Final Fantasy XV could be an Action/RPG

So says the producer of Final Fantasy XIII-2. My first thought: Final Fantasy is truly dead. My second thought: that would be a huge improvement over Final Fantasy XIII. The latter's great failure was raising the automated play-style of Final Fantasy XII to 11 and at the same time requiring frenetic button-pushing. If it's going to require quick responses, 90% of which will be the repeatedly jam the select button, for heaven's sake let us control the character directly. Combining that with RPG menus really sucks.

I do hope, though, that they don't do this. Final Fantasy XV desperately needs to be a nod to tradition. XII and XIII went so far afield that each broke not only the Final Fantasy series, but the RPG genre itself in diametrically opposed ways (rather than going very outside the box, like Final Fantasy VIII and its innovative, and unfortunately extremely gameable, Junction system).

They need traditional JRPG gameplay, directly navigated airships, and really need to get Uematsu back in order to restore a sense of cohesion to the series as a whole. They need not go as far as Final Fantasy IX did (as great as it was) and give it an aimed-at-children feel. But they do need to bring things back into perspective.

Honestly I still think Final Fantasy X should have been the last main series Final Fantasy game. It was the last to be in the pure JRPG genre, the last to have Uematsu, and the last to have the almost indescribably Final Fantasy feel. XII should have been a spinoff brand (Final Fantasy Ivalice, or Final Fantasy - War of the Occuria, or something of that sort). XIII should have been a totally new series. I mean, really, Chrono Trigger could far more justifiably have been a branded Final Fantasy game; all you'd need to do was add in a Chocobo, a few Moogles, and a guy named cid and it would fit in perfectly. Matsueda was not only the only Square composer on the same level as Uematsu, but also totally compatible with him.

DRM actually does have one use

It does a good job of stopping casual copying between people who know each other. If my cousin bought a book on the Kindle, for example, and wants to share it with me, he or she won't be able to email me a copy due to copy protection. Unless that cousin is as savvy as I am and knows how to strip off the DRM (which is much easier than it looks, BTW). For the record, I only strip DRM for archival purposes. I am bloody well not going to pay multiple times for the same ebook just because I decided to move to a different platform. I also want security in case Amazon goes under or some yahoo decides to delete my account on a whim.

DRM does nothing to deter P2P copying since someone somewhere will know how to break the DRM, will upload it, and then the unprotected data will be passed on from torrent to torrent and network to network. And if the album, movie, or book isn't popular enough to spread like that, then it probably would have benefited from being distributed over P2P since it would raise its profile and produce word-of-mouth publicity that might eventually result in more legitimate purchases.

Victor Davis Hanson: Going Against the Grain Liberates Presidents

Surprisingly, I agree with this essay by Victor Davis Hanson virtually in its entirety. If a president does something that their own side is more inclined to criticize, they can act almost with impunity. The key, though, is to have given your own side enough red meat not to rebel when you do it. Bush learned the hard way with Harriet Miers that the base will sometimes rise up. That was, though, a combination of her being an obvious crony appointment and social conservatives being an advanced state of paranoia due to having slavishly devoted themselves to the GOP for thirty years and gotten little to show for it. That's why I knew she was toast when the speech in which she sounded sympathetic to Planned Parenthood v. Casey started circulating the Internet. Twenty-four hours later she was no longer the nominee.


Adding to that, in international matters the president doesn't really need to run anything by Congress unless they want to launch a full-scale ground invasion. War is one area where the Court tends to stay out of the fray as much as possible, probably because if it didn't it would probably get nobbled in one way or another. The War Powers Act is more honored in the breach than in the observance.

Thus it's entirely possible that Obama would bomb Iran. The fallout would be severe though. I suspect we'd end up with a ground war, since Iran could retaliate by blocking the straight of Hormuz causing economic catastrophy for the world. We'd probably need to wage full-scale war to clear it and keep it clear.

People who never look in the mirror

A couple of items. First, Republicans thinking they lost the Ohio union ballot because they are too noble to stoop to dirty tactics. Hah! Talk about delusional. Of course this is the publication that defended Saxby Chambliss's Bin Laden ad. The second item is this:

The cheaply partisan contemporary Left makes me miss the old explicitly Marxist Left, at least a little bit. As the Marxists knew, the key to maintaining a paranoid, fantasy-driven worldview is maintaining a narrative that while wildly implausible is internally consistent, just as in sci-fi or horror movies.

This applies equally to modern American Right. Paranoia is rampant, preventing any compromise whatsoever. Comprehensive immigration reform can never happen because "the other side will trick us: we'll get amnesty and no border security," bipartisan deficit reduction is impossible, because "the other side will trick us: we'll get tax hikes and no spending cuts," and even banning late-term abortions is impossible, because "the other side will trick us: the health exception will mean that women who stub their toe will be able to get late term abortions." In all cases, nothing can be done without Republican political domination. In the case of the budget, it becomes an immediate threat to the nation because they inexplicably insist on threatening apocalyptic shutdowns and defaults if they don't get what they want the way they want it.

This really is bad for the country. We need two sane political parties. Hopefully if Romney becomes president, he'll reign in the crazies like Bush did. Or if Cain gets nominated and then goes down in flames because of more sex scandals and because people don't want their taxes raised to give more tax breaks to the rich, it will have a salutory effect on the Republican psyche (like a parent's spanking of their child). Unlikely, I know: they'll find some way to blame a conspiracy of "liberal racists" or whatnot. Ultimately this is what happens to you when you only pay attention to sources specifically tailored to your political perspective, dismissing pretty much the entire mainstream media as a propaganda wing for the other side.

I should note that Democrats are every bit as capable as Republicans of dirty campaigning. I also note that they have their share of paranoid members, though I can't remember the last time the paranoids almost caused massive catastrophe like Republican paranoia nearly caused a default and might still cause a shutdown.

Lifehacker: Five Best RSS Newsreaders [Hive Five]

From Lifehacker:

Five Best RSS Newsreaders [Hive Five]:

Google's changes to Google Reader this week upset a lot of people, and it got us wondering how many of you still use Google Reader as your preferred RSS newsreader when there are so many other options. This week, we're going to highlight some of those other news readers, in case you're looking for alternatives. More »

The good news is that the alternatives sync with Google Reader. The problem with any non-cloud reader is that they will only download feeds while they're open, and don't have history going back forever. Feeds typically only have 10-30 items, which means that if you only download a feed once a day you're liable to miss things. The sheer power of Reader is the enormous database of RSS items it has. That's not easily replaceable.

Note: Feedly at least seems to not take advantage of Reader's database (if the API even allows that). Thus if you link it to Reader, you'll only get the ten most recent items on most things. Reader still is the best game in town despite the redesign (which I agree was not an improvement at all--too much whitespace; they really need information density settings like they have in Gmail).

Solitary confinement as a form of torture

Sarah Shourd, one of the hikers arrested by Iran for "espionage," describes being in solitary confinement for most of fourteen months. She ends:

It’s wonderful to begin my life again, and every day I feel more free, but I can’t help thinking about the thousands of others who are alone right now. I believe the excessive use of solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment — that it is torture. The United Nations should proscribe this inhumane practice, and the United States should take the lead role in its eradication. 

The problem is that you have to qualify it with "excessive." I mean, what else do you do with a lifer who rapes, tortures, or murders other prisoners? There are two options (since adding time to their sentence is pointless): kill them or lock them up alone. Allowing them to continue to rape and torture their fellow prisoners is unacceptable. So is permitting criminal enterprises to form in prison and continue unabated.

I can absolutely believe that the US uses solitary confinement where it isn't warranted, though: we have the highest incarceration rate on the planet. Americans don't care how many people we put in jail, or what happens to them, as long as they're taken out of sight.

More shutdown danger, more yawns

The congressional Republicans have overplayed the shutdown card. It's hard to believe they're still trying to use that threat at all, let alone to undo Obamacare. Really, there's a very good chance the Supreme Court will strike it down and nothing will need to be done by them, and they will probably win the White House and the Senate next year if things don't improve and they both fail to nominate a loon and fail to obviously tank the economy through intransigence.

If they were going to go the shutdown route, they should have pulled the trigger back in Spring. Instead they punted, threatened to do far worse damage to the country with a default, chickened out at the last minute (not without drawing some Democratic blood, though), and now they want to go at it again? Frankly, the biggest selling point in a Romney presidency is that maybe he'd keep these psychos under control. Failing that, seeing the Republicans eat each other alive would be fun. I doubt Romney would roll over and let Republican inferiors in the House run the country for him.

Anyway, there won't be a shutdown. This is just apocalyptic posturing to please the Tea Party. Nothing to see here. Moving on...

Cain is Obama's best hope for reelection

The 9-9-9 proposal is a sure catastrophe in the general election if the Obama campaign has any competence at all. Raising taxes on 80% of Americans while simultaneously cutting them enormously on the richest Americans is a recipe for a landslide. Not to mention the GOP could kiss the elderly vote goodbye since 9-9-9 repeals Social Security's revenue source, the payroll tax.

New Google Reader

I just got the new Google Reader. As was to be expected, it reminds me of the old Windows Hi-Res theme. Not really my preference--I like some color--but I'll get used to it. Glad to see they kept the core of Reader unchanged, as expected. I didn't use the social features before and probably won't use the Google+ features now, so I'm left out of that particular bruhaha. I'm just glad to see that it's not going to get Buzzed. It's one of the most powerful web applications.

Now that we've got Google+ integration one way, how about adding RSS feeds to Plus to make it go both ways. I've been wanting to be able to subscribe to people and circles in Reader since the beginning.

I'm also irritated with the lack of themability. The new styles have much larger sticky portions, which is a problem with my ancient monitor and limited resolution. I'm finding myself having to use fullscreen to use Reader comfortably now. In addition, they still haven't added the simple feature of having the search default to the folder or feed you're viewing (as Gmail's search does). That's been annoying for a long time.

Political Paralysis on Taxes and Immigration

Imigration and the Federal budget are two problems that will never be solved. The current situation on both is unsustainable. The deficit is massive and will continue to spiral upwards and more and more Mexicans emigrate here every year illegally. There's a general consensus that both need to be fixed, but there's no way to accomplish a fix.

On immigration, both sides have interests pushing to maintain the status quo. Businesses like cheap labor that, in red states at least, have to live in fear of being discovered and sent back home. Democrats dream of someday turning those illegal immigrants into Democratic block voters (aided by nativist Republicans--the nativist uproar over Bush's comprehensive immigration reform led McCain to do very poorly among Hispanics). Beyond that, the anti-immigration crowd themselves killed said immigration reform during the Bush administration because they didn't trust that the border enforcement would actually happen. There was nothing you could give them that would appease them. Of course the problem is that getting rid of the many millions of illegal immigrants already here would not only be a massive undertaking, it would look like a pogrom at this scale. So nothing much was done.


Likewise conservatives refuse to compromise one iota on taxes, so any budget deal is impossible. We get repeated apocalyptic showdowns and the deficit remains enormous both in the short-term and in the long-term. It's unlikely anything much will be done. Many on the right have been complaining for years that the budget process includes a baseline that causes every part of the government to grow every year automatically. Does the right offer tax hikes in exchange for changing the baseline? Of course not. Tax hikes are from the Devil. Nothing, no matter how monumental, is a good enough trade to get them. Besides, they reason, no matter what they get in return, it will turn out to be a trick. Of course it stands to follow that whatever they extort from the Democrats by threatening to shut down the government or send the nation into default will also be a trick, so what's the point?

More Hanson and liberal faux-hypocrisy

I've noticed that his writings on National Review, even on the Corner, are better thought-out than on PJMedia.com. The latter seems to be a forum for emoting and tossing red meat, very stale red meat, to the hyper-conservative echo chamber there. Hence this piece on charges of hypocrisy against the left that no doubt everyone has heard about a million times. Note that most of it isn't even real hypocrisy. One can discuss whether carbon credits are genuine, but the concept of cleaning up after oneself by planting trees to soak up carbon to offset what you emit isn't invalid. It does put millionaires like Gore in an "easy for you to say" position, since most of us can't afford carbon credits, but then aren't the Republicans in the "easy for you to say" camp on almost everything?

Likewise there's no hypocrisy in wanting to tighten the tax code so that there's less avoidance while taking advantage what's legal now. It may undercut your moral authority a bit to not lead by example, but saying "I believe in gun control, but if everyone around me is packing heat you bet I'm going to do it too." It's living in the system you're in while trying to change it. Hypocrisy comes in when you do something like the Maryland politician who was found to have an unregistered gun when he himself voted for tougher gun registration laws, or when someone hides the fact that he's not leading by example. Besides, if Warren Buffet made his corporations fail to engage in legal tax sheltering, he'd be doing a disservice to his investors for not maximizing the value of their investment as the law would allow.

As for foundations, has Buffet actually come out against outlawing them? It's relevant because there are two reasons to have an inheritance tax: 1) to break up family dynasties and 2) to raise money for the government. Inherited wealth is what produces the idle rich which Hanson himself has so criticized. Bill Gates, by funneling his money into a charitable foundation, is fulfilling the first goal admirably. Every advocate of inheritance taxes should have no problem with that.

He almost has a point on Obama's war on terror policies. It's probably more a matter of growing in office, in a way many progressives see as being partly in a twisted way. Some of it is bowing to political reality combined with having to deal with an inherited problem. Guantanimo springs to mind: if people and state governments, aided and whipped into a frenzy by congress, are unwilling to allow trials for detainees, closing Guantanimo is impossible.

I'll grant the point about teachers in colleges. I've personally known teachers who were being exploited in that way. Considering how academia's internal politics are, I have no doubt the tenured class aren't too eager to bring equality and put themselves on the chopping block. Nor is it terribly difficult to see that liberals aren't inclined to attack academia and give more excuse for budget cuts, union-busting, tenure-busting, etc.

One more point of note: everyone in American politics protects their own. Accusing anyone of hypocrisy on that score may have some legitimacy, but it's almost like saying water is wet. Of course both sides make the accusations too, so I guess the best response is to yawn and shrug and move on.

Actually, waterboarding IS a dead issue

Why? Because Obama stopped doing it. At least officially, which is probably all that anyone can expect. The CIA has always been up to all sorts of illegal, amoral, and sometimes downright evil stuff. The Bush administration was only unusual in that they got stooges like John "No law or treaty can stop the government from crushing a child's testacles" Yoo to "make it legal" in the Palpatine sense. Even if all Obama did was push torture back into the shadows, that's still a victory for civilization.

"If we can blow them up, then we can do whatever we want to them"

That is the logic Victor Davis Hanson uses to declare waterboarding a "dead issue":

Waterboarding, which once sparked a liberal furor, is now a dead issue. How can anyone object to harshly interrogating a few known terrorists when routinely blowing apart more than 2,000 suspected ones — and anyone in their vicinity?

That's always been a stupid argument, no less so now that Dick Cheney has used it. Since we vaporized lots of Japanese women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and boiled lots of Japanese women in Tokyo with napalm, does that mean it would've been okay for General MacArthur to force Japanese women to serve as "comfort women" for American soldiers? Of course not. Likewise blowing up enemies on the field has no moral bearing on whether it's legitimate to torture them in confinement, i.e., after they have been rendered non-threatening.

Hanson in general has gone to seed in the last few years. Most of the Right has moved on from the disastrous Bush administration, but Hanson must continue to defend them and the failed neocon enterprise. He despises the Obama administration but won't admit that the catastrophic failure of the Bush administration led to the Obama administration.

The other half of Google Reader Users

The World Is Surprisingly Angry About the End of Google Reader - Technology - The Atlantic Wire

This surprises me. I started using Google Reader early on when the social features were still limited. There was no liking or comments, for example. I never really got into the social Google Reader scene. Actually, I didn't even know there was one, as it managed to go under the radar until now. Because of that I was thrilled at the news of the redesign: it meant that Google Reader was not only sticking around, it was still being improved.