There are a number of high ABV beers out there that ARE good.
The obvious one to me is Three Philosophers, which is made by Ommegang, a NY based Belgian brewery. It's about 10% ABV iirc, and very good. Most of Ommegang's beers are relatively high ABV, yet still good.
I think I have also had something up to 16% ABV that I liked (can't remember the name currently), and I have also had plenty of high test beers that sucked, probably about in proportion to normal beers that suck though.
That being said, I have next to no interest in these ultra high ABV beers. They are no longer beer, and are now distilled spirits. I kinda doubt they taste all that good, and I'm fairly sure they would not be worth what ever the ridiculous asking price is.
I mean, if some one offered me some I would take it (I'm a curious drinker), but I'm not going to seek it out.
As a horrible American who really knows next to nothing about other countries, especially those that aren't English as a primary language, it through me for a loop, and sorta disappointed me (something bugs me about the idea of government web pages NOT being in the proper language). Knowing that they are all bilingual is kinda awesome to me, thanks.
Apple has 2 things going for them: 1) They probably have contracts saying "we can dictate when/where you can sell our products".
2) They can ALWAYS say "well, we will stop selling you our products if you don't stop selling online".
Apple gets to negotiate from a position of strength here. They are a large enough company that they can take the hit from a single store no longer selling their products. If you want an i you want an i not an MP3 player, a tablet, or what ever, so if your preferred store doesn't sell them, you will simply go to another.
Yes, all of the retailers COULD band together and say "nope, sorry, if you impose this we will stop carrying your goods", and it probably would work. However, not all of the retailers are willing to take that hit, and they know that if they are one of the few retailers with i they will be the store everyone goes to.
However it is mostly back to the old days of copying games for friends.:
PSN games are tagged to an account. You can log into a PSN account from any PS3. Prior to this game you could download your PSN games and then sign off and play them as you saw fit.
This leads to people sharing an account amongst themselves so that everyone can have the games but they are only payed for once. It is apparently fairly pervasive, and even works for MP games (you can be signed into a different account and still play the games, not sure if this works for this FF title or not).
I haven't done this yet myself as PSN games fall under within my price range of "It is low enough that I am willing to take the hit if it isn't that great, especially if they offer a demo". Admittedly, I have also bought all of one PSN game (Fat Princess).
When it was first announced it was announced WITH the price, and the general reaction, here and other places I looked, was "wow, that would be nice if it was $300".
"According to a draft regulation drawn up by the European Commission and seen by Reuters, suppliers may be allowed to require that distributors have a "brick-and-mortar" shop before they can sell online."
First sentence in the article.
The law would allow suppliers to require the retail stores to have a brick and mortar location before they sell, something I gues they aren't allowed to do now. This actually sounds like the EU saying "ok, you can refuse to sell to people who don't fit your business model", which sounds fine to me.
I found out about this glorious law of yours when a friend got me a copy of an Umbilical Brother's DVD (Aus comedy group, well worth it). And I was all set to spending one of my region switches to rip it and re-encode it. Only to pop it in the DVD drive and it to start working. Looked up a bit of info and it made my day.
The OP also has an interesting point. The games are not actually banned, they are just illegal to sell.
I was going to write a post about that as well, and wondering why it would matter for an AUS release, as they actually have laws (or had, I assume they still exist) making region locking illegal, and thus importing media from else where a trivial matter.
However, I then looked up the release dates of the game. Australia got it on Nov 12th, NA got it on the 15th, EU got it on the 20th, and JP got it on Dec 3rd.
So, however he got it, he released it prior to ANYONE getting it, and probably in a region free version as well (though, I think Nintendo doesn't actually region lock their games, but I wouldn't swear to it).
This is really all kinds of awesome. Not only will they release a new (whatever sport) game every year, they will now shut down all but the latest for online play. It is GENIUS I tell you!
What ever happened to EA's "We will stop being evil, we swear" thing they said a while back? I remember the followed it for a few months. I guess they then realized that the vast majority of their customers are slack jawed idiots, not because they play sports games (as much as I find them uninteresting), but because will take whatever is dished out.
Admittedly, I guess I am a slack jawed idiot, because I still buy EA titles every so often...
I avoided using the term uncanny valley as too many people take it gospel, when in reality it is basically just an idea some guy came up with. It's a good idea, and I agree with it, but it is still just a random idea with no actual backing aside from masses of geeks who go "yah, that makes perfect sense".
Also, it is specifically in terms of things that approach humanity (why we feel more comfortable with something like TF2 characters, than we do with those humanoid robots like the Einstein head). Where I am talking about errors in how things work, not just graphics.
Oh, and the last comment: Until a game actually can reproduce reality (but twisted so that we can play whatever game it is), I will generally stick to the very unrealistic. If a game tries to be as close to reality as they can every little error will break you out of the game ("wait, he shouldn't have fallen like that"). However a game that creates it's own reality is by it's nature correct in all things that it does.
In real life if some one is close to an explosion they don't gib, however when I see some one eat a rocket and fall apart into nice chunks (be it TF2, Quake, whatever) it works because it is internally consistent.
That really is the key to me. I have no real interest in the 'realistic' games out there (be they FPS like AA, or something like ARMA) simply because they aren't realistic.
"Oh no, my gun jammed, I have to do this quicktime event to make sure I can fix it quickly."
Not fun.
Now, if a game could really 100% put me into a situation where it is simply my skills vs the game (holodeck), I would be down for playing a good bit of that. The flip side is that I would still likely spend more time running around tossing fireballs at people who respawn in 10 seconds. I'm an SF/F geek, not a military geek, thus it is what I want.
I think the people that talk about realism in games are simply military/whatever geeks. How many people do you know that play those really serious flight sim games that can't quote you the specs on a few hundred planes? They aren't in it because it is realistic, they are in it because it is what they are into in the first place.
I wonder if they actually think of this as deriving revenue from pirates. I mean, any decent release will include cracked copies of what ever DLC there was. However some one who prefers to buy used games of piracy will NOT get the DLC that the original purchaser or the pirate gets, so I suspect that the people behind this know they are really only targeting the 2nd hand market with this.
There was an article a while back about DLC packaged with games, and some one (iirc, it was a high up in EA) said that it was aimed directly at the 2nd hand market, and made no mention of piracy.
To be fair, they aren't asking to stop providing internet. They are just saying that the ISP's should be handling copyright notices, because it should be their responsibility. It is not ISP's responsibility to monitor for such activity, but they should deal with copyright notices when they are send one. Of course, IMO it should be courts decision. But if we're going for analogies, lets at least keep them on the same level.
Wrong. To be fair, they are asking an entire industry to take on responsibilities for an entirely separate industry. This would be akin to Gucci telling eBay it needs to police all of its auctions, rather than Gucci itself being required to police eBay's auctions. It's a bullshit attempt to shift the cost of policing users to an inappropriate entity IMHO.
Wrong. To be fair, they are asking an entire industry to take on responsibilities for processing notices given by an entirely separate industry. This would be akin to Gucci telling eBay it needs to process all of Gucci's notices, rather than eBay itself being required to police Gucci's auctions. This is a bullshit attempt to Karma whore on Slashdot IMHO.
That actually is a rather awesome idea. Reminiscent of the Sprawl trilogy's Simstims, but more likely to happen some time soon (good 3d scanning/modeling of a human vs wetware).
The person wanted an electronic copy because the copying fee (25 cents a page) was restrictive ($656 all told). He was told that the only electronic version they can give out is the one done by a 3rd party company, and they charge $200. He is free to look at the the laws in other formats (local library), however the only ways for him to currently get a copy of said laws are a hard copy or this program.
The writer's interviewee (Robert Freeman, executive director of New York's Committee on Open Government) argues that "A contract cannot reduce or diminish rights of access conferred upon the public by a statute such as the Freedom of Information Law", and thus they should provide him with a digital copy that is unencumbered of the 3rd party's software.
I have no clue if any of this is correct or not, however it seems reasonable for the local govn't to say "we provide it in 2 forms, both have associated costs, you can also get it for free from your library".
Side note: I have never run into a web page that inserts a "read more at XYZ" at the end of a C&P you do from their web page...
If they cannot acknowledge this lack of trustworthiness, there is nothing you can do.
That's the key. People will talk about locking down the computer, or making them use linux or a thin client, or whatever. But it is too late. Do you honestly think you can convince your parents to use a different system,when it took them that long to learn how to use the damn current one?
My dad was smart and bought his mother something along the lines of a dumb terminal. It goes on the web, and checks email, and that is it (It might even be running linux!). But his case was easy, this was her first computer.
Really, the answer is: You're boned. If you have tried a few times to explain out to them why they shouldn't open the email that says "I Love You", your cause is lost. These aren't clients/employees, you can't tell them "well, sod off" and quit.
The problem with removing down modding is that there is then no way of filtering out the actual spam, aside from setting your reading level above the default which then means that you miss the ACs with good comments that don't get modded up.
I still think that the slashdot system is the best I have seen, I just wish there was some more stringent way of knocking people out of the moderating system, and that up mods counted for a lot more than down mods.
One of the interesting effects of down modding a good comment is that they CAN'T down mod all of the replies that it garners, and there are enough people that read at -1 that there will be comments.
Sort of random: I read at 0 because I have found that this gives me the best overview. Things seem to only end up at -1 if they really deserve it (copy paste stuff), however things will sit at 0 even though they are reasonable comments, or at least as reasonable as some of the +5, insightful stuff. So I don't think that the slashdot system is bad, just that you need to read at 0 to get the best use out of it, after all, every so often AC says something worth reading, which is why we are supposed to focus on modding things up instead of down.
Because it is cute, and amusing, and to people who read esquire magazine it is an interesting introduction to a technology that is gaining in popularity.
Congratulations, you aren't the target audience. However I suspect that the target audience will have fun messing around with it.
As for all of the "This isn't AR" comments. No shit. But it is what is currently being called AR, and in a sense it is AR. IT isn't very good AR, or very usable AR, but it is AR. Instead of the ideal overlay of images on reality, it is an overlay of images over a live video. Not perfect, but close enough to entertain some people, and to give proof of concepts ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a number of high ABV beers out there that ARE good.
The obvious one to me is Three Philosophers, which is made by Ommegang, a NY based Belgian brewery. It's about 10% ABV iirc, and very good. Most of Ommegang's beers are relatively high ABV, yet still good.
I think I have also had something up to 16% ABV that I liked (can't remember the name currently), and I have also had plenty of high test beers that sucked, probably about in proportion to normal beers that suck though.
That being said, I have next to no interest in these ultra high ABV beers. They are no longer beer, and are now distilled spirits. I kinda doubt they taste all that good, and I'm fairly sure they would not be worth what ever the ridiculous asking price is.
I mean, if some one offered me some I would take it (I'm a curious drinker), but I'm not going to seek it out.
As a horrible American who really knows next to nothing about other countries, especially those that aren't English as a primary language, it through me for a loop, and sorta disappointed me (something bugs me about the idea of government web pages NOT being in the proper language). Knowing that they are all bilingual is kinda awesome to me, thanks.
That's my assumption as well.
Especially as the web page is all in English, which was rather surprising to me.
New Tron Star Not Dense
Apple has 2 things going for them:
1) They probably have contracts saying "we can dictate when/where you can sell our products".
2) They can ALWAYS say "well, we will stop selling you our products if you don't stop selling online".
Apple gets to negotiate from a position of strength here. They are a large enough company that they can take the hit from a single store no longer selling their products. If you want an i you want an i not an MP3 player, a tablet, or what ever, so if your preferred store doesn't sell them, you will simply go to another.
Yes, all of the retailers COULD band together and say "nope, sorry, if you impose this we will stop carrying your goods", and it probably would work. However, not all of the retailers are willing to take that hit, and they know that if they are one of the few retailers with i they will be the store everyone goes to.
Yes, RTFSummary?
However it is mostly back to the old days of copying games for friends.:
PSN games are tagged to an account.
You can log into a PSN account from any PS3.
Prior to this game you could download your PSN games and then sign off and play them as you saw fit.
This leads to people sharing an account amongst themselves so that everyone can have the games but they are only payed for once. It is apparently fairly pervasive, and even works for MP games (you can be signed into a different account and still play the games, not sure if this works for this FF title or not).
I haven't done this yet myself as PSN games fall under within my price range of "It is low enough that I am willing to take the hit if it isn't that great, especially if they offer a demo". Admittedly, I have also bought all of one PSN game (Fat Princess).
The hell are you talking about?
When it was first announced it was announced WITH the price, and the general reaction, here and other places I looked, was "wow, that would be nice if it was $300".
"According to a draft regulation drawn up by the European Commission and seen by Reuters, suppliers may be allowed to require that distributors have a "brick-and-mortar" shop before they can sell online."
First sentence in the article.
The law would allow suppliers to require the retail stores to have a brick and mortar location before they sell, something I gues they aren't allowed to do now. This actually sounds like the EU saying "ok, you can refuse to sell to people who don't fit your business model", which sounds fine to me.
I found out about this glorious law of yours when a friend got me a copy of an Umbilical Brother's DVD (Aus comedy group, well worth it). And I was all set to spending one of my region switches to rip it and re-encode it. Only to pop it in the DVD drive and it to start working. Looked up a bit of info and it made my day.
The OP also has an interesting point. The games are not actually banned, they are just illegal to sell.
I was going to write a post about that as well, and wondering why it would matter for an AUS release, as they actually have laws (or had, I assume they still exist) making region locking illegal, and thus importing media from else where a trivial matter.
However, I then looked up the release dates of the game. Australia got it on Nov 12th, NA got it on the 15th, EU got it on the 20th, and JP got it on Dec 3rd.
So, however he got it, he released it prior to ANYONE getting it, and probably in a region free version as well (though, I think Nintendo doesn't actually region lock their games, but I wouldn't swear to it).
This is really all kinds of awesome. Not only will they release a new (whatever sport) game every year, they will now shut down all but the latest for online play. It is GENIUS I tell you!
What ever happened to EA's "We will stop being evil, we swear" thing they said a while back? I remember the followed it for a few months. I guess they then realized that the vast majority of their customers are slack jawed idiots, not because they play sports games (as much as I find them uninteresting), but because will take whatever is dished out.
Admittedly, I guess I am a slack jawed idiot, because I still buy EA titles every so often...
I avoided using the term uncanny valley as too many people take it gospel, when in reality it is basically just an idea some guy came up with. It's a good idea, and I agree with it, but it is still just a random idea with no actual backing aside from masses of geeks who go "yah, that makes perfect sense".
Also, it is specifically in terms of things that approach humanity (why we feel more comfortable with something like TF2 characters, than we do with those humanoid robots like the Einstein head). Where I am talking about errors in how things work, not just graphics.
Oh, and the last comment:
Until a game actually can reproduce reality (but twisted so that we can play whatever game it is), I will generally stick to the very unrealistic. If a game tries to be as close to reality as they can every little error will break you out of the game ("wait, he shouldn't have fallen like that"). However a game that creates it's own reality is by it's nature correct in all things that it does.
In real life if some one is close to an explosion they don't gib, however when I see some one eat a rocket and fall apart into nice chunks (be it TF2, Quake, whatever) it works because it is internally consistent.
That really is the key to me. I have no real interest in the 'realistic' games out there (be they FPS like AA, or something like ARMA) simply because they aren't realistic.
"Oh no, my gun jammed, I have to do this quicktime event to make sure I can fix it quickly."
Not fun.
Now, if a game could really 100% put me into a situation where it is simply my skills vs the game (holodeck), I would be down for playing a good bit of that. The flip side is that I would still likely spend more time running around tossing fireballs at people who respawn in 10 seconds. I'm an SF/F geek, not a military geek, thus it is what I want.
I think the people that talk about realism in games are simply military/whatever geeks. How many people do you know that play those really serious flight sim games that can't quote you the specs on a few hundred planes? They aren't in it because it is realistic, they are in it because it is what they are into in the first place.
I wonder if they actually think of this as deriving revenue from pirates. I mean, any decent release will include cracked copies of what ever DLC there was. However some one who prefers to buy used games of piracy will NOT get the DLC that the original purchaser or the pirate gets, so I suspect that the people behind this know they are really only targeting the 2nd hand market with this.
There was an article a while back about DLC packaged with games, and some one (iirc, it was a high up in EA) said that it was aimed directly at the 2nd hand market, and made no mention of piracy.
FTFA.
Use 2 seconds of this "common sense" that every one is complaining that no one uses.
Yes, the patent system is horrible currently, that doesn't mean that the people in charge are TOTAL morons and wouldn't think of this idea.
To be fair, they aren't asking to stop providing internet. They are just saying that the ISP's should be handling copyright notices, because it should be their responsibility. It is not ISP's responsibility to monitor for such activity, but they should deal with copyright notices when they are send one. Of course, IMO it should be courts decision.
But if we're going for analogies, lets at least keep them on the same level.
Wrong. To be fair, they are asking an entire industry to take on responsibilities for an entirely separate industry.
This would be akin to Gucci telling eBay it needs to police all of its auctions, rather than Gucci itself being required to police eBay's auctions.
It's a bullshit attempt to shift the cost of policing users to an inappropriate entity IMHO.
Wrong. To be fair, they are asking an entire industry to take on responsibilities for processing notices given by an entirely separate industry.
This would be akin to Gucci telling eBay it needs to process all of Gucci's notices, rather than eBay itself being required to police Gucci's auctions.
This is a bullshit attempt to Karma whore on Slashdot IMHO.
That actually is a rather awesome idea. Reminiscent of the Sprawl trilogy's Simstims, but more likely to happen some time soon (good 3d scanning/modeling of a human vs wetware).
Having actually RTFA, you are correct.
The person wanted an electronic copy because the copying fee (25 cents a page) was restrictive ($656 all told). He was told that the only electronic version they can give out is the one done by a 3rd party company, and they charge $200. He is free to look at the the laws in other formats (local library), however the only ways for him to currently get a copy of said laws are a hard copy or this program.
The writer's interviewee (Robert Freeman, executive director of New York's Committee on Open Government) argues that "A contract cannot reduce or diminish rights of access conferred upon the public by a statute such as the Freedom of Information Law", and thus they should provide him with a digital copy that is unencumbered of the 3rd party's software.
I have no clue if any of this is correct or not, however it seems reasonable for the local govn't to say "we provide it in 2 forms, both have associated costs, you can also get it for free from your library".
Side note: I have never run into a web page that inserts a "read more at XYZ" at the end of a C&P you do from their web page...
If they cannot acknowledge this lack of trustworthiness, there is nothing you can do.
That's the key. ,when it took them that long to learn how to use the damn current one?
People will talk about locking down the computer, or making them use linux or a thin client, or whatever. But it is too late. Do you honestly think you can convince your parents to use a different system
My dad was smart and bought his mother something along the lines of a dumb terminal. It goes on the web, and checks email, and that is it (It might even be running linux!). But his case was easy, this was her first computer.
Really, the answer is: You're boned. If you have tried a few times to explain out to them why they shouldn't open the email that says "I Love You", your cause is lost. These aren't clients/employees, you can't tell them "well, sod off" and quit.
The problem with removing down modding is that there is then no way of filtering out the actual spam, aside from setting your reading level above the default which then means that you miss the ACs with good comments that don't get modded up.
I still think that the slashdot system is the best I have seen, I just wish there was some more stringent way of knocking people out of the moderating system, and that up mods counted for a lot more than down mods.
One of the interesting effects of down modding a good comment is that they CAN'T down mod all of the replies that it garners, and there are enough people that read at -1 that there will be comments.
Until they ONLY make releases for those types of sets.
</paranoia>
Sort of random:
I read at 0 because I have found that this gives me the best overview. Things seem to only end up at -1 if they really deserve it (copy paste stuff), however things will sit at 0 even though they are reasonable comments, or at least as reasonable as some of the +5, insightful stuff. So I don't think that the slashdot system is bad, just that you need to read at 0 to get the best use out of it, after all, every so often AC says something worth reading, which is why we are supposed to focus on modding things up instead of down.
Because it is cute, and amusing, and to people who read esquire magazine it is an interesting introduction to a technology that is gaining in popularity.
Congratulations, you aren't the target audience. However I suspect that the target audience will have fun messing around with it.
As for all of the "This isn't AR" comments. No shit. But it is what is currently being called AR, and in a sense it is AR. IT isn't very good AR, or very usable AR, but it is AR. Instead of the ideal overlay of images on reality, it is an overlay of images over a live video. Not perfect, but close enough to entertain some people, and to give proof of concepts ideas.
Meh! Kirk has a goat in every port. Who does Picard have to come home to?
An acting career?