It seems to me that we're still experiencing special effects giddiness as many of the industry people that started in the 70s and 80s when things were hard and you had to build intricate models and crazy sets and sometimes colour things in with crayons are now the old coots in charge and leading some of these works of wonder out there, and literally can't control the power they have. It's not even that you couldn't do some things without CG but it was just too expensive and no one in their right mind would do it.

Just look at the Gungan/droid battle at the end of SW Episode 1; it adds virtually nothing to the story but does show a total lack of imagination by those in charge. They took great pains to construct an encounter that, for all its lasers, aliens, droids and tanks, is essentially a medieval skirmish where large formations clash at close quarters. 20 years ago you'd have to dress up a few hundred guys, build faux tanks and giant beasts, and many of those things in miniature as well, and then use a lot of clever editing to pull all of it together. It would have likely never happened because of the sheer physical effort involved, or they'd do a different style of battle instead because it'd be easier to show a few people on the screen at one time. George is not the only one succumbing to this, though he certainly is our favourite example.

The current state of CG in movies is almost what would happen if new Lamborghinis were suddenly being sold for $20k - many of the people who wanted one as a kid would probably get one, and then your roads would be packed with impractical but cool-looking two-seaters, and it would take some time before people came to their senses.

You sound like someone who has never spent the better part of a night in an ER, waiting for someone to do something to help you or a person you care about. You might be dying, you don't know (well, this guy did), and you're probably in serious pain or discomfort, and no one there is really in a hurry - of course it's going to be emotional. But the story here is that, though his ER experience was the typical hospital horror story, he followed up later and was able to identify defects with the hospital's software as contributing, potentially significantly, to what he went through, and draw some conclusions.

As for how this relates to Obama's health care plan, well, why do you assume that any grant-driven country-wide modernization is going to produce better results than this hospital's presumably self-driven modernization did? There's perhaps nothing inherently wrong with electronic records systems, but it's going to be a short-term gold rush for IT companies and a time-limited opportunity for the hospitals (if for no other reason that the grant budget, though large, is finite, so those who wait too long may not get anything), an environment that doesn't lend itself to patience, thoroughness and careful consideration, things that typical IT projects aren't exactly brimming with to begin with. It's not that it's a bad idea to try to lift hospitals out of the paper & pencil days, but throwing money at the problem and saying "go forth and digitize" doesn't inevitably (or even likely) translate into heroic results that will make everything all better.

I just type sequences of Dwarf Fortress commands in random text boxes periodically to maintain my uber micro. bwz bTl dbd mvt

I didn't really do the Vista thing, but it was my impression that everyone was really fucking confused about all the different versions and which one did what, possibly including Microsoft guys themselves? So the way this reads, Windows 7 will be pretty much the same in this regard, except they'll ignore most of the versions for the purposes of simplifying advertising, pushing the "fancy/expensive" versions while the lesser versions probably are what comes pre-installed on your pre-assembled computers. Or so it seems.

I think the (sarcastically) better idea would be if they let you buy something that boots into a browser-capable environment for $30 and then nickle-and-dimed you on everything else. Looks like you're trying to write a letter. To use the letter assistant, please have your credit card ready... Or something.

Google seems to have fixed itself around 1025 EST, which is unfortunate in a way - I would have preferred a more prime-time meltdown. This is not because I wish particularly ill on them, but because too many people drink the kool-aid and it's good to have a reminder of Google's mortal fallibility once in a while. ;)

Do we really need to look back at Far Cry 2? I didn't even look forward to it, but aside from that, what are we looking back at? They innovated in the department of system requirements, but is it really innovation if they've done it once before already? I guess the thing is pretty and got good reviews, but so what? Where's the insight, the brilliance, the revolution? It's not Doom or Quake or Half Life or Counter-Strike or Natural Selection or System Shock or anything remotely like any of those - there's nothing to see here, move along.

Also, I think it's been three months since release - is it really the time to compile a detailed introspective and take a time out to survey the ravaged field of their accomplishments, or are post-Christmas sales merely slumping? Surely the legacy of their awesomeness will need a bit more time to accrue.

But I thought the web was good?

WRONG! The web is bad! Well, sometimes, for some things... maybe.

There's a grab-bag of random thoughts there on some things that could be inherent problems in the web and some that are merely artifacts, and it seems neither here nor there.

The big guys always call the shots - who cares if it's browsers or operating systems, you're not going to tell MS (or Apple, just to be fair) what to do and there's no guarantee the next SP or random security patch won't bone all your effort with no notice or recourse, whether it's in-browser or on the desktop.

And the web UIs are a mess? That's nothing to do with the web - lots of people design lots of stuff, you get randomness. It's no different than on the desktop, except the long reign of some MS products and the fact that developing Windows apps you get to use some of those same form controls gets you the appearance of this magical consistency that's really just the consequence of monoculture. Open any full-screen app (read: game) and it's a brave new world, like on the web, because the pre-generated MS controls and constraints don't apply. But this is good, right, because you're not doing what the man tells you to do?

And the productivity argument... did he just need to reach 5? You can block the outside world coming in over the wire, it's not that big an effort, and then people will find other ways to screw around - hand-held devices are so powerful now the whole issue of limiting the desktop to work issues only is quickly becoming moot.

And so on and so forth... I guess it's redundant to say "you need to consider each usage case based on its specific merits," but then the decision-makers don't...

While I'm generally a paranoid person myself, I feel it is ludicrous to accuse Bethesda of leaving things out to use as expansions later, even hypothetically; that game is freaking huge. Love the game or hate it, you'll be hard pressed to find anything else these days that gives you so much to see and do, so many people to eat^H^H^Hinteract with.