IMHO -- this web page is stored on my server, in my country, with my laws. If you don't want to see it, or if you don't want access to it, then don't request that page. The internet is not a "push" medium. You are perfectly welcome to not request my web pages, or deny all packets from my server.
Conversely, this would be a rare bit of irony, if it does apply to the country that ordered Norwegian hacker Johanssen brought overseas for trial at the behest of their recording industry and mediacorps.
I think you're more likely to find cohesion in the BSD projects. The decentralized nature of the Linux movement is one of its greatest strengths, but at the same time, that cohesions is extremely difficult to achieve because of this.
I.e., with Mac OS X, you don't have to choose whether you want Gnome or KDE...
(yeah I know it's not an original thought, but it bears repeating)
Two that I particularly missed included the growing friendship between Legolas and Gimli.
No, you're mixing up the first two books. I'm pretty sure that they don't become close friends until they fight side by side in the big battle in the middle of The Two Towers. Let's hope that this is focused on in the next movie.
I've reviewed this post and it contains SPOILERS....
The Lord of the Rings Movie didn't really make me feel much.
Agreed. Hear me out.
I loved the movie, and thought that it was pretty true to the book -- mainly leaving out only the slowest/least relevant part (between the Shire and the Prancing Pony). But there's one thing that just couldn't fit into even a four-hour movie of Fellowship's scope: character development.
Before you mod me a troll, consider this:
the movie was almost three hours long
the DVD is supposed to include an extra half-hour of footage that had to be removed, either for violence or because the movie was already too long.
most of that footage is supposedly character development and interaction.
For instance: Aragorn's initial hostility (which evolves into a desire to protect the hobbits)... Legolas and Gimli's distrust of each other (touched on in this film, hopefully to be expanded upon in the next)... the family relationship between the Bagginses and the rest of Hobbit culture... Sam's preoccupation with elves (touched on, yes, but not truly developed)... there's only so much that a movie can go into in any given period of time. That's why, even though a person can read faster than characters on a screen can speak or move, I don't think anyone could read the whole book in less than three hours. To get the whole book into one three-hour movie, they needed to make some sacrifices. Other movies are able to focus on character development more, because they're not simultaneously trying to fit the first 1/3 of an epic into such a short span of time.
Basically, I think that instead of three movies, they could have made six, just like the structure of the actual printed work -- each is actually divided into two Books, with a total of six Books altogether. If the studios and producers had given the directors the ability to split it up further (and if the directors had had the inclination to do so), then both character development and the complete story could probably have fit into six two-hour movies.
So I can see how it might not make one feel like much, beyond the elation and excitement that they bring with them into the theater.
POSTSCRIPT: I have to comment that the directors did an admirable job of portraying two things that I would never have imagined anything but the book to be capable of: the respect and almost fear that Gandalf exudes over the Hobbits (the best part being in the beginning when he is chased by the child hobbits); and the complete subservience to the Ring that all of its bearers have felt. How cool was that when Bilbo's eyes nearly popped out of his skull at Rivendell -- "My precious!!" For whatever may be my criticisms, I still think the movie did an amazing job of being true to the book.
You can choose the race of your character, this obviously has implications for what its abilities will be
Cool. I want to be White, Male Anglo-Saxon with +10 wealth and +20 opportunity. Will Mexican-American Males have +5 table bussing ability? Any other insider notes?
You're very clever, know that?
You know what the article meant, and what I inferred. Otherwise you wouldn't have posted AC.
That's just an urban myth. Square didn't have financial problems when creating Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is just a name, much like anything else.
Oh. Well, I guess I'm wrong then -- you could be right --
The Japanese LOVE cool-sounding American names, "Final Fantasy", although meaningless to someone who understands English sounds very cool to someone who doesn't.
-- because on this one I agree completely. I minored in Japanese, and the phenomenon isn't even limited to marketing. There's a slew of American-based words that have no meaning whatsoever outside of the context of the Japanese language, which are used in everyday conversation.
I wish I had some facts to back this up but I'm too lazy to find some right now.
I wish you did too -- I'd mod you up if you did, but then I can't mod in this article now that I've posted in it. As for supporting your point of view -- "I guess that's the real trick, isn't it?" -- Han Solo
Sometime in 1987, a small Japanese publishing company named Square Co. LTD. was in desperate need of a hit. Until this point, Square had mostly published smaller games for the Famicom Disk system. The titles sold respectably, but the modest installed base of Famicom Disk systems made blockbuster status an elusive goal. Hironobu Sakaguchi had an idea: why not create a game similar to competitor Enix's Dragon Quest? The console RPG was a big hit with gamers, and Sakaguchi thought that Square could significantly improve upon the basic formula. Thus work began on a massive one-megabit cartridge role-playing game that would attempt to revolutionize the genre. All of Square's resources, dreams, and hopes were placed on this single game. If it failed, Square would be no more. The project, as Square's final gasp, was given the name "Final Fantasy."
For those who aren't interested in reading 9px Arial font with few line breaks, or the fanboy details/speculation (like what kind of magic Red Mages can use, or how desolate the Saltbelt Plains are), here's the meat of the story:
You can "communicate" with other players by selecting a symbol from a menu, which becomes like a "name tag" -- it hovers above your head, broadcasting your intentions to other players.
You can join a team of other players by broadcasting the right symbol.
At least in the beta, no multi-language chat facility (a la PhantasyStarOnline)
Teams can form alliances, up to three in an alliance
A leader must be selected when an alliance is formed, and this leader is highlighted in the game for all to see (i.e., a target)
Wandering monsters can be seen ahead of time and avoided
Not known if limit breaks are going to be included in battle
You can choose the race of your character, this obviously has implications for what its abilities will be
A class system may also be included. It has been designed, but it is still unknown at this point.
All of that information is taken from the article, not my own a priori knowledge or opinion.
I didn't get past that paragraph before I had to stop reading and go "what?" I think there is just a little melodrama here. At least on my Calendar the date is only January 5th. Which puts us almost at a mere two weeks after Christmas. Not even quite yet.
I'm sorry -- I don't mean to troll, but I thought I'd point out that not every kid gets their presents at Christmas. (Yeah, I know this is rhetoric for rhetoric's sake, go ahead and mod this down.)
But with the ability to assign "Friend or Foe" you essentially gain the ability to make the No-Mans-Land of the comments into an area that only reflects your own views and opinions. Granted it might take a while, and will very likely never completely kill dissenting opinion, but a pretty self-supporting environment can still be made.
The closest analogy I can think of would be a hardcore conservative listening to 24 hours of Rush Limbaugh (Not sure who would be a good example for a Liberal stance, so I won't list them. ). Sure they can do it, but in doing so they cut themselves off from the other viewpoints and opinions that might provoke some thought in what they believe in.
That's true, but think about it -- how many Rush-haters listen to Rush? How many conservatives listen to NPR, or read the Nation? (okay, maybe NPR) The fact is, this is the same kind of self-censorship. You don't have to use the new system at all.
Of course, I suppose others using it against you introduces levels of complexity to my point -- one way or another, it effects change to Slashdot's system. But then, what kind of input do you ever get to NPR or Rush Limbaugh? Unless you're Ford Motor Corporation, IBM, or Price Waterhouse, or one of the other big "underwriters". So maybe the analogy isn't half bad.
Or better yet, a delete/edit function so you can go back and edit your own posts. Everyone has done it. You go and post a message and think of more to add or you just want to delete it entirely. Why not allow deleting/editing your own posts?
Writing OSS is like playing solitaire, in that it is fun (you're solving little puzzles which are non-trivial, but not impossible), but when you've done it, you end up with a program that does what you like, and you can give it to people and they'll be impressed.
Given the collaborative nature of open-sourcing a project, wouldn't that be more like networked role-playing?
They came out with a new OS and are still upgrading the old one. Since OS X came out, they have done 3 patches on OS 9. When MS releases a new OS, the patches stop for the old ones. Sorry, free patches.
Those patches were released to contribute to compatibility with OS 9. Apple will no longer support OS 9 after March 2002, but they'd be fools if they didn't continue to support OS 9 while 3rd parties scramble to finish their Carbon ports.
The difference between MS and Apple in this case is that MS doesn't introduce new operating systems based on Unix, which require a complete overhaul of every application. Or maybe Apple just cares a little bit more about their customers' satisfaction with their products.
Now how about organizing them before publishing them? Call me pre-postmodern (and I'm still in my twenties), but I tend to learn more from a coherently-organized message than from a random jumble of statistics and facts. Cringely jumps from a detailed description of the KLAT2 and its innovative networking technology to a brief description of UWB. And then it's over.
Maybe I'm missing something.
I'm no gun freak but...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
The sidewalk issue is dicier. In order to ensure that Segways are permitted to move alongside pedestrians, Kamen's regulatory-affairs mavens will have to keep the machine from being classified either as a motor vehicle or as a scooter. At the federal level, the deal is done--though, for a while, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration wanted to classify the Segway as a "powered industrial truck." Technically, final sidewalk authority rests with state and local governments. Kamen is betting, however, that the decision will be made not by lawmakers but "de facto, by what becomes standard practice. If we have police and mail carriers riding on the sidewalks for a year, how is anyone in government going to say, 'It's O.K. for us but not O.K. for you'?"
I'm no gun freak, but they say it about carrying guns in public....
Wil, I like ya - I really do. I just have to wonder, though - if you had a million dollars to invest on a cause, why you'd pick the EFF. I hope it wasn't just because of some 31337 haxor image or something...
Let's try not to forget that there are certain rights that we need to protect -- and that does require financial support in a capitalist system like the one in the US -- in order to then go on to help others, no matter how much more "needy" those other causes may appear.
Everyone takes for granted the freedom to post their thoughts to sites like SlashDot (just look at the crap that gets posted on this site). The EFF does its best to make sure that we can continue to do so. Do you think that we would even be aware of half of the problems in the world without freedom of communication?
Right now, there are far too many ways in which basic rights of communication are being trampled on, and I'm not referring to the freedom to swap MP3s. The EFF is one of the only organizations that is dedicated specifically to protecting these rights.
Actually, I think that was a novel called Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. The main character drives a hovertank and uses a Texas catheter when he's "working".
On that note, Walter Jon Williams' Voice of the Whirlwind was one of the first books that I ever read that dealt with the ethical and political ramifications of being a clone. But it's a relatively recent book and a relatively old idea, so I'm not claiming that it was the first to do so.
Don't forget William Gibson. These days we get annoyed when we hear the cliche "cyberspace", but when he first used it to describe the "consensual hallucination of data", a WWW didn't really exist yet.
I'm too busy shopping. I mean, 90% of all television, magazine, and radio commercials are all aimed at me, the upper-middle-class tech worker -- I'm supposed to spend that "quality time" watching commercials and TV programs where people do those "social activities".
although someone needs to beat the engineer that though not using a standard dvd was a good idea over the head with several SNES machines. what moron in engineering or management thought it was a good idea to not have a feature that everyone else has?
Forget about DVDs.
Nintendo isn't Sony -- they have nothing to gain by sneaking a DVD player into every kid's bedroom.
Nintendo is going to be the last of the console makers to worry about game piracy, because their format is nonstandard.
Their system is $100 cheaper off the bat, which is a plus for savings-minded parents in this economy.
Most people who can plunk down $200 on a next-gen console can probably plunk down $150 on a decent DVD player that fits on their stereo rack and isn't bright purple (and have already).
Sony's DVD implementation on PS2 wasn't even that great, my friend's "X-Men" didn't even play on it. For all their other problems, Nintendo hardware tends to be very good quality.
my first notice was the fact that the local stores still have Xboxes on the shelves.. funny, you couldnt get a PS2 for months after release, yet I could liesurely buy an Xbox.... anyone else notice this? or is it region specific?
I hope that Microsoft learned from Sony's mistake, in not providing enough units to satisfy initial demand. I know that I would have bought one the day it came out if I could have. Now I'm glad that they weren't readily available for months, because I've decided to wait and see how the other next-gen offerings will be. That's $300 that they haven't gotten from me yet.
If it makes you guys feel better, anime companies are not part of the MPAA, and after talking to some of the studio peeps, dont even like region encoding or macrovision.
I hate to be a pessimist, but if anime gets greater widespread appeal, how long do you think it will be before the MPAA subsumes anime companies? Or they just create their own anime companies, and use the leverage of their resources to win out on import rights? Or, in characteristic MPAA fashion, use their leverage to keep small-time anime companies from getting access to airtime?
I hate to say it because it iselitist, but the fact is that the widespread acceptance of a cultural product (such as anime) usually ends up watering it down. Not that widespread acceptance inherently must dilute culture, but rather that big-time businesses take an interest and then exercise their typical "lowest-common-denominator"ing on the products in the process of capitalizing on them.
Anime on tv, regardless if its edited or not, is a good thing. Its not like they are keeping you from seeing the original un-edited versions.
I'd rather see a few high-quality UNEDITED anime shows on the Midnight Run than a whole bunch of Sony-mangled cartoons on a few channels. Why? Because pretty soon, Japanese animation studios will have to consider the almighty American Market when making new shows, and will start censoring themselvesto ensure that there is no problem in exporting the shows to the States. And if that happens, we won't have to worry about getting the unedited version, because the unedited version will have been candy-fied to American standards.
This process of intentionally or unintentionally changing other cultures' cultural products, often for the worse, is known as American cultural imperialism.
And another thing. Does everybody here think that because they read Slashdot that they are "different?"
I definitely think I'm different -- I have a girlfriend, a social life, I actually have a strong set of political beliefs, and I enjoyed high school and college (both socially and academically). Sure, I love computers and video games and even some SF, but I feel like I'm somehow demonized as having been some kind of "normal person" all my life. At least, when I read Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO -- this web page is stored on my server, in my country, with my laws. If you don't want to see it, or if you don't want access to it, then don't request that page. The internet is not a "push" medium. You are perfectly welcome to not request my web pages, or deny all packets from my server.
Conversely, this would be a rare bit of irony, if it does apply to the country that ordered Norwegian hacker Johanssen brought overseas for trial at the behest of their recording industry and mediacorps.
I think you're more likely to find cohesion in the BSD projects. The decentralized nature of the Linux movement is one of its greatest strengths, but at the same time, that cohesions is extremely difficult to achieve because of this.
I.e., with Mac OS X, you don't have to choose whether you want Gnome or KDE...
(yeah I know it's not an original thought, but it bears repeating)
Two that I particularly missed included the growing friendship between Legolas and Gimli.
No, you're mixing up the first two books. I'm pretty sure that they don't become close friends until they fight side by side in the big battle in the middle of The Two Towers. Let's hope that this is focused on in the next movie.
I've reviewed this post and it contains SPOILERS....
The Lord of the Rings Movie didn't really make me feel much.
Agreed. Hear me out.
I loved the movie, and thought that it was pretty true to the book -- mainly leaving out only the slowest/least relevant part (between the Shire and the Prancing Pony). But there's one thing that just couldn't fit into even a four-hour movie of Fellowship's scope: character development.
Before you mod me a troll, consider this:
For instance: Aragorn's initial hostility (which evolves into a desire to protect the hobbits)... Legolas and Gimli's distrust of each other (touched on in this film, hopefully to be expanded upon in the next)... the family relationship between the Bagginses and the rest of Hobbit culture... Sam's preoccupation with elves (touched on, yes, but not truly developed)... there's only so much that a movie can go into in any given period of time. That's why, even though a person can read faster than characters on a screen can speak or move, I don't think anyone could read the whole book in less than three hours. To get the whole book into one three-hour movie, they needed to make some sacrifices. Other movies are able to focus on character development more, because they're not simultaneously trying to fit the first 1/3 of an epic into such a short span of time.
Basically, I think that instead of three movies, they could have made six, just like the structure of the actual printed work -- each is actually divided into two Books, with a total of six Books altogether. If the studios and producers had given the directors the ability to split it up further (and if the directors had had the inclination to do so), then both character development and the complete story could probably have fit into six two-hour movies.
So I can see how it might not make one feel like much, beyond the elation and excitement that they bring with them into the theater.
POSTSCRIPT:
I have to comment that the directors did an admirable job of portraying two things that I would never have imagined anything but the book to be capable of: the respect and almost fear that Gandalf exudes over the Hobbits (the best part being in the beginning when he is chased by the child hobbits); and the complete subservience to the Ring that all of its bearers have felt. How cool was that when Bilbo's eyes nearly popped out of his skull at Rivendell -- "My precious!!" For whatever may be my criticisms, I still think the movie did an amazing job of being true to the book.
Cool. I want to be White, Male Anglo-Saxon with +10 wealth and +20 opportunity. Will Mexican-American Males have +5 table bussing ability? Any other insider notes?
You're very clever, know that?
You know what the article meant, and what I inferred. Otherwise you wouldn't have posted AC.
That's just an urban myth. Square didn't have financial problems when creating Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is just a name, much like anything else.
Oh. Well, I guess I'm wrong then -- you could be right --
The Japanese LOVE cool-sounding American names, "Final Fantasy", although meaningless to someone who understands English sounds very cool to someone who doesn't.
-- because on this one I agree completely. I minored in Japanese, and the phenomenon isn't even limited to marketing. There's a slew of American-based words that have no meaning whatsoever outside of the context of the Japanese language, which are used in everyday conversation.
I wish I had some facts to back this up but I'm too lazy to find some right now.
I wish you did too -- I'd mod you up if you did, but then I can't mod in this article now that I've posted in it. As for supporting your point of view -- "I guess that's the real trick, isn't it?" -- Han Solo
I don't get it. How final is a fantasy when there are dozen of them?
Taken from www.videogames.com, here is the origin of the name "Final Fantasy".
For those who aren't interested in reading 9px Arial font with few line breaks, or the fanboy details/speculation (like what kind of magic Red Mages can use, or how desolate the Saltbelt Plains are), here's the meat of the story:
All of that information is taken from the article, not my own a priori knowledge or opinion.
I didn't get past that paragraph before I had to stop reading and go "what?" I think there is just a little melodrama here. At least on my Calendar the date is only January 5th. Which puts us almost at a mere two weeks after Christmas. Not even quite yet.
I'm sorry -- I don't mean to troll, but I thought I'd point out that not every kid gets their presents at Christmas. (Yeah, I know this is rhetoric for rhetoric's sake, go ahead and mod this down.)
But with the ability to assign "Friend or Foe" you essentially gain the ability to make the No-Mans-Land of the comments into an area that only reflects your own views and opinions. Granted it might take a while, and will very likely never completely kill dissenting opinion, but a pretty self-supporting environment can still be made.
The closest analogy I can think of would be a hardcore conservative listening to 24 hours of Rush Limbaugh (Not sure who would be a good example for a Liberal stance, so I won't list them. ). Sure they can do it, but in doing so they cut themselves off from the other viewpoints and opinions that might provoke some thought in what they believe in.
That's true, but think about it -- how many Rush-haters listen to Rush? How many conservatives listen to NPR, or read the Nation? (okay, maybe NPR) The fact is, this is the same kind of self-censorship. You don't have to use the new system at all.
Of course, I suppose others using it against you introduces levels of complexity to my point -- one way or another, it effects change to Slashdot's system. But then, what kind of input do you ever get to NPR or Rush Limbaugh? Unless you're Ford Motor Corporation, IBM, or Price Waterhouse, or one of the other big "underwriters". So maybe the analogy isn't half bad.
Or better yet, a delete/edit function so you can go back and edit your own posts. Everyone has done it. You go and post a message and think of more to add or you just want to delete it entirely. Why not allow deleting/editing your own posts?
Accountability.
Writing OSS is like playing solitaire, in that it is fun (you're solving little puzzles which are non-trivial, but not impossible), but when you've done it, you end up with a program that does what you like, and you can give it to people and they'll be impressed.
Given the collaborative nature of open-sourcing a project, wouldn't that be more like networked role-playing?
They came out with a new OS and are still upgrading the old one. Since OS X came out, they have done 3 patches on OS 9. When MS releases a new OS, the patches stop for the old ones. Sorry, free patches.
Those patches were released to contribute to compatibility with OS 9. Apple will no longer support OS 9 after March 2002, but they'd be fools if they didn't continue to support OS 9 while 3rd parties scramble to finish their Carbon ports.
The difference between MS and Apple in this case is that MS doesn't introduce new operating systems based on Unix, which require a complete overhaul of every application. Or maybe Apple just cares a little bit more about their customers' satisfaction with their products.
Those are some interesting ideas.
Now how about organizing them before publishing them? Call me pre-postmodern (and I'm still in my twenties), but I tend to learn more from a coherently-organized message than from a random jumble of statistics and facts. Cringely jumps from a detailed description of the KLAT2 and its innovative networking technology to a brief description of UWB. And then it's over.
Maybe I'm missing something.
The sidewalk issue is dicier. In order to ensure that Segways are permitted to move alongside pedestrians, Kamen's regulatory-affairs mavens will have to keep the machine from being classified either as a motor vehicle or as a scooter. At the federal level, the deal is done--though, for a while, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration wanted to classify the Segway as a "powered industrial truck." Technically, final sidewalk authority rests with state and local governments. Kamen is betting, however, that the decision will be made not by lawmakers but "de facto, by what becomes standard practice. If we have police and mail carriers riding on the sidewalks for a year, how is anyone in government going to say, 'It's O.K. for us but not O.K. for you'?"
I'm no gun freak, but they say it about carrying guns in public....
Wil, I like ya - I really do. I just have to wonder, though - if you had a million dollars to invest on a cause, why you'd pick the EFF. I hope it wasn't just because of some 31337 haxor image or something...
Let's try not to forget that there are certain rights that we need to protect -- and that does require financial support in a capitalist system like the one in the US -- in order to then go on to help others, no matter how much more "needy" those other causes may appear.
Everyone takes for granted the freedom to post their thoughts to sites like SlashDot (just look at the crap that gets posted on this site). The EFF does its best to make sure that we can continue to do so. Do you think that we would even be aware of half of the problems in the world without freedom of communication?
Right now, there are far too many ways in which basic rights of communication are being trampled on, and I'm not referring to the freedom to swap MP3s. The EFF is one of the only organizations that is dedicated specifically to protecting these rights.
Actually, I think that was a novel called Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. The main character drives a hovertank and uses a Texas catheter when he's "working".
On that note, Walter Jon Williams' Voice of the Whirlwind was one of the first books that I ever read that dealt with the ethical and political ramifications of being a clone. But it's a relatively recent book and a relatively old idea, so I'm not claiming that it was the first to do so.
He's a great hard SF/cyberpunk author, though.
Don't forget William Gibson. These days we get annoyed when we hear the cliche "cyberspace", but when he first used it to describe the "consensual hallucination of data", a WWW didn't really exist yet.
What else would I need?
I'm too busy shopping. I mean, 90% of all television, magazine, and radio commercials are all aimed at me, the upper-middle-class tech worker -- I'm supposed to spend that "quality time" watching commercials and TV programs where people do those "social activities".
although someone needs to beat the engineer that though not using a standard dvd was a good idea over the head with several SNES machines. what moron in engineering or management thought it was a good idea to not have a feature that everyone else has?
Forget about DVDs.
my first notice was the fact that the local stores still have Xboxes on the shelves.. funny, you couldnt get a PS2 for months after release, yet I could liesurely buy an Xbox.... anyone else notice this? or is it region specific?
I hope that Microsoft learned from Sony's mistake, in not providing enough units to satisfy initial demand. I know that I would have bought one the day it came out if I could have. Now I'm glad that they weren't readily available for months, because I've decided to wait and see how the other next-gen offerings will be. That's $300 that they haven't gotten from me yet.
It's a 767
If it makes you guys feel better, anime companies are not part of the MPAA, and after talking to some of the studio peeps, dont even like region encoding or macrovision.
I hate to be a pessimist, but if anime gets greater widespread appeal, how long do you think it will be before the MPAA subsumes anime companies? Or they just create their own anime companies, and use the leverage of their resources to win out on import rights? Or, in characteristic MPAA fashion, use their leverage to keep small-time anime companies from getting access to airtime?
I hate to say it because it iselitist, but the fact is that the widespread acceptance of a cultural product (such as anime) usually ends up watering it down. Not that widespread acceptance inherently must dilute culture, but rather that big-time businesses take an interest and then exercise their typical "lowest-common-denominator"ing on the products in the process of capitalizing on them.
Anime on tv, regardless if its edited or not, is a good thing. Its not like they are keeping you from seeing the original un-edited versions.
I'd rather see a few high-quality UNEDITED anime shows on the Midnight Run than a whole bunch of Sony-mangled cartoons on a few channels. Why? Because pretty soon, Japanese animation studios will have to consider the almighty American Market when making new shows, and will start censoring themselvesto ensure that there is no problem in exporting the shows to the States. And if that happens, we won't have to worry about getting the unedited version, because the unedited version will have been candy-fied to American standards.
This process of intentionally or unintentionally changing other cultures' cultural products, often for the worse, is known as American cultural imperialism.
the low-browing of culture makes me absolutely want to vomit sometimes.
Highbrow culture makes me want to vomit even more. There's nothing worse than using elitism to show how much better one is than his/her peers.
And another thing. Does everybody here think that because they read Slashdot that they are "different?"
I definitely think I'm different -- I have a girlfriend, a social life, I actually have a strong set of political beliefs, and I enjoyed high school and college (both socially and academically). Sure, I love computers and video games and even some SF, but I feel like I'm somehow demonized as having been some kind of "normal person" all my life. At least, when I read Slashdot.