Horticulture Tycoon

I hate to break up the Star Trek converation (I haven't seen it yet), but I just want to recommend a few Detective movies to Sergey real quick: The Big Sleep is the granddaddy of detective movies, so definitely start there if you haven't seen it. Though it's easily the most confusing movie of all time, I've seen it at least five times and I'm only just now starting to figure out what the hell is going on in that movie. But mostly I want to recommend D.O.A. (1950) and Kiss Me Deadly, which are two of my favorite movies and neither is as well-known as I think they deserve to be. Also The Long Goodbye, which is another great 70s detective movie, and The Maltese Falcon, which is not quite the classic it's cracked up to be in my opinion, but still pretty good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bERzMBTy77c Does this work?

Marvel has been putting full episodes of the 70s Japanese Spider-Man TV show online, one episode per week. Which is hilarious and awesome of them. Not that I intend to watch every episode, but it's worth watching if only for the opening title sequence: http://marvel.com/animation/Japanese_Spiderman/start/237 Even greater is the fact that the title of the first episode is called "The Time of Revenge Has Come! Beat Down Iron Cross Army!" That's the first episode! Amazing.

Nobody in this thread is complaining about the combat systems, they're complaing about the story. Isn't a person allowed to be fond of the gameplay while simultaneously turned off by its story? I for one loved FFXII's combat system, I thought it was ingenious. But a combat system alone isn't going to be enough to motivate me to play all the way through a 120 hour game, and if the story isn't interesting enough to make me want to see how it ends, then it's pretty much inevitable that the game is going to end up leaving a bad taste in my mouth, no matter how much I enjoyed the game initially.

My problem with Final Fantasy stories is their pacing. Every time I play FF game, I get really into it for the first 20-30 hours or so, and then the game sends me on a massive series of fetch-quests to find the seven crystals of whatever, and meanwhile the story grinds to a complete halt while I'm galavanting all over the world looking for them. By the time I've gotten the last whatsit, I've forgotten why I'm collecting them in the first place and stopped giving a crap regardless.

Maybe that's what makes it "final" -- they tell the same story over and over because there are no more fantasies left to tell.

I'm a rank amateur but here goes: And now the joke version:

That news story gave me way too many ideas for how one might use these dolls as a tool for all kinds of horribly cruel pranks. Mostly involving a woman screaming "Oh God! My baby!"

Did I just wake up in a world where real babies no longer exist? Is Clive Owen going to come and bring me to Michael Caine's secret sanctuary?

Cool, thanks for the input, miffy. I actually cracked the yellow pad on my RB2 kit just yesterday (it still works, strangely -- if you can tolerate your stick occasionally getting caught in the crack), so I'm glad to hear how easy it is to replace the individual pads. ION here I come.

If Pink Floyd's The Wall isn't in that game in its entirety, then Lego has really missed an opportunity. I don't care how expensive it would be to license, it's an entire album about building a wall!

The area around Vegas is already a wasteland, unless Vegas takes a direct nuclear strike I think the apocalypse might actually be an improvement for it.

* insert Final Fantasy Victory gif * Please tell me you understand what I mean at least, even if you don't agree that it's a valid definition of ethics. As for my point, my point is that the MPAA has both the legal and quote-unquote "ethical" right to protect the intellectual property of its members. That's all. Like I said earlier, I brought it up because it's the basis for the whole discussion. If you believe that there's nothing morally or ethically wrong with piracy, then the law is unjust and should be changed. I don't believe that, and think the law needs to be enforced.

That may be. But I've at least tried to explain the distinction between the two terms as I've been using them, and as I've always understood them to mean. I don't know what more I can do, since these are the definitions I've always worked with. Blame my high school English teacher, I suppose. It all ties into the whole reason why the piracy issue is like the third-rail of the internet, and why this thread got so heated in the first place. It's so difficult to make a case that piracy is wrong because the 95% of internet users who regularly engage in piracy read that statement and interpret it as "I think you're an awful person if you've ever downloaded pirated shit." I genuinely don't think that. So if you just want to accept my definition of "unethical" as any questionably moral act that simultaneously does not reflect poorly on your character, then that's the best definition I can offer.

I think if every time you pirated a game, you had to get into a ten-minute argument with a dancing space-rapper, that might solve the problem right there. Space-rappers, assemble! I agree completely that the methods of these companies are often totally out of proportion to the crime and often exceedingly stupid and counter-productive. But in the last few years the industry has seemed to shift its attention away from the individual users and towards people like the owners of Pirate Bay who facilitate piracy. It's one thing thing to download a few things for yourself, it's another thing entirely to be the one who actively makes it easier for others to do so. The fact that they don't profit from it is beside the point. It's illegal for me to practice law in my state, but if I do it pro bono that doesn't make it alright. To a degree, sure. But Sweden is a WTO member and is obliged to enforce the international copyright laws they agreed to. Since the Swedish government was either unwilling or unable to do so upon receiving a criminal complaint, the MPAA went through the channels of American diplomacy, as any American company or citizen has the right to do. Of course the Phillipines is a WTO member as well, and like you point out, nobody's going to the streets of the Phillipines and shutting down street vendors. But I think if the entertainment industry had the resources, they would. It's a matter of going after the highest profile, highest priority targets first, and Pirate Bay is definitely that. Now if your objection is that the MPAA has too much influence with the US Government in that they can strongarm their way through the diplomatic process in a way that an individual citizen never could, then I think that's probably true. But it doesn't change the fact that Sweden wasn't enforcing its own copyright laws, and the MPAA has a legal right to pursue action through every channel available to them. It it fair that a massive corporation can ensure that the law is enforced, but an individual probably couldn't? Not really. If I wanted to file my own Swedish criminal complaint because someone was sharing the mp3 of my awful butt-rock garage band, I'm sure the American Embassy wouldn't even take my calls. But that's unfair to me, not unfair to the pirates. The last pirated game I played was in college, where we had one guy in the dorm who did the pirating for the whole floor. I'd go to class and come back and suddenly StarCraft would be installed on my computer. I felt just as strongly back then as I do now, but you know, I played them. I figured I had enough plausible deniability that I could allow myself to play them. "Hey, it just installed itself, I dunno where it came from!" In hindsight I was a huge hypocrite, but at the time I didn't want to be left out of the base-nukin', Zerg-rushin' fun. The same goes for music, I mean pirated music is so pervasive that it's pretty much impossible to avoid entirely. I've had friends burn me CDs of music that were almost certainly pirated (and even if it's not, the burned copy obviously is). They know my stance on piracy, but it's like, if they want to recommend an album to me, I'm not going to insist they buy the thing first, or if they actually own the album, that they loan me their original copy. I just treat the burned disc as if it's a loaner, even though I know my friend doesn't want it back. I'll listen a few times, maybe keep it a few weeks, and then toss it. If I liked the album, I'll buy myself a copy. Of course now, most times they just send a link: "This album is great, you can download it here." or "Check out these mp3s I attached." I still don't know how to respond to stuff like that. It's getting tougher to stick to my convictions and not come off as a total douche, as this thread has clearly proven. But this is the honest truth, I've never directly pirated anything in my life. I say that not to brag or to hold myself up as some kind of paragon of virtue, it's just how it is. I've never used a torrent and wouldn't even have a clue how to.

And incidentally, the only reason I brought the ethical angle up was because it's really the heart of the issue. If you don't think there's anything wrong with piracy, then you probably think the MPAA/RIAA has no right to pursue the action that they did. If you feel otherwise like I do, then you probably think they're justified. Legal wrangling and economic matters notwithstanding, I think for the most part your opinion on piracy in the general sense is going to determine where you fall on this ruling.

I have a bad habit of phrasing my opinions as if they were facts, particularly when they're opinions I feel strongly about. For that, I'm sorry. If I came off as judgmental, believe me that I never meant to be. That said, I truly believe the act of piracy is unethical. I do not, however, believe that makes you a bad person if you engage in piracy. If you think that's an inherent contradiction and I'm a nonsensical lunatic, well that's fine with me. But that's how I feel about it. I mean look, is in unethical to cheat at Scrabble? Probably. Is it immoral? Probably not. Is a Scrabble cheater a bad person? Maybe, but not because he cheats at Scrabble.

Of course it's speculation. Or did you not notice all the "maybes" in that paragraph? Also: I don't know how you can make these two statements in the same post. If you're in support of people taking steps to protect their intellectual property, then why shouldn't the MPAA do everything in its power to legally protect the intellectual property rights of its members? EDIT: Now that I look into the details of the case a little more, I see what you mean about The MPAA bullying their way into Sweden's legal system. But it seems to me not so much a case of changing legislation, as much as changing an ineffective law enforcement system. Seeing as Sweden has an obligation to enforce international law, I don't think the MPAA was out of line in pressuring the Swedish government as they did, though I can see how it could be perceived as bullying.

Well we're getting into more theoretical issues about the difference between ethics and morals. Stealing bread from the king to feed a starving man is highly moral, yet simultaneously highly unethical. Ethically, it would be preferable to convince the king to willingly feed the dying man. Morality has shades of gray, ethics is black and white. Let's say for the sake of argument (though I don't believe this for an instant) that piracy actually helped these artists, by exposing their work to a greater number of people. I illegally download a song, tell ten friends how great it is, and they all go buy an album that they otherwise wouldn't have bought. Even though my piracy has resulted in a greater profit for the artist, enjoyment for my friends, and all-around happiness for all involved, you still cannot say what I did was ethically justifiable. You can do an unethical thing with the intent to do good, but that does not make your actions any less unethical.

Conversely, Alien Syndrome is frequently associated with swearing. As in, "Oh fuck, aliens are attacking me!"

This isn't a discussion about the rights and wrongs of piracy? That pretty much seems like what it's about. You can't argue about whether or not the MPAA and RIAA have the right to pursue those responsible for piracy if the argument about the ethical standing of those conducting the piracy isn't settled first. Anyway, for one thing it's not at all true that all filmmakers and musicians get paid in advance. In fact, the model in the music industry has always been for the label to consider the cost of producing an album as an advance to the artist. The musicians actually owe that money back to the label, and until those costs are recouped, the band makes absolutely nothing on the album. In fact, if an album doesn't make its money back, the musicians actually end up owing money for the cost of producing the album. But aside from that, I'll never understand the logic that just because a person or corporation is rich enough that they can afford to be stolen from, that somehow makes it justifiable. Stealing from the rich is no less unethical than stealing from the poor. Just because the consequences for the wealthy victim are less severe than the poor victim, the act of theft is the same in either case. Ethics don't function on a sliding scale, either something is ethical or it's not. And regardless, even if you do believe that it's fine to pirate the products of massive corporations (or to use syntheticgerbil's logic, that it's fine to pirate products that are complete shit), the fact is that piracy affects more than just that one product that you've downloaded. If you pirate Shrek 3, it doesn't only affect the makers of Shrek 3. Maybe Dreamworks doesn't make as much money on Shrek 3 as they projected, and therefore decide not to take a chance on that up-and-coming director with the brilliant but commercially questionable script. Maybe that other animation house decides it can't justify it's new experimental animated film because the market for animation doesn't seem to be as healthy as it once was. In the same way that a foreclosed house affects the property values around it, a poorly-performing film (or album or whatever) can affect other products down the line, and piracy can play a big part in that.

I'm so tempted to buy that ION kit as well, I'm to the point where I can play all but about two songs on Expert without too much problem (fuck you, Dream Theater!) and I feel like I should really buy something more akin to a real drum kit so as to not waste this otherwise pointless ability I've cultivated. I'll be very interested to hear what you think of it toblix, because I can't decide whether it's worth spending the money or not.

I was responding to this, not speaking in the general sense. Regardless, speaking now in the general sense, a screenwriter could conceivably accept a job on the stipulation that he himself will direct, but a screenwriter can't accept a job on the stipulation that so-and-so-his-favorite-director will direct. Which is clearly what I meant.

If you wrote the Half-Life movie, you wouldn't have a say in who would direct, or do the effects, or the score. That's how it works. Which is exactly why I'm not too bent out of shape about the screenwriter of Shadow of the Colossus. He really has only so much influence over how the thing turns out. I understand the instinct to imagine your own film adaptation of your favorite video game; hell, I actually wrote a Grim Fandango screenplay once just for fun, I'm slightly embarassed to say (and not in an "I copied all the dialogue from the game, put it in screenplay format and slapped my name on it" kind of way either, though there was some of that). But unless you're in a position to actually pitch the thing to someone, it's really a futile and pointless exercise. That way madness lies.