This article won me with the line, "Kent acknowledges that his hypothesis is speculative."
Speaking of Karate Kid, what was up with that? Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to have a scene where Jackie Chan beats up a gaggle of barely-teens?
Yeah yeah yeah. The opening of The Fall was one of the most memorable scenes in a movie ever. I would love Tarsem for that alone.
From the sort of half-attention I paid to the trailer I got a very different impression. It seemed more like people were using the alien things for artistic purposes, rather than the aliens joining in on the latest mural painting project. That strikes me as pretty interesting: Less a comment on artists and more a comment on extremism and the lengths people will go to when searching for the next big thing or trying to gain notoriety.
Net necessarily. Sometimes I let it hang out at the end of a bad movie to show my distaste. Different strokes, I guess.
Per usual, old business seems to be completely missing the point. Netflix represents the golden dream for anyone in the software industry: A service. A predictable revenue model. If everyone in the US had a netflix account -- let's say that's 50 million households, 1/6th of the population, all paying a price of $20 a month, for 12 billion dollars a year of revenue from a single country. Looking at worldwide gross [boxofficemojo.com] the US seems to generally account for a third to a quarter of worldwide profits, so double that to 24 billion a year. Is that really not enough to run a business cranking out around 600 movies a year? You could decimate your advertising budget since the money is guaranteed, only individual theaters and chains would have a vested interest in attracting customers. Plus this doesn't include all the ancillary tie in and marketing revenue, which is probably a lot more then just ticket and raw dvd sales.
toooommmmm wellllling... loooook intooooo your fuuutuuuurrreee
"Honey flash"
"Honey FLASH"
"Honey... FLASH"
I can't get it to work over here, did anyone else manage it?
"Honey FLASH"
"Honey... FLASH"
I can't get it to work over here, did anyone else manage it?
Yeah but where's the rest of the clip? The part where he explains how this leads to the collapse of society.
More than the consoles themselves, I'm annoyed with the business models of the companies behind them. I'd love to move to instantly-gratifying digital downloads, but it's frustrating to see games for sale on the xbox for $40 that I can order from newegg for $10 and even resell.
Valve and Steam seem to really buck that trend with a lot of great, nicely priced content. What I'd love to see is someone put out a "Steambox," a small machine with a standard console controller designed just to run Steam. Then provide some basic utilities to make it easy to know what kind of experience you're going to have -- that is, filter the titles on Steam based on whether they support the easy console controls. Also add in a simple quality rating system -- I don't care how, but some idea of knowing roughly how a game would perform on your Steambox. With this in place, we could break the console generation cycle (if you want a better experience and access to newer games, buy a better Steambox, just like a PC), but still have the basic ease-of-use advantages of consoles.
Valve and Steam seem to really buck that trend with a lot of great, nicely priced content. What I'd love to see is someone put out a "Steambox," a small machine with a standard console controller designed just to run Steam. Then provide some basic utilities to make it easy to know what kind of experience you're going to have -- that is, filter the titles on Steam based on whether they support the easy console controls. Also add in a simple quality rating system -- I don't care how, but some idea of knowing roughly how a game would perform on your Steambox. With this in place, we could break the console generation cycle (if you want a better experience and access to newer games, buy a better Steambox, just like a PC), but still have the basic ease-of-use advantages of consoles.
@jayntampa: "That's an incorrect analogy." Seems like to me, too. I'm not claiming to understand Korean gaming laws at all, but from what I gather, this seems to imply Blizzard would have the rights to shut down any public performance of their products -- so theoretically, it would be illegal to make a little youtube video of me playing Starcraft. That seems pretty daft. But again, not claiming to understand the intricacies of the issue.
@Buxyman: "Most games have a radar with a big arrow pointing in the way of objective. Is this no different?"
Conceptually it's the same, but the execution makes a big difference to me: The breadcrumb trail is relatively obtrusive and animated. It's not a static, small arrow tucked away in some corner view I can easily ignore. My problem is that, the animation in particular, is distracting and causes me anxiety when I try to ignore it. Now, this is hardly soul-crushing, life-threatening anxiety, but it exists nonetheless. As I've now been corrected, it can be turned off. I can't remember well enough if I had other issues with that or what the deal was. But it's just a fact of life the internet is going to have to deal with: I flippin' hate the breadcrumb trail.
Conceptually it's the same, but the execution makes a big difference to me: The breadcrumb trail is relatively obtrusive and animated. It's not a static, small arrow tucked away in some corner view I can easily ignore. My problem is that, the animation in particular, is distracting and causes me anxiety when I try to ignore it. Now, this is hardly soul-crushing, life-threatening anxiety, but it exists nonetheless. As I've now been corrected, it can be turned off. I can't remember well enough if I had other issues with that or what the deal was. But it's just a fact of life the internet is going to have to deal with: I flippin' hate the breadcrumb trail.
@Chicken Pawks: Ha, really? Been too long, I don't even remember that. I never understood why it wasn't more part of the game world -- a skill or spell to create a glowing trail to the objective that fades after a short time, but you can upgrade for longer durations to infinity seemed like a more appealing option to me. I'm all for easing gaming inconvenience for people who want it, I just like a sense of progression.
But anyway, nah, that was far, far from my only complaint. Let the people who love it go on loving it, I'm just not one of them.
But anyway, nah, that was far, far from my only complaint. Let the people who love it go on loving it, I'm just not one of them.
I hate to drive by and complain but that video pulled me right back to my massive hate for Fable II. Man I despise that breadcrumb trail, that dumb little line that leads me everywhere I need to go and never lets me find things for myself, always urging me to follow some quest and never letting me feel like I can go wandering off to explore. O, Fable. I've wanted to love you with all my heart starting way back in the glory days with Project Ego. You are ambitious and bold and you do some things that matter -- I sacrificed the dog at the end of II and couldn't believe how empty and joyless the world felt without him. That's impressive. But when I sit down to play you I just end up wandering around small areas or agonizingly following a glowing line down a linear path and my heart breaks.
@giyad: Last I knew, the contrast -- because of the way eink is made, they have to place a filter on the screen, lowering the contrast on top of the already so-so eink contrast. Maybe this has gotten a lot better? If there have been pics or vids of color einks within the last year I haven't seen them.
I am assuming, since the article specifically calls out eink, we are actually talking about E Ink, not e paper in general. For example, from what I've seen, the mirasol displays don't have this problem. Those look pretty nice to me.
I am assuming, since the article specifically calls out eink, we are actually talking about E Ink, not e paper in general. For example, from what I've seen, the mirasol displays don't have this problem. Those look pretty nice to me.
Last I knew, the color eink screens were very poor quality. I haven't seen anything about where they are now, but it seemed pretty clear that the first generation was not going to be great. I'd much rather just have a higher-contrast B&W display. That's what kills me the most about the einks.
I want more like Shivering Isles. I played a lot of Oblivion, but nearly all my memories are from the expansion. And next time, let me conjure an undead army, please. It's bad enough sitting through the real world without a horde of decaying corpses shambling forth to destroy my enemies.
Both standards look pretty nice so I wouldn't care much except that the USB camp really ticked me off with insisting on this "full speed" "high speed" "super speed" or whatever terminology instead of USB 1, 2 and 3. I hate deciphering that stuff. So for that reason alone, I say good riddance if USB fades away.
Wow! A name change! It's like a whole new product. Here's a thought: Stop charging me to access other people's services, like netflix, which is the only thing I use my gold account for. Stop charging or once my current subscription is up I will switch to a ps3, now that it's built in.
Seriously, MS, you went the wrong direction. You've spent years deliberately adding services for people like me, who don't online game. Then you went and not only made me pay as if I game online, but you started jacking up the price. If you'd introduce an intermediary level, like $20 a year for access to everything but the gaming, whatever, I'd absorb it and a ps3 wouldn't be appealing. As it stands, I'm mentally getting ready to jump ship the moment my subscription is up unless you've done something to address my segment of the market.
I don't know why I'm talking as if MS is listening.
Seriously, MS, you went the wrong direction. You've spent years deliberately adding services for people like me, who don't online game. Then you went and not only made me pay as if I game online, but you started jacking up the price. If you'd introduce an intermediary level, like $20 a year for access to everything but the gaming, whatever, I'd absorb it and a ps3 wouldn't be appealing. As it stands, I'm mentally getting ready to jump ship the moment my subscription is up unless you've done something to address my segment of the market.
I don't know why I'm talking as if MS is listening.
