The gameplay balances out considerably at the 2nd of the 3 difficulty levels. (Normal, Ruthless, Psychotic).
Normal is best described as easymode, Ruthless is normal, and Psychotic is hard.
If the difficulties were renamed as such then they'd be more accurate. I highly recommend that you play on Ruthless. In particular, precision targeting and non-lock shooting become more important to disabling or killing quickly. This is because at ahigher difficulty, enemies hit harder so they must be handled faster and more efficiently.
You can go inside buildings here and there, but generally only for boss missions and the buildings are large enough that they don't really restrain your freedom of movement since it'd kinda suck to go from superleaping to bashing your head on the ceiling.
The game has 3 Agency car types that are infinitely supplied from your central base and are 8-10 times more durable than non-Agency cars. Agency cars are super-cars built for your super agent. The handling is very good, far better than GTA and Saints Row. But this is only the case for Agency cars, they don't want you in normal cars, which are not at all fun to drive since they handle like well, normal cars. At level 4 driving: The Supercar has twin high-caliber gatling guns, The SUV can stick to surfaces and jump, the truckcab gets nitrous for extra acceleration, at ramming speed it one-hit-kills other cars.
No depth to melee. Higher levels just knocks him farther away since it usually kills in one or two hits, and the first one will leave them a crumpled mess on the ground for stomping to death.
You can throw them quite far. There is an achievement for throwing objects more than 200 feet. You can do this with a body.
The demo faces you against the latino gang because the game gangs scale upwards in difficulty like in almost any game. The latino gang is the starting point, and thus the best place to start the player in the demo since they would get to experience beginner level gameplay so that they can contrast it with end-game gameplay.
If the races disturb you, what about this?:
Why is it alright for a black person to kill a black person, but not for a white person to kill a black person? How about asians killing black people? Indians? What color person is allowed to kill what color of victim?
Thing is, the act of killing others should be far more disturbing than the incidental skin colors involved. If you can get past that, the skin color is a very minor detail. And many gamers find no problem getting past that(because they know that it's a game, not violence).
I was thinking in the car today(dangerous habit, I'll try to quit)....and I thought about how parents get blamed for a bad kid. Or media's bad influences, having taught the kid to behave the way they do. If the media isn't teaching the kids to be bad, were the parents teaching the children to be bad? The parents are supposed to train the children out of bad behavior.
It seems to me that bad behavior is the natural course for a child to follow. It's not that "_____ is corrupting our kids!" the kids would have ended up that way either way without the parents actively training the kids to STOP. It'll be easier or harder for some parents depending on the kid's personality. It's their responsibility of course, regardless of how difficult the task may be(Some of you may have read the letter sent to Penny-Arcade from a guardian of a teen who killed a homeless man for fun and then blamed games, the parents seem to have put in quite a lot of effort in raising the kid and failed anyway).
Anyway, another reason it's comforting to blame new and unfamiliar media like rock music, rap, movies, games, etc. for corrupting the youth is that it's a nice shield. It's depressing to think that youth may naturally turn out pretty crappy on their own without outside guidance.
It's not like humanity has a good track record for keeping its behavior in check. It took a long while to develop civilization, training wild humans not to screw each other at every turn for fun or profit. And it's still a work in progress. So it's nice to have games as a scapegoat. Probably why it's popular.
I'm entirely in agreement with you. I think what's happening is that there are weaknesses in the current industry model popping up. The $60 dollar price tag is still not that bad considering the massive cost of development. The margins are getting strained to the edge and so businesses are looking for alternatives to make their money. The resale market, gamefly's rental/try-before-buy system, and Steam's electronic distribution/self-publishing.
The funny thing is that though development costs have skyrocketed, the gameplay time has dropped considerably, 12-20 hour games being fairly standard. The quality difference between old games and new games is part of why it costs so much more. A lot more work goes into fabricating these experiences, high-detail textures, audio, mo-cap, programming, what-have-you. But is the total enjoyment scaling appropriately? I would say that it isn't. The high-end high-cost content burns brightly, but fades quickly since it's hard to produce a large amount of gameplay at those levels of costs. Also, the pretty and new graphics cease to impress once the gamers have played half-way through and have grown accustomed to that level of graphics. Graphics are only good if they're new for most gamers because they're making their judgement via comparison to what's new. Quake 1 had amazing graphics, but all these years later, it's the same game, but it would be considered terrible graphics.
To sum it up, the high-end development is eating huge budgets, and producing even less substance. Lots of dressing and little meat.
Nintendo understood this, at least partially, in that their Wii console's goal was not to compete graphically with the Xbox360 and PS3. They're generating value via gameplay. Lower development costs, giving more profits, and gamers are still enjoying the games despite the lesser graphical capability.
However, Nintendo only got this partly right. Technology has advanced gaming for a long time and will continue to do so. Strong hardware specs when used to create advanced gameplay is a real benefit to the gamer. Games like Dead Rising and Crackdown would not be possible on weak hardware incapable of streaming large masses of zombies, or a massive seamless traversed in large leaps and bounds. This is a worthwhile investment of development and technology, since it directly impacts core gameplay and is not just eyecandy.
Hopefully, through an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, those who figure out how to get the most value for the least money will come out the best in this process. Unfortunately, not all businesses will survive.
(Taken from my post in another thread yesterday, it's actually more relevant for this article than the last:P)
A person only needs technical ability as far as it is useful to the person. The person in accounting doesn't need to know how to fix factory machinery.
The cost of learning how to fix something yourself vs. the cost of getting someone else to do it. Take whichever is lower.
I'm entirely in agreement with you. I think what's happening is that there are weaknesses in the current industry model popping up. The $60 dollar price tag is still not that bad considering the massive cost of development. The margins are getting strained to the edge and so businesses are looking for alternatives to make their money. The resale market, gamefly's rental/try-before-buy system, and Steam's electronic distribution/self-publishing.
The funny thing is that though development costs have skyrocketed, the gameplay time has dropped considerably, 12-20 hour games being fairly standard. The quality difference between old games and new games is part of why it costs so much more. A lot more work goes into fabricating these experiences, high-detail textures, audio, mo-cap, programming, what-have-you. But is the total enjoyment scaling appropriately? I would say that it isn't. The high-end high-cost content burns brightly, but fades quickly since it's hard to produce a large amount of gameplay at those levels of costs. Also, the pretty and new graphics cease to impress once the gamers have played half-way through and have grown accustomed to that level of graphics. Graphics are only good if they're new for most gamers because they're making their judgement via comparison to what's new. Quake 1 had amazing graphics, but all these years later, it's the same game, but it would be considered terrible graphics.
To sum it up, the high-end development is eating huge budgets, and producing even less substance. Lots of dressing and little meat.
Nintendo understood this, at least partially, in that their Wii console's goal was not to compete graphically with the Xbox360 and PS3. They're generating value via gameplay. Lower development costs, giving more profits, and gamers are still enjoying the games despite the lesser graphical capability.
However, Nintendo only got this partly right. Technology has advanced gaming for a long time and will continue to do so. Strong hardware specs when used to create advanced gameplay is a real benefit to the gamer. Games like Dead Rising and Crackdown would not be possible on weak hardware incapable of streaming large masses of zombies, or a massive seamless traversed in large leaps and bounds. This is a worthwhile investment of development and technology, since it directly impacts core gameplay and is not just eyecandy.
Hopefully, through an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, those who figure out how to get the most value for the least money will come out the best in this process. Unfortunately, not all businesses will survive.
I've heard the same about the used game sales. I've also seen articles showing the cost breakdown of the game leaving the profit margin for the retail store pretty slim, like $1-5 dollars per game. Gamestop will pay something like 15-25 bucks for a used game, and then sell it back out for 5-10 dollars less than retail. They're making far more money selling the used games rather than the new ones apparently.
This doesn't particularly bother me, so long as I get the games I want, at the prices I'm agreeable with. It's just business. The practice will succeed/fail on its own merits.
I need some links to Bush getting blasted for spreading freedom. I have yet to see this happen.
What I do see, is criticism of Bush for going to war. I haven't seen anyone arguing that giving Iraq freedom is bad; what they're arguing is that the cost is not worth it to the American people. The price of their freedom is high, why are we the ones footing the bill?
Is it our duty to impose it? That's a moral argument and jury is still out on that one. Is it economically adviseable? We'd have to look at the opportunity cost of the money spent on Iraq, what other places could we have spent the money, and weigh the benefits against each other. Is America going to benefit more from spending money on a war in the middle east than spending it on infrastructure, deficit, health care, social security, space program, etc. etc.? Iraq may benefit, but what is the value of Iraq's freedom to America?
This is a recent article regarding affirmative action, and a strict meritocracy enrollment, in some colleges today.
From the link: "But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it -- specifically, for ignoring highly qualified Asian-American applicants in favor of other minorities with less stellar test scores and grades."
More from the article: "What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill does not mirror the ethnic face of California, which is 12 percent Asian, already more than twice the national average. But it is the new face of the state's vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses."
Your friend needs to loosen up. I'd be considered an Oriental.
But my preferred term of address is just "American".
It's not big deal if you want to use the "Asian-" prefix if there's a need to specify my race or racial features for additional identification detail. Otherwise I'd prefer to just be considered American since I was born and raised in New Jersey.
Dell actually recommends the exact upgrades "for an optimal Vista experience". So if you're using the exact configuration that they recommended for Vista(they even set aside a page listing out which upgrade areas where you lack the recommended parts), how is it that they still can't be sure that my laptop is ready for Vista?
They also keep a support sticker on the bottom so they know exactly what hardware is inside when they look up the support sticker. They also require that support sticker when registering for the vista upgrade.
I don't think Dell's problem is that they don't know who would be ready to get the upgrade. I just think they had no plan at all for processing all the discs they promised to send out.
GoW would not translate well to kb/m. Considering the map layout and movement speeds involved in this game, being able to use mouse precision would drastically change the gameplay. It'd be like playing counter-strike with everybody's walk button taped down.
Right now melee combat is a very significant equalizer in this game since disparity in armament becomes irrelevant once you get up close, which happens fairly regularly since controllers just aren't as precise as mice. If kb/m is used, ranged weapons vastly increase in their deadliness, particularly the one-shot stoppers like the sniper rifle, boomshot, and bow.
It can be moved to PC, but it will require adjustments to core gameplay and renovation of map layouts, because a direct port would not play out anything like the current Gears of War.
Keeping in mind that the legal/illegal does not necessarily indicate whether an action is moral/immoral(as has been relentlessly pointed out over and over throughout this thread), I would nevertheless find this user's action both immoral and illegal.
Though my moral position is highly subjective, my primary reasoning is that while I would enjoy watching an episode for free, watching it before it even airs on TV damages the value of the episode for those who purchased commercial timeslots and funded the creation of the show which I enjoy. This emphasizes a risk in this venue for future investment and increases investor paranoia in funding the shows that I'm watching and would not like to see canceled.
24 is very far off from being canceled from this single incident, but this detail does not justify the action in my eyes. What's going through my mind is:
"What if this had happened to Arrested Development?"
Indeed, though I believe the term "Hardcore gamer" is a concern for consumers to bat around in their debates, not the companies. Since it's their livelihood, I'm sure they would be viewing the market with better detail that just hardcore/not-hardcore(softcore? o.O )
And Gears of War is quite casual. Very short, but fun singleplayer, and quick multiplayer games set on small compact maps with immediate action and fast map turnover. Very little time and effort needs to be invested to enjoy this game. Casual and Hardcore have veered off quite a bit in how they're used, now meaning non-violent vs. violent, which is a different concern.
Namely, violent vs. non-violent is a parental concern. Gamers don't care. Gamers don't care much for violence in videogames, they see points and progress towards a goal. Violence offers a few minutes of giggles when just starting out, but this is soon forgotten when the gamer goes on to actually play the game.
You didn't blow a human beings brains out all over the wall, you just scored a point. We're not grieving for virtual families, we're competing in a game. Playing the game brings the vast majority of the pleasure, not the virtual bloodshed.
The violence is just an easily understood setting for competitive play, because a post-apocalyptic game of lasertag or nerf is far far harder to suspend your imagination for than a war. Thus, the violent or non-violent aspect of casual vs. hardcore ought to be dropped in favor of depth and duration of play arguments.
Small quibble, It's probably true that after the investing is done, they can just let the returns roll in while they're looking at new investments.
But the residual sales are likely taken in account even though they may be less significant than the initial surge. They would just be estimated, weighted for the time value( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value ), and then added into the overall expected return of the investment.
Marketing allows for recognition of a product in addition to its competitors. Knowing that there are multiple alternatives gives you a starting point for comparison and letting you figure out your best choice.
Capital-intensive markets may require a large consumer base in order to exist and suppply that consumer base with a product. If there wasn't marketing to let consumers know it exists, then the consumer base available to sell to may be too small for the company to offer the product, then not even those who would be willing to buy the product can get the product.
Marketing helps society when the market exhibits large economies of scale that would otherwise be foregone with less business.
Marketing is also used by charitable non-profit organizations.
Marketing is a tool that can be used for "good" or for "evil". Much like how a hammer can help build a house for the homeless, or smash your head in. And there's still plenty of grey area in between to deal with as well.
With regards to my job, I can cut my lead time by about a 1/3rd if there is trust. I don't need the 4 pages of legal ass-covering, and I can accept his initial pricing instead of entering the negotiation period for each time I purchase equipment for our factories.
He can profit a bit by screwing me on a purchase once, but he can profit more by giving me good service at good prices with repeat business.
So the "trust" isn't really trust, but it's better than that, it's mutually beneficial. Knowing that we both win by working together is much more comforting than baseless goodwill.
Game theory does dictate the level of "trust" I have. If the game session is short, I have zero trust, because I know that game theory says that in this scenario, his best move is to screw me on the one purchase. I don't know how many times I'll have to buy more of certain items so I'll cover myself until I'm confident I'll have a long-term relationship. If he's aware that I'll be completing a game session soon, he should try to screw me, so I cover at the end. If I know it'll be long-term, I'll use the tit-for-tat arrangement.
In addition to whether or not it works as intended(I'm betting it doesn't), while the 40lb isn't much more than what's already worn. The problem is, some of what's already worn won't be tossed aside just because they've got that suit, some of it will still have to be worn over that suit.
but while I can understand why they'd give awards for the other categories, and while I love Bender/Wakka John Dimaggio's work...
I can't see Marcus Fenix being note-worthy. The VA did a pretty good job with what he had, but the writing wasn't really there to making any special character performance possible, at least IMO.
The character is awfully generic. Big strong soldier-guy with a bad attitude. Gruff. Not particularly special.
*possible spoilers* While the idea of his father being an important scientist having the potential for an interesting story, it didn't make it into the game. Much of the story is implied, but never expressed in any detail (You don't even know anything about why Marcus chose to disobey the order, and why nobody knew about his father's maps till you stumble across it).
I'm sure they're taking any avenues to a solution into consideration and weighing the pros and cons.
The problem with drugs is that they tend to come with unwanted sideeffects. They might want to find an ideal mid-point between a behavioral solutions and a pharmaceutical one. The fewer medications the better.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong(and I wouldn't be suprised), but wasn't the "promised land" occupied when the Jews arrived? Biblical story is that they attacked the occupants(the whole wandering in the desert and Jericho part). Problem is, biblical knowledge of the incident would probably be more common than historical knowledge, so could somebody shine some light on this?
Slashdot Mirror
The gameplay balances out considerably at the 2nd of the 3 difficulty levels. (Normal, Ruthless, Psychotic).
Normal is best described as easymode, Ruthless is normal, and Psychotic is hard.
If the difficulties were renamed as such then they'd be more accurate. I highly recommend that you play on Ruthless. In particular, precision targeting and non-lock shooting become more important to disabling or killing quickly. This is because at ahigher difficulty, enemies hit harder so they must be handled faster and more efficiently.
You can go inside buildings here and there, but generally only for boss missions and the buildings are large enough that they don't really restrain your freedom of movement since it'd kinda suck to go from superleaping to bashing your head on the ceiling.
The game has 3 Agency car types that are infinitely supplied from your central base and are 8-10 times more durable than non-Agency cars. Agency cars are super-cars built for your super agent. The handling is very good, far better than GTA and Saints Row. But this is only the case for Agency cars, they don't want you in normal cars, which are not at all fun to drive since they handle like well, normal cars. At level 4 driving: The Supercar has twin high-caliber gatling guns, The SUV can stick to surfaces and jump, the truckcab gets nitrous for extra acceleration, at ramming speed it one-hit-kills other cars.
No depth to melee. Higher levels just knocks him farther away since it usually kills in one or two hits, and the first one will leave them a crumpled mess on the ground for stomping to death.
You can throw them quite far. There is an achievement for throwing objects more than 200 feet. You can do this with a body.
The demo faces you against the latino gang because the game gangs scale upwards in difficulty like in almost any game. The latino gang is the starting point, and thus the best place to start the player in the demo since they would get to experience beginner level gameplay so that they can contrast it with end-game gameplay.
If the races disturb you, what about this?:
Why is it alright for a black person to kill a black person, but not for a white person to kill a black person? How about asians killing black people? Indians? What color person is allowed to kill what color of victim?
Thing is, the act of killing others should be far more disturbing than the incidental skin colors involved. If you can get past that, the skin color is a very minor detail. And many gamers find no problem getting past that(because they know that it's a game, not violence).
I was thinking in the car today(dangerous habit, I'll try to quit). ...and I thought about how parents get blamed for a bad kid. Or media's bad influences, having taught the kid to behave the way they do. If the media isn't teaching the kids to be bad, were the parents teaching the children to be bad? The parents are supposed to train the children out of bad behavior.
It seems to me that bad behavior is the natural course for a child to follow. It's not that "_____ is corrupting our kids!" the kids would have ended up that way either way without the parents actively training the kids to STOP. It'll be easier or harder for some parents depending on the kid's personality. It's their responsibility of course, regardless of how difficult the task may be(Some of you may have read the letter sent to Penny-Arcade from a guardian of a teen who killed a homeless man for fun and then blamed games, the parents seem to have put in quite a lot of effort in raising the kid and failed anyway).
Anyway, another reason it's comforting to blame new and unfamiliar media like rock music, rap, movies, games, etc. for corrupting the youth is that it's a nice shield. It's depressing to think that youth may naturally turn out pretty crappy on their own without outside guidance.
It's not like humanity has a good track record for keeping its behavior in check. It took a long while to develop civilization, training wild humans not to screw each other at every turn for fun or profit. And it's still a work in progress. So it's nice to have games as a scapegoat. Probably why it's popular.
I'm entirely in agreement with you. I think what's happening is that there are weaknesses in the current industry model popping up. The $60 dollar price tag is still not that bad considering the massive cost of development. The margins are getting strained to the edge and so businesses are looking for alternatives to make their money. The resale market, gamefly's rental/try-before-buy system, and Steam's electronic distribution/self-publishing.
The funny thing is that though development costs have skyrocketed, the gameplay time has dropped considerably, 12-20 hour games being fairly standard. The quality difference between old games and new games is part of why it costs so much more. A lot more work goes into fabricating these experiences, high-detail textures, audio, mo-cap, programming, what-have-you. But is the total enjoyment scaling appropriately? I would say that it isn't. The high-end high-cost content burns brightly, but fades quickly since it's hard to produce a large amount of gameplay at those levels of costs. Also, the pretty and new graphics cease to impress once the gamers have played half-way through and have grown accustomed to that level of graphics. Graphics are only good if they're new for most gamers because they're making their judgement via comparison to what's new. Quake 1 had amazing graphics, but all these years later, it's the same game, but it would be considered terrible graphics.
To sum it up, the high-end development is eating huge budgets, and producing even less substance. Lots of dressing and little meat.
Nintendo understood this, at least partially, in that their Wii console's goal was not to compete graphically with the Xbox360 and PS3. They're generating value via gameplay. Lower development costs, giving more profits, and gamers are still enjoying the games despite the lesser graphical capability.
However, Nintendo only got this partly right. Technology has advanced gaming for a long time and will continue to do so. Strong hardware specs when used to create advanced gameplay is a real benefit to the gamer. Games like Dead Rising and Crackdown would not be possible on weak hardware incapable of streaming large masses of zombies, or a massive seamless traversed in large leaps and bounds. This is a worthwhile investment of development and technology, since it directly impacts core gameplay and is not just eyecandy.
Hopefully, through an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, those who figure out how to get the most value for the least money will come out the best in this process. Unfortunately, not all businesses will survive.
(Taken from my post in another thread yesterday, it's actually more relevant for this article than the last:P)
That's what technicians are for.
A person only needs technical ability as far as it is useful to the person. The person in accounting doesn't need to know how to fix factory machinery.
The cost of learning how to fix something yourself vs. the cost of getting someone else to do it. Take whichever is lower.
I'm entirely in agreement with you. I think what's happening is that there are weaknesses in the current industry model popping up. The $60 dollar price tag is still not that bad considering the massive cost of development. The margins are getting strained to the edge and so businesses are looking for alternatives to make their money. The resale market, gamefly's rental/try-before-buy system, and Steam's electronic distribution/self-publishing.
The funny thing is that though development costs have skyrocketed, the gameplay time has dropped considerably, 12-20 hour games being fairly standard. The quality difference between old games and new games is part of why it costs so much more. A lot more work goes into fabricating these experiences, high-detail textures, audio, mo-cap, programming, what-have-you. But is the total enjoyment scaling appropriately? I would say that it isn't. The high-end high-cost content burns brightly, but fades quickly since it's hard to produce a large amount of gameplay at those levels of costs. Also, the pretty and new graphics cease to impress once the gamers have played half-way through and have grown accustomed to that level of graphics. Graphics are only good if they're new for most gamers because they're making their judgement via comparison to what's new. Quake 1 had amazing graphics, but all these years later, it's the same game, but it would be considered terrible graphics.
To sum it up, the high-end development is eating huge budgets, and producing even less substance. Lots of dressing and little meat.
Nintendo understood this, at least partially, in that their Wii console's goal was not to compete graphically with the Xbox360 and PS3. They're generating value via gameplay. Lower development costs, giving more profits, and gamers are still enjoying the games despite the lesser graphical capability.
However, Nintendo only got this partly right. Technology has advanced gaming for a long time and will continue to do so. Strong hardware specs when used to create advanced gameplay is a real benefit to the gamer. Games like Dead Rising and Crackdown would not be possible on weak hardware incapable of streaming large masses of zombies, or a massive seamless traversed in large leaps and bounds. This is a worthwhile investment of development and technology, since it directly impacts core gameplay and is not just eyecandy.
Hopefully, through an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, those who figure out how to get the most value for the least money will come out the best in this process. Unfortunately, not all businesses will survive.
I've heard the same about the used game sales. I've also seen articles showing the cost breakdown of the game leaving the profit margin for the retail store pretty slim, like $1-5 dollars per game. Gamestop will pay something like 15-25 bucks for a used game, and then sell it back out for 5-10 dollars less than retail. They're making far more money selling the used games rather than the new ones apparently.
This doesn't particularly bother me, so long as I get the games I want, at the prices I'm agreeable with. It's just business. The practice will succeed/fail on its own merits.
I need some links to Bush getting blasted for spreading freedom. I have yet to see this happen.
What I do see, is criticism of Bush for going to war. I haven't seen anyone arguing that giving Iraq freedom is bad; what they're arguing is that the cost is not worth it to the American people. The price of their freedom is high, why are we the ones footing the bill?
Is it our duty to impose it? That's a moral argument and jury is still out on that one. Is it economically adviseable? We'd have to look at the opportunity cost of the money spent on Iraq, what other places could we have spent the money, and weigh the benefits against each other. Is America going to benefit more from spending money on a war in the middle east than spending it on infrastructure, deficit, health care, social security, space program, etc. etc.? Iraq may benefit, but what is the value of Iraq's freedom to America?
These questions are important.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/07/news/asians .php
This is a recent article regarding affirmative action, and a strict meritocracy enrollment, in some colleges today.
From the link: "But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it -- specifically, for ignoring highly qualified Asian-American applicants in favor of other minorities with less stellar test scores and grades."
More from the article: "What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill does not mirror the ethnic face of California, which is 12 percent Asian, already more than twice the national average. But it is the new face of the state's vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses."
Your friend needs to loosen up. I'd be considered an Oriental.
But my preferred term of address is just "American".
It's not big deal if you want to use the "Asian-" prefix if there's a need to specify my race or racial features for additional identification detail. Otherwise I'd prefer to just be considered American since I was born and raised in New Jersey.
So your solution...
Hump white women for world peace? I'll (try to) do my part!
Dell actually recommends the exact upgrades "for an optimal Vista experience". So if you're using the exact configuration that they recommended for Vista(they even set aside a page listing out which upgrade areas where you lack the recommended parts), how is it that they still can't be sure that my laptop is ready for Vista?
They also keep a support sticker on the bottom so they know exactly what hardware is inside when they look up the support sticker. They also require that support sticker when registering for the vista upgrade.
I don't think Dell's problem is that they don't know who would be ready to get the upgrade. I just think they had no plan at all for processing all the discs they promised to send out.
GoW would not translate well to kb/m. Considering the map layout and movement speeds involved in this game, being able to use mouse precision would drastically change the gameplay. It'd be like playing counter-strike with everybody's walk button taped down.
Right now melee combat is a very significant equalizer in this game since disparity in armament becomes irrelevant once you get up close, which happens fairly regularly since controllers just aren't as precise as mice. If kb/m is used, ranged weapons vastly increase in their deadliness, particularly the one-shot stoppers like the sniper rifle, boomshot, and bow.
It can be moved to PC, but it will require adjustments to core gameplay and renovation of map layouts, because a direct port would not play out anything like the current Gears of War.
Keeping in mind that the legal/illegal does not necessarily indicate whether an action is moral/immoral(as has been relentlessly pointed out over and over throughout this thread), I would nevertheless find this user's action both immoral and illegal.
Though my moral position is highly subjective, my primary reasoning is that while I would enjoy watching an episode for free, watching it before it even airs on TV damages the value of the episode for those who purchased commercial timeslots and funded the creation of the show which I enjoy. This emphasizes a risk in this venue for future investment and increases investor paranoia in funding the shows that I'm watching and would not like to see canceled.
24 is very far off from being canceled from this single incident, but this detail does not justify the action in my eyes. What's going through my mind is:
"What if this had happened to Arrested Development?"
That would have pissed me off.
Indeed, though I believe the term "Hardcore gamer" is a concern for consumers to bat around in their debates, not the companies. Since it's their livelihood, I'm sure they would be viewing the market with better detail that just hardcore/not-hardcore(softcore? o.O )
And Gears of War is quite casual. Very short, but fun singleplayer, and quick multiplayer games set on small compact maps with immediate action and fast map turnover. Very little time and effort needs to be invested to enjoy this game. Casual and Hardcore have veered off quite a bit in how they're used, now meaning non-violent vs. violent, which is a different concern.
Namely, violent vs. non-violent is a parental concern. Gamers don't care. Gamers don't care much for violence in videogames, they see points and progress towards a goal. Violence offers a few minutes of giggles when just starting out, but this is soon forgotten when the gamer goes on to actually play the game.
You didn't blow a human beings brains out all over the wall, you just scored a point. We're not grieving for virtual families, we're competing in a game. Playing the game brings the vast majority of the pleasure, not the virtual bloodshed.
The violence is just an easily understood setting for competitive play, because a post-apocalyptic game of lasertag or nerf is far far harder to suspend your imagination for than a war. Thus, the violent or non-violent aspect of casual vs. hardcore ought to be dropped in favor of depth and duration of play arguments.
Small quibble,
It's probably true that after the investing is done, they can just let the returns roll in while they're looking at new investments.
But the residual sales are likely taken in account even though they may be less significant than the initial surge. They would just be estimated, weighted for the time value( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value ), and then added into the overall expected return of the investment.
Exactly, which brings us to the real question...
Who cares?
I don't think that it matters whether or not it's happening.
We need to fight back. Breed back the enemy! Get out the vote!
I'll be doing my part.
(Or at least trying.)
Marketing allows for recognition of a product in addition to its competitors. Knowing that there are multiple alternatives gives you a starting point for comparison and letting you figure out your best choice.
Capital-intensive markets may require a large consumer base in order to exist and suppply that consumer base with a product. If there wasn't marketing to let consumers know it exists, then the consumer base available to sell to may be too small for the company to offer the product, then not even those who would be willing to buy the product can get the product.
Marketing helps society when the market exhibits large economies of scale that would otherwise be foregone with less business.
Marketing is also used by charitable non-profit organizations.
Marketing is a tool that can be used for "good" or for "evil". Much like how a hammer can help build a house for the homeless, or smash your head in. And there's still plenty of grey area in between to deal with as well.
Interesting,
With regards to my job, I can cut my lead time by about a 1/3rd if there is trust. I don't need the 4 pages of legal ass-covering, and I can accept his initial pricing instead of entering the negotiation period for each time I purchase equipment for our factories.
He can profit a bit by screwing me on a purchase once, but he can profit more by giving me good service at good prices with repeat business.
So the "trust" isn't really trust, but it's better than that, it's mutually beneficial. Knowing that we both win by working together is much more comforting than baseless goodwill.
Game theory does dictate the level of "trust" I have. If the game session is short, I have zero trust, because I know that game theory says that in this scenario, his best move is to screw me on the one purchase. I don't know how many times I'll have to buy more of certain items so I'll cover myself until I'm confident I'll have a long-term relationship. If he's aware that I'll be completing a game session soon, he should try to screw me, so I cover at the end. If I know it'll be long-term, I'll use the tit-for-tat arrangement.
Just a micro-level anecdote.
In addition to whether or not it works as intended(I'm betting it doesn't), while the 40lb isn't much more than what's already worn. The problem is, some of what's already worn won't be tossed aside just because they've got that suit, some of it will still have to be worn over that suit.
but while I can understand why they'd give awards for the other categories, and while I love Bender/Wakka John Dimaggio's work...
I can't see Marcus Fenix being note-worthy. The VA did a pretty good job with what he had, but the writing wasn't really there to making any special character performance possible, at least IMO.
The character is awfully generic. Big strong soldier-guy with a bad attitude. Gruff. Not particularly special.
*possible spoilers*
While the idea of his father being an important scientist having the potential for an interesting story, it didn't make it into the game. Much of the story is implied, but never expressed in any detail (You don't even know anything about why Marcus chose to disobey the order, and why nobody knew about his father's maps till you stumble across it).
I'm sure they're taking any avenues to a solution into consideration and weighing the pros and cons.
The problem with drugs is that they tend to come with unwanted sideeffects. They might want to find an ideal mid-point between a behavioral solutions and a pharmaceutical one. The fewer medications the better.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong(and I wouldn't be suprised), but wasn't the "promised land" occupied when the Jews arrived? Biblical story is that they attacked the occupants(the whole wandering in the desert and Jericho part). Problem is, biblical knowledge of the incident would probably be more common than historical knowledge, so could somebody shine some light on this?