@artician
you always have the same criticisms.
with the same conclusions and yet you never offer an alternative.
now i understand your criticisms and they are not exactly wrong,but rather too over-simplified in my opinion.

what i DON'T understand is how you can bring that same criticism for a trailer.this is a small sniglet to get people to watch this movie.a glimpse of the content using dramatic music and flashy visual imagery all with the specific intent:to get people to watch this movie.

this tactic is used for every trailer,every commercial for a tv show or reality series,it is even used to sell BOOKS!

and to postulate that the mere appearance of manipulation invalidates the content,even if true,is illogic made manifest.

of course a documentary is going to have a certain bias,they are trying to make a point,but if the facts are solid and the logic reasonable..who cares if they use dramatic music to set the tone?

chomsky relays some of the most in-depth criticisms of american hegemony but he also is soft spoken and monotone.he puts many people to sleep.so it doesnt matter that his facts are backed by reams and reams of data,he simply bores many people.

see what im saying? because it appears to me,THAT is what you would prefer.no music,no dramatic production,just straight facts delivered in a monotone voice.

meh../shrugs.guess we just disagree on this point.and that's fine.

@artician
i hear ya man,
but tolkien set the bar where all other fantasy writers had to follow.

personally i found the "the chronicles of thomas covenant-the unbeliever" to be perhaps the best fantasy series to take what tolkien did to a much greater depth and scope and incorporating much of what C.S lewis laid down.

what a great series.the protagonist is such an anti-hero and you struggle for three books to even like him,nevermind identify with him.

but like you,i sometimes struggle when a writers influence is so blatant.

take Dean Koontz...really...take him..
i find him to be an utter hack,and while his prose is readable,his storylines and ideas are so obviously plucked from better writers and then mashed together so we wont notice.

i notice...and thats why any book of his given to me has a permanent place on my bathroom shelves.that man is pure crapper reading,since i get to play "recognize the plot" without any real exertion ....mentally.

but let us be honest.
while tolkien created a very diverse and detailed land with lore and history.painting a picture in our heads this fantastic world he created.the basic plotline is not that original.

it is your basic heroes quest with an extremely detailed backdrop.

so i will give this show a pass,just as i did brooks books.they were engaging and entertaining,and at the end of the day...what more do we wish out of our books?

ever read any of piers anthony's xanth novels?
they are puntastic and a fun ride (even if a bit cheeky),and nowhere near great literature.

but fun...and i can live with that.

Noooo.... So, I read the hell out of the Shannara novels when I was a kid, and loved them, until someone pointed out the character-for-character format that it took straight from Lord of the Rings (I read Shannara first, and was also too young to notice things like that).
Brooks novels are mediocre facsimile at their greatest points. They can try all they want to compete with Game of Thrones but there isn't a trace of the depth or darkness (or quality) in Shannara.

Totally agree. They had to re-do mine 3 times because I breathed. There's no way they could do an MRI this clear on moving people. Notice the 'slice' they look at never changes. MRI's take pictures in 'slices', and if you move, you get a different 'slice'...but the depth of this image miraculously stays in exactly the same plane, even though they are supposed to be getting it on.
I'll second your call of shenanigans. Everybody grab your broom!

I like this girl and how in-depth she goes into explaining epic histories of fictional worlds. She has a great series of videos about the history of the world and each house of Game of Thrones. Very educational.

@947bis - that nearly brought a tear to my eye and explains EXACTLY why i was disappointed with Fallout 3. Or better to say, disappointed that it was given the label of Fallout instead of something like "Post Apocalyptic RPG".

FO3 had no subtlety. Sometimes you'd make decisions in Fallout 1&2 that you'd not even realised you'd made. Or chosen a dialogue option that you had no idea would affect how the game played out. There were multiple options to solve "quests" (there was no formal quest log) that would significantly alter the state of the rest of the game - what bases and equipment you had access to, and how you could ultimately finish the game. You could sneak into places, or disguise yourself and walk in, lie your way past NPCs, demolish your way in, then ultimately sabotage their base or fix it for them, ruin a gang's drug and slave trade, have sex with a crime boss's wife (or daughter if you preferred) and rob their safe before sneaking or shooting your way back out - and then the rival family would love you! It's as though the money they saved on not having voice actors for *every* NPC or graphical wizardry was spent on designing interesting, intertwined and thoughtful characters and situations, which were more fulfilling despite being a text only deal.

Fallout had so much character and charm and personality... It was genuinely funny and involved - in every area there would be many storylines that could affect each other directly and change the story, or change your reputation in the wasteland and affect your options elsewhere. FO3 feels cold and dead by comparison. In FO3, the decisions you make give the illusion of depth, when in actual fact only a small number of "decisions" affected the game at all, and even then, the consequences were not surprising or not impactful to the same degree.

God, i wish i could bottle the feeling of playing Fallout 1&2 back in the day.. i wish i could explain it to you young whippersnappers!

Oh and here's a more in-depth article that details the events from the video among other things (and explains the laws involved).

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/opinions/kraska-china-island-building/index.html

Seems to be pretty much what I said, chest thumping, the US Admiral in charge of the Ops calls them "freedom of navigation operations".

He stayed cool as ice under pressure. Given the depth of the danger, it's amazing he didn't cave. He must have had some good training, because he didn't crack.

The rumor is they're waiting out for an exclusive or timed exclusive offer from MS or Sony before announcing console release. Not that I care, I'll be playing on PC in Nov!

Looks good. Procedural level design is great news, the downside of the first was at some point you knew the layout of all the maps and it was predictable as hell. I hope they bring back some of the complexity that was missing from the recent reboot (e.g. multiple bases, base grid structure), or at least add new depth.

This is elaborate, and very Canadian visual metaphor. The naked man represents the terror of divulging that which is most vulnerable while being intoxicated, while the tackle represents the motor coordination challenges while same. Asking for help to "bring it in" being a rejected cry for help. The canoe represents the territory of self, surrounded by the depth of the dark feelings.

It's a very basic Canadian mode of self-reflection.

Anyone remember TI graphing calculators, which at the time I was using them (90s) I think ran on 8088 processors?

Quite a bit MORE expensive than this. MUCH less powerful, even factoring in Moore's law. AND, they were in no way intended to be an open, hackable design like this is. And even with all those limitations, they became one of the primary "introduction to hardware and software hacking" devices of my generation.

When I was a 16-year-old HS Freshman, I had a TI-81 that I hooked up to a PC with a serial port and "hacked" zShell onto. I learned a bit of assembly code and put on lots of little programs like games etc. onto my calculator. I even got an image display program where you could load up bitmap images that were converted to a specific size and color depth (4-8 grays if I remember right). I got busted in my Geometry class that year looking at a blurry grayscale picture of a topless Pamela Anderson. On my calculator. If that doesn't put me in the running for biggest nerd ever, I don't know what would.

Anyway, I can only see this "Chip" thing (I agree that I'm not too big on the name) as a very cool idea. Sometimes, something as simple as a hackable platform or a blurry 4-bit picture of some boobs can be enough to push someone towards a lifelong interest in IT and other technology. Raspberry Pi and the others are great too, but the price of this one gives it a real leg up in the universal accessibility department!

The thing about that is that his show has repeatedly been shown to educate viewers on the actual facts of the 'news' far better than the "real journalists" you would put before him. He presents the news in comedy fashion, but still in a much clearer, often more in depth, and more honest way than nearly any "news organization" operating today.

So it IS actual news, and more so than most "news" shows. Incredibly more so than, lets say, Fox, which is worse than watching no news at all, proven time and time again.

I've been shouted down in meetings for the depth of field thing so many times. So many people don't understand how inappropriate it is for an interactive experience. Film is about controlling the viewers experience, games are about allowing the player to experience on their own. Not only is depth of field a completely unnatural artifact, its presence in games is a misunderstanding and misuse of the medium. Drives me nuts.
Also, most of the things the talking head says during the demo are devoid of any meaning. There's truthfully not a great deal impressive about the demo itself; these guys are wowing people with great artwork and flawless technical execution, (which is still nice), but the hardware/software used isn't as important as they're going on about.

Thanks much for in-depth answers to the solar questions! Have a couple power points.

Over the past few years there has been this trend towards simulating artifacts that you'd more commonly associate with film, presumably to give games a more cinematic feel. Some of them I find really annoying, like film grain, but others like lens flare can actually be used to communicate something you wouldn't otherwise be able to. Likewise, I find depth of field to sometimes be very nicely implemented, even where the effect is really quite strong. Alien: Isolation sort of made a gameplay mechanic out of it. I find it works best when the game only applies it in a context where it makes sense, like bringing up the scanner in Alien, or zooming into one your cities in Endless Legend. Where it fails, I think, is where it is always on and assumes that your crosshair is always going to be your focus.