When it comes down to it, you cannot explain away that leveling is usually described as grinding.
Yeah, so if "leveling" is the point of the game for you, you have an objective case to make that it's just rat-pellet. My point is that there are other aspects, and that for some people the social/cooperative aspect precludes leveling as the primary aim. Thus, the game is not inherently reducible to rat-pellet even though, in your case, it is.
The flaw with WoW is that advancement of your character has no ultimate goal other than sheer advancement:
So what, pray tell, is the ultimate point of the game in the first place? If the answer is "to have fun" (and it should be) and if people have fun leveling up their characters (and several million seem to) than it seems you have no point.
I'm not aware of any "proof" that stimulus/response can not account for all of human behavior. It seems to me that that is essentially what any strict-materialist, deterministic view of human self hood boils down to. Of course, I don't think that stimulus/response is a term that most modern materialists would use first, but it seems as accurate as any non-technical summary could be.
If you want to prove materialism wrong, or demonstrate that materialism rules out stimulus/response, please go ahead. This is a hobby of mine, and I'm curious to hear what you've got.
If you're going to talk about stimulus/response than I'm afraid the neurological complexity is orders of magnitude above the complexity of game design. I don't know if you know anything about algorithm analysis, but what you're essentially doing here is quibbling over the value of a constant term when the algorithm is clearly exponential.
b - value of complexity
Furthermore, if you redefine the scope of the system to exclude the neurological component, you're still left with the question: why should we care about complexity? Are simple games not also fun? Sure, tic-tac-toe may get boring, but how about pente? That's pretty simple. How about tag? Also relatively simple. Perhaps the interpersonal aspect of WoW, which is augmented by simplistic gameplay, outweighs the relative simplicity of the rule set.
If anything, it seems vaguely sociopathic to completely focus on the asocial aspect of the game, don't you think?
c - appeal to skill
Finally, it's again not clear that skill is not required in WoW, or that skill should even be that important in games. Plenty of games - like a simple race - don't require a lot of skill. Others require coordination (like athletic sports) others require mental skills (like chess) others require elements of both (say survival paintball). And I'd say that organizing and holding together a 30 - 50 member raid displays exactly the type of skill that someone who excludes social aspects of the game may be lacking. It's entirely possible that part of the success of WoW has been that, rather than cater to the kinds of people who want several 300 page manuals before they can use their imagination (that'd be you, AD&D fans) they simply created a simple, fun, attractive world and allowed people to interact in it.
I think people dismiss the skinner box criticism because its all too real.
I didn't dismiss it because it was false, I dismissed it because it wasn't useful. It's not useful because you can apply it to all (or most) human activity. The point you're missing is that the same skinner box criticism can be applied to: - MMORPGs - FPSers - reading a book - watching a movie - eating pie - interpersonal relationships - human kindness - charity work - etc.
The stimulus/response paradigm fails to distinguish activities that the author clearly intended to distinguish. Thus, it's not a useful paradigm (in this case). Whether or not its accurate is another matter altogether.
I'm shocked to hear such a well-reasoned, articulate explanation of why Halo is such a great game. It makes my heart warm. Yeah, I'm a Halo fanboi, but it's because of the artistic vision of Bungie. They're one of the few game companies that I feel really elevate gaming to an art.
Of course, Halo multiplayer is a different beast altogether...
In any case, it's their legacy of refined story/music/narrative/character that make me hopeful for the eventual movie. That, and I Love Bees (ilovebees.com).
Old pet peeve: compare games to the old rat-and-the-pill analogy
New pet peeve: my style of game play is better than yours
I suppose I shouldn't be to harsh. This is just a public message board, not a peer-reviewed academic journal. But it's still annoying when people try to pass off personal preference as some kind of objective value statement. in this case you say "Sure many of you can't stand PvP, but in truth static quests, bad scripting, and poor AI will never beat playing against a human mind".
Aside the question-begging (does non-PvP have to involve bad scripting?) what I found truly obnoxious is the false idea that you can either play against an AI, or against a human. Believe it or not, some people don't see that question purely as picking your opponent, but they turn your dichotomy on its head and ask "who can I play with?"
I get that you like PvP. And I'm not going to try and tell you that you shouldn't. But your myopically conflict-oriented viewpoint isn't the only one out there, you know. A lot of people like WoW because they enjoy cooperation. I love to shoot my buddies with a rocket launcher in the original Halo, but I also got intense satisfaction out of playing cooperatively with them against hordes of AI. Now you could play team vs. team, but A - some people don't enjoy "killing" each other, especially in an RPG where you actually do some type of damage to the person you "kill" and B - it's (so far) impossible to wrap massive PvP into a story line with any kind of script.
So in the end, you're no better off than the original article. You're trying to pass off personal preference as objective criticism.
You're a rat, and the game keeps sending you to look for bigger pellets.
People never tire of making that analogy, do they? But it's probably about the most worthless analogy you could make. Reducing an activity to stimulus/response may seem clever, but the trouble is that it works for pretty much every human behavior imaginable. And it certainly works for every leisure activity.
The problem is that games are supposed to be fun. You're going to have to work really hard to come up with an alternative criteria. And since fun is pretty subjective, there's really not much room for criticism.
Art, literature, poetry, drama and film all have associate bodies of academic criticism and pop-derivatives. So there's a semi-objective framework from which you can criticize these works even if they are popular. Everyone rushes out to see "Titanic", but it still had some really, really lame dialog.
Unless you're going to make a similar attack on gaming (e.g. lame dialog, bad graphics, etc.) it's really hard to make any criticism that doesn't reduce to petulant whining. There simple is no cohesive theory of gaming criticism (outside of technical elements), and so before you start slinging criticisms you need to build the framework. I don't see that happening in this article.
I'm pretty curious about that too. There are hundreds of read reviews - over a thousand total. Are these just folks who've gotten hold of pre-release copies, or is it (as you surmised) possibly just wishful thinking.
Check out the CNet comparison. Look at the rankings from the editors vs. from the readers. Whoops, just noticed the article actually links to Wired when it says it links to CNet. No matter, here's the CNet side by side comparison: http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6464_7-6551960.html?t ag=cnetfd.mt
Here's how the editors ranked the systems:
1. PS3 (8.8) 2. Xbox 360 (8.4) 3. Wii (8.2)
Here's how the readers ranked the systems:
1. Wii (8.0) 2. Xbox 360 (7.5) 3. PS3 (7.1)
Aside from the full one-point "grade inflation" the readers ranked the systems in exactly the opposite order that the editors did. Is this because the editors are playing on machines they didn't pay for? And with HDTV equipment most users don't have? Is it perhaps related to the relative advertising might these companies are flexing at CNet? Are CNet gamers more casual and fun-oriented compared to more hardcore CNet editors?
I have a, still functioning, Sony Betamax. I have a, still functioning, Sony PS2. I have a, still hasn't set the house on fire, Xbox 360.
That looks like a suspiciously high number of commas in relatively short span of words. Since we're using "still functioning" as an adjective, I think we need to drop the comma. It's like writing "I have a, red, bike." Instead use hyphens to make "still functioning" into an adjective and you get the following:
"I have a still-functioning Sony Betamax. I have a still-functioning Sony PS2. I have a still-hasn't-set-the-house-on-fire XBox 360."
Although obviously the last sentence is awkward. So it could make more sense to just stop trying to use the phrase "still functioning" as an adjective altogether. What do I know? I'm not an English professor. That was my father. I had to hide Cliff notes in my room growing up the way some kids hid marijuana.
If it's a rumor with some circumstantial evidence, it seems to be that it's worth a wikipedia entry. At the very least they could have an entry about the rumors.
If you think Star Wars fits any definition of "believable", you're crazy. Star Wars operates on pure suspension of disbelief, period.
This is absurd. Suspension of disbelief does not mean "nothing makes sense". Even in fantasy or sci-fi settings we expect order and reason by and large. Cause and effect. Suspension of disbelief is always limited, and "realism" is important even in fantasy and sci-fi.
I believe "dramatic foil" is the term.
It's not. Not even close. Look it up. Here's just one example: Definition: a dramatic foil is a minor character who resembles or is in parallel circumstances to a central figure in the play. Foils are similar enough to the main character(s) to provide a useful basis of comparison, but different enough that the comparison is meaningful: they enhance our understanding of the main character's personality traits or actions. from here: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/ayli.html
So we come to this: Han Solo was originally the kind of person who was not above shooting someone underneath a table to avoid getting killed himself. He could have tried an open, "fair" fight, he could have tried running away. He could have sat there and waited for Greedo to kill him. Instead, he shoots first and pays the bartender for the mess. That's a defining moment much like the Indiana Jones scene where, instead of dueling sword-to-sword, he draws his revolver and shoots the bad guy.
To argue that having Greedo shoot first changes nothing is assinine. It doesn't change Han Solo's character overtly, but it dramatically removes the scene as being indicative of his characater. Anyone can get shot at, but a rogue shoots first (under the table).
To further argue that having Greedo shoot first and miss somehow establishes the star wars rule that blasters are inaccurate is even less believable. In subsequent scenes Han and others manage to have great accuracy, just as the storm troopers do when they take out the Jawa vehicle. So that's nonsensical too.
I don't care where you're coming from, but you clearly don't have a good grasp on film theory (not that I'm an expert) and it shows in your exceptionally poor arguments and misunderstanding of relevant terms.
A - I'm a browncoat. Save the "if you want badass" speech for someone who, maybe, doesn't already own the entire Firefly series AND Serenity. Please.
B - Han is not a badass. This is the same guy who, in response to a long insult from Leia, responds with "Who's scruffy looking?" You think that's badass? In the film Han was clearly attempting to play innocent by looking away from Greedo, smiling, etc. as he unholstered his weapon to take Greedo out under the table. It doesn't make him badass, it makes him a rogue. Someone who's not afraid to use subterfuge to stay alive. It makes him, in short, a scoundrel. There's more than one character type available for smugglers in a sci-fi universe, you know.
C - If you think Greedo missing his target at 3 feet makes blasters believably inaccurate or explains away the Stormtrooper Effect [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper_effect] you're crazy. It makes no sense for Greedo to miss, period.
D - Final point: people who wander around waylaying strangers in a discussion about X purely so that they can plug Y are obnoxious. Really obnoxious. In your little universe there's room for only one heroic smuggler captain: Mal. That's great. I love Mal. But I live in a universe where Mal can be the badass, and Han can be the scoundrel, and neither one takes away from the other. So keep your silly series-promotion to yourself in the future.
Seriously. That was the first thing that came to my mind. If only I could have been there to pause the movie, and explain "that's not really how it was".
Anyone who sees the movies "as George Lucas intended" is missing out.
I actually *like* politics stories on Slashdot. By politics I mean things like, oh, network neutrality. Or stories about IP legislation in congress. You know: politics that relates to tech? Even the odd major news story that makes it on here is fine. Say when Rumsfeld resigned or the blue dogs helped the democrats take both houses. There's no reason to stick our heads in the sand and say "no politics allowed". That stuff is going to have relevance to tech too.
But this piece wasn't just political, it was polemical. That's where I get annoyed. I don't want to have to stop reading politics stories that are relevant just 'cause some political troll managed to get their "I hate Bush" (or "I hate Clinton" or "I hate Pelosi" or "I hate Ghandi") rant on slashdot. It's the same with religion. If there's a story on Slashdot about say religion and science (how evolution is taught in school, for example), that's fine. It's newsworthy and it relates to science (which is close enough to tech). And if a fun flamewar breaks out over whether the Mormon God can beat up the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so be it. But don't be posting sermons (atheist or evangelical) as stories.
You're dead on. I read the guys blog. Next to promotions for his "Why Bush is Evil" NYT best-seller (not the real title) and the "keep Roe v Wade in place!" ads, we're supposed to act as though this has any relevance to technology? The entire point of the post was not, blog author's protestations to the contrary, about the behavior of the Washington Post (let alone technology) - it was about how President Bush lied and isn't that awful.
The thing is, there could be an interesting story here about how the internet catches mainstream media self-censoring. But A - that's not really news and B - that's not the focus of this story. We could even ask more politically-minded questions like "why does the media self-censor" and I think that would be worth discussing. Personally, I think it comes down to cowardice. The mainstream media is under economic pressure as the barrier to entry for their particular market has all but completely eroded and as a result they want to present sensational news, but not seriously controversial news. I can think of no other realistic reason to explain the two examples of self-censoring noted.
But oh no! We get treated to a long exposition of the Bush Lie versus the Bill Clinton Lie. It's got nothing to do with tech, and as an ethics discussion goes, it's pretty poor there too. Are we honestly going to pretend that all lies are the same now? That "Honey, of course I didn't sleep with the babysitter!" is equivalent to "No! That doesn't make you look fat!"
On every single level, this "news" article fails dismally.
I have to say that the fact that it's inevitable that global powers have enemies doesn't in any way justify e.g. a "fucked up foreign policy".
For the casual internet polemic, "f****d up" may substitute for actually policy analysis, but if we're going to ask serious questions about American foreign policy then the question of why you can't avoid having enemies is directly relevant to foreign policy. I'd say the fundamental explanation for why any significant nation has enemies is that we live in a competitive world of limited resources. Conflict is unavoidable. And if that is the case, that one wonders how much "f***ed up" foreign policy is avoidable.
Furthermore, it's incredibly oversimplistic to say "a global power has a great deal of choice about how many enemies it's going to make". Global powers are not entities. They don't make choices. People make choices. This isn't splitting hairs. You can't apply the same system of ethics to a nation of 300 million people that you do to individuals for roughly the same reason that Newtonian physics break down at the sub-atomic level. The issues of scale are such that the rules are different.
So you see it's not so much the criticism of American foreign policy I'm reacting to (there's plenty to criticize) it's the dangerously idealogical and overly-simplistic rational behind it. If you're going to criticize my country, I'd prefer you do it honestly and intelligently and (hopefully) constructively. If you're just going to rant and rave and make ridiculous assumptions about the world (e.g. the default status is peace until someone f's it up, conflict is evitable, it's possible for a nation to behave morally in the eyes of an audience that includes people trying very hard to blow each other up) and about nations (e.g. they can be monolithically characterized and personified) then I'm just going to point out, in frustration and annoyance, that you're being an irrational internet troll and not making any credible intellectual statement.
Perhaps what might be more instructive would be to examine why no one is blowing anything up in Canada.
How does it feel to just walk into something that obvious? The only more depressing than the fact that I knew someone would make that senseless point was that I also knew it would get modded up.
Errr, no. Fewer people seem to think seriously that a less safe environment is just a natural consequence of a fucked up foreign policy that pisses over other countries and expects zero consequences.
Please show me the country in world history that was simultaneously large and powerful and didn't have enemies. I mean, I guess we could take the Roman approach. Just invade any country that pisses us off and plow salt into it after we enslave the inhabitants. Would that strike you as more enlightened foreign policy? Look at how they handled Middle Eastern affairs:
The first Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE), sometimes called The Great Revolt (Hebrew: , ha-Mered Ha-Gadol), was the first of three major rebellions by the Jews of Judaea Province against the Roman Empire (the second was the Kitos War in 115-117, the third was Bar Kokhba's revolt, 132-135). It began in the year 66, sparked by persecution of the Jews; it ended when legions under Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem, looted and burned Herod's Temple (in the year 70) and Jewish strongholds (notably Gamla in 67 and Masada in 74), and enslaved or massacred a large part of the Jewish population. The defeat of the Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire notably contributed to the numbers and geography of the Jewish Diaspora, as many Jews were scattered after losing their state or were sold into slavery throughout the empire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Jewish_Revolt
But hey, there was peace, right?
Get off the soapbox, asshat. After you show me a country that has significant global power and doesn't offend anyone, we'll talk. Or have I made a mistake? Do you come from Nice-land? That mystical country that everyone loves? That enlightened nation that defends itself purely via open, honest, rational discourse and is never threatened by harm or misery or war or poverty? 'Cause, I guess if you live there, you've got a point.
Have you not looked at a map of Canada recently? Of course you rank high. No one feels a need to go stick cameras in the snow to record trees growing. I don't mean this as a flame-bait attack on Canada. I have nothing against Canada. Honestly, I've been there twice and it was really nice (Prince Edward Island, if you're curious, I was there for a couple of weeks). But privacy is a function of, among other things, security and population density. Since no one has blown up anything Canadian recently, you don't have to worry about that, and clearly the population density is not in Canada what is is in Deutschland (which is why I find their numbers more impressive). Honestly, would you expect more surveillance in Maryland (small, populace state right by Washington D. C.) or Wyoming?
I'm not saying la-la-la everything is fine in the US, but I continue to feel that most privacy advocates take a very simplistic approach to privacy. Everyone knows about the privacy/security balance (though clearly we have different ideas of where we should place our line in the sand), but fewer people seem to think seriously about the way lack of privacy is just a natural consequence of civilized life. Again: population density means less privacy (in general).
It comes down to this. I just find single-minded advocates of most issues kind of grating on the nerves. There are other things to consider besides privacy. There are other things to consider besides the environment. There are other things to consider besides terrorism, or the economy, or education. If you want to pick one thing to emphasize, that's great. But when you start pretending that other considerations don't even exist, you stop having anything useful to say.
Yeah, but you got to think another 2-3 or 6-7 big headline news stories like this and how long will it take for people to just ignore most news about Sony?
I don't think it will work like that. Humans like narratives. We like good guys and bad guys. These news stories are definitely putting Sony more and more as "the bad guy" instead of "company with great products". Consumer anger, in my limited experience, works on a kind of tipping-point basis. No one really cares until it hits a point where it becomes, suddenly, an issue. Sony's DRM escapades would have been enough alone, I think to get them in serious trouble with the consumer if it weren't for the fact that it's a rather technical issue and the CDs effected weren't exactly #1 with the nerds (as though any major-label CDs could be). Still, it had an effect.
I expect some real consumer backlash, especially when it comes to products that are extremely dependent on marketing: consoles. If the PS3 were the hottest thing since sliced bread (ugh, another awful business metaphor) they'd be fine, but with the PS3 already under serious criticism they really don't need to annoy their possible consumers. Angry consumers can do a lot of damage short of a boycott. Buying less, buying slower, buying later - any and all of these behaviors could really hurt Sony because they're so vulnerable right now.
You do have a point that if it's price fixing there's more than one company involved. For price-fixing to work you have to have collusion on a near-monopoly scale. That means you have to have enough market share to get a monopoly. It does not mean you need the entire industry - especially if you're counting by company as opposed to market share. One or two "giants" with 40% each of the market can collude, leaving a dozen small companies out in the cold. Furthermore, one company can shoulder more responsibility if they initiate/direct the collusion.
Now I don't know anything about the SRAM industry. I don't know how much marketshare SONY has, how many companies there are, etc. And none of us know who - if anyone - initiated and directed the price-fixing. But it's a bit naive to assume that if price fixing was involved everyone was in on it. More than 1 - certainly (unless you're a monopoly), but everyone? Not necessarily.
Slashdot Mirror
When it comes down to it, you cannot explain away that leveling is usually described as grinding.
Yeah, so if "leveling" is the point of the game for you, you have an objective case to make that it's just rat-pellet. My point is that there are other aspects, and that for some people the social/cooperative aspect precludes leveling as the primary aim. Thus, the game is not inherently reducible to rat-pellet even though, in your case, it is.
-stormin
Sure, but there's a difference between saying "the game is just a rat-pellet system" and "the game felt like a rat-pellet system to me".
-stormin
The flaw with WoW is that advancement of your character has no ultimate goal other than sheer advancement:
So what, pray tell, is the ultimate point of the game in the first place? If the answer is "to have fun" (and it should be) and if people have fun leveling up their characters (and several million seem to) than it seems you have no point.
-stormin
I'm not aware of any "proof" that stimulus/response can not account for all of human behavior. It seems to me that that is essentially what any strict-materialist, deterministic view of human self hood boils down to. Of course, I don't think that stimulus/response is a term that most modern materialists would use first, but it seems as accurate as any non-technical summary could be.
If you want to prove materialism wrong, or demonstrate that materialism rules out stimulus/response, please go ahead. This is a hobby of mine, and I'm curious to hear what you've got.
-stormin
This is not a very well-formed criticism.
a - complexity of the system
If you're going to talk about stimulus/response than I'm afraid the neurological complexity is orders of magnitude above the complexity of game design. I don't know if you know anything about algorithm analysis, but what you're essentially doing here is quibbling over the value of a constant term when the algorithm is clearly exponential.
b - value of complexity
Furthermore, if you redefine the scope of the system to exclude the neurological component, you're still left with the question: why should we care about complexity? Are simple games not also fun? Sure, tic-tac-toe may get boring, but how about pente? That's pretty simple. How about tag? Also relatively simple. Perhaps the interpersonal aspect of WoW, which is augmented by simplistic gameplay, outweighs the relative simplicity of the rule set.
If anything, it seems vaguely sociopathic to completely focus on the asocial aspect of the game, don't you think?
c - appeal to skill
Finally, it's again not clear that skill is not required in WoW, or that skill should even be that important in games. Plenty of games - like a simple race - don't require a lot of skill. Others require coordination (like athletic sports) others require mental skills (like chess) others require elements of both (say survival paintball). And I'd say that organizing and holding together a 30 - 50 member raid displays exactly the type of skill that someone who excludes social aspects of the game may be lacking. It's entirely possible that part of the success of WoW has been that, rather than cater to the kinds of people who want several 300 page manuals before they can use their imagination (that'd be you, AD&D fans) they simply created a simple, fun, attractive world and allowed people to interact in it.
-stormin
I think people dismiss the skinner box criticism because its all too real.
I didn't dismiss it because it was false, I dismissed it because it wasn't useful. It's not useful because you can apply it to all (or most) human activity. The point you're missing is that the same skinner box criticism can be applied to:
- MMORPGs
- FPSers
- reading a book
- watching a movie
- eating pie
- interpersonal relationships
- human kindness
- charity work
- etc.
The stimulus/response paradigm fails to distinguish activities that the author clearly intended to distinguish. Thus, it's not a useful paradigm (in this case). Whether or not its accurate is another matter altogether.
-stormin
I'm shocked to hear such a well-reasoned, articulate explanation of why Halo is such a great game. It makes my heart warm. Yeah, I'm a Halo fanboi, but it's because of the artistic vision of Bungie. They're one of the few game companies that I feel really elevate gaming to an art.
Of course, Halo multiplayer is a different beast altogether...
In any case, it's their legacy of refined story/music/narrative/character that make me hopeful for the eventual movie. That, and I Love Bees (ilovebees.com).
-stormin
Old pet peeve: compare games to the old rat-and-the-pill analogy
New pet peeve: my style of game play is better than yours
I suppose I shouldn't be to harsh. This is just a public message board, not a peer-reviewed academic journal. But it's still annoying when people try to pass off personal preference as some kind of objective value statement. in this case you say "Sure many of you can't stand PvP, but in truth static quests, bad scripting, and poor AI will never beat playing against a human mind".
Aside the question-begging (does non-PvP have to involve bad scripting?) what I found truly obnoxious is the false idea that you can either play against an AI, or against a human. Believe it or not, some people don't see that question purely as picking your opponent, but they turn your dichotomy on its head and ask "who can I play with ?"
I get that you like PvP. And I'm not going to try and tell you that you shouldn't. But your myopically conflict-oriented viewpoint isn't the only one out there, you know. A lot of people like WoW because they enjoy cooperation. I love to shoot my buddies with a rocket launcher in the original Halo, but I also got intense satisfaction out of playing cooperatively with them against hordes of AI. Now you could play team vs. team, but A - some people don't enjoy "killing" each other, especially in an RPG where you actually do some type of damage to the person you "kill" and B - it's (so far) impossible to wrap massive PvP into a story line with any kind of script.
So in the end, you're no better off than the original article. You're trying to pass off personal preference as objective criticism.
-stormin
You're a rat, and the game keeps sending you to look for bigger pellets.
People never tire of making that analogy, do they? But it's probably about the most worthless analogy you could make. Reducing an activity to stimulus/response may seem clever, but the trouble is that it works for pretty much every human behavior imaginable. And it certainly works for every leisure activity.
The problem is that games are supposed to be fun. You're going to have to work really hard to come up with an alternative criteria. And since fun is pretty subjective, there's really not much room for criticism.
Art, literature, poetry, drama and film all have associate bodies of academic criticism and pop-derivatives. So there's a semi-objective framework from which you can criticize these works even if they are popular. Everyone rushes out to see "Titanic", but it still had some really, really lame dialog.
Unless you're going to make a similar attack on gaming (e.g. lame dialog, bad graphics, etc.) it's really hard to make any criticism that doesn't reduce to petulant whining. There simple is no cohesive theory of gaming criticism (outside of technical elements), and so before you start slinging criticisms you need to build the framework. I don't see that happening in this article.
So basically, it's just whining.
-stormin
I'm pretty curious about that too. There are hundreds of read reviews - over a thousand total. Are these just folks who've gotten hold of pre-release copies, or is it (as you surmised) possibly just wishful thinking.
I wish I knew.
-stormin
Check out the CNet comparison. Look at the rankings from the editors vs. from the readers. Whoops, just noticed the article actually links to Wired when it says it links to CNet. No matter, here's the CNet side by side comparison: http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6464_7-6551960.html?t ag=cnetfd.mt
v s-gamers.html)
Here's how the editors ranked the systems:
1. PS3 (8.8) 2. Xbox 360 (8.4) 3. Wii (8.2)
Here's how the readers ranked the systems:
1. Wii (8.0) 2. Xbox 360 (7.5) 3. PS3 (7.1)
Aside from the full one-point "grade inflation" the readers ranked the systems in exactly the opposite order that the editors did. Is this because the editors are playing on machines they didn't pay for? And with HDTV equipment most users don't have? Is it perhaps related to the relative advertising might these companies are flexing at CNet? Are CNet gamers more casual and fun-oriented compared to more hardcore CNet editors?
Whatever's going on, it looks interesting to me.
-stormin (shameless self-promotion, I covered this discrepancy in my blog yesterday: http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2006/11/editors-
I think it was from this line:
I have a, still functioning, Sony Betamax. I have a, still functioning, Sony PS2. I have a, still hasn't set the house on fire, Xbox 360.
That looks like a suspiciously high number of commas in relatively short span of words. Since we're using "still functioning" as an adjective, I think we need to drop the comma. It's like writing "I have a, red, bike." Instead use hyphens to make "still functioning" into an adjective and you get the following:
"I have a still-functioning Sony Betamax. I have a still-functioning Sony PS2. I have a still-hasn't-set-the-house-on-fire XBox 360."
Although obviously the last sentence is awkward. So it could make more sense to just stop trying to use the phrase "still functioning" as an adjective altogether. What do I know? I'm not an English professor. That was my father. I had to hide Cliff notes in my room growing up the way some kids hid marijuana.
-stormin
If it's a rumor with some circumstantial evidence, it seems to be that it's worth a wikipedia entry. At the very least they could have an entry about the rumors.
-stormin
If you think Star Wars fits any definition of "believable", you're crazy. Star Wars operates on pure suspension of disbelief, period.
l
This is absurd. Suspension of disbelief does not mean "nothing makes sense". Even in fantasy or sci-fi settings we expect order and reason by and large. Cause and effect. Suspension of disbelief is always limited, and "realism" is important even in fantasy and sci-fi.
I believe "dramatic foil" is the term.
It's not. Not even close. Look it up. Here's just one example: Definition: a dramatic foil is a minor character who resembles or is in parallel circumstances to a central figure in the play. Foils are similar enough to the main character(s) to provide a useful basis of comparison, but different enough that the comparison is meaningful: they enhance our understanding of the main character's personality traits or actions. from here: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/ayli.htm
So we come to this: Han Solo was originally the kind of person who was not above shooting someone underneath a table to avoid getting killed himself. He could have tried an open, "fair" fight, he could have tried running away. He could have sat there and waited for Greedo to kill him. Instead, he shoots first and pays the bartender for the mess. That's a defining moment much like the Indiana Jones scene where, instead of dueling sword-to-sword, he draws his revolver and shoots the bad guy.
To argue that having Greedo shoot first changes nothing is assinine. It doesn't change Han Solo's character overtly, but it dramatically removes the scene as being indicative of his characater. Anyone can get shot at, but a rogue shoots first (under the table).
To further argue that having Greedo shoot first and miss somehow establishes the star wars rule that blasters are inaccurate is even less believable. In subsequent scenes Han and others manage to have great accuracy, just as the storm troopers do when they take out the Jawa vehicle. So that's nonsensical too.
I don't care where you're coming from, but you clearly don't have a good grasp on film theory (not that I'm an expert) and it shows in your exceptionally poor arguments and misunderstanding of relevant terms.
-stormin
Is what happened to the wikipedia entry on the iPhone? I check and it's not only deleted, but protected: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
Was another part of Apple's strategy clamping down on rumors? Does anybody know what that article contained/when it was deleted?
-stormmin
A - I'm a browncoat. Save the "if you want badass" speech for someone who, maybe, doesn't already own the entire Firefly series AND Serenity. Please.
] you're crazy. It makes no sense for Greedo to miss, period.
B - Han is not a badass. This is the same guy who, in response to a long insult from Leia, responds with "Who's scruffy looking?" You think that's badass? In the film Han was clearly attempting to play innocent by looking away from Greedo, smiling, etc. as he unholstered his weapon to take Greedo out under the table. It doesn't make him badass, it makes him a rogue. Someone who's not afraid to use subterfuge to stay alive. It makes him, in short, a scoundrel. There's more than one character type available for smugglers in a sci-fi universe, you know.
C - If you think Greedo missing his target at 3 feet makes blasters believably inaccurate or explains away the Stormtrooper Effect [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper_effect
D - Final point: people who wander around waylaying strangers in a discussion about X purely so that they can plug Y are obnoxious. Really obnoxious. In your little universe there's room for only one heroic smuggler captain: Mal. That's great. I love Mal. But I live in a universe where Mal can be the badass, and Han can be the scoundrel, and neither one takes away from the other. So keep your silly series-promotion to yourself in the future.
-stormin
Seriously. That was the first thing that came to my mind. If only I could have been there to pause the movie, and explain "that's not really how it was".
Anyone who sees the movies "as George Lucas intended" is missing out.
-stormin
I actually *like* politics stories on Slashdot. By politics I mean things like, oh, network neutrality. Or stories about IP legislation in congress. You know: politics that relates to tech? Even the odd major news story that makes it on here is fine. Say when Rumsfeld resigned or the blue dogs helped the democrats take both houses. There's no reason to stick our heads in the sand and say "no politics allowed". That stuff is going to have relevance to tech too.
But this piece wasn't just political, it was polemical. That's where I get annoyed. I don't want to have to stop reading politics stories that are relevant just 'cause some political troll managed to get their "I hate Bush" (or "I hate Clinton" or "I hate Pelosi" or "I hate Ghandi") rant on slashdot. It's the same with religion. If there's a story on Slashdot about say religion and science (how evolution is taught in school, for example), that's fine. It's newsworthy and it relates to science (which is close enough to tech). And if a fun flamewar breaks out over whether the Mormon God can beat up the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so be it. But don't be posting sermons (atheist or evangelical) as stories.
Do you honestly not see the difference?
-stormin
You're dead on. I read the guys blog. Next to promotions for his "Why Bush is Evil" NYT best-seller (not the real title) and the "keep Roe v Wade in place!" ads, we're supposed to act as though this has any relevance to technology? The entire point of the post was not, blog author's protestations to the contrary, about the behavior of the Washington Post (let alone technology) - it was about how President Bush lied and isn't that awful.
The thing is, there could be an interesting story here about how the internet catches mainstream media self-censoring. But A - that's not really news and B - that's not the focus of this story. We could even ask more politically-minded questions like "why does the media self-censor" and I think that would be worth discussing. Personally, I think it comes down to cowardice. The mainstream media is under economic pressure as the barrier to entry for their particular market has all but completely eroded and as a result they want to present sensational news, but not seriously controversial news. I can think of no other realistic reason to explain the two examples of self-censoring noted.
But oh no! We get treated to a long exposition of the Bush Lie versus the Bill Clinton Lie. It's got nothing to do with tech, and as an ethics discussion goes, it's pretty poor there too. Are we honestly going to pretend that all lies are the same now? That "Honey, of course I didn't sleep with the babysitter!" is equivalent to "No! That doesn't make you look fat!"
On every single level, this "news" article fails dismally.
-stormin
I have to say that the fact that it's inevitable that global powers have enemies doesn't in any way justify e.g. a "fucked up foreign policy".
For the casual internet polemic, "f****d up" may substitute for actually policy analysis, but if we're going to ask serious questions about American foreign policy then the question of why you can't avoid having enemies is directly relevant to foreign policy. I'd say the fundamental explanation for why any significant nation has enemies is that we live in a competitive world of limited resources. Conflict is unavoidable. And if that is the case, that one wonders how much "f***ed up" foreign policy is avoidable.
Furthermore, it's incredibly oversimplistic to say "a global power has a great deal of choice about how many enemies it's going to make". Global powers are not entities. They don't make choices. People make choices. This isn't splitting hairs. You can't apply the same system of ethics to a nation of 300 million people that you do to individuals for roughly the same reason that Newtonian physics break down at the sub-atomic level. The issues of scale are such that the rules are different.
So you see it's not so much the criticism of American foreign policy I'm reacting to (there's plenty to criticize) it's the dangerously idealogical and overly-simplistic rational behind it. If you're going to criticize my country, I'd prefer you do it honestly and intelligently and (hopefully) constructively. If you're just going to rant and rave and make ridiculous assumptions about the world (e.g. the default status is peace until someone f's it up, conflict is evitable, it's possible for a nation to behave morally in the eyes of an audience that includes people trying very hard to blow each other up) and about nations (e.g. they can be monolithically characterized and personified) then I'm just going to point out, in frustration and annoyance, that you're being an irrational internet troll and not making any credible intellectual statement.
-stormin
How does it feel to just walk into something that obvious? The only more depressing than the fact that I knew someone would make that senseless point was that I also knew it would get modded up.
Errr, no. Fewer people seem to think seriously that a less safe environment is just a natural consequence of a fucked up foreign policy that pisses over other countries and expects zero consequences.
Please show me the country in world history that was simultaneously large and powerful and didn't have enemies. I mean, I guess we could take the Roman approach. Just invade any country that pisses us off and plow salt into it after we enslave the inhabitants. Would that strike you as more enlightened foreign policy? Look at how they handled Middle Eastern affairs:
But hey, there was peace, right?
Get off the soapbox, asshat. After you show me a country that has significant global power and doesn't offend anyone, we'll talk. Or have I made a mistake? Do you come from Nice-land? That mystical country that everyone loves? That enlightened nation that defends itself purely via open, honest, rational discourse and is never threatened by harm or misery or war or poverty? 'Cause, I guess if you live there, you've got a point.
-stormin
Have you not looked at a map of Canada recently? Of course you rank high. No one feels a need to go stick cameras in the snow to record trees growing. I don't mean this as a flame-bait attack on Canada. I have nothing against Canada. Honestly, I've been there twice and it was really nice (Prince Edward Island, if you're curious, I was there for a couple of weeks). But privacy is a function of, among other things, security and population density. Since no one has blown up anything Canadian recently, you don't have to worry about that, and clearly the population density is not in Canada what is is in Deutschland (which is why I find their numbers more impressive). Honestly, would you expect more surveillance in Maryland (small, populace state right by Washington D. C.) or Wyoming?
I'm not saying la-la-la everything is fine in the US, but I continue to feel that most privacy advocates take a very simplistic approach to privacy. Everyone knows about the privacy/security balance (though clearly we have different ideas of where we should place our line in the sand), but fewer people seem to think seriously about the way lack of privacy is just a natural consequence of civilized life. Again: population density means less privacy (in general).
It comes down to this. I just find single-minded advocates of most issues kind of grating on the nerves. There are other things to consider besides privacy. There are other things to consider besides the environment. There are other things to consider besides terrorism, or the economy, or education. If you want to pick one thing to emphasize, that's great. But when you start pretending that other considerations don't even exist, you stop having anything useful to say.
-stormin
I see why you post as AC.
-stormin
Yeah, but you got to think another 2-3 or 6-7 big headline news stories like this and how long will it take for people to just ignore most news about Sony?
I don't think it will work like that. Humans like narratives. We like good guys and bad guys. These news stories are definitely putting Sony more and more as "the bad guy" instead of "company with great products". Consumer anger, in my limited experience, works on a kind of tipping-point basis. No one really cares until it hits a point where it becomes, suddenly, an issue. Sony's DRM escapades would have been enough alone, I think to get them in serious trouble with the consumer if it weren't for the fact that it's a rather technical issue and the CDs effected weren't exactly #1 with the nerds (as though any major-label CDs could be). Still, it had an effect.
I expect some real consumer backlash, especially when it comes to products that are extremely dependent on marketing: consoles. If the PS3 were the hottest thing since sliced bread (ugh, another awful business metaphor) they'd be fine, but with the PS3 already under serious criticism they really don't need to annoy their possible consumers. Angry consumers can do a lot of damage short of a boycott. Buying less, buying slower, buying later - any and all of these behaviors could really hurt Sony because they're so vulnerable right now.
-stormin
You do have a point that if it's price fixing there's more than one company involved. For price-fixing to work you have to have collusion on a near-monopoly scale. That means you have to have enough market share to get a monopoly. It does not mean you need the entire industry - especially if you're counting by company as opposed to market share. One or two "giants" with 40% each of the market can collude, leaving a dozen small companies out in the cold. Furthermore, one company can shoulder more responsibility if they initiate/direct the collusion.
Now I don't know anything about the SRAM industry. I don't know how much marketshare SONY has, how many companies there are, etc. And none of us know who - if anyone - initiated and directed the price-fixing. But it's a bit naive to assume that if price fixing was involved everyone was in on it. More than 1 - certainly (unless you're a monopoly), but everyone? Not necessarily.
-stormin