Michael

Quick accounting lesson because I enjoy it:

If a company buys something (e.g. the Coca Cola company) for more than the book/accounting value of its land and buildings, such as paying extra for brand name and reputation, the excess is accounted for as 'goodwill' and treated as a posession rather than a loss. Theoretically all brand names could be treated as posessions, but valuing your own name is too open for misuse, so it is only possible in acquisitions, with the rationale that if the brand wasn't worth $millions then the buyer wouldn't have paid it.

However, if it later appears that the brand name isn't held in very high regard by people, it means it's suddenly not worth very much either, and 'goodwill' is reduced correspondingly. The reduction is treated as a loss. (*For the nerdy, goodwill used to be depreciable over time which is still the rule for tax purposes, but the new accounting rule is it remains fixed until there is grounds to call for an impairment review)

So in this case Atari didn't actually spend $70m more than they made, they rather spent $15m more, and the rest stems from them having paid lots for something intangible in earlier years that now looks to be worth much less.

Good thing this was not a mosque, or there would be hell!

Cue #23, why do you use as a method of ridicule and discredit to call someone 'marginalized loners'? I assume those are negative traits, as to emphasise their personal weaknesses in being shut out by the compassionate, warm, inclusive, intelligent majority?

I'll add to psychoticdream - I honestly can't recognise the smallest bit of the typical accusations against Rand in the book. If the premise was "if it benefits you to kill someone then do it", why would the group of creators help each other rather than turn each other in for a reward? Why did they not gas the continent and make use of the scrap material? It is an absurd interpretation, and yes, it does slightly appear like the accuser haven't read the book.

The central theme in my view, as exemplified by the extremely strong Rearden family scene, is that whoever gives deserves thanks. As simple as that, if you go out of your way to defer to others, then you _should have_ their appreciation and thanks. Even for something as simple as paying tax. Rand does not at all say "Governments should not tax", she says "When the government taxes, it had better provide something good in return, and appreciate the payers".

This may sound like a theme so self-evident that its absurd, but remember that Rand's family fled from Russia. At the time, and in communist theory, someone who gives does NOT deserve thanks and is NOT a good person, because whatever that person had was in the first instance stolen from its rightful owners, and being born with good health and ability is simply a stroke a luck that puts an obligation on you to work for the less fortunate. I would even say that there is a significant number of people who hold a similar view today, especially that a 'rich person' cannot have a single redeeming feature, and that it is in their self-interest to portray Rand poorly. As such, if the true theme of Atlas Shrugged _is_ that it's right to kill people if it benefits you then I would be opposed to it, but as I can't see that, I support it.

Oh, and on Bioshock, I am concerned it might be overhyped. And the same goes for Spore.

Here is a further marketing suggestion: A picture of a man that is computer manipulated in a natural-looking way to allow for a PS3 sticking out of his rectum.

The story behind the picture is that the man nagged his friend to borrow his PS3 so much that his friend exclaimed "Here you go!" and shoved it up his ass(while taking care not damage it, of course) and promptly went and bought another system for himself because it is too good to go without. The viewer is invited to infer the back story and how it shows the desirability for themselves, which again makes them more likely to buy it as they have incurred a mental cost considering it that would be a meaningless sacrifice if they did not buy one.

PS: You can have the idea for 1 PS3.

Is there actually some system or somesuch called Games for Windows? I thought it was just a logo.

P.S. Actually I knew about Games for Windows already, because I had seen the magazine entitled Games for Windows on. I assumed this was a new magazine title from some publishing house who also happened to have published a few games, like PC Format.

I am shocked that police officers who were on duty to GUARD THE STREET NEXT TO A WALL did not keep their eyes glued to this wall one hundred percent of the time.

I hope the employers of the people who complain about this install keyboard logging software to ensure that they will type at a normalized typing speed FOR THEIR ENTIRE WORKDAY, and the number of halts in their typing classed by severity (5-10 seconds, 10-20 seconds, 20-60 seconds, 60 seconds+ halt) is reconciled against a schedule of toilet breaks before being added to their disciplinary record. That especially goes for journalists.

I am currently developing a game that takes place in 4D, though you can push a button to "crush" your preferred level of inwards/outwards into a 3D scene. The alpha test required a bajillion megabytes of RAM, but then I used procedural programming instead so it can run on a mobile phone.

I think you could only say gaming teaches to people to be submissive and conformist if you have never played very many games yourself.

What games taught me was not only to learn how systems work and how to adapt to them, but also the fracture points where the system has funny and usable results, as #9 points out. The same person who found that staying at the very edge of the screen during a boss battle gives guaranteed victory, could/would also be the one to find that being in circumstance XYZ means you never ever gets picked for an IRS audit. This would not be obvious to someone who just 'sees someone mindlessly push buttons over and over'.

#13 also makes a good point. The overarching principle "Thou shalt not conform" only comes into existence in some circles if they dislike the specific thing that is conformed to. If not, no overarching principle. Funny that. A fracture point of a system that encourages us to conform to anything pronounced an "overarching principle for a good society" perhaps?

Why Spore will not live up to the hype:

1. The average video game hardcodes the relationship between objects. For example, the peon object may absorb the wood object and turn into a peon-carrying wood-object.

2. Spore will change this through 'procedural synthesis' - you instead have an object with movement and interaction capability that for the sake of argument is treated like a peon, and may interact with absolutely anything, including any object similar in form and use as wood. In other words, complete freeform beyond what anyone has seen. In theory, that is.

3. In practice, it is virtually impossible to define and program a utility system that prioritises between tasks like a human, and there is an incredible number of differences in material properties (and hence what the 'procedural system' must take into account) between something as simple as iron vs steel vs stainless steel vs aluminum. For this reason you end up with a 'freeform' priorities and action system that neverthless has a _lot_ of hardcoded exceptions in it. Every item and object will need a hardcoded exception.

4. The gameplay experience will therefore much resemble that of those who went down path 1, just by taking a lot more time and with much more buggy and bulky code.

I wrote this a year ago and can't see the conclusion changing.