There are people out there who legitimately need financial help from the government. However, most do not. What they need is to be educated in fending for themselves and no relying on government to support them. Entitlement programs need to stop. Investing in space programs will do far, far more for the well-being of the nation in the long run than handing out welfare checks.
Furthermore, France, Germany and much of the rest of Europe is going through some hard times. Unlike many Americans who seem to believe Europe is some social wonderland without knowing what it's really like there, I actually have family in Portugal, France and the UK. France in particular keeps cutting back on social programs because they can't afford to sustain things as they are. One of my uncles there now has private insurance because the government stopped providing the kind of coverage he needed. In fact, in general they seem to be moving towards a more American model of privatization.
My point is that extensive social programs are little more than a money pit. If the government were more thorough, actually kept track of people on welfare and used education to get people out of poverty maybe it would be somewhat effective. Unfortunately they seem to be intent on bailout people and companies which don't deserve to be bailed out and they're making it even easier to deserve benefits. It's also completely unfair that people who don't even have to pay taxes are getting "rebate" checks.
I'd rather see my tax money go to programs that have real tangible benefits and not to sustain this culture of entitlement.
Frankly, I think this is why I think American industry is headed for the toilet. Too many of these imbecile stockholders are more interested in ROI than the company actually producing a good product. Companies are forced into this mindset and as we've seen, no good has come of it.
Compare that to Japanese companies where investors are far more patient. Major Japanese companies are constantly spending money on what can be considered pointless R&D. But in the end they have something to show for it.
How many potentially good products have been killed because investors weren't to wait. Or what was released wasn't particularly good because the product was rushed to market.
The problem isn't the desire to make money, it's that the desire to make money has superseded the desire to make a good product or provide a good service. That's why companies will go to ridiculous lengths to show shareholders they're still viable, but they don't actually do anything to improve their product and ultimately find themselves in the same situation all over again. They're doing little more than delaying the inevitable.
It the greater scheme of things MMOs are in their infancy. Most offer little in the way of truth depth and substance. Although I have little desire to play a game like Eve Online, I can appreciate it for what the developer has managed to pull off with the game. I think it's closer to the future of MMOs than anything else out there, with it's truly dynamic experience. Perhaps someone will find a way to provide such an experience but make day-to-day gameplay more exciting, but that's beside the point.
The problem is that people today have the attention span of a house fly. Everything has to be cutting edge. This reminds me of reading some blog recently where they called a game barely 10 years old ancient. But then, it seems like nerd has been redefined in recent years to mean someone with a gadget fetish for anything shiny and new and occasionally pretending to show an interest in science.
This Prince of Persia has the same problem I've encountered with essentially every single 3D game that features any level of platforming. There's no sense of place. I feel like I'm going through some sort of studio where each room is done up to convey a particular theme; I never feel like I'm actually going anywhere. The platform elements only serve to enhance the sense of artificiality.
Not many developers seem capable of conveying the sense of being in an actual location introducing platforming to that setting. The Metroid Prime games, excluding the goofy morph ball sequences, and Mirror's Edge I think do it fairly well.
A second problem, which pertains specifically to gameplay is the problem of platforming itself within a 3D game. A lack of depth perception and awkward cameras always make platforming more frustrating than fun. In every one of these games I die not because of real challenge but because I couldn't appropriately gauge how far I needed to go or because I've encountered a scenario I had no possible way of anticipating. And the problem, of course, is that if a developer tries to account for these problems more often than not the platforming sequences become excessively easy.
Ultimately, I find it frustrating that developers without fail resort to tired old gameplay formulas. For what ever reason a hack'n'slash game MUST have platforming sequences. Just like many current FPSs have to have a vehicle sequence. Instead of trying to shoehorn a poorly designed mechanic into the game how about focusing on the main aspect and make that engaging.
Of course, Prince of Persia has originally about the platforming and fighting secondary. Either way, I can't help but wonder if the game wouldn't be more entertaining restricted to a 2D plane.
I've always been a fairly committed PC gamer. Not that I game extensively, but that was my platform of choice; other than a Nintendo DS and a Sega Master System I had years ago I owned no other console. Then I got a PS3 for Xmas.
Now I have little interest in PC gaming outside of an occasional Flash or small indie game. It's nice to not have to deal with the pain of worrying about performance and stability. One thing that has frustrated me over the last 10 years of PC games has been starting a game and then finding that the vast majority of the time I couldn't run it at full detail. Low settings might make the game very playable, but for me I've always felt like I paid for a defective game. I've paid for a game I can't experience to it's fullest extent. And the thing is that with the demands more recent games have made that a person can really miss out from a graphical standpoint.
I still have to deal with installations and updates on the PS3, which I find somewhat amusing, but in general it's a far more seamless experience. The growing push to more of an Xbox Live sort of model on the PC is another big turn off for me.
The PS3 is my console of choice, but it's really getting the short end of the stick in every way. It keeps losing out on exclusives and now we get this sort of nonsense where developers don't bother with updates they offer for other platforms.
I get the impression that Sony has given up pushing exclusives for the system, either because they can't afford it, they've lost all clout with developers or they've simply stopped caring. What's particularly frustrating is how there are a number of PS3 exclusives available in Japan which publishers are too stupid or risk-averse to introduce in the US.
I got Fallout 3 on the PC last year, but didn't like the game much at all, so I have little interest in these updates anyway.
One big frustration for me is the complicity of the media is forcing this man-made climate change nonsense on us. Every couple of weeks someone in the news will make the statement that humanity is unquestionably responsible for global warming with no evidence whatsoever to support these statements. For me, climate change is the 21st century equivalent of a witch hunt. The whole fixation on carbon emissions, I'm convinced is going to turn out to be a big sham.
There have been reports from all over the world of unusually cool weather, but will you find this reported in the American media? Just barely. This past week there was snow in the United Arab Emirates. From what I've read it's the second time anyone can recall that they've experienced snowfall.
Even more impressive however, was the unusually cold weather in Thailand. Unusually cold for them being temperatures in the low 50s when they're used to 75+ temperatures. People there didn't even have coats to cope with the weather; a few people in northern Thailand died of hypothermia. I heard about this from my wife who gets news from Taiwan. I tried searching for stories on the web and the only sites I found covering it were based in Australia and elsewhere in Asia.
Speaking of Taiwan, they've had unusually cold weather as well. There were a few inches of snow in the mountains which is relatively rare. I have family in Europe who have also complained about unusually cold weather. My cousin went back to the UK after the holidays and was greeted to a few inches of snow outside of London. That's not that unusual, but it's certainly normal either.
And in my own area we've had an unusually high number of snow storms and colder weather than normal. But where few outside the local news services seem to point this out. On the other hand, we get a couple of days hot weather, like we do every summer, and the cries of global warming start.
I need to point out all these examples because if I were to only point out what was going on around here my experience would be immediately dismissed as being too localized.
Even NASA can't get their data straight. Last year the temperature readings for Russia were reporting the hottest October every, by a significant amount. Some guy took notice of this and on investigating found that the date for October was identical to September. He reported it, barely got a response, but noticed the data quietly fixed within a few hours. I have a friend who makes a hobby of looking at climate data and he's said that there are quite a few head-scratching oddities here and there in the data. Then there are all the improperly placed temperature measuring stations.
I accept that there will always be some amount of flawed data. That's just the way things are. My problem is how people are making such absurd assumptions on this data and then want to force everyone to change their way of life because of it.
But ultimately, I'm convinced this comes down to money. There's a fortune to be made over climate change and everyone, from Al Gore on down is looking to cash in. They're trying to create a forced economy by making us pay to build the alternative energy industry. And Obama has shown his disregard for the average person by acknowledging in an interview with SF Gate last year that his energy plans are going to result in much larger financial burden for Americans. He has said he didn't have a problem with gasoline being over $4 per gallon, his problem was that it got so expensive so quickly. I already pay a lot for utilities around here and I try to be quite frugal with usage. I would serious consider moving if things got worse.
And finally, one common theme I see with the global warming crowd is how we're going to be facing the consequences of climate change in the near feature. It's always looming, yet year after year nothing ever happens. We've had 100+ years of global warming but little has come of it. And the consequences of global warming are wildly contradictory. One the one hand, they'll cause larger and
What I think Obama wants is to not loose contact to the people who got him into office in the first place. And THAT I find commendable.
How exactly does holding onto a personal phone convey this message? How would him using the government issued phone prevent him from losing contact with the people who got him in office. And that's assuming he has any more contact with the people who got him in office, voters, than any previous president has. Somehow I doubt he's going to be calling any of us to remind us he's still thinking about.
Now, if you believe that special interests helped get him in office, that might not necessarily be a good thing for us.
For me, national security trumps all else. But honestly, I'm fairly confident the government will be able to ensure that Obama's Blackberry is just as secure as that Sectera. What I am curious about is on what network the Sectera runs and if they can ensure the same level of security for both.
Feel free to commend Obama on facts, but please don't start commending him for something you only imagine he might be thinking.
What I would commend Obama for is if he refused to use the Sectera because he felt it was an overpriced piece of equipment that provides no more inherent security than the Blackberry. But of course, by keeping his private line he needs two phones just the same, so it's a moot point.
Say what you want about Al Jazeera, but the former ABC correspondent, David Marash, I belive, who was hired by them quit because of the anti-American bias. What I found most interesting was his comment about how he encountered the strongest bias coming from Western employees, not natives to the Middle East.
Although you'd like to believe otherwise, the US media is far more sensitive to foreign cultures, the Middle East included.
Regarding Battlestar Galactica, there's one big reason I've never been able to really enjoy the show. We have barely 50,000 humans left, facing a constant threat of extinction by the cylons, and the show depicts humans engaged in what I consider insignificant squabbles. They're constantly hung up about issues which I think given their precarious position should be a non-issue. I would think humanity, facing such a situation, would either run like hell or pull out all the stops to survive and win.
I think a series which was quite effective at handling political and social dilemmas was Deep Space Nine. I also think the scenario was more believable because despite being on the front lines and a serious looming threat the Federation wasn't faced with extinction.
I don't quite understand why people dislike Keanu Reeves so much. Well, I think he has a tendency to end up in these lame movies with roles that are easily mocked. I wouldn't call him a great actor, but he's certainly far from the worst. And he's not nearly as obnoxious as others.
My problem with this movie is the fact that it's yet another remake and it will probably be crap. They'll try to reinvent everything, completely missing the character of the original. I expect the end result to be crap much like Speed Racer.
Part of my problem, however, is the source material. Cowboy Bebop is decent, but like most other anime is very derivative and features convoluted storylines. Over the years I've found that anime fans tend to have low standards. As long as it's Japanese they love it. I can't count the times I've read glowing reviews for one thing or another only to find it's not very good. Even what is widely considering to be average anime gets overly positive reviews. And when something is actually pretty good, then it's really blown out of proportion.
My point is why bother remaking anime? The fans will never be happy with it. Few others will know enough about the source material to be interested which means the movie will have to stand on its own merits. At that point, they may as well have just come up with something unique and potentially more interesting. But then Hollywood and unique go together like oil and water.
Speaking of anime remakes, Battle Angel Alita is also coming in 2011, with James Cameron as the director. The manga's storyline has turned to crap, but I still have a fondness for the original story. Even though I'll probably be disappointed I am foolishly looking forward to the movie.
When Barack Obama stocks his staff with industry insiders, it's corruption. When George W. Bush stocks his staff with industry insiders, it's just politics as usual.
You've got to be kidding. When the hell did the media ever go easy on Bush? They blamed him for basically everything. I'm not saying he didn't deserve a lot of criticism, but according to the media he did nothing right. The one exception was, predictably, Foxnews. But somehow a lot of people seem to take one news network and extrapolate that out to represent all of news media, print included.
If anything, I'm surprised the media changed it's tune so quickly on Obama. What remains to be seen is if the entertainment shits on Obama the way they did with Bush. Somehow I don't see that happening.
Gaming magazines are probably going to die out completely at some point, at least those that offer little more than previous and reviews. Gaming is a visual medium, who want's to see a printing of a screenshot when I can go online and see it exactly as it will appear in the game. Not only that, I can get videos online and news is much more timely.
Really, for a magazine to survive in this medium it needs to offer something more. Those might be exclusives, developer diaries, compelling content that others don't have access too. One interesting thing might be a magazine devoted mostly to strategy guides and cheats; it's a lot easier to play a game with a printed guide sitting in your lap, as opposed to trying to browse the web while gaming. Of course, this also means catering to a more niche market.
Well, the electricity and gas companies in my state offers a program where monthly bills are averaged out for the whole year eliminating price spikes during certain seasons, especially the winter. The rationale is that it makes things more manageable in those months of heavier usage. As far as I know, however, there are no refunds for overpayment. But there may very well be; I haven't tried it.
That does remind me of another absurdity. The electricity company has had campaigns over the last few years encouraging people to cut usage. People do start cutting usage for a variety of reasons, and how do we get repaid for the effort? That company is raising rates because of decreased demand.
I pay my bills online, but in most cases I continue to receive paper bills. It makes it easier to spot discrepancies and it reminds me that there's a bill to pay. There are a few companies, however, which don't give the option of paper billing if I decide to pay bills online.
My problem with online payment is that a handful of companies don't spell out how my bill breaks down as clearly as I'd like. I have to really dig around to get all the details, and I'm convinced it's done intentionally.
One thing I will never do is automatic payment. This makes it difficult to dispute payments and introduces a host of other potential problems.
If the power were being generated by wind, solar and perhaps nuclear power why would having a more inefficient television be harmful to the environment? As for pollution from manufacturing the televisions themselves, an energy inefficient television is just as potentially harmful as an efficient one.
And as for global warming, it's debatable that something needs to be done about that.
As for taxes being raised, I think it's time the government cut their own waste. If their too inept to manage their own budgets they have no right coming to the people demanding more money.
I look forward to more energy efficient products, but I don't want the government cramming them down my throat.
Isn't that what property taxes are for? Granted, I don't live in California, but around here part of what I pay in property tax goes towards garbage disposal.
All these other fees are nothing but bullshit money grabs. This way politicians can fool people into believing their taxes haven't been raised.
And even with high taxes and all these nonsense fees states are somehow incapable of incurring massive debt.
I think California were actually concerned about energy consumption they'd cut government waste.
Right... Like a $50 yearly savings is going to convince me to potentially spend an additional $500. I'll spend more for a better imagine, not for marginal energy savings. Although, if it were more efficient that would be a nice plus.
It reminds me of the gas boiler I got recently. Boilers with 85%+ efficiency qualify as high efficiency boilers and as such qualify for an up to $500 tax credit in my state. The problem is that they cost $3500 or more. On the other hand I can get a boiler between 80% and 84% efficiency for $1500. And the high efficiency boiler has additional components that conventional boilers don't use which add further expense.
I'd like to get the high efficiency boiler. But I don't have the freedom to spend that much up front, first of all. And secondly, I'm hard pressed to justify the price difference when I'm not going to see significant savings.
Instead of trying to control yet another aspect of our lives maybe California should look at improving power generation. With the supposed advent of clean energy what does it matter what kind of television I have?
I think people should be informed about using energy efficiently, especially anything dependent on a finite resource. But I'd rather see this achieved through education. This stinks of yet another way for California's politicians to extend their control over the people.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of the motivations behind this is to spur more spending. However, the fact is that it is time to move on to more advanced technology; this had to happen sooner or later.
It's not like this is anything new. In Japan the government makes it difficult to own a car for more than a few years because taxes actually go up for older cars. And it gets increasingly difficult to meet requirements. One of the many reasons for this, of course, is to spur people to replace their cars on a regular basis.
I also don't think television is going to die any time soon. There's a lot of things people would rather give up before they give up television.
I can see the argument. But when I was living in a big city in Asia I felt more stimulated and motivated than I've ever felt anywhere else. I felt like there was always something going on, something to take a part in, something new to see, something to absorb.
Now I'm back in the US, back in the suburbs, and in some ways it feels like a wasteland of blandness. I live in an area where the homes are all very close together, but there just isn't much life to be found. It's all hidden away indoors.
I recall getting back and over the first few weeks feeling this sense of emptiness, similar to hearing silence. I can see where too much stimulus might be a problem, but to me it isn't much different than being bombarded by crap on TV, but I think television is worse.
The problem I see with big cities is the impersonal nature of life there, how a person can feel isolated even in the midst of millions of people. That leads to all sorts of problems. But with culture today it seems to be a problem everywhere but small towns.
To be honest, if I had the opportunity to move back I would.
Compared to other MMOs Runescape started small. This game the developers time to refine and improve the game. As for WoW, it may have had some issues, but compared to many MMOs the game was released in a reasonably polished state.
The World Ends with You was a great game, especially the first section with Shiki. But ultimately it grows extremely tedious and the story turns into a bit of a letdown. It was still interesting and I continued to enjoy the game, but it didn't live up to the potential raised in that first section.
I'm probably being overly fixated on one of the many games featured on the list, but I must be one of the only people out there who thinks Fallout 3 was one of the most overrated games of the year, perhaps third only to GTA5 and Spore.
When I first played the game I regretted my purchase and lamented the fact that I couldn't return the game, having gotten the PC version. But I decided to spend more time with the game and found that my impression hadn't changed.
Getting past the excessively monotone color scheme, I will admit the game looks impressive. But otherwise I found it to be extremely tedious and the story a bit contrived. The characters followed the same uninspired templates I find in bad Sci-Fi channel movies.
While I can accept the gritty theme of the game, I dislike overly realistic characters that end up looking ugly and more like actors than actual inhabitants of the world being depicted. Always lame is when children look like miniature adults, mainly because of overly mottled facial textures. Encountering old people in the game made me laugh a few times because of how insanely wrinkled they were, like they were made of cracked leather or clay.
I don't care for having to repair my equipment, are constantly being encumbered by random crap I find, having to sit there and sort through inventory trying to determine what I need and don't need. The side quests are so disruptive to flow and feel so disconnected that I eventually lost track and forgot what the main quest was all about. Basically, it's reminiscent of Bethesda's other RPGs, Morrowind included. Although I think that, in terms of gameplay, was the superior game.
One high point was combat which was somewhat entertaining. The targetting feature, while helpful, I found disruptive and felt like little more than an excuse to showcase the violence.
Maybe the game gets better, but I don't have the patience to find out.
Interestingly enough, I played Knights of the Old Republic 2 for the first time less than a week after abandoning Fallout 3 and found that to be, far and a way, a much better game. It wasn't perfect and I'm not normally one for Star Wars games but it was very engaging the whole way through and a lot of fun to play. The customization was satisfying without being tedious. About the only thing that crossed my mind a few times was what KOTOR2 would look like with current generation graphics on the level of Fallout 3 but with more style.
I just got an 80GB PS3 for Xmas. It's a bit shocking to compare this version to previous ones and notice what's been cut. To be honest, however, this is the version Sony should have released from the start because what was cut I consider largely superfluous for the PS3's primary purpose which is playing games.
I can only imagine that some higher ups at Sony had this unrealistic vision that both the PSP and PS3 were going to be complete entertainment and information centers to replace everything else. Things didn't work out with the PSP, so even though Sony executives might have been aware of those issues before the release of the PS3 it was too late to address them. And some probably continued to insist it would be a success.
But ultimately, the real problem with the PS3, I don't think, is the price of the system. Well, it may be now with the economy, but I think the real problem still is the lack of good games. There seems to be a never-ending stream of games promised to be great and which turn out to be mediocre. There's an overall lack of variety, and in some genres there aren't more than an handful of games available.
I encountered this upon trying to decide what I wanted to get for my PS3. There's not a huge selection outside of shooters, sports and a number of racing games. And an even bigger problem is the fact that most games are cross-platform which largely renders the PS3 irrelevant given the Xbox360s install base. I bought four games and that's pretty much all I'm interested in getting at this point.
Sony needs to get more exclusives, which is going to be difficult, but there already exist a number of exclusives in Japan that are unavailable in the US. I'm not sure who are the decision makers that don't bring to the US potentially interesting games. If nothing else it would create more options for players here. And perhaps it might help move the market away from the more adult crowd the PS3 currently seems to attract.
On a side note, my PS3 is quite quiet. I hear the harddrive going more than I hear the fan itself. And the system seems to run cool. Of course we're entering winter, so it may be a different story in the summer.
That's because the Higgs Boson and dark matter has no immediate impact on our lives. But the man-made global warming hysteria campaign can have a real impact on our daily lives.
Hell, it's already bad enough that I can't watch an educational show about nature or the environment without it turning into a propaganda piece about how awful humans are.
What in the hell does skepticism in the global warming hysteria have to do with pollution? That's quite a leap of logic there, can you explain it to me?
I'm completely opposed to pollution, but that doesn't mean I have to blindly subscribe to the notion of man-made global warming. Quite frankly, the whole movement stinks to me more of a political and social movement than anything driven by concerns for the environment. The fact that there has been a shift from the use of the term "global warming" to "climate change" should make anyone skeptical. Someone seems to be trying to cover their ass to make the movement relevant if the claims and reality fail to agree.
We've been hearing claims for the last 15-20 years that we're doomed with even minimal changes and climate. The consequences are always around the corner. And yet here we are still waiting.
More often than not, I hear global warming being lumped in with claims that the haves are somehow oppressing the have-nots. In my part of the country the wealthy have taken to using environmentalism as a tool to preserve their way of life.
All this doesn't mean, however, that I want to see raw sewage dumped into the ocean and garbage strewn about everywhere. I think it's great that we're finally seeing alternatives to gasoline powered cars, clean energy is becoming a reality and companies and governments are becoming smarter about managing and recycling waste. And I will agree that not enough is being done.
The problem with the global warming crowd is that they make unrealistic and unattainable claims; like during the presidential campaign when there were television ads claiming that the US could be on 100% clean energy in 10 years. And they're constantly shitting on people. It doesn't matter what people do, it's never enough. I feel like these people still wouldn't be satisfied if we were living in huts and cooking over campfires. After all, some communities are even banning the use of fireplaces.
And ultimately, that's what it comes down to. These people trying to force things down our throat based on a pseudo science. And perhaps for now it hasn't had a significant impact, but are we going to cripple this country based on something we're not even certain of? We already have enough problems as it is.
And yes, I will call it a pseudo science because I find it an insult every time someone comes along and claims it's an absolute fact that man is affecting the climate. Like somehow, despite all the archaeological and scientific data, the climate has been static for the last 4+ billion years. However, if you believed in creationism and the 6000 year old universe, then I might understand the belief in man-made global warming.
I will concede that the human race is great at procrastinating and will always choose the path of least resistance. So in some cases we need a fire under our asses to get something done. But in many ways this hysteria is going too far.
In my mind, the reason Steve Jobs is important to Apple was not because of his ideas, or whatever involvement he may have had in the development of products. He is important because of his role as a figurehead, because he seems to intimately understand the products his company sells, and because he doesn't preach a corporate philosophy so much as epitomize it. He's a leader, I suspect, is easy for employees to rally behind.
Compare that with the heads of many other American companies. Many of those guys have business and marketing backgrounds. They seem to barely know what their companies do and all information about the company is filtered through management.
Take the CEO of Chrysler, Robert Nardelli. The guy has a degree in business. Before taking his current position he was CEO at Home Depot, somehow landing that job with no retail experience whatsoever. But here he is running a car company, with no experience in this sort of business either. So, how much interest can he possibly have in the well-being of the company?
His primary goal must be making money. Now, only someone who is naive would think that Steve Jobs doesn't want to do the same. But I think the issue is priority. I'd like to think that Steve Jobs approaches his company from the standpoint of wanting to produce a superior product first, and then profit from that effort second. Whereas many of these other guys focus on money first. This makes it too easy to trivialize what the company does, outsource everything, lay off employees, cut corners. They'll do anything to ensure the company looks good to stockholders, but what they are doing is eroding any competitiveness and potential for innovation the company might have had.
I think it's one of the reasons Japanese companies make such good products. Engineers run their companies. They may not have the persona of someone like Jobs, but they still have an intimate understanding of the business they're in and are driven by the desire to make a good product.
My prediction is if Apple manages to find someone with a similar mindset as Jobs they'll continue to do well. If they replace him with yet another business idiot then they're likely to loose a lot of the ground they've gained. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
If desensitization is what it learns after exposure then that is a good thing.
I'm sure desensitization is a good defense mechanism when necessary. But it's not a good thing when people stop caring about violent crime and other atrocities. When you've got kids laughing at videos of violence I think we've got a problem.
Is this why we've got so much crime in the US? Probably not. But it probably helps ensure that people don't bother to do much of anything about it.
Regarding any reference to any war, my point wasn't to justify anything, which apparently you appear to believe. My point was that if you want to convey the message that war, for example, is wrong then convey those exact consequences you describe. Don't twist things around to somehow justify more violence, as movies and games do constantly. You're reiterating my point, which is that the consequences need to be emphasized.
But lets face reality, violence exists in games for no other reason that because it sells. People to feel an emotional response and once they've become accustomed to something they're going to look for a bigger thrill.
I just think there's a point where people have to really start thinking about when enough is enough. Will people finally be turned off when we get ultra-realistic graphics? I doubt it, but I do think the fight over violence in games will become even more passionate. And I do admit that my feelings on the matter are at odds with my belief in personal freedoms.
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There are people out there who legitimately need financial help from the government. However, most do not. What they need is to be educated in fending for themselves and no relying on government to support them. Entitlement programs need to stop. Investing in space programs will do far, far more for the well-being of the nation in the long run than handing out welfare checks.
Furthermore, France, Germany and much of the rest of Europe is going through some hard times. Unlike many Americans who seem to believe Europe is some social wonderland without knowing what it's really like there, I actually have family in Portugal, France and the UK. France in particular keeps cutting back on social programs because they can't afford to sustain things as they are. One of my uncles there now has private insurance because the government stopped providing the kind of coverage he needed. In fact, in general they seem to be moving towards a more American model of privatization.
My point is that extensive social programs are little more than a money pit. If the government were more thorough, actually kept track of people on welfare and used education to get people out of poverty maybe it would be somewhat effective. Unfortunately they seem to be intent on bailout people and companies which don't deserve to be bailed out and they're making it even easier to deserve benefits. It's also completely unfair that people who don't even have to pay taxes are getting "rebate" checks.
I'd rather see my tax money go to programs that have real tangible benefits and not to sustain this culture of entitlement.
Frankly, I think this is why I think American industry is headed for the toilet. Too many of these imbecile stockholders are more interested in ROI than the company actually producing a good product. Companies are forced into this mindset and as we've seen, no good has come of it.
Compare that to Japanese companies where investors are far more patient. Major Japanese companies are constantly spending money on what can be considered pointless R&D. But in the end they have something to show for it.
How many potentially good products have been killed because investors weren't to wait. Or what was released wasn't particularly good because the product was rushed to market.
The problem isn't the desire to make money, it's that the desire to make money has superseded the desire to make a good product or provide a good service. That's why companies will go to ridiculous lengths to show shareholders they're still viable, but they don't actually do anything to improve their product and ultimately find themselves in the same situation all over again. They're doing little more than delaying the inevitable.
It the greater scheme of things MMOs are in their infancy. Most offer little in the way of truth depth and substance. Although I have little desire to play a game like Eve Online, I can appreciate it for what the developer has managed to pull off with the game. I think it's closer to the future of MMOs than anything else out there, with it's truly dynamic experience. Perhaps someone will find a way to provide such an experience but make day-to-day gameplay more exciting, but that's beside the point.
The problem is that people today have the attention span of a house fly. Everything has to be cutting edge. This reminds me of reading some blog recently where they called a game barely 10 years old ancient. But then, it seems like nerd has been redefined in recent years to mean someone with a gadget fetish for anything shiny and new and occasionally pretending to show an interest in science.
This Prince of Persia has the same problem I've encountered with essentially every single 3D game that features any level of platforming. There's no sense of place. I feel like I'm going through some sort of studio where each room is done up to convey a particular theme; I never feel like I'm actually going anywhere. The platform elements only serve to enhance the sense of artificiality.
Not many developers seem capable of conveying the sense of being in an actual location introducing platforming to that setting. The Metroid Prime games, excluding the goofy morph ball sequences, and Mirror's Edge I think do it fairly well.
A second problem, which pertains specifically to gameplay is the problem of platforming itself within a 3D game. A lack of depth perception and awkward cameras always make platforming more frustrating than fun. In every one of these games I die not because of real challenge but because I couldn't appropriately gauge how far I needed to go or because I've encountered a scenario I had no possible way of anticipating. And the problem, of course, is that if a developer tries to account for these problems more often than not the platforming sequences become excessively easy.
Ultimately, I find it frustrating that developers without fail resort to tired old gameplay formulas. For what ever reason a hack'n'slash game MUST have platforming sequences. Just like many current FPSs have to have a vehicle sequence. Instead of trying to shoehorn a poorly designed mechanic into the game how about focusing on the main aspect and make that engaging.
Of course, Prince of Persia has originally about the platforming and fighting secondary. Either way, I can't help but wonder if the game wouldn't be more entertaining restricted to a 2D plane.
I've always been a fairly committed PC gamer. Not that I game extensively, but that was my platform of choice; other than a Nintendo DS and a Sega Master System I had years ago I owned no other console. Then I got a PS3 for Xmas.
Now I have little interest in PC gaming outside of an occasional Flash or small indie game. It's nice to not have to deal with the pain of worrying about performance and stability. One thing that has frustrated me over the last 10 years of PC games has been starting a game and then finding that the vast majority of the time I couldn't run it at full detail. Low settings might make the game very playable, but for me I've always felt like I paid for a defective game. I've paid for a game I can't experience to it's fullest extent. And the thing is that with the demands more recent games have made that a person can really miss out from a graphical standpoint.
I still have to deal with installations and updates on the PS3, which I find somewhat amusing, but in general it's a far more seamless experience. The growing push to more of an Xbox Live sort of model on the PC is another big turn off for me.
The PS3 is my console of choice, but it's really getting the short end of the stick in every way. It keeps losing out on exclusives and now we get this sort of nonsense where developers don't bother with updates they offer for other platforms.
I get the impression that Sony has given up pushing exclusives for the system, either because they can't afford it, they've lost all clout with developers or they've simply stopped caring. What's particularly frustrating is how there are a number of PS3 exclusives available in Japan which publishers are too stupid or risk-averse to introduce in the US.
I got Fallout 3 on the PC last year, but didn't like the game much at all, so I have little interest in these updates anyway.
One big frustration for me is the complicity of the media is forcing this man-made climate change nonsense on us. Every couple of weeks someone in the news will make the statement that humanity is unquestionably responsible for global warming with no evidence whatsoever to support these statements. For me, climate change is the 21st century equivalent of a witch hunt. The whole fixation on carbon emissions, I'm convinced is going to turn out to be a big sham.
There have been reports from all over the world of unusually cool weather, but will you find this reported in the American media? Just barely. This past week there was snow in the United Arab Emirates. From what I've read it's the second time anyone can recall that they've experienced snowfall.
Even more impressive however, was the unusually cold weather in Thailand. Unusually cold for them being temperatures in the low 50s when they're used to 75+ temperatures. People there didn't even have coats to cope with the weather; a few people in northern Thailand died of hypothermia. I heard about this from my wife who gets news from Taiwan. I tried searching for stories on the web and the only sites I found covering it were based in Australia and elsewhere in Asia.
Speaking of Taiwan, they've had unusually cold weather as well. There were a few inches of snow in the mountains which is relatively rare. I have family in Europe who have also complained about unusually cold weather. My cousin went back to the UK after the holidays and was greeted to a few inches of snow outside of London. That's not that unusual, but it's certainly normal either.
And in my own area we've had an unusually high number of snow storms and colder weather than normal. But where few outside the local news services seem to point this out. On the other hand, we get a couple of days hot weather, like we do every summer, and the cries of global warming start.
I need to point out all these examples because if I were to only point out what was going on around here my experience would be immediately dismissed as being too localized.
Even NASA can't get their data straight. Last year the temperature readings for Russia were reporting the hottest October every, by a significant amount. Some guy took notice of this and on investigating found that the date for October was identical to September. He reported it, barely got a response, but noticed the data quietly fixed within a few hours. I have a friend who makes a hobby of looking at climate data and he's said that there are quite a few head-scratching oddities here and there in the data. Then there are all the improperly placed temperature measuring stations.
I accept that there will always be some amount of flawed data. That's just the way things are. My problem is how people are making such absurd assumptions on this data and then want to force everyone to change their way of life because of it.
But ultimately, I'm convinced this comes down to money. There's a fortune to be made over climate change and everyone, from Al Gore on down is looking to cash in. They're trying to create a forced economy by making us pay to build the alternative energy industry. And Obama has shown his disregard for the average person by acknowledging in an interview with SF Gate last year that his energy plans are going to result in much larger financial burden for Americans. He has said he didn't have a problem with gasoline being over $4 per gallon, his problem was that it got so expensive so quickly. I already pay a lot for utilities around here and I try to be quite frugal with usage. I would serious consider moving if things got worse.
And finally, one common theme I see with the global warming crowd is how we're going to be facing the consequences of climate change in the near feature. It's always looming, yet year after year nothing ever happens. We've had 100+ years of global warming but little has come of it. And the consequences of global warming are wildly contradictory. One the one hand, they'll cause larger and
How exactly does holding onto a personal phone convey this message? How would him using the government issued phone prevent him from losing contact with the people who got him in office. And that's assuming he has any more contact with the people who got him in office, voters, than any previous president has. Somehow I doubt he's going to be calling any of us to remind us he's still thinking about.
Now, if you believe that special interests helped get him in office, that might not necessarily be a good thing for us.
For me, national security trumps all else. But honestly, I'm fairly confident the government will be able to ensure that Obama's Blackberry is just as secure as that Sectera. What I am curious about is on what network the Sectera runs and if they can ensure the same level of security for both.
Feel free to commend Obama on facts, but please don't start commending him for something you only imagine he might be thinking.
What I would commend Obama for is if he refused to use the Sectera because he felt it was an overpriced piece of equipment that provides no more inherent security than the Blackberry. But of course, by keeping his private line he needs two phones just the same, so it's a moot point.
Say what you want about Al Jazeera, but the former ABC correspondent, David Marash, I belive, who was hired by them quit because of the anti-American bias. What I found most interesting was his comment about how he encountered the strongest bias coming from Western employees, not natives to the Middle East.
Although you'd like to believe otherwise, the US media is far more sensitive to foreign cultures, the Middle East included.
Regarding Battlestar Galactica, there's one big reason I've never been able to really enjoy the show. We have barely 50,000 humans left, facing a constant threat of extinction by the cylons, and the show depicts humans engaged in what I consider insignificant squabbles. They're constantly hung up about issues which I think given their precarious position should be a non-issue. I would think humanity, facing such a situation, would either run like hell or pull out all the stops to survive and win.
I think a series which was quite effective at handling political and social dilemmas was Deep Space Nine. I also think the scenario was more believable because despite being on the front lines and a serious looming threat the Federation wasn't faced with extinction.
I don't quite understand why people dislike Keanu Reeves so much. Well, I think he has a tendency to end up in these lame movies with roles that are easily mocked. I wouldn't call him a great actor, but he's certainly far from the worst. And he's not nearly as obnoxious as others.
My problem with this movie is the fact that it's yet another remake and it will probably be crap. They'll try to reinvent everything, completely missing the character of the original. I expect the end result to be crap much like Speed Racer.
Part of my problem, however, is the source material. Cowboy Bebop is decent, but like most other anime is very derivative and features convoluted storylines. Over the years I've found that anime fans tend to have low standards. As long as it's Japanese they love it. I can't count the times I've read glowing reviews for one thing or another only to find it's not very good. Even what is widely considering to be average anime gets overly positive reviews. And when something is actually pretty good, then it's really blown out of proportion.
My point is why bother remaking anime? The fans will never be happy with it. Few others will know enough about the source material to be interested which means the movie will have to stand on its own merits. At that point, they may as well have just come up with something unique and potentially more interesting. But then Hollywood and unique go together like oil and water.
Speaking of anime remakes, Battle Angel Alita is also coming in 2011, with James Cameron as the director. The manga's storyline has turned to crap, but I still have a fondness for the original story. Even though I'll probably be disappointed I am foolishly looking forward to the movie.
You've got to be kidding. When the hell did the media ever go easy on Bush? They blamed him for basically everything. I'm not saying he didn't deserve a lot of criticism, but according to the media he did nothing right. The one exception was, predictably, Foxnews. But somehow a lot of people seem to take one news network and extrapolate that out to represent all of news media, print included.
If anything, I'm surprised the media changed it's tune so quickly on Obama. What remains to be seen is if the entertainment shits on Obama the way they did with Bush. Somehow I don't see that happening.
Gaming magazines are probably going to die out completely at some point, at least those that offer little more than previous and reviews. Gaming is a visual medium, who want's to see a printing of a screenshot when I can go online and see it exactly as it will appear in the game. Not only that, I can get videos online and news is much more timely.
Really, for a magazine to survive in this medium it needs to offer something more. Those might be exclusives, developer diaries, compelling content that others don't have access too. One interesting thing might be a magazine devoted mostly to strategy guides and cheats; it's a lot easier to play a game with a printed guide sitting in your lap, as opposed to trying to browse the web while gaming. Of course, this also means catering to a more niche market.
Well, the electricity and gas companies in my state offers a program where monthly bills are averaged out for the whole year eliminating price spikes during certain seasons, especially the winter. The rationale is that it makes things more manageable in those months of heavier usage. As far as I know, however, there are no refunds for overpayment. But there may very well be; I haven't tried it.
That does remind me of another absurdity. The electricity company has had campaigns over the last few years encouraging people to cut usage. People do start cutting usage for a variety of reasons, and how do we get repaid for the effort? That company is raising rates because of decreased demand.
I pay my bills online, but in most cases I continue to receive paper bills. It makes it easier to spot discrepancies and it reminds me that there's a bill to pay. There are a few companies, however, which don't give the option of paper billing if I decide to pay bills online.
My problem with online payment is that a handful of companies don't spell out how my bill breaks down as clearly as I'd like. I have to really dig around to get all the details, and I'm convinced it's done intentionally.
One thing I will never do is automatic payment. This makes it difficult to dispute payments and introduces a host of other potential problems.
If the power were being generated by wind, solar and perhaps nuclear power why would having a more inefficient television be harmful to the environment? As for pollution from manufacturing the televisions themselves, an energy inefficient television is just as potentially harmful as an efficient one.
And as for global warming, it's debatable that something needs to be done about that.
As for taxes being raised, I think it's time the government cut their own waste. If their too inept to manage their own budgets they have no right coming to the people demanding more money.
I look forward to more energy efficient products, but I don't want the government cramming them down my throat.
Isn't that what property taxes are for? Granted, I don't live in California, but around here part of what I pay in property tax goes towards garbage disposal.
All these other fees are nothing but bullshit money grabs. This way politicians can fool people into believing their taxes haven't been raised.
And even with high taxes and all these nonsense fees states are somehow incapable of incurring massive debt.
I think California were actually concerned about energy consumption they'd cut government waste.
Right... Like a $50 yearly savings is going to convince me to potentially spend an additional $500. I'll spend more for a better imagine, not for marginal energy savings. Although, if it were more efficient that would be a nice plus.
It reminds me of the gas boiler I got recently. Boilers with 85%+ efficiency qualify as high efficiency boilers and as such qualify for an up to $500 tax credit in my state. The problem is that they cost $3500 or more. On the other hand I can get a boiler between 80% and 84% efficiency for $1500. And the high efficiency boiler has additional components that conventional boilers don't use which add further expense.
I'd like to get the high efficiency boiler. But I don't have the freedom to spend that much up front, first of all. And secondly, I'm hard pressed to justify the price difference when I'm not going to see significant savings.
Instead of trying to control yet another aspect of our lives maybe California should look at improving power generation. With the supposed advent of clean energy what does it matter what kind of television I have?
I think people should be informed about using energy efficiently, especially anything dependent on a finite resource. But I'd rather see this achieved through education. This stinks of yet another way for California's politicians to extend their control over the people.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of the motivations behind this is to spur more spending. However, the fact is that it is time to move on to more advanced technology; this had to happen sooner or later.
It's not like this is anything new. In Japan the government makes it difficult to own a car for more than a few years because taxes actually go up for older cars. And it gets increasingly difficult to meet requirements. One of the many reasons for this, of course, is to spur people to replace their cars on a regular basis.
I also don't think television is going to die any time soon. There's a lot of things people would rather give up before they give up television.
I can see the argument. But when I was living in a big city in Asia I felt more stimulated and motivated than I've ever felt anywhere else. I felt like there was always something going on, something to take a part in, something new to see, something to absorb.
Now I'm back in the US, back in the suburbs, and in some ways it feels like a wasteland of blandness. I live in an area where the homes are all very close together, but there just isn't much life to be found. It's all hidden away indoors.
I recall getting back and over the first few weeks feeling this sense of emptiness, similar to hearing silence. I can see where too much stimulus might be a problem, but to me it isn't much different than being bombarded by crap on TV, but I think television is worse.
The problem I see with big cities is the impersonal nature of life there, how a person can feel isolated even in the midst of millions of people. That leads to all sorts of problems. But with culture today it seems to be a problem everywhere but small towns.
To be honest, if I had the opportunity to move back I would.
Compared to other MMOs Runescape started small. This game the developers time to refine and improve the game. As for WoW, it may have had some issues, but compared to many MMOs the game was released in a reasonably polished state.
The World Ends with You was a great game, especially the first section with Shiki. But ultimately it grows extremely tedious and the story turns into a bit of a letdown. It was still interesting and I continued to enjoy the game, but it didn't live up to the potential raised in that first section.
I'm probably being overly fixated on one of the many games featured on the list, but I must be one of the only people out there who thinks Fallout 3 was one of the most overrated games of the year, perhaps third only to GTA5 and Spore.
When I first played the game I regretted my purchase and lamented the fact that I couldn't return the game, having gotten the PC version. But I decided to spend more time with the game and found that my impression hadn't changed.
Getting past the excessively monotone color scheme, I will admit the game looks impressive. But otherwise I found it to be extremely tedious and the story a bit contrived. The characters followed the same uninspired templates I find in bad Sci-Fi channel movies.
While I can accept the gritty theme of the game, I dislike overly realistic characters that end up looking ugly and more like actors than actual inhabitants of the world being depicted. Always lame is when children look like miniature adults, mainly because of overly mottled facial textures. Encountering old people in the game made me laugh a few times because of how insanely wrinkled they were, like they were made of cracked leather or clay.
I don't care for having to repair my equipment, are constantly being encumbered by random crap I find, having to sit there and sort through inventory trying to determine what I need and don't need. The side quests are so disruptive to flow and feel so disconnected that I eventually lost track and forgot what the main quest was all about. Basically, it's reminiscent of Bethesda's other RPGs, Morrowind included. Although I think that, in terms of gameplay, was the superior game.
One high point was combat which was somewhat entertaining. The targetting feature, while helpful, I found disruptive and felt like little more than an excuse to showcase the violence.
Maybe the game gets better, but I don't have the patience to find out.
Interestingly enough, I played Knights of the Old Republic 2 for the first time less than a week after abandoning Fallout 3 and found that to be, far and a way, a much better game. It wasn't perfect and I'm not normally one for Star Wars games but it was very engaging the whole way through and a lot of fun to play. The customization was satisfying without being tedious. About the only thing that crossed my mind a few times was what KOTOR2 would look like with current generation graphics on the level of Fallout 3 but with more style.
I just got an 80GB PS3 for Xmas. It's a bit shocking to compare this version to previous ones and notice what's been cut. To be honest, however, this is the version Sony should have released from the start because what was cut I consider largely superfluous for the PS3's primary purpose which is playing games.
I can only imagine that some higher ups at Sony had this unrealistic vision that both the PSP and PS3 were going to be complete entertainment and information centers to replace everything else. Things didn't work out with the PSP, so even though Sony executives might have been aware of those issues before the release of the PS3 it was too late to address them. And some probably continued to insist it would be a success.
But ultimately, the real problem with the PS3, I don't think, is the price of the system. Well, it may be now with the economy, but I think the real problem still is the lack of good games. There seems to be a never-ending stream of games promised to be great and which turn out to be mediocre. There's an overall lack of variety, and in some genres there aren't more than an handful of games available.
I encountered this upon trying to decide what I wanted to get for my PS3. There's not a huge selection outside of shooters, sports and a number of racing games. And an even bigger problem is the fact that most games are cross-platform which largely renders the PS3 irrelevant given the Xbox360s install base. I bought four games and that's pretty much all I'm interested in getting at this point.
Sony needs to get more exclusives, which is going to be difficult, but there already exist a number of exclusives in Japan that are unavailable in the US. I'm not sure who are the decision makers that don't bring to the US potentially interesting games. If nothing else it would create more options for players here. And perhaps it might help move the market away from the more adult crowd the PS3 currently seems to attract.
On a side note, my PS3 is quite quiet. I hear the harddrive going more than I hear the fan itself. And the system seems to run cool. Of course we're entering winter, so it may be a different story in the summer.
That's because the Higgs Boson and dark matter has no immediate impact on our lives. But the man-made global warming hysteria campaign can have a real impact on our daily lives.
Hell, it's already bad enough that I can't watch an educational show about nature or the environment without it turning into a propaganda piece about how awful humans are.
What in the hell does skepticism in the global warming hysteria have to do with pollution? That's quite a leap of logic there, can you explain it to me?
I'm completely opposed to pollution, but that doesn't mean I have to blindly subscribe to the notion of man-made global warming. Quite frankly, the whole movement stinks to me more of a political and social movement than anything driven by concerns for the environment. The fact that there has been a shift from the use of the term "global warming" to "climate change" should make anyone skeptical. Someone seems to be trying to cover their ass to make the movement relevant if the claims and reality fail to agree.
We've been hearing claims for the last 15-20 years that we're doomed with even minimal changes and climate. The consequences are always around the corner. And yet here we are still waiting.
More often than not, I hear global warming being lumped in with claims that the haves are somehow oppressing the have-nots. In my part of the country the wealthy have taken to using environmentalism as a tool to preserve their way of life.
All this doesn't mean, however, that I want to see raw sewage dumped into the ocean and garbage strewn about everywhere. I think it's great that we're finally seeing alternatives to gasoline powered cars, clean energy is becoming a reality and companies and governments are becoming smarter about managing and recycling waste. And I will agree that not enough is being done.
The problem with the global warming crowd is that they make unrealistic and unattainable claims; like during the presidential campaign when there were television ads claiming that the US could be on 100% clean energy in 10 years. And they're constantly shitting on people. It doesn't matter what people do, it's never enough. I feel like these people still wouldn't be satisfied if we were living in huts and cooking over campfires. After all, some communities are even banning the use of fireplaces.
And ultimately, that's what it comes down to. These people trying to force things down our throat based on a pseudo science. And perhaps for now it hasn't had a significant impact, but are we going to cripple this country based on something we're not even certain of? We already have enough problems as it is.
And yes, I will call it a pseudo science because I find it an insult every time someone comes along and claims it's an absolute fact that man is affecting the climate. Like somehow, despite all the archaeological and scientific data, the climate has been static for the last 4+ billion years. However, if you believed in creationism and the 6000 year old universe, then I might understand the belief in man-made global warming.
I will concede that the human race is great at procrastinating and will always choose the path of least resistance. So in some cases we need a fire under our asses to get something done. But in many ways this hysteria is going too far.
In my mind, the reason Steve Jobs is important to Apple was not because of his ideas, or whatever involvement he may have had in the development of products. He is important because of his role as a figurehead, because he seems to intimately understand the products his company sells, and because he doesn't preach a corporate philosophy so much as epitomize it. He's a leader, I suspect, is easy for employees to rally behind.
Compare that with the heads of many other American companies. Many of those guys have business and marketing backgrounds. They seem to barely know what their companies do and all information about the company is filtered through management.
Take the CEO of Chrysler, Robert Nardelli. The guy has a degree in business. Before taking his current position he was CEO at Home Depot, somehow landing that job with no retail experience whatsoever. But here he is running a car company, with no experience in this sort of business either. So, how much interest can he possibly have in the well-being of the company?
His primary goal must be making money. Now, only someone who is naive would think that Steve Jobs doesn't want to do the same. But I think the issue is priority. I'd like to think that Steve Jobs approaches his company from the standpoint of wanting to produce a superior product first, and then profit from that effort second. Whereas many of these other guys focus on money first. This makes it too easy to trivialize what the company does, outsource everything, lay off employees, cut corners. They'll do anything to ensure the company looks good to stockholders, but what they are doing is eroding any competitiveness and potential for innovation the company might have had.
I think it's one of the reasons Japanese companies make such good products. Engineers run their companies. They may not have the persona of someone like Jobs, but they still have an intimate understanding of the business they're in and are driven by the desire to make a good product.
My prediction is if Apple manages to find someone with a similar mindset as Jobs they'll continue to do well. If they replace him with yet another business idiot then they're likely to loose a lot of the ground they've gained. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
I'm sure desensitization is a good defense mechanism when necessary. But it's not a good thing when people stop caring about violent crime and other atrocities. When you've got kids laughing at videos of violence I think we've got a problem.
Is this why we've got so much crime in the US? Probably not. But it probably helps ensure that people don't bother to do much of anything about it.
Regarding any reference to any war, my point wasn't to justify anything, which apparently you appear to believe. My point was that if you want to convey the message that war, for example, is wrong then convey those exact consequences you describe. Don't twist things around to somehow justify more violence, as movies and games do constantly. You're reiterating my point, which is that the consequences need to be emphasized.
But lets face reality, violence exists in games for no other reason that because it sells. People to feel an emotional response and once they've become accustomed to something they're going to look for a bigger thrill.
I just think there's a point where people have to really start thinking about when enough is enough. Will people finally be turned off when we get ultra-realistic graphics? I doubt it, but I do think the fight over violence in games will become even more passionate. And I do admit that my feelings on the matter are at odds with my belief in personal freedoms.