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Playing with an idea for a moment, maybe not a bigger room : A better room.

Example - I can think of a few people I know who probably haven't read a book in their adult lives. One of them can tear apart pretty much anything motorbike related and has his own terms for practically every component. One would struggle to name an interest of theirs and probably couldn't tell you much about any of them. Guess which one I spend more time with?

I have a sense that we need to broaden and sharpen definition of knowledge. You may be the sgitr (in my head this becomes "smug git") when it comes to a something you know about, but I doubt you know more about everything than everyone. If you truly believe you do, you probably have some sort of severe personality disorder.

I see very little value in being tsgitr. If you are I think it likely that you have either not found an area of knowledge between the group and yourself that you are lacking in. This may be because it is of little interest to you or many other reasons. The big problem occurs when you cease trying to learn more about anything/everything.

I think what I'm trying to get at is we can never be sgitr, unless we choose to be. Mainly by not exchanging knowledge. Consider who benefits the room. Get more smart people in there! Get a better room!

As an aside, when considering the traits of sgitr I can't help but associate more than a few with the harpy from "The weakest link". The mindset and ethos of the show and presenter had a curious combination of praise and hate towards knowledge and success. Good choices were always second guessed, bad ones played to a further extreme.

I like this idea. I'm going to go and play with it more.

Err...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17548011

Adverts for the new Ben Stiller film Neighborhood Watch have been pulled in the US over fears they are insensitive.

It comes after the shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, last month.

He was killed by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who said he was acting in "self defence" after the 17-year-old looked "suspicious".

Twentieth Century Fox has withdrawn its ads, saying the film was made "before this incident ever came to light".

It was feared that one scene in particular could be misconstrued.

It showed actor Jonah Hill making a gun gesture with his fingers, then pretending to shoot at a suburban neighbourhood, where children were playing in their gardens.

The tone of the whole article is confusing. It makes mention of several key points and issues but completely fails to mention that Ben Stiller has never made a good film, and is, in fact, an odious piece of shit.

Games focusing more on collaborative story telling are an interesting beast.

I've played a few systems that encourage this, and the stories that evolve can range in quality significantly. This I would mainly attribute to the actual game system involved. D&D is great for games mainly involving looting and killing stuff, as this is what tends to give you rewards in game. When you get the rarities like Planescape: Torment you start to get an idea of what these mechanics can become if loosened up a little.

Tabletop stuff like Burning Wheel make the story the actual reward instead of personal advancement. It's just more fun to fail/succeed occasionally when it has an ongoing impact on the narrative. Getting a server full of people all interested in weaving a good yarn is a markedly different audience to those who like to be told a good story though.

I've got some spare time coming up this week so I'll try and get through some of the games mentioned here and give you a long rambling post covering as much as I can.

Ah. The more you know then.

I guess that increases the chances of some sort of false flag op considerably.

I would guess this also ties into some of the renewed interest in Somalia. Equipping a few pirates who are suicidal/stupid enough to take a run at a tanker would be an interesting play. Even if stopped and not causing any real damage it would probably give the US a justified entry into Africa.

Probably just being paranoid.

Murdoch backlash begins..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17547568

"Writing on Twitter, Rupert Murdoch took a clear swipe at the BBC, asserting "enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's status quo with their monopolies"."

His twitter account must be fucking hilarious. The total lack of irony here is startling.

""Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels," Murdoch wrote on Twitter.

"So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing," the 81-year-old tweeted."

Add this to the rumours that the current cruddas snafu was his initiative, Forcing those who dare to investigate him to suffer similar inquiries...

The Germans probably have a term for how to feel about this.

Cain, even if these were all proved totally true, I doubt this would stop NI. I'm fairly certain the reason he's still around is so he can be put out to pasture and blamed when everything does go to shit. New people, new direction new model totally not business as usual.

http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/314662/mps-try-to-overturn-and39god-can-healand39-ad-ban.thtml

Three Christian MPs are trying to overturn an advertising ban on claiming that 'God can heal'.

Gary Streeter (Con), Gavin Shuker (Lab) and Tim Farron (Lib Dem) say that they want the Advertising Standards Authority to produce "indisputable scientific evidence" to say that prayer does not work - otherwise they will raise the issue in Parliament.

The MPs wrote to dispute the ruling after the outpouring of support and prayer for football star Fabrice Muamba.

3 MP's need the concept of "burden of proof" explained to them. Probably slowly, with pictures.




Good to have chaps like this in charge of the future of the NHS.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17503116

Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas has resigned with immediate effect after a newspaper claimed he was prepared to arrange access to the prime minister and chancellor for £250,000

Sleaze? In Government? Again? I'll shut up this barely qualifies as news now.

More interesting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17502417

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has said the war on drugs has failed, and it is time to end the "taboo" on discussing decriminalisation.

Nice to see some balls here. I doubt this will lead to any particular change in local or global policies. Depending on how far this gets pushed it could have a few interesting outcomes. One is probably a new Presidente. I wonder how much history this General has read?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458205

(Note, passing video/dvd sales. projections are still up and ahead apparently. I've been a little extreme again, it's more something like 2030 that game sales would be the larger combined industry. That growth also incorporates mini games, mobile games, etc. Stuff like the Wii being marketed towards older people and more kinetic options/tablets/smartphones are really driving sales if I recall   correctly. Will dig out another article that was pretty interesting. I would suspect the film industry to be looking increasingly toward game franchises as a result of this.)

2- Totally agree. Imagine if Call of duty or the like was run once a day, and the setting was The Somme. Or any other historic battle. Tech should have reached the point where games larger than the old tribes 2 style(60on 60) look small. Allow a few players Natural Selection kind of gameplay to increase the audience and have even a bunch of smaller battles relate to a scale of a larger battle.

Either one massive instance or a series of games leading to a (frequency) result would sound more appealing to me.

Run it as you die, you die. Allow spectation from a range of angles. That's probably closer to a real MMO than warcraft.

3 - Quite agree again. It seems a minor thing to incorporate, though it's probably a fucker to code. Unreal Tournament had an option of set difficulty or allow the AI to scale to your standard. A graceful way of sidestepping the problem.

I suppose the way to implement that in RPG's and such is have enemies scale to your level/power. I also imagine this would piss off a lot of people who were used to being invincible. Adding extra risk to the time-sink has to be balanced with a carrot. Make it an option and be allowed to get this gear instead would be obvious I guess.


Probably rambling again.

3 Shiny trinkets says that Israel accuses Iran within the next 2 weeks.

Taking all bets!

That Gingrich called Trayvon an "it" bothers me intensely.

I hear a lot of white people saying things like "There's a black man at the door" when "There's a man at the door" would suffice. I don't like it, there's a "not like us" subtext even if they don't consciously mean anything by it. A lot of fucked up thinking seems to be just ground into people and they don't realize it.

It takes a lot of self-reflection to realize that sort of thing. Most people aren't very good at that or even willing to try.

Slightly off-topic, but this particular corner of Hades, UK I've felt like there's been a growing acceptance of casual racism building for quite a few years. It tends to get a veneer of "workplace taking the piss", but the frequency in which I encounter it is disturbing. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't invariably serious and later  involved a variation of XXX are stealing our jobs.

Eventually people may realise that the problem is any ethnic group, the problem is fucking idiots. They're everywhere. And practically everyone.

There's a book in there. "Everyone is a fucking Idiot. Volume #1/Infinity"

1 - Re: Emotional engagement and the smaller number of emotionally gripping games. I fail to be emotionally moved by the vast majority of media I consume. If you look at the sheer quantity of shite books, movies and TV shows that are pumped out, the games market is comparatively smaller. There might be 12-18 'smash hit' games released in a year. Compare/contrast with the number of 'must see' TV shows you'll have rubbed in your face. I don't think the proportion is much different. There's just MORE of other types of media so proportionately there's more things worth seeing. People ARE interested in the emotional impact of games.

2- Heck, I'd say that is what MMOs are all based on. You point out they are addictive; they are addictive because there is a genuine sense of accomplishment which flows with them. It isn't a highbrow emotional response, but it is still a very emotional response. And it relies on something unique to video games; the input of the user. No other form of media has that input and can evoke those emotions.

3 - Games CAN still be hard. But I reject the notion that being hard is in itself necessary or even desirable. No other form of media shuts you off because you can't pass an arbitrary skill level (as Dara O'Brian says in his routine). There are older games in my collection I have never finished and will never go back to. Modern games can provide an enjoyable and fun experience without necessarily being a difficult experience. Difficulty for its own sake is just infuriating and rarely adds anything to the experience of the game, IMO.

Right, with any luck this should be a little more coherent and less rambling bullshit. I'm going to refer to this post a lot to try and direct my thinking.

1- Games are now outselling pretty much ever other media. There's been a few articles about this recently, google around.
A lot of the "AAA" "hyperbole here" titles cost considerable amounts to produce, comparable to films in many cases. Now film is a media more associated with engendering emotion, but how many "Generic FPS" titles that make up a substantial amount of these blockbuster releases manage to create any emotion? The last I can recall was some sort of deep space horror shooter (name eludes me. There was a sequel) that actually got a kind of "Event Horizon" kind of vibe from the offset. It was pretty good, like the first time running round in the dark in doom.

A lot of people probably do want more emotional or atmospheric games, May have been a bit harsh. It just looks like the industry is not looking at that. I'm being rather broad with "emotion", what I'm trying to get at is you really should either be immersed or thinking something other than "this is fun/dull/meh/" more "this is claustrophobic/oppressive/expansive" I don't think I'm describing this very well.

2 - My issue with most MMO's is more that the main investment you make is time. While there is a degree of skill, it's usually fairly low and spending more time allows you to plough through the content eventually, even if you're totally useless. While it can be pleasurable, you really gain nothing apart from progression in a stateful environment. With wiki's about everything, your imagination really needs to suck if you can't google all the top equipment, imagine how that looks on an avatar and just not bother playing at all.
This may be more personal resentment than sense. I just think we should be looking more at how to raise a skill, whatever it is, rather than just present people with a grinding mechanic and a skinner box. The "accomplishment" should be more than just proof you've spent another X hours on a game.

3 - The difficulty question. The best way I can think to demonstrate this is "Tetris" Pretty much the best example difficulty in a video game ever really. Simple to grasp, against an increasing clock that is based on your performance.
Alright it breaks down after a while, but it makes more sense to me for say, an action a game to build to progressively difficult bosses, the final being the hardest? Countless games have you in a state that when you reach the end, you're usually totally overpowered compared to enemies you face. While rewarding to smash everything to a pulp, we're straight back to the grind/smash mechanic that results in no skill being practised really.

The rest I can't really comment on too well. I'm not familiar with a lot of it, so I'll get my hands on some and see what's what.

Thanks. I have bizzare moments where I struggle to understand how it's an acceptable force response to shoot an unarmed person.

Given the association with NRA types, would the implication be that because the assailant is armed he assumes the victim/everyone else is? Reading back through the thread it sounds like he knew the exact law to spout right away. That leads me to think he's either well educated on gun law or was being prepared for possibly being caught. Probably both?

Gingrich responded to Obama's remarks during a "Hannity Radio" interview:

What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful. It's not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.
Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn't look like him. That's just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot. It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian American of if he'd been a Native American. At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.

I suspect this guy did not get the memo saying that white people still aren't allowed to say "get over it" about slavery and such. I also suspect that ethnic minorities are not the demographic he is very concerned about reaching. Ironically this tends to lead to further divides, the opposite of the apparent stated goal.

It certainly seems racially motivated. The victim lived there and given the shooter's neighbourhood watch antics, are we suggesting he did not know who lived in the place he was watching?

And could someone please explain this "stand your ground" law because I am struggling to fathom it. It sounds and seems like some kind of old-wild-west-never-repealed-thing?

There's no justice quite like publicly mandated justice. Call 0800 HANG EM to cast your vote now.......


You may mock but justice via a phone vote is probably closer than you think. If not the verdict then certainly the punishment.

Memo - Make public access TV show, get premium rate phone line and do this.