Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[Blinge]

'James Bond Gets Politically Correct Makeover In New Novel'

Sigh...

Can't wait for him to have tats too

[Ed Oscuro]

I think the people writing these things do little credit to Ian Fleming. I don't think that, had it been acceptable to give James Bond an "outspoken gay friend" in the 1960s, that Fleming would have thought it impossible.

There are some things from the Bond novels that people would have problems with today - but it's clear that Oddjob isn't meant to be the disgusting stereotype of all Asians. I personally like well-rounded characters, but you can't force an author to make every character deep and thoughtful; I think Fleming wanted to capture some of the essence of selfless fanaticism and self-immolation that people knew, from the WWII experience, certainly did appear in some Asian people. The chitinous hands were pretty gross though!

The same novel, Goldfinger, also has Bond seduce or rescue Pussy Galore away from lesbianism. It seems inconceivable to people now, but I think he gave setting up a plausible psychological explanation well - he gives the character of Galore an abusive uncle and put her in denial of her feelings. It sounds crazy, but it's not implausible. Similar things have happened in real life, though we're strongly encouraged to not discuss emotional progressions like this because they don't put front-and-center the message that gay people don't need to be rescued. Of course, from my memory, I didn't think that Fleming was moralizing about Galore's lesbian flings, either, but rather just trying to portray things as the result of events. Of course, that would have been almost the only way you could get away with talking about lesbianism back then, absent doing the traditional hardened heart "bad girl meets a bad end" story. But it does feel like we're encouraged to trade one bad generalization (all homosexuals are confused) with another (no people who exhibit homosexual behaviors are confused about their sexuality, which is of course ridiculously wrong).

He came his closest to moralizing when writing about Nazis though - you can tell he liked writing in as many scenarios that involved bumping off old Nazis as possible.

Telling Bond that it's no longer the Middle Ages sounds pretty '90s to me, to be honest. Can't we think up anything new to say about Bond?

[Xyga]

It's nice to see the SPECTRE back by the way, but without Blofeld and his cat it won't be the same.

Unless...

[Blinge]

Oh man I remember Blofeld's death being nothing more than a prologue at the beginning of one of the Roger Moore films.

Bond is so shit.

[Xyga]

Tepid at best. I believe it was good in the beginning for what it represented in its era, but the 70's killed it (the 70's killed a lot of things).

[JBC]

License To Kill, Goldeneye, Casino Royale, & Skyfall are all great post-Moore films. I feel confident about Spectre as well.

[Mischief Maker]

I say "The Living Daylights" could have been the series revitalization that Casino Royale eventually was. Timothy Dalton's performance as a Bond with a dangerous edge, but still charming, was way better than Daniel Craig's "Bond as thug" interpretation. Unfortunately it immediately followed in the wake of Roger Moore's silliness, so you have this uncomfortable back and forth between Dalton playing it serious against the KGB and goofball shit like Joe Don Baker as a Bond villain with a wax museum of history's great conquerors, all sporting his face.

It also has one of the most badly-aged jokes in the history of cinema at the end when Bond's Mujahideen pals show up to the opera with guns and ammo belts and say, "Sorry we're late, we were delayed at the airport."

I wonder if Stallone cringes every time Rambo III comes on TV?

[Ji-L87]

So this happened at work today:
A printer toner we were waiting for was not only delivered to the wrong address but also received and signed by a person who reportedly haven't been to work today.

HOW

And now I have to hunt it down. Monday. Because all the staff I could ask have gone home for the weekend now...

[Mischief Maker]

Indie developers giving all their love to steam and giving their DRM-free customers the shaft.

[lilmanjs]

Indie developers giving all their love to steam and giving their DRM-free customers the shaft.

What's the point of providing a DRM-free version if you aren't really going to support it. If they wanted to go the DRM-free route, they could have tried to get on GOG.

[Mischief Maker]

Indie developers giving all their love to steam and giving their DRM-free customers the shaft.

What's the point of providing a DRM-free version if you aren't really going to support it. If they wanted to go the DRM-free route, they could have tried to get on GOG.

It was a promise to entice more kickstarter donations, and they're following through on it with all the enthusiasm of a man who lost a bet.

[Ed Oscuro]

I say "The Living Daylights" could have been the series revitalization that Casino Royale eventually was. Timothy Dalton's performance as a Bond with a dangerous edge, but still charming, was way better than Daniel Craig's "Bond as thug" interpretation. Unfortunately it immediately followed in the wake of Roger Moore's silliness, so you have this uncomfortable back and forth between Dalton playing it serious against the KGB and goofball shit like Joe Don Baker as a Bond villain with a wax museum of history's great conquerors, all sporting his face.

It also has one of the most badly-aged jokes in the history of cinema at the end when Bond's Mujahideen pals show up to the opera with guns and ammo belts and say, "Sorry we're late, we were delayed at the airport."

I wonder if Stallone cringes every time Rambo III comes on TV?

When has Joe Don Baker ever failed to deliver? (He's not impressing me much in In The Line of Fire, but it's hard to see what he's supposed to do with that role.) He's pretty decent in Goldeneye as Jack Wade, but it's interesting to see him play a full-bore lunatic here.

Post-9/11, people pay a lot more attention to the Mujahdeen boys, which, perhaps perversely, only makes the situations funnier (pls don't crucify me).

It's even got John Rhys-Davies! The only character that really didn't do it for me was the hapless sod in the pod who suffers all the film's bad jokes. Even he's got some moments, but the "diplomatic bag" ending doesn't really fit the tone of what we get to see on-screen.

The Living Daylights and even many of the Moore films actually fare well enough compared to contemporaries: Licence To Kill has a couple memorable characters but little else, and Connery's "Never Say Never Again" doesn't always do well with its low-budget concept, though low-rent Q, Bond with Mac-10s (?) and "free radicals" are all great.

[Mischief Maker]

When has Joe Don Baker ever failed to deliver?

To me the essential Joe Don Baker role was in the movie that gave Joel Hodgson his sendoff:

Mitchell

[JBC]

Other people.

I mean, just act right.

[Ed Oscuro]

http://www.baytekgames.com/games/details/?id=283

Can't wait for this to hit MAME

I mean, just act right.

In other news, SourceForge locked the maintainer of GIMP out of the site so it could wrap adware around the installer.

Guess who's the highest bidder for acquiring GeekNet?

(GeekNet owns SourceForge.)

GameStop!

So in the near future people might be getting ad-encrusted downloads of FOSS programs which enriches GameStop.

[BIL]

My mom caught me reading the hot glue bukkake thread and took away internet. :[ I'm posting from work. OH SHIT MY BOSS JUS

[Xyga]

Scam auto-calls, got one on my mobile and one on the landline today.

Tracked the first: from Paris.
The second: some small town in... Wisconsin ???

Of course it's always while you're taking a shower, or cooking or whenever's not the right time.

[Ed Oscuro]

The second: some small town in... Wisconsin ???

We get so many of those it's not funny...sometimes more than others.

Thank goodness the politicians gave themselves an exemption to scam calling

I wonder if the call came from the same part of "Wisconsin" that The Vanishing of Ethan Carter does, with a German cemetery and dramatic valleys everywhere, rather than being almost wholly flat like the real state is

[Mischief Maker]

Every morning I walk my dog to the dog park to burn off his energy. Partway on the path is a spot with no lamp posts where some pervert has been leaving condoms. At first he left them in the wrapper. Later he started leaving them out of the wrapper but still rolled up. This morning I see he's finally worked up the nerve to unroll one, possibly on himself. One of these days he's going to see this sad fantasy through to completion and I'm going to have to witness the aftermath the following morning.

[Xyga]

I wonder if the call came from the same part of "Wisconsin" that The Vanishing of Ethan Carter does

Nope, just Beaver Dam...

[JBC]

The predictably negative online reactions to anything related to Resident Evil.

RE is like pizza, even when it's bad it's still pretty good. I don't see why so many people want to act like snot nosed brats about every new announcement.

[soprano1]

"System Stability" updates. Just say you are patching exploits, Nintendo.

[Mischief Maker]

Video Games with arbitrarily bad endings. I don't mind games that have bad endings and good endings depending on what you did during gameplay. I mean endings that will always be bad, no matter what you do, especially if they're long games. As in, "Surprise! You thought you were the hero but you were really Hitler this whole time!"

I don't want to spoil things, but I just finished a wonderfully designed WRPG with a bog standard party and was really looking forward to my second run on hard mode with a more challenging party setup... only to hit a horribly arbitrarily bad ending. So awful I can't suspend disbelief and enjoy it a second time.

Dammit, when you're a talented gameplay designer, you don't need to artgame it up!

[Squire Grooktook]

Video Games with arbitrarily bad endings. I don't mind games that have bad endings and good endings depending on what you did during gameplay. I mean endings that will always be bad, no matter what you do, especially if they're long games. As in, "Surprise! You thought you were the hero but you were really Hitler this whole time!"

I don't want to spoil things, but I just finished a wonderfully designed WRPG with a bog standard party and was really looking forward to my second run on hard mode with a more challenging party setup... only to hit a horribly arbitrarily bad ending. So awful I can't suspend disbelief and enjoy it a second time.

Dammit, when you're a talented gameplay designer, you don't need to artgame it up!

Since I remember you mentioning playing it a few monthes back, are you talking about

Spoiler

Lords of Xulima?

I'm told the ending in that game is

Spoiler

actually meant to be a cliff hanger/sequel hook rather then an outright bad ending.

Also couldn't you just ignore the dialogue and play for the gameplay? Or headcanon your own plot in its place? I've been using my imagination for a long time on story-less games, so the absence of story or presence of shitty story doesn't really bother me at all if I like the gameplay. Though I still do like a charming story.



Also woooooooooow I missed Skykid's post a page ago. I"ll try to keep this short and respond to the most important point:

...I get this, but you're just talking about taste again. We can still agree Raizing and Psikyo made good games. It's not taste that's deciding if they're good or bad, it's the quality of workmanship...

Taste is entirely the point. The point of all these games, I should think, is to entertain. The goal of the game designer is to entertain (and preferably make money along the way). If "taste" is something that varies from individual to individual, and if taste is something that determines how much the game accomplishes its goal of entertaining you...then I don't think a game can be judged as objectively "good or bad" when the success of it's ultimate purpose/goal is entirely dependent on the individual.

Should one really care if a game is a rickety "kusoge" if it's scoring system deeply appeals to your tastes in a way that compensates whatever flaws it may have (if those things even count as flaws to your taste)? Does the fact that Marvel Vs Capcom 2 or Battle Garegga have "programming held together by duct tape and glue" (quoth someone who looked into the games code for the former) and who's greatest triumphs were partially or entirely accidental deter those who have played them for 10+ years because of what those games uniquely offer?

The hardwork that goes into "craftsmanship" is definitely to be admired, but I don't think that alone makes it good or bad. And if it did, then whether a game is "good" or "bad" seems entirely irrelevant when it's still capable of deeply entertaining an audience of hardcore competitive players for 10+ years, despite being "bad".

[Mischief Maker]

You guessed correct.

Also couldn't you just ignore the dialogue and play for the gameplay? Or headcanon your own plot in its place? I've been using my imagination for a long time on story-less games, so the absence of story or presence of shitty story doesn't really bother me at all if I like the gameplay. Though I still do like a charming story.

Not for an RPG. Getting immersed in the story is entirely the point of RPGs, at least for me, because their gameplay is always garbage compared to other genres. Witcher 3 can't hold a candle to Devil May Cry 4 in the combat department, you play it to role play in its world and look at tits.

[Blinge]

Either had to post it here or in 'made me smile'...

[Ed Oscuro]

Smelled something bad from my PC's top exhaust, right over the CPU.

When all your CPU temps report 29-33 degrees C in SpeedFan and OpenHardwareMonitor, except for THAT ONE (temperature #1) which starts at 99 (in a cold boot) and goes all the way up to 120 degrees, and even higher. It did read -60 soon after a cold boot, so maybe the sensor is bad, but I'd expect it to be stuck at a high temp, rather than pinging around. Strangely, I can put my finger on the back of the CPU / heatsink attachment plate no problem, but it does feel slightly warm, which isn't usual.

Spent a day re-cleaning things (GPU even got a slight wash, though just the cooler / fan portion, and carefully done of course), re-applying TIM to the CPU / heatsink, guess it's not wasted, but damn annoying.

Also, that burning smell.

Would be too easy to blame it on Win10

Maybe I just found out what burnt 8-legged on a VRM smells like. Mobo seems really clean though. Cleared out a ton of eight legs yesterday, there's some tiny ones that are like "motherfucker, I'm building a bridge ACROSS YOUR FACE." No more mercy now! Guess OpenHardwareMonitor lies, and SpeedFan also; everything seems okay and HWiNFO64 shows everything quite cool and normal. It is really odd, though, because the temp indicated does seem tied to usage. It might be a sensor on another component, and it might be faulty.

In other Win10 and forced motherboard upgrade news, if you bought an OEM OS which you upgraded to, the usual line is that upgrading your motherboard will count as a "new device," even if you are the OEM and it is really the same PC. However, I found an interesting post on Microsoft Answers:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 33d?auth=1
in which Mr. Kalpana Shankarappa writes

If you replace the CPU, TPM, or Motherboard you may have to re-activate but this will not require a purchase of Windows 10.

So, in case you get into an argument during re-activation on a new PC, which I was contemplating a week before this current mess started, you should be able to refer to this post.

[null1024]

Would be too easy to blame it on Win10

I have a friend who just had his laptop fried due to overheating, apparently it wouldn't kick the fan on properly after he installed Win10.
I dunno if it's 10's fault, but he certainly thinks so.

as for me, this machine I'm on is still on Win7

[Ed Oscuro]

There were a fair number of issues with reboots not working in Win10 - I think my own system's inability to always get to the Win10 load screen might be related to this, though I did have some power state related issues even in Win7. Still up in the air about that one, and having an older mobo isn't helping.

SWAT 3 isn't working properly in Win10. It seems to be that DirectDraw emulation in Win10 is crap, and Win8.1 too, so old games (pre-Direct3D stuff, apparently) doesn't work. It seems that they're going to fix it at GoG, though.

Deadly Tide doesn't work, though I read a report that it worked in Win8.1. Haven't tried it on a 8.1 machine yet. Not an amazing loss, but here we are. Would have been nice to try it out for the Win95 20th.

[Mischief Maker]

The "Fistful of Gun" trailer does a decent enough approximation of an Ennio Morricone soundtrack, which I haven't experienced in a game since Lucasarts' "Outlaws," but the actual in-game music is blippy "retro" garbage.