tribal mentality that might have served us well 20,000 years ago, but now it's just ripping everything apart. Watch yourselves closely for the next couple of days as news stories appear. See if you catch yourself just making huge, broadly based assumptions about certain people. Question every assumption. Be skeptical about *everything* just for a while.
It's impossible to be an independent thinker any more. If I praise Obama on one thing, I get called a socialist. If I criticize him on another thing, I'm called a right wingnut. There is no correct side here- they are all profoundly effed in the head.