So? All there is to do in WoW is buy, kill things, sell, and talk.
"Create" is a pretty damn broad term, and in SL it encompasses a whole lot. Modelling, texturing, scripting, and bringing all of that together to create objects, buildings, landscapes, etc.
90% of what happens in real life really boils down to social interactions. Why should a "virtual world" be any different. Humans are social creatures.
The whole credit card thing sounds pretty crappy though. Bastards.
Second Life is more interesting I think because most of what you see in the game is player created. WoW may have more people playing it, but they're spread across a bunch of different servers, and they're generally just interacting with pre-made content. Second Life takes place in a huge online world, where almost everything can be modified by players, and almost everything can be sold/traded/exchanged/given away. It's much more open-ended than WoW.
The downside is that you have a lot of less-talented people creating the world, so much of what you see is crap. But there's still plenty of good stuff, and just because someone isn't that great at creating doesn't mean they shouldn't be given the opportunity to try, or to share what they've made.
Dammit, The people running Iran are not as crazy as you think they are. If Iran ever does use a nuke on another country, it will likely be Israel, but it'll be the result of someone else attacking Iran first.
There's one thing that you can safely assume about anyone in government. Their primary concern is maintaining their own power. A nuke going off in Israel would result in an overwhelming nuclear response from both Israel and the US, over every square inch of Iran's territory. Iran's government is fully aware of that. As much as they might like to see Israel gone and be able to reclaim that land, they know that attacking them with nuclear weapons would not have a useful result for them.
North Korea's leader is often described as a loonybin reject, but his government has consistently taken all necessary steps to maintain their power, and launching a strike against South Korea or Japan would be the quickest way to unmake their position. They know that as well, and would never agress first.
There's a slightly better chance that one of these two countries could potentially try to sell nukes to another country, but I don't see that as particularly likely. It's not the kind of technology that you just share with other people. But if they did, and the world found out, they know they'd be facing isolation and hardships well beyond what they've got now.
These countries have been using the development of nukes as a bargining chip for negotiation. Since the current administration refuses to actually negotiate, progress on the nukes keeps moving. And it's a win-win for NK and Iran. Either they can stop development in exchange for whatever concessions they can get out of the rest of the world, or they end up with working nuclear weapons, which are an excellent deterrent when you're being hassled by a country that sent a bunch of soldiers halfway around the world to wreck another country, just because they could.
Killing/physically harming someone is a little extreme, but the case in question is a bit more mundane. In that case, it's not really as simple as just good parenting. Even a middle school aged child has a fair amount of independent thought.
Anecdotally, my brother and I are close in age, were treated pretty equally by our parents, and were given what I feel is a good balance of freedom vs. structure while growing up. Yet my brother has consistently made some questionable decisions that have resulted in a lot of problems for both himself and my parents, while I've generally been more thoughtful with my actions, and stayed out of trouble. As my brother started causing problems, he became more closely watched than I was, and was punished for things he did, but that didn't always straighten him out.
The plain truth of the matter is that my brother and I are inherently very different people, and we've reacted to the same parenting in very different ways. While I don't think my brother ever would go and shoot a school administrator that he didn't like, it wouldn't have surprised me if he had posted nasty myspace pages had such a thing existed when he was that age. And if he did, when my mom found out, he would've had to deal with some consequences.
While preparing your children for what they'll encounter is an important part of parenting, it's not possible to entirely predict what your kid will face, or how they'll react. Parents are not mind-readers or future-tellers. Just as important a part is how you make your child accept responsibility for their actions after the fact. Taking that job out of the parents' hands and putting it into the domain of the legal system doesn't seem like a good idea.
If the parents locked their kids off of the internet at their houses, they just would've done it on the computers at school, or the library, or the coffee shop, or whatever. Kids are imaginative and smarter than many people give them credit for. Add in the comfort level with digital technology that they have over a lot of adults currently, and their MySpace'ing is basically unstoppable.
You think that's bad? I heard that Steve Jobs rides to his Apple Expo keynotes in a car not made by Apple! And sometimes when the CEO of McDonalds goes to lunches with business clients, sometimes he goes to restaurants that don't serve Big Macs! Hell, I work in an architecture firm, but I live in a house that someone else designed. I must think I'm crap!
They're basically saying, rather than roll our own online "environment" for this project, we'll just use a pre-existing one, and save our company some money by not doing a lot of extra work. That seems to make sense to me.
Yeah, this is just more dumb hype. Sure, tiny chips will continue to advance in computing power, and continue to take over tasks that used to require a room full of computers to use. That's great.
But as the capabilities of computers has continually increased, people have continually found problems that require large amounts of hardware to solve. No matter how much data someone manages to cram into a 3" disc, someone's going to pull together a pile of data that requires thousands of those discs. That much hardware will need significant amounts of energy, cooling, security, monitoring, etc. Spreading them around all over the place won't make those issues go away, it'd make them worse.
As distributed computing takes off, datacenters will become even more important, because more and more data will be generated, and having centralized places to store, control, utilize all that data makes tons of sense.
Yeah, I don't think people are upset at the possibility of new features, it's just that there's a flipside to this coin, and it's that the ability to patch problems through updates makes it "acceptable" for devs/publishers to ship games that might not quite be up to the quality we're used to on consoles, at least in terms of bugs and such. When you know you won't be able to patch your software, and your company's reputation is on the line, there's good reason to test the hell out of your game. Now the "ship now, fix it later" mentality that plagues PC games might make the jump to our living rooms.
Maybe 10 years ago, I could play Nintendo for six hours a day, for twelve months straight, and I'd see less crashes than I would in a week of light computer use. That is one of the biggest reasons why console gaming has grown so much bigger than PC gaming. Now that Microsoft has finally gotten a handle on their OS stability, it's depressing to think that console gaming might be going in the other direction.
He tried to get China to deal with it because he was too incompetent to do it himself. NK wanted direct talks with the US. They didn't want to go through China. NK is worried about the US undermining their government, they're not concerned about China.
The Bush administration's big idea on NK was to cut off any sort of aid and diplomacy, and try and get everyone else to do the same. The misguided hope is that that would cause the government to collapse. The problem is that during the Clinton administration, the US as well as China and especially South Korea had been involved in detailed, complex, and relatively cordial negotiations.
The way diplomacy generally works is that the leaders make big proclamations and empty threats and whatnot, and then other people work hard behind the scenes to establish a compromise where things get settled peacefully, and neither side ends up looking like they lost. After Clinton left office, North Korea kept playing that game, because that's how politics work. Bush, however, was disinterested in playing that game (for a number of reasons). And so while the rhetoric was increasing as it always was, there was no effort put forth by the US to actually solve any of the issues. Both sides painted themselves into a corner, and this time no escape plan was hammered out.
The only difference is that NK's corner had a little ledge they could climb out on, it just involved actually testing a nuke. The US is still stuck in its corner, and even if there was a way out, it's doubtful that Bush would take it, it's just not the way his mind works. His administration views any sort of compromise as defeat, no matter who the opponent, or how high the stakes.
Yeah, I thought about that, but I'm not sure that's entirely it. There are still plenty of older games that I still find fun. The bulk of my time on my DS is spent on Advance Wars, which is so simple that it could probably run on an NES no problem (with mildly downgraded artwork and sound.
Online multiplayer, however, I'll give you. That's a recent advance that's really benefitted as of late from technology, and has made some new types of games possible.
All that being said, I think my original point still stands. There have been many hyped up games, with beautiful visuals and such, which have ended up being not particularly fun. Packing more hardware into a box does not guarantee better games.
Meh, I also do not think we should have gone to war in Iraq. It is, however, not correct or productive to place the blame on the troops, and since they're over there following orders as best they can, they deserve our respect and the best logistics/support that we can manage to give them.
I was thinking about this last night. I remember a little bit of Atari gaming, but the bulk of what I clearly remember in my gaming career started with the NES. Since then, the industry has grown by leaps and bounds, the power of the hardware has increased at a stunning rate, and game development prices have continued to balloon.
But through all that, I still only seem to see about four or five must-have games in a given year. Despite all the advances in technology, making a great game appears to still be rather difficult. Maybe the technology has made it harder. I don't make games, so I'm not sure.
I'm certainly glad that graphics have improved. I'm excited to see what sorts of changes more realistic physics will allow in games. If AI gets better, that's awesome too. But don't think that it'll necessarily mean that the quality of games will improve overall.
I don't believe that there's a whole bunch of designers out there with these absolutely killer ideas for games, just waiting for the hardware to get powerful enough to make it reality. I still think that tetris is the best game I ever played, and it could run on a calculator that I had 10 years ago. Horsepower will only get you so far. You've got to have some inspired and dedicated designers making games, and as long as that's there, what you run it on doesn't matter so much.
There's no reason why a $250 system can't have games that are just as good as a $600 system, no matter how many pixels each one can render.
I watched a TV show about the space probe that sent an impactor into a comet a few years back, and they had to deal with this problem with the "mothership" craft that would follow behind the impactor and take measurements of the impact. They were testing a shield using the same basic design, except I think it used copper for the sheets. They used some super high speed guns at a university in Colorado I think. The point is, it was designed to protect against the sorts of speeds common in space-borne particles, and the tests were successful.
The spacecraft mission was also succesful, but I don't know if the craft actually had any significant impacts during flight. I'm sure google would turn up some info, but I'm too lazy to search right now.
For some reason this is modded funny, but it's actually true. Although space is pretty empty, there's still lots of little particles flying around and very high speeds. Micrometeor damage to spacecraft is extremely common, and probably unavoidable until all those lazy scientists get off their asses and invent deflector arrays and energy shields. So far, we've been lucky that none of the damage has been catastrophic for any astronauts, but it's an ever present risk.
If this technology really works as well as is advertised, how bout the government does something with it a bit more productive than sending a bunch to the army? Like maybe buying thousands of these things and shipping them to many of the different places in the world where a lack access to fresh water is one of the most pressing health concerns of millions of people.
It's good that our soldiers are out in the middle east doing their jobs, and they deserve fresh water too. But seeing the general anger towards the US that's prevelant in so much of the world right now, actually helping people with something like this would generate tremendous good will. It'd probably be a lot cheaper than our wars are as well.
As long as it's worked into the game reasonably well, and not an interruption to the game, it doesn't bother me much. Like most things, it can be done badly, in which case it will certainly be annoying. But if it revolves around product placement and brand awareness, rather than direct "Buy me now for only $14.99 at Walmart!" it shouldn't be bad. More clever things like BK having the king escort you to the ring in FightNight are actually pretty cool, and would make me laugh.
I don't have any problem with ads in game on principle. If it keeps the prices of games from going up as quickly as they would otherwise, then so much the better.
This is one of those things where just about anyone even mildly educated about how we think our solar systems formed would say, "Well, duh, planet formation seems pretty standard, so with hundreds of millions of stars out there, there should be billions of planets."
As long as you assume that the circumstances that lead to the creation of our solar system were not particularly unusual or unique (arguably a reasonable assumption), then basic common sense points towards similar things happening for many of the other stars out there.
So keeping that in mind, the next question is, how does the number of planets in our solar system compare to the average. It's just starting to become possible for us to detect and hopefully count planets around other stars, so hopefully that number will become less hazy.
Like I said, a little knowledge of the science we have so far plus some common sense would generally lead a person to expect planets around many stars out there. Nature, however, has surprised us before. So any time we find planets somewhere besides here, it just reaffirms our confidence in our theories.
In some cases it's the story, but sometimes it's just the gameplay. Mario Kart didn't have much of a story on the SNES, but it was fun as hell multiplayer, and it's still fun as hell two versions later with some friends sitting around the Gamecube.
I'm as much for innovation as the next guy, but there's nothing wrong with building on a successful formula or continuing a successful franchise.
Going in between two structures is significantly more difficult than just running into them. Not only do you have to aim for the right point, but you need to approach from the correct angle.
Commercial jets are complicated machines, but at the end of the day, they pretty much fly according to the same principles of a small cessna. Turning, climbing, and diving are all basically the same, and as long as you don't have to take off or land, flying a plane is not particularly challenging.
The more complicated parts of being a pilot are obeying all the rules and regulations, as well as navigating. The terrorist pilots on 9/11 had to figure out the navigating part, but probably weren't all to concerned with following the rules. Once they located the towers, all they had to do was point the plane and start to throttle up. Unless they had second thoughts about killing themselves, it probably wasn't very hard at all.
Actually, my new theory is that Jack Thompson is just a huge Nintendo fanboy, but disguises this fact by pretending it's all about violence. And since Nintendo only makes kiddie games, he'll never have to criticise them, and he only has to sue Sony and maybe Microsoft.
All you Sony and MS fanboys whining about him crapping on your hobby need to realize that he's actually crapping on your particular consoles, and that he's twice the genius fanboy that you'll ever be.
The current administration was given a lot of support from the country as a whole after the WTC attacks, and they quickly used that support as a club to beat down anyone who disagreed with their plans. Congress as a whole, members from both parties, were paralyzed by fear; either fear of terrorism, or fear of looking weak against terrorism. They allowed the president to do pretty much whatever he wanted, and the administration did just that.
Now it's to the point where congress has really lost any control of the executive branch. The president is doing things that clearly contradict the law, and will continue to do so. Congress can pass any sort of restrictions on his power that they want, the administration will just ignore it. So instead, the republicans are passing laws that retroactively allow the president's previously illegal actions, to make it look like they still have some control over the situation. Part of the democrats follow suit and vote with the republicans, and the bulk of the remaining democrats are too afraid and disorganized to create a loud resistence.
This spying bill is pretty bad, but it's not nearly as big a blemish on our country as the Detainee/Trials/Torture bill that just got passed. If you want to see some real evidence of the terrorists winning against our freedoms, read up on that.
All other things being equal, I'd rather have a computer that looks nice than one that's just a plain box.
Plus, there's the hope that a company that would take the time and effort to make their machine look really nice cared enough to make the machine's insides work and perform well also.
You won't find much argument that the client is laggy and a couple of generations behind as far as visuals go. I'm not familiar with TinyMUD, but if it's similar to Second Life, then good for it. If there's still a market for such software 15 years later, then maybe SL isn't such a bad thing?
You can play second life 24/7 without spending a dime of real cash on the game. You have to pay a subscription fee if you want to own "land" within the game. On land that you own, you have some privledges that you don't normally have, but if you have any social ability, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a group that will allow you to share their land.
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So? All there is to do in WoW is buy, kill things, sell, and talk.
"Create" is a pretty damn broad term, and in SL it encompasses a whole lot. Modelling, texturing, scripting, and bringing all of that together to create objects, buildings, landscapes, etc.
90% of what happens in real life really boils down to social interactions. Why should a "virtual world" be any different. Humans are social creatures.
The whole credit card thing sounds pretty crappy though. Bastards.
Second Life is more interesting I think because most of what you see in the game is player created. WoW may have more people playing it, but they're spread across a bunch of different servers, and they're generally just interacting with pre-made content. Second Life takes place in a huge online world, where almost everything can be modified by players, and almost everything can be sold/traded/exchanged/given away. It's much more open-ended than WoW.
The downside is that you have a lot of less-talented people creating the world, so much of what you see is crap. But there's still plenty of good stuff, and just because someone isn't that great at creating doesn't mean they shouldn't be given the opportunity to try, or to share what they've made.
Dammit, The people running Iran are not as crazy as you think they are. If Iran ever does use a nuke on another country, it will likely be Israel, but it'll be the result of someone else attacking Iran first.
There's one thing that you can safely assume about anyone in government. Their primary concern is maintaining their own power. A nuke going off in Israel would result in an overwhelming nuclear response from both Israel and the US, over every square inch of Iran's territory. Iran's government is fully aware of that. As much as they might like to see Israel gone and be able to reclaim that land, they know that attacking them with nuclear weapons would not have a useful result for them.
North Korea's leader is often described as a loonybin reject, but his government has consistently taken all necessary steps to maintain their power, and launching a strike against South Korea or Japan would be the quickest way to unmake their position. They know that as well, and would never agress first.
There's a slightly better chance that one of these two countries could potentially try to sell nukes to another country, but I don't see that as particularly likely. It's not the kind of technology that you just share with other people. But if they did, and the world found out, they know they'd be facing isolation and hardships well beyond what they've got now.
These countries have been using the development of nukes as a bargining chip for negotiation. Since the current administration refuses to actually negotiate, progress on the nukes keeps moving. And it's a win-win for NK and Iran. Either they can stop development in exchange for whatever concessions they can get out of the rest of the world, or they end up with working nuclear weapons, which are an excellent deterrent when you're being hassled by a country that sent a bunch of soldiers halfway around the world to wreck another country, just because they could.
Killing/physically harming someone is a little extreme, but the case in question is a bit more mundane. In that case, it's not really as simple as just good parenting. Even a middle school aged child has a fair amount of independent thought.
Anecdotally, my brother and I are close in age, were treated pretty equally by our parents, and were given what I feel is a good balance of freedom vs. structure while growing up. Yet my brother has consistently made some questionable decisions that have resulted in a lot of problems for both himself and my parents, while I've generally been more thoughtful with my actions, and stayed out of trouble. As my brother started causing problems, he became more closely watched than I was, and was punished for things he did, but that didn't always straighten him out.
The plain truth of the matter is that my brother and I are inherently very different people, and we've reacted to the same parenting in very different ways. While I don't think my brother ever would go and shoot a school administrator that he didn't like, it wouldn't have surprised me if he had posted nasty myspace pages had such a thing existed when he was that age. And if he did, when my mom found out, he would've had to deal with some consequences.
While preparing your children for what they'll encounter is an important part of parenting, it's not possible to entirely predict what your kid will face, or how they'll react. Parents are not mind-readers or future-tellers. Just as important a part is how you make your child accept responsibility for their actions after the fact. Taking that job out of the parents' hands and putting it into the domain of the legal system doesn't seem like a good idea.
If the parents locked their kids off of the internet at their houses, they just would've done it on the computers at school, or the library, or the coffee shop, or whatever. Kids are imaginative and smarter than many people give them credit for. Add in the comfort level with digital technology that they have over a lot of adults currently, and their MySpace'ing is basically unstoppable.
You think that's bad? I heard that Steve Jobs rides to his Apple Expo keynotes in a car not made by Apple! And sometimes when the CEO of McDonalds goes to lunches with business clients, sometimes he goes to restaurants that don't serve Big Macs! Hell, I work in an architecture firm, but I live in a house that someone else designed. I must think I'm crap!
They're basically saying, rather than roll our own online "environment" for this project, we'll just use a pre-existing one, and save our company some money by not doing a lot of extra work. That seems to make sense to me.
Yeah, this is just more dumb hype. Sure, tiny chips will continue to advance in computing power, and continue to take over tasks that used to require a room full of computers to use. That's great.
But as the capabilities of computers has continually increased, people have continually found problems that require large amounts of hardware to solve. No matter how much data someone manages to cram into a 3" disc, someone's going to pull together a pile of data that requires thousands of those discs. That much hardware will need significant amounts of energy, cooling, security, monitoring, etc. Spreading them around all over the place won't make those issues go away, it'd make them worse.
As distributed computing takes off, datacenters will become even more important, because more and more data will be generated, and having centralized places to store, control, utilize all that data makes tons of sense.
Yeah, I don't think people are upset at the possibility of new features, it's just that there's a flipside to this coin, and it's that the ability to patch problems through updates makes it "acceptable" for devs/publishers to ship games that might not quite be up to the quality we're used to on consoles, at least in terms of bugs and such. When you know you won't be able to patch your software, and your company's reputation is on the line, there's good reason to test the hell out of your game. Now the "ship now, fix it later" mentality that plagues PC games might make the jump to our living rooms.
Maybe 10 years ago, I could play Nintendo for six hours a day, for twelve months straight, and I'd see less crashes than I would in a week of light computer use. That is one of the biggest reasons why console gaming has grown so much bigger than PC gaming. Now that Microsoft has finally gotten a handle on their OS stability, it's depressing to think that console gaming might be going in the other direction.
He tried to get China to deal with it because he was too incompetent to do it himself. NK wanted direct talks with the US. They didn't want to go through China. NK is worried about the US undermining their government, they're not concerned about China.
The Bush administration's big idea on NK was to cut off any sort of aid and diplomacy, and try and get everyone else to do the same. The misguided hope is that that would cause the government to collapse. The problem is that during the Clinton administration, the US as well as China and especially South Korea had been involved in detailed, complex, and relatively cordial negotiations.
The way diplomacy generally works is that the leaders make big proclamations and empty threats and whatnot, and then other people work hard behind the scenes to establish a compromise where things get settled peacefully, and neither side ends up looking like they lost. After Clinton left office, North Korea kept playing that game, because that's how politics work. Bush, however, was disinterested in playing that game (for a number of reasons). And so while the rhetoric was increasing as it always was, there was no effort put forth by the US to actually solve any of the issues. Both sides painted themselves into a corner, and this time no escape plan was hammered out.
The only difference is that NK's corner had a little ledge they could climb out on, it just involved actually testing a nuke. The US is still stuck in its corner, and even if there was a way out, it's doubtful that Bush would take it, it's just not the way his mind works. His administration views any sort of compromise as defeat, no matter who the opponent, or how high the stakes.
Yeah, I thought about that, but I'm not sure that's entirely it. There are still plenty of older games that I still find fun. The bulk of my time on my DS is spent on Advance Wars, which is so simple that it could probably run on an NES no problem (with mildly downgraded artwork and sound.
Online multiplayer, however, I'll give you. That's a recent advance that's really benefitted as of late from technology, and has made some new types of games possible.
All that being said, I think my original point still stands. There have been many hyped up games, with beautiful visuals and such, which have ended up being not particularly fun. Packing more hardware into a box does not guarantee better games.
Meh, I also do not think we should have gone to war in Iraq. It is, however, not correct or productive to place the blame on the troops, and since they're over there following orders as best they can, they deserve our respect and the best logistics/support that we can manage to give them.
I was thinking about this last night. I remember a little bit of Atari gaming, but the bulk of what I clearly remember in my gaming career started with the NES. Since then, the industry has grown by leaps and bounds, the power of the hardware has increased at a stunning rate, and game development prices have continued to balloon.
But through all that, I still only seem to see about four or five must-have games in a given year. Despite all the advances in technology, making a great game appears to still be rather difficult. Maybe the technology has made it harder. I don't make games, so I'm not sure.
I'm certainly glad that graphics have improved. I'm excited to see what sorts of changes more realistic physics will allow in games. If AI gets better, that's awesome too. But don't think that it'll necessarily mean that the quality of games will improve overall.
I don't believe that there's a whole bunch of designers out there with these absolutely killer ideas for games, just waiting for the hardware to get powerful enough to make it reality. I still think that tetris is the best game I ever played, and it could run on a calculator that I had 10 years ago. Horsepower will only get you so far. You've got to have some inspired and dedicated designers making games, and as long as that's there, what you run it on doesn't matter so much.
There's no reason why a $250 system can't have games that are just as good as a $600 system, no matter how many pixels each one can render.
I watched a TV show about the space probe that sent an impactor into a comet a few years back, and they had to deal with this problem with the "mothership" craft that would follow behind the impactor and take measurements of the impact. They were testing a shield using the same basic design, except I think it used copper for the sheets. They used some super high speed guns at a university in Colorado I think. The point is, it was designed to protect against the sorts of speeds common in space-borne particles, and the tests were successful.
The spacecraft mission was also succesful, but I don't know if the craft actually had any significant impacts during flight. I'm sure google would turn up some info, but I'm too lazy to search right now.
For some reason this is modded funny, but it's actually true. Although space is pretty empty, there's still lots of little particles flying around and very high speeds. Micrometeor damage to spacecraft is extremely common, and probably unavoidable until all those lazy scientists get off their asses and invent deflector arrays and energy shields. So far, we've been lucky that none of the damage has been catastrophic for any astronauts, but it's an ever present risk.
If this technology really works as well as is advertised, how bout the government does something with it a bit more productive than sending a bunch to the army? Like maybe buying thousands of these things and shipping them to many of the different places in the world where a lack access to fresh water is one of the most pressing health concerns of millions of people.
It's good that our soldiers are out in the middle east doing their jobs, and they deserve fresh water too. But seeing the general anger towards the US that's prevelant in so much of the world right now, actually helping people with something like this would generate tremendous good will. It'd probably be a lot cheaper than our wars are as well.
As long as it's worked into the game reasonably well, and not an interruption to the game, it doesn't bother me much. Like most things, it can be done badly, in which case it will certainly be annoying. But if it revolves around product placement and brand awareness, rather than direct "Buy me now for only $14.99 at Walmart!" it shouldn't be bad. More clever things like BK having the king escort you to the ring in FightNight are actually pretty cool, and would make me laugh.
I don't have any problem with ads in game on principle. If it keeps the prices of games from going up as quickly as they would otherwise, then so much the better.
This is one of those things where just about anyone even mildly educated about how we think our solar systems formed would say, "Well, duh, planet formation seems pretty standard, so with hundreds of millions of stars out there, there should be billions of planets."
As long as you assume that the circumstances that lead to the creation of our solar system were not particularly unusual or unique (arguably a reasonable assumption), then basic common sense points towards similar things happening for many of the other stars out there.
So keeping that in mind, the next question is, how does the number of planets in our solar system compare to the average. It's just starting to become possible for us to detect and hopefully count planets around other stars, so hopefully that number will become less hazy.
Like I said, a little knowledge of the science we have so far plus some common sense would generally lead a person to expect planets around many stars out there. Nature, however, has surprised us before. So any time we find planets somewhere besides here, it just reaffirms our confidence in our theories.
In some cases it's the story, but sometimes it's just the gameplay. Mario Kart didn't have much of a story on the SNES, but it was fun as hell multiplayer, and it's still fun as hell two versions later with some friends sitting around the Gamecube.
I'm as much for innovation as the next guy, but there's nothing wrong with building on a successful formula or continuing a successful franchise.
They're more often referred to as the 6 degrees of freedom
Simple movement through space:
Up-Down
Left-Right
Forwards-Backwards
And rotations around the three axis:
Pitch
Roll
Yaw
They're all really easy to show visually, but it's sort of hard to explain the differences with words.
I guess sony's controller can detect all 6 types of movement, but it's really only happening around three axis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Degrees_Of_Freedom
Going in between two structures is significantly more difficult than just running into them. Not only do you have to aim for the right point, but you need to approach from the correct angle.
Commercial jets are complicated machines, but at the end of the day, they pretty much fly according to the same principles of a small cessna. Turning, climbing, and diving are all basically the same, and as long as you don't have to take off or land, flying a plane is not particularly challenging.
The more complicated parts of being a pilot are obeying all the rules and regulations, as well as navigating. The terrorist pilots on 9/11 had to figure out the navigating part, but probably weren't all to concerned with following the rules. Once they located the towers, all they had to do was point the plane and start to throttle up. Unless they had second thoughts about killing themselves, it probably wasn't very hard at all.
Actually, my new theory is that Jack Thompson is just a huge Nintendo fanboy, but disguises this fact by pretending it's all about violence. And since Nintendo only makes kiddie games, he'll never have to criticise them, and he only has to sue Sony and maybe Microsoft.
All you Sony and MS fanboys whining about him crapping on your hobby need to realize that he's actually crapping on your particular consoles, and that he's twice the genius fanboy that you'll ever be.
The current administration was given a lot of support from the country as a whole after the WTC attacks, and they quickly used that support as a club to beat down anyone who disagreed with their plans. Congress as a whole, members from both parties, were paralyzed by fear; either fear of terrorism, or fear of looking weak against terrorism. They allowed the president to do pretty much whatever he wanted, and the administration did just that.
Now it's to the point where congress has really lost any control of the executive branch. The president is doing things that clearly contradict the law, and will continue to do so. Congress can pass any sort of restrictions on his power that they want, the administration will just ignore it. So instead, the republicans are passing laws that retroactively allow the president's previously illegal actions, to make it look like they still have some control over the situation. Part of the democrats follow suit and vote with the republicans, and the bulk of the remaining democrats are too afraid and disorganized to create a loud resistence.
This spying bill is pretty bad, but it's not nearly as big a blemish on our country as the Detainee/Trials/Torture bill that just got passed. If you want to see some real evidence of the terrorists winning against our freedoms, read up on that.
Moving heavy patients? Was someone having a contest to see who could come up with the most boring use of super-human strength?
All other things being equal, I'd rather have a computer that looks nice than one that's just a plain box.
Plus, there's the hope that a company that would take the time and effort to make their machine look really nice cared enough to make the machine's insides work and perform well also.
You won't find much argument that the client is laggy and a couple of generations behind as far as visuals go. I'm not familiar with TinyMUD, but if it's similar to Second Life, then good for it. If there's still a market for such software 15 years later, then maybe SL isn't such a bad thing?
You can play second life 24/7 without spending a dime of real cash on the game. You have to pay a subscription fee if you want to own "land" within the game. On land that you own, you have some privledges that you don't normally have, but if you have any social ability, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a group that will allow you to share their land.