I absolutely third this recommendation. Here's my pre-teen sci-fi list, find these old books and put them in front of your kids and they will love Sci-fi forever:-
- Douglas Hill, the Last Legionary quartet (and it's prequel, Young Legionary) - this is my absolute #1 choice and my spine still tingles as a grown man thinking about these books. Pure excellence.
- Harry Harrison, The Man from P.I.G., The Man from R.O.B.O.T. (novellas).
- Harry Harrison, Spaceship Medic.
- Harry Harrison, Deathworld series.
Then move on to medium-heavy material as their tastes develop. Examples would be Heinlein teens, Burroughs Mars and Venus series, Gardner Fox's Llarn books, Van Vogt's Slan, possibly Ender's Game although I feel that is a young adult/adult book and the sequel even more so.
Too many recommendations on here, with respect, are expecting too much sophistication - they're at least 1 or 2 categories too ambitious for the average bright 9-12 year old. Just like Coffee, good Beer and fine Wine, it takes a developed palate to be able to appreciate sophisticated sci-fi. Start them out on cheap beer and move them up to the Westvleteren's as they develop.
Oh, and I'd always be starting them on fantasy too at the same age. The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper would be my first bet at that age, followed by Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea cycle. These are much better than Harry Potter. The advantage on starting kids with older books is that they will learn from a young age to appreciate that old books are great too - rather than only reading new stuff - and will thus have a much richer overall pool of stories to draw on.
I'd mark you as Insightful, but I'd rather reply than mod up in this case.
It's simple - the parents of Gen Y are more often Baby Boomers than Gen X.
I'm Gen X, and am doing everything I can to make sure my kids grow up with respect, empathy etc.
You think? The only people who buy phones in those places are teenagers IMO, and that's far from most of the market. Unless you have numbers to suggest otherwise?
In my private life, I don't know anyone who bought a phone anywhere other than Carphone Warehouse or a carrier shop and most are on a contract. The corporate market = only Blackberry to me.
The iPhone would do a lot better in the UK market if it had any 3 of the following:-
A 3.2 megapixel or better camera with flash
A camera that can take VGA resolution video at at least 30 FPS
A GPS, and SatNav software
3G
It has a lovely interface and some good features, but it's overall just overpriced and underspecced for the UK market. I looked at the iPhone, thought "sexy interface", then saw the lack of features and decided to go for an LG KU990 instead.
I tried as requested with both drives and they're both pretty solid - I could get them to creak and move a bit by pressing fairly hard, but I didn't get the impression that they were of low build quality or particularly susceptible to vibration.
If I could mod you +10 Basic Common Sense I would. Thank you.
If everyone who was unhappy with the drive took it back as faulty, it would make the point and encourage Seagate to do something about it.
Where's the harm to justify a lawsuit? It's an affordable, consumer grade external hard drive, not a million-euro SAN that is storing mission-critical air traffic control data.
If you want every single external hard drive to be guaranteed perfect on pain of lawsuit, they'll all cost $500, with good reason. If you want perfection, pay for it and please stop the nonsense about lawsuits on the more affordable products.
By the way, I have two of these drives, and they are great. Seagate should be lauded for producing a fast, quiet, attractive and affordable product that just works and has a very generous warranty. I can see that quite a few people have had a problem with faulty units; my 2 are rock solid and have been for over 6 months so far.
Jonathan, I can see this is a passionate issue for you. It's not for me, I come on here to relax, so please don't categorise me as a "hater" because I said a single thing you don't like. Sometimes, people talk conversationally in internet forums and don't microanalyse every word other people say looking for hidden agendas and "haterdom". I don't hate the iPhone or Apple, but I do think they're somewhat overhyped and reserve the right to say so without having to be a hater.
I'll attempt to clarify the statement I made that seemingly got your blood to 100 degrees C - the iPhone has features that generally place it in the upper rank of mobile phones in Europe. However, it appears to bring nothing new to the table that the average European mobile phone punter is likely to pay that sort of money for apart from the Apple name and marketing, and also lacks features that (certainly in the recent UK market) are considered in sum to be must-haves. No Video is a serious problem for more than a small minority. No 3G is a serious problem for some people - and definitely on a phone selling itself at least partially as a good web browsing platform. The no-zoom, no-flash, 2 MP camera would be considered entry level even on a mid-range phone and would be a definite no-go for the segment of the market that is using their phone as their primary or only digital camera.
These criticisms could separately be leveled at other phones on the market, but together in a single phone they're pretty damning compared to the top-tier phones out there. Would the average European punter rather have multitouch or a good camera that does good video? Would they rather have a good web browser or 3G and SatNav? If they're not already an iTunes fan (and they exist, even if they don't appear to be ravenous hordes) would they rather have an equally-capable music phone that beats the iPhone in most other categories? Would they rather have a Nokia N95 (or whatever the latest SonyEriccson Wunderphone is - I haven't looked in a few months) for zero initial cash outlay on an expensive contract with lots of inclusive minutes and texts, or an iPhone for 265 squids up front and on an expensive and flat-out rubbish contract?
I think it will do well on image and hype if nothing else, and I can think of a segment of the market who would love a phone that is a top notch music player and even have that much disposable cash, but I just don't think the new stuff it brings to the table is going to convince many people to shell out the extra cash. In the USA, it is an all-round cutting-edge phone. In the EU, it just isn't.
And I'll hasten to add - being a relaxed, conversational kind of fellow on here - that I'm not basing this on intricate research, but rather on how the people I know use their phones, the general YouTube phone video phenomenon etc. I'd prefer to leave the intricate research and expectation that people are going to pick every single word apart for my doctoral thesis.
"I generally agree that cellphone tech lags in in U.S., but you realize that pretty much the same high-end Nokia and Samsung phones sold in Europe are also sold in the U.S., right?"
Yes. The difference is that in the US only the occasional rich gadget freak has one, in Europe the average citizen has one.
"It's not the phones themselves that are hampering the tech, it's the carriers."
Indeed. The net effect is that the average citizen in the US is walking around with a phone that's older than the one I gave away to my mother a year ago. That's not so good.:-( You guys should rebel against the evil carriers.
"Really? Which other phones have a multi-touch screen? Which other phones have a good web browser? Which other phones have iTunes?"
Any windows smartphone has a good web browser. That leaves you with iTunes and a multi-touch screen as your selling points - which are meaningless features. I wouldn't pay 1 USD for those features - and I certainly wouldn't swap the SatNav and decent camera out of my phone for them.
This is really missing my point - the iPhone is a decent phone and a sexy one - it's just nothing that's going to blow the socks off the European market, especially at the price. We've had the key features readily available for a while now.
This is easy to explain. The iPhone brings nothing new to the table in Europe, where all of its features are available generally in other phones, and most are common in any high-end phone. In America, which for some reason appears to be 2-3 generations behind Europe in the mobile phone arena, this isn't true.
iPhone in America = OMFG this phone has everything, even a camera!
iPhone in Europe = Pretty, cool, doesn't do X as well as Nokia or Y as well as Sony Ericsson and OMFG the price!
I ran campaigns on the TSR Original D&D from 1984 to 1994, and there has never been a richer, more developed world than Mystara, IMNSHO.
I suspect you mean "never been a richer, more developed D&D world than Mystara, which I would agree with.
Glorantha is probably the richest, most developed fantasy world, with Tekumel arguing for that place too. Both have been developed constantly for decades; although this could be debated until the stars die, Glorantha effectively has a single point of control and a multitude of people who submit patches; it evolves rapidly and even occasionally breaks backward compatibility - but results in an incredibly deep and rich game world with multiple well-detailed cultures, endless myths and genuine mysteries and secrets.
And yes, I'm including Middle Earth in my survey. It's very rich in some aspects and relatively bare in others.
Britney is arguably an odd example, as she's not particularly talented... she just has that groupthink thing going.
However, it's not hard to find a good example, as there are truly talented artists who are using the digital music world to their benefit. Prince is, right now, famously doing so by giving away copies of his new album (on physical media no less!) on the front of a newspaper, and also as a complementary bonus for buying a ticket to one of his live performances. Apparently he makes most of his money from live performances anyway, which is understandable as he's a hell of a performer.
Now, 2 things to justify my Insightful points:-
1) The digital music revolution weakens the profitability of studio music and big expensive distribution, yet increases the profitability of performance-based music - more people have easy access to your music, more people become fans, more people want to see you perform live (I have everything Fleetwood Mac have ever released on MP3 and CD, and yet I paid the equivalent of several CDs just to see them perform a few songs live, once). In other words, technology is making people more likely to get together in the physical realm and listen to music actually being performed for them in the flesh. That's a shit in the eye for luddites if ever there was one. You cannot beat actually being there, this experiential instinct is ingrained into our being at a fundamental level and it's what sane creative business models should be based on.
2) How much money did Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc make from selling recorded copies of their performances? None, and yet they all made a living off of it and were famous, well-connected and generally rewarded for their work. The music industry should get off their high horse and stop pretending that recorded sales of performances are the natural means of earning money and recognition from music. It wouldn't hurt musicians to realise this too, and stop expecting to be multi-millionaires from music - if ten times as many musicians could just be comfortably rich and somewhat famous from their performance-based careers as now, the music world would be a kinder place and potentially encourage more creativity. How many musicians have been put off the career completely by the "you either make it huge or not at all" nature of the industry?
On a final note, it really may be that the OP's brother's band just isn't that good. They should try setting up a begging bowl on their website, people who aren't prepared to pay $15 for a CD or ticket may be prepared to throw them $2 to patronise their efforts and "legitimise" their personal MP3s. I've always been amazed, given the general willingness of the average decent person to give small amounts of money away that more software doesn't work on this model. Certainly, if I ever release anything worth releasing, it's the model I'll use.
I have an 02 XDA Orbit, which I paid nothing additional for on an 18-month contract in the UK. The XDA, whilst not being as sexy as the iPhone, does everything it can, and in addition has GPS (and SatNav software - talk about a killer app that the iPhone can't touch), voice dialling, voice recording and I can run any Windows Mobile or Java Micro Edition software I like on it. It's not locked to a network either. I just don't see the attraction of the iPhone and have to conclude as many others here have - the hype is about marketing and the stone age mobile phone system in the US.
I've lived in the UK, Australia, and the USA. When I was in Australia, I was shocked as to how bad the cars were. When I was in the USA, I was shocked as to how bad the phones were. They were *at least* 2 years behind what I could get for almost nothing in the UK. It was mind-boggling.
The bottom line appears to be that, hardcore techies aside, the average consumer in the USA is reacting the same way the UK would have had the iPhone come out 3 years ago. Whilst some in the UK are frothing over the iPhone, many more are scratching their heads as to why everyone is supposed to get so excited - there were phones that did all that well over a year ago.
"Also the reason why America has never sustained a colonial empire- farmers are simply not interested in sending off their boys to die in foreign lands for the profit of the elite"
I'm not sure which America you're talking about. Right now America has a lot of farmboys dying in foreign lands for the profit of the elite. It's made quite an unhealthy habit of meddling in foreign affairs.
Were you being sarcastic, perhaps? A foreign policy of "it's OK to treat the people of other countries as disposable" isn't the same as an isolationist policy.
Oops, I meant to say "Snow Crash had a great story and fast-paced writing on top of it, and essentially [spoiler] has the same "secret" as Diamond Age"
Let's face it, all Neal Stephenson books are vehicles for a certain type of cool technology, and not bad for it. However, he only seems to have worked out how to end a book well once - Snow Crash. Many authors struggle with endings, and Neal seems to struggle more than most. I say this with huge respect as a fan.
The problem with the Diamond Age is that, for me, it had nothing beyond the projection of what might happen if a cool tech existed - Snow Crash had a great story and fast-paced writing on top of it, and essentially [spoiler] has the same "secret" as Snow Crash - virusy thing causes humans to be susceptible to programming/group mind phenomena. This recycling of ideas is pretty weak and obviously invites direct comparison between the books, which Snow Crash wins - hell, just this introspection is better than any five chapters from Diamond Age:-
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken."
I'm a fairly big Potter fan, but The Dark Is Rising was much superior. Didn't care too much for Over Sea, Under Stone - the first book - although it only suffers from the same malady the first Potter book does. The rest of the series is amazing.
"What in the world posessed you when you decided to play this game for more than five minutes?"
Simple - the old-fashioned reason, I owned it - saw it cheap at a shop and bought it on impulse. I hadn't and haven't played the demo.
It definitely has its frustrating points but once I got past those it was a great and very enjoyable game. I finished it and would have written a guide if not for time. There are POS samurai fighting games - Samurai Warriors on the PSP is a good example - but this is not one of them.
It's pretty clear, having read many reviews for it, that many reviewers barely scraped the surface of the game. So, it would seem, did many players. Those early problems appear to be a big barrier to entry, and yes I did curse the camera at several points even once I'd got used to it, but the multiple heroes with different styles that are valuable at different locations, the multiple weapons that play differently and have different moves and the pure fun of executing beautifully-animated and flowing combos are all big pluses.
I've been a computer and video game fan for over 20 years and have pretty mature tastes in video games. Genji: DotB is a very enjoyable game if you can get past the camera problems. Some people can't, clearly, and Sony should have realised this.
It *is* a great game - with a couple of flaws. 1 is the camera angle being out of control of the player, and stupid far too often. 2 is that it's too easy save in a few boss battles, and thus rewards button-mashing (for this reason people often dismiss the 4th character, Buson, as you *can't* button-mash effectively with him, and they assume he's not good, whilst he's actually the best character - he's the God of War and that should be hint enough). But it has a decent story, great graphics, a great control system and it's just all-round lots of fun - if you can get past the camera control and button-mashing.
Sony should release a patch for it to put the camera under the control of the player... then it would be an awesome game. As it is, it's still great. A lot of the reviewers just couldn't get past the camera controls and the Giant Enemy Crabs, and didn't play it very much, or so it seems.
Oh shit! I forgot Thief 1 and 2 (I think it would be easy to make a strong argument for Thief 2 being the most perfectly-implemented game ever) and Fallout!
Give me another half-hour, I'm sure I'd come up with a few more absolutely sublime, life-changing games, that were somehow left off this list.
But seriously, nothing from the Thief series? Fuhgeddaboudit. Crap list.
This list is complete pro-console, pro-Nintendo bollocks. It almost completely ignores PC gaming.
No Panzer Dragoon Saga!!!
No Dungeon Master!!!
No Ultima Underworld II!!!
Where the hell are Ultima IV and Ultima VII?
Where the hell is System Shock II?
^^^^ These are all games that I play every few years because they're just that great, keeping old systems around and tirelessly tweaking emulators as necessary. This list is just shameful.
"It didn't even make the top ten - which is how you know this "list" is a joke."
Agreed. If either Ultima IV or VII were right up there, the list would have credibility. As it is, it's a Nintendo and console-biased joke.
No list of best games is going to be uncontentious though.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks - I forgot the Huntsman books by Hill in my list above. Excellent series also.
I'd choose Tunnel in the Sky as the best introductory Heinlein for a teen/pre-teen, personally.
Then move on to medium-heavy material as their tastes develop. Examples would be Heinlein teens, Burroughs Mars and Venus series, Gardner Fox's Llarn books, Van Vogt's Slan, possibly Ender's Game although I feel that is a young adult/adult book and the sequel even more so.
Too many recommendations on here, with respect, are expecting too much sophistication - they're at least 1 or 2 categories too ambitious for the average bright 9-12 year old. Just like Coffee, good Beer and fine Wine, it takes a developed palate to be able to appreciate sophisticated sci-fi. Start them out on cheap beer and move them up to the Westvleteren's as they develop.
Oh, and I'd always be starting them on fantasy too at the same age. The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper would be my first bet at that age, followed by Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea cycle. These are much better than Harry Potter. The advantage on starting kids with older books is that they will learn from a young age to appreciate that old books are great too - rather than only reading new stuff - and will thus have a much richer overall pool of stories to draw on.
I'd mark you as Insightful, but I'd rather reply than mod up in this case. It's simple - the parents of Gen Y are more often Baby Boomers than Gen X. I'm Gen X, and am doing everything I can to make sure my kids grow up with respect, empathy etc.
You think? The only people who buy phones in those places are teenagers IMO, and that's far from most of the market. Unless you have numbers to suggest otherwise?
In my private life, I don't know anyone who bought a phone anywhere other than Carphone Warehouse or a carrier shop and most are on a contract. The corporate market = only Blackberry to me.
The iPhone would do a lot better in the UK market if it had any 3 of the following:-
It has a lovely interface and some good features, but it's overall just overpriced and underspecced for the UK market. I looked at the iPhone, thought "sexy interface", then saw the lack of features and decided to go for an LG KU990 instead.
I tried as requested with both drives and they're both pretty solid - I could get them to creak and move a bit by pressing fairly hard, but I didn't get the impression that they were of low build quality or particularly susceptible to vibration.
If I could mod you +10 Basic Common Sense I would. Thank you. If everyone who was unhappy with the drive took it back as faulty, it would make the point and encourage Seagate to do something about it. Where's the harm to justify a lawsuit? It's an affordable, consumer grade external hard drive, not a million-euro SAN that is storing mission-critical air traffic control data. If you want every single external hard drive to be guaranteed perfect on pain of lawsuit, they'll all cost $500, with good reason. If you want perfection, pay for it and please stop the nonsense about lawsuits on the more affordable products. By the way, I have two of these drives, and they are great. Seagate should be lauded for producing a fast, quiet, attractive and affordable product that just works and has a very generous warranty. I can see that quite a few people have had a problem with faulty units; my 2 are rock solid and have been for over 6 months so far.
Jonathan, I can see this is a passionate issue for you. It's not for me, I come on here to relax, so please don't categorise me as a "hater" because I said a single thing you don't like. Sometimes, people talk conversationally in internet forums and don't microanalyse every word other people say looking for hidden agendas and "haterdom". I don't hate the iPhone or Apple, but I do think they're somewhat overhyped and reserve the right to say so without having to be a hater.
I'll attempt to clarify the statement I made that seemingly got your blood to 100 degrees C - the iPhone has features that generally place it in the upper rank of mobile phones in Europe. However, it appears to bring nothing new to the table that the average European mobile phone punter is likely to pay that sort of money for apart from the Apple name and marketing, and also lacks features that (certainly in the recent UK market) are considered in sum to be must-haves. No Video is a serious problem for more than a small minority. No 3G is a serious problem for some people - and definitely on a phone selling itself at least partially as a good web browsing platform. The no-zoom, no-flash, 2 MP camera would be considered entry level even on a mid-range phone and would be a definite no-go for the segment of the market that is using their phone as their primary or only digital camera.
These criticisms could separately be leveled at other phones on the market, but together in a single phone they're pretty damning compared to the top-tier phones out there. Would the average European punter rather have multitouch or a good camera that does good video? Would they rather have a good web browser or 3G and SatNav? If they're not already an iTunes fan (and they exist, even if they don't appear to be ravenous hordes) would they rather have an equally-capable music phone that beats the iPhone in most other categories? Would they rather have a Nokia N95 (or whatever the latest SonyEriccson Wunderphone is - I haven't looked in a few months) for zero initial cash outlay on an expensive contract with lots of inclusive minutes and texts, or an iPhone for 265 squids up front and on an expensive and flat-out rubbish contract?
I think it will do well on image and hype if nothing else, and I can think of a segment of the market who would love a phone that is a top notch music player and even have that much disposable cash, but I just don't think the new stuff it brings to the table is going to convince many people to shell out the extra cash. In the USA, it is an all-round cutting-edge phone. In the EU, it just isn't.
And I'll hasten to add - being a relaxed, conversational kind of fellow on here - that I'm not basing this on intricate research, but rather on how the people I know use their phones, the general YouTube phone video phenomenon etc. I'd prefer to leave the intricate research and expectation that people are going to pick every single word apart for my doctoral thesis.
"I generally agree that cellphone tech lags in in U.S., but you realize that pretty much the same high-end Nokia and Samsung phones sold in Europe are also sold in the U.S., right?"
Yes. The difference is that in the US only the occasional rich gadget freak has one, in Europe the average citizen has one.
"It's not the phones themselves that are hampering the tech, it's the carriers."
Indeed. The net effect is that the average citizen in the US is walking around with a phone that's older than the one I gave away to my mother a year ago. That's not so good. :-( You guys should rebel against the evil carriers.
"Really? Which other phones have a multi-touch screen? Which other phones have a good web browser? Which other phones have iTunes?"
Any windows smartphone has a good web browser. That leaves you with iTunes and a multi-touch screen as your selling points - which are meaningless features. I wouldn't pay 1 USD for those features - and I certainly wouldn't swap the SatNav and decent camera out of my phone for them.
This is really missing my point - the iPhone is a decent phone and a sexy one - it's just nothing that's going to blow the socks off the European market, especially at the price. We've had the key features readily available for a while now.
This is easy to explain. The iPhone brings nothing new to the table in Europe, where all of its features are available generally in other phones, and most are common in any high-end phone. In America, which for some reason appears to be 2-3 generations behind Europe in the mobile phone arena, this isn't true.
iPhone in America = OMFG this phone has everything, even a camera!iPhone in Europe = Pretty, cool, doesn't do X as well as Nokia or Y as well as Sony Ericsson and OMFG the price!
I ran campaigns on the TSR Original D&D from 1984 to 1994, and there has never been a richer, more developed world than Mystara, IMNSHO.
I suspect you mean "never been a richer, more developed D&D world than Mystara, which I would agree with.
Glorantha is probably the richest, most developed fantasy world, with Tekumel arguing for that place too. Both have been developed constantly for decades; although this could be debated until the stars die, Glorantha effectively has a single point of control and a multitude of people who submit patches; it evolves rapidly and even occasionally breaks backward compatibility - but results in an incredibly deep and rich game world with multiple well-detailed cultures, endless myths and genuine mysteries and secrets.
And yes, I'm including Middle Earth in my survey. It's very rich in some aspects and relatively bare in others.
Upmixing stereo CDs to 5.1... sounds great. Would you mind helping an audio newbie out with a pointer to the toolset for that operation? TIA.
Britney is arguably an odd example, as she's not particularly talented... she just has that groupthink thing going.
However, it's not hard to find a good example, as there are truly talented artists who are using the digital music world to their benefit. Prince is, right now, famously doing so by giving away copies of his new album (on physical media no less!) on the front of a newspaper, and also as a complementary bonus for buying a ticket to one of his live performances. Apparently he makes most of his money from live performances anyway, which is understandable as he's a hell of a performer.
Now, 2 things to justify my Insightful points:-
1) The digital music revolution weakens the profitability of studio music and big expensive distribution, yet increases the profitability of performance-based music - more people have easy access to your music, more people become fans, more people want to see you perform live (I have everything Fleetwood Mac have ever released on MP3 and CD, and yet I paid the equivalent of several CDs just to see them perform a few songs live, once). In other words, technology is making people more likely to get together in the physical realm and listen to music actually being performed for them in the flesh. That's a shit in the eye for luddites if ever there was one. You cannot beat actually being there, this experiential instinct is ingrained into our being at a fundamental level and it's what sane creative business models should be based on.
2) How much money did Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc make from selling recorded copies of their performances? None, and yet they all made a living off of it and were famous, well-connected and generally rewarded for their work. The music industry should get off their high horse and stop pretending that recorded sales of performances are the natural means of earning money and recognition from music. It wouldn't hurt musicians to realise this too, and stop expecting to be multi-millionaires from music - if ten times as many musicians could just be comfortably rich and somewhat famous from their performance-based careers as now, the music world would be a kinder place and potentially encourage more creativity. How many musicians have been put off the career completely by the "you either make it huge or not at all" nature of the industry?
On a final note, it really may be that the OP's brother's band just isn't that good. They should try setting up a begging bowl on their website, people who aren't prepared to pay $15 for a CD or ticket may be prepared to throw them $2 to patronise their efforts and "legitimise" their personal MP3s. I've always been amazed, given the general willingness of the average decent person to give small amounts of money away that more software doesn't work on this model. Certainly, if I ever release anything worth releasing, it's the model I'll use.
I have an 02 XDA Orbit, which I paid nothing additional for on an 18-month contract in the UK. The XDA, whilst not being as sexy as the iPhone, does everything it can, and in addition has GPS (and SatNav software - talk about a killer app that the iPhone can't touch), voice dialling, voice recording and I can run any Windows Mobile or Java Micro Edition software I like on it. It's not locked to a network either. I just don't see the attraction of the iPhone and have to conclude as many others here have - the hype is about marketing and the stone age mobile phone system in the US. I've lived in the UK, Australia, and the USA. When I was in Australia, I was shocked as to how bad the cars were. When I was in the USA, I was shocked as to how bad the phones were. They were *at least* 2 years behind what I could get for almost nothing in the UK. It was mind-boggling. The bottom line appears to be that, hardcore techies aside, the average consumer in the USA is reacting the same way the UK would have had the iPhone come out 3 years ago. Whilst some in the UK are frothing over the iPhone, many more are scratching their heads as to why everyone is supposed to get so excited - there were phones that did all that well over a year ago.
"Also the reason why America has never sustained a colonial empire- farmers are simply not interested in sending off their boys to die in foreign lands for the profit of the elite"
I'm not sure which America you're talking about. Right now America has a lot of farmboys dying in foreign lands for the profit of the elite. It's made quite an unhealthy habit of meddling in foreign affairs.
Were you being sarcastic, perhaps? A foreign policy of "it's OK to treat the people of other countries as disposable" isn't the same as an isolationist policy.
Oops, I meant to say "Snow Crash had a great story and fast-paced writing on top of it, and essentially [spoiler] has the same "secret" as Diamond Age"
Let's face it, all Neal Stephenson books are vehicles for a certain type of cool technology, and not bad for it. However, he only seems to have worked out how to end a book well once - Snow Crash. Many authors struggle with endings, and Neal seems to struggle more than most. I say this with huge respect as a fan.
The problem with the Diamond Age is that, for me, it had nothing beyond the projection of what might happen if a cool tech existed - Snow Crash had a great story and fast-paced writing on top of it, and essentially [spoiler] has the same "secret" as Snow Crash - virusy thing causes humans to be susceptible to programming/group mind phenomena. This recycling of ideas is pretty weak and obviously invites direct comparison between the books, which Snow Crash wins - hell, just this introspection is better than any five chapters from Diamond Age:-
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken."
I'm a fairly big Potter fan, but The Dark Is Rising was much superior. Didn't care too much for Over Sea, Under Stone - the first book - although it only suffers from the same malady the first Potter book does. The rest of the series is amazing.
"What in the world posessed you when you decided to play this game for more than five minutes?"
Simple - the old-fashioned reason, I owned it - saw it cheap at a shop and bought it on impulse. I hadn't and haven't played the demo.
It definitely has its frustrating points but once I got past those it was a great and very enjoyable game. I finished it and would have written a guide if not for time. There are POS samurai fighting games - Samurai Warriors on the PSP is a good example - but this is not one of them.
It's pretty clear, having read many reviews for it, that many reviewers barely scraped the surface of the game. So, it would seem, did many players. Those early problems appear to be a big barrier to entry, and yes I did curse the camera at several points even once I'd got used to it, but the multiple heroes with different styles that are valuable at different locations, the multiple weapons that play differently and have different moves and the pure fun of executing beautifully-animated and flowing combos are all big pluses.
I've been a computer and video game fan for over 20 years and have pretty mature tastes in video games. Genji: DotB is a very enjoyable game if you can get past the camera problems. Some people can't, clearly, and Sony should have realised this.
It *is* a great game - with a couple of flaws. 1 is the camera angle being out of control of the player, and stupid far too often. 2 is that it's too easy save in a few boss battles, and thus rewards button-mashing (for this reason people often dismiss the 4th character, Buson, as you *can't* button-mash effectively with him, and they assume he's not good, whilst he's actually the best character - he's the God of War and that should be hint enough). But it has a decent story, great graphics, a great control system and it's just all-round lots of fun - if you can get past the camera control and button-mashing.
Sony should release a patch for it to put the camera under the control of the player... then it would be an awesome game. As it is, it's still great. A lot of the reviewers just couldn't get past the camera controls and the Giant Enemy Crabs, and didn't play it very much, or so it seems.
Oh shit! I forgot Thief 1 and 2 (I think it would be easy to make a strong argument for Thief 2 being the most perfectly-implemented game ever) and Fallout!
Give me another half-hour, I'm sure I'd come up with a few more absolutely sublime, life-changing games, that were somehow left off this list.
But seriously, nothing from the Thief series? Fuhgeddaboudit. Crap list.
No Panzer Dragoon Saga!!!
No Dungeon Master!!!
No Ultima Underworld II!!!
Where the hell are Ultima IV and Ultima VII?
Where the hell is System Shock II?
^^^^ These are all games that I play every few years because they're just that great, keeping old systems around and tirelessly tweaking emulators as necessary. This list is just shameful.
"It didn't even make the top ten - which is how you know this "list" is a joke." Agreed. If either Ultima IV or VII were right up there, the list would have credibility. As it is, it's a Nintendo and console-biased joke. No list of best games is going to be uncontentious though.