Connections: "The Trigger Effect"

This is the first series of written questions and answers given by my to my 10yo daughter, Maria, about the first episode of Connections. Her answers are written in purple, and were transcribed by me.

It is part of these posts:

• Connections: Rationalism, God, Kids, and Waking Up...
  

Questions and Answers for Connections Season 1, Episode 1: "The Trigger Effect"
1) Take a look at the room you are in, and above all, at the man-made objects in that room that surround you - the Television set, the lights, the phone and so on - and ask yourself "What do these objects do to my life, just because they are there?"

List as many or as few as you want, and a bit about what they do to your life just by being there.

They help us. If we didn't have lights we wouldn't be able to see, we would have to use candles again. We couldn't watch what's going on around the world if we didn't have TV.

2) How important is electricity to this house? What would happen if we lost electricity and could never get it back?

We would have to do what we used to do back in the old days, and find ways of surviving. We don't have enough land to run because we can't put any of the necessary things like we see at the nature park - there they had a big wide spot. Outdoor bathroom, a place to make... the animals would all be fighting for space.

3) Why did the people in the subway just sit around waiting instead of trying to get out? What did they assume would happen (that, of course, didn't)?

Because they weren't thinking they were thinking that someone was going to come and help them - because lots of people are so used to being helped and not helping themselves - like a computer helps you write things for your homework - instead of using a pencil. [bad example]

4) How important is electricity to an entire city? What would happen if we lost electricity and could never get it back?

Then it wouldn't be a city anymore. Cities are full with traffic lights, electricity. Everybody will go crazy - and get supplies for only them - because the supplies would run out.

5) Briefly describe how you would try to survive without electricity, OR, what you would need to survive without electricity.

You would need light - with candles - to get food you take care of animals - you would need horses with horse drawn carriages to move around - you'd need to wash your own clothes.

6) Name a few reasons you think the ox/animal-driven plow is important.

You need a plow to live, and not just have a little food and be starving.

7) Why did the plow help civilizations to grow? (Note: Irrigation is the process by which we move water from one location to another to make dry land wet, and then are able to grow crops for food.)

Because it made more food, and the people thought "Hey we need this... hey we can do this..." "Where do we store the food, how do we cook it?"

8) Watch how the discovery of oil helped to rapidly transform the Middle East / Arabia. No question, just watch.

9) [45:40] "Never have so many people understood so little, about so much." Briefly write down what you think this means.

How we use so many things but understand so little about them.

10) Briefly write down what you found most interesting that James Burke, the narrator, taught you.

What started it all, the planting thing - the plow.

Addendum: Proud of my 10 Year-Old Daughter

In addendum to the original post...

Corrections:
Maria is 101 pounds with clothes on but without shoes, not 70 something. That's Dulce Maria, my 7 year-old rail-thin skinny cuddle bunny dainty princess. Maria is about 4 feet, 11 inches tall. She's already almost as tall as her 5'4" mother, and she's ten, so I'm betting she got some American genes for her height. Nobody on the Rodriguez side is tall by American standards.

Omitted Part of the Story:
Maria read the blog post for accuracy and told me a part of the story she'd omitted. After their encounter with each other, she saw the boy with his four friends sitting behind a car in the yard in the back of the church. He had taken off his shoe and was observing his foot, thinking he was away from anyone being able to see him, she reasoned, and she saw that his foot had turned purple. She told me "He was a really, really black boy, so to see something darker than him on his foot... yeah." making a sincere expression as she talked.

So I asked her "You really held nothing back when you hit him, didn't you. You must have really done some damage."

"Oh no. I'm sorry, but he made me mad." she replied. "Oh no" in this sense meant "Oh no I didn't." She has a habit of not finishing sentences as she speaks.

I said "That's good, never hold back or pull your punches, because people will take that as a sign of weakness and, now that they're mad because you've hit them, hit you back. I'm a nice guy so there were three times in High School I'd get mad and hit someone hard enough to let them know to stop, but not hard enough to really do all the damage I could, and each time they'd come back at me, whoever it was, so I learned that if I had to hit someone, I had to give it all I had, and then, half the time, there would be no more fight."

She asked about the possibility of breaking people's bones.

"Sweetie, you're a 10 year-old girl, and you've had no formal martial arts training. You can't hit someone hard enough to do that because you don't know how to. Once you have formal training, they will teach you how to hit people, and then you will learn how to do the same amount of damage with less force - and using all of your force, yes, can break bones. But right now you don't have to worry about that."

She seemed to understand. She got her reward yesterday, since none of my friends bothered to post a comment :P

The Reward
Her choice? She said she really wanted Planet Earth but, since only Dulce would enjoy that with her, got Wiiplay with an extra Wii Remote instead. She plans on buying the Planet Earth DVD set with her own money for herself.

That made me proud - she picked not the gift she wanted the most, but the one she thought most of the members of the family would enjoy.

Connections: Rationalism, God, Kids, and Waking Up

A friend of mine has inadvertently managed to cut a knife through my years and years of upbringing which has taught me I'm a flawed and useless mind. Flawed, yes, anyone with AADD (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder), by definition, is - but useless?

His net effect is that I've found the joy I used to take when I was young in engaging my brain in things. Growing up about the only TV I watched were nature shows, PBS (Public Broadcasting System), Doctor Who, original Star Trek, some cartoons, and Night Court. I enjoyed horseback rides and spending hours and hours not playing videogames, but drawing and making up my own worlds - which I do to this day every time I'm walking by myself.

So I bit torrented the first season of James Burke's Connections and, while some of it is out of sync and the 70's film quality doesn't hold up well, it's still just an incredible series, and it's got me thinking.

God
You see, I have a rather rational mind. I recall, watching something Carl Sagan put together, learning that 95% of the world believed in some sort of God. My immediate response was "95% of the world is stupid?" I am no longer an atheist, but that's not by choice, but by personal experience. Believe me, if faith was all I had - I would still be the staunchest atheist you could find who really didn't care to spread it around or use it to say "I can do whatever I want," which is what almost every other atheist I ever met did, and I didn't like them, but that didn't matter to me at the time, because rational thought mattered more than emotional beings.

Suffice it to say, I do not believe in coincidences anymore than God or a policeman does, and aside from this, I've seen proof that the world isn't as simple as what we can normally observe. Beyond that, I can't tell you anything - what religion to follow, what ethics to follow, I can just tell you - the tree is there, even if nobody sees it or believes it, and I get the sense that the tree isn't anymore damaged by a lack of belief than a tree in this world. It just is. I make no effort to explain it because I'm rational enough to believe the only way to explain it would be through the scientific process, and I don't have the tools I'd need to do that. It's also pointless, because as much effort as some people put into believing in God, others put into disbelieving. It almost always boils down to emotional need.

I've also found that I still enjoy rationals more than true believers in Christ because they're capable of thinking without boundaries. My wife is a wonderful exception - she'd be akin to some of the scientific Catholic friars of old - devout to the physical secular world as well as the clerical one. You can't bring scientific information to her that she doesn't want to accept because, to her, all proven science is part of the world, from Dinosaurs to ancient man to the vastness of the cosmos, it fascinates her. There was a time she'd have been burned, or, like the old friars, carefully researched away from prying eyes.

At any rate, the thinking rationals put into the workings of the world interests me more because they aren't afraid to say "Fanatical religion = bad" and so on. For some stupid reason, most followers of faith don't want to admit that there is any bad associated with what they do.

The flip-side, of course, is rampant liberalism and the problem this brings with rearing children, but I digress...

It Helps My Life
Anyway, rational thinking has got me thinking about the world again, like I used to do more of - how news is spread, information twisted, how societies and civilizations work, how change happens (thanks to Connections) and how we are all caught up in it. The Internet wasn't around in the 70's, but it was on the drawing board, so to speak.

This, in turn, has given me another hobby I can engage in with my wife. You see, my lovely armchair anthropologist (she's had college level courses in anthropology but, as she was a traditional Franciscan Nun at the time, she was not allowed to collect a paper degree, so she has no proof other than quizzing her) goes so far as to take a notebook and colored pens to make notes on everything she sees, so much so that she cross-references what one documentary says with another.

Testing My Daughters
Back on Connections: I actually wrote up a written test for my 10 year old daughter, Maria, 9 questions in total, dealing with the first episode. My wife tried to tell me it was too much, and I realized it was, so I added money to the pot: $1 per every two questions answered. 1 question was rhetorical.

Dulce participated passively, by watching the show and then observing Maria giving her answers.

Maria de Guadalupe couldn't write down her answers, so I transcribed for her. It was made especially difficult because her reward for beating up a 13 year-old black ghetto boy (poor kid, but this is basically where I live, so I might as well write it like it is) arrived the same day - she was stuck: she wanted to have fun with her reward, but I told her "If you don't do your Connections work today, you won't make any money. You'll still have to watch it, but you'll have no questions and no opportunity to make money. This is how the world works, Maria. If someone asks you to do something for them and they are willing to pay you, you can't tell them 'Maybe next week.' "

She eventually saw my point. Her questions weren't entirely correct, but I kept telling her as I transcribed "I don't care if you're completely correct, I care that I've made you think." She earned $4 in roughly 2 hours of work - one hour spent watching the first episode by herself, and another reviewing it and saying her answers with me when I got home. She's lucky if she can make $4 in an entire day of chores, so she was amazed at the work/reward ratio, and asked if she could do more.

Mexican Jew. She likes work and spots ways of making easy money fast. *chuckles*

The questions:

• Connections: "The Trigger Effect" - lists all of the questions I wrote down for Maria, and the answers I transcribed for her.
  

The questions ranged from "What would happen if there was no electricity in our house? How could we survive if it never came back on?" to "What happens to a city if it loses electricity permanently? What do the people do?" to "Why is the plow so important to civilization?"

Her answers ranged from bits of ideas to pure accuracy based on what James Burke said. I'll post it here. Dulce was interested, but is 7 - I can't do this to her just yet, but I'm glad she wanted to observe.

How many 7 year-old little girls do you know who want to watch Connections, twice?

Summary

• Watching Connections has helped rekindle my questioning of the way things are, and why.
• Dove's daily commentary and friendship helped spur all of this.
• I love asking my children why, and not focusing on their answer, just that I made them think.
  

PS to Kevin - The other religious friend of mine whom I find capable of rational thought is Kevin, in Virginia. He's got some hard and fast views, but that's what makes him a great person - he'll never betray a confidence, and never betray a person, because he's incapable of it. Jack Bauer could torture the man, and he'd stay firm. On the flip-side, that means you can't question President Bush or the PS3 ;)

And I love him like that. Too few people have firm minds. His is just one (firm mind) that is unusually free from being stuck in the mud, so to speak.

PS to Dove - I know he's not big on compliments, but I hope he realizes that he's made my life a bit better, and that is pretty much the best thing someone can say about a friend.

PS about Dave - I am an INTJ. I am aware this makes me more apt to thinking rational thought and working systems is far more important than emotional concerns, which don't affect how the world works, only what you do in it.

In the title, "Waking up" refers to my re-realization that my mind, while beneath super geniuses, is still useful, and fun to exercise.

Proud of my 10 Year-Old Daughter

My 10 year-old daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, had her first real fight with a boy on Sunday, April 29th. The subject was one black 13 year-old boy, who was surrounded by his four friends, roughly equaling his age.

The fight, like so many real fights, was very quick, and really only involved one blow. At our local Southern Baptist Church, Harvest Baptist Church, some adults had handed one piece of candy to each child. The children went outside the back of the church (really a rented house) to play and eat.

We live in the North East section of town, which is predominantly black. Pastor David Middlebrooks and his his three sons, daughter and virtuous wife are also, and I love showing my son, Jose Francisco, the Pastor's grown sons, David, Darius (his third, DJ, is still at home), because they are such fine examples of good men. They're strong, smart, educated, and most definitely "mens' men." Jose Francisco's face lights up every time he sees them, and David and Darius call him their little buddy.

The young boys Maria dealt with, however, were new to the church, and undoubtedly did not come from as good a family as the Pastor's sons. When presented with one piece of candy a piece and a selfish desire for more, one of the boys decided to steal a piece of candy from a six year-old black girl.

Maria de Guadalupe stepped up to the 13 year-old boy. She's 101 pounds, 4'11", and most people, in part due to her height and in part due to her Latin blood endowing her earlier than white girls, think she's 12.

"You better give that back to her," she warned him. They quickly exchanged words, his to the effect of "No" with disdain and, upon one last warning from her that she'd make him, he and his friends laughed.

Now, bare in mind, I have taught Maria the basics of making a fist, forming a line with her hand bones and forearm, shown her how easy it is to gouge out an eyeball, where pressure points are, and the infamous "Kick them in the balls" trick. She'd nailed me there just the day before after I had, whilst sparring with her, hit her in the side of the ribs and her shoulder. I do these exercises for obvious reasons.

Maria was wielding, or wearing rather, large pump shoes. So she stomped on the 13 year old boy's foot so hard he nearly fell over. He hopped on one foot, she said, and yelped and nearly cried, but looked at his friends and "looked like my brother, realizing he was a boy and couldn't cry."

I asked her "What did his friends do?"

"They looked like 'We're not going to mess with her.' " And they didn't, nor was anyone else's candy stolen.

I told her that she did just the right thing, and that had he responded by punching her in the face, or continuing the fight, she would have gone after him just like she does me when she's had enough. "You would have come back at him so hard he would be unable to keep 'playing.' " I told her. She just said "Yep."

She was embarrassed at the attention I lavished on her, and wasn't proud of the fight but rather what she accomplished with it: the gave the piece of candy back to the six year-old girl, and her look was one of happiness and amazement.

Bare in mind that none of her siblings were around; Dulce Maria was still inside with Jose Francisco and Alejandrita, which Dulce confirmed of course. The 20 year-old daughter of an adult member of the church had stepped inside, apparently being bored. So Maria was outside, without an adult, facing 5 older boys, and it didn't matter. Even so, it was a battle well picked - she hit the ringleader, hit him while he was laughing and not expecting it, hit him with the only weapon she had (her thick pump shoes) right where it would work the best - in the fragile bones of the feet, which I've also shown her in the past.

(To be precise, her strike was aimed not at toes, but at the metatarsal bones of the foot.)

God, I love these children.

Maria knew the ages of the boys because newcomer kids give their name and age at the start of the service.

Oh! And her reward: I'm thinking of two options - buying her a $54 DVD set of Planet Earth (she loves nature shows but dislikes the "in your face" style of the late Croc Hunter) - or something else she and her sisters might enjoy: WiiPlay which bundles another Wii Remote. If you have any opinions on the two, please drop them in my comments.

Addendum
I made an addendum to this post. Maria read this blog post for accuracy and added a piece of the story she had omitted before.

Family has been sick, and speaking of sick...

By Wednesday, 3 out of 4 of my children were sick, excluding my oldest daughter.

I woke up on Thursday morning early (6:15am) so I sat down to wait for 7am at my computer. I knew something was wrong when nobody got up. Not my firstborn, not my wife, not even the baby boy. At 7:25am I crept in and saw the children all looked like they had sweated all night long. My wife was in similar shape, so I cleaned the living room and kitchen (save washing dishes, noisy dishwasher) and waited for 8:25am, at which point I called work and told Rich my situation, and to ask a manager to call me back if they'd like. I wasn't sick, and while my family could have survived without me, I would not have felt good about that.

Now here's the cool thing - I kept everyone hydrated all day, made the kids stay still (broke our TV rules and set up hours of Blues Clues and Azumanga Daioh for them, the latter of which I watched as my children can't watch any anime without me - not because I like anime, but because I know how quickly something inappropriate but funny to Japanese folks can crop up) - but it was the cleaning in the morning Maria Alejandra kept thanking me for at the end of the day.

Friday, I've done much the same, but they've been more self-managing. Jose Francisco still looks like he's in the process of turning into a vampire - his eyes are red, he has rings around his eyes, he holds his mouth open all the time, and his lips are flush and his face is pale. Vampirism! That's it!

Speaking of Sick...
I've had all the Supreme Commander I can tolerate in one single day, I think. Friday being easier, as I haven't had to ferry food and drinks to bedridden family members, but rather help Maria (well, both of them) with the kids.

The final game runs better, but 4 players with 500 units apiece still slows down Pharra. What I dislike, ultimately, is that it's not a strategy game, it's an arcade game. The only strategy revolves around what order you build things in and what units you produce. For all of Chris Taylor's boasting about it's strategy game controls, and it has the best I've seen, there's not much to do with that. You just overwhelm.

Sure, there's strategy in the rock, paper, scissors, air supremacy, naval supremacy, land domination game-play - but it's all about momentum. That's it. Just keep up momentum.

After a while, and many games, you come to see what is like in a thing - and it's the momentum, and I just don't care to keep it up - it's always the same.

RIAA debacle reveals hidden truth

Everyone knows:

1. File sharing copyrighted material is illegal.
   
2. You have to use a Peer to Peer file sharing program and send copyrighted files for the RIAA to go after you - though there are plenty of noted exceptions, it goes without saying: If every claim the RIAA made was totally specious, every defendant would hold their innocence and show up to court to avoid summary judgment.
3. The RIAA is attacking people with intimidation.

What's fascinating about this whole debacle isn't that the RIAA is ethically and morally wrong in how they attack people, making false litigious claims, suing whole families and so on...

It is fascinating that the Internet public at large has galvanized into a pure hatred of the RIAA, one that is not reflected in the outside world. Joe Schmo has no real opinion of the matter, or might even say "File Sharing is wrong!" Certainly Republicans with vast investments actually support the RIAA for supporting their interests as shareholders.

What this tells me is that the legal problems with the RIAA isn't really the issue: the issue is a kind of business/cultural revolution, one that only people involved in the Internet really have the ability to know about and partake in.

As I've pointed out before:

1. RIAA: Guilty of not following the market
2. One Man Understood What Market He Was In
3. Suing Innovation

...business models have changed, but moreover, how people want to interact with content has changed, and how they want to treat it. These things aren't going away with Fascist strong-arm tactics - at least not in this country.

So remember next time you hate the RIAA, remember your own hypocrisy: are you downloading free music, but smart enough to do so over encrypted bit torrent protocols? Realize what you are: you're a revolutionary engaged in an illegal activity, active in something that isn't recognized as a revolution (so you won't be treated nicely). calling something a grand revolution which isn't. It's just the standard, changing market, shifting to yet another piece of technology that changes the way people do things faster than business models, and laws, can adjust.

We are not idealic soldiers if all we do is sit back and download. We are opportunists, waving our fists in the air hoping one day we'll be legitimatized. As of yet, the market has not found an equilibrium, and sitting back and bit torrenting only helps further the need for change - it does not create balance and harmony in and of itself.

The Cutest Thing Happened Last Night

Jose Francisco is a very Latin baby boy. You cannot convince him of anything he doesn't already agree with, or decides on his own terms that he agrees with. This includes:

• Having fun in a bouncy air-filled gym with 40 balloons and his two little sisters already inside playing. He took 20 minutes to consider this before deciding it was good and had fun.
  
  
• Kissing anyone. My mom has gotten frustrated with him many times because he won't kiss her, which would be flat rude if it was me. I kiss anyone who asks for one (cheeks mostly, exception daughters, wife and mom).
  
  
• The last time I was smacking Dulce on the arm three times for shoving her little sister, he came running up to me and hit me on the leg with a fist.
  
  I decided the two smacks I already gave Dulce was good and made him feel that his bravery and confronting the most terrifying thing for a baby boy - an angry father - got him what he wanted: I stopped.
  
  I didn't leave him unscathed and I went "ARRGH" at him, to demonstrate I was mad and if he was going to fight, he had to be prepared for the target's reaction. His response was to go "UHN, UH!" at me and wave a hand, and I relented, and told Dulce to hug him.
  
  
• Absolutely everything else.

His oldest sister, my 10 year-old daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, is his little momma. He called her "Marr" until recently, now he also calls her "Lupe" (loo-pay).

Well he likes to go to sleep with his mother and he likes to sleep with Maria. Switching this rarely works - sometimes he likes to sleep with his mother, but he usually won't go to sleep with his sister. He will, however, wake up if she or her mother is not there.

Last night Maria was sleeping and he woke her up kicking her for space. He'd gotten himself splayed out on the bed such that he was taking up the whole thing. She gently picked him up to move him and he mumbed, in Spanish, "I love Maria" or "La quiera Maria..." or in Jose Francisco speak, "ra quira marr."

She didn't know what he was dreaming, but as, during the day, you're lucky if you can get a hug from him, she was touched, kissed him on the hair and went back to sleep but remembered the story to tell us in the morning.

He is a good baby boy. He loves his family, his sisters, his mother, his father, his grandmothers... but he doesn't show it like I do. You have to watch what he does.

Running up to a father who is holding and hitting his sister and attacking him? That's love, I think, and while the description isn't reality, from a baby boy's eyes it might have been closer to what he saw.

I feel sorry for my mom, of course. She's a sweetheart and loves demonstrative love, and Jose Francisco just doesn't have any of that to give. She said it right, once: "I love Jose Francisco, and always will, but I'm glad I had you (me) and not him for a son."

Maybe she should think what he'd do if I yelled at her.

How to Cure your Children of Wanting to Play MMO's

Answer? Let them play them. But make sure to

1. Be there with them.
2. Have them follow you and your guild members.
3. Give them enough rope to hang themselves.
4. Do everything you can to make their stay better, literally, that way they won't think you conspired against them, and on the surface, you didn't. You let the stress of the MMO and the Guild do it for you.
   

I got back on City of Heroes / City of Villians, though the latter wasn't part of the picture when I left, joining my friend Kevin in Virginia. After a few nights playing, my 10 year old daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, asked me if she could play with us. I realized the game came with a 14 day free trial so I said "Sure."

Now you might ask "Why is a father introducing his TEN YEAR OLD GIRL to the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games?!"

Here's why, and the result of the evening, in an e-mail I sent to my friend Kevin and my lovely Latin wife...

Last night was too much fun. And most of that was either

• Watching Maria become frustrated with MMO's or
• Watching my minions slay the enemy.

I genuinely wanted to give Maria de Guadalupe the chance - it was just like D&D, I just laid all that rope out there (the old adage of giving the D&D players enough rope to hang themselves and sitting back as the DM) and did nothing on my own part to make her time miserable, other than demonstrate how a team can be frustrated with another team member's ineptitude. After that, she, once again, got stuck on some stairs with enemies hitting her, and we risked ourselves to save her, and I'm sure she understood that. Nobody likes to watch their friends go through hardship because they did something wrong.

And, as I told you, when she wanted to watch her Spanish soap opera I reminded her that you and I had gone through a lot of trouble so she could play, and what were we going to do now that she's leaving? (Soap Opera: Not like the States, they last only 6 months a piece and this one is about an ugly girl who has the most beautiful personality and intellect, literally titled "The Ugly More Beautiful," or translated I would say "The most beautiful ugly girl." Sweet show, actually. Imagine an American Soap Opera that stars an ugly lead girl. The actress is kinda like Carrie-Ann Moss/Princess Leia: pretty only if you really truss her up, and they dressed her way down for this show - Like Carrie, she's the unbeautiful progeny of two other famous actors. Unlike Carrie, she can act very well, and has, up until winning the lead on this show, made a living in comedy shows.)

Anyway, so she got to feel

• "MMO's dictate when you can play them because of who you have to play them with."
• She got to feel "Pulls are bad."
• She got to feel "Not being able to navigate the world is bad."
• She got to feel "There are some real creeps out there." (Start area creeps trying to flirt with her father playing a girl character - she's 10, and she's a girl, she's not stupid, and she can read, and all she told me afterwards were there were some really bad people online.)
  

She also got plenty of good. She seemed to like seeing you, but she told me afterwards you didn't talk much. I told her "You weren't in the room with me, but you're right, he's kinda quiet. When he talks, it's usually interesting." That, she knows, is like her mother. She enjoyed our social RP before you joined us most of all, I think. I will never, ever show her Second Life. Actually she wouldn't like that either - too many creeps.

But... I'm glad. If she had liked it I would have kept playing with her and taught her how to be responsible concerning the time spent playing. Either way, as she likes her NDS and some PC games, I knew MMO's (as they are the future) were going to be in her life at some point, and I figured, opportunity knocking with her saying she wanted to play with us, there was no better chance to teach her the ins and outs.

Lastly, one day my 10 year old little girl will be reading Daddy's blog, and she won't mind coming across this. She knows I do lots of things like this to teach her about the world, rather than just try to tell her how it is.

RAIDEN III, Lord of the Rings, Left 4 Dead and Supreme Commander

The Lord of the Rings: Online Sucks. It's largely like the World of Warcraft; however, in this game, getting lost on your 3rd mission and wandering around for forty minutes is FUN. Apparently it gets worse.

I downloaded Raiden III and am in love with it - I might acquire the PS2 version. Dual player support on one input device is supported in the PS2 version, and perhaps the PC - I can't read Japanese. At any rate, it's really a remake of Raiden II in 3d with modifications, and that's grand. It has replay modes that show you Seibu Kaihatsu's best playing through the mission you completed in one life, and demonstrates how to beat bosses and evade their attacks. The greatest thing about the Raiden Shoot-'Em-Up series is that if you play correctly, there is always a way out - you are never hemmed in by shots until you are dead unless you just aren't playing well. Actually Raiden III was developed by MOSS, licensed by Seibu Kaihatsu. I just thought it sounded cooler.

I want Left 4 Dead to come out.

I got Supreme Commander as well, but haven't installed it yet. So many games.

"Super Gas Chamber Tycoon 1943"

This post against the post that supports the "Super Columbine Massacre RPG" has the funniest quote I've seen all day.

Next I want to see "Super Srebrenica Massacre RPG" and "Virginia Tech: Perfectly Executed".

At least "JFK: Reloaded" waited, you know... a while.

Lord of the Rings: Online

So I downloaded that and tried it - there are 6 days left. I'm on the Vilny server, top left option. It appears to be an RP server, as I saw only one name that wasn't RP, and saw several people use "OOC:" in their chats.

Executive Summary
The game leaves me unimpressed. It is a very good WoW clone. That's not exactly a compliment. It is artistically pleasing, and the first MMO with that distinction since WoW that I've seen.

Accessibility
It's not as user friendly as WoW and that might really kill it. In WoW, you pick up quests that are clearly identifiable and immediately do them. You can pick up several and accidentally do them. In this game, I spent two hours and didn't get near as many quests done, nor could I follow them as easily as in WoW. Hard to explain, but it just happened that way - I was a member of American Mensa, so I don't think it's because I'm just dumb. That said, it wasn't boring or punishing, because I kept playing.

To do anything with your levels you have to find a trainer, which is kind of homosexual, but expected. Perhaps I'm just used to WoW's inventory system, but I like it better than LotR:O. The inventory system appears to be a functional copy, without directly copying - I'm sure Blizzard has patented something.

The game does not assume you know about the lore of the Lord of the Rings, and each race lets you choose a nation / land of origin, which alters what color hair and skin you can have. Making a red-headed Pharra required that she come from Rohan, not Gondor, which I thought was cool.

Graphics
The graphics are incredibly good and smooth. The bad part is that everything is easy to see even in the dark, so nothing is very scary. I did experience the "Dread" effect when I saw a Nazgul though, my screen got dark and contrasty and my vision blurred - that was disorienting so I backed off quickly. Neat, but I haven't seen it used since.

Combat & Classes
The combat feels kind of like WoW with a Warrior, having played around with a Guardian and a Champion (Warrior Tank / Warrior DPS).

I must say that the LotR setting has hurt the game classes, although I'm sure it will save the game as far as people actually joining it. I'm sure it will be a commercial success, a viable game, but not a killer MMO.

The reason? Well since The Lord of the Rings canon says there were only five wizards during the end of the Third Age, "Lore Masters," "Minstrels" and "Burglars" all suffer. We have three classes that are really "Warriors with different skill trees" in WoW:

Captain - a Warrior who handles group buffs and agro.
Champion - a Warrior who hurts things.
Guardian - a Warrior who handles agro and tanks.

That's really a whole lot of warriors.

Other than that, there's a Hunter! Which is really a ranged Warrior.

Perhaps, at higher levels, the differences will be more pronounced, but there's a 15 level cap in the BETA (out of 50) and this is what I've seen so far.

Minstrels heal, supposedly, as does the Lore Master class - which is "NOT A WIZARD!" but pretends to be. How... strange.

Split Servers
All of that said, it is better than I expected, and should be a viable game. Once again, the game is split into servers, which is homosexual, so you can't play with your friends like you can in Awesome Guild Wars, which is un-awesome in about every OTHER aspect, if you're holding it to the MMO candle.

Lifetime Membership and stuff
For $199 you can get a lifetime membership if you order now, and pre-ordering gives you rights to $10 a month instead of $15 forever, if you don't opt for big bucks.

It Will Probably Sell
Given the licensing and the setting, I think this MMO will not die horribly. It will probably find its niche, like City of Heroes, etc., and do well.

Remember, Dave hates MMO's, with a Passion
Also, bare in mind, I hate MMO's. I hate their repetition, the way they force you to play them, the way you can't tinker with a darn thing, etc. I hate that I can't hear a cool story from Dove or Kevin and go home, fire up the game and go meet them, lose interest and do it again in a few months. All I can do is live vicariously, and I'm content with that.

Lastly, I'd Like to Play it More
The terrain is really neat and I was really surprised about the names given to the characters. None of this "Prestochango" the Druid shit, or "Idoitfrombehind" Rogue bullshit names. I'd like to see what being in a Fellowship (party/guild) is like. But unlike City of Heroes, other than the setting, I can't think of why I should.

Oh yes, you can inhabit Monsters starting at level 10 and use them to attack other people in certain "free" zones where this is to be expected. From what I've read - you get the option to buy non-reusable buffs for your character for your trouble. Yay. Not. But nifty idea otherwise.

PS3: What, no jokes anymore?

Two important things to notice:

1. Folks aren't bashing the PS3 as much lately on the Internet.
2. The 20GB model PS3 has been largely discontinued.
   

I've noticed that folks on the Internet aren't bothering to bash the PS3 as much anymore (heck they aren't even searching for it), and that while Sony dropped the lower-end PS3, Microsoft never had to drop their bottom-of-the-barrel XBOX 360. Why?

Well, the answer is related.

As a friend of mine pointed out, we mock the things that we are afraid our friends might buy, but consider ourselves as having enough knowledge to think that we know something they don't and should warn them. That's something humans do. We don't bother mocking things we don't think our friends will buy - for example, nobody is going around mocking Betamax today, or the NCage.

The PS3 has passed that critical point where the hardcore (those of use who read everything, delve into everything about our hobby) feel that the PS3 is no longer a viable alternative that their friends might pick up.

The thing nobody says about the 20GB PS3 being discontinued is that it's the beginning of the end for the PS3 itself. The XBOX 360 Core model never went out of production because it kept selling, even though any gamer worth his salt would go for the XBOX 360 with a Hard Drive in it.

The PS3 is pretty much the same, only those who were going to buy PS3's, have largely already done so, and the whole crowd that would make up the "core system" buyers can't, or won't, because of the price.

The PS3 is dead. It is doomed. It is on its way to Saturn land. I am no longer sure it will limp by like the N64 or the GameCube; it's possible, but the future is unclear.

Update:
Dove just made a point: developers can't make games for the PS3 and make a profit. The flagship titles that the PS3 currently has use only 20% of its power, another 80% sits idly.

To the end consumer, what they see is 80% of what they paid for - does nothing.

In order for developers to make games that used the system, they would have to spend a solid year just on development of an engine and charge up to $100 per game to the consumer.

I update my prophecies to "The PS3 will not slide by" for the simple reason that the N64 (I think) and the GC (I know) did not operate at a loss per unit. Sony has over-extended themselves, and that would have worked if the system sold, or wasn't a billion dollars, or both. And so they eat cost, and eat even more for unsold units.

Random Updates

God of War II versus Greek Mythology (PS2)
Take a multi-part online video look at the mythos behind God of War II.

Rainbow Six: Vegas cooperative mode (PC)
This game is incredibly fun. So far, I'm good at blowing myself up with hand grenades, as is my friend, Kevin. When not enjoying the thrills of bouncing our grenades off of steel railing back at us, we enjoy ducking behind doorways, cars, walls, and arcade systems for cover, and killing the enemy. We use Teamspeak to communicate via voice.

Armed Assault (PC)
I'll mention it again, this is the seminole military simulator. My friend Dennis is hooked on this. Jock hates change - all change, even good change, like High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting, because "it makes things harder to see."

Well - duh. That's what happens in real life. But he plays the game anyway.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Review of the Game
Fantastic game. There are four classes and four portraits for each class (two girls and two guys each). You collect items and equipment which affect how the game plays. The game is simple: a puzzle board wherein you move one piece at a time up, down, left or right and try to make a vertical or horizontal row of three or more of a kind. Each colored gem represents a kind of Mana (magic) that you can use for different spells that you have. Some are direct damage (skulls) instead of Mana, others are gold and experience point gems.

So, you can set whether or not you have a time limit to make a turn, the difficulty of your opponent, and go to town. You can buy a mount, capture prisoners and make spells - but only if you have the right buildings built in your citadel - you'll need stables and dungeons and mage towers for those activities. Plus you can have companions, apparently, but I haven't gotten there.

Leveling up seems fast with my Paladin (they get bonus XP) and good with all other classes.

Bugs!
The thing that troubles me is that console games are now coming out with BUGS, not just your minor glitches, but fucking obvious ones like "The game crashes after a match" which is rare, but taken in total across the Internet, folks talk about it, and it happened to me once.

Buried in the 2nd page of a thread on DS version bugs in "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" I posted this:

We're getting off-topic with the ROM morality debate; however, everyone please clarify if you are using a ROM or a Cartridge, because there can be issues with some games (Ultimate Spiderman loves to play poorly with MOD cards).

I am using a ROM (forget the dump team) and a G6 Lite MOD card with a Passcard 3.

Bugs I have found:

1. Crash after Victory Bug: (Multiplayer Local Ad-Hoc game) Upon my daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, beating me, her NDS went black and crashed. Upon reloading, we couldn't tell if it had saved her progress or not before it crashed.
2. Spell List Bug: The spell list you see is not the one you are trying to click on ... I was playing with my 10 year-old again and noticed I had a new spell after my level up, so I clicked "HELP" and tapped on the new spell, but nothing happened for it or the 2nd to the bottom spell. Clicking on my upper spells told me the stats to my daughter's spells, not mine. I eventually figured out that, while I was seeing my spells, the game thought I was tapping on the Spell List that wasn't there, namely, her spell list, not mine. To see mine, I had to switch to her spell list and then click where my spell would be, even though she had less spells this worked.

Bugs In Total:

1. Something about leveling up while mounted.
2. Restarting multiple times makes the gems randomize themselves.
3. AI seems to get really lucky as to what falls down - I have noticed this too, but I don't think it's a bug - I think it is the game's way of making sure the AI has mana to give it a chance against the power of the human difference engine (brain). I tend to plan my moves out 2 to 3 turns if I can, so I can get something better than just the gems I'm moving. The computer does this too, but sometimes it seems more due to what drops after they make a move, rather than how the existing pieces fall.
4. ...
   

Summary about Puzzle Quest: Warlords
This is the first game I have really super liked on the Nintendo DS since Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, which I beat recently (most folks beat the game at level 35, I beat it at level 65 - Dracula can't be brute forced, but being his match helps).

Yu-Gi-Oh on the NDS

I liked Yu-Gi-Oh: Nightmare Troubadour, but the cards were blurry and worst, you could only sort all 1,148 card types in your inventory by one criteria, and filter by one other criteria, which made creating decks by reading the cards in the game impossible.

So I tried Yu-Gi-Oh: Spirit Summoner. That version had much better card textures (not blurry) and you could filter by any combination of filters you wanted (say, all trap/spell cards of a given color), which was glorious.

Unfortunately, the new music is hideous and you can't turn it off, and the control system for using the cards has changed so that everything involves one extra click, and all of the buttons are now tiny. You have to click on a card, then click a tiny button (one of two) to sway what you want to do with it. Before, this was one step.

Summary
So Yu-Gi-Oh didn't kill Yu-Gi-Oh, the sequel did. It was so much better (creating decks, which is essential to play the game), but so much worse (music and a control system that kills interest in the game).

Sony, Microsoft have Barred the Gates

Sony and Microsoft have effectively barred the gates from people buying their consoles, because they have tauted the HDTV capabilities so much, the average consumer thinks he needs an HDTV (a whole new expense factor) in order to enjoy an XBOX 360 or PS3.

As an employee at a video game store, I get questions asking about the graphical differences between the current and next-gen consoles occasionally.

Every once in awhile, a customer will try and "confirm" with me that you can't tell the difference between current and next-gen games without an HD television.

It comes in different forms but it is a perception among some uneducated casual gamers that you need an HDTV to enjoy the 360 or PS3. They're wrong of course but it is something that has been created amongst some because of all the "HD" marketing of the 360 and PS3.

[source] Around 30% of the TV owning populace have some form of HDTV now, which is not a lot. I know that one thing that has occured to me is that if I got a PS3 or XBOX 360 I would have to hook it up to an LCD computer screen, because there's no way I'm paying thousands more for something else that doesn't last as long as a computer LCD display, or a $2,000 LCD TV. And I'm not sure PS3's hook up to computer LCD's...

The Wii, meanwhile, has stayed accessible - possibly too much. Many Obsessive / Hardcore Gamers view it with distain, but others are jumping in.

What are Hardcore and Casual Gamers?

Folks assume that the hardcore is all that matters, or that the hardcore is all that can support the videogame industry, but the changing market tells us this isn't so, as well as some basic math and common sense. Avid moviegoers do not outnumber casual moviegoers, nor can our numbers save movies we love (Serenity) compared to the all powerful might of the masses. This same truth of human nature (obsessives versus casuals) is true in gaming.

Games Sorted by Score on Metacritic

• Wii 9 bad, 28 okay, 8 good.
• PS3 2 bad, 12 okay, 20 good.
• XBOX 360 9 bad, 80 okay, 80 good. (Odd, same number good and okay, but I double checked, and that's accurate)

What These Figures Mean
I find it interesting that the XBOX 360 has racked up as many bad games (listed in Metacritic) in 16 months as the Wii has in 4, and that the PS3 (which has been out almost exactly as long as the Wii has) has 60% more good games than the Wii, and 22% of the Wii's bad games amount.

My theory is that game developers are having an easier time grappling with familiar (traditional) consoles, and that the casual games coming out for the Wii are ill received by hardcore gamers. Basically, developers are still figuring out how to use the Wii's control scheme to make fun game and nobody has made a Wii game that can keep the Hardcore Enthusiasts happy, except Nintendo with "Zelda: Twilight Princess."

Now the inevitable question comes... "If the Wii is doing so poorly with its games, why does it continue to sell so well?"

The Answer Is:
The answer isn't "People are stupid and they'll wake up soon and the Wii will die." The answer is "Because there are so many more casual gamers than hardcore gamers like to think, it really doesn't matter. They are legion, and they will crush you."

The Reason Behind The Answer Is:
Casual Gamers are those that buy 4-6 games a year on average. Hardcore Gamers are those that, as soon as they beat one game (which takes them little time), they buy another, and so they buy 12 or more games a year. If you buy this much, you are hardcore. If you would buy this much but you have to eat, you are hardcore. If that really seems like a waste of money, but you love a good game, you are casual. If you can spend 100 hours on one game you love, but you don't bother reading about every new game that comes out, you are casual. If you read exhaustively everything about games even if you don't own a system (or exclusively read about every game for "your" console), you are hardcore.

Wake up, my fellow Hardcore, we are only about 15% of the gamer population.

Hardcore Gamers versus Casual Gamers... Casual Wins:
Lets take 100 gamers. 15 are HARDCORE, and 85 are casual. Over the course of the year, assuming each HARDCORE gamer buys 12 games, and each casual gamer buys 5, what do we have?

• 15 HARDCORE gamers out of 100 total gamers will buy 180 games in one year.
• 85 casual gamers out of 100 total gamers will buy 425 games in one year.
• HARDCORE gamers account for 34% of all games bought in one year. Casual gamers account for 66%.

The Myth that there are More Hardcore than Casual Gamers is a Lie Because:
Now, my math is fictional. I don't have the exact ratio of HARDCORE to casual gamers. But think of cars - some people are seriously freaked out about their cars. They buy chrome parts, wash them and take them to shows, read car magazines, collect car memorabilia and watch car shows. Most people just drive their cars, or love the one car they are in. What is their percentage versus the car enthusiasts?

Human nature stays constant over the course of our short lives - evolution takes longer. It follows that gamers show a similar trend of obsessive gamer and casual gamer as car lovers follow a similar trend of obsessive and casual car lover (versus people who, you know, drive something). Most people who love their cars don't subscribe to car magazines, let alone anything else.

Hardcore Gamers is a bad term, we are Obsessive Gamers:
We aren't hardcore, we are obsessive. That is what we do. Hardcore just sounds cool, and casual doesn't, hence my homo-italics. By definition, the obsessives of any product industry are not the majority, we are the overly vocal minority. Up until now (the Wii), most game systems have completely catered to the obsessive gamers, and now they have figured out that casual gamers make money too.

Does this spell DOOM for the obsessive gamer? Not really, because games casual gamers like, obsessive gamers also tend to like; however, an obsessive gamer needs deeper layers in a game to keep him busy and coming back for more, but both appreciate an approachable game.

Summary:
Hardcore Gamers are really obsessive gamers, and Casual Gamers outnumber them. We are witnessing a changing market, and no matter what vitriole we spew out, it's going to keep changing. I hate to use the pun, but the revolution is here, and now that companies have seen money, it's not going to stop.

PS3 Dominates Folding@Home, but that doesn't mean what we think it does

The Folding@Home numbers (which show the PS3 as accounting for 2/3rd of all calculation power when it numbers 27,000 to almost 200,000 computers) imply a fallacy.

According to Folding@Home, GPUs account for the greatest amount of calculations (while CPUs are necessary for others). But the only GPUs supported are flagship tier ATI 1900XT & 1900XTX (presumably 1950XT as well), not Nvidia nor 1800XT's.

This makes the PlayStation 3 greatly weighted against the PC, because not only do they have seven Cell processors (GPUs, in Folding@Home's eyes), but most PC's don't have the required videocard to even try to take on the PS3.

This makes the PS3 seem to dominate computers, when the reality is that it's not an even playing field.

PS3 sales 165k in two days in UK - but what does that mean?

In two days, 165,000 PS3 units have been sold in Great Britain. Record breaking, they say. Kevin and I decided to test that theory, but seeing what happened in Japan on the first two days, both comparing the sales figures, population of the two countries, and number of games at the launch.

Population:
60,609,153 (UK) is 47% of 127,463,611 (JAP)
UK has almost half the population of Japan.

PS3 Hardware Sales:
81,639 (JAP PS3) is 49% of 165,000 (UK PS3)

Launch Titles:
However, the PS3 launched in the UK with 22 titles, and only 5 in Japan. 5 is 23% of 22.

There are two theories to this:

1. The UK sales are a product of having more games, and this makes the UK sales figures less impressive.
   
2. Same as the above; however, this shows that the PS3 still has hope if it just gets enough games, because games drove the UK sales.

Background Data:
UK sold about 51% more PS3's than Japan did in its two day launch window. In order to match the UK sales, Japanese gamers would have had to buy about 84,150 more PS3's; however, that doesn't take into account there are twice as many Japanese, just how much it would take to make each country's sale ratios equal.

If UK has half the pop of Japan, and bought half more PS3's than Japan... then that would mean that Japan would have to by TWICE (100%) more PS3's to match the "Desiration Factor" of the PS3 in the UK. We aren't factoring in price, because while we think the UK PS3 is more expensive than the Japanese PS3 (British pound versus Japanese yen), we're not sure.

Europe World Population: source
Japan Population: source
Great Britain Population: source
Japan PS3 Sales in first 2 Days: source
Japan PS3 Launch Titles: source

One Man Understood What Market He Was In

Satoru Iwata is CEO of Nintendo of Japan, the mother company of Nintendo of America, and the lead behind the Wii.

What he said in a recent interview which named him one of the world's leading CEO's, was telling:

"We are not fighting against other companies—we are fighting against ignorance of video games."

The RIAA is guilty of more than suing American families, it is guilty of not understanding what market it is in.

"The RIAA is the "recording industry" and they represent the interests of the record labels who, while they may claim are in the music business, appear to believe they're really in the "music selling business" rather than (as they really are) the "music entertainment business." They believe their job is to distribute music, promote it, and get people to buy it. They make money by keeping that system closed and locked down. If they recognized they were really in the "entertaining people with music business" they should only be ecstatic about new technologies and services that make their job easier."

This is profound because there is a similar fallacy in the Gaming Industry has: that great graphics motivates gamers, rather than appeases them. This is why games come out early and buggy - because distributors think that once a game's graphic engine is done, that is all that is needed. If a game has crappy graphics, we are not pleased, but if the game is itself is not fun, all the graphics in the world won't save it.

The ignorance of the Gaming Industry is that they think are in the Videogame Graphics Market, not the Videogame Entertainment Market, which is their actual market as evidenced by the Nintendo Wii.

Understanding that their market is not limited to hardcore gamers with large pockets is costing not only Sony, but Microsoft.