unsubstantiated claims about the ability of their products to clean air of various indoor air pollutants and to prevent or relieve allergies
tabletop and room unit ozone generators are not effective in improving indoor air quality
ozone is a potent irritant that can bring about... *increased* responsiveness to allergens
Out-dated! You're quoting studies on products from 1990, 1992, and 1995! Let's see IDC put out a March 2003 report on "Analysis of the Linux Desktop" -- based on Red Hat 1.0. Sit back and watch the firestorm on Slashdot.
Consider what air purification improvements that a decade of technology advancement can bring about. The statements you quoted probably do not apply to the popular Ionic Breeze that you see on TV or the Surround Air Ionizer/Purifier, which I own.
I will substantiate the claims about the ability of an ozone-producing ionizer to relieve allergies. I'm living proof. No more expensive allergy shots and serum for me! I've more than "made" back the price I paid.
I hereby bear witness that a tabletop ozone generator is effective (YMMV) in improving indoor air quality and breathing conditions.
"I couldn't help it. It just popped in there!" - Ray
Re:We produce BAD ozone...
on
Humans Make Ozone
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Ozone is poisonous at very high levels, but so is oxygen (relative to normal levels). Ozone has a strangely fresh, sweet odor. Sometimes you can smell it outside after a lightning storm. The odor is easily detectable at safe levels and is not necessarily a sign of danger.
At.05 ppm (parts per million) or less, ozone is not only safe, but healthy. I have twoair purifier/ionizers in my bedroom (more than recommended for its size), which produce ozone. It's not like I'm gassing myself. Read the FAQ for all the technical details.
From your linked page: "There's this bike path near my house, but when I walk or run on it on ozone alert days I spend the next few hours coughing." -- Melissa, age 68
There must be a very high concentration of ozone at that particular location. My allergies hardly bother me at all since I put these ozone-producing devices in my house (one beside my bed pillow!), which run 24 hours a day. After taking allergy shots every month for many years, I don't need the shots anymore. The ozone negative ions remove contaminants from the air.
In studies conducted at the Academy of Medical Sciences in Russia, Dr. Gubernskii and Dr. Dmitriev found that 0.005 ppm (parts per million) to 0.02 ppm of ozone added to normal indoor air (0 ppm) increased animals' resistance to the cold, to infection, to toxic substances, and to oxygen deprivation. A general increase in the immune "biological potential" and the vital capacity of the lungs was reported.
Dr. Gubernskii and Dr. Dmitriev also performed tests using less than.01 ppm of ozone in an air-conditioned office building, which revealed that "the levels of oxygen in the blood increase relatively quickly and remain at a high level for the duration of the experiment." They also stated that: "Atmospheric ozone has a positive effect on animals and people. It is important to note its positive effect on the breathing system, blood composition, arterial pressure, immune system, general feeling of well-being, and mental and physical work capability. The ozone-ion complex is a necessary component of fresh air that gives it a curative effect."
This same study, featured in the Russian journal Priroda, also reports a decrease in complaints of stuffiness (3.8 times fewer complaints).
And there's a lot more information on that site. Based on personal experience with their product, I'm inclined to believe in their research and conclusions.
My friend, most of the bible's stories has iraq as a background.
It is impossible for us to know that. Trying to locate Ante-Diluvian (pre-Diluge/Flood) geography in a post-Diluvian world is an exercise in futility. For example, even though river names like Tigris and Euphrates are found in Genesis, we should not expect that the present-day Tigris and Euphrates are in the same locations. The world-wide, cataclysmic flood of Noah's era surely carved out canyons, demolished mountains, and reshaped the whole landscape.
We can agree that iraq is one of the most important and amazing sites.
In my view, not nearly as important as Israel, and the Temple Mount in particular. For over two years, Palestinians have beensystematicallydestroying Hebrew archaeology dating back to the First Temple built by King Solomon around 960 B.C. This is where the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Ten Commandments were housed. Recently, a tablet was discovered with inscriptions from the book of II Kings in the Bible. We'll never know what other archaeological treasures have been intentionally, maliciously destroyed and dumped into landfills by Muslims.
The Taliban destroys a Buddha statue in Afghanistan, and the world condemns the action.
The war with the Butcher of Baghdad threatens to destroy an old battery in Iraq, and the world cries out.
Israel is subjected to cultural genocide for years, and the world yawns.
He's referring to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, the AP, BBC, PBS, NPR *breeeath* MSNBC, NY Times, Ha'aretz, the Nation, the Mirror, Salon, etc., and of course, Slashdot.
Joe Citizen, who disagrees with laws enacted by our representatives, is a prima donna, post-modernist and/or a cry baby?
No, not people who just disagree. I disagree with some of our laws. People who defy laws, i.e., unilaterally make their own rules ad hoc, basically fit one of those categories. Some are legitimate reformers, some are just not very bright, but for the most part, lawbreakers fit one of those categories. I suppose I could've used less flashy, more precise terms.:-)
Do you even know what post-modernism is?
In application, it means that "right" and "wrong" are not universal. Whatever a person thinks is right is right for that person. Whatever a person believes to be true is true for that person, but if somebody else believes different, that reality is true for him. It's a nonsensical philosophy, but it's growing in popularity.
It is perfectly acceptable in our society to complain about laws we dislike. How do think unfair laws are dealt with?
No argument there. Did you miss the whole last paragraph of my previous post? Political debate and lobbying, peaceful protest, and civil disobedience are time-honored traditions in the United States. The day that such things are crushed and made ineffectual by zealous authoritarianism is the day that we will have ceased being a democracy.
Fascism?:-D He he, it really does make me laugh out loud trying to imagine Mussolini or Hitler sending gamers to the gulags for hacking game consoles. I've heard lots of horrific stories from Iraqi refugees about torture with electric drills and acid, but not even Saddam Hussein has outlawed modchips! What a tyrant Ashcroft is! But seriously...
It's just video games! Get a grip!
You can legallly play any game on the planet if you pay for the games and the systems they were made to be played on. It won't kill you to shell out a few more bucks. Video games are NOT a necessity! We're not talking about important issues like access to public water reservoirs or voting booths. Believe or not, billions of people today have lived their whole lives without playing video games, and are no worse off for it.
IMHO, this is utterly trivial. But since many of you think it's a critical, life-or-death, the-sky-is-falling, Constitutional abrogation, I will continue...
We are a nation of laws, not chaos. Just because Joe Citizen doesn't like a law doesn't mean he gets to be self-appointed dictator. The law does not bow to prima donnas, post-modernists, or cry babies. Although you yourself can't make or repeal laws, you do get to choose the people who do that. The laws were created by representatives that the people have voted into office. That's the way a democracy (or, "representative republic," for the nitpickers) works.
With over 280 million American citizens, there will always be major disagreement over the merit of particular legislation. Notwithstanding, you must obey the laws or freely accept the punishment for breaking them, even if they aren't written like YOU would want them to be. You may practice civil disobedience, but in doing so, you still must face the consequences until the other people in your movement have been effective in lobbying for the amendment or repeal of the contested laws.
The goal is to achieve zero security vulnerabilities. Realistically, he understands that this will not actually happen.
I saw one of those inspirational posters you see in elementary schools with this saying:
"Shoot for the moon. [perfection] Even if you don't make it, you'll be among the stars. [pretty close]"
That's the idea. The higher you set your goals, the greater your achievement will be.
Isn't this common sense? Are you people just being facetious? I feel like I've been trolled.:-/
No, but this page has some fascinating artist renditions (and *huge* publication size images), including Pioneer passing Jupiter, and the Pioneer looking back at the sun from Neptune's orbit!! Amazing! Nobody's ever seen *our* sun appear so small. (It's more dramatic in the medium-size picture.) It gives me goose bumps thinking what it would feel like to be out there, lost in the bleakness of space.
I'll back you up since nobody else is. What the parent poster wishes he had done is as bad as wanting to rape a girl in a wheelchair to "take advantage of the opportunity." Any guy who would take advantage of a girl when she's distressed and vulnerable is heartless.
Unfortunately, many men have that mindset. They're predators - like sharks looking for easy victims to devour.
No, it's the result of studies on color preferences and the effect of colors on psychology.
Surveys show that blue is the favorite color of more people than any other color. Even in this Slashdot poll on favorite color, blue got over twice as many votes as green, the second-place color. And what do you know, the second most common color in Windows XP is green!
The color blue has been shown to have a soothing effect on people. Many people experience anxiety when they try to use computers. Microsoft probably conducted extensive user testing and surveying to get just the right shades of blue. Notice also how the Windows background has blue skies and fluffy white clouds. It helps to put people at ease.
While a BSOD is still bad, IMO it doesn't look quite as ominous as a red or black screen of death would look. On a side note, I think the BSOD color can be specified in win.ini.
I understand the relationship between genotype and phenotype. But the changes occur within each kind of organisms.
The issue is not change of genotype, but creation of new alleles to comprise new genotypes to account for the colossal array of phenotypes in the complex forms of life we have.
I think you should type more. You haven't made your case that evolution is a fact.
A straw man? Excusez-moi? Obviously (I assumed this would be), I was allowing for countless stages between amoeba and turtle. I'm not demanding proof that the former evolves into the latter in a single generation. That would in fact be a straw man, but that's not what I meant. You can't prove such evolution could occur even given a billion generations.
Evolution makes much grander claims than of the observable/supportable changes in genotype. Does not evolution purport that animals evolve into completely different kinds of animals? Evolutionism holds that given enough time, small creatures like fish or slugs can and have evolved into whales and elephants. That kind of phenomena would require prolific development of additional, new genetic material. The mutation of alleles affects traits within basic kinds of organisms, in what some people refer to as microevolution. And genetic recombination is just the exchange of pre-existing genetic material. The tenets of biological evolution don't seem to come close to explaining how worms begat brontosaurs and humans, much less, how inanimate material became sentient on its own.
Different combinations of genetic material produce different traits. Big deal. Developing a distinct-looking canine through controlled breeding, for example, does not constitute evolution. On a side note, the "evolution" that we observe in the wild helps to explain how our diversity of creatures came from the basic specimens of types preserved in Noah's ark. (Obviously, there were not millions of pairs of species in the ark.) However, the changes since then (and before) have not been genetically progressive (productive) evolution, although they have certainly been beneficial to the survivability of the organisms.
Furthermore, I ask: Does evolutionism not in effect resort to purporting that living beings were formed happenchance from various chemicals aimlessly abiding in the universe? That would require a mountain of miracles. Evolution goes waaay past change in genotype.
The assertion that evolution is just about changes in genotype is almost a reverse straw man. You are downplaying or over-minimizing the tenets and ramifications of evolution in order to make them easier to defend.
So we can observe "evolution" in a lab? A hi-tech, manufactured environment with controlled conditions under the auspices of intelligent beings scheming to make it happen.
The evolution debated is on the scale of amoebas evolving into turtles, snakes evolving into eagles, or donkeys evolving into elephants, which is untestable, unobservable, and therefore, unprovable. What has been observed is not really evolution at all, because the new organism doesn't contain any new genetic material.
Shove democracy down countries throats even if they don't want it; by using forceful tactics
Right. Freedom isn't for everybody. We Westerners like freedom, but other peoples prefer slavery and oppression. It is arrogant for us to think that government "of the people, for the people, by the people" is compatible with all cultures.
How high and mighty of us to shove liberty down their throats! Some countries have long, cherished traditions of persecution and torture. If Saddam Hussein tests chemical weapons on his own people, it's none of our business! Who are we to impose our new-fangled Jeffersonian claptrap on authoritarian states whose practices are based on the time-honored tradition of tyranny?
There is strength in diversity: Democracy, Monarchy, Anarchy, Communism, Nazism, Wahhabism, Fascism. Some people prefer presidents. Others choose autocrats and despots. It's their right to choose their own government.
Microsoft actually happens to adapt to things very quickly at times
I agree. And the first part of his advice sounds like it was written in 1996.
"Windows has yet to move past its PC-centric roots to capture a significant part of the larger network space..."
What in the world does he mean by that? Novell, the networking pioneer, has suffered greatly from Microsoft's deep inroads into networking. If it weren't for universities and schools entrenched in Netware, Microsoft would have run Novell out of business.
"Microsoft's reluctance to adopt networked ways is understandable."
Excuse me? The biggest thing at Microsoft is DOT NET, not DOT PC. Web services (XML, RDF, SOAP, WDDI) is all the rage in Redmond. MS was a founding member of the W3C XML Working Group in 1997. They invented the MAPI protocol several years ago. They run an ISP (MSN) and the largest Internet mail service (Hotmail). They make the most popular web browser, the most popular web design program, and the most popular e-mail client. You can publish Office documents to the web (ActiveX required to view, unfortunately), and Office 11 will have XML document formats for all its programs.
I don't agree with the way Microsoft does everything, but to say that they're stalled in the single-PC paradigm is just not true. In fact, people on this forum have expressed fears that MS could almost own the Internet. With IIS/SQL Server/Exchange (servers), Windows (clients), FrontPage (producing non-standard HTML and JavaScript), IE (FrontPage content viewer), MSN, and Outlook, the only part of the Internet they don't have their hands in is the routers and cables.
Even more beyond the PC, they're now selling game consoles (XBox), and they've been trying to get their software into cars since at least 1998.
I doubt a game about Egypt and Knowledge will attract many players... Mostly older and world-aware players I guess. Can they make a buck with, say, the US market ?
If they're going to create a religion-based game, they might as well have it based on one that's still practiced. I doubt there are many Egyptologist gamers. I think it would be a good idea for the next desert-oriented game to be based on Israel and Hebrew culture. Replace ancient Egypt's "disciplines of man" with the Bible's laws of God.
The game developers may not care about religion personally, but capitalist minds should consider what I'm saying. With a biblical focus and appropriate marketing (i.e., in Christian/Jewish media, bookstores), they could make lots of bucks in the US market. They should try to team up with this group, which created a very in-depth "interactive journey" CD-ROM a few years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad my brain corrected the mistake. So European life really is in doubt?
;-)
tabletop and room unit ozone generators are not effective in improving indoor air quality
ozone is a potent irritant that can bring about
Out-dated! You're quoting studies on products from 1990, 1992, and 1995! Let's see IDC put out a March 2003 report on "Analysis of the Linux Desktop" -- based on Red Hat 1.0. Sit back and watch the firestorm on Slashdot.
Consider what air purification improvements that a decade of technology advancement can bring about. The statements you quoted probably do not apply to the popular Ionic Breeze that you see on TV or the Surround Air Ionizer/Purifier, which I own.
I will substantiate the claims about the ability of an ozone-producing ionizer to relieve allergies. I'm living proof. No more expensive allergy shots and serum for me! I've more than "made" back the price I paid.
I hereby bear witness that a tabletop ozone generator is effective (YMMV) in improving indoor air quality and breathing conditions.
Read my longer post on my experience.
Hmmm?
"I couldn't help it. It just popped in there!" - Ray
At .05 ppm (parts per million) or less, ozone is not only safe, but healthy. I have two air purifier/ionizers in my bedroom (more than recommended for its size), which produce ozone. It's not like I'm gassing myself. Read the FAQ for all the technical details.
From your linked page: "There's this bike path near my house, but when I walk or run on it on ozone alert days I spend the next few hours coughing." -- Melissa, age 68
There must be a very high concentration of ozone at that particular location. My allergies hardly bother me at all since I put these ozone-producing devices in my house (one beside my bed pillow!), which run 24 hours a day. After taking allergy shots every month for many years, I don't need the shots anymore. The ozone negative ions remove contaminants from the air.
See this.
And there's a lot more information on that site. Based on personal experience with their product, I'm inclined to believe in their research and conclusions.Turkey is part of NATO. And it's not like there aren't plenty of brown-skinned folks in the USA and European countries.
Thank you. I accept your correction. Consider my post updated. :)
If America had rushed to war, it would have saved millions of lives.
It is impossible for us to know that. Trying to locate Ante-Diluvian (pre-Diluge/Flood) geography in a post-Diluvian world is an exercise in futility. For example, even though river names like Tigris and Euphrates are found in Genesis, we should not expect that the present-day Tigris and Euphrates are in the same locations. The world-wide, cataclysmic flood of Noah's era surely carved out canyons, demolished mountains, and reshaped the whole landscape.
We can agree that iraq is one of the most important and amazing sites.
In my view, not nearly as important as Israel, and the Temple Mount in particular. For over two years, Palestinians have been systematically destroying Hebrew archaeology dating back to the First Temple built by King Solomon around 960 B.C. This is where the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Ten Commandments were housed. Recently, a tablet was discovered with inscriptions from the book of II Kings in the Bible. We'll never know what other archaeological treasures have been intentionally, maliciously destroyed and dumped into landfills by Muslims.
The Taliban destroys a Buddha statue in Afghanistan, and the world condemns the action.
The war with the Butcher of Baghdad threatens to destroy an old battery in Iraq, and the world cries out.
Israel is subjected to cultural genocide for years, and the world yawns.
He's referring to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, the AP, BBC, PBS, NPR *breeeath* MSNBC, NY Times, Ha'aretz, the Nation, the Mirror, Salon, etc., and of course, Slashdot.
If that's all it takes to get nations' support, why has the U.S. not bribed or bullied France and Germany too?
No, not people who just disagree. I disagree with some of our laws. People who defy laws, i.e., unilaterally make their own rules ad hoc, basically fit one of those categories. Some are legitimate reformers, some are just not very bright, but for the most part, lawbreakers fit one of those categories. I suppose I could've used less flashy, more precise terms. :-)
Do you even know what post-modernism is?
In application, it means that "right" and "wrong" are not universal. Whatever a person thinks is right is right for that person. Whatever a person believes to be true is true for that person, but if somebody else believes different, that reality is true for him. It's a nonsensical philosophy, but it's growing in popularity.
It is perfectly acceptable in our society to complain about laws we dislike. How do think unfair laws are dealt with?
No argument there. Did you miss the whole last paragraph of my previous post? Political debate and lobbying, peaceful protest, and civil disobedience are time-honored traditions in the United States. The day that such things are crushed and made ineffectual by zealous authoritarianism is the day that we will have ceased being a democracy.
It's just video games! Get a grip!
You can legallly play any game on the planet if you pay for the games and the systems they were made to be played on. It won't kill you to shell out a few more bucks. Video games are NOT a necessity! We're not talking about important issues like access to public water reservoirs or voting booths. Believe or not, billions of people today have lived their whole lives without playing video games, and are no worse off for it.
IMHO, this is utterly trivial. But since many of you think it's a critical, life-or-death, the-sky-is-falling, Constitutional abrogation, I will continue...
We are a nation of laws, not chaos. Just because Joe Citizen doesn't like a law doesn't mean he gets to be self-appointed dictator. The law does not bow to prima donnas, post-modernists, or cry babies. Although you yourself can't make or repeal laws, you do get to choose the people who do that. The laws were created by representatives that the people have voted into office. That's the way a democracy (or, "representative republic," for the nitpickers) works.
With over 280 million American citizens, there will always be major disagreement over the merit of particular legislation. Notwithstanding, you must obey the laws or freely accept the punishment for breaking them, even if they aren't written like YOU would want them to be. You may practice civil disobedience, but in doing so, you still must face the consequences until the other people in your movement have been effective in lobbying for the amendment or repeal of the contested laws.
I saw one of those inspirational posters you see in elementary schools with this saying:
"Shoot for the moon. [perfection] Even if you don't make it, you'll be among the stars. [pretty close]"
That's the idea. The higher you set your goals, the greater your achievement will be.
Isn't this common sense? Are you people just being facetious? I feel like I've been trolled. :-/
No, but this page has some fascinating artist renditions (and *huge* publication size images), including Pioneer passing Jupiter, and the Pioneer looking back at the sun from Neptune's orbit!! Amazing! Nobody's ever seen *our* sun appear so small. (It's more dramatic in the medium-size picture.) It gives me goose bumps thinking what it would feel like to be out there, lost in the bleakness of space.
Unfortunately, many men have that mindset. They're predators - like sharks looking for easy victims to devour.
"This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be..." - Sir Isaac Newton
Surveys show that blue is the favorite color of more people than any other color. Even in this Slashdot poll on favorite color, blue got over twice as many votes as green, the second-place color. And what do you know, the second most common color in Windows XP is green!
The color blue has been shown to have a soothing effect on people. Many people experience anxiety when they try to use computers. Microsoft probably conducted extensive user testing and surveying to get just the right shades of blue. Notice also how the Windows background has blue skies and fluffy white clouds. It helps to put people at ease.
While a BSOD is still bad, IMO it doesn't look quite as ominous as a red or black screen of death would look. On a side note, I think the BSOD color can be specified in win.ini.
The issue is not change of genotype, but creation of new alleles to comprise new genotypes to account for the colossal array of phenotypes in the complex forms of life we have.
I think you should type more. You haven't made your case that evolution is a fact.
Evolution makes much grander claims than of the observable/supportable changes in genotype. Does not evolution purport that animals evolve into completely different kinds of animals? Evolutionism holds that given enough time, small creatures like fish or slugs can and have evolved into whales and elephants. That kind of phenomena would require prolific development of additional, new genetic material. The mutation of alleles affects traits within basic kinds of organisms, in what some people refer to as microevolution. And genetic recombination is just the exchange of pre-existing genetic material. The tenets of biological evolution don't seem to come close to explaining how worms begat brontosaurs and humans, much less, how inanimate material became sentient on its own.
Different combinations of genetic material produce different traits. Big deal. Developing a distinct-looking canine through controlled breeding, for example, does not constitute evolution. On a side note, the "evolution" that we observe in the wild helps to explain how our diversity of creatures came from the basic specimens of types preserved in Noah's ark. (Obviously, there were not millions of pairs of species in the ark.) However, the changes since then (and before) have not been genetically progressive (productive) evolution, although they have certainly been beneficial to the survivability of the organisms.
Furthermore, I ask: Does evolutionism not in effect resort to purporting that living beings were formed happenchance from various chemicals aimlessly abiding in the universe? That would require a mountain of miracles. Evolution goes waaay past change in genotype.
The assertion that evolution is just about changes in genotype is almost a reverse straw man. You are downplaying or over-minimizing the tenets and ramifications of evolution in order to make them easier to defend.
I agree with that statement. They have it completely backwards.
Creationists should be interpreting scientific information in a biblical context.
The evolution debated is on the scale of amoebas evolving into turtles, snakes evolving into eagles, or donkeys evolving into elephants, which is untestable, unobservable, and therefore, unprovable. What has been observed is not really evolution at all, because the new organism doesn't contain any new genetic material.
Right. Freedom isn't for everybody. We Westerners like freedom, but other peoples prefer slavery and oppression. It is arrogant for us to think that government "of the people, for the people, by the people" is compatible with all cultures.
How high and mighty of us to shove liberty down their throats! Some countries have long, cherished traditions of persecution and torture. If Saddam Hussein tests chemical weapons on his own people, it's none of our business! Who are we to impose our new-fangled Jeffersonian claptrap on authoritarian states whose practices are based on the time-honored tradition of tyranny?
There is strength in diversity: Democracy, Monarchy, Anarchy, Communism, Nazism, Wahhabism, Fascism. Some people prefer presidents. Others choose autocrats and despots. It's their right to choose their own government.
</tongue-in-cheek>
I agree. And the first part of his advice sounds like it was written in 1996.
"Windows has yet to move past its PC-centric roots to capture a significant part of the larger network space..."
What in the world does he mean by that? Novell, the networking pioneer, has suffered greatly from Microsoft's deep inroads into networking. If it weren't for universities and schools entrenched in Netware, Microsoft would have run Novell out of business.
"Microsoft's reluctance to adopt networked ways is understandable."
Excuse me? The biggest thing at Microsoft is DOT NET, not DOT PC. Web services (XML, RDF, SOAP, WDDI) is all the rage in Redmond. MS was a founding member of the W3C XML Working Group in 1997. They invented the MAPI protocol several years ago. They run an ISP (MSN) and the largest Internet mail service (Hotmail). They make the most popular web browser, the most popular web design program, and the most popular e-mail client. You can publish Office documents to the web (ActiveX required to view, unfortunately), and Office 11 will have XML document formats for all its programs.
I don't agree with the way Microsoft does everything, but to say that they're stalled in the single-PC paradigm is just not true. In fact, people on this forum have expressed fears that MS could almost own the Internet. With IIS/SQL Server/Exchange (servers), Windows (clients), FrontPage (producing non-standard HTML and JavaScript), IE (FrontPage content viewer), MSN, and Outlook, the only part of the Internet they don't have their hands in is the routers and cables.
Even more beyond the PC, they're now selling game consoles (XBox), and they've been trying to get their software into cars since at least 1998.
If they're going to create a religion-based game, they might as well have it based on one that's still practiced. I doubt there are many Egyptologist gamers. I think it would be a good idea for the next desert-oriented game to be based on Israel and Hebrew culture. Replace ancient Egypt's "disciplines of man" with the Bible's laws of God.
The game developers may not care about religion personally, but capitalist minds should consider what I'm saying. With a biblical focus and appropriate marketing (i.e., in Christian/Jewish media, bookstores), they could make lots of bucks in the US market. They should try to team up with this group, which created a very in-depth "interactive journey" CD-ROM a few years ago.