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And for keeping tabs on what is on which disk... I've been using a freeware program called "Cathy" (I don't have any links)...Although I don't know whether it'll do DVD's, I haven't tried.

Cathy is avalible for download here. According to these sites it will handle many disk formats ("CD-ROMs, LS120, Iomega Zip and Jaz disks, or even diskettes"). The link to the home page is broken.

You will not be able to sit back in your recliner and experience
the sights and smells of an actual African safari with Marlon Perkins

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have the option to view programming that reflects
actual facts, opinions and situations of real people in real jobs doing real work

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have more information at your disposal,
but a great deal more disposable information;
you will not experience a reduction in the amount of subliminal messaging
or an increased exposure to the fully explored viewpoints
of persons with alternative outlooks on the world and ways of life;
nor will you have the ability to selectively choose shows and entertainment
that will best equip you to face other human beings
who may have differing and conflicting methods of dealing with everyday existence
because, despite your ability to earn a Ph.D.
by absorbing the litany of T & A, S & M, B & D and R & R
on CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN,
people who have important things to say
regarding the fragility of relying on modern convenience
will not be able to set up independent broadcast towers
because the FCC, FBI and CIA will make sure
that you do not find these programs included as part of "Must See TV,"
and they will certainly not be sponsored
by Mobil Oil Corporation and the Fortune 500.

You will not be able to immediately gain access
to the viewing public without waiting nine months
on a list for new programs, waiting only to be passed over
by a Committee for Fairness in Television
because your views are not deemed interesting enough
to command a favorable Nielson share.
Nor will you be able to select features for your viewing pleasure
that have not been hand-picked by the owners of the airwaves
and their supporting advertisers.

Your television will not be revolutionized.
Your television will not be revolutionized.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will continue to experience a decrease in rapid eye movement,
increasing cases of attention deficit disorder among your babies and children,
and on-going, invasive modifications to your DNA
caused by the barrage of an electron machine gun
you have invited into your home to expose "viewers like you"
to a thousand points of artificial light.

You will continue to form images subconsciously inside your physical brain
without the benefit of seeing them outside your head,
and without the ability to blink and shut them out or slow them down
so as to maintain the facility to selectively choose
the sound bytes and sound tracks and sound effects and
hypnotic waves of electricity that will influence
your spending patterns, your methods of recreation, your opinions on procreation,
your impression of reality and
your overall sense of physical health and well-being.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

Your retention of information will continue to decrease,
while the available percentage of brain cells at your disposal
will continued to be used up by phrases from sitcom theme songs,
by deductive meanderings on who shot J.R., and
by images of politicians wrapped in flags and kissing babies,
eating chitterlings, slicing pizza and
spreading lox on bagels.

You will not be able to take your message to the streets
or distribute pamphlets questioning the party line
at union meetings or city council sessions,
because your fellow citizens will be safe at home,
unified only in the respect that they are all watching re-runs
of the same shows so it can be assured there will be a topic of conversation
when we are all turned loose to exercise
our First Amendment rights
assisted by a new and improved level of communication
brought to you by the Association for the Preservation of Technological Megalomaniacs.

You will not be able to tell the difference between an embrace
offered by a virtual reality image of your dead father
and the gentle purring of a live kitten grasping your shoulder;
but you will continue to be able to anesthetize your sense of boredom
vicariously, whether through the war game simulation of professional sports,
or candid interviews with starvation victims
in a country of which you were not even aware "prior to this newscast,"
and may be convinced exists
only thanks to the believability score of the on-the-scene commentator,
or by gripping the edge of your seat while watching
carnage and bloodshed and laying on of hands
resulting in cures for leprosy, AIDS, infantile paralysis,
sickle cell anemia, and that awful bloated feeling,
all of which may or not be created using special effects.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will continue to trust in a world that has been edited for television,
in situations that will be re-enacted based on circumstantial evidence
and the imagination of financial advisors to the producers during "sweeps" week,
and in actors who are paid to tell you their headache disappeared in minutes
or that they actually spent time at their last dinner party discussing yeast infections
or wash-and-go shampoos.

You will be able to see inside the minds and hear the thoughts
of Richard Nixon, of Jeffrey Dahmer, of Charles Manson and Mother Theresa,
but you will see them being asked the same questions, things like,
"When did you first realize that you were different from other children?"
and you will see the same one-liners being used to promote their causes
in between paid advertisement programs
showcasing the efficiency and pleasure provided by shopping at home,
and they will be given equal air-time,
and each will be gently disclaimed:
"The opinions expressed by guests on this program
do not necessarily reflect the views of this network,
do not support the philosophy or political leanings of the majority of our viewers,
and are not intended to stimulate, educate or otherwise affect anyone at all."

You will continue to find yourself in a world
that has an increasing number of methods for communication,
and alarmingly less and less to say.

You will find it true, as Marshall McLuhan once said, that
"the medium is the message,"
and that its sweet velvet voice is crooning,
"Learn to consume as you have taught me to consume,"
and reminding us in the words of Jello Biafra
that the conveniences we have requested are now mandatory.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not be able to sit back in your recliner and experience
the sights and smells of an actual African safari with Marlon Perkins

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have the option to view programming that reflects
actual facts, opinions and situations of real people in real jobs doing real work

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have more information at your disposal,
but a great deal more disposable information;
you will not experience a reduction in the amount of subliminal messaging
or an increased exposure to the fully explored viewpoints
of persons with alternative outlooks on the world and ways of life;
nor will you have the ability to selectively choose shows and entertainment
that will best equip you to face other human beings
who may have differing and conflicting methods of dealing with everyday existence
because, despite your ability to earn a Ph.D.
by absorbing the litany of T
but you will continue to be able to anesthetize your sense of boredom
vicariously, whether through the war game simulation of professional sports,
or candid interviews with starvation victims
in a country of which you were not even aware "prior to this newscast,"
and may be convinced exists
only thanks to the believability score of the on-the-scene commentator,
or by gripping the edge of your seat while watching
carnage and bloodshed and laying on of hands
resulting in cures for leprosy, AIDS, infantile paralysis,
sickle cell anemia, and that awful bloated feeling,
all of which may or not be created using special effects.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will continue to trust in a world that has been edited for television,
in situations that will be re-enacted based on circumstantial evidence
and the imagination of financial advisors to the producers during "sweeps" week,
and in actors who are paid to tell you their headache disappeared in minutes
or that they actually spent time at their last dinner party discussing yeast infections
or wash-and-go shampoos.

You will be able to see inside the minds and hear the thoughts
of Richard Nixon, of Jeffrey Dahmer, of Charles Manson and Mother Theresa,
but you will see them being asked the same questions, things like,
"When did you first realize that you were different from other children?"
and you will see the same one-liners being used to promote their causes
in between paid advertisement programs
showcasing the efficiency and pleasure provided by shopping at home,
and they will be given equal air-time,
and each will be gently disclaimed:
"The opinions expressed by guests on this program
do not necessarily reflect the views of this network,
do not support the philosophy or political leanings of the majority of our viewers,
and are not intended to stimulate, educate or otherwise affect anyone at all."

You will continue to find yourself in a world
that has an increasing number of methods for communication,
and alarmingly less and less to say.

You will find it true, as Marshall McLuhan once said, that
"the medium is the message,"
and that its sweet velvet voice is crooning,
"Learn to consume as you have taught me to consume,"
and reminding us in the words of Jello Biafra
that the conveniences we have requested are now mandatory.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

During the spring I saw a documentary about a team building a Trebuchet with medieval tools.
It was on the Swedish science program, Vetenskapens värld.

In the NOVA/WGBH Trebuchet Project (October-November 1998),
the Timber Framers Guild helped to build two Trebuchets,
supervised by Mr Renaud Beffeyte.
A 300 pound stone ball was used to smash a a 7 foot-thick granite wall
more than 160 yards away.
No modern tools were used in the construction.

There are several types of Trebuchets and other war-mashines.
Schematic overviews and more information can be found at Medieval Mechanical Artillery

Everybody knows that spock was a superhero. He was called Namor, the Sub-Mariner before his Star Trek days..

My argument is that people and organization are more important for intelligence work than technology.

Similarly consider Operation Bagration, the destruction of the German Army Group Center in Summer 1944. Bagration I suppose is the Russian counterpart of the Allied deception campaign that mislead the Germans about the Normandy invasion. The "technology" that led to the success of Operation Bagration was the massive fleet of trucks the West had given Russia through Lend Lease, so perhaps some argument can be made that indirectly Enigma contributed to the victory. But what made Operation Bagration work was organization, attention to detail.

In my opinion, overemphasis on technology such as Enigma is dangerous in today's era because it reinforces current United States prejudices on how to conduct intelligence without "getting one's hands dirty". It would be a shame to repeat all the mistakes of the Germans and learn nothing from what worked for say the Russians.

"I believe our country risks being thrown into a dark age of medical research..."

I guess Seaquest really was ahead of it's time... they predicted 2001 as the start of the Dark Age of Genetics

This argument makes no sense, and makes me believe it was written by a shill. Although circumstances can cause a piece of media to become worthless, the causes are mostly out of the distributors control. What we are talking about is equipment manufacturers and media conglomerates (who are often one and the same) _colluding_ to control the distribution of media.

Taken to the extreme ,if I bought a DVD and found that I could only sell the DVD to people who lived within 5 miles of me due to the whims of the DVD consortium, this would almost certainly limit the market which I could sell it, and be an undefendible practice. The author might have tried to make the argument that since DVD regions are large, the market is not severely limted by region encoding, but they chose not to. Even this argument is not really supported by the facts, since there is clearly an nonzero demand for imported DVDs due to pricing descrepencies between the different regions.

The author of this text is presenting the view that the intent of the distributor doesn't matter, which may or may not be the case with regard to copyright law, but is not true on the face of it. Whether DVD encoding is illegally limiting first sale doctrine is something needs to be worked out by looking closely at the law and certainly isn't an argument that is "without merit"

Post Comment Lameness filter encountered. Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted You are not logged in. You can login now using the convenient form below, or Create an Account. Posts without proper registration are posted as Anonymous Coward

Having only been to local protests, I can assure you that the "violent" protests refered to by all and sundry were actually peacefull protests (i.e. the crowd was so scared of the police that they verbally abused anyone who looked like splitting that peace), physically attacked by police and attended by professional trouble-makers.

In Melbourne, last September, we did not take to the streets smashing things, but as far as the media and now Joe sixpack are concerned, that is exactly what happened. The newspapers spent months trying to incite any violent kooks into coming into the protests for the promised violence. Funily enough, that's just what they've started doing now in the lead up to our CHOGM lead up meeting.

These protesters have very real concerns and are being ignored by the media, and subsequently the public at large. To ignore their message and to focus on the bullshit "HYPE" is to stand against these people. I hope you know what you're doing, because, once they've all been beaten, you may find their concerns do effect you and there will be no one left to say anything.

Now, come look @ some pretty photos.

The reason you want _everybody_ to tell where their satellites are is of course that you don't want any accidents. Having a satellite 'hidden' by placing it in a secret orbit defeats that.

[sarcasm:] It's an outrage! That nations who develop satellite and launch vehicle technology cannot count on the reports filed with the UN, and instead have to also develop sophisticated Radio Detection And Ranging (RADAR) technology, is unconscionable!

Please share with us your knowledge, and explain how those reports can have any impact on collision avoidance. How would a nation, relying upon those reports, apparently without RADAR technology, know where the spent rocket bodies and other miscellaneous detritus from their launch operations ended up? After their satellite decays into scrap and falls apart, how will they inform the rest of us where the bits are floating?

Here in the US, our Air Force runs this outfit (whom I used to work for, picture of the radar here) to keep track of the bits and pieces floating around in space. I suggest that any nation who cannot use similar technology has no business throwing their garbage into space in the first place.

I have lost all hope of ever expecting that slashdot moderators will ever gain a little understanding of the technology of middle of the LAST CENTURY!

It has been 51 hours since I re-opened outside access to my webserver (apache), to identify the type of attack. They were previously logged in my firewall but are not recognizable except for the port number: 80.
I'm using Kryptolus' script to scan my logs and generate a report. Here is a snapshot of this report. (pages are currently not there, nbci seems to refuse ftp upload. I'll try later)
The count is now at 1123 and still rising. The bulk of the connections is from my ISP's DSL network (in Belgium), but I'm also seeing attempts from outside: Honk Kong, Taiwan or Sweden for example. If these computers are trying each possible IP, think of the number of checks they have made before reaching me! ;)

Thank you for the amazing breakdown. I myself am a Huge Fan of this series, and was watching since GROPOS. It's a must-see. Infact, the only series to actually come close to its glory has been Farscape, but still has not beat it just yet.

Some good sites to go to for Babylon 5 information and discussion:
The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5. A great reference source. It has THE most comprehensive episode guide for the series, it's movies, and its spinoff, Crusade. They Include a Synopsis, Notes, Comments from JMS, and other related information. The site also includes a B5 term encyclopedia, which can be beneficial for those who don't understand a term.
B5 Tech Reference. This site, while containing large amounts of fictional information, is a decent reference for anyone seeking information on the spacecraft of Babylon 5.
FirstOnes.com. While this is a shameless plug, If you want to talk with other babylon 5 fans, go there and visit the forums. You'll meet some interesting people from around the world. While it's primary mission has been abandoned (to raise the Babylon 5 Space Combat Simulator, Into the Fire, from the dead), it is being transformed into a source for everything Babylon 5. (well, that's the plan, at least =) )
Hyperspace Ship Guide. Another great reference page for the spacecraft of babylon 5. This has less fanfiction than Babylon 5 Tech, but less information as a whole. It has some great images, though.
The Down Below Sound Archive. This Page has a sound bite of just about anything you could want from this show. It's a great place to go if you want something along those lines.
Babylon 5: The place to be. This is another great site, loaded with 3D art and the models to make your own! Check it out sometime.
The Music of Babylon 5.. This is another great Babylon 5 Resource. It's webmaster posts various soundtracks from Babylon 5 on a regular basis. Most recently, the site had put up Battle Sequences A-F, the Sampler tracks for the music in Babylon 5: Into the Fire. Take a few minutes and listen to it.
The Shadow Information Office. A great page dedicated to correcting the popular belief that shadows are evil monsters. Rather, it shows that they have a very incolved culture, and exist for the sole purpose of assisting the other races. Check it out.

I hope these links are put to good use. There is a lot of information on the web. most of it bad. This should clear up some of that. Sanfam Out.

The movie, "The Matrix," at least metaphorically speaking, is not far from the truth. In the future, I see a day when people are too "attached" to a system to let go. In this future, I see people who can't define their own reality or even define freedom because of the constraints that are placed upon them since birth. In other words, they will have lost the ability to step outside the box and question the facade they call "reality".

• I have a right to install software on my computer that alters the content i access and view in any way i want, as long as i have permission to view that content in some form.
• Third Voice has a right to maintain a database where people can comment on various URLs for purposes of commentary or critisism. The fact they display the comments on top of the webpages being commented on makes no difference*, as long as the customers are either clearly aware of what is original content and what is 3rdvoice content or have consented to having the content altered for them. (Yes, of course, the fact KaZaA customers were not fully aware of what it meant that TopText was being installed, or informed during the installation process what the yellow links would mean in future makes everything different, and makes the inclusion of TopText with the KaZaA program, whether legal or no, definitely immoral on the part of KaZaA.)

... when I hear a TTS say "we are the knights who say ... NI !" with the proper intonation :-)

Better watch the Simpson's Planet of the Apes

This is only a link to some pictures and sound bytes. THey are not mine but enjoy !!

for a moment, i thot JonKatz was referring to some actor-studio squabbles in making the original.

a quick check found that Heston was in fact enthusiastic about the movie (at the start): see here and here.

Heston on the prospects for the movie: "The novel was singularly uncinematic; there wasn't even a treatment outlining an effective script. Still, I smelled a good film in it."

yeesh.

for a moment, i thot JonKatz was referring to some actor-studio squabbles in making the original.

a quick check found that Heston was in fact enthusiastic about the movie (at the start): see here and here.

Heston on the prospects for the movie: "The novel was singularly uncinematic; there wasn't even a treatment outlining an effective script. Still, I smelled a good film in it."

yeesh.

You're thinking too small. Combine Gold + Silver + Iron = Element 152 (79+47+26 atoms) After doing so, you'll have the material that powers the Legion of Superheros' Flight Rings. http://plaza.v-wave.com/legion_headquarters/rollca ll/monel.htm And look at these built-in features! http://plaza.v-wave.com/legion_headquarters/transp ortation/air.htm Just think of the cash you'll rake in with an antigravity metal that is telepathically responsive. http://members.nbci.com/lightning_lad/Role_Playing /Legion_Technology/Flight_Rings/flight_rings.html One of the pieces of Legion equipment created by Invisible Kid, the flight rings are made out of Element 152, an anti-gravity metal created by Mon-El. Experimenting with the metal for months, Invisible Kid developed a flight ring with the following attributes: * Flight through the will power of the wearer. * Allows its wearer to link with other ring-wearers. This allows all those linked to travel at the speed of the fastest linked character. * Signaling device is activiated by twisting the L symbol clockwise a quarter turn. This activates the ring's SOS transmission and tracking beam. * Allows the wearer to hover even is he/she loses consciousness. * Communication is allowed via ring to other wearers. The wearer focuses his or her will through the ring to "send" a message to another person or persons. For more personal messages or ones that need to be kept from others, telepathic plugs must be used. Small wonder that Booster Gold made a fortune with his.

Barney Doom was one of the original reasons I got into FPSs in the first place! How sad.

I don't know how to get CSS working in Xine

See
CSS for Xine

Mr. Hicks is still around and Alvin's Secret Code was reprinted by Penguin a couple years ago. It seems to be out of print again, but used copies are easy to find.

Hmmm, here's a good info page--a couple more of the books have been reprinted too:

The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald

I think you're also thinking Alvin Fernald; That was another "boy genius" book, a kid who invented tons of stuff. Danny Dunn was the one who had the professor in the house, Alvin had little sister and did less science based stuff and more Rube-Goldbergian developments.

You can find more on Alvin Fernald here.

Actually, This kind of a thing is already implemented for IE. Check out QuickClick. Which does exactly what Windows XP is attempting to do.
Of course, QuickClick was implemented by a third party (I dont know if MS helped them in this development or not). And there used to be Ads that used to run on TV about this. Now that NBCi is sort of dead, I guess there might not be any more development in this regard.
If someone took pains to download QuickClick, That person might be interested in the SmartTags as well.I guess its just a matter of choice of the user.
As a web site developer, I can never have a say about what they do with end result HTML.For all I care, They might feed it to a HTML scraper and show it in an application.

in french and english, explain everything on webcam for astronomy, how to setup various model, special driver to allow long exposures, "blackening" the CCD and remove this "black" image from the image you've taken, etc, very very good site here at astrocam http://www.astrocam.org/ (don't know why but i cannot put the link with a A tag)
Another site with special webcam for astronomy is SAC
--

I was reading in a recent Sky & Telescope about a German teenager who got some pretty good pictures of the ISS + shuttle with a 4 inch (!) 'scope and a webcam. Found his website here.

We've seen this before at NBCi with their QuickClick thing. Here's an article from MSNBC (!) about why such things are evil.

Art At Home

Realize that the average background noise in a residential home *without* computers is about 50dB. That means 34dB is well below the noise floor in the average home.

Remember that your computer has fans. Fans produce noise. If you can produce only 34dB from your computer then you're doing pretty well.

Sort of like the NBC site for Weakest Link.

"You have got mail." It should be either "You have mail" (if referring to the potential status of mail's existence) or "You have gotten mail"

Except "have got" for "have received" is valid English. Some dialects don't even have a word "gotten."

And even if you are, it sounds goofy as all hell.

Especially when Big Bird sings it at the beginning of the song "Everyone Makes Mistakes": "I've a special secret children ought to know..."

> Read the Bible, it says so right there.

*sigh*

I'm tired of people that can't even be bothered to *read* the orginal Hebrew and double check the translation. Gen 1:2 uses the Hebrew word "hayah" which means "became". It is used in over 600 places in the Old Covenant.

Next time, use proper exegisis instead of taking the words at literal value.

Good explaination of the hebrew words:
http://members.nbci.com/doulos/howold_earth.html

Gap Theory:
http://pages.prodigy.net/oweber/gapq.htm

I've set up a mirror at the following location.

And, some ever helpful links:Turbo Vision For Unix and Turbo Vision. Two different ports. Judging by their freshmeat entries, I'd go with the second one.

I want my own half height clone to mow my lawn.

Hmm, seems to me that the ownership of a living being by another living being is referred to as "slavery". No matter what color, etc. this is still the same issue.

I would rather have R2-D2 mowing my lawn, such as one of these Mowbots

TV say Donuts are high in fat

Kazoo

Found a hobo in my room

It's Pricess Leia

The yodel of life

Give me my sweater back

Or I will play the guitar

Hyakugojyuuichi!

There's way too much blather about hate, evil, destroy, etc. The issues is USING A MONOPOLY IN ONE MARKET TO GAIN DOMINANCE IN ANOTHER MARKET. There, isn't that easy to understand in plain simpleton terms?

Say a railroad enjoyed a natural monopoly in a certain geographical area. Any industry the RR wants to go into the uses freight can be destroyed by the RR. In fact, instead of griping about people wanting to destroy Msft, how come your silent on all the companies Msft has, is and wants to destroy or consume, hmmm??? They've become like some of those species of life on Pacific islands that have no natural predators and grow to gigantic proportions.

here's the ball lightning page without the nasty flashing ad frame

Did anybody notice that that microwave plasmoid cooks up nitrous oxide?

-perdida

If you want a laugh, go onto Napster and search for "Space Ghost". My favorite is known as "Brak is stoned".

--

According to their FAQs,

"Destination Mir is a television series and contest from NBC that allows 12 American civilians to undergo Russian cosmonaut training. One winner will visit the orbiting Russian space station, Mir. The television series will air in the fall of 2001."

Didn't come up with the idea myself, I got it from the math program I am in. And I know that the image is a b0rken link, the real one is here (take out the space)

Didn't come up with the idea myself, I got it from the math program I am in. And I know that the image is a b0rken link, the real one is here (take out the space)

http://members.nbci.com/forcemajeure/download/m6_n oise.pdf
The idea is the same as the particle decay, except in this case a backward biased transistor is used, which will block most electrons, but some will have enough thermal energy to 'jump the gap'(conduct), which is brownian motion. You could just have easily use a reverse biased diode(hook up cathode(striped) to +, anode to gnd.
Normally you wouldn't care if these are reverse biased, because the leakage current is too small, and 'random'. They sometimes are used as a temperature 'sensor', because the warmer they get, the more likely electrons jump.

--

Well, NBCi is being odd, so heres another link: http://members.nbci.com/mduell52/chatlog.zip.html Its still the same 3MB zip file, with a new extension... (Remember, choose Save as... [I pity the fool who tries to open it with IE])

Mark Duell

I put up another mirror (with all the logs in one big zip) at http://members.nbci.com/mduell52/chatlog.zip.delet ethis (3.00MB). Of course, you have to delete the deletethis extension, because NBCi doesnt allow zips :(

Mark Duell

Here is an article from 1998.

As video has become a central way to entertain, inform and influence the public, "the people," not just government and big media companies, must be given the power to create decent video presentations..

If you can't run one of the more popular commercial non-linear editors (Avid/Final Cut Pro/etc) I offer the following list of Linux alternatives.

(And before you mod me offtopic, note that Trinity uses Gstreamer. So there.)

NON-LINEAR SYSTEMS

Broadcast 2000 -- One of the more developed linux editors. Works with a variety of hardware. I personally haven't used it, but there is at least one company out there selling pre-packaged versions of this.

Trinity -- Another Linux solution - still very early in development. Uses Gstreamer though

MainActor -- I think this is a commercial Linux product, about $100.

And for fun...

AUDIO EDITING SYSTEMS

ProTools FREE - This is a commercial product, but this free, non demoware version, limited to 8-tracks, does not require dedicated hardware. It does require Mac or Windows, though I have no idea if it will run under WINE.

ProTUX - Although the web site denies it, this is basically an open source ProTools.

Audacity - A cross-platform open source audio editor.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I know about.

W
-------------------

This isn't a black-and-white issue, but here's how I see the relationship: It's just easier to create a fun game without worrying about graphics. I can make a lame game with good OR bad graphics by simply ignoring gameplay. It will have nothing going for it. But if I create some compelling gameplay, I'm guaranteed a fun game even if the graphics suck. Now, if I care to wrap it all up in apppropriate swirling, glowing, texture-mapped, alpha-blended, 120fps graphics, then it might very well be a really fun game. It might. But remember where we need to start.

So everybody just stop triple-buffering and mipmapping for a second ask yourselves some questions like:

What is a game?
Why do people play games?

And maybe read an (old) book like Chris Crawford's The Art of Computer Game Design . It can't hurt.