That's true, but I do agree with GP about taking a more optimistic approach. Every time I read Slashdot I'm always hearing about how this is the end and all our rights are going away, regardless of the fact that compared to 1787 the rights of a majority of Americans have improved, or the fact that government exposure to journalism has increased enormously compared to the days when all rooms were smoke-filled and all papers were typeset. I'm fairly certain that if Slashdot had been around for the last two centuries, I'd easily be able to dig up the same depressing posts from any point in time, putting forth a phony zeitgeist that everything is getting worse. This is not a plea for apathy, that would absolutely make things worse, but I'm just saying that I appreciate a little, measured glass-half-full thinking every now and then.
His entire species dies like every year, I don't think it would have the same impact. Though I would love to see Future Zoidberg (his friend Jesus?), voiced by Leonard Nimoy...
Me neither, and I read an awful lot of internet. I knew about the Microsoft's Project Natal months before it was even announced, but I've never heard of Bing. I find it difficult to believe they've beaten Yahoo! unless they're using targeted mind control on other cities or something...
Whenever a new game comes out, Gamestop is immediately competing with the retail price, offering it for about $5 less. In many cases, they will even deliberately not stock new copies. To save $5, people are giving $55 dollars to a company that does nothing, rather than $60 to the studio that actually made the game (minus cuts to all sorts of people, but you get the point). If you're against ticket scalping, (which should be protected under "normal" docrtine, but doing so makes life suck) I don't think it's very hard to see that game companies have a case here. Right now, studios are turning towards more cheaply priced digital distribution as a solution to this. Are you really satisfied with no resale rights? The article also talks about ongoing content, which can be a plus but for many companies (I'm looking at you, Namco Bandai!) it creates a dangerous temptation to simply reduce the originally intended amount of content.
That said, they still can and really need to take matters into their own hands. Publishers still sell new games to Gamestop, and even provide them with special content/items. That's insane. If their losses are really that great, publishers need to stop providing these things to Gamestop. If Billy the Casual Gamer needs to find a pure retail store because Gamestop can't get Mario Party 8 at launch, that's probably where he's going to be shopping from now on. And if Gamestop no longer has the coolest freaking preorder items, guess where the ubergamers are shopping? I assume the only reason they have access to all these preorder items to begin with is because they won't stock anything but preorders, and companies feel garnering those is better than nothing. It's not. Cut them off if you're so unified about this, and I guarantee they'll offer a cut the next day. Slowly killing them through digital distribution is like boiling a toad, and it hurts the consumer a lot more.
Right now on Amazon you can get a PSP-3000 and 16GB Memory Stick for $6.60 less than the PSP Go. By the time the thing actually goes on sale, that gap could widen to something more considerable. The screen is smaller, the UMD drive is gone, the only real features you're getting are smallness (is that a feature or a bug when it comes to the PSP?) and Bluetooth. According to their presentation they're not planning anything exclusive to it software-wise. It's probably a good purchase if and only if you want to use your PSP as your primary music player (the old one was kinda huge for that, and didn't have Bluetooth control/output). Otherwise, no...
The EyeToy/PlayStation Eye has had some pretty amazing demos too, although I think you're right to point out that depth perception is new. This is basically two EyeToys, plus some decent software taking advantage of that fact. I think the Achilles' heel of this kind of technology is the install base, though. The launch will be neat, but more developers aren't going to sign on unless it's wildly popular. You could do an awful lot more with the PlayStation Eye, too, but interest always wanes after E3. I'm not against Natal (except for the name), I hope it succeeds, but history doesn't seem to be on its side...
The writing for him was pretty good too. The dialog for all the characters was good, but his was more or less spot on for the original McCoy; it wouldn't have been out of place in TOS, or at least the original movies. And it managed to not be too, um, "post-Trek." "Dammit" and "doctor" were juxtaposed, but it wasn't just a rehash of his rare catchphrase, which a lot of fan and non-canon work usually uses in an (ironic) attempt to build credibility. The virus and ensuing hilarity were also exactly the kind of thing you could expect from McCoy. It recalled several scenes from original Star Trek, but still managed to be completely fresh material. I have a lot of issues with the movie, but that's one part I loved...
You've highlighted the worst part of this whole thing: nothing is canon but Enterprise. That's like the exact opposite of what we wanted...
Re:Vulcan's mysterious sister world Hoth
on
Reviews: Star Trek
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· Score: 1
Wow, you seem short on things there are no fathomable explanations for. Here, let me give you some of mine:
The Romulans keeping their shields down after their jammer went out is like, uh... starting to drill a beehive and then standing there with a rip in your suit. It doesn't matter if they saw the Enterprise or not, it isn't the only thing in existence with a transporter pad.
For that matter, what the fuck was the rest of humanity doing during that window of opportunity? They're attacking your planet! Beam up and kick ass!
Two Romulan miners in a row? As movie villains? Trying to use a previously unmentioned substance to destroy the Earth? This isn't a plothole so much as, wtf are the odds?
According to the new paradigm, the Little Red Hen is greedy and selfish.
That's not a valid comparison at all. Presumably all the animals in that story had full access to and ownership of the grain, land, means of harvest, means of threshing, means of milling, and means of baking. The Red Hen obviously deserves to reap the full benefits of her labor, since everyone else had exactly the same opportunity but blew it. The real world isn't quite so fair and magical, however.
The iPhone's getting much more love from Japanese developers than from Japanese consumers, it seems. Microsoft set unbelievable piles of money on fire to get a handful of Japanese developers, but without any particular plan on their part to be a gaming system Apple already has a Final Fantasy game (I guess CD isn't nominally FF but it has all the Moogles and fixins of an FF) and a Metal Gear Solid game lined up. It's a really weird contrast, perhaps th iPod touch will take off as a gaming platform there...
Didn't the original reports tout this as a "portable computer"? This is still what it appears to be. It was the western media that labeled it a "laptop" and ran with it.
No, they didn't. According to TFA (as well as TFA this is retracting), the Times of India reported that it was a laptop and other news sources picked it up from there. I'm a little curious as to how this left the blog-level and made it to NPR, but the government itself was hyping it as their answer to the $100 laptop, which is clearly not the case.
Well, with the way ratings work, I'm not sure how advertisers would even be able to measure this. By virtue of either having a big packet labeled "TV" on your desk, or having a tech guy coming out to "upgrade" your set meter, Nielsen viewers are probably skewed to be much more aware of the change than any other random set of people. Advertisers can conjecture all they want, but I believe in that industry the numbers are sacred, even if there is a serious flaw with the process...
Umm, you do realize the ESRB is a self-regulatory commission, right? It was created by the ESA, and if you RTFA you'd know that the ESA is fighting government regulation tooth and nail. I guess their rating system could be better if, say, it just paralleled the MPAA's, but scrapping the entire organization and starting over from scratch would be anything but productive...
You do realize you're comparing a concept of "race" with roots in mythology and folklore thousands of years old to a modern understanding of race based on scientific discoveries, right? Back then, the various parts of Europe thought of each other as different species. There are next to no actual differences across the "races" in the real world, most of the perceived ones are just stereotypes. That is the difference here.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true, but I do agree with GP about taking a more optimistic approach. Every time I read Slashdot I'm always hearing about how this is the end and all our rights are going away, regardless of the fact that compared to 1787 the rights of a majority of Americans have improved, or the fact that government exposure to journalism has increased enormously compared to the days when all rooms were smoke-filled and all papers were typeset. I'm fairly certain that if Slashdot had been around for the last two centuries, I'd easily be able to dig up the same depressing posts from any point in time, putting forth a phony zeitgeist that everything is getting worse. This is not a plea for apathy, that would absolutely make things worse, but I'm just saying that I appreciate a little, measured glass-half-full thinking every now and then.
Clearly the Ferengi secretly beat them.
His entire species dies like every year, I don't think it would have the same impact. Though I would love to see Future Zoidberg (his friend Jesus?), voiced by Leonard Nimoy...
Bender would probably be Mike the TV...
Me neither, and I read an awful lot of internet. I knew about the Microsoft's Project Natal months before it was even announced, but I've never heard of Bing. I find it difficult to believe they've beaten Yahoo! unless they're using targeted mind control on other cities or something...
We're apparently at 8. I meant Mario Party 9. Sorry Billy!
Whenever a new game comes out, Gamestop is immediately competing with the retail price, offering it for about $5 less. In many cases, they will even deliberately not stock new copies. To save $5, people are giving $55 dollars to a company that does nothing, rather than $60 to the studio that actually made the game (minus cuts to all sorts of people, but you get the point). If you're against ticket scalping, (which should be protected under "normal" docrtine, but doing so makes life suck) I don't think it's very hard to see that game companies have a case here. Right now, studios are turning towards more cheaply priced digital distribution as a solution to this. Are you really satisfied with no resale rights? The article also talks about ongoing content, which can be a plus but for many companies (I'm looking at you, Namco Bandai!) it creates a dangerous temptation to simply reduce the originally intended amount of content.
That said, they still can and really need to take matters into their own hands. Publishers still sell new games to Gamestop, and even provide them with special content/items. That's insane. If their losses are really that great, publishers need to stop providing these things to Gamestop. If Billy the Casual Gamer needs to find a pure retail store because Gamestop can't get Mario Party 8 at launch, that's probably where he's going to be shopping from now on. And if Gamestop no longer has the coolest freaking preorder items, guess where the ubergamers are shopping? I assume the only reason they have access to all these preorder items to begin with is because they won't stock anything but preorders, and companies feel garnering those is better than nothing. It's not. Cut them off if you're so unified about this, and I guarantee they'll offer a cut the next day. Slowly killing them through digital distribution is like boiling a toad, and it hurts the consumer a lot more.
Right now on Amazon you can get a PSP-3000 and 16GB Memory Stick for $6.60 less than the PSP Go. By the time the thing actually goes on sale, that gap could widen to something more considerable. The screen is smaller, the UMD drive is gone, the only real features you're getting are smallness (is that a feature or a bug when it comes to the PSP?) and Bluetooth. According to their presentation they're not planning anything exclusive to it software-wise. It's probably a good purchase if and only if you want to use your PSP as your primary music player (the old one was kinda huge for that, and didn't have Bluetooth control/output). Otherwise, no...
The EyeToy/PlayStation Eye has had some pretty amazing demos too, although I think you're right to point out that depth perception is new. This is basically two EyeToys, plus some decent software taking advantage of that fact. I think the Achilles' heel of this kind of technology is the install base, though. The launch will be neat, but more developers aren't going to sign on unless it's wildly popular. You could do an awful lot more with the PlayStation Eye, too, but interest always wanes after E3. I'm not against Natal (except for the name), I hope it succeeds, but history doesn't seem to be on its side...
The writing for him was pretty good too. The dialog for all the characters was good, but his was more or less spot on for the original McCoy; it wouldn't have been out of place in TOS, or at least the original movies. And it managed to not be too, um, "post-Trek." "Dammit" and "doctor" were juxtaposed, but it wasn't just a rehash of his rare catchphrase, which a lot of fan and non-canon work usually uses in an (ironic) attempt to build credibility. The virus and ensuing hilarity were also exactly the kind of thing you could expect from McCoy. It recalled several scenes from original Star Trek, but still managed to be completely fresh material. I have a lot of issues with the movie, but that's one part I loved...
You've highlighted the worst part of this whole thing: nothing is canon but Enterprise. That's like the exact opposite of what we wanted...
Wow, you seem short on things there are no fathomable explanations for. Here, let me give you some of mine:
The Romulans keeping their shields down after their jammer went out is like, uh... starting to drill a beehive and then standing there with a rip in your suit. It doesn't matter if they saw the Enterprise or not, it isn't the only thing in existence with a transporter pad.
For that matter, what the fuck was the rest of humanity doing during that window of opportunity? They're attacking your planet! Beam up and kick ass!
Two Romulan miners in a row? As movie villains? Trying to use a previously unmentioned substance to destroy the Earth? This isn't a plothole so much as, wtf are the odds?
Pike's slug. What happened to that guy?
They didn't make the Xbox from scratch, they made it from a computer...
That sounds like something that could only be a trend in the Space '50s...
According to the new paradigm, the Little Red Hen is greedy and selfish.
That's not a valid comparison at all. Presumably all the animals in that story had full access to and ownership of the grain, land, means of harvest, means of threshing, means of milling, and means of baking. The Red Hen obviously deserves to reap the full benefits of her labor, since everyone else had exactly the same opportunity but blew it. The real world isn't quite so fair and magical, however.
Not to mention yet another demonstration of the new administration's preference for Apple products over Microsoft products.
Huh? The man uses a Zune and a Blackberry rather than an iPhone...
At least they're not dupes...
You can enter the account someone else is using and then remove it. They should really add a check for that...
In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
Actually, that was Gerald Ford. Not saying whether that's meaningful or not, that's up to you, but I figured it was worth mentioning.
The iPhone's getting much more love from Japanese developers than from Japanese consumers, it seems. Microsoft set unbelievable piles of money on fire to get a handful of Japanese developers, but without any particular plan on their part to be a gaming system Apple already has a Final Fantasy game (I guess CD isn't nominally FF but it has all the Moogles and fixins of an FF) and a Metal Gear Solid game lined up. It's a really weird contrast, perhaps th iPod touch will take off as a gaming platform there...
Didn't the original reports tout this as a "portable computer"? This is still what it appears to be. It was the western media that labeled it a "laptop" and ran with it.
No, they didn't. According to TFA (as well as TFA this is retracting), the Times of India reported that it was a laptop and other news sources picked it up from there. I'm a little curious as to how this left the blog-level and made it to NPR, but the government itself was hyping it as their answer to the $100 laptop, which is clearly not the case.
Well, with the way ratings work, I'm not sure how advertisers would even be able to measure this. By virtue of either having a big packet labeled "TV" on your desk, or having a tech guy coming out to "upgrade" your set meter, Nielsen viewers are probably skewed to be much more aware of the change than any other random set of people. Advertisers can conjecture all they want, but I believe in that industry the numbers are sacred, even if there is a serious flaw with the process...
Umm, you do realize the ESRB is a self-regulatory commission, right? It was created by the ESA, and if you RTFA you'd know that the ESA is fighting government regulation tooth and nail. I guess their rating system could be better if, say, it just paralleled the MPAA's, but scrapping the entire organization and starting over from scratch would be anything but productive...
You do realize you're comparing a concept of "race" with roots in mythology and folklore thousands of years old to a modern understanding of race based on scientific discoveries, right? Back then, the various parts of Europe thought of each other as different species. There are next to no actual differences across the "races" in the real world, most of the perceived ones are just stereotypes. That is the difference here.
Oh, in that case see my parallel post.