Slashdot Mirror

Orange is the best color.

It's the maintenance man. He knows I like orange.

Also, and on-topic, Deus Ex is a must-play game.

Yeah, what evildoers, giving Russia a slap on the wrist for the petty offense of invading and taking over part of another country that had insolently decided to no longer be under Russia's thumb. Next up, the evil tyrants in American and Europe will send Putin a sternly worded letter! Maybe he won't even get a Christmas card from Biden this year!

See: US to sanction Russia over annexation of Virginia

Considering they called it a Robo Brain, I'd say yes.

That would be the superior show Inspector Spacetime.

I can see it now, a comic book super villain and his swarm of programmable insects.

You mean, like this guy?

Sounds a lot like http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Bra...

http://irwinallentvseries.wiki...
"Don and John come out of the ship asking about carbon tetrachloride. Smith says he uses it to remove stains--he's used it and left the top off. John asks him if he has any thoughts besides his immediate needs---without the carbon tetrachloride they will lose their food supply. They use it as food preservation (NOTE: how is a mystery---it is highly toxic). They will have to eat only non-perishable items and now face a food shortage (what about the hydroponic garden?). ..." :-)

Will Robinson saved the day on that episode, but he had to come all the way to Earth via an alien matter transporter to do it.

Kidding aside, you make a great point!

Did this solar-thermal power plan happen to be called HELIOS One?

Seriously, wasn't Helios One powered by targeting mirrors and built by Ivanpah? As I recall from the end that quest, had any birds been alive they would've been in for one hell of a scare when the plant was activated.

So...does this mean the bird thing is just a cover-up while the government installs a secret weapon in there?

We must all say F-U-S-I-O-N-H-O. The timing has to be precise, and our index fingers have to carefully touch our neighbours' fingers in an exact dance. You can learn more about this here :)

Yeah, but the guards handing him over are all beautiful naked blond women, right?

Assange Consented To Be Extradited, Says British Home Secretary

Reminds me of the Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses :)

This is already been done: http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_machine

AC wrote: "Based on what I've seen, I just assume that the AI from that Eagle Eye movie has taken over the NSA. Why else would they want to collect a mountain of data that no "person" is going to access?"

Hadn't know of that movie; thanks for mentioning it (partial spoiler below):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
"Ethan monitored the DOD's top secret intelligence-gathering supercomputer, the Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst (ARIIA). ... Both groups learn that after ARIIA's recommendation was ignored and a botched operation in Balochistan resulted in the deaths of American citizens, ARIIA concluded that "to prevent more bloodshed, the executive branch must be removed." Acting on behalf of "We the People", and citing the Declaration of Independence ("whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"), ARIIA is acting in compliance with Section 216 of the Patriot Act which "allows us to circumvent probable cause in the face of a national security threat, in this case, the chain of command itself." ..."

Another related story I first saw mentioned on slashdot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
"Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids."

Although aspects of our current social systems are heading that way with or without AI anyway... Example:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
"We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats."

See also Marshall Brain's "Manna" sci-fi story about computer systems taking over. James P. Hogan goes into that in his sci-fi novel "Two Faces of Tomorrow". Two episodes of Eureka have Carter's Smart House take over, one of those times in order to prevent injuries, which includes mentally reprogramming people who might disagree with it.
http://eureka.wikia.com/wiki/H...
http://eureka.wikia.com/wiki/L...

Around 1984, I sat in on an undergrad course by Stephen Cohen in Soviet Politics. After one class where he mentioned the potential liberating power of personal computers in a USSR where every typewriter was licensed and every photocopier guarded, I suggested that ultimately personal computers could analyze what people wrote on them, looking for keywords, and report on the user. I had not envisioned networks doing that which is more what we actually got, but the effect is much the same given almost anything significant related to social change is done by communicating groups of people. Back to the point through, you don't really need need AIs to analyze massive data looking for keywords or phrases or to make statistical inferences about patterns of writings or commercial transactions. AIs might be useful, but regular software can do much of that already. You also don't have to flag everything to have a massive chilling effect that upholds the status quo.

But surveillance is still a different point than

AC wrote: "Based on what I've seen, I just assume that the AI from that Eagle Eye movie has taken over the NSA. Why else would they want to collect a mountain of data that no "person" is going to access?"

Hadn't know of that movie; thanks for mentioning it (partial spoiler below):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
"Ethan monitored the DOD's top secret intelligence-gathering supercomputer, the Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst (ARIIA). ... Both groups learn that after ARIIA's recommendation was ignored and a botched operation in Balochistan resulted in the deaths of American citizens, ARIIA concluded that "to prevent more bloodshed, the executive branch must be removed." Acting on behalf of "We the People", and citing the Declaration of Independence ("whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"), ARIIA is acting in compliance with Section 216 of the Patriot Act which "allows us to circumvent probable cause in the face of a national security threat, in this case, the chain of command itself." ..."

Another related story I first saw mentioned on slashdot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
"Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids."

Although aspects of our current social systems are heading that way with or without AI anyway... Example:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
"We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats."

See also Marshall Brain's "Manna" sci-fi story about computer systems taking over. James P. Hogan goes into that in his sci-fi novel "Two Faces of Tomorrow". Two episodes of Eureka have Carter's Smart House take over, one of those times in order to prevent injuries, which includes mentally reprogramming people who might disagree with it.
http://eureka.wikia.com/wiki/H...
http://eureka.wikia.com/wiki/L...

Around 1984, I sat in on an undergrad course by Stephen Cohen in Soviet Politics. After one class where he mentioned the potential liberating power of personal computers in a USSR where every typewriter was licensed and every photocopier guarded, I suggested that ultimately personal computers could analyze what people wrote on them, looking for keywords, and report on the user. I had not envisioned networks doing that which is more what we actually got, but the effect is much the same given almost anything significant related to social change is done by communicating groups of people. Back to the point through, you don't really need need AIs to analyze massive data looking for keywords or phrases or to make statistical inferences about patterns of writings or commercial transactions. AIs might be useful, but regular software can do much of that already. You also don't have to flag everything to have a massive chilling effect that upholds the status quo.

But surveillance is still a different point than

Off the bat, IAABNQAL (I am almost but not quite a lawyer, took the bar but no results until Oct.) so take this with as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate. This isn't legal advice, etc etc.

The short answer is, this is pretty much unsettled law, but there is good reason to believe that the knowledge and status of the caller (i.e. business vs individual) would matter. The Wiki article cites Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006) for the proposition that, at least if one caller is in CA, its stricter two-party law still applies to out-of-state callers trying to (legally, in their own jurisdictions) record phone calls with CA residents. However, that is too broad a generalization.

The defendant in that case was Smith Barney, a national brokerage (corporation) with independently sufficient contacts for CA to exercise personal jurisdiction over it anyway ("SSB 'systematically and continually does business' in California, and SSB does not deny that it maintains numerous offices and does extensive business in this state"). SSB was conversing with clients in CA (two-party), but making and receiving calls in GA (one-party), and the CA Supreme Court found that there were compelling reasons not to let a company doing business in CA escape the CA privacy law, much less a business with offices in CA that could conveniently "outsource" its calls to other states (pretty much gutting the law). On a technical point of law, this was also a ruling reversing the trial court's dismissal of plaintiff's case, merely allowing the case to proceed and not addressing many of SSB's factual arguments (like "hey, this isn't what the legislature meant by 'confidential communication'").

However, look at it from the out-of-state consumer perspective and everything changes. Lets make the easy assumption that you don't have any presence, property, or business dealings in the two-party state of CA. First, from a personal jurisdiction standpoint, if someone from an unknown location (oops it's CA, gotcha!) is calling you in your one-party state, you have not established minimum contacts with California because you did not purposefully avail yourself of CA's laws—you didn't contact CA on purpose!

What if you know they're calling from CA? You're hardly directing any activity at CA by answering the phone. What if you're the one making the call and it's an 800 number to a destination unknown? This happens all the time, on the same day I'll make three calls to customer service and get centers in Illinois, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. Well, you still haven't directed your action at CA if the call winds up there. In all these cases, it would be nigh-impossible for a CA business to make a case against you, because you (almost certainly) didn't establish minimum contacts with California such that the CA courts could exercise its long-arm jurisdiction against you. Even if you had a contract with this company with a CA forum selection clause, it would be a huge stretch; you consented to CA jurisdiction to settle disputes over that contract, you didn't say "I submit to the laws and jurisdiction of California for everything ever."

What if you're a consumer in a one-party state, knowingly calling a number in a two-party state, to discuss business you have with that company? Well, I would wager you're still in the clear, and in fact I record a significant number of customer service calls as I sit in my one-party state, regardless of where the representative is located or what the telephone number is. I do this in order to protect against the abuses in TFA, "forgetful" supervisors, etc., and I do not worry about the wiretapping laws of some distant state. Why? Well, even though they might be able

I'd find it particularly difficult to sleep wearing a facehugger. Its probably almost as bad as when the cat decides to flop down on my head at night.

All that plus the fact that the average video game champion is about as physically imposing as Jeremy Freedman

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki...

Ok... I admit I'm speculating. I don't really follow "e sports" at all, but that's what a lot of the magic the gathering top players looked like back when I played.

They were not really societies take on "men who men wanted to be and women wanted to be with"

That's not to say that esports players won't attract its own audience and groupies, any subculture has that, but going mainstream -- it will need broader appeal. Its more than just overcoming ideas that video games are "childish" -- it would require somehow overcoming the fact that video games players do not conform to our biological / evolutionary cued measures of attractive / capable / healthy / etc.

The Interweb disagrees with you: http://disclockedcontent.wikia...

You can also add Gears of War 3 to that list.

...the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...

Looks like Japan has considered that angle. I don't know about naming something from Japan "S.T.A.R.S.", though...

Do they have a Dr. King or a Dr. Powell on file? Is this serum called Trilsettum serum by any chance?

Yeah, I fucking loved that show, and I fucking hate the guys who cancelled it after just one season. I guess it was too smart for their audience. Not enough blood, killing, mindless arch-enemies and the like.

The video game franchise "Fallout" is all I'm thinking when seeing news like this. In the Fallout universe, nuclear war breaks out in the year 2077 between USA and China (in this universe, the USSR still exists and is an ally to China) as the Earth's non-renewable resources like fossil fuels run out.

In our world, it just seems to be purely over who controls the World Order: the East or the West? I'm sure there are many factors I'm unaware of right now, but this buildup of military forces in the Pacific has me concerned for the future.

For more info on what I'm referring to, here's the Fallout Wiki's article on the "Great War" aka WWIII.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/...

But are they really guesting Princesses into Sofia's timeline?

Yes.

Does Cedric have something to do with it?

No, as far as I can tell. I guess it's assumed all the Disney Princesses have some kind of illogical shared continuity (regardless of time, history, or distance... because preschoolers). Think of it as the Power of Marketing.

If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.

I'm not sure that throwing around space money will make him stop...

True, but Understanding of others' Ignorance also Brings Fear

Also, it's a Futurama reference.

selenium poisoning?

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki...

satellites equipped with grappling arms that could co-orbit and then disable expensive U.S. hardware

They watched Outlaw Star decided that they had uncovered a Top Secret military program and then decided to copy them verbatim. Can these guys do ANYTHING original?

No memory protection. No virtual memory. The switcher. Sad Mac Icon. Things were not perfect.

No memory Protection: Neither did Windows.

No virtual memory. Actually, starting with System 7.0, which was released in May, 1991, MacOS had a virtual memory system. And unlike Windows' version, the Mac version almost never made you feel like you were trapped in Swap-File Hell....

The Switcher: The Switcher was really only released as a "toy", and was fairly irrelevant after about 1987, when Macs could have more than 256K (yes, that's KILObytes) of RAM, and since System 7 supported Virtual Memory, it was REALLY irrelevant then. Heck, I wrote a floppy-based "Switcher" for my Apple ][. Took about 4 seconds to swap-out 48K of RAM (pretty much every single byte of it!). Was cool to be able to run Magic Window (for documentation) and your Software Development "IDE" (in my case, usually my specially-modified version of the TED][ Editor/Assembler) and be able to flip back and forth.

As far as "stability" goes, I never had that much problem with MacOS, as long as I stayed out of Aldus Freehand or Photoshop. Those apps were pretty much guaranteed to elicit at least one "bomb" per hour... ;-) Windows, on the other hand...

The tradeoff is that is it a government and corporate portal into your home and life.

Citation, please.

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)

A frog named Throg

it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

All of which misses the point. NONE OF THOSE EXAMPLES INCLUDED THE NAME CHANGE TO THOR.

Seriously, did you not notice that?

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)

A frog named Throg

it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

All of which misses the point. NONE OF THOSE EXAMPLES INCLUDED THE NAME CHANGE TO THOR.

Seriously, did you not notice that?

It looks like that is specifically tied to using false whois info if there is a subsequent copyright or trademark infringement, not if Joe Average decides to put 123 Main St. as his contact address. Seems like the law is a tool that can be used to help prosecution of Lanham violations (there probably aren't many criminals who keep their whois info up to date ;)

Here's the text copied from wikia:

http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Fr...

"Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, Tit. II of the Intellectual Property Protection and Courts Amendments Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-482, 118 Stat. 3912, 3916 (Dec. 23, 2004).
Overview Edit

This Act increases criminal penalties for those who submit false contact information when registering a domain name that is subsequently used to commit a crime or engage in copyright or trademark infringement."

If it's broader than that then please correct me (IANAL).

We already did this... Even a racist clock is right twice a day

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)

A frog named Throg

it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

I think black Thor is tacky, objecting has nothing to do with being racist but the fact they're screwing with other people's mythology. Now if they made Spiderman a gay black man? Or Professor X a female? Now those are changes I could endorse and the resulting changes would make the character's fundamental characteristics more compelling.

As for this case I'd say Marvel is the one being misogynist. The basic implication of this stunt is that the only way they can see to make a flagship female character is by taking a male flagship character and turning them female.

A woman shouldn't have to piggyback on a man to gain fame.

We already did this... Even a racist clock is right twice a day

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)

A frog named Throg

it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

I think black Thor is tacky, objecting has nothing to do with being racist but the fact they're screwing with other people's mythology. Now if they made Spiderman a gay black man? Or Professor X a female? Now those are changes I could endorse and the resulting changes would make the character's fundamental characteristics more compelling.

As for this case I'd say Marvel is the one being misogynist. The basic implication of this stunt is that the only way they can see to make a flagship female character is by taking a male flagship character and turning them female.

A woman shouldn't have to piggyback on a man to gain fame.

You're still incorrect.
http://marvel.wikia.com/Hel
http://marvel.wikia.com/Valhal...

You're still incorrect.
http://marvel.wikia.com/Hel
http://marvel.wikia.com/Valhal...

We already did this... Even a racist clock is right twice a day

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)
A frog named Throg
it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

We already did this... Even a racist clock is right twice a day

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)
A frog named Throg
it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

technology [...] magic

Book sellers that group science fiction with fantasy follow Arthur C. Clarke's observation: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Larry Niven pointed out the converse about sufficiently analyzed magic. I'd be interested in how you would rigorously separate these.

future [...] middle ages

I understand what you're getting at: you're trying to avoid works of speculative fiction that take place in a so-called standard fantasy setting. But otherwise, it sounds like you're trying to distinguish "past" from "future". This is complicated by settings that are nominally soft science fiction but do not cross over with real-life history in such a way as to anchor dates. These include BSG ("All this has happened before, and all this will happen again" more than 150,000 years ago) and Star Wars ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."). What opinion do you have about speculative fiction settings closer to the present day, such as "steampunk" (recent past) and "urban fantasy" (present)?

The other topic about translation, that is easy to answer: american copyright law is at fault. As it prohibits authors to sell their work as they please. Once sold to a publisher the publisher has 'the copyright'

What compels an author to sell permanent exclusive rights, whether through assignment or exclusive license, to a publisher?

I fail to see what your two points add to the discussion :)

First, I was clarifying that the convergence of science fiction with fantasy is not the fault of book sellers but instead the result of a fundamental continuum between the two. Second, I was clarifying that unavailable translations are not the fault of book sellers, be they Amazon or brick and mortar, but instead business decisions made by authors.

technology [...] magic

Book sellers that group science fiction with fantasy follow Arthur C. Clarke's observation: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Larry Niven pointed out the converse about sufficiently analyzed magic. I'd be interested in how you would rigorously separate these.

future [...] middle ages

I understand what you're getting at: you're trying to avoid works of speculative fiction that take place in a so-called standard fantasy setting. But otherwise, it sounds like you're trying to distinguish "past" from "future". This is complicated by settings that are nominally soft science fiction but do not cross over with real-life history in such a way as to anchor dates. These include BSG ("All this has happened before, and all this will happen again" more than 150,000 years ago) and Star Wars ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."). What opinion do you have about speculative fiction settings closer to the present day, such as "steampunk" (recent past) and "urban fantasy" (present)?

The other topic about translation, that is easy to answer: american copyright law is at fault. As it prohibits authors to sell their work as they please. Once sold to a publisher the publisher has 'the copyright'

What compels an author to sell permanent exclusive rights, whether through assignment or exclusive license, to a publisher?

I fail to see what your two points add to the discussion :)

First, I was clarifying that the convergence of science fiction with fantasy is not the fault of book sellers but instead the result of a fundamental continuum between the two. Second, I was clarifying that unavailable translations are not the fault of book sellers, be they Amazon or brick and mortar, but instead business decisions made by authors.

technology [...] magic

Book sellers that group science fiction with fantasy follow Arthur C. Clarke's observation: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Larry Niven pointed out the converse about sufficiently analyzed magic. I'd be interested in how you would rigorously separate these.

future [...] middle ages

I understand what you're getting at: you're trying to avoid works of speculative fiction that take place in a so-called standard fantasy setting. But otherwise, it sounds like you're trying to distinguish "past" from "future". This is complicated by settings that are nominally soft science fiction but do not cross over with real-life history in such a way as to anchor dates. These include BSG ("All this has happened before, and all this will happen again" more than 150,000 years ago) and Star Wars ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."). What opinion do you have about speculative fiction settings closer to the present day, such as "steampunk" (recent past) and "urban fantasy" (present)?

The other topic about translation, that is easy to answer: american copyright law is at fault. As it prohibits authors to sell their work as they please. Once sold to a publisher the publisher has 'the copyright'

What compels an author to sell permanent exclusive rights, whether through assignment or exclusive license, to a publisher?

I fail to see what your two points add to the discussion :)

First, I was clarifying that the convergence of science fiction with fantasy is not the fault of book sellers but instead the result of a fundamental continuum between the two. Second, I was clarifying that unavailable translations are not the fault of book sellers, be they Amazon or brick and mortar, but instead business decisions made by authors.

technology [...] magic

Book sellers that group science fiction with fantasy follow Arthur C. Clarke's observation: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Larry Niven pointed out the converse about sufficiently analyzed magic. I'd be interested in how you would rigorously separate these.

future [...] middle ages

I understand what you're getting at: you're trying to avoid works of speculative fiction that take place in a so-called standard fantasy setting. But otherwise, it sounds like you're trying to distinguish "past" from "future". This is complicated by settings that are nominally soft science fiction but do not cross over with real-life history in such a way as to anchor dates. These include BSG ("All this has happened before, and all this will happen again" more than 150,000 years ago) and Star Wars ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."). What opinion do you have about speculative fiction settings closer to the present day, such as "steampunk" (recent past) and "urban fantasy" (present)?

The other topic about translation, that is easy to answer: american copyright law is at fault. As it prohibits authors to sell their work as they please. Once sold to a publisher the publisher has 'the copyright'

What compels an author to sell permanent exclusive rights, whether through assignment or exclusive license, to a publisher?

I fail to see what your two points add to the discussion :)

First, I was clarifying that the convergence of science fiction with fantasy is not the fault of book sellers but instead the result of a fundamental continuum between the two. Second, I was clarifying that unavailable translations are not the fault of book sellers, be they Amazon or brick and mortar, but instead business decisions made by authors.

On top of that for some dumb reason they put SF and Fantasy into one category 'SF&Fantasy' however I'm not interested in the later

At the soft end of speculative fiction's Mohs scale, what difference do you see between "SF" and "fantasy"? What's the difference between "ETs" and "elves"?

and it takes 5 or more years till an interesting title is finally translated into german.

Your complaint could be worded that most works of SF literature that you find "interesting" are not published under a license that allows fans to translate it. Whose fault is that?

But for now, crossing a human with a flower may not result in a talking flower, though it still could be a pretty looking flower.

For some reason, this very scenario is present in two games of the Sims series.

Yes, and the result was dicks. They're sending us dick pics.

Clearly they're blueprints for a dickship.

In response to this direct threat to the UK, mesa propose that the Senate give immediately emergency powers to the Supreme Minister David Cameron!

CAPTCHA: "controls"

ED has been amazing blast so far, both as KS community and just inspirational development project. We are closing to regular beta, starting at the end of July, which will have huge majority of first version of ED implemented, coming out at the end of the year.

See ED unofficial community FAQ for more

The Apple version looked much better than the NES version. The PC-88 & PC-98 version absolutely demolish the NES version.

Citation needed...oh wait, I have a citation for you that proves you wrong:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.n...

Deus Ex on PS2 had crap textures, low quality soundtrack and tiny levels

They're not tiny, they're split in pieces, the port house didn't know the trick of streaming levels. But take a look at the screenshots...

http://steamcommunity.com/shar...

and the comments at the end about the nice soundtrack and how it looks a touch nicer than the PC version. And this is people on Steam saying this, one of the more anti-console forums on the net.

Half-Life on PS2 came out three years after the PC original and still looked worse than the PC version with Blue Shift,

Do you know why I'm laughing. The graphical upgrade Blue Shift brought to the PC version was provided by the never released Dreamcast version. the High Definition pack are the textures the Dreamcast version used. The PS2 version has enhancements beyond that:

http://half-life.wikia.com/wik...

The PlayStation 2 remake of Half-Life saw even further improved models to the game, also created by Gearbox. This included full facial animation and individually-animated fingers.[4] As such, they're considered a continuation of the High Definition Pack. The PlayStation 2 port took advantage of a "Level of Detail" system, allowing these very detailed models up close without sacrificing performance. Health and H.E.V. Chargers have been converted to 3D and have special animations during use. These extra HD features were never officially released for the PC version of the game.

Both had crap controls on console, rendering them unplayable.

Really, you have copies? Played them? Citation needed, because I have both within 10 feet of me and know how they support effective dual shock controls, and also support keyboard and/or mouse. I personally recommend a hybrid control scheme, using the left half of a dual shock for movement...but mouse for aiming.

Sacred 2 looked like shit on PC, but far worse on console.

What? A game that runs at true 1080p with no upscaling tricks? Even digital foundry, notoriously partisan for the PC, said that.

It was also a very mouse heavy game which again renders it virtually unplayable on a gamepad.

That's not what Sacred 2's developers say. That's not even what people on the PC version say either. Some of them actually wanted gamepad support as well.

Diablo I on PSX came out two years after the PC version and runs at such a low resolution that you can't tell what it happening on screen.

Troll. It's one of the PSone games that runs at 240p. Yes it's low but you can easily make everything out. You can easily find video or screenshots.

Diablo III on console looks like shit compared to the PC version.

That's not what notoriously PC partisan Digital Foundry said:

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

On the technical scale, both the PS3 and 360 are running at the equivalent to the PC version's high settings for texture assets, physics and effects - with smoothed dynamic shadows almost a match for PC's highest preset. Quibbles with internal resolution and field of view aside, this is a pristinely presented take on a year-old game that targets 60fps on both platforms, and largely succeeds in nailing exactly

Understandable, most people have moved on from film so I think the screeners just have no idea what they are looking at with a basically all mechanical camera. The bulb cable also seems to cause them a lot of confusion as well. I have been tempted to take my Pocket Kodak No. 1 series II to see their reaction.