JonDo

I have to be honest, the people that spent more than say 50-100 bucks on spaceships in an unreleased game? Especially the ones that spent thousands?

I hope the game tanks, and never releases. I know, it's a harsh attitude, but follow my logic: if you were just excited about the game for its mechanics, I would never say I wanted you to miss out on the fun.

But I don't even understand people who pre-order games in 2014, having never played them and no assurance they are actually good products. Much less anyone who spent thousands. The best word I can come up with is "foolish".

Why? Because I think it's really foolish to put that many of your eggs -- whatever your income -- in an invisible, non-existant basket. They would deserve it. It's foolish. Spend your money how you want, but if you do something dumb with it and regret it, who are you going to cry to?

I actually have more sympathy for the people who risked their money in buying said invisible starships, clearly on speculation, specifically to take advantage of these people's foolishness.

(Try not to take this too harsh... unless you're one of these people).

EDIT: I have thought of something better than the whole game tanking and noone having fun. I would totally patch the game 0-day to make the "preorder/kickstarter exclusive" ships available to the general public, with a trivial amount of in-game currency.

I saw Under the Skin on the cut list, and I'm torn.

I feel like it's a great movie, but if it was cut because it's not really a horror movie, that makes a lot of sense to me. Johansson's performance was great, I loved the direction -- it's a slow burn but that fits the themes.

Recommended all around.

I mean, physical play in this sense is definitely a good thing, and something I would be interested in -- the main thing for me is having a camera and mic running in my house 24/7 on an internet enabled device. I know I'm paranoid, but I can't be the only non-psychopath whose privacy concerns cause this to give "red flags". I didn't even like this aspect of having a smartphone around.

When I see a piece of technology, one of the first things I think of is how it could be compromised. I'm not a security expert, but it's not like I'm saying NOONE should have these things around. It's more weird to me that noone even considers this aspect.

It's not like I'm all up in arms about how the Kinect is a "tool of the blue helmet elites" or anything, it's just like... noone even thought of this? It's cool if you don't care, I'm not saying you should... but I don't think it's wrong for my privacy concerns to cause me to be creeped out.

I guess what I'm saying to me is that when I look at it like this it's like there's a lot of people who just don't value privacy. "Who cares?" or "You're nuts for worrying about this" don't seem like legitimate answers to me.

@kid_gloves:

I find your rationale quite level-headed here; I suppose my initial statement was too broad. The Sony unveil playing a part in this had crossed my mind. I had more been speaking to the people who seem ready to vomit over this announcement.

I probably can't use an OR, but if I could, at this point I would really want to be running it in a way that did not involve any of the code it shipped with... "jailbroken", or whatever the correct term would be. But I can't question Oculus VR's decision here, personally. I'm happy for them, as hopefully they're going to be very wealthy.

@kid_gloves:

Well, perhaps I wrote that too quickly to add in qualifiers such as "in this situation". I mean, it's not as though facebook is going to commit genocide with the OR. *I* find Facebook and their information gathering practices questionable, but not questionable enough to have turned this offer down.

Er, to try to be clearer: Some people really seem like they think Facebook is Hannibal Lecter and accepting said offer is tantamount to broadcasting every cell phone in america's GPS location worldwide on the internet... when really it's just a matter of a mountain of cash. Most people react the same way to those.

Anybody who thinks someone should have turned down TWO BILLION DOLLARS, in this situation, probably has a warped perspective.

I don't know -- I kind of think it's the 2014 version of the American Dream(TM): Kickstarter funded, humongous payoff. That said, facebook is creepy in my opinion. Most people don't understand the privacy concerns the way they should.

I'm interested to see if all the money invested leads to another leap of technology, maybe a hybrid google glass type thing. I could work something much lighter, which I'm sure is coming. 10 years down the road? It might be mostly a coating on my glasses lenses, a la Transitions.

I wonder if this is heading to like a cell phone OS ocluus rift. Seems sensical, in a way.