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Gravity waves depend on the stability of the fluid (in this case, the atmosphere). If the fluid is unstable, the displaced air will accelerate away from its original location. It's the difference between a wave (stable) and a parcel (unstable). In meteorology, we usually discuss stability in terms of parcels because, although imperfect, the assumptions of parcel theory are close enough to be useful in explaining a lot of processes in the atmosphere.

For those who are genuinely interested, here are a couple of links that explain gravity waves:
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/64/
http://www.physics.uwo.ca/~whocking/p103/grav_wav.html

Both links, of course, use parcels to help explain gravity waves. The second link is more detailed and introduces the related concept of the Brunt-Vaisala frequency (the period of a gravity wave oscillation; it is infinite or NaN for neutral stability and not purely real for unstable conditions), which is useful in meteorology.

Would you like to contribute to the discussion, or are you just here to troll me, as your most recent post implies?

Just like Robin Hood and Friar Tuck?

Cranial capacity (and IQ by extension) has been correlated to sex and race. And, yes, the scientists were frequently called sexists and racists.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Rushton1992.pdf

Nope. Compare:

http://palaeos.com/tellurobiot...

http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann/r...

Yeah, but that was cheating. The Chinese had no idea there were TWENTY Canadians up there!

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/personal/humour/General_Audience/Red%20Rory%20o'%20th'%20Glen.html

Red Rory o' th' Glen

The story is told of the English Regiment marching through
the Highlands of Scotland (when English Regiments were wont to
do such). As they passed through a very narrow defile, a voice
mocked them from above.

"I'm Red Rory of the Glen," the voice called. "And I challenge you!
Send up your best man."

The Colonel of the Regiment looked up to the hilltop and beheld the
BIGGEST Scot he had ever seen. His kilt-girthed form must have stood
7 foot and the Claymore in his hand would dwarf most men.

Again the challenge echoed across the hills. "I'm Red Rory of the Glen
and I challenge you! If anyone amongst you would dare to call himself
``Champion'', then send him up!"

The Colonel, unwilling to let this challenge to the flower of English
Soldiery pass unanswered, called over his Adjunct. "Major," he seethed,
"send up the Regiment's champion. I want this Scot's head!"

And so the Champion went forth. Up the hill he strode, confidence
in every step, to do battle with this Challenger. The Challenger
roared his mirth and stepped over the crest, out of site; the Champion
followed. Soon the sounds of battle rolled over the hill and the
Regiment waited. And then, THUMP Thump thump.... A head! Rolling down
the hill came a head. And then, from the hilltop, came the rumble of
the Challenger's laughter. "I'm Red Rory of the Glen! Again I challenge
you! Send up your best Squad!"

"Major," shouted the Colonel! "This cannot be stood! Send up the best
Squad." Up the hill forged the Squad, then over the crest to face the
Challenger. Soon the sounds of battle were heard again and then THUMP
THUMP THUMP Thump Thump thump! The heads of the squad came rolling down
the hill.

"I'm Red Rory of the Glen," came the voice, "and I challenge you! Send up
your best company!"

Rage contorted the Colonel's face as he screamed, "Major! Send up
Company C. I want that man's head and I want it now!" "Yes, sir," was
the only response, and soon Company C was advancing up the hill. Again,
from over the crest, came the sounds of terrible battle but this time,
floating above them, came the sound of the Challenger's laughter!

Slowly, the sounds of battle died away but still the laughter continued.
And then, from the top of the hill, came a avalanche of heads to pile
up around the Colonel's feet.

"I'm Red Rory of the Glen, and I challenge you! I have beaten the best
you have to send, now come yourself!"

"Major," said the Colonel, his rage now turned icy cold. "Take the
Regiment up that hill and destroy him! I don't want anyone to return
without his head!"

So, in good form, the Regiment marched up the hill and out of the sight
of the Colonel waiting at the bottom of the hill. This time the battle
raged for hours. Then as the sun sank into the hills, the Adjunct came
hurtling down the hill, his uniform disarrayed and splattered with
blood. His eyes spoke books of terror. "Colonel," he screamed, his
terror edging his voice with panic, "RUN, it's a trap. There's two
of them!"

http://www.uwo.ca/its/brain/iqmyth/Hampshire%20Owen%20IQ%20Neuron.pdf

Paul Wiegert (http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~wiegert/) did some of the work 15-odd years ago. Some of the earlier work is online at http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~wiegert/papers/1997AJ.113.1445.pdf.

The perpendicular line in the first animation represents the asteroid's position relative to the Earth, as the Earth moves. So, although it's traveling at approximately a 45-degree angle relative to Earth's movement as it passes, it's going enough faster than the Earth that its angular velocity along the direction of Earth's orbit is about the same as the Earth's, so from an Earth perspective it passes perpendicular to our orbit.

Try this experiment: take a pen in each hand, and hold your left hand stationary while you drive a vertical line going up with your right hand, from the bottom of the paper to the top. You'll have a dot and a straight line - that will look like the animated image where the Earth doesn't move. Now have someone pull the paper to the right while you do this (or move both hands to the left in unison), and you'll get a horizontal line for your left hand, and a diagonal line for your right, which will represent a small portion of the second image centered around where the asteroid crosses the Earth's orbit.

Relative orbits are a fascinating subject (for some people). One of my pet projects is a simple gravity simulator, to which I added the ability to render relative orbits, so you can see those weird kidney bean shapes around Lagrange Points. See Earth coorbital asteroid 2002 AA29 and Near-Earth asteroid 3753 Cruithne for some interesting examples.

The perpendicular line in the first animation represents the asteroid's position relative to the Earth, as the Earth moves. So, although it's traveling at approximately a 45-degree angle relative to Earth's movement as it passes, it's going enough faster than the Earth that its angular velocity along the direction of Earth's orbit is about the same as the Earth's, so from an Earth perspective it passes perpendicular to our orbit.

Try this experiment: take a pen in each hand, and hold your left hand stationary while you drive a vertical line going up with your right hand, from the bottom of the paper to the top. You'll have a dot and a straight line - that will look like the animated image where the Earth doesn't move. Now have someone pull the paper to the right while you do this (or move both hands to the left in unison), and you'll get a horizontal line for your left hand, and a diagonal line for your right, which will represent a small portion of the second image centered around where the asteroid crosses the Earth's orbit.

Relative orbits are a fascinating subject (for some people). One of my pet projects is a simple gravity simulator, to which I added the ability to render relative orbits, so you can see those weird kidney bean shapes around Lagrange Points. See Earth coorbital asteroid 2002 AA29 and Near-Earth asteroid 3753 Cruithne for some interesting examples.

Meanwhile, the military are seeing multiple airbursts yearly (from http://meteor.uwo.ca/~pbrown/usaf.html I'm seeing around one event a month, on a rough average) in the multi-Hiroshima range of energy release.

This does not inspire me with confidence that an incoming bolide will be detected as such. It is possible that such a detection would occur ; the probability of such a detection occuring may be increasing ; but I don't think we're "there" yet.

On the other hand, the census of potentially regionally-devastating NEOs (Near-Earth Objects) is steadily improving, so for events that are likely to kill billions, we're getting some better odds of knowing about it in advance, even if we don't (yet) have anything we can do about it. But this census has a severe limitation : it's focussed on objects in regular planet-like orbits, and therefore on objects near the ecliptic. But we also know that there is another class of potential impactor - the long-period and single-apparition comets, and they can come from literally any direction. Which makes spotting them before the event rather more challenging.

I'm not an expert on Android, and don't really use it much, but since no-one else has answered...

Android doesn't use X, it uses the framebuffer and as far as I'm aware there isn't an X server for it (but I could be wrong on that), so you won't be able to forward X apps directly to it, however you can use VNC for remote desktop. For the Linux distros that run in a chroot on Android I believe they all use Xvnc which presents as an X server to applications, but a VNC server to a VNC client.

Anyone have a link to the actual study, so we can find out what "better than chance" really means? 40% accuracy? 35% accuracy? Either could be significantly better than chance (33%), but neither shows much promise on the "I'm going to read your mind" front.

Unrelated, but why did slashdot decide to change the UI again? It's even less responsive now than their last change!

http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/stories/2011/June/brain_research_predicts_premeditated_actions.pdf

Speaking as seebs, who I actually am, I think this addon is a brilliant example of the importance of making a threat concrete and specific in order for people to understand it. I, for one, welcome our new us overlords.

Consider:

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Folklore/Robin%20Hood%20And%20Friar%20Tuck.html

This is not a new technique. This is not a bad thing, particularly. And compared to the severity of the problem, I think it's pretty tastefully understated.

And again, this is actually seebs. Really!

Umm... not to devalue their achievement, but The University of Western Ontario's already got one of those: http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/'3_little_pigs'_facility_eager_to_blow_the_house_down_20051021434073/ It's been operational for several years now.

$0.66 / GB / month, provided by ITS (central IT) at the University where I work, including backups with great historical snapshots. Here's their internal pricing: http://www.uwo.ca/its/services.pdf

http://www.astrazeneca.ca/en/research/
http://www.bmscanada.ca/bms/randd/pri/
http://www.lib.uwo.ca/programs/companyinformationcanada/connlab.html

There are lies, damned lies, and Fox News.

I'm sure, if you try really hard, you can find all kinds of alternative explanations. Unfortunately, when the same races show the same characteristics all over the world, under all kinds of environments, Occam's razor, as well as the bulk of research on the the matter, tells us those characteristics are at least to some degree heritable.

Sorry, but there's been plenty of research done on this topic, and your spew of liberal talking points, have been refuted a dozen times over. Give it up.

I've managed to get on the web site now. It isn't a whiz-bang web site with all sorts of awesome web features, but it does the job. Their content is a little slim but I assume this project is in the early stages. It appears that they have partnered with in some way with the University of Western Ontario (Enrollment: 30,000+) and the Oakland Univeristy (Enrollment: 20,000+). Now we aren't talking Harvard here but we aren't talking University of Phoenix, either.

Yes, The project is new. We are at the stage where we are looking for volunteers to help.

And, just so you (well, all of the rest of you) know, Western has one of the best Planetary Sciences departments in Canada, and are the first node outside of the US in NASA's Lunar Research Network. (Here I go, Killing another page. - http://clrn.uwo.ca/) We also work with University of North Dakota, who have a great deal of space experience.

Their business partners.....I don't know about them. I tried to go to one web site and got the firefox "Get me the hell out of here, this page got jacked" message.

I'd like to know which one. We'll fix that.

It should also be noted that their Web Master is currently operating out of the Sahara Desert. I'm guessing this site is new and she hasn't had much time to work on it. Not to mention, hey! If I'm donate money to a project that is supposed to sent people to space, I'd sure as hell rather them use the money to you know, send people to space rather than make their web site look all pretty with tons of Flash animation and the like.

Well, thank you. We also need volunteers, but that is painfully obvious right now. (Like someone who can either provide the web space, or help us setup the servers across multiple links... :)

"Don't worry :) - by Foredecker (161844) * on Saturday January 23, @08:05PM (#30874292) Homepage

Per my subject-line above, & quoting you? Well...

"What, me worry?" - Alfred Neumann

(LOL!)

Sure, ok: I can concede that @ times? Yes, I might have come on a WEE bit strong, but I have been getting trolled here by some real (imo @ least) "ne'er-do-wells", & especially this week...

Like most folks I think, I also don't like seeing it directed others' way either, unless the brought it on themselves, & FIRST.

(Usually, I just read it & decide who I think is correct or not, but sometimes? When the person's pretty cool on top of it & is being attacked?? I cut loose on the attacker (it's doing them a favor in a way IF you think about it)... that's all).

PRACTICAL EXAMPLES THEREOF RECENTLY DIRECTED MY WAY? SURE... see links below

(AND, it goes on ALL the time here w/ these "Pro-*NIX" zealots directed my way, OR anyone's way that speaks their mind about why they think WINDOWS or other products are better than the REAL 'fanboys' here favs are!)

----

Mostly on things where I point out that Windows has some great points vs. *NIX variants for instance -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519330&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=30853490 OR http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519330&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=30859018

OR

Where I felt that Opera was FF's superior -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=30851208#30852888

OR

How HOSTS files are actually SUPERIOR to AdBlock -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1512306&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=30782898 (& how they work TOGETHER, for better "layered security" overall actually)...

----

Those points here, as-per-usual, just got me 'attacked by the trolls', as-per-usual... even though I posted VALID points.

Not complaining, because VALID CRITICAL DEBATE IS FUN, and you get stronger via VALID CRITICISMS (1lb. of valid critique > 1,000 lbs. of unjustified praise & all that), but not when it comes down to calling others names & what-not or otherwise attempting to destroy them via lies & b.s.!

(Yes, @ times, it does "get to you" somewhat (like fleas on a dog, an annoyance)).

Now - I don't MIND it when they have valid points OR critiques they put my way, I either get STRONGER for it, or stand corrected, because I can "err" like any human (rarely, lol) & "to err IS human"!

HOWEVER - I don't like name-tossing (& I only really do it, when attacked first, as "OFFENSE IS THE BEST DEFENSE") & I usually put out valid rebuttals vs. their b.s. too, everytime, w/ concrete & verifiable facts USUALLY... what do I see in response then? Well, I call it "geek angst", & usually in the form of "adhominem attacks".

ANYHOW/ANYWAYS:

So, "that all said & aside"?

----

THIS ONE HERE'S FOR ALL YOU TROLLS OUT THERE ON /. & OTHERWISE - It's dedicated to Jay Little & Jeremy Reimer of arstechnica especially (in my best "radio DJ voice", lol):

This man said it better than I EVER COULD on how I feel about those types:

http://publish.uwo.ca/~asuksi/Achi

An hour of searching revealed these clues to the origin of the classic gaming name Zork. Here's a 2001 interview with Dave Lebling, one of the devs from Zork and the early days of Infocom posted on Adventure Gaming Classic http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/171/:

Q: There had been numerous speculations regarding the origin of the word "Zork." For the record, who among the "Infocom Imps" came up with this name? Where is the exact origin of the word "Zork"?

A: I'm pretty sure it was Marc Blank who first applied the word to the game. The word itself was current as an exclamation or nonsense word (like "foo" and "bar") around the lab. Programs in the ITS operating system were had to have six-letter or fewer names, and it was pretty common to use a placeholder name when working on something new. I think Marc used "TS ZORK" as the placeholder, and it stuck.
I think "Frobozz" was similar, of a variant of "foobar." Bruce Daniels was, I think, largely responsible for its ubiquity in the early parts of Zork.

We briefly changed the name of the game to "Dungeon" (which was my bad idea, I sheepishly admit), then changed it back after TSR (the D&D people) threatened us with a lawsuit over it. MIT's lawyers squashed them like bugs but we decided we liked "Zork" better anyway. The widely distributed Fortran version of Zork was written during the period when the game was called Dungeon, which is why that version is often called Dungeon.

Also here's a further clue in "The History of Zork", as recounted by Tim Anderson http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/NZT/zorkhist.html:

"...Marc, Bruce, and I sat down to write a real game. We began by drawing some maps, inventing some problems, and arguing a lot about how to make things work. Bruce still had some thoughts of graduating, thus preferring design to implementation, so Marc and I spent the rest of Dave's vacation in the terminal room implementing the first version of Zork. Zork, by the way, was never really named. "Zork" was a nonsense word floating around; it was usually a verb, as in "zork the fweep," and may have been derived from "zorch." ("Zorch" is another nonsense word implying total destruction.) We tended to name our programs with the word "zork" until they were ready to be installed on the system."

Anyone got the email address for Marc Blank? Undoubtedly the absolute truth lies with him.

Perhaps they should add some disclaimers, just to be completely sure.

Ha ha!! There were so many of those, it's impossible to list them all.

The best, and most popular were the Infocom games, where failure to light a torch, lantern, match, etc. would put you in danger of being eaten by a grue (a theme that spanned the whole lineup, regardless of genre).

You can find the Infocom games here:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3398113/Infocom_Universe_Bootleg

Pirated, but it's very hard to get the actual copies of the games these days, and the items that came packaged with the game were essential in completing those games (and also very enjoyable to read).

While the link above may not sit well with you, since it's to a torrent site, the original Zork trilogy has been released as freeware, and you can find them here:

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/

Text based interactive fiction was very popular on the old 8bit computers (one reason was that it was easier to port to the multiple different home computers around at that time) and there are too many different ones to be able to identify the game you played. The Infocom games are possibly the cream of the crop in this area.

Also, interactive fiction is still alive and you can get all sorts of great games here:

http://ifarchive.org/

Some of these are better than other ones, so be sure to read the ratings and reviews. A few of them match or exceed the quality present in the old Infocom games.

"I suspect we (as knowledge workers) will be learning some hard lessons in the next few years."

I don't expect the /. community to take kindly to this, but I am going to suggest you look at Cyber Marx: Cycles and Circles of struggle in High Technology Capitalism by Nick Dyer-Witheford here.

A gem from his book: "One aspect of this process is a surge in the commodification of cultural and communicational forms. Advertising, design, marketing, fashion, and entertainment become a primary focus of commercial activity. Consequently, the distinction--valid for earlier stages of capitalist developmentâ"between an economic base and cultural superstructure collapses. Capitalised culture envelops all aspects of the social in an omnipresent wrap of imagery whose multiple surfaces extinguish material reference or sense of history. Subjectivity becomes, as postmodern theory suggests, increasingly decentered and unstable--experiencing a condition not so much of alienation as fragmentation, induced by the fluctuating stimuli of electronic media and the malleable spaces of commercial architecture and urban design."

Sound Familiar?

Even if you find Marxism repulsive (although you do use the term "knowledge workers" in a way that convinces me this isn't entirely the case,) Dyer-Witheford's work should not be ignored if you are working, living, or breathing in the beginning of the 21st century

"Warning: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them."

there are tools to help parallelize code:
http://www.stats.uwo.ca/faculty/yu/Rmpi/
http://www.sfu.ca/~sblay/R/snow.html

You mean Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment?

Credit where credit's due:
http://www.physics.uwo.ca/~harwood/humor13.txt

Although I had heard about their Virtual Universe product and other things.

It sounds a lot like the beginning of the old Infocom game "Trinity," where you start off in Kensington Gardens in London, and if you don't figure out a way out of the park, you get vaporized by an atomic blast. I never got very far, but it's a hell of a way to start a game: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/trinity.html

Sorry MsGeek, "This is the secret to why immigrant Asian children have been outperforming Anglo children in school." WRONG! This SciAm article is one more example of "scientists" searching for "facts" which make us feel good. In other words, bad science. Here are the real facts: http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/ http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf Intelligence is mostly genetic. Why wouldn't it be? Get over it. I'm anticipating more Slashdot bad karma due to posting an inconvenient truth, as usual. If James Watson can be fired for speaking the truth, what's a little more bad karma here?

I know it is a bit off topic, but seeing as we are discusing confinement, I would love to hear someone comment on Leslie Woods' (a late mathematician from Oxford) equations. Basically, from what I understand from the Nerenberg lecture he gave, he claimed that the majority of the gap between what the equations predict and what is observed in reality is not due predominantly to missing turbulence, but rather to a missing non-turbulence term.

Unfortunately, from what I understand of what he said, despite his corrected equations predicting very closely what has actually been observed in practise, and turbulence approaches not predicting anything very well beyond their degrees of freedom, the current community (or at least a key subset of it with a lot invested in the turbulence approaches) is uninterested in hearing anything more about it or allowing the work to be published. Apparently they forstall under such issues as demanding it be derived from Boltzmann's equations, despite his objections that this cannot be done due to the fundamental assumptions underlying Boltzmann's equations.

Personally, although I do not have the physics background to comment on the derivation, I must admit that, if the equations are indeed doing a much better job of matching up with what is being observed, I am quite bothered to hear this. I am reminded of such issues as those between Laplace and Fourier regarding the latter's (seminal) work on the Fourier series and the former's repeated objections to it or anything to do with it. Really, shouldn't the final test always be how well it does in the lab? I hate to think of all that great plasma engineering that is being help up over lack of ability to really model these phenomenons well in the lab.

Now that is a vintage computer. I'm pretty long in the tooth, but I'm not old enough to have experience on a non-byte architecture. Unless you count CompuServe (the pre-internet version) and playing Zork on ITS.

This site has all of the Invisiclues hint booklets.

(If you mean the key that your ex-workers took with you before you started playing Infidel, not Trinity, you should probably try smashing the lock with something heavy like a pick axe, shovel, or blackened rock :-)

Never heard of New London but London Ontario is the location of Western Ontario University http://www.london.ca/ http://www.uwo.ca/

There is actually a fairly large community for games similar to this in the English-speaking world, where it is known as interactive fiction (or by it's old-fashioned name, text adventure). Infocom produced some of the most famous games in this genre, including Zork and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but there's now a very active community of (mostly) amateurs creating these games just for fun and to explore the artistic possibilities of interactivity in storytelling.

Most interactive fiction these days is purely text based, as that can be easily created by one or two people who have more experience with writing and programming than graphics and multimedia, and doesn't require a large budget or time investment, though you do occasionally see games with graphics. It has become common to write these games to run on a virtual machine, so that they can be run on all kinds of different platforms. The two most common virtual machines are the Z-machine, which has actually been reverse-engineered from Infocom's virtual machine and thus is compatible with most of their old games and tons of old computers, and the TADS VM. Likewise, there are two common authoring environments, which target these machines; Inform targets the Z-machine, and TADS targets, well, the TADS VM. Both have recently released innovative new systems; Inform 7 uses a natural language syntax (similar to the natural language input that controls the game), and TADS 3 is designed to be aggressively object-oriented.

For anyone who is new to these sorts of games, there are a few games that have been designed specifically for beginners. I would recommend Andrew Plotkin's Dreamhold or Emily Short's City of Secrets. You can find lots more games, along with capsule reviews of some of them, at Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive. In order to play these games, you'll need an interpreter for the virtual machine. On Windows or Unix/Linux I would recommend Gargoyle, as it's an interpreter that has nice typography and supports many different virtual machines. On the Mac, I would recommend either Zoom (for Z-machine, with support for some other interpreters in beta) or Spatterlight (which supports many different machines).

There is also a large community interested in developing, playing, criticizing, and discussing these games. Some of the best places to go for discussion are the interactive fiction newsgroups, rec.arts.int-fiction (for discussion of interactive fiction programming, game design, and topics about the field as a whole) and rec.games.int-fiction (for announcement and discussion of particular games). There is also an interactive fiction MUD (mostly a fancy chat-room), several contests for developing the best interactive fiction, plenty of reviews and other articles online. There are several good beginner's guides to the format as well.

Anyhow, I thought that since this review made it sounds like interactive novels were mostly a Japanese thing, I thought I'd point out a bit of what is available in the English speaking world. As I mentioned, these are mostly text based, both due to the preferences of the authors and lack of budget, unlike the graphical Jap

Really? You're unfamiliar with near earth asteroids?

OK. Let's start with the Wikipedia reference which mentions that there are asteroids for which it would take less effort to reach than the moon.

Then here's a website discussing come co-orbitals, which are pretty close to the concept of "Earth-orbiting asteroid".

These are, of course, a lot further away than the moon. But they're not that much more difficult to reach and it's certainly a lot easier to take stuff away from them as compared to the moon. It just takes longer. For a lot of what people are considering there is no reason to transport stuff back down a gravity well. We want the stuff at the top of earth-moon gravity well(s) where these asteroids and material already are.

It appears that in the article he is using the term "Interactive Storytelling" to mean what is more commonly called "Interactive Fiction".

Basically.. it's text based adventure games. They stopped being commercially produced about 20 years ago. However, due to the ease of creating them, there are many freeware games out there. If you're really interested in seeing what the big deal is about, I'd suggest giving Zork a spin -- it has aged rather gracefully.

The article is frustratingly vague, but it basically seems to be about making it easier to produce better interactive fiction. While IF is currently easy to put out, it tends to be pretty bad due to horrid language parsing.

You refer to the Ford Nucleon. It was designed, but not built. Unlike this monstrosity, which was partially completed.

Actually it's not a big deal, the source code for Frotz is freely available and I have copies of all of the required data for each game. My only concern is that the scratch 'n' sniff card that came with Leather Goddesses might no longer work.

1. A Mind Forever Voyaging

Reminds me of A Mind Forever Voyaging...

Storyline is what disturbs. Let's get back to telling real stories.

Such as Infocom's Trinity (about time travel and nuclear war), and A Mind Forever Voyaging: Starts off with the mildly disturbing premise of what it's like to be a "brain in a vat, experiencing a computer simulation". Continues with the extremely disturbing unfolding of what happens when (because reality's just a computer simulation), the simulation extrapolates social/political consequences of what happens when one plugs in a certain Senator's "plan" to save the economy... and what happens to the brain in the vat when it starts to learn things about the "plan" that the dear Senator might not like.

AMFV was probably the most disturbing interactive fiction title that Infocom ever released. (Because we're arguably still playing it - you and me reading this - today.)

Storyline is what disturbs. Let's get back to telling real stories.

Such as Infocom's Trinity (about time travel and nuclear war), and A Mind Forever Voyaging: Starts off with the mildly disturbing premise of what it's like to be a "brain in a vat, experiencing a computer simulation". Continues with the extremely disturbing unfolding of what happens when (because reality's just a computer simulation), the simulation extrapolates social/political consequences of what happens when one plugs in a certain Senator's "plan" to save the economy... and what happens to the brain in the vat when it starts to learn things about the "plan" that the dear Senator might not like.

AMFV was probably the most disturbing interactive fiction title that Infocom ever released. (Because we're arguably still playing it - you and me reading this - today.)

Infocom did more with text inside of five years than the entire first person shooter genre has done in its lifetime.

My personal favorite was "Suspended." You were in a cryogenic state, only able to interact with remote robots to bring a group of out-of-whack computers into working shape again. Each robot had its own abilities and senses -- they rolled or walked, one could smell, and so on. The puzzles made you work at them, and this was one game where the packaging and manual and so on really helped and were necessary. I remember the laminated map vividly. It was the complete package.

The gaming industry should be looking to people like those Infocom writers and Dani Bunten as its prophets. Instead we get John Carmack opinion in nauseating detail about the latest graphic cards.

(Dang kids! Get off my lawn!)