The way I understand it, aging happens because cells have a built in reproductive clock. Yup. Gerontology is exceedingly complex, but the current understanding is that aging is largely governed by telomeres that don't get copied over during mitosis of non-stem cells. This is an engineering problem, not a hard limit dictated by the laws of physics. There are challenges (such as not inadvertently inducing cancer), but this should be a surmountable obstacle. If biology fails entirely, there's always the possibility of uploading...
Ok, but it sounds more like a support group than a group of friends.;-) That's not entirely incorrect, though in my case the distinction could be moot. There will be culture shock- probably the likes of which few people have ever had to deal with. This is explicitly stated in the paperwork one has to slog through to get signed up (at least for Alcor), and I hold no illusions about it being all peaches and cream. However, I do think that it's worth it. I think that enthusiasm about the prospects for being able to have a positive quality of life post-cryonics correlate strongly with successful assimilation into a new culture/society, and cryonicists are a self-selected group. If you're not gung ho about it then you're not likely to go through the hassle of signing up.
If "oblivion" is really what happens when you die, then your preference to avoid it is kind of moot, don't you think? Not from my current perspective! Taking your statement to an irrational extreme, it could be used to justify decriminalizing killing people in their sleep.;-)
It isn't so much a fear of death as it is hating the idea of missing everything that happens afterward.
Life is good! As long as I'm alive there exists the potential of improving my situation, and the situation of those around me. Death deprives one of that potential, and I see that as its greatest tragedy.
You make an interesting point, but I have to disagree. Even if quantum effects are part of the brain's mechanisms, I have serious doubts about them being the "seat of the self". They'd act as little more than random number generators, and I think that identity is much more than that.
In my opinion (and I freely admit that my only qualifications here are that I've looked into emergent behavior and also pondered this very question far more than any sane person should) the whole idea of consciousness transfer and the question of "which one is the real you?" are nothing more than fuzzy thinking resulting from imprecise language and bias introduced by our perspective of spending our entire lives instantiated in a single body. In reality the questions are nonsensical.
"You" is not an object. "You" is a set which happens to contain just one object at this moment, but which also encompasses who you have been in the past and who you will be in the future. If your neural patterns could be faithfully reproduced, either in another biological brain or in some digital simulation, those too would be "you" even if both of you had no intercommunication beyond what any two people have. The software metaphor really is spot on. One copy of Firefox has just as much claim to the "Firefox" identity as another, and the hardware on which it's running is tangental. So too with intelligent beings.
I realize that this is a counterintuitive stance, and potentially uncomfortable to consider as well, but please give it thought. Like I said, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time considering this, and it seems to be the only answer that doesn't require invoking any metaphysical woo woo. As the technologies for AI, uploading, and reviving cryonics patients arrive these questions will more than just exercises for the armchair philosopher. They're going to be important issues that will determine the rights and responsibilities of an increasing percentage of society.
I'll agree that germline genetic engineering is likely to be a path to radical life extension, but it's hardly the only one. The technology that will be required to perform the cellular level repairs necessary to revive cryonics patients will almost certainly make life extension trivial, so I don't think that'll be an issue. We'll be able to rejuvinate the elderly well before we're able to revive "cryonauts".
Your second point is something that I hear a lot, and I don't really understand why. A cryonicist won't be alone. He'll have the support structure and camaraderie of all of the other cryonicists, who will be making the same adjustments and living through the same adventure.
He'll also likely know many of them already, as the cryonics community is small and fairly closely knit. Even setting aside the active online community, I personally know over a dozen other cryonicists reaonably well, and couldn't guess at how many total I've met. I've never met one I didn't like, and am happy to say that my wife and three of my closest friends are also cryonicists. Assuming I "come back", it's highly unlikely that I'll do it alone.
And if by some fluke I am the only one? I still prefer it to oblivion.
Well... sort of. If your idea of hookers is venomous exoskeletal arachnids with claws then you're in luck! Just bear in mind that "getting a piece of tail" will have a different meaning for her than it will for you.
Bingo might seem like a poor substitute for blackjack, but this is Space Bingo! Anything is better with "Space" affixed to its name! Think about it; Which would you rather drink- "beer" or "Space Beer"!
Other people have made some very valid points and well thought out responses to this book, but I don't think any of them say it strongly enough so I'm going to jump on the soap box with a brief rant.
These fucking Luddites are nothing more than a vestigial nuisance. They will be crushed under the tank treads and metal feet of The Machine, and the rest of us who are willing to embrace the fruits of technology and become one with it will be better off for it.
Normally I take no issue with people choosing to live their lives however they see fit, and I'll actively fight long and hard for their right to live in tents or caves or whatever makes them happy. But when they start advocating a deliberate slowdown in technological progress then they make themselves the enemy of intelligent life- whether it be it human, machine, or somewhere in between. Like all barriers to progress they must either be circumvented or destroyed.
While I don't quite agree with your conclusion, I do put Blade Runner in my top 5 movies of all time. Your points are all valid, but while you do touch on the visual aspect of the film I personally think that the environment in which the movie is set is so utterly, soul crushingly compelling that all other aspects of the movie, as good as they are, fade in comparison.
Los Angeles 2019 is dirty, nasty, violent, dangerous, decaying, and I would burn down my house and move there tomorrow without a moment's hesitation, even if it meant living on the street. The high-tech/urban decay mix is absolutely beautiful, and makes my little cyberpunk heart whir with delight.
Okay guys, this is absurd. LiftPort's plan, while certainly speculative, is not as infeasible as the non-article-reading Slashdot crowd seems to think, and LiftPort's approach to it makes perfect sense for a small startup company.
The space elevator basically has two components- the lifter and the tether. The tether is the tricky materials science component, but it's also the part receiving the most research interest worldwide. There's a LOT of money being poured into manufacturing long chain carbon nanotubes because the practical applications are literally world changing. Every major research lab on the planet is at least dabbling in it, and bit by bit progress is being made. Really it's just a matter of time. However, a small outfit like LiftPort simply couldn't hope to have the resources to compete with the big labs (though when last I heard they were finishing up construction of a CNT fab for commercial use).
That's where the lifter comes in. While still a big engineering challenge, design of the lifter IS within the scope of a small company's R&D, and aside from LiftPort there's nobody even working on it. LiftPort's very sensible approach is therefore to concentrate on what they *can* do, so that when the CNT manufacturing challenges get worked out they have an enormously profitable application all ready to go.
I've been following LiftPort closely for several years, and spoken with Michael Laine one-on-one on more occasions than I could count. Hell, if I'd had money to invest I would've been one of their investors, and even now would have no gripes at all about how they've been conducting their work and using their funds. Sometimes businesses don't work out. It happens. However I think it's terribly unfair to crucify LiftPort, Laine, or the space elevator concept because this particular venture is having problems.
I'd like to know if Michael (or anyone else from LiftPort) is still planning on attending Dragon*Con this year? The presentations in the past have always been fascinating and down to earth (no pun intended), and have demonstrated both that from a technical standpoint the LiftPort team really has their act together and that as an organization they've always been very open and upfront about their challenges, victories, and setbacks.
Armagetron and GLTron are both great fun, but honestly neither one holds a candle to the actual TRON 2.0 game. It's a completely different caliber. Granted, it's not open source and as far as I know it's only available for Windows and Mac OS X, but if you're really fanatical about light cycles the game is worth it just for that mode alone (to say nothing of the superb FPS and disc combat arena modes).
If you can find a copy it's absolutely worth picking up, even at full retail. However, any retailer that has it likely has it in the $5-$10 bin, which is a steal for one of the best games ever made.
Unfortunately the comic book was discontinued after just a few issues. You can still get them from Slave Labor Graphics, however. The artwork in the first two issues is absolutely terrible, but they changed artists in issue 3 and both the visuals and storyline had found their sweet spot when it was cancelled. *sigh*
As the grandparent stated, the TRON 2.0 video game is absolutely the genuine sequel to TRON. The plot is solid, the gameplay is great, and the environment is oh-so-compelling- far superior even to the original movie. It really would make a great movie, though I don't think that the translation to big screen would offer anything that the game doesn't already have. I place it firmly in my top 5 best games ever list.
And then there's multiplayer. The standard deathmatch mode is nice but nothing special. The arena combat is original and really puts you into the feel of what doing battle on the game grid would actually be like.
However, the game really shines in Lightcycles, both single player and multiplayer! It'd be worth the full price of the game just for that mode alone. I've played a lot of excellent light cycles games over the years, and TRON 2.0 wipes the floor with even the very best of them. Again it's superior even to the original move. It's gorgeous, authentic, and has surprising variety. It's also held up exceptionally well in the few years since it came out. I was at a LAN party just last weekend and we spent a good chunk of the day doing light cycle combat. I was in heaven.
Yeah, I'm gushing here, but it really is that good. I don't understand how it is that more people haven't discovered this game.
People should have the right to make bad choices because they're autonomous human beings. I think you're framing the question all wrong. It shouldn't be "why should people have the right to make bad choices?", but rather "how is it the government's right to restrict an individual's choices so long as they aren't harming other people?" It isn't. Ergo, to my way of thinking you should be permitted to cook up whatever you want in your own toilet, but GWB's actions as you stated them are still wrong. Let the government handle the big engineering and technology projects that simply wouldn't get funded if left entirely to the private sector. They're good at that. What they're not good at is interfering in people's personal lives. Some bloke in Washington does not know what's best for me and even if he did, granting him the power to make those decisions for me is a sure road to tyranny.
Prohibiting the government from stealing people's right to self-determination doesn't give any additional meaning to scientific discovery. It gives meaning to life as a whole.
By the way, I completely agreed with all of your posts in this thread until I got to the implication of this one, so to all of your other comments I say "bravo!" and "right on!". My biggest complaint about NASA's current manned space exploration plan is that I think that it's woefully underambitious. If it were up to me we would've been following Zubrin's Mars Direct plan for the past 15 years, and would probably be landing the first people on Mars around the time that the current plan will be returning to the moon.
You're not, and in my case I've found that since every show I watch is available on iTMS it's significantly cheaper for me to buy every episode and ditch cable TV altogether, even taking into consideration that it raises the price for my broadband access a bit.
Yeah, it means that I get programs a day later, but I save a pile of money and get to keep the commercial-free episode to watch wherever and whenever I choose. I recently caught up on Heroes on my iPod during a plane flight.
Because frankly anything relating to Jonathan Coulton counts as "news for nerds". He is the quintessential geek bard, with song topics ranging from Mandelbrot sets (he actually turns formulae into song lyrics) to genetics to having a T-1000 as a roommate. His love ballad "Laptop Like You" honest-to-Gawd makes me cry, and I'm a stone cold mo'fo'! I just happen to really love my laptop.:-)
Out of curiosity, is your sig quote from WKRP? I remember something about a Thanksgiving stunt gone horribly awry involving a helicopter and turkeys...
My short term memory is so bad that at least 2-3 times every day I forget what I was saying in mid sentence. I have the attention span of a mosquito (I've already stopped twice so far while typing this to do something else), and on a bad day if there are any distractions whatsoever have difficulty carrying on a conversation.
And yet truly random bits of information get etched into permanent memory with no regard to their utility. This is a perfect example. In the 23 years since I saw Ghostbusters in the theater I've never once not been able to spit out their phone number off the top of my head. But things like what I had for dinner last night or who the last person I spoke with 30 min ago are a complete fog to me.
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me, and does this happen to anyone else? I'd suspect that I have some form of low level anterograde memory dysfunction except that it's inconsistent.
In theory you could, as long as you somehow managed to make back what you spent on equipment. As long as you skipped the super high performance vehicle in favor of the ambulance used in the movie you could buy all of the other bells and whistles and pretty easily turn a profit by the time Gozer showed up.
Based on other reactions to the game that I've read over the years, I suspect that more people's experiences were closer to yours than to mine. Also, I'd never heard of the game before I saw it on store shelves (it was an impulse buy), so I was completely unaware of the pre-launch hype, which apparently touted many features that didn't make it to release.
What eerie timing! I just got back from lunch with an old friend, and we were reminiscing about the delightfully evil brutality that was multiplayer Lemmings on the Amiga. I mentioned that, having played Lemmings on every platform for which it exists (got the classic GameBoy cartridge for Christmas!), all versions are a pale shadow of the Amiga version.
I come back to the office and check Slashdot, and here's another reference! I'm gonna have to dig out my A1200 and see if the wife will let me hook it up to the TV.
I'm right there with you on every point you made... except with regard to Outpost.
As far as I can tell, I'm one of three people in the world (I know the other two) who loved Outpost. I didn't just love Outpost- I was consumed by it, and it vacuumed up all of my free time for a year (amazingly, my then-girlfriend still ended up marrying me). I own both hint books for it, and at one time could quote spectral classes and distances to the major star systems in the game.
Admittedly I also never got the monorail to work, but for me at least that was the extent of my technical issues, and the rest of the game shined for me. In fact, less than a month ago I picked up a copy of the Mac version so I can play around with it on my PowerBook. It's not C&C 3, but given its age I think it's held up well.
Mac users are no worse than Windows users. I say this as someone who just yesterday had to explain to a supposed MCSE how to click and drag to select a group of items on his XP desktop.
No, I'm not bullshitting, lying, or exaggerating. I'm also not leaving out any extenuating details. The guy is really that dumb, and half of our users are as bad or worse. In my experience a "normal" computer user, PC or Mac, refers to their computer as either "the hard drive" or "the box part", and thinks that if you replace their monitor they'll lose all of their desktop icons.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I understand it, aging happens because cells have a built in reproductive clock.
;-)
;-)
Yup. Gerontology is exceedingly complex, but the current understanding is that aging is largely governed by telomeres that don't get copied over during mitosis of non-stem cells. This is an engineering problem, not a hard limit dictated by the laws of physics. There are challenges (such as not inadvertently inducing cancer), but this should be a surmountable obstacle. If biology fails entirely, there's always the possibility of uploading...
Ok, but it sounds more like a support group than a group of friends.
That's not entirely incorrect, though in my case the distinction could be moot. There will be culture shock- probably the likes of which few people have ever had to deal with. This is explicitly stated in the paperwork one has to slog through to get signed up (at least for Alcor), and I hold no illusions about it being all peaches and cream. However, I do think that it's worth it. I think that enthusiasm about the prospects for being able to have a positive quality of life post-cryonics correlate strongly with successful assimilation into a new culture/society, and cryonicists are a self-selected group. If you're not gung ho about it then you're not likely to go through the hassle of signing up.
If "oblivion" is really what happens when you die, then your preference to avoid it is kind of moot, don't you think?
Not from my current perspective! Taking your statement to an irrational extreme, it could be used to justify decriminalizing killing people in their sleep.
It isn't so much a fear of death as it is hating the idea of missing everything that happens afterward.
Life is good! As long as I'm alive there exists the potential of improving my situation, and the situation of those around me. Death deprives one of that potential, and I see that as its greatest tragedy.
Duh. I should've looked that up before opening my mouth. Thanks for setting me straight.
You make an interesting point, but I have to disagree. Even if quantum effects are part of the brain's mechanisms, I have serious doubts about them being the "seat of the self". They'd act as little more than random number generators, and I think that identity is much more than that.
In my opinion (and I freely admit that my only qualifications here are that I've looked into emergent behavior and also pondered this very question far more than any sane person should) the whole idea of consciousness transfer and the question of "which one is the real you?" are nothing more than fuzzy thinking resulting from imprecise language and bias introduced by our perspective of spending our entire lives instantiated in a single body. In reality the questions are nonsensical.
"You" is not an object. "You" is a set which happens to contain just one object at this moment, but which also encompasses who you have been in the past and who you will be in the future. If your neural patterns could be faithfully reproduced, either in another biological brain or in some digital simulation, those too would be "you" even if both of you had no intercommunication beyond what any two people have. The software metaphor really is spot on. One copy of Firefox has just as much claim to the "Firefox" identity as another, and the hardware on which it's running is tangental. So too with intelligent beings.
I realize that this is a counterintuitive stance, and potentially uncomfortable to consider as well, but please give it thought. Like I said, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time considering this, and it seems to be the only answer that doesn't require invoking any metaphysical woo woo. As the technologies for AI, uploading, and reviving cryonics patients arrive these questions will more than just exercises for the armchair philosopher. They're going to be important issues that will determine the rights and responsibilities of an increasing percentage of society.
I'll agree that germline genetic engineering is likely to be a path to radical life extension, but it's hardly the only one. The technology that will be required to perform the cellular level repairs necessary to revive cryonics patients will almost certainly make life extension trivial, so I don't think that'll be an issue. We'll be able to rejuvinate the elderly well before we're able to revive "cryonauts".
Your second point is something that I hear a lot, and I don't really understand why. A cryonicist won't be alone. He'll have the support structure and camaraderie of all of the other cryonicists, who will be making the same adjustments and living through the same adventure.
He'll also likely know many of them already, as the cryonics community is small and fairly closely knit. Even setting aside the active online community, I personally know over a dozen other cryonicists reaonably well, and couldn't guess at how many total I've met. I've never met one I didn't like, and am happy to say that my wife and three of my closest friends are also cryonicists. Assuming I "come back", it's highly unlikely that I'll do it alone.
And if by some fluke I am the only one? I still prefer it to oblivion.
Actually, isn't it the other way around? Mitochondria use oxygen to break down ATP into ADP, thereby releasing energy that the cell uses for work?
Does it have hookers? And blackjack?
Well... sort of. If your idea of hookers is venomous exoskeletal arachnids with claws then you're in luck! Just bear in mind that "getting a piece of tail" will have a different meaning for her than it will for you.
Bingo might seem like a poor substitute for blackjack, but this is Space Bingo! Anything is better with "Space" affixed to its name! Think about it; Which would you rather drink- "beer" or "Space Beer"!
Other people have made some very valid points and well thought out responses to this book, but I don't think any of them say it strongly enough so I'm going to jump on the soap box with a brief rant.
These fucking Luddites are nothing more than a vestigial nuisance. They will be crushed under the tank treads and metal feet of The Machine, and the rest of us who are willing to embrace the fruits of technology and become one with it will be better off for it.
Normally I take no issue with people choosing to live their lives however they see fit, and I'll actively fight long and hard for their right to live in tents or caves or whatever makes them happy. But when they start advocating a deliberate slowdown in technological progress then they make themselves the enemy of intelligent life- whether it be it human, machine, or somewhere in between. Like all barriers to progress they must either be circumvented or destroyed.
While I don't quite agree with your conclusion, I do put Blade Runner in my top 5 movies of all time. Your points are all valid, but while you do touch on the visual aspect of the film I personally think that the environment in which the movie is set is so utterly, soul crushingly compelling that all other aspects of the movie, as good as they are, fade in comparison.
Los Angeles 2019 is dirty, nasty, violent, dangerous, decaying, and I would burn down my house and move there tomorrow without a moment's hesitation, even if it meant living on the street. The high-tech/urban decay mix is absolutely beautiful, and makes my little cyberpunk heart whir with delight.
Second, comparing the price of a home built PC to a purchased PC(or Mac) means nothing.
Sure it does. It means that he considers his time to be of no value.
Okay guys, this is absurd. LiftPort's plan, while certainly speculative, is not as infeasible as the non-article-reading Slashdot crowd seems to think, and LiftPort's approach to it makes perfect sense for a small startup company.
The space elevator basically has two components- the lifter and the tether. The tether is the tricky materials science component, but it's also the part receiving the most research interest worldwide. There's a LOT of money being poured into manufacturing long chain carbon nanotubes because the practical applications are literally world changing. Every major research lab on the planet is at least dabbling in it, and bit by bit progress is being made. Really it's just a matter of time. However, a small outfit like LiftPort simply couldn't hope to have the resources to compete with the big labs (though when last I heard they were finishing up construction of a CNT fab for commercial use).
That's where the lifter comes in. While still a big engineering challenge, design of the lifter IS within the scope of a small company's R&D, and aside from LiftPort there's nobody even working on it. LiftPort's very sensible approach is therefore to concentrate on what they *can* do, so that when the CNT manufacturing challenges get worked out they have an enormously profitable application all ready to go.
I've been following LiftPort closely for several years, and spoken with Michael Laine one-on-one on more occasions than I could count. Hell, if I'd had money to invest I would've been one of their investors, and even now would have no gripes at all about how they've been conducting their work and using their funds. Sometimes businesses don't work out. It happens. However I think it's terribly unfair to crucify LiftPort, Laine, or the space elevator concept because this particular venture is having problems.
I'd like to know if Michael (or anyone else from LiftPort) is still planning on attending Dragon*Con this year? The presentations in the past have always been fascinating and down to earth (no pun intended), and have demonstrated both that from a technical standpoint the LiftPort team really has their act together and that as an organization they've always been very open and upfront about their challenges, victories, and setbacks.
I would de-rez myself if they cast The Rock. I could think of no more appropriate time to commit seppuku ninja style with a disc!
Armagetron and GLTron are both great fun, but honestly neither one holds a candle to the actual TRON 2.0 game. It's a completely different caliber. Granted, it's not open source and as far as I know it's only available for Windows and Mac OS X, but if you're really fanatical about light cycles the game is worth it just for that mode alone (to say nothing of the superb FPS and disc combat arena modes).
If you can find a copy it's absolutely worth picking up, even at full retail. However, any retailer that has it likely has it in the $5-$10 bin, which is a steal for one of the best games ever made.
Unfortunately the comic book was discontinued after just a few issues. You can still get them from Slave Labor Graphics, however. The artwork in the first two issues is absolutely terrible, but they changed artists in issue 3 and both the visuals and storyline had found their sweet spot when it was cancelled. *sigh*
As the grandparent stated, the TRON 2.0 video game is absolutely the genuine sequel to TRON. The plot is solid, the gameplay is great, and the environment is oh-so-compelling- far superior even to the original movie. It really would make a great movie, though I don't think that the translation to big screen would offer anything that the game doesn't already have. I place it firmly in my top 5 best games ever list.
And then there's multiplayer. The standard deathmatch mode is nice but nothing special. The arena combat is original and really puts you into the feel of what doing battle on the game grid would actually be like.
However, the game really shines in Lightcycles, both single player and multiplayer! It'd be worth the full price of the game just for that mode alone. I've played a lot of excellent light cycles games over the years, and TRON 2.0 wipes the floor with even the very best of them. Again it's superior even to the original move. It's gorgeous, authentic, and has surprising variety. It's also held up exceptionally well in the few years since it came out. I was at a LAN party just last weekend and we spent a good chunk of the day doing light cycle combat. I was in heaven.
Yeah, I'm gushing here, but it really is that good. I don't understand how it is that more people haven't discovered this game.
People should have the right to make bad choices because they're autonomous human beings. I think you're framing the question all wrong. It shouldn't be "why should people have the right to make bad choices?", but rather "how is it the government's right to restrict an individual's choices so long as they aren't harming other people?" It isn't. Ergo, to my way of thinking you should be permitted to cook up whatever you want in your own toilet, but GWB's actions as you stated them are still wrong. Let the government handle the big engineering and technology projects that simply wouldn't get funded if left entirely to the private sector. They're good at that. What they're not good at is interfering in people's personal lives. Some bloke in Washington does not know what's best for me and even if he did, granting him the power to make those decisions for me is a sure road to tyranny.
Prohibiting the government from stealing people's right to self-determination doesn't give any additional meaning to scientific discovery. It gives meaning to life as a whole.
By the way, I completely agreed with all of your posts in this thread until I got to the implication of this one, so to all of your other comments I say "bravo!" and "right on!". My biggest complaint about NASA's current manned space exploration plan is that I think that it's woefully underambitious. If it were up to me we would've been following Zubrin's Mars Direct plan for the past 15 years, and would probably be landing the first people on Mars around the time that the current plan will be returning to the moon.
You're not, and in my case I've found that since every show I watch is available on iTMS it's significantly cheaper for me to buy every episode and ditch cable TV altogether, even taking into consideration that it raises the price for my broadband access a bit.
Yeah, it means that I get programs a day later, but I save a pile of money and get to keep the commercial-free episode to watch wherever and whenever I choose. I recently caught up on Heroes on my iPod during a plane flight.
Because frankly anything relating to Jonathan Coulton counts as "news for nerds". He is the quintessential geek bard, with song topics ranging from Mandelbrot sets (he actually turns formulae into song lyrics) to genetics to having a T-1000 as a roommate. His love ballad "Laptop Like You" honest-to-Gawd makes me cry, and I'm a stone cold mo'fo'! I just happen to really love my laptop. :-)
Yup. It does seem to be more prevalent among my co-workers than among the population as a whole.
Out of curiosity, is your sig quote from WKRP? I remember something about a Thanksgiving stunt gone horribly awry involving a helicopter and turkeys...
My short term memory is so bad that at least 2-3 times every day I forget what I was saying in mid sentence. I have the attention span of a mosquito (I've already stopped twice so far while typing this to do something else), and on a bad day if there are any distractions whatsoever have difficulty carrying on a conversation.
And yet truly random bits of information get etched into permanent memory with no regard to their utility. This is a perfect example. In the 23 years since I saw Ghostbusters in the theater I've never once not been able to spit out their phone number off the top of my head. But things like what I had for dinner last night or who the last person I spoke with 30 min ago are a complete fog to me.
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me, and does this happen to anyone else? I'd suspect that I have some form of low level anterograde memory dysfunction except that it's inconsistent.
In theory you could, as long as you somehow managed to make back what you spent on equipment. As long as you skipped the super high performance vehicle in favor of the ambulance used in the movie you could buy all of the other bells and whistles and pretty easily turn a profit by the time Gozer showed up.
Good times...
Based on other reactions to the game that I've read over the years, I suspect that more people's experiences were closer to yours than to mine. Also, I'd never heard of the game before I saw it on store shelves (it was an impulse buy), so I was completely unaware of the pre-launch hype, which apparently touted many features that didn't make it to release.
What eerie timing! I just got back from lunch with an old friend, and we were reminiscing about the delightfully evil brutality that was multiplayer Lemmings on the Amiga. I mentioned that, having played Lemmings on every platform for which it exists (got the classic GameBoy cartridge for Christmas!), all versions are a pale shadow of the Amiga version.
I come back to the office and check Slashdot, and here's another reference! I'm gonna have to dig out my A1200 and see if the wife will let me hook it up to the TV.
I'm right there with you on every point you made... except with regard to Outpost.
As far as I can tell, I'm one of three people in the world (I know the other two) who loved Outpost. I didn't just love Outpost- I was consumed by it, and it vacuumed up all of my free time for a year (amazingly, my then-girlfriend still ended up marrying me). I own both hint books for it, and at one time could quote spectral classes and distances to the major star systems in the game.
Admittedly I also never got the monorail to work, but for me at least that was the extent of my technical issues, and the rest of the game shined for me. In fact, less than a month ago I picked up a copy of the Mac version so I can play around with it on my PowerBook. It's not C&C 3, but given its age I think it's held up well.
Mac users are no worse than Windows users. I say this as someone who just yesterday had to explain to a supposed MCSE how to click and drag to select a group of items on his XP desktop.
No, I'm not bullshitting, lying, or exaggerating. I'm also not leaving out any extenuating details. The guy is really that dumb, and half of our users are as bad or worse. In my experience a "normal" computer user, PC or Mac, refers to their computer as either "the hard drive" or "the box part", and thinks that if you replace their monitor they'll lose all of their desktop icons.