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The Republicans have lost their sense of history. They've used the filibuster against even higher court appointments before. It was the right thing to do then. It is the right thing to do now. The filibuster remains the last desperate refuge of the minority against the tyranny of the majority.

A more paranoid theory is that they intend to take such measures to insure they need never be the minority again. However, I feel (especially given the President) that it is more appropriate to attribute their behavior to stupidity rather than malice.

Using solar powersats eliminates the storage and most of the distribution problems (did you know you can run jetliners on beamed power? true story), reduces the cost of power and also reduces the enviro footprint from obvious and opaque solar arrays to more flexible and translucent rectenna arrays.

Each piece of serious space infrastructure you build (ISS isn't anything like serious) makes it easier to build other systems. For example, powersat construction provides a market for a space elevator and drives down the materials costs for everything but the ribbon - and transport up via the elevator drops the cost of a powersat considerably. Building a Moon-mine would also lower the cost of both powersats and elevator from a materials and technology, and of course the mine would be cheaper to start with prefab parts coming up an elevator and cheaper to build with powersats having already proven a lot of the technology.

We just need someone to bite the bullet and spend 0.1 Iraq Wars or Desert Storms to produce one piece, and the other pieces will happen. At the moment, the USA faces a dichotomy between a "liberal weiner" and a "right-wing nut-job", neither of whom will seriously back any such project.

• Bobby Loves Mangos
• 
  Twelve Monkeys
  Star Trek (4, not First Contact, which was worse)
  Terminator
  Back to the Future
  The Sound of Thunder
  

Trooper Clerks. Star Wars + Clerks = Insanity.

This links directly to the shockwave file. No advertisements necessary.

Link directly to the flash file (this_land.swf) for offline viewing or for the plugin impaired:

here

This Guy is Falling

-Adam

There's actually a short film on the internet about this kind of scenario. Here's the link to Flicka.

Love knows no boundaries or at least that is the essence of this short film from the Netherlands that tells the story of a lonely building supervisor who starts a relationship with a computer program. While she might not be, her love is real.

OK, maybe it's just that I hang out with weirdos. However, most of the liberals I hang out with will oft breifly tune in to FoxNews to see what the conservatives are frothing about, and a right wing nut job who routinely checks the editorials page of the NYTimes web site for further proof of how stupid the biased liberal media is (are?).

It seems to me that, while they don't usually put in great effort to seek it out regularly, most people LIKE encountering the occaisional wildly opposite opinion, so as to confirm their bias that people who don't agree with them are "a load of useless bloody loonies!" Which means, that a news search site that occaisionally provide such a story in with any others, will have happier people and thus retain more traffic.

Of course, I am a loonie, so what do I know.

What a freakin riot. It's refreshing to find someone that can poke the appropriate amount of fun at both parties without getting too wrapped up any moore.

The swf file can be found here so you don't have to deal with the ads and can save it on your own drive. Show the corporate types what the Internet is all about, sharing.

http://images2.shockwave.com/afassets/flash/this_l and.swf

plays the cartoon bigger and without the advertising

Shockwave animation in question direct link.

I thought it was funny...

-Adam

As this short movie clearly explains, Bush is a trans-species mutant with no brain: This Land.

OK so for my job I recently had to do a very simple clickthrough for some UI design work. I would have used straight HTML but I also needed to approximate some fancy UI thing. So even simple 'goto' statements didn't work like they were supposed to. The Flash ActionScript language is one of the most assinine things I've ever encoutered.

Meanwhile, Flash. What is it good for? Absolutely nuthin'! Well OK, funny animations like This Land are great. But most of the time it hinders me getting to the information that I need or want. Car sites are a prime example. Just show me the pictures and let me get to the specs easily!

The Web is primarily a tool for information--Flash has not proven itself to be a good information tool.

People, give Macromedia some credit. Without Flash we wouldn't have some of the movies that defined a generation. Some of the classics are:

All Your Base
Yatta
Eat Your Oatmeal
This Land is Your Land

And all the other bizarre flash that lives HERE Without Flash we'd be living in a world on Animated GIFS or worse yet ASCII art. Sure Flash is proprietary, has a less than optimal IDE, and costs way to much just to make screwy videos, but it sure has brightened up the web. Additionally, Flash has given me more than one much needed side-splitting laugh. Long live FLASH!

Monsanto is the Microsoft of agriculture, so please take their literature with a grain of salt :-) Oh, and speaking of salt, please don't buy any of that Scotts weed killer for the weeds between the cracks in your sidewalks, as their commercials suggest. A bag of salt will do the trick and keep anything from growing back in that spot for years. Cheaper, more effective, and the fewer chemicals the better, right? Ok, so even if you love toxic chemicals, the salt is still cheaper and more effective. Oh, and boiling water, applied correctly, will kill your fire ants... since we're on that whole reducing chemical usage thing... uh, yeah, so I'll drop the valley girl thing now (Two five minute episodes of Pink Five, forgive me) and say...

Thanks for reading :-)

Unless your kids are using Linux, the Shockwave plugin can be found here (Access this link with a Mozilla-compatible browser).

Anyway, there's no indication that this "consortium" would set a standard for plugins in that they would be cross-platform. That would be the ideal situation, otherwise it would not bring many benefits to this effort.

Hoyle games aren't restricted just to casual players. I have Hoyle Casino 2004 (Costco, $15 or so) and love it. While it is unlikely I will have to personally hunt terrorists (or become one myself - CS), re-fight WWII (Day of Defeat), or take on other colorful tanks (bzflag) I do gamble in casinos. Hoyle Casino helps me improve my play though its tutorial mode, where a player is warned before making an incorrect play. It also allowed me to bypass the most boring table game known to man, Let It Ride (Shockwave version here). Once I played that in software I knew there was no way I'd play it at a table, where the action is even slower.

Silly husband, you should know by know that the best advice will come from the women on this board. Gaming I encourage. Impulse tech purchases I don't. (Do those quietly, on your own, with money you squirrel away yourself - and don't point out new equipment until it's been around a month or so... that way your answer can be, "Oh, I've had this forever.")

Dumping your current girlfriend I also don't encourage. But if she likes puzzles at all, there are games out there for her. Check out Shockwave's TextTwist for puzzles. I've been addicted to it for over a year. That way my husband (yeah, I married the guy) can play his games online while I play mine.

Also, if you can get a routine together as others have suggested, it really helps. Especially if it involves a game that you can save at any time, rather than having to restrict yourself to certain levels. The ability to pause in the middle of the game is also strongly advised.

Oh, and those Valentine gifts? The first one he got me was a mouse for my company-supplied laptop, which was nice. The second gift was a USB memory stick, silver, quite pretty enough to wear as jewelry. Bonus points.

The internet killed the Video Star... see it here. Just be sure you have a decent macromedia flash player. This is quite old... an oldie, but a goodie.

I think you're talking about Spy Hunter. We're talking about Spy Hunter .

Automated? Hell no. This would be perfect for the next computer game playing adapted to real life!

Who's up for a game of Tapper?

I SysAdmin a significantly sized heterogeneous network and to my dismay, I often have to set up new Windows machines and/or reinstall Windows machines.

As an aside, in sysadmin-land, the general rule is to reinstall a machine after someone leaves and/or every two-three years max. Any longer than that and the machine's OS & registry gets too clogged up with crap (among other things) that the machine goes so slow and a complete & clean reinstall is the only way to really regain that lost productivity.

Anyhow, the first 10 or so programs I install on these (primarily w2k) machines are as follows:

• Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (if you don't install this from a cd before you put the machine on the network, you will get a virus).
• Windows Critical & OS Updates
• Netscape
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Sophos AV (served over the network via EMLibrary)
• Office 2002/XP including all service packs
• PuTTY
• WinSCP
• Winzip or PowerArchiver
• Shockwave (since I don't allow user admin rights on most clients)
• Google Toolbar (just a convenience)
• Real Player
• ABC Image Browser

1. Fink - get the GNU POSIX environment on!
2. OSXVNC - get somewhere else
3. OO.o
4. Mozilla / Firefox / etc. - and the plugins:
   • Flash
   • Acrobat Reader
   • StumbleUpon toolbar - it's like having your own personalized fark (not that I read fark, but this is probably why)
5. MPlayer - it handles just about all the codecs
6. WS Manager - Multiple desktop manager. I'm too cheap to pay to upgrade from OS 10.2 to 10.3 for Exposé, even with my wife's educational discount.

1. Cygwin - get the POSIX environment on!
2. PuTTY - the only terminal I've found that handles colors and stuff right.
3. TightVNC - get to some other computer
4. OO.o
5. vim - I'm not even a VI guy, but it's fast and has nice hooks into explorer and I'm too lazy to deal with registering TextPad or whatever. JEdit's also nice, but way too slow for casual use... I usually go straight to emacs for that kind of editing.
6. Mozilla / Firefox / etc. - and the plugins:
   • Flash
   • Acrobat Reader
   • StumbleUpon toolbar - it's like having your own personalized fark (not that I read fark, but this is probably why)
7. Winamp - get the groove on
8. MPlayer - it handles just about all the codecs
9. MultiDesk - usable multiple desktops for Windows... like getting that 10% productivity improvement for having dual monitors without having to pay 100% more in displays. If only it had a visual pager...
10. Windows PowerToys - because every little option matters

More on Linux and MacOS X later, I guess...

an FPS in flash : at shockwave.com

Not an FPS, but try Loop, a brilliant and extremely difficult game from gamelab (creators of Blix and Sissyfight2000, among others). The whole game is ABOUT catching butterflies.

You fools! It's Christmas Tauntauns. That's a link to the Trailer, people!

Remember Internet Killed the Video Star?

Here

Just wanted to let you know full screen video commercials, blaring over my computers speakers, downloaded on my bandwidth using software from Macromedia by a company named Unicast has finally driven me to totally remove both Flash and Shockwave from my computer. There is not enough content on the net to make further aggravations of me by your companies products worth it. When enough people uninstall flash then perhaps you will get the message people do not want to be harassed with commercial advertising anywhere but on TV. I will be recommending to every user of my Internet service that they also remove Flash and Shockwave as Adware software along with other commercial serving softwares such as Gator. Macromedia's products have now sunken to their level of respectability in my eyes.

Platformers - Very true... As a computer user, you don't get exposed much to platformer games, but they can be VERY fun... I played Mario 64 on an emulator and thought it was very fun. You just don't see these for the PC (unfortunately).

Driving Games - Not so sure bout this one... I haven't played many driving games on a console. I played Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PC and thought it was AWESOME. I played GTA: Vice City on the PS2 at a friend's house (granted, I was quite drunk on Wild Turkey) and thought the console controls sucked for both driving and gaming. When I got GTA: Vice City on my PC though I thought it rocked!

Puzzle Games - Haven't played these on a console or multiplayer, but there are quite a few fun puzzle games for the PC, a lot of which can be played for free on the shockwave website. Also you should look up the "Smart Games" series (2 and 3 are a blast I know) if interested in some fun mind games.

Fighting Games - I 100% agree here. I haven't found a fun fighting game on my computer since my Commodore 64 with Karate and I can't think of the other, something to do with Bruce Lee I think. Consoles kick total ass in this arena. I spent $250 for a Dreamcast and "Soul Calibur" when it came out because I spent 5 minutes playing it in CompUSA and got hooked. I haven't been dissappointed, I still play it with friends every now and then.

www.macromedia.com -> download shockwave player -> need a different player -> Other Operating Systems (CompuServe) Shockwave Player 8.5.1 -> Download now. Thats the full version.

Being a long time fan of animation, I've enjoyed the new ways that the medium is being used on the web. But what I haven't seen mentioned on here (yet) is Flash's use off-line. My company has created numerous presentaions in Flash and Director, because there's so much more that we can do in those applications than we can in PowerPoint. It's certainly not perfect, but I have enjoyed the ability to create more interesting and in-depth animations in a GUI rather than notepad.

As for some sites that have "good" Flash, I can't speak for anyone else, but here's some spots that I've enjoyed:

NASA's home page. They mixed in the Flash rather well, IMHO.

I don't see it anymore, but Tron 2.0's website used to have a link to their "fCon" mock site, which had been built in Flash (IIRC). This was about as well-put together of a teaser site for a game that I've seen.

Atomfilms's animation section has boatloads of Flash animations, both interactive and non-interactive, and also -- not surprisingly -- some great, some not so great.

Finally, Salon every now and then has some editorial cartoons built in Flash, which, to me, is probably one of the best uses of the application.

Oh, and on my company's Intranet we have several online demos/tutorials/examples that have been created in Flash, which make "distance learning" much easier.

Personally, I enjoy working in Flash because of my background in animation and video. I've seen it used well. and I've seen it used poorly. Just like HTML, it's nothing more than a tool that is only as good as the person who uses it.

Matt

Are you absolutely positively sure you want to use Windows XP Home instead of the much better XP Professional or even better 2000 Professional? I've had nothing but heartache with the PCs that my family members have bought that have XP Home on them...

Otherwise, people have already suggested Mozilla and a few have suggested Mozilla Firebird, which I myself think is a far superior mail product. Mozilla Thunderbird is what I use for mail at home right now, but it's an acquired taste.

Ad-Aware is indispensable. Every PC should have a copy of it.

For image viewing Irfan View is probably the greatest thing in the world.

You'll of course need WinZip and you'll need the DiVX codec and unfortunately you'll also need Quicktime and Shockwave for numerous braindead (and not so braindead) websites along with the latest Java VM. Besides that, the rest is left up to personal taste. I'd suggest a copy of MS Office because OpenOffice makes me want to gnaw my arm off but then again that's also partially because I can buy Office on student discount at the University Bookstore.
Oh, and get a BitTorrent client from somewhere.

Personally, I think Bounty Trail is one of the best star wars fan films.

As far as comedy goes Pink Five is the funniest fanfilm. It ranks right up there with Troops.

I dont know why duality was posted, its almost three years old.

Pink Five

I think it's a little more recent.

Wait a minute... why should I pay to play AOL's single player games in the AIM environment when I can go to Shockwave, Yahoo, or any of the other million free online game sites that support single and multiplayer gaming? I can understand AOL wanting to squeeze as much profit as they can from their IM service, but this seems like a foolish way to burn money from the consumer's point of view.

Am I missing something or Shockwave has been ported to other OS-s(besides Win) since the last time I checked??? I agree that .swf may be *EVENTUALLY* cross-platform with the appropriate plug-ins, but Shockwave, wtF??

Yes you have been missing something. Here you go. Man I could not deal with Linux if I could not get my swf pr0n and homestarrunner! :)

At a time when everything on seems to be a sequel it would be nice to have something original on the silver screen, ....

Judging from what I saw on the trailer, the film doesn't look like a sequel to any existing film -- looks just like another amateurish independent feature shot on mini-DV. Personally I don't need another BlairWitch to come along. I rather go atomfilms and watch shorts.

• Atom Films
• IFilm
• TheForce.net fanfilms
• Filmwatcher

• Recommendations:
• More (Brilliant)
• Fan made Star Trek epsiode (Hilarious!)

True, seems like there would be more stuff out there, but there are some great ones like these to keep your eyes open for.

You're very welcome.

No.. Because Internet Killed the Video Star

http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/joust

I hear that those jawas are the worst...

I'm glad I could find it!

I'm just going to have to go with the mob here and say that I really don't like flash. Like most of the world I'm stuck on dialup and flash take forever to download. I mean some sites will use it as an intro but have an nice little URL saying "Skip Intro". That I can live with. Its the ones that don't that annoy me and I will move on if I see that.

One thing flash is good for however is for things like "Frog in a Blender" at Atomfilms. However only if people don't send it to you via email.

Email is not for transporting large files. FTP is

Rus

Maybe they will predict that NetHack will die as well.

These games are just being published by smaller developers. The ones that can't afford the extraordinate fees to buy a chip so that there programs work on the consoles. These games are usually more affordable as well.

Check out some of these sites:

Game House

Pop Cap Games

Llamasoft

Shockwave Games

While you're waiting for it to go back up, check out Wallace & Gromit's Crackling Contraptions, especially if you've never seen any of the duo's shorts before. (Beware, AtomFilms only use the Windows Media Player format now.)

Wallace and Gromit also have an official site, available from the Aardman Animation site. -Mr. Fusion

You can even use Macromedia Flash for 2D which is a lot easier for developing good looking arcade games that you see on a lot of internet game sites. Macromedia Director using the Shockwave Player can be used for 3D games. Take a look at the website www.shockwave.com. They are interested in getting game ideas/designs. I think it's interesting that their number one game played daily is a jigsaw puzzle. Seems to me that people still like those oldy, but goody games.