I find myself unhealthily intrigued by this line of thought.
Would the monthly be hardcore if people were photographed only while fully clothed (no matter how damp)? Is the subject matter in itself sufficient to earn censure or does nudity, obscenity or other transgressions of 'common decency' need to be involved?
What about fake shots, such as someone in a shower of beer?
Hmm. Beer showers. I knew this discussion would end up somewhere good.
Fortunately such material is already illegal in the UK, so it should not be available to be opted in to.
Incidentally I find the Labour party disgusting and sick but looking at their policies isn't harmful for my (future unborn) kids. It is possible to dislike something while also recognising its legitimacy and accepting that it might appeal to some fucked up weirdos.
Did you know, for instance, that golden showers are a traditional way of cleansing wounds. You might smell afterwards, but not as much as gangrene.
Machinarium was puzzle, not strategy. Worms is shoot-em-up, not strategy. (yeah, Steam have it as strategy. Steam is often full of shite) Braid is a puzzle-platformer (copy-pasted that description from Steam) Zen Bound 2 is a puzzle game. However, I hadn't spotted it before, and the screenshots are really appealing to me.
A couple of your RPGs are action-RPGs - Torchlight is less RPG than Angband, and sadly less durable too.
Casual games can be fun, and indie games often have gameplay or aesthetics that go way beyond the multi-million dollar industrial productions, but puzzle games are not strategy games.
I suspect he was referring to the Dogme film movement. If you haven't seen Lars von Trier's forays into that world then I strongly recommend tracking them down and watching them.
Genuinely superb cinema, albeit fucking painful to watch. I still can't face watching Dancer in the Dark a second time, even though I feel compelled to do so.
Twitch shooting doesn't reward nearly as much as a single precise shot to the skull.
Twitch precision shots to the skull reward even more quickly still.
You will get trampled on until you learn the maps/common player strategies, after that if your not top of the board, then put on your glasses and you will be.
As opposed to the people with fast reactions who also know the maps and common player strategies.
With equal knowledge and equal skill, he who moves faster wins. It's a young man's game, along with tennis and dogfighting.
No, he's applying commercially led censorship using flimsy excuses to justify banning one symbol and not others.
If he had any moral grounding then he would be banning other symbols too, instead of belittling the people that highlight the logical fallacies in his position.
It's Microsoft's service, they can do what they want with it. Doesn't mean he's not a twat about it though.
As someone that isn't in America, I found the over-exhuberant, unnecessary and pain-inducing whooping on the video was so fucking annoying I stopped watching it.
Was there any actual content or did it just continue in masturbatory appreciation of the cult of celebrity?
I used to take photos of military aircraft on military airfields. The usual response from the military to me (a civilian) was to pose for me.
I have a nice photo somewhere of some Wermacht soldiers pointing anti-tank weaponry at me in a mock menacing manner - they had rifles, pistols and assorted other firearms with them too but you lose the comedy value with those.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's all got a bit stupid of late:(
That would indeed be a significant undertaking. I'd also hazard it would be doomed to fail - entrenched interests would seek to kill something that didnmt give them a controlling interest.
You'd thus have to start small, build a market, gain acceptance and basically force everyone else to play with you.
Look at how Youtube, Facebook, etc got up and running, and created new markets that established players had to work with.
Truly hideous quadra-linked soft costs appear out of nowhere that resemble M. C. Escher designing a haunted house. "No one believes a crank in his house" - so you get an office!
It's still possible to run a business out of a home office. It's also possible to get financial assistance from various bodies and organisations for things like startup office costs.
"This is money-replacement-interaction, so we need at least two legal reps, one for interacting with banks and one for the govt."
You need a legal rep to open a bank account? Your customers need to be able to transfer money to you, but it doesn't have to go anywhere other than your main account. Put all the money in there, pay out all real monies from there.
And/or become a card merchant? Millions of shopkeepers have managed to do that.
"You need at least 10 meetings each with 10 high powered people to get influence, and those guys don't eat tacos on a park bench... $100,000 for meeting costs."
Why? What sort of influence? Maybe if you're trying to become the default payment mechanism for the Olympic Games, or get terminals installed on public transport, but we're talking startup costs. Start small.
"You need advertising so our famous Harry H. Schmoe has head of this - 10 spots at a cut rate $10,000/spot 'cuz you know a buddy = $100,000"
The original suggestion was a nano-transaction model to support in-game purchases. So hook up the new payment mechanism to the game. Zero advertising needed.
Whee!
Look, I too can start up a company with a burn rate of $7m/month. I've been there (albeit working for, rather than running) and it's easily done.
I can also start up a company with a burn rate of $70/month. I've been there too and it's also easily done.
Indeed - I stuck £40 in crisp used notes through a neighbour's door yesterday. I could have done an electronic bank transfer but she'd have panicked if I'd knocked on the door and asked for her bank account details.
I like using cash anyway, it gives me a tangible way to observe my general expenditure. If I used a card for everything I'd have less of an emotional link between spending money and having a lower bank balance.
Hmm. Startup costs are a few hundred dollars tops. A good coder could get the basic system up and running in hours, a nice looking and secure UI in days.
The time and money isn't difficult. The encryption is easy (you think online banking required new encryption mechanisms, or did they just re-use what's already out there) and the economics is irrelevent: He's perceived a need, if he's right it'll be economically sound.
A Paypal equivalent isn't a difficult thing to create. Marketing it, getting it used and trusted and building the momentum around it is the difficult bit, and if you're selling a game where you say to people "Stick $1 into your account and we'll let you make 1400 purchases with it" then he has a market already.
Me, I don't think the world is ready for nano-transactions - the micro-transaction model (where things cost $1, not $0.000056) is already becoming established. I also don't want to encourage online metering of services - e.g. Google make money off my searches, I don't want them to charge me too.
Oh heck no, Irreversible was a stunning film. (It left me stunned:)
Not a great film, but essential viewing at least once nonetheless. Any film that leaves me unable to look away from something I'm finding traumatic must be doing something right.
And nobody had mentioned it in this thread at the point I previously posted, but yeah, you've just reminded me of that awful brilliant shot.
Indeed - Dark City is a great film (by Alex Proyas, whose recent film was listed in the article) and has 20-30 cuts in a quarter second sequence at one point.
Average shot time is (according to IMDB) 1.8 seconds.
On the flipside, one of the great sequences was Linklater's "welcome to school" montage near the start of Donnie Darko. It's put on screen speeded up but still takes a minute to play out.
And although Requiem for a Dream has a substantial number of cuts, it also has 30 seconds of footage that is a speeded up 20 minute single take (of Ellen cleaning up the house). I'll watch anything made by Aranofsky, he does cinema sooo well!
Slashdot Mirror
I find myself unhealthily intrigued by this line of thought.
Would the monthly be hardcore if people were photographed only while fully clothed (no matter how damp)? Is the subject matter in itself sufficient to earn censure or does nudity, obscenity or other transgressions of 'common decency' need to be involved?
What about fake shots, such as someone in a shower of beer?
Hmm. Beer showers. I knew this discussion would end up somewhere good.
Fortunately such material is already illegal in the UK, so it should not be available to be opted in to.
Incidentally I find the Labour party disgusting and sick but looking at their policies isn't harmful for my (future unborn) kids. It is possible to dislike something while also recognising its legitimacy and accepting that it might appeal to some fucked up weirdos.
Did you know, for instance, that golden showers are a traditional way of cleansing wounds. You might smell afterwards, but not as much as gangrene.
Machinarium was puzzle, not strategy.
Worms is shoot-em-up, not strategy. (yeah, Steam have it as strategy. Steam is often full of shite)
Braid is a puzzle-platformer (copy-pasted that description from Steam)
Zen Bound 2 is a puzzle game. However, I hadn't spotted it before, and the screenshots are really appealing to me.
A couple of your RPGs are action-RPGs - Torchlight is less RPG than Angband, and sadly less durable too.
Casual games can be fun, and indie games often have gameplay or aesthetics that go way beyond the multi-million dollar industrial productions, but puzzle games are not strategy games.
I suspect he was referring to the Dogme film movement. If you haven't seen Lars von Trier's forays into that world then I strongly recommend tracking them down and watching them.
Genuinely superb cinema, albeit fucking painful to watch. I still can't face watching Dancer in the Dark a second time, even though I feel compelled to do so.
I think it's irresponsible to perpetuate humanity. Stop breeding, it's old fashioned and selfish.
How about go adopt a kid instead? There's a world full of children that need good parents.
You just answered your own query.
Twitch shooting doesn't reward nearly as much as a single precise shot to the skull.
Twitch precision shots to the skull reward even more quickly still.
You will get trampled on until you learn the maps/common player strategies, after that if your not top of the board, then put on your glasses and you will be.
As opposed to the people with fast reactions who also know the maps and common player strategies.
With equal knowledge and equal skill, he who moves faster wins. It's a young man's game, along with tennis and dogfighting.
Old days? Shit. In the old days the story was..
The Frog wants to get home!
The caterpillar is hungry!
Drugs are Good[tm] until the ghosts in your head catch you.
Invaders from Space!
Hardly Booker Prize winning material.
So Microsoft are merely commercially exploiting the violence, instead of using it to express themselves artistically (as Activision did)?
I'm not sure what your point is here.
If I had to make constant decisions for 15 year olds I'd try and be:
- consistent
- honest
- polite
He's just being a twat.
No, he's applying commercially led censorship using flimsy excuses to justify banning one symbol and not others.
If he had any moral grounding then he would be banning other symbols too, instead of belittling the people that highlight the logical fallacies in his position.
It's Microsoft's service, they can do what they want with it. Doesn't mean he's not a twat about it though.
As someone that isn't in America, I found the over-exhuberant, unnecessary and pain-inducing whooping on the video was so fucking annoying I stopped watching it.
Was there any actual content or did it just continue in masturbatory appreciation of the cult of celebrity?
I used to take photos of military aircraft on military airfields. The usual response from the military to me (a civilian) was to pose for me.
I have a nice photo somewhere of some Wermacht soldiers pointing anti-tank weaponry at me in a mock menacing manner - they had rifles, pistols and assorted other firearms with them too but you lose the comedy value with those.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's all got a bit stupid of late :(
That would indeed be a significant undertaking. I'd also hazard it would be doomed to fail - entrenched interests would seek to kill something that didnmt give them a controlling interest.
You'd thus have to start small, build a market, gain acceptance and basically force everyone else to play with you.
Look at how Youtube, Facebook, etc got up and running, and created new markets that established players had to work with.
Truly hideous quadra-linked soft costs appear out of nowhere that resemble M. C. Escher designing a haunted house.
"No one believes a crank in his house" - so you get an office!
It's still possible to run a business out of a home office.
It's also possible to get financial assistance from various bodies and organisations for things like startup office costs.
"This is money-replacement-interaction, so we need at least two legal reps, one for interacting with banks and one for the govt."
You need a legal rep to open a bank account? Your customers need to be able to transfer money to you, but it doesn't have to go anywhere other than your main account. Put all the money in there, pay out all real monies from there.
And/or become a card merchant? Millions of shopkeepers have managed to do that.
"You need at least 10 meetings each with 10 high powered people to get influence, and those guys don't eat tacos on a park bench... $100,000 for meeting costs."
Why? What sort of influence? Maybe if you're trying to become the default payment mechanism for the Olympic Games, or get terminals installed on public transport, but we're talking startup costs. Start small.
"You need advertising so our famous Harry H. Schmoe has head of this - 10 spots at a cut rate $10,000/spot 'cuz you know a buddy = $100,000"
The original suggestion was a nano-transaction model to support in-game purchases. So hook up the new payment mechanism to the game. Zero advertising needed.
Whee!
Look, I too can start up a company with a burn rate of $7m/month. I've been there (albeit working for, rather than running) and it's easily done.
I can also start up a company with a burn rate of $70/month. I've been there too and it's also easily done.
Don't over complicate.
a decent bank replacement system
Hmm, no, nothing that complex. Even the basic ones have a shitload of nastiness, particularly when they have to support multiple payment schemes.
A better Paypal however is relatively trivial.
the card auto-destructs if the key is entered wrong 4-5 times
This is why we don't have better security. The cost of replacing cards would be far higher than the cost of occasional fraud.
There's a balance between the cost and inconvenience of security and the extent of benefit it gives.
The general public would rather their bank loses money to fraud than have more onerous security constraints.
(That the banks put as much of that cost onto the merchants as possible is a separate but linked discussion).
Indeed - I stuck £40 in crisp used notes through a neighbour's door yesterday. I could have done an electronic bank transfer but she'd have panicked if I'd knocked on the door and asked for her bank account details.
I like using cash anyway, it gives me a tangible way to observe my general expenditure. If I used a card for everything I'd have less of an emotional link between spending money and having a lower bank balance.
Hmm. Startup costs are a few hundred dollars tops. A good coder could get the basic system up and running in hours, a nice looking and secure UI in days.
The time and money isn't difficult. The encryption is easy (you think online banking required new encryption mechanisms, or did they just re-use what's already out there) and the economics is irrelevent: He's perceived a need, if he's right it'll be economically sound.
A Paypal equivalent isn't a difficult thing to create. Marketing it, getting it used and trusted and building the momentum around it is the difficult bit, and if you're selling a game where you say to people "Stick $1 into your account and we'll let you make 1400 purchases with it" then he has a market already.
Me, I don't think the world is ready for nano-transactions - the micro-transaction model (where things cost $1, not $0.000056) is already becoming established. I also don't want to encourage online metering of services - e.g. Google make money off my searches, I don't want them to charge me too.
Nope. Don't read xkcd; once you get past the self-congratulation, smugness and sanctimony, all that's left is stick figure art.
Oh. I read it for the art. :(
Oh heck no, Irreversible was a stunning film. (It left me stunned :)
Not a great film, but essential viewing at least once nonetheless. Any film that leaves me unable to look away from something I'm finding traumatic must be doing something right.
And nobody had mentioned it in this thread at the point I previously posted, but yeah, you've just reminded me of that awful brilliant shot.
Could it possibly be Hard Boiled, which was mentioned in the article? :)
Indeed - Dark City is a great film (by Alex Proyas, whose recent film was listed in the article) and has 20-30 cuts in a quarter second sequence at one point.
Average shot time is (according to IMDB) 1.8 seconds.
On the flipside, one of the great sequences was Linklater's "welcome to school" montage near the start of Donnie Darko. It's put on screen speeded up but still takes a minute to play out.
And although Requiem for a Dream has a substantial number of cuts, it also has 30 seconds of footage that is a speeded up 20 minute single take (of Ellen cleaning up the house). I'll watch anything made by Aranofsky, he does cinema sooo well!
A technical, not artistic, triumph.
Exactly. It's a hollow victory when the cinema is compromised to achieve an arbitrary technical goal.
Technically admirable but sadly a pretty shit film.