Microsoft seriously needs to do something about this. It's gotten so bad that I get a phishing message almost every single day I play online (CallOfDuty mostly). They're usually "msg me for free MS points" but the scams vary. I report them every time but I have no idea if Microsoft actually does anything with them.
BMI combined with a shred of common sense is a perfectly fine approximation of obesity. There are two Unix admins here with scary-high BMIs, and you don't need calipers to know which one is obese and which one is just on steroids.
It sounds like you also don't need BMI to know which one is obese.
If you enjoyed BG:DA and X-menLegends, you must check out Dungeons&Dragons:Heroes! My friends and I had an absolute blast playing that game. We actually enjoyed it much more than Champions Of Norrath, even though Norrath seemed to get a lot more press. Norrath had way too much inventory management and a fair number of bugs.
We use both HSQL and Derby and our experience was that while HSQL was great for small databases, it started to become impractical for medium-to-large databases. Just doing a SELECT Count(*) FROM Foo (which should be instant) can take 30 seconds or more on a large table. Also, if you do a lot of updating (incrementing statistics records, for instance) the table size can get out of hand quickly since each update effectively adds a new record to the table file (until you compact it).
Here are some preliminary notes one of our engineers compiled while investigating adding Derby to our project. They were just preliminary notes so I make no guarantees as to accuracy but they might be helpful...:
CHAR/VARCHAR/LONG VARCHAR
Derby strictly enforces the size specification in CHAR and VARCHAR fields. CHAR fields are space extended; non-space data the does not fit in the field raises an exception on insert or update. LONG VARCHAR data cannot be ordered, grouped, or indexed. (Really!) I believe that SQLServer (and possibly MySQL) has these stupid limitations, too. It may go all the back to the SQL-92 spec. HSQLDB, on the otherhand, ignores all size specifications, treating CHAR/VARCHAR/LONG VARCHAR as synonymns for java.lang.String.
TOP/LIMIT
Derby does not support the TOP or LIMIT syntax. There appears to be a "FIRST n ROWS ONLY" syntax that was added to DB2 that never found its way into Cloudscape.
Case sensitivity
Derby appears to treat all columns as case sensitive; and there appears no way to change this. HSQLDB, on the otherhand, can be configured on a field-by-field basis. (SET IGNORECASE is used for the database default; and VARCHAR_IGNORECASE is used as the data declaration.)
IDENTITY fields
Derby uses the bizarre syntax GENERATE ALWAYS AS IDENTITY. This also does not imply that the field is a primary key. So, "IDENTITY" in HSQLDB becomes "GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY". Derby allows specification of initial value and increment.
GENERATE ALWAYS AS IDENTITY (START WITH 1, INCREMENT BY 2)
Performance
Derby is nearly instantaneous for COUNT(*) queries on databases with large number of rows. HSQLDB appears to count the rows, resulting in very poor performance. Derby appears to have a better architecture for large databases. Queries seem to run in time proportional to the size of the result set. Many simple HSQLDB queries run in time proportional to the size of the database.
I think the Seti distributed thing is great and all, but I'd like to donate my free cycles to a project with more immediate (and likely) benefits to mankind. Any suggestions?
I'm still waiting for the day that one of these things wipes out the infected host after X hours/days. Ebola spreads fast and kills the host, why not a virus/worm?
I'll laugh when it happens.
I have a few questions, which you probably won't answer.
I work for a company that provides a very good anti-spam gateway service that you might want to check out. You basically just point your mail domain to our filtering servers, which filter (quarantine) out the junk and then forward the rest to your original mailserver. The block rate is around 98% and the false positive rate is close to zero. The cost is less than $2.00/user/month but if you e-mail me at brien1@redcondor.com I might be able to get you setup for less.
Best of luck, Brien
I would have sent this via e-mail but your address isn't listed in your profile. Gee, I wonder why?:-)
FFS. Stick to one genre. GTA is GTA. Platform games are platfom games. Shoot em ups are shoot em ups. By mixing genres all you end up with is something to piss off everybody.
I tried Jak2 and really didn't like it but I actually thought the shooter/platformer combination worked beautifully in Ratchet 2. In fact, I'd have to say it stands as one of my favorite platformers.
I was really looking forward to playing 4-player ChampionsOfNorrath but ended up quite disappointed. I, too, have had the game crash but what was way worse was running into a quest glitch a third of the way through and having to start the entire freakin' game over! That's unforgivable, especially in a console game.
My other major gripe in Norrath is a mind-bogglingly stupid (and simple) design issue. Every single little creature you kill (and most of the barrels you smash) drops treasure, 99% of it being crap items. How ants and beetles manage to carry around suits of armor and battle-axes, I have no idea. In a 4-player game you end up spending, I kid you not, HALF of the freakin' game in the inventory screen, or the store. Of course, only 2 players at a time can view their inventory or the buy/sell screens, which means the other 2 players are impatiently twiddling their thumbs most of the time. It honestly felt like we'd bought the wrong game and somehow ended up playing "Barbie's Shopping Mall Adventure Of Norrath". Unfortunately it comes close to ruining the game and our fourth player actually quit in disgust and went home on the first night. We're now down to three, which makes the inventory stuff a tiny bit more manageable.
The quests themselves aren't that great, either, and the game desperately needs compass indicators for the quests. You spend quite a bit of time wandering around, trying to figure out where you're supposed to go.
It's a shame, because I can see a pretty decent game underneath except for some really stupid design decisions that would have been trivial to fix.
We had WAY more fun with D&D:Heroes on the XBox, which for some reason received much poorer reviews than CON.
Extending their logic: As a software developer shouldn't I get a cut of all devices that can be used to pirate software? This would, of course, include CDRs, floppy disks, CD-burners, hard-drives, USB memory sticks, modems, DSL lines, and computers.
99% of the games are only 480 so I wouldn't call that true HD support. There's a big difference between 1080i and 480p. I want the next gen consoles to have enough power (and memory) so that all of the games actually support the high resolution modes of HDTV. Hopefully that will make split-screen multiplayer a little more palatable, as well.
That's my biggest wishlist item for the next generation consoles. It's kinda' frustrating to finally have a television that doesn't have 50-year old resolution limitations but still not be able to really take advantage of it in my gaming...
In response to the above poster I'd just like to say "Ditto!".
I've been playing games for 20 years and the game that had the most emotional impact is, without a doubt, Planescape:Torment. I was in awe of that game as I played... (the Fallout games also rocked, of course)
I just talked a friend into playing Planescape a few weeks ago. I think I'll wait until he's finished before giving him the bad news.
Black Isle, you'll be missed.
Brien Voorhees brienv@pacbell.net
OverStock's crappy search feature lost them a sale
on
The Career Programmer
·
· Score: 1
When I followed the Overstock link and tried to add the book to my cart I got an error message so I tried locating the book from their homepage. Here are my search results on Overstock.com (no searches resulted in the book being on the first page of results):
career programmer = 2249 matches
"the career programmer" = 1673 matches
career programmer Duncan = 1929 matches
and here are the same searches on Amazon:
career programmer = 23 matches, Duncan's book at top of results
"the career programmer" = 23 matches, Duncan's book at top of results
career programmer Duncan = took me directly to Duncan's book
I was so disgusted with Overstock's search feature that I decided to screw the savings and just 1-click order it on Amazon. Way to go, Overstock!
> I've tried going checking out review sites like GameSpot, > but they don't really list that specifically, and > reviewers don't necessarily care about it.
I've been very frustrated by this, as well. AdrenalineVault (http://www.avault.com) is good about covering multi-player features of games. Their reviews have a separate section/rating specifically for multi-player features. I wish more review sites had that. I'd also love to be able to sort/select games based on their multi-player features.
I love cooperative games and really wish game producers put more effort into making cooperative play a priority. It seems like co-op availability especially went downhill when all of the games went to 3-D. I'm bummed that Doom3 won't have co-op since my friends and I had an absolute blast playing Doom1&2 together back in the day.
I recently scoured usenet for game titles that support cooperative play. Here are the notes I compiled resulting from that search in case it's helpful (I haven't played any of them yet so I can't vouch for them):
Defender - Xbox
PS2..... Conflict Desert Storm[mediocre reviews but co-op is supposed to be good] Mobile Light Force 2 (shooter) Contra Shattered Soldier
PS1..... Herc's Adventures. (platformer - highly recommended) Unholy War (strategy/action game similar to Archon and designed by Paul Reiche III. Might be competitive instead of co-op) RayStorm (overhead water-based shooter) You Don't Know Jack Metal Slug-X Assault: Retribution (similar to contra) Ballistic (looks like good puzzle/action game) Bomberman Party Edition Poy Poy (party) Trap Gunner (well-reviewed, similar to "bomberman, grid runner, crackdown") Space Invaders Twisted Metal 2 & Critical Depth Micro Machines V3 bomberman fantasy race
In The Hunt Critical Depth (Warhawk meets Twisted Metal) Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo "It's the best two-player puzzle game ever made. No kidding!" Tecmo Stackers (similar to Super Puzzle Fighter) Bust-a-Groove FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing N2O: Nitrous Oxide (Like tempest but better?) Roll Away (2-player puzzle/marble-madness/monkeyball)
Here are some:
Tales of Destiny. You'll have to play the first dungeon by yourself, but once you get Mary in your party & find the Channeling in that cave near the temple, you can have your girlfriend play as Mary... Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 (like twisted metal but a bit more cartoonish and supports cooperative)
Team Buddies (single player and deathmatch. over-head real-time strategy/action) Grid Runner Namco museum 4 Nectaris: Military Madness Norse By Norsewest R-Types (listed as 2-player but I don't think it is)
MAME (emulator) ROMs..... Most of these are side scrolling multi-player games: Aliens Vs Predator - avsp Armored Warriors - armwar Double Dragon(japan) - ddragon D&D - ddsom D&D2 - ddtod Golden Axe - goldnaxe Knights of the Round - knights Smash TV - smashtv TMNT1 - tmnt x-men (4 players) - xmen
A friend and I played through TimeSplitters2 recently and are currently going through TimeSplitters1. Both games support co-op and are a lot of fun. Some of the levels get pretty hard and really require good teamwork.
Going to the video store takes too much time (and is just plain annoying) and buying games is too expensive (especially when you buy a crappy game). For me, RedOctane and NetFlix totally rock.
When I hear about a new game I just add it to my queue and forget about it. I always have at least one new game to play and it costs me a fraction of what I used to spend buying games. I live in California and their shipping turnaround has been extremely quick. My experience with NetFlix has been similar.
Between Tivo, NetFlix, RedOctane, and my wife, I have everything I need!
-Brien
IDEA will save you an hour or more per day
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 1
I know this sounds like bullshit but using IDEA will generally save you about an hour a day. You'll also probably end up with better code thanks to how quick and easy it is to refactor (move or rename methods/classes/variables/packages, etc.) with IDEA. I'm sure there are some IDEA users on here that'll back me up on those seemingly outrageous claims.
Other people have already listed some of IDEA's features so I won't bother enumerating them. The only real downsides to IDEA are that it's a memory/cpu hog and it doesn't have wizards and drag-n-drop GUI designers (I never used 'em anyway). What it has instead are tons of features that actually save you time while you're coding and navigating your code.
I've used several major IDE's and eventually settled on JBuilder until recently when I finally decided to give IDEA a try. It's the only IDE I've ever used that felt like it was designed by programmers instead of a marketing department.
I find the idea of basing the bulk of internet sites on one company's proprietary application to be quite scary. I mean, imagine what kind of control and power(i.e.wealth) this company will have someday once the majority of sites worldwide are written exclusively for their technology...
Oh wait, Microsoft has already accomplished that with Microsoft IE/.NET/SmartTags/etc. Nevermind.
sigh,
Brien Voorhees
Andromeda's ok but pales compared to StargateSG-1
on
Andromeda
·
· Score: 1
If you like sci-fi but yearn for better writing, clever dialog, and decent acting, you should really check out Stargate SG-1 on Showtime (also available in sindication). I didn't think much of the original movie but have been enjoying the hell out of the series.
It's one of only a handful of shows that I bother to watch regularly (the others being West Wing, Simpsons, and Futurama (like you care) ).
SG-1 can be a little confusing at first so it helps to watch a few episodes and you can also consult the handy FAQ at http://www.stargate-sg1.com/home/faq/index.html .
[all IMHO, of course]
-Brien
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft seriously needs to do something about this. It's gotten so bad that I get a phishing message almost every single day I play online (CallOfDuty mostly). They're usually "msg me for free MS points" but the scams vary. I report them every time but I have no idea if Microsoft actually does anything with them.
Just got one today titled "Extreme Cat Rape".
I guess that's where you go when normal cat rape just doesn't do it for you anymore.
BMI combined with a shred of common sense is a perfectly fine approximation of obesity. There are two Unix admins here with scary-high BMIs, and you don't need calipers to know which one is obese and which one is just on steroids.
It sounds like you also don't need BMI to know which one is obese.
If you enjoyed BG:DA and X-menLegends, you must check out Dungeons&Dragons:Heroes! My friends and I had an absolute blast playing that game. We actually enjoyed it much more than Champions Of Norrath, even though Norrath seemed to get a lot more press. Norrath had way too much inventory management and a fair number of bugs.
Brien Voorhees
We use both HSQL and Derby and our experience was that while HSQL was great for small databases, it started to become impractical for medium-to-large databases. Just doing a SELECT Count(*) FROM Foo (which should be instant) can take 30 seconds or more on a large table. Also, if you do a lot of updating (incrementing statistics records, for instance) the table size can get out of hand quickly since each update effectively adds a new record to the table file (until you compact it).
:
Here are some preliminary notes one of our engineers compiled while investigating adding Derby to our project. They were just preliminary notes so I make no guarantees as to accuracy but they might be helpful...
CHAR/VARCHAR/LONG VARCHAR
Derby strictly enforces the size specification in CHAR and VARCHAR fields. CHAR fields are space extended; non-space data the does not fit in the field raises an exception on insert or update. LONG VARCHAR data cannot be ordered, grouped, or indexed. (Really!) I believe that SQLServer (and possibly MySQL) has these stupid limitations, too. It may go all the back to the SQL-92 spec. HSQLDB, on the otherhand, ignores all size specifications, treating CHAR/VARCHAR/LONG VARCHAR as synonymns for java.lang.String.
TOP/LIMIT
Derby does not support the TOP or LIMIT syntax. There appears to be a "FIRST n ROWS ONLY" syntax that was added to DB2 that never found its way into Cloudscape.
Case sensitivity
Derby appears to treat all columns as case sensitive; and there appears no way to change this. HSQLDB, on the otherhand, can be configured on a field-by-field basis. (SET IGNORECASE is used for the database default; and VARCHAR_IGNORECASE is used as the data declaration.)
IDENTITY fields
Derby uses the bizarre syntax GENERATE ALWAYS AS IDENTITY. This also does not imply that the field is a primary key. So, "IDENTITY" in HSQLDB becomes "GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY". Derby allows specification of initial value and increment.
GENERATE ALWAYS AS IDENTITY (START WITH 1, INCREMENT BY 2)
Performance
Derby is nearly instantaneous for COUNT(*) queries on databases with large number of rows. HSQLDB appears to count the rows, resulting in very poor performance. Derby appears to have a better architecture for large databases. Queries seem to run in time proportional to the size of the result set. Many simple HSQLDB queries run in time proportional to the size of the database.
CHECK constraints
Derby supports CHECK constraints, e.g.,
size INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL CHECK (size >= 0)
disposition CHAR(1) DEFAULT '+' NOT NULL CHECK (disposition IN ('+', '-', 'B', 'M', 'Q'))
FOREIGN KEY constraints
Derby supports inline foreign key declarations with implied column matching, e.g.,
smtpID CHAR(17) NOT NULL REFERENCES InboxEvents ON DELETE CASCADE
HSQLDB requires table-level contraints with explicit column matching:
FOREIGN KEY (smtpID) REFERENCES InboxEvents (smtpID) ON DELETE CASCADE
Cheers,
Brien Voorhees
Red Condor
Corporate anti-spam gateway service for less than $2/user/month
I think the Seti distributed thing is great and all, but I'd like to donate my free cycles to a project with more immediate (and likely) benefits to mankind. Any suggestions?
-Brien
I have a few questions, which you probably won't answer.
Why will you laugh when that happens?
What do you think that says about you?
Will you laugh when it happens to you?
Rumors have it that this Windows version will be so massive that Microsoft plans to abandon CDs in favor of read-only 120gig hard drives.
Much of the space will be used by the conveniently pre-installed pop-ups, worms, viruses, and spyware (in other words, it will come with RealPlayer).
I work for a company that provides a very good anti-spam gateway service that you might want to check out. You basically just point your mail domain to our filtering servers, which filter (quarantine) out the junk and then forward the rest to your original mailserver. The block rate is around 98% and the false positive rate is close to zero. The cost is less than $2.00/user/month but if you e-mail me at brien1@redcondor.com I might be able to get you setup for less.
:-)
Best of luck,
Brien
I would have sent this via e-mail but your address isn't listed in your profile. Gee, I wonder why?
I tried Jak2 and really didn't like it but I actually thought the shooter/platformer combination worked beautifully in Ratchet 2. In fact, I'd have to say it stands as one of my favorite platformers.
Brien
I was really looking forward to playing 4-player ChampionsOfNorrath but ended up quite disappointed. I, too, have had the game crash but what was way worse was running into a quest glitch a third of the way through and having to start the entire freakin' game over! That's unforgivable, especially in a console game.
.02,
My other major gripe in Norrath is a mind-bogglingly stupid (and simple) design issue. Every single little creature you kill (and most of the barrels you smash) drops treasure, 99% of it being crap items. How ants and beetles manage to carry around suits of armor and battle-axes, I have no idea. In a 4-player game you end up spending, I kid you not, HALF of the freakin' game in the inventory screen, or the store. Of course, only 2 players at a time can view their inventory or the buy/sell screens, which means the other 2 players are impatiently twiddling their thumbs most of the time. It honestly felt like we'd bought the wrong game and somehow ended up playing "Barbie's Shopping Mall Adventure Of Norrath". Unfortunately it comes close to ruining the game and our fourth player actually quit in disgust and went home on the first night. We're now down to three, which makes the inventory stuff a tiny bit more manageable.
The quests themselves aren't that great, either, and the game desperately needs compass indicators for the quests. You spend quite a bit of time wandering around, trying to figure out where you're supposed to go.
It's a shame, because I can see a pretty decent game underneath except for some really stupid design decisions that would have been trivial to fix.
We had WAY more fun with D&D:Heroes on the XBox, which for some reason received much poorer reviews than CON.
My
Brien Voorhees
Extending their logic :
As a software developer shouldn't I get a cut of all devices that can be used to pirate software? This would, of course, include CDRs, floppy disks, CD-burners, hard-drives, USB memory sticks, modems, DSL lines, and computers.
Where's my damn money?
Brien
99% of the games are only 480 so I wouldn't call that true HD support. There's a big difference between 1080i and 480p. I want the next gen consoles to have enough power (and memory) so that all of the games actually support the high resolution modes of HDTV. Hopefully that will make split-screen multiplayer a little more palatable, as well.
Brien Voorhees
That's my biggest wishlist item for the next generation consoles. It's kinda' frustrating to finally have a television that doesn't have 50-year old resolution limitations but still not be able to really take advantage of it in my gaming...
Brien Voorhees
Can anyone recommend good shareware games that support cooperative play?
Brien Voorhees
brienv@pacbell.net
Give Your Spam The Bird!
Enterprise spam filtering for less than $2/user/month.
In response to the above poster I'd just like to say "Ditto!" .
I've been playing games for 20 years and the game that had the most emotional impact is, without a doubt, Planescape:Torment. I was in awe of that game as I played... (the Fallout games also rocked, of course)
I just talked a friend into playing Planescape a few weeks ago. I think I'll wait until he's finished before giving him the bad news.
Black Isle, you'll be missed.
Brien Voorhees
brienv@pacbell.net
and here are the same searches on Amazon
I was so disgusted with Overstock's search feature that I decided to screw the savings and just 1-click order it on Amazon. Way to go, Overstock!
Brien
> I've tried going checking out review sites like GameSpot,
> but they don't really list that specifically, and
> reviewers don't necessarily care about it.
I've been very frustrated by this, as well. AdrenalineVault (http://www.avault.com) is good about covering multi-player features of games. Their reviews have a separate section/rating specifically for multi-player features. I wish more review sites had that. I'd also love to be able to sort/select games based on their multi-player features.
Brien Voorhees
I love cooperative games and really wish game producers put more effort into making cooperative play a priority. It seems like co-op availability especially went downhill when all of the games went to 3-D. I'm bummed that Doom3 won't have co-op since my friends and I had an absolute blast playing Doom1&2 together back in the day.
:
.....
.....
.....
I recently scoured usenet for game titles that support cooperative play. Here are the notes I compiled resulting from that search in case it's helpful (I haven't played any of them yet so I can't vouch for them)
Defender - Xbox
PS2
Conflict Desert Storm[mediocre reviews but co-op is supposed to be good]
Mobile Light Force 2 (shooter)
Contra Shattered Soldier
PS1
Herc's Adventures. (platformer - highly recommended)
Unholy War (strategy/action game similar to Archon and designed by Paul Reiche III. Might be competitive instead of co-op)
RayStorm (overhead water-based shooter)
You Don't Know Jack
Metal Slug-X
Assault: Retribution (similar to contra)
Ballistic (looks like good puzzle/action game)
Bomberman Party Edition
Poy Poy (party)
Trap Gunner (well-reviewed, similar to "bomberman, grid runner, crackdown")
Space Invaders
Twisted Metal 2 & Critical Depth
Micro Machines V3
bomberman fantasy race
In The Hunt
Critical Depth (Warhawk meets Twisted Metal)
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo "It's the best two-player puzzle game ever made. No kidding!"
Tecmo Stackers (similar to Super Puzzle Fighter)
Bust-a-Groove
FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing
N2O: Nitrous Oxide (Like tempest but better?)
Roll Away (2-player puzzle/marble-madness/monkeyball)
Here are some:
Tales of Destiny.
You'll have to play the first dungeon by yourself, but once you get Mary
in your party & find the Channeling in that cave near the temple, you can
have your girlfriend play as Mary...
Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 (like twisted metal but a bit more cartoonish and supports cooperative)
Team Buddies (single player and deathmatch. over-head real-time strategy/action)
Grid Runner
Namco museum 4
Nectaris: Military Madness
Norse By Norsewest
R-Types (listed as 2-player but I don't think it is)
MAME (emulator) ROMs
Most of these are side scrolling multi-player games:
Aliens Vs Predator - avsp
Armored Warriors - armwar
Double Dragon(japan) - ddragon
D&D - ddsom
D&D2 - ddtod
Golden Axe - goldnaxe
Knights of the Round - knights
Smash TV - smashtv
TMNT1 - tmnt
x-men (4 players) - xmen
Brien Voorhees
A friend and I played through TimeSplitters2 recently and are currently going through TimeSplitters1. Both games support co-op and are a lot of fun. Some of the levels get pretty hard and really require good teamwork.
Brien Voorhees
Also check out D&D:Heroes, coming very soon. It's supposed to support co-op, too.
Brien Voorhees
Going to the video store takes too much time (and is just plain annoying) and buying games is too expensive (especially when you buy a crappy game). For me, RedOctane and NetFlix totally rock.
When I hear about a new game I just add it to my queue and forget about it. I always have at least one new game to play and it costs me a fraction of what I used to spend buying games. I live in California and their shipping turnaround has been extremely quick. My experience with NetFlix has been similar.
Between Tivo, NetFlix, RedOctane, and my wife, I have everything I need!
-Brien
I know this sounds like bullshit but using IDEA will generally save you about an hour a day. You'll also probably end up with better code thanks to how quick and easy it is to refactor (move or rename methods/classes/variables/packages, etc.) with IDEA. I'm sure there are some IDEA users on here that'll back me up on those seemingly outrageous claims.
Other people have already listed some of IDEA's features so I won't bother enumerating them. The only real downsides to IDEA are that it's a memory/cpu hog and it doesn't have wizards and drag-n-drop GUI designers (I never used 'em anyway). What it has instead are tons of features that actually save you time while you're coding and navigating your code.
I've used several major IDE's and eventually settled on JBuilder until recently when I finally decided to give IDEA a try. It's the only IDE I've ever used that felt like it was designed by programmers instead of a marketing department.
Check it out at http://www.intellij.com .
Brien
I find the idea of basing the bulk of internet sites on one company's proprietary application to be quite scary. I mean, imagine what kind of control and power(i.e.wealth) this company will have someday once the majority of sites worldwide are written exclusively for their technology...
Oh wait, Microsoft has already accomplished that with Microsoft IE/.NET/SmartTags/etc. Nevermind.
sigh,
Brien Voorhees
If you like sci-fi but yearn for better writing, clever dialog, and decent acting, you should really check out Stargate SG-1 on Showtime (also available in sindication). I didn't think much of the original movie but have been enjoying the hell out of the series. It's one of only a handful of shows that I bother to watch regularly (the others being West Wing, Simpsons, and Futurama (like you care) ). SG-1 can be a little confusing at first so it helps to watch a few episodes and you can also consult the handy FAQ at http://www.stargate-sg1.com/home/faq/index.html . [all IMHO, of course] -Brien