29th December 2004, 10:54 pm
I just caught the review of the new Sid Meier’s Pirates! over on Ars Technica.
I played the original of the game as obsessively as I was able when I was in, er, high school. On my Apple II, um, gs. Anyway, reading the review both summoned long lost memories and made me realize that this new version is that rarest of beasts: an updated video game that really is just an update and not a “re-invention”. The game itself sounds almost exactly like the the Pirates! of old, and that, my friends, is awesome.
The only thing from the old game that I remember sucking was the sword fighting. At that point, the old Pirates! firmly reminded you that it was not a fighting game. I barely remember any major quests. I do remember the treasure hunting, the courting of governor’s daughters, the storming of towns, and the general piracy.
It is enough to make me want to build a Windows gaming machine. A task made harder today when I had to raid my erstwhile Windows box for its power supply.
29th December 2004, 05:20 pm
I know that there is something that I just don’t understand about the situation, but when I heard the followup to the U.S. beef industry’s woes on NPR yesterday, I experienced the same reaction when I heard the story the first time: huh?
Apparently, a small meat-packer in Kansas has gone to the trouble of making it possible to test every cow for mad cow’s disease, as the Japanese now require. The rest of the beef industry turns around and says, “No way!”. You see, this much testing is bad for the industry, because, well, because the rest of the industry would have to actually…compete. At least for re-entry into the Japanese market.
Since when did capitalism become such a bad thing for the beef industry?
I had the same reaction when I noticed that there was an article describing how Craigslist “costs” newspapers $50 to $65 million a year. OMG! Competition! Horrible!
To be fair, that actually isn’t precisely the tone of the article (more of an announcement for a $250 report, really), but this sort of thinking does pervade certain industries.