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Super Mario Brothers: A Literary Criticism

Let's see if I can find a way to summarize the year's best music to my ears...

#1 : Do Make Say Think's Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn. Amazing production, and a very contemporary look on the merging between what dark jazz promised with a certain hopefulness that lingers long after the album is over.

#2 : Howard Hello's Don't Drink His Blood - Deceptive in its pop simplicity, but with this dark streak. Again, mostly instrumental but with highly processed singing in places that borders on sinister. A real sleeper on the radar.

#3 : The Cinematic Orchestra's Man With a Movie Camera :: this is by far the best soundtrack ever produced for this film. Mixing jazz, pure psychedelia, and even throwing in a Art Ensemble of Chicago cover, this album ties everything that is meaningful about the psychedelic experience into a beautiful package. A must listen.

#4 The Microphones' Mount Eerie -- In addition to the wonderful vinyl pressing, with hand-stitched sewn sleeve, this album is a complete trip through the forces of nature and man's place within it. Deep and meditative, good for listening once every two months or so when you are ready to confront your closet.

There were dozens of other great releases this year, but those were the ones I was most thankful for.

On the reprint front, we were given a brilliant repackaging of the Soft Machine's BBC Radio Volume 1. Fantastic music from this forgotten band, at their very best.

Uhm. It's a convenience store.

One definition of randomness, and one that seems quite reasonable is that a string is "random" if it cannot be compressed to smaller than it is, i.e. listing its characters itself is the most compact possible description. Formally, a string is random if there exists no algorithm generating the string whose description on some universal Turing machine is smaller than the string itself (this is the definition used in the field of Kolmogorov complexity). A string of a billion digits making up Pi, for example, is not random by this definition, as one can easily write a short program, whose length would certainly be less than one billion characters, whose output is the digits of Pi. Think of it this way: the most general form of pattern matching device that we know of is a Turing machine, and if the best device you can construct to match that pattern is as complex or more complex than the pattern itself, then well, you have total randomness. Unfortunately, rigorously proving that a particular string is random by this very strong definition is extremely difficult, as you run into undecidability everywhere you turn.

This is the sort of stuff that real theoretical computer science is made of. For a very good overview of the theory of Kolmogorov Complexity and algorithmic information theory, Gregory Chaitin's home page is a good starting point

To go back to the Voynich manuscript, if there is some sort of regularity that can be discerned from it, then perhaps a context-free or context-sensitive (or something in between) language may be found to characterize it. Once you have such a syntactic characterization, perhaps it might be possible to divine the semantics from context. The shape of the grammar that results may well prove whether the Manuscript is in fact a real language, a fabrication, an elaborate cipher, or just total gibberish.

One definition of randomness, and one that seems quite reasonable is that a string is "random" if it cannot be compressed to smaller than it is, i.e. listing its characters itself is the most compact possible description. Formally, a string is random if there exists no algorithm generating the string whose description on some universal Turing machine is smaller than the string itself (this is the definition used in the field of Kolmogorov complexity). A string of a billion digits making up Pi, for example, is not random by this definition, as one can easily write a short program, whose length would certainly be less than one billion characters, whose output is the digits of Pi. Think of it this way: the most general form of pattern matching device that we know of is a Turing machine, and if the best device you can construct to match that pattern is as complex or more complex than the pattern itself, then well, you have total randomness. Unfortunately, rigorously proving that a particular string is random by this very strong definition is extremely difficult, as you run into undecidability everywhere you turn.

This is the sort of stuff that real theoretical computer science is made of. For a very good overview of the theory of Kolmogorov Complexity and algorithmic information theory, Gregory Chaitin's home page is a good starting point

To go back to the Voynich manuscript, if there is some sort of regularity that can be discerned from it, then perhaps a context-free or context-sensitive (or something in between) language may be found to characterize it. Once you have such a syntactic characterization, perhaps it might be possible to divine the semantics from context. The shape of the grammar that results may well prove whether the Manuscript is in fact a real language, a fabrication, an elaborate cipher, or just total gibberish.

There was a time when people looked up to the monarchy, but after Diana, when the Queen was basically forced to go on TV and make a statement, it showed the end of the monarchy as an institution. The people control the monarchy now, and they will be expected to entertain them, like Posh and Becks.

You might want to have a look at http://encarta.msn.com/. While not everything is free, there is a huge amount of content online. I was also thinking about http://www.everything2.com/, not quite comparable to Wikipedia, but pretty good too.

Apparently you're not alone. Take a look at this: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=683260 .

I've hesitated to rewrite them because I suspect the complete replacement of the pages would not be welcome. Equally, having them subject to popular vote means they are likely to be re-edited to return to copies of the simpistic rehashing of the simplistic information already on the web.

Yeah but they still have case catagories to show. Loosers.

See Wikipedia

CCCP, eh?
That's quite the acronym.

In CCCP, you get free colocated Internet access!

I can't understand why the slashdot community doesn't want to help out a dying webserver

As much as I admire Wikipedia, I must say that on the whole I prefer Everything2. It allows for a personal edge that Wikipedia just doesn't have.

Neither would I, but that still doesn't make it ironic.

But Gigli and Kangaroo Jack takes the cake for the worst ones..

Not exactly. Actually, according to the IMDB bottom 100 films listing, From Justin to Kelly (the American Idol movie) is the #1 hands-down worst movie of all time. AND IT DESERVES IT. cf. review here or on IMDB. Or..wow.

I am proud to have fought hard to get low votes for that movie. It was like Mary Poppins without Mary (or popping); like The Sound of Music without any Sound or Music worth re-hearing; like Oklahoma! only set on a god-awful Florida beach.

That said, if you want something to laugh at and have a friend who was foolish enough to pay for a copy of this tripe and you have free time and want to stare off into space for a while, From Justin to Kelly is the movie for you.

Would you play a modern-day political sim videogame?

Now that it's back up, I sure would!

I don't know about really obscure stuff, but we could take another look at something obvious: power.

• Pebble bed modular reactors are very safe, very clean, and ready right now. Come up with some improvements on them.
• Fuel cells. They're still not good enough for general use, but they have good prospects -- look at vanadium redox batteries.
• Solar panels. They're already the best solution for most remote stuff in relatively sunny climates (navigational buoys, spacecraft), and they're still not very efficient (15%?).
• Energy transmission by microwave or laser (e.g. for orbital solar power).
• Floating seawater-cooled reactors. Don't laugh.
• Passive or semi-passive stuff: tidal, geothermal, hydroelectric, weird-ass solar chimneys, etc.
• Why muck around? Go for cold fusion. Yes, the most famous attempt was a fraud. Yes, it's not going to be ready tomorrow, even given a huge breakthrough. But the potential is amazing.

There are three basic kinds of power: grid power, which comes in bulk; portable fueled power, like a car engine; and embedded power, like a battery. All of could be a lot safer, cheaper, and cleaner. Happy research.

Bullpucky. Those few islands were a lot smaller and closer to the mainland than to Taiwan, there were no hostile forces shooting back, and the excellent Chinese military still fucked up so badly that some of the invasion force starved to death because they couldn't get supplies to them! Most military analysts concluded that China was nowhere near being able to take on Taiwan.

An interesting analysis: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=589046

Cheers,
-j.

Parent was copied verbatim from this node, which includes some interesting follow-ups...

Actually, Chomsky (or one of his contemporaries anyhow) discovered early on that almost no natural language can be represented solely by regular languages, or even context-free languages. Chomsky initially even tried to use unrestricted/semi-Thue grammars to represent natural languages, but realized just as quickly that this HUGE class of languages is much, much too big (in fact, it's actually Turing complete, and only useful to those doing research in the theory of computation, not the theory behind human language). That left the context-sensitive languages in the original Chomsky hierarchy, but even those languages were found to be much too general, and the most general simulators for linear bounded automata needed to process CSL's apparently requires exponential time to operate. Current research in computational linguistics these days seems to concentrate on classes of languages between CFL's and CSL's, formal languages which are "mildly" context sensitive to characterize human languages. One example is the tree-adjunct grammars (which also incidentally have been found to characterize RNA secondary structures very well, and are of great use in bioinformatics). There are a few other models out there which I researched while making a writeup on the Chomsky hierarchy for E2, but unfortunately E2 is still down... :(

Apparently computational linguistics is taking the same course that most other fields in artificial intelligence have taken lately. One camp takes the formal symbol manipulation approach (the original Chomsky theory and its descendants), and the other camp includes more recent approaches based on neural nets, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, and so forth, which are more grounded in biology rather than abstract mathematics. Sorta like the traditional SMPA robotics vs. Dr. Brooks' behavioral robotics.

When Everything comes back (hopefully later this week), you might want to look into it.

Anyway, the active color ingredient in Pepto Bismol and its generic equivalents is, if I'm not mistaken, red food coloring - that, and the active ingredient is bismuth subsalycilate, not pure bismuth, whereas the theory here is that it's bismuth and lead.

"In one of the more peculiar of English habits, Guy Fawkes is celebrated with his own day of national remembrance for his role in a failed scheme to dispose of King James I and the House of Lords. You'd think they'd celebrate the foiler of the attempt rather than one of its enactors, but then "1st Earl of Salisbury Day" or "Lord Monteagle Day" just don't have the same ring."

Face it, laissez-faire capitalism works no better in the real world than communism did.

"Vegetable originally meant any plant, as in "the vegetable kingdom", or Twenty Questions' opening gambit, "animal, mineral, or vegetable?" And fruit meant any edible plant part. With the development of the science of botany, however, the meanings of the words have shifted. Vegetable is now used to refer to herbaceous (non-woody) food plants or their edible parts. Fruits are the reproductive parts of a plant, the ripened ovary of a flower and its contents and related parts; vegetables as well as other plants like trees can have fruits." Source.

Tomatoes are fruits (berries).

The Atkins Diet, also known as the [ketogenic diet], is a four-stage low-[carbohydrate] [diet] which uses the bodily state of [ketosis] in order to provide [weight loss] and weight [management]. Invented by Dr. [Robert Atkins], this contraversial diet plan has nonetheless helped many people lose weight.

"They lose the weight, they feel fine, then they get to their goal weight and they still have 60 more years to live, and are they going to go hungry for all 60 years?"
Dr. Robert Atkins ([1931]-[2003]) to [CNN] on diets which restrict [caloric] intake

This diet (and variations thereof) is frequently used to treat [seizure]s as it reduces [blood] [glycogen] levels, making the brain somewhat immune to seizure [trigger]s. While on this diet, one depends on [fat]s for energy rather than carbohydrates. As a result, you find yourself eating salad without [crouton]s, but with a ton of [blue cheese] dressing. Like most diets, one drinks a great deal of water, in this case to avoid damage to the [liver] and [kidney]s due to ketosis.

[ketosis|K][ketosis|ETOSIS]

While avoiding [supersession] of such other [factual]s as [ketosis], no description of the Atkins Diet is complete without at least briefly covering the highest and lowest points of [ketosis], at least as it relates to this diet. Firstly, ketosis is a desirable [state] because it causes your body not to store fat when consumed, and also reduces your body's tendency to consume [muscle] as [fuel]. Since ketosis is induced by consuming a minimum of carbohydrates, your body has nowhere to turn for energy beyond the [fat]s you take in, and the fats stored in your body.

On the down side, the reduced levels of [insulin] can make you tired, though for most this passes in the first couple of weeks. It also increases stress on your [liver] and [kidney]s, which is the reason for the increased water intake. And it increases calcium loss, necessitating a greater calcium intake.

[Dietician]s (and others) frequently confuse ketosis with [ketoacidosis], a dangerous state which can be deadly in those with [diabetes]. Put simply, the pH of the blood becomes lower than normal because of increasing acidity due to ketones. If your body is not processing its waste properly, this state can come about. Thus the use of this diet is not recommended to those who require [dialysis].

STAGES

The four steps of the Atkins diet are:

1. Induction: During this phase one consumes 20g (or less) of [carbohydrate]s per day. This is exceptionally difficult due mostly to unnecessary addition of sugar to nearly everything one eats, especially in the [USA]. Even ostensible meat products like [beef] [jerky] tend to be loaded with sugar; most hot dogs are filled with carbohydrate-based fillers. One continues with this step until one has nearly reached their target weight.
   During the onset of this stage, in the first week or so, most people will lose a fair amount of weight due to simple water loss. This should not be mistaken for actual weight loss, as it will be regained immediately if one returns to normal dietary process. It is unlikely that anyone will lose more than twenty pounds this way; using the atkins diet to lose twenty pounds is closely akin to using a [backhoe] to dig a [post hole] -- in other words, [overkill].
2. Ongoing Weight Loss: During this phase one

"Actually, the truth is that in 1938, Hitler released the gun control laws in Germany that had been set in 1919, long before his rule. His reason was that they were hurting the German weapons industry - at least he was honest."

and...

"Single-variable logic is not a useful way to go about trying to understand the world. Take just one step beyond the propaganda slogan at hand, and you sink into a swamp of contradictory gibberish. It's good for a giggle when you're preaching to the converted, but don't mistake it for a proof of anything. Since Godwin's Law has already been invoked, I may as well mention in passing that this is just the kind of logic that HITLER used! In fact, it is. That doesn't make you Hitler for using it, though. It's just an amusing observation. "

and...

"Almost everyone favors some measure or another which could be construed as gun control. It's not just a matter of banning weapons of a given type. Trigger locks are often lumped into the "gun control" classification, and yet many more people would favor trigger locks than would favor banning, say, toys that happen to look like guns. Along a similar vein, mandated gun safety classes could be considered a form of gun control, and even most of the staunchest NRA members would favor such a measure (many, in fact, openly advocate it)."

I thought no one used Forth anymore. Now Linus tells us it is the future of Linux?

Seriously though, is it just me, or is the title phrased in a peculiar manner?

I wonder why it took them so long to come up with a model for lemmings' weird population behavior. I think such "boom and bust" cycles have also been observed for caribou and the arctic wolf. A rise in the caribou population causes a corresponding rise for wolves and both fall dramatically afterwards. I'm not completely sure about this, so please feel free to correct me here.

Also, it is interesting that suicidal behavior among animals does exist. This Everything2 node provides some very interesting information about this matter.

Shit, I figured I spelled it wrong, but so did a lot of people on Everything2 as well. At least I'm not the only one....

AC said:
>Most MAC users I know "spread the cheeks" and not the word.

I do both, plus I spread the word of God.

Jesus Saves!
John 3:16 -KJV

# from file: Big Mac rant.txt
I have found that you have capitalized all the letters in the word Mac. However, Mac is short for Macintosh, a model series of computers and operating systems designed by the Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino California. e.g. iMac, Power Mac and Mac OS X: http://www.apple.com/

It is a common misconception that MAC is an acronym that stands for something such as DOS (Disk Operating System) and ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) those examples being an Acronym (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Acronym ) and an Initialism (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Initialism ) respectively.

However Mac is an abbreviation (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=abbreviation ) of the full word Macintosh. If it is written as all capitals, MAC, is an acronym for the computer technology Media Access Control: http://webopedia.com/TERM/M/MAC.html which is a technology and standard used in the hardware devices used to connect to the internet or network computers together (modems, network interface cards, routers, switches and hubs.)

I hope that I have not offended or overwhelmed you. It was simply my intention to inform you as to the proper capitalization of the abbreviation for Macintosh.
#EOF

# from file: Big Mac rant.txt
I have found that you have capitalized all the letters in the word Mac. However, Mac is short for Macintosh, a model series of computers and operating systems designed by the Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino California. e.g. iMac, Power Mac and Mac OS X: http://www.apple.com/

It is a common misconception that MAC is an acronym that stands for something such as DOS (Disk Operating System) and ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) those examples being an Acronym (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Acronym ) and an Initialism (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Initialism ) respectively.

However Mac is an abbreviation (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=abbreviation ) of the full word Macintosh. If it is written as all capitals, MAC, is an acronym for the computer technology Media Access Control: http://webopedia.com/TERM/M/MAC.html which is a technology and standard used in the hardware devices used to connect to the internet or network computers together (modems, network interface cards, routers, switches and hubs.)

I hope that I have not offended or overwhelmed you. It was simply my intention to inform you as to the proper capitalization of the abbreviation for Macintosh.
#EOF

# from file: Big Mac rant.txt
I have found that you have capitalized all the letters in the word Mac. However, Mac is short for Macintosh, a model series of computers and operating systems designed by the Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino California. e.g. iMac, Power Mac and Mac OS X: http://www.apple.com/

It is a common misconception that MAC is an acronym that stands for something such as DOS (Disk Operating System) and ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) those examples being an Acronym (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Acronym ) and an Initialism (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Initialism ) respectively.

However Mac is an abbreviation (see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=abbreviation ) of the full word Macintosh. If it is written as all capitals, MAC, is an acronym for the computer technology Media Access Control: http://webopedia.com/TERM/M/MAC.html which is a technology and standard used in the hardware devices used to connect to the internet or network computers together (modems, network interface cards, routers, switches and hubs.)

I hope that I have not offended or overwhelmed you. It was simply my intention to inform you as to the proper capitalization of the abbreviation for Macintosh.
#EOF

Furthermore, writing accuented text in plain HTML is such a pain in the ass it's not even funny. You have to type stuff like "&eacute" instead of a sole key on a French keyboard ( I'm French-speaking ), and since most languages have non-standard - according to English, that is... - characters and that these are very common in text for some languages, I think such a feature is essential to a top notch international HTML editor.

Or you could write your page in the ISO-8859-1 character encoding rather than US-ASCII (you should be anyways, even if you're only using english), which has accented characters at U+00C0 through U+00FF (with interspersed non-accent characters). Not knowing how to use the tool is not the same thing as having a bad tool.

Aside: Slashdot's comment box only allows characters in the printable range of US-ASCII, so I can't include any examples here. Try Everything2's LATIN-1 writeup.

I feel the author of this story is looking at radio totally from a US / Western perspective.

Did the author stop to think for just one minute of all the non-western countries around the world where some people still don't even know what a computer is let alone even dream of being able to afford one? (Tip: please please travel more...!!)

Have you ever heard of Telex which was around before fax machines? Fax machines and Telex are dead in world, right? Wrong!, Both Telex machines and Fax machines are still very much alive elsewhere in the world with many companies offering gateways to convert between "modern" systems and Telex/Fax !!!

If you work for a international company then you will know how important it is to still have access to this out of date technology (in western terms) to be able to communicate with non-western countries who haven't quite reached the same level of infrastructure. [In fact I'm please to see that as a whole the US has finally almost caught up with Europe in relation to mobile (radio) phones... :-) !!!]

Radio has been around for 100 years. It's pretty amazing that TV, the Internet, etc. haven't killed it. It's still enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people here in the US every day.

Exactly... only radio is enjoyed by BILLIONS of people around the world in additional to the US. What is more radio is very much alive with new developments still coming into existance such as Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) (long range *digital* AM/MW!)

Radio will be around for at least another 100 years in the western world and will continue to exist for many more outside the western world, regardless of if people think it is dead in the west.

I feel the author of this story is looking at radio totally from a US / Western perspective.

Did the author stop to think for just one minute of all the non-western countries around the world where some people still don't even know what a computer is let alone even dream of being able to afford one? (Tip: please please travel more...!!)

Have you ever heard of Telex which was around before fax machines? Fax machines and Telex are dead in world, right? Wrong!, Both Telex machines and Fax machines are still very much alive elsewhere in the world with many companies offering gateways to convert between "modern" systems and Telex/Fax !!!

If you work for a international company then you will know how important it is to still have access to this out of date technology (in western terms) to be able to communicate with non-western countries who haven't quite reached the same level of infrastructure. [In fact I'm please to see that as a whole the US has finally almost caught up with Europe in relation to mobile (radio) phones... :-) !!!]

Radio has been around for 100 years. It's pretty amazing that TV, the Internet, etc. haven't killed it. It's still enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people here in the US every day.

Exactly... only radio is enjoyed by BILLIONS of people around the world in additional to the US. What is more radio is very much alive with new developments still coming into existance such as Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) (long range *digital* AM/MW!)

Radio will be around for at least another 100 years in the western world and will continue to exist for many more outside the western world, regardless of if people think it is dead in the west.

I feel the author of this story is looking at radio totally from a US / Western perspective.

Did the author stop to think for just one minute of all the non-western countries around the world where some people still don't even know what a computer is let alone even dream of being able to afford one? (Tip: please please travel more...!!)

Have you ever heard of Telex which was around before fax machines? Fax machines and Telex are dead in world, right? Wrong!, Both Telex machines and Fax machines are still very much alive elsewhere in the world with many companies offering gateways to convert between "modern" systems and Telex/Fax !!!

If you work for a international company then you will know how important it is to still have access to this out of date technology (in western terms) to be able to communicate with non-western countries who haven't quite reached the same level of infrastructure. [In fact I'm please to see that as a whole the US has finally almost caught up with Europe in relation to mobile (radio) phones... :-) !!!]

Radio has been around for 100 years. It's pretty amazing that TV, the Internet, etc. haven't killed it. It's still enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people here in the US every day.

Exactly... only radio is enjoyed by BILLIONS of people around the world in additional to the US. What is more radio is very much alive with new developments still coming into existance such as Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) (long range *digital* AM/MW!)

Radio will be around for at least another 100 years in the western world and will continue to exist for many more outside the western world, regardless of if people think it is dead in the west.

And I suppose that every other site that offers the ablility to edit posts suffers from this phenomenon....NOT.

Indeed. How do they solve it? And how can that solution be applied here? Do other sites have a technical fix at all or are they just not as thoroughly-trolled as slashdot?

The only experince that I can bring to bear here is of everything2. E2 gets past this problem in two ways:
Firstly the site is structured differently. Posts are not replies and they are not threaded. There are far more topics created than on slashdot and the ratio of posts per topic is far lower than on slashdot.

Users are encouraged to write posts that stand alone within the topic, even if there are other posts there.

When you reply, you should reply to a fixed article - an imutable historical record of what someone said. You can't edit your verbal utterances or email once sent, so why should this be different?

Secondly the editorial staff is far more proactive in deleting posts that are offtopic, trolling or even just obsoleted.

I think that Slashdot would have to change a lot for editable posts to make sense.

Diesel would probably be a lot cleaner were it not for the fact that the U.S. has the lowest-quality diesel fuel on the entire fucking planet.

EULAs on physical objects?
I wonder what happend to the First Sale Doctrine.

Ashcroft: Personally - I'd say as socialist as they come

See also: The Political Compass

*Small-l libertarianism should not be confused with the big-l Libertarianism of the U.S. Libertarian Party, which is, in terms of economic policy, neo-liberal (i.e., even farther to the right than the Republicans).

Ashcroft: Personally - I'd say as socialist as they come

See also: The Political Compass

*Small-l libertarianism should not be confused with the big-l Libertarianism of the U.S. Libertarian Party, which is, in terms of economic policy, neo-liberal (i.e., even farther to the right than the Republicans).

Ashcroft: Personally - I'd say as socialist as they come

See also: The Political Compass

*Small-l libertarianism should not be confused with the big-l Libertarianism of the U.S. Libertarian Party, which is, in terms of economic policy, neo-liberal (i.e., even farther to the right than the Republicans).

A big fan of hosts-based ad blocking - Simple ad blocking with hosts.

Ah, the joys of the percentage twenty!

Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, filtering web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a very flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes.

I downloaded "RoboteQ.molecular.blueprint[45A99B28].bz" last night, and my Zyvex FX3000 nanoassembler burn^H^H^H^Hbuilt it in only 6 minutes! Sure, it's still technically illegal to copy someones "Intellectual Property" (until HR837475 becomes law), but putting food on the table doesn't cost anything anymore, and they got whuffie from me just the same.

--

Thats when I knew Nintendo lied to us about saying the amount of ROM space was the main culpret behind not having bigger games.

The NES has had bankswitching since the CNROM days. The limiting factor during the "ROM shortage" was the cost of replicating mask ROMs with larger capacity; at the time, Nintendo didn't want to price Game Paks at 80 USD MSRP. Cost was also the issue in Square's decision to publish Final Fantasy VII for a CD-based system instead of the Nintendo 64; what Square wanted to do with the game couldn't be accomplished in the 128-Mibit (16-MiB) N64 carts that were affordable to replicate.