Azarkon

These two ideas contradict each other. On one hand, you imply that technological advancements might change your mind. But what was Oblivion's innovation in the first place if not in the procedural technology of dynamic worlds? It maybe true that Oblivion's current level of technology cannot simulate the living narrative that you would like to see, but at least they're making progress towards that, whereas most FMV-based narratives are simply sitting on their asses trying to make prettier graphics. The stories, I daresay, are not even getting better, especially since every story is necessarily subsidiary to their cinematic equivalent. Ultimately, I cannot see the slow, at times unconscious adaptation of decades of pre-existing cinematic experience into the digital medium as something worth getting excited over. If anything, FMV-based narratives offer nothing new, while MMORPGs and simulated virtual worlds advance the gaming genre with each iteration, even though as of late we've fallen into a trap with companies trying to imitate WOW' success. What made PnP great was the amount of choices you had; the level of interactivity you could have with the environment and the narrative. Linear, FMV-based games suppress that in favor of a more cinematic level of enjoyment. Therefore, they cannot be said to be great *games*.

You mean like an admission of guilt from Bush or his administration? They're not *that* dumb. :D Regardless, it's true that this is likely exaggeration, since every form of media is fundamentally biased and politicized. The fact that Bush making an ass out of himself managed to make itself known through every avenue of media reporting, however, is truly extraordinary. Either we really have an idiot for a President, or the administration really believes that a mask of idiocy will garner votes from the average joe. Neither case bodes well for the prospect of intelligence in America.

If you believe that everyone who fights against the US is, in your words, "people who drag people from their cars and shoto them in the head, decapitate people and air it on TV, butcher and hang bodies of civlians from bridges, and set off bombs purposely near children", then it seems that the propaganda machine of the US has worked quite well. But in reality, there is a huge distinction between those who fight the US's presence and those who take advantage of the chaos in Iraq to unleash their criminal intents - a distinction that Bush does not make. And Bush has quite implicity stated that countries that does not stand with the US against terrorism are supporters of terrorism. He may not have called France or Germany terrorist countries outright, but the implication is there: those who do not support the US in its War on Terror are either cowards or terrorist-supporters. This has in fact shaped the US conception of the rest of the world - that is, that they're consumed by jealousy and hypocrisy, and are thus incapable of understaning US righteousness - as if the US was righteous in the first place. I already covered this with Walsingham. How many times do I have to repeat myself about the reason why the US does not "blow Iraq sky high"? It's not like we HAVEN'T done that in the past with Japan. As for the targetting of Iraqis by insurgents - do you understand the difference between the insurgents and the Iraqis? The insurgents do not see themselves as defending a country called Iraq. They see themselves as defending their holy land of the Middle-East. Most of them who are fighting in Iraq aren't even native Iraqis, so I'm not surprised that they could care less about the people there. Protecting the people is not their cause, nor is it the US's. In both cases, we have groups fighting for the sake of an ideology (in the US's case, of spreading democracy; in the insurgents case, of purging their land of US influence), which is the problem in the first place. And as for calling them freedom fighters - of course they can be. And are, by those who support them. Of course, in the Middle-East, the term freedom fighter is not nearly as provocative as a link to Allah, which is exactly what many of these suicide bombers are called by their supporters muhajedin: the holy warriors. That requires a value judgment of whether US intervention in the Middle-East justified an attack against our soil. I can't make that judgment because I don't know the details of the damages our intervention did in the Middle-East. Apparently, though, Al Qaeda feels that our intervention deserves far worse, which is why you see Osama Bin Laden comparing the WTC to the two towers the Israel invasion of Lebanon destroyed. However, seeing that history remembers what it's like to be a victim of European/American imperialism, I very much understand the world's stance towards any attempts at the dissemination of American intervention. The course of US foreign policy is such that you cannot but help notice the extent to which the US has forcibly meddled with the Middle-East. We, in many ways, put people like Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in power in our attempts to contain Communism back in the days of our "glorious" role as the champion of democracy admist the Cold War. From this perspective it is wholly understandable that there are people out there who hold justifiable hatred towards the US and would, in their mind, see the US as the equivalent of a foreign empire that must be stopped regardless of costs to their people or ours. Radical Islam is no worse than radical Christianity, or any other radical religion for that matter. Both have committed atrocities over the course of history, the difference being that one side managed to become a set of first world nations while the other side fell into a disparate collection of third world states. First world nations are by their very nature more "enlightened", or should I say more prone to peace due to their socio-economic infrastructure. But this has nothing to do with the incapability to change. As you yourself said, the Middle-East used to be the most enlightened people in the world. As China had been. As Rome/Greek had been. As the US/Europe was and perhaps still is. The difference, then, lies not in any underlying ideological principle but in the mode of production, in the rise of industry and science in *place* of religion. In this respect, the one and only way for a part of the world to become peaceful and prosperous is through their own initiative to change. It cannot be forced upon them - imperialism failed, ultimately, though it managed to spark the rise of nationalism as a mode of resistance against Western exploitation. And US intervention in the Middle-East - our attempt to force them into the molds of democracy, will likewise fail. This is because civilizations are built upon the dignity of the people, and the dignity of the people cannot be "given" by another, or it is not dignity at all. Change can only come about when people get tired of their present social state, and in that respect what is necessary from the rest of the world is understanding, sympathy, aid, and patience. Violence on our part fuels the propaganda of the dictators who will use US aggression as their instrument of control. Misunderstanding on our part fuels the division of the world into sides that will fall deeper into the hands of those who can exploit people's ideologies. This is why I say that ideology is the enemy of the modern world, because ideology constructs reality instead of representing it. Ideology divides people even as it unites them, and leads to both ignorance and war. It is European ideology that led to the Age of Imperialism and the subsequent world wars. It is American and USSR ideology that led to the Cold War and the wars of containment in Asia. It is American ideology now that guides it in the War against Terror. In all of these cases ideological control is at the heart of why two nations both filled with peace-loving people would go to war for the sake of an idea, and it is this ideological control that must ultimately be destroyed for any progress to be made. This is a cause that *I* think is worth fighting for - the disruption of propaganda, the shattering of silence, and connecting people AS PEOPLE through the avenues of modern technology (ie the internet). Not a fight for democracy that simply becomes an oligarchy. Not a war for national interest that becomes the interest of the few and the powerful. Not a struggle for freedom that ends up in the thrall of a different kind of control via propaganda and capital. The grand, fundamental reason behind war is the economic struggle for resources. But what allows wars to happen, what justifies them and their brutality, is alienation between people. What allows a man to murder his neighbor in cold blood is his lack of sympathy for his fellow man, the alienation of one man from the humanity of the other. Because the murderer cannot see the world from his neighbor's eyes, because he cannot put himself in his victim's shoes, his nefarious deeds become possible. And so it is with war. When we cannot see the people of a nation as people but as followers of an ideal, it becomes possible for us to destroy their livelihoods. When we do not treat our enemies as human beings but as barbarians and savages, it becomes possible to kill without batting an eye. And just as the terrorist is alienated in this way from the Western world, so is the US in the thralls of this alienation from the Middle-East. Fortunately, there are those in the US who care more about people than ideology, just as there are people in the Middle-East who do the same. And it is these people who understand the costs of this war and its underlying futility. But for everyone of them you can probably also find someone who screams Death to all Muslims, and to hell with the Islamic Middle-East. They are the equivalent of the US terrorist - only lacking in the courage to blow themselves up.

By God, Bush means the little voice in his head that speaks to him every night before he sleeps, the one that's been there all his life, that tells him that he's a good boy, and makes the bad things go away.

But is it advancing the RPG genre to make them choose-your-own-ending films? I'd think game developers should have more ambition than that. In some senses though you're right in that RPGs are in some ways hybrids of the cinematic and the interactive experience. They attempt to tell a story (visually) and create interesting characters, and insofar as this is true they are films. They then integrate that with player input, which makes them games. And it is completely true that you may enjoy the movie aspect more than the game aspect and is willing to sacrifice gameplay for better FMV's, and there's nothing wrong with that, but as a game, the product would still have failed even if it succeeded as a narrative/film. And as a step forward for the gaming medium - well, I'd argue that it wouldn't be a step forward at all as much as it'd be a retreading of the same domain films did. Now here I may be over-generalizing, and there may indeed be important differences inherent in a choose-your-own-ending film from a traditional film that requires a separate artistic sensibility. But in the overall sense, I still can't imagine it to be step forward for games. What would constitute a step forward for games is the level of interactivity, since as I see it the dynamic effect of the player is what separates games from films. So in a RPG, an advancement in the level of the choices you can make would be an advancement of the game aspect, as would an advancement in the depth of their effects. From this perspective, "games" like Xenosaga that are basically FMV's with mini-games in-between are just the same old polished cinematic experiences, while games like Oblivion that try to push the boundaries of the gameplay aspect of RPGs represent an advancement. I say this not to the detriment of Xenosaga as much as I say it to the detriment of those who praise games like Xenosaga & its ilk as the way RPGs should be when they're CLEARLY not even games as much as they are films with a few choices and mini-games added in. I simply do not see that, even if I at times enjoy it, as the direction RPGs should be taking. It's a tried and true medium, but by that very fact it's becoming tired, and even Square Enix realizes that when they attempt to innovate on the gameplay aspects of their games. Yes, you can come up with a new story every time and your fans will gobble it up, but that's just like a long-running film series. You'll never add anything really new to the genre until you make a innovation in the underlying gameplay. In the end, every story has been told, and it's how they're told that makes them fresh and new. The how and not the what should be stressed in relation to what differentiates games, as it is already in literature and already in film.

By saying that everyone who's fighting against the US in Iraq are barbarians? By stating that the Taliban was a terrorist government and so was Saddam? By coining the term War on Terror that isn't really much of a war on anything other than going into Middle-Eastern countries that don't bow down and obey to US demands? Bush AND his predecessors far expanded the definition of terrorism so as to cover everyone who's fighting him. If we were just after Al Qaeda, why the hell is the majority of our attention diverted to creating a US-friendly government in Iraq? Because it helps in our search? Give me a break. You don't hear him calling the insurgents in Iraq freedom fighters. You don't hear him making a distinction between Al Qaeda and other organizations. The only distinction he makes is between people who support the US (the freedom loving, democratic Iraqis!) and those who don't (terrorists, barbarians, insurgents). They're all our enemies - each and every one of them, regardless of whether their cause is just or has a point. As long as they oppose the US, Bush will demonize them. It's no surprise that most of the US population thinks that Middle-Easterners are in general prone to terrorism. That's the construction at work. Ah yes, US exceptionalism at its best. Well guess what, I don't buy it, and the reason I don't buy it is not because I listen to the rest of the world but because I try to understand the underlying forces that generate the opinions of both the US AND of the rest of the world, whereas you only look at the US side and think that what we're doing must undeniably be right. Well it's not. Nor is what the rest of the world is saying undeniably right. What's right is what lies beneath the two propaganda machines, the political-ecnomic structure that operates off of ideologies and nations instead of between people. Who the hell is apologizing for their behavior? Let me tell you something, taks, your attacks on my character are getting old. The world is not divided between terrorist haters and terrorist supporters. We don't live in Bush's vision of US against THEM. If you continue to try and pidgeonhole me the latter, I will start ignoring your posts, period. And then you can go off and ignore me too, if you will, since you are intent on doing that anyways. Read. I already went over this with Welsingham. The actions we take are the result of our superior position of power. We do what is necessary to win the war and for us that does not involve hiding in civilians or suicide bombing, both of which are contrary to our war effort. For the terrorists, it does involve that, so that's why they do it. Walking into a cafe = attack enemy morale. Flying into the WTC = destabilize national economy and taking the fight to the enemy so that they actually have a STAKE in the fighting On that subject, terrorists could care LESS about how whether America is democratic , free, etc. or not. I have yet to hear of a single terrorist proclaiming that the goal of the Middle-East is worldwide domination. What they want is the US out of the Middle-East and that has been the only goal I've ever seen proclaimed by Al Qaeda and subsidiary organizations. If the US did not meddle in ME affairs, and did not support Israel, and the terrorists are STILL hitting us - then you'd have a point. But since that has never been historically true, I can only go by what I think are the underlying factors. Al Qaeda's proclaimed intent: "We are fighting for our freedom, to stop the US from meddling in Middle-Eastern affairs." Our understanding of their intent: "No, you're barbarians. Savages. Terrorists. You fight against the free world for the sake of chaos and disruption." Intent is a construction, and the intent of a enemy is seldom the intent we attribute to the enemy. Therefore, only actions can speak for themselves. I daresay Al Qaeda has more claim in the Middle-East than the US does, seeing that they're an organization that's based in the ME, whereas we're a foreign organization that has nothing to do with the Middle-East geographically but is happy to meddle in their affairs ANYHOW. In fact, the only "claim" the US ever had on anything in the Middle-East is the UN decision to put Israel smack in the middle of their historical enemies, which subsequently became a US ally and thus, through its own wars against the surrounding nations, so dragged the US into it as well. Argue it anyway you want, but in the end it's a matter of US intervention in the Middle-East. The terrorists justify their actions through believing that they're fighting a holy war against the Christian/Jewish invasion. We gave them that incentive. And then we painted the world between US and THEM, and so made the war a matter of good vs. evil, instead of our specific national interest in keeping Israel where it is and in keeping the Middle-East "friendly" to US capital. Because the terrorists were a problem before we started meddling in Middle-Eastern affairs, right? Look at the root of the problem instead of its manifestation. You can defeat Al Qaeda. You can defeat the IRA. You can defeat all the terrorist organizations in the world, but in the end unless you solve the root of the problem, they'll keep coming back in forms you won't expect.

FMV draws you into the game. There was an excellent piece about how Squenix games were such emotional rollercoasters and thats mostly down to how the FMV links the games sequences together. Of course games that are nothing more than FMV are better off being movies, but in RPGs especially good FMV should not be underated. For me , the intro movie is hugely important. It determines whether or not the game is likely to draw me in enough to spend 60 ish hours playing it. A good story can even compell me to finish something even if the gameplay isnt really to my tastes. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Indeed. However, while FMVs can be effective in advancing a story and I really like them, I also understand that they're necessarily a step BACK for the gaming industry. That is, the future of gaming does not lie in films, because films preceded games, and the cinematic techniques in games are often far inferior to those already developed in films. Interactivity is the advantage of the gaming medium, and it is here that innovations should be made, or else we risk the prospects of eternally piggybacking on the cinematic medium. Instead of constantly giving off the image that games are simply a inferior "cheap man"'s version of films (which the film industry often has the perception of), the game industry should develop its own set of sensibilities and additions to culture. And that is why I tend to support games like Oblivion more than I should: because they advance the technology that differentiates a dynamic game from a static film.

1. That was in response to your claim that revolutionary groups claim publicly that their intent is to cause chaos and disruption, when the leader of perhaps the most well-known revolutionary group at this junction in time made a claim that is completely different from chaos and disruption: 1. with actual goals 2. with justification (revenge) and 3. with a set of conditions. This makes them less the anarchists you characterize and more organizations with a clear political objective. 2. The danger with arguing anything on a good vs. evil basis is that intent is never as simple as criminal psychosis. Again this goes back to your bias that all terrorists are psychos, egomaniacs, or fools, when many of them, though of course not all, have very real political and social goals in mind, and are acting because they feel that the US has wronged them/their countries. Of course that too is often a product of propaganda, but to judge based on intent you must first understand why that intent has come about. This is why I make no distinction between the soldier and the terrorist in the real sense - because both are products of a propaganda that ultimately has misguided intents. Sure, the soldier thinks that he's doing good, but SO DOES THE terrorist, and both have this assumption because they were trained and drilled in that assumption. Therefore, to say that a terrorist kills because he has evil intents and a soldier does because he has good ones is off the marks, because neither operate on the basis of their personal intents but on the basis of a greater intent as imparted through propaganda - and this intent is almost always "righteous" in theory. 3. Again, it depends on the nature of self-interest. The US army can establish short-term gains by ignoring humanitarian concerns, but it will suffer long-term strategic defeats. Why? Because people at home will hear of it and the army will be forced to pull out as it did in Vietnam (a great example of what occurs when a war becomes a matter of survival; all kinds of atrocities were committed there by BOTH sides in the conflict). This is mainly because we're not talking about a matter of national survival here but a volunteer fight on foreign soil. If someone were to invade the US and successfully, we will then be in a similar state to the terrorists, and then I'll invite you to see what we will do in response. 4. Observations of underlying forces. First and second-hand study are useful, but they are never comprise a real conclusion until you put them in the framework of overall forces. The analogy I would give you is the man who studies flocks of animals and publishes his observations of how animals behave, versus the man who studies flocks of animals and derives the theory of evolution. I'm not claiming to be the latter man, but I do believe in his method - that in order to arrive at something, you must look at the whole picture instead of simply what you observe and find the underlying causes and effects of things. Perhaps, but isn't that what's in question here: *whether* terrorists operate on his own opinions/inclinations? Isn't this is the key observation: that propaganda determines the actions of its receivers? I may not have had as much first hand experience of terrorists as you do, but even so I think I'm justified to say that most terrorists - especially the ones that sacrifice their lives - do not act on the basis of their own opinions but by the power of a greater authority whether it be the organizations whose cause they serve, or the Allah whose jihad and heavenly rewards they believe in. Perhaps this is the only thing that divides the merely criminal from the political militant, but regardless of how misguided this type of ideology is, it certainly is in the same class of ideologies a soldier would go to war for: a greater cause that he believes in. Hence the ultimate conflict is not between people, but ideas. US Imperialism - that's an idea from the point of view of those who hate the US. Freedom and democracy - that's an idea from the point of view of those who support us. These ideas are not the root causes of our conflicts (natural resource and territorial power are much more fundamental, since they're a feature of all animals), but what is used to control and direct our world. They are what divides the world. It is only when we realize them for what they are that we can even begin to change the way the world is. You won't get *anywhere*, I argue, by going about fighting terror and dictatorship where you see them, so long as what you replace terror and dictatorship by is your own version of the same kind of ideological control. Yes, you might one day achieve a united and peaceful world. But then so might have Hitler done if he wiped out other ethnic groups. In either case, might is not right, and perhaps that is a moral absolute.

I'm not saying there is no difference between our military and theirs. But why is there a difference? How is it constructed? Those are my concerns, and my argument is that the method of construction is revealing, not the definition itself. It has nothing to do with getting my info from "counter-cultural" sources, because my sources are necessarily the medium of the propaganda. In other words, in order to criticize Bush, I must listen to what he and the military says. As such, my sources are the same as yours, but my interpretation is different, as I will demonstrate. Here you are demonstrating my point: there is a clear distinction between the ideology behind military vs. terrorism, but only in the realm of ideology. When push comes to shove, the facts remain that ideology doesn't make a damn difference. The need to shoot before you ask, because they hide among civilians? Necessary self-defense. Must bomb buildings with civilian in them? Regrettable loss. We certainly SAY and make our soldiers FEEL that civilians are to be protected, but that line of thinking ends where our interests begin. Again, I make this argument: If the US army were a third world freedom fighting organization going up against a Middle-Eastern superpower, would it do any different? If Al Qaeda was the dominant superpower invading a third world America, would it still rely on the ideology of terror? My answer is no and no. When push comes to shove, governments and militaries have demonstrated that they could care less about what it takes to achieve victory, including wiping out entire civilian cities, regardless of what they feel or apologize for afterwards. The reason the US do not fall to terrorist tactics is because we can AFFORD not to, and because we NEED not to. To pursue a line of warfare other than NEED under the current state of the American ideology is political suicide: if you urged the destruction of civilians without excuses you will get your ass kicked out of the government in a matter of weeks. On the other hand, if America was being overwhelmed by a foreign power and we had the capacity to strike back at their civilian targets, you can bet your ass we will do so with brutal efficiency, because at that point, we will NEED to strike at their civilian targets. Now think on this from Al Qaeda's perspective. Do they NEED to strike our civilian targets, and if not, what targets can they strike to stop the US from meddling in Middle-Eastern affairs? In Bin Laden's public announcement as to why he initiated the 9/11 attack, he was very concrete about the goals of Al Qaeda and why he did what he did. It's available here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/...den.transcript/ Whether we believe him or not is inconsequential, the point is how can you claim that what they typically say in public announcements is that their goal is solely to cause chaos and disruption? Here he clearly states his goal: "US out of the Middle-East", proves justification: "Revenge", and states tangible propositions: "We won't attack you if you stop supporting Israel/attacking us". He demonstrates the ability to manipulate the public just as well as Bush can - in fact better, in some ways, since he seems to be aware of American opinion in a way Bush is not aware of Iraqi opinion. Certainly you can make the argument that the *END RESULT* of his statements is chaos and disruption, but chaos and disruption is exactly the guerilla way of fighting. You seem to make the distinction between terrorists and guerilla insurgents without understanding the underlying connection that their goal, both, is to drive out the influences of a ruling power through disrupting said power's economic, social, and political gains. Whether they are constructed as terrorists or insurgents is what distinguishes them, not their inherent properties. And you call me biased? And you call me ignorant? Such a generalization makes it impossible for me to take you seriously, and makes your interpretation of the situation no differen than Bush's - that "terrorist" organizations are all evil and composed of evil people with no redeemable qualities and who must be exterminated for the greatness of our civilization. You seem colored by the fact that you read a few interviews, talked to a few ex terrorists. Well guess what, those interviews and those talks are given for political reasons, and they are spread - through the net or otherwise - for political reasons. Until you can argue objectively about those political reasons and the underlying forces that create them, their words are meaningless. It's easy to read a line and say what it means. Difficult to undertand what created its meaning. That's the difference between those who can look at the administration and see through their propaganda, versus those who take it at face value simply because they saw a few supporting documents. It sounds to me that you believe if I witnessed documents where the terrorists confess to their diabolical goals I will be happily transformed from a ignoramous into a hard-lined realist, when in fact that is exactly the opposite. The more I read about people who think they know what they're doing, the less I think they do. The reason for this is two-fold: 1. As I mentioned before, all documents of this manner are disseminated for a very political reason. There are very few sources indeed that have no political goals in selecting these documents, so to speak, and very few sources that will allow you to chat with ex-terrorists without first politicizing what they're going to say. 2. Understanding does not come from hegemonious knowledge. If I spoke to the average American about the definition of terrorism they would spill to me exactly what the propaganda of the government tells them. Now you may believe that this is the true definition, but replace terrorism with "Japan" and replace the US with "China" and quickly you realize the extent to which the majority of the people in a country think alike - and think alike erroneously. This is no different with terrorists. Propaganda affects them as it affects us as it affects everyone. No one would die for a cause they do not believe in. Conflicts do not exist between good and evil. You do not blow up your own people rationally. You do not kill 50,000+ civilians rationally and shrug it off as justified. The US is not the heroes and Al Qaeda are not the villains, or vice versa. People from one country do not intrinsically cheer when another country suffers. Nor do they intrinsically believe that the Middle-East must be "democratized" through war. All of these attributes of modern society are products of propaganda, of cultural and moral hegemony, and fighting one brainwashed group with another brainwashed group does nothing but increase the enmity of the entire world. In the end, true peace comes from true understanding, from sympathy between people instead of ideas. Ideology itself is, in this respect, the real enemy of modern society - and it is about time people realized the extent to which they are blinded by it.

That's certainly what the Bush administration says. The question you gotta ask if whether you believe it. If you can but tear your eyes and ears away for a moment from the hegemonic view of this nation, you would know the reason why much of the world is critical fo the US and its policies. Yes, there are organizations out there who use terror as their instrument of attack, but that category certainly does no comprise the current administration's umbrella of all who oppose the US. Completely baseless. I would argue that the reason you believe thus is only because you have been thoroughly indoctrinated by the moral hegemony generated by government propaganda. The degree to which the Bush administration engages in this kind of over-simplification is blatant to the point of parody. For instance, when Bush claims that the world is divided between Us and Them, he is engaging in a gross categorization with the sole purpose of galvanizing a Good vs. Evil view. He relies on examples such as terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructures, while completely excusing the US army's own actions as being either accidental or necessary. In both cases, the distinction lies only in the presentation: the US army does not *target* civilian infrastructures *by choice* and without *military justification*, therefore they are just even if they target civilian infrastructures, as they often did in air raids and bombings in order to root out hiding terrorists. On the other hand, the terrorist attacks on US civilian infrastructures are *unjust* even though they are done for the same purpose of crushing the enemy economic-industrial war machine. In the end, the US inflicts MORE civilian casaulties than Al Qaeda ever did, but we write it off as the mere cost of war. Why then cannot Al Qaeda do the same? Remember, 9/11 was not the first casaulty of this war, despite what the Bush administration would like you to believe. They did not attack us out of the blue. The US has been meddling in the affairs of the Middle-East both economically and militarily since before the Cold War. If anything, we started this war. We've just been fighting it on foreign soil until they decided to take the fight to us.

But that's not called terrorism. Terrorism as a modern day term only applies to insurgent groups, or for governments associated with these insurgent groups. If a large national government executes dissenters, it's either called a problem of human rights (China), or a tyrannical state (Iraq), depending on the standing of said country in the world. Like I said, terrorism is a term constructed by those who oppose it. Yes, it indicates a strategy based on fear, but that's only because in propaganda you concentrate on the attribute that most people can identify with rather than one that most people can't. For instance, the assassination of a government leader is NOT necessarily for the sake of instilling fear. Yet it is called terrorism by said government. Similarly, attacking commercial and military structures can clearly be seen as economic warfare, but it is their terrorist nature that's stressed. In neither of these cases can we be confident that the GOAL of the attackers is to instill fear - perhaps it is, perhaps it's not. We certainly cannot judge them only based on the results. After all, gang wars DO bring fear to the populace, but gangsters are not called terrorists. Dictators construct fear to control the entire populace, yet it is not terrorism. In the end, the question of whether or not the goal of terrorism is to bring fear is irrelevant. ALL acts of war bring terror and fear upon the populace, and all manners of control depend somewhat on fear. Whether if that was the strategic purpose is, in most cases, difficult to see. For example, it's easy to say that an attack on a children's hospital is an act of terrorism if done on purpose. But what if it wasn't done for the sake of terror? What if the purpose of the act was hate crime? It's hard to say, and most of the times no one knows the details - certainly not the media. So in the end it's government's propaganda that discerns a terrorist from a freedom fighter. We, in the US, *have* called terrorists freedom fighters (ie when we were supporting them in Iraq & Afghanistan against the USSR), and we have called what other countries consider freedom fighters terrorists. This is solely a matter of political self-interest: we color the world as would advance our own goals, and the vast majority of the population believe in the divisions we give. In war, it is necessary to paint the other side as evil, and our own cause as the cause of righteousness. The enlightenment of a society, then, depends on whether it is able to sympathize with the other side. Common sense dictates that conflict is resolved through mutual understanding. Yet in the modern world, such a philosophy does not exist. On either side.

Those are not realtime. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Right, of course. What I meant was the real-time *rendering* of procedurally generated plants (the plants are of course generated off-time, per game I assume). That's not an easy thing to do because procedural methods have the tendency to inflate the number of polygons. This is the reason why programs like SpeedTree can generate very lush looking forests, but most games that use them end up looking like crap. You could fix this with artists going in and specifically modifying the scene to suit the game's needs, but that takes ALOT of time, so the fact that Oblivion managed to do this procedurally is certainly a step forward for games in general. And with respect to the soil erosion and wind factors, etc. - these are all procedurally based graphic generation methods that haven't been used, to my knowledge, in games. This is why Oblivion is innovative technologically - because it manages to tackle with one of the biggest problems in game development: the overhead of modeling labor, which then frees artists to engage in more creative endeavors such as designing dungeons and cities.

we define the terrorists actions based on what their ultimate goal is, not what is socially implied. the semantics are irrlevant. that the terrorist leaders openly admit their own goals or not is irrelevant. their intent is fear, no matter how you want to define it. UBL (OBL?) wants to frighten. the IRA wants to frighten (well, the radical arm). hamas wants to frighten. of course, once enough people are afraid, other, perhaps more materialistic, goals are attainable (these leaders are tyrants by any definition). and kaftan says he's not making any political statements " taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How do you justify your statements? You basically just repeated your argument. For instance, the ultimate goal of terrorism is terror? What? Terror is the instrument, not the goal. If fear were the goal of terrorism then we might as well call horror movie makers terrorists.

Terrorism is just a word. It has no meaning outside of what is socially implicated in its definition. Those who think that the goal of terrorism is to cause fear are taking that definition from those who oppose it. The terrorists themselves, even the leaders, do not necessarily agree with said definition. But then neither would they call themselves terrorists. Unfortunately, any argument over terrorism IRL tends to expose too many deep, fundamental emotions, so I won't go further than that. I would say the question you have to ask here is who is using this definition. It sounds like the definition of a neutral observer instead of either party, unless the point of this definition is to reveal a world where the government and the terrorists both respect each other's causes. I'd say that a definition never exists in a vacuum but is always the product of the social factors that surround those who coin it. Since the word terrorism implies a antagonistic outlook towards its goals (an idealist would not name his movement "terrorism", I'd think), it is most likely coined by those who are against it, and therefore its definition would probably be much more condemning.

This game is money. Definitely the most technologically progressive game I've seen out of the RPG genre in a long time, and with today's games essentially determined by the degree to which they can demonstrate next generation technology, Oblivion's shaping up very well. Course, that does mean that those who would rather see innovations elsewhere, such as in gameplay or character interaction, would be disappointed. But hell, that forest is an awesome work of real-time procedural graphics, and having researched that topic myself in academia, I can tell you that what they did is quite impressive. Tech showcase? Sure. Genre-defining tech showcase? Very probable.

It looks great. The question I have is whether it will have as many varied units as TA did. Most modern RTS's focus on a small number of easily balanced units versus a large array of possibly unbalanced units. Will Supreme Commander be one way or the other?

One definition of immersion is as a measure of the suspension of disbelief, the feeling that you are in the game world rather than out of it. Another is people's use of the term for the experience of being a character, but that, of course, denotes a natural affinity for the first person. If we went by your definition of immersion, I agree absolutely. In terms of the first definition I offered, however, you ought to consider what is revealed to the player with respect to the gameworld in first-person vs. isometric. In isometric view, you are only given a top-down view of the world which, depending on the angle, may be extended to a half-view of vertical structures. This is not how *we* view the world, and as such leads to a distancing between the player and the world, the same as if you were staring at the World Map versus as if you were traveling the world yourself. Clearly, the two experiences are not the same, and the latter is more convincing of you "being" in the world. If we take the second definition I offered, this effect is exacerbated. We should now consider that the experience of being a character is a function of the distance from said character. If we can experience what said character experiences through all five senses, then we are in Full Immersion. Clearly, a first person view here is far superior of an immersive experience because looking down upon your character is not as close to the experience of being him as looking from his eyes. None of this is to say that you cannot have a great game either way. However, when your purpose is to close the distance between the player in the real world and his character in the imaginary, which is in fact a major concern of RPGs, your choice of camera perspectives undoubtedly has an effect on the extent of the immersive experience. Good directors understand this and will exploit it in films. By analogy, good designers should also be concerned with it. However, before I'm branded as a first-person fan, let me be the first to say that a first person perspective is NOT necessarily the most satisfying or dramatic viewpoint, even for a RPG. In real life, many events that would've, under a different viewpoint, offered dramatic expression, come off as being rather mundane and plain by virtue of our first person perspective. Easy example of this is a battle: watching a battle unfold before you creates a greater sense of excitement than watching a battle from the first person perspective. Seeing two lovers kiss is more romantic than seeing your partner's oblong, depth distorted face as you kiss (hence why many people close their eyes). It is for this reason that the statement "the first person perspective is the most immersive of all perspectives" must be taken with a grain of salt. That may very well be true depending on your definition of immersion, but it does not necessarily mean anything with respect to how to best tell a story.

First person has its drawbacks, as does third person, but in general isometric is a strategic point of view derived from the old miniature tabletop games (and one step up from the overhead view of RTS's). As such, isometric tends to create a sense of distance between the player and the character, as if the character is a piece on a board instead of your personal perspective. This works if you like to see RPGs as tactical combat simulators in addition to RPGs, and works especially well if you don't have very good 3D models and thus does not want the player to look closely at the characters, but ultimately it's not a format endemic to true immersion. Frankly, I'm not exactly sure that the format of staring at a character's butt all the time, as is the case in KOTOR, is any better in this respect, so I can understand the criticism. First-person definitely lends itself to the most immersive experience, but there are serious problems with using first-person in a party-based game. As such, in the end it's a matter of what game the devs want to make. A party-based, squad-combat centric RPG will do fine with an isometric POV, whereas a game that stresses the immersive experience of a single protagonist will need to find alternatives such as first-person or dramatic 3D camera.

EA is a typical corporation. In other words, our future masters.

Only the overt military operation is (sometimes!) frowned upon, and only if the government mismanages the spread of information so that the media gets a whiff. The US is very much in the business of conquering other nations through its economic dominance and puppet government policies. Don't believe me? Think about who's really in charge in the US. Why does the US pursue an aggressive foreign policy at all, and why does it push for democracy in certain countries but not others? What are the benefits of fighting a war in Iraq? Clearly it's not so that we can make the world a better place, but it's also not just for the sake of "oil" or of "getting revenge". Who put Saddam in charge, who expected him to become a lapdog of the US, and who miscalculated that and must now go back once again to depose the rebellious general? Others have more eloquently outlined the imperialism of the US, but it's not until we juxtapose it with that of a far more overt power player, in this case China, that we understand the differences of policies and why the US does what it does. Simply put, it's a matter of national image. China will need to work very hard to dispel its oppressive system image in the eyes of nations, but the US can simply be let off by the excuse of a dumb president catering to conservative values. When the next election rolls around and the US happens upon a "better" candidate, all will be forgotten and forgiven.

I don't understand this amazement over Chinese policy towards Taiwan/HK. With respect to HK, the country temporarily ceded the area over to the UK because it lost a war - is it really a matter of whether HK *wants* to rejoin China or not? To the Chinese government and the inhabitants of the country, HK *belongs* to China as much as any state of the US belongs to the US, regardless of the feelings of those who inhabit said state. If California were to declare independence / join Mexico, you can bet your dollars that the US military would come down and enforce martial law. When national security and unity is in question, no government ****s around with liberalism. The only independence that's ever been earned had been done so through force of arms, whether overtly military, or covertly power politics. Taiwan is a slightly different issue, since technically it's led by a separatist government that never really agreed to nation-hood with the PRC. But if we are to take that stance, then technically Taiwan and the PRC are still at war, and it's really the Guomingdong that "invaded" Taiwan which had belonged to dynastic China (but not the PRC), in which case the future of the island remains a matter of military conflict. Either way, the PRC has legitimate claims on both, whereby legitimate I mean as legitimate as any nation in the history of the world has ever had a legitimate claim on territory. People of a land (as opposed to immigrants) do not happily join national bodies. They conquer, or are conquered.

If we skip all the heathen burning and polygamy parts of the Old Testament, sure :D Nonetheless, you are right in the sense that the Old vs. New Testament is much less disjoined than the body of Buddhist doctrine, due to the fact that the Old Testament was in fact integrated within the New Testament by theocrats. Buddhism, on the other hand, spread from India to the rest of the world in a much less official manner. As opposed to a legion of trained missionaries, Buddhism, by its natural lack of a intermediary authoritative figure such as the priest/preacher, tended to be much more open to interpretation, and many cultures simply made up their own version.

Religions are not, generally, hypocritical (barring revisions going against past dogma, ie Old Testament vs. New Testament). Those who practice them, however, often can be. As far as the China relative morality thing goes, I have a feeling that the government is making a power move, counting on the fact that most Chinese citizens are quite content with economic progress and as such wouldn't criticize the deterioration of internet liberties. On the surface, the acceptance of the restriction points out to a culture of submission to authority, but then again, have we ever considered the idea that China may in fact be dominated by a majority of nationalistic conservatives? In this respect, the US making a fuss would be quite like the kettle calling the pot black. Certainly, there are different degrees of freedom allowed between the two countries, but in the end, neither care enough about freedom to sacrifice national well-being. And since these two countries are set to become the superpowers of our time, the future remains one of corporate dominance and foolish nationalism.

Rita is the third most powerful hurricane in history, at the moment. But with an impact date of Saturday, it could get even worse, though hopefully better.

Here's an oft-considered conspiracy theory: Bush is merely a puppet in a long line of puppets. His push for a change in the military role is not intended to give him any leverage in the remaining days of his presidency, so getting rid of him is not at all going to change things. Instead, this is just a step for those who really are in power to strengthen their control of the system. But of course, they understand that the American people will never give ground except in times of crisis, and they are patient. As such, they wait for (or perhaps even engineer) the moments of crisis when the public is most vulnerable, and then make their move, one subtle step at a time. Probably an overly alarmist theory, but I do have to admit that everyday the Bush administration pushes me closer to belief. As much as RoTS might have sucked in certain areas, its equation of Palpatine and Bush is perhaps one of the more worthy-of-debate moments in Lucas's filmmaking. Democracy does indeed die with rounds of applause, though likely not as the result of a single villain. As bad of a president as Bush may seem at times, no individual, not even a Sith Lord, can single-handedly engineer the downfall of a republic. What we gotta ask ourselves, and soon, is whether this is really even a problem, rather than the natural evolution of a flawed philosophy. Democracy and capitalism maybe the best systems we've ever achieved, but then again, they maybe the last we ever achieve. EDIT: Btw, whenever we talk about "liberals", we should remind ourselves of something: today's "liberals" and "conservatives" are peas in the same pod, just as the Democrats and the Republicans are increasingly united in their ideologies. I'm not sure if this implies a reversal of positions, in the future, of the Democrat-Republican parties as much as it points to a single oligarchic entity that's no longer really cares about freedom, human rights, etc. as much as it cares about spewing out the right keywords in order to stimulate the right voters.