Amentep

That's why I have yet to commit to any MMORPG. I've never found it fun to be around people whose only desire is to make sure you don't have fun. Ah, but doing that IS fun. It's like a vicious circle of fun and unfun. Also, getting annoyed is pretty much what the griefers want if you ignore them you kind of win. Or I can just avoid the experience and I win!

I've been saying this for years. People try to build societies around humans and it's like building a house on the sand. Human nature is the problem so changing human nature is the solution. Not sure its possible to do though... ] That would be a pretty big download, I think. People on dial-up will have to go to their local library or an internet cafe to patch themselves. That's why I have yet to commit to any MMORPG. I've never found it fun to be around people whose only desire is to make sure you don't have fun.

I'm not so sure that I'd call the numbers fabricated, but a bit more about the methodology to reach those number would help. That said, if the methodology to get to 40% of the population is correct, than the estimate is fairly reasonable.

That's me. And until someone patches Human Nature, I think there's no way around that in a MMORPG.

Eh, I gave her all the weapons I didn't want to use and the ammo for them. Worked out fine particularly since I fail utterly when trying to hit anything with a sniper rifle (but the computer AI could). Still playing MUA2 and it has unskippable cut-scenes to hide loading as well (even says it when you hit a button!)

Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. The whole (sadly shortlived) Master Li series is good, which included BoB and Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. But if you're only going to read one, Bridge of Birds is well worth it as a stand alone story.

But see these are the two problems I have: one is that they can't be sculpting matter from refuse because the Wall-R's are dumping the refuse into space (leaving a trail behind the ship) which brings up problem two, namely that humanity doesn't learn its lesson - they're still polluting space! And if the captain is any indication they've forgotten that they even had a past to learn from, much less actually learned a lesson.

See if you feel the same way, when your AI partner runs at giant bug (that one hit kills) with a shock stick. RE5 also proves the QTE are evil. I never, ever, gave the AI partner a shock stick. And sticking with guns, there was only one time where the AI henchmen got killed that I wouldn't consider my fault.

Or at the very least, Fallout would have cooties.

Lord of Flies I think she's making conversation about topics that interests her.

That would depend on who you are - but I'd imagine that any media (and any of that media's followers) main interest in being described as art is that the label of art still carries some degree of "respect" with it.

Playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Superherobuttonmashingtasticaction!

That's not really true though; many painters worked with the idea of provoking a response or emotion in their work. Art in general requires some form of engagement in the viewer. There's actually a theory in literature that the authorial intent doesn't matter, only what the reader gets from the book. My point is, I don't think the interactivity with the audience is the problem; just as people don't generally consider someone's home movies to be an example of art in movies, there's always a dividing line (often variable) between "art" and "not art". I think there's been no attempt to either critically discuss/analyze games or create a division or a classification over what "games as art" would even mean.

You know very good i was talking about computer/console games... and they are definately not older than human species You're denying the efforts of ancient alien video game programmers!

As I understand it - and I could very well be wrong - it depends on whether the hospital they arrive at is a private or public hospital. Public hospitals are obligated to help all; private hospitals are, I believe, only obligated to stabilize a patient before transferring them to a public hospital if they have no insurance (or, in fact, if the insurance company wants them to be in one of their hospitals).

Lets say you make X dollars a year and your wife makes 80% of what you do. So you make X, she makes .8X and together your total income equals 1.8X If you each lose 13% from your income to pay for UHC, that puts you at (1-.13)X= .87X and your wife at 1-.13 * .8X = (.87 * .8 )X or .696X So your total income is now .87X + .696X or 1.566X 1-1.566/1.8 = 1-.87= .13 = 13% So your total loss is still at 13% as a family income. Or in your example (.13*100K) + (.13*100K) = 87K + 87K = 174K 1-(174/200) = .13 = 13%

If academics ever decide that gaming is art, something like PST would only ever be discussed as a node on the path to the artistic environment (much as how the early fictional short films are seen; primitive curiosities that hinted at some of the possibilities in the medium)

You'll have a lot of people who'll debate you on that point (not me, of course) particularly in academics. We're starting the second century (roughly) of the media/style so again I don't think Video Games are going to get critical content studies (as opposed to critical studies about the effects of games).

I think you got it backwards, it started out as cheap entertainment and later evovled into an artform that has everybit as much range of expressions and artistry as anything else. But they dont sell the good stuff at Wall-mart, obviously, so youll have to go looking. Not really; comic books in the US started as reprints of comic books that appealed to a wide range of readers. Through the 1940s readership was strong amid kids and teens, but also GIs in WWII. In the 50s the best selling comics, like the horror, crime and romance comics, sold to teens and adults alike in massive numbers. It was the self censorship movement (the Comics Code Authority) that was a reaction to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (1954) hearings (so disastrously featured an appearance by EC's Bill Gains) which led the readers away from comic books. This movement was pushed by the kid oriented publishers (of superhero and comedy material that had seen their reader base evaporate) that helped stunt the growth of the medium, pushing out publishers of more adult comic fare in favor of "safer" reading. (To be fair, there was competing products also vying for attention; adults had also began moving into the magazine successor to the pulps - like adventure and romance magazines - and to paperbacks.) Even with the CCA, comics had lost a lot of ground in terms of public perception; the Senate Subcommittee cemented the media as one for kid oriented works, and a lot of parents didn't trust the media and threw the whole industry in a tailspin that wouldn't recover until the second superhero genre boom of the late 50s. Video games are in many ways in the same boats as comics; there are still many who will argue the media of either can never be art (which is a different argument from whether it *is* art now or not) and that their primary purpose is entertaining kids (and adults who should know better. *tsk, tsk*)

I don't really see the end of FRWL as weak myself although it is overshadowed by the train fight. Although I will agree that the Fleming books are better than the film series by and large, Quarrel's death made me cringe the first time I saw Dr. No and hasn't improved with age. I don't remember anything that out-and-out cringe worthy in FRWL. That said I can also enjoy the campier Bond outings (double-taking pidgeon? Connery in Japanese disguise?) for what they are for the most part. But they're not a patch on the better, more serious adventures.

Kirby drew everything which was my point in choosing him. He did romance stories, he did science fiction, he did crime drama, he did westerns and he did superheroes over his 50-something years drawing comics work. And many people consider him to be one of the better creators (if not the best) who came out of the US System. And he was fast. There aren't execeptions - art takes as long as it takes and each artist will take longer or shorter dependent on their own abilities and expectations of themselves. Saying that manga art is all bad because they produce large amounts of work is just silly. Anyhow most commercial comic work is going to be crap; the good stuff is always the exception and that's true of all the markets, US, EU and Japan.

Jack Kirby - often considered to be one of the founders of US comic book style (having not only been influential in superhero comics, but created the American Romance comic as well as doing work in the earliest horror comics) - could do 8-12 pages a day. Does that make him worse than Pratt? There are current comic artists in the US who can't even make a complete page in a day, are they better than Pratt?

I'm not necessarily sure that just because something can be done by rote (as it were) it devalues the efforts not done by rote. And that's true of comics, movies, television, novels or video games. Hiroaki Samura, Junji Ito, and Yukito Kishiro for example have all struck me as good artists and good sequential art storytellers doing current work.

How is that more believable than them wanting the IP to make money from it? They may want to make money from it, but they may also want to make sure no one else makes money off of it (or creates what could be a competing product with the IP)

Hopefully not tanned teeth however.