How I hate that phrase 'politically correct' - Its a 'smear phrase'... shorthand for "things and opinions that I'd rather not deal with." Really, there's nothing wrong with wishing that sexual preferences were not subject to other people's imaginative failings.
But actually, I think the world is a little 'rosier' these days, indeed I'm quite surprised by how little outrage this disclosure has caused. Its the fascist role play that has upset most people - no one but a few, insignificant cranks care about the S&M or the prostitutes.
This is true of all technology and I think that is precisely why people are regarding iRacing with a very cynical eye. What vision are they embodying?
People are interested in LFS and GPL still, because, in very different ways, they embody a vision that one might describe as noble: the enthusiastic, informed, and dedicated amateur. They stand for independance of vision, outside an overly stratified and demarcated professionalism.
iRental so far reeks of moneyed privilege, and the sort of politicised professionalism that is at the root of most people's mistrust of, for example, the FIA...
lol, yeah, pretty much so, but also wondering why so many people, so intent on realism (see the "we're so glad we're so hardcore club " or whatever its called...), are so eager to personalise the car in front of them.... While I never used them, digital speedos were infinitely more likely to exist in any road car than this names gadget.
Why?
As a driver its your responsibility to deal with the car in front whatever the situation. If its slow - pass it. If its erratic - pass it. If its faster than you - ... ok, that may not usually apply to someone of your rep! (note to devs... PITBOARD please)
I've posted this before (elsewhere on the forum), but my link is dead now, since it was a .wmv from brayspeed.co.uk. You have to register on the site now, but I recommend going through the dull rigmarole of signing up since they have loads of good quality hill climb footage (have a look at 2t4t too)
So has the credit crunch hit the forum? Come on everyone, if your cards are maxed out, you might as well go down in style! Now is not the time to be saving... Burn, baby, burn!!
No commentary please. For five or ten minutes at a time. Just stop filling the air with trivial pursuits nuggets and let me listen to the engines. Let me watch "the race" and trust me to understand what it means when a gap gets larger between two cars.
What history books do you read?! The ancient games were part of a religious festival... Have you ever known a religion that wasn't riven by sectarian bickering, boasting, and manipulative power struggles? And you couldn't compete if you were not Greek, however if you came from a colony you were allowed into the games... You don't think there would have been just a little national rivalry going on there?
The Olympics have never been politics free, indeed they have often dramatised the political inconsistencies of the host countries in ways that state propaganda machines have rarely been able to control effectively.
Think of Jesse Owens at the German Olympics in 1936: an African-American athlete who beat the "Aryan nation's" best, but who had to wait until 1976 to be accorded any state honour in his own country. Neither Germany nor America came out untainted from that spectacle. Think of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and wonder whether perestroika would be an inevitable political shift just five years later.
The Olympics is a huge propaganda exercise, but the sheer weight of spectacle will surely overwhelm and expose any irregularities of the host country. China will not be able to dampen the noise of props falling over backstage.
Don't really understand what is meant there, but the obstinately two dimensional nature of a monitor image brings with it more than just subjective problems.
For me its not really the subjective perception of speed that's an issue (though I recognise the problem: swapping between the '65 cars and the '67s in GPL will illustrate this to anyone), but on my small monitor, running in low resolution, the advantage of looking ahead (scanning from the horizon to the near distance, as I do in real life) is significantly reduced. There's a point in the distance where coloured pixels simply stop offering any useful information. Indeed this is true of any sized monitor: its an inherent problem of the screen image being a representation.
It is not depth perception, but the illusion of depth that you are responding to. Sorry to sound pedantic, but Tristan, if someone were to come onto this forum blabbering technical inconsistencies you would be the first to jump on them. I really don't understand how you can be so cavalier in this instance, since there are quite measurable objective consequences in the difference between real and representational.
Ha! I'm forty something or another (the drugs have kicked in and increments of less than a decade have ceased to have meaning...). Successfully avoided a mid-life crisis by going straight to an end-of-life one... Now I consider myself immortal (the drugs again...)
Yeah interesting... but there's a secondary story here: in the UK we have to pay for a TV licence "to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV." Now, I don't think ITV is going to be simultaneously broadcasting and streaming (not sure about this...), but I'm sure in the future that it will happen...
Currently, you only need a licence if your computer has a TV card installed, but at some point we will probably have to pony up for a licence simply for possessing a computer, since it will be capable of receiving programmes as they are broadcast...