Tril wrote:
Greed is such a human thing. Er, I mean to this excess (one can argue that "greed" exists in all animals, but whatever). Your last statement has it all, really. It's like... world economics, middle school clique style!
It's funny how often I find myself quoting Robert Heinlein. One of the quotes from his Lazarus Long character was something like, "When a society grow large enough to require personal I.D.s, it's time to get out." Humans are less likely to screw over people they know (they still will, but not as often). With an economy this big, people don't care if they benefit at someone else's expense because to them that other person doesn't actually exist.
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I agree that healthy competition fosters innovation in a capitalistic market, but it needs to be balanced against ethics, IMO, which is almost never a selling point in consumerism.
I think you have to take the bad with the good, really. Government-controlled businesses directly contradicts personal freedoms, but if left unchecked people will always find ways to take advantage of others. Simply put, there's no perfect system, and never will be.
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I haven't heard the argument about getting rid of currency, but that's silly. Are these the same people that want to get rid of the IRS and say taxes are unconstitutional? It boggles my mind that those kinds of people use so many tax-paid public services without realizing it and they have the balls to whine about it. Yeesh.
I don't think it's a widespread movement, just some nuts. Like the people who think anarchy would actually be beneficial. But the taxes argument always ticks me off. Sure, let's stop paying taxes. Better get to know your neighbors, because you'll all be chipping in to maintain the streets near you. Oh, and you'll also have to help one another out in an emergency, because there won't be any fire departments or law enforcement.
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So! DAO will have no draconian DRM (no EA-sponsored SecuROM) and only a basic disc check! Whatever "basic disc check" means, but that's definitely something I can live with. That vastly ups replay value for me if I can install it so many times on machines ten years from now. There will also be a pen-and-paper DAO game from Green Ronin, if you're into that sort of thing. I plan to preorder the collector's edition, especially with the DRM announcement. I mean, at the very least I could resell it more easily if I end up not liking it very much. ;>
Yeah! The basic disc check just ensures the game disc is in the drive when you start the program. Nothing new there, really. Though some people (kids) have actually been getting pissed that they have to change discs every time they want to play a different game. I even saw one person who was upset that an Xbox game was 4 discs because he didn't want to get up and change discs. Even though it means the game has more content...
Oh well, these are the people who will be unable to survive when society collapses.
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It's one of those "if there's nothing else on and I flip past it, I suppose I'll stay a while" series, much like the Star Trek franchise for me. I liked the O'Neill character more than the movie, but Richard Dean Anderson is pretty cool anyway.
I think I liked the character better in the movie, but I don't think it's really possible to compare because their story arcs are different. In the movie, there's only two hours for the character to grow and progress, whereas an episodic show requires different handling. I thought his story was well done in the movie, though.
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I think that sounds like a good decision.
Also, I have to be perfectly honest. I've never thought very highly of the writing in WoW. The storytelling tends to be rather bland, and other times it's just silly. I don't mean the humor; the jokes are fantastic. I can't, however, take a story seriously when it actually contains a book called the Arcanomicon.
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Also, I have to admit that the new Amazon Kindle DX is all sorts of sexy, but... half the price, c'mon! Will it save newspapers? I don't know, but journalism as a money-making thing may be dead as it is if everyone insists on getting news free online. Dead tree versions of newspapers have been dying left and right because of this. Then what's the point of being a journalist if you're not paid? Will we have to learn to trust the "standards" set by amateur bloggers instead? Hmmmm.
Journalism as a money-making thing
needs to die. I understand that it takes money to do anything, but journalism should be a reporting of unbiased fact, or else it invalidates itself. Today's media is a contest to see who can lure in the biggest audience, and thus make the most money. No one wants to report on a politician's seedy dealings in order to bring the truth to light, they want to do it because it'll make them famous.
Then, of course, we have the amateur bloggers you mentioned, who potentially have the right intentions. However, since they're not bound by the same "rules", they're more susceptible to greed and personal bias. So basically, our whole media system is broken. Yay!
