Not only is that an old joke, it doesn't work if you think for even a moment.
Pac Man was played by Gen-Xers. In other words, people who are currently working in cubicles and spending the weekends with their kids.
Raves are populated entirely by Gen-Y kiddies who have no idea what Pac Man is, let alone spent any real time playing it.
If you somehow tied Pac Man to listening to really crappy hair metal like Poison or LA Guns while drinking Old Milwaukee beer out of tupperware containers at 1990 college parties or playing Nintendo hockey in the dorms, then maybe, just maybe, you would have been on to something.
P.S. Pac Man didn't have repetitive electronic music, either. There were brief melodies during the little interstitial scenes, but the game itself was sound effects only.
The reason for the strange Hollywood computer rules is obvious enough: The language of film-making evolved around other technology.
If you are writing a script for a spy thriller, hacking into a computer system becomes identical to a safe-cracking: A specialist does arcane tech stuff while the hero brandishes a gun and stands guard. This should never take more than a minute or so, unless you have a "B" story to cut away to, in which case it can take hours.
Crucial data must exist on only one copy of portable media, which can't be duplicated (more than maybe once), erased, or even remain on the computer it came from. Otherwise, the file in question fails to work as a "McGuffin", and lazy writers can't make use of it.
People who understand computers are like good mechanics. If a grease monkey can make a working airplane out of two broken ones of completely different designs, then a good hacker can log onto the alien computer systems with his Powerbook.
Film directors tend to be old guys who don't really understand how computers work, so they frame them in contexts which they grok. This is also why sci-fi directors almost never get deep-space physics right. Ships on Star Trek move like naval vessels because directors know how to do that. When there's no "up," no gravity, no friction to slow your inertia, and no objects close enough for your movement to be observed by the naked eye, the typical director is utterly lost. Hense, when Kirk outwits Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking patterns, he does so by moving the Enterprise "down" while retaining the same Y axis. It's essentially a submarine attack, rather than a battle between free-moving objects with no fixed reference apart from the nebula they are drifting through. Film directors get submarines. They don't get the void of space.
GTA has been the Killer App of the PS2 up until a few months ago. For two years, PS2-owning friends would say to me: "Yea, DOA3 looks kind of cool, HALO is awesome, and that 'Knights of the Old Republic' game that's coming out soon looks impressive, but GTA is the best reason for owning a console. I would never bother buying a machine which couldn't play it."
Once Rockstar finally ported GTA-III and GTA:VC to the X-Box, my PS2-owning friends looked at the X-Box a lot more favorably. It now played their very favorite PS2 games, and also a few X-Box exclusive games which they envied.
By the time I'm completely bored with those two games, the new one will probably be ported over as well.
Who in the Hell ever writes a memo anymore!? This is the 21st Century. We use e-mail for everything... and I just sent my boss an e-mail last week that used "D'oh!" in it.
The Cluetrain Manefesto was published years ago - Speaking like an aristocrat no longer impresses anybody. Spell carefully and use conversational English. Those are the only rules now.
Okay, first of all, the family therapy episode was hillarious from beginning to end, as was the other episode you mentioned. If you didn't bust a gut laughing all the way through them, maybe you were too young back then to catch just how subversive and subtle some of the jokes were. (Such as when the cut-away from the electrocution scene to show Monty Burns cheerfully speculating that the "conservation fad" might finally be over. A two-second throw-away joke which was funnier than any entire sit-com that was on TV at the time.)
That said, I would say that the decline of the Simpsons has a lot more to do with writer turn-over than anything else.
If, by "excellent," you mean "mostly okay" then I agree completely. The special effects were good for the time, the flying car chases were fun, and Chris Tucker got a laugh or two with his Prince impersonation, but mostly it had the feel of an independent comic book from the late 1980s transferred onto a movie set with lots of plastic props. Also the writing was awful, and the villian was hammy and broad.
Four stars out of ten. Good for a rental; or to show off your home theater setup. Sort of like "Stargate"... except it also has a clown-haired Milla Jovovich dressed in bandages.
Well, first off, the very early episodes really sucked
You sir, are clearly high.
Episode 2, in which Bart cheats on his standardized test and gets places in a "gifted" school, remains one of the funniest half-hours in the history of television. Likewise the season-one family therapy episode in which the whole family (including Maggie) are hooked up to a machine that allows them to electrocute one another. Nothing from recent seasons can compare to it.
All the funniest characters on the show, including "Bleeding Gums" Murphy, Krusty, Monty Burns, Principal Skinner, Apu, Sideshow Bob, Troy McClure, etc., were introduced during those first couple years.
I'm the only one who wears my shoes, so why would I want shoes that adjust to the person wearing them? I can buy shoes that are correct for my size, weight, and running style right out of the box. I try on shoes until I find a pair that do the job for me, and I'm good to go. They will never need to accomodate anybody else, so being adjustable is not an asset.
You're contradicting the OP's point, not supporting it. He hated the movie sequels/prequels he mentioned, but he likes Zelda and is anticipating the sequel (so am I).
Actually, I'm explaining why movie sequels are usually cheap, disposable, and guaranteed to farm a little more cash for the production company regardless of quality, while game sequels are major projects with a high level or pressure on the creators to make something worthwile.
Hence, sucky move sequels and high-quality game sequels.
You know what's really cost-effective? Roads. Widen the 494/694 loop to six lanes all the way around, and fix the damned 35W/62 interchange, which is one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the US. I'm tired of paying high gasoline taxes to subsidize busses and trains while our already-obsolete road grid continues to stagnate.
If trains were truly "cost-effective" we wouldn't need to spend any tax money on them... just pay for them with the fares of those who ride them.
Minneapolis is getting one of those new street-level electric trains this summer, which has that exact problem. Personally, I wish it was never built, but now that it's here, I advocate hooking up PA speakers which play traditional dixieland jazz at about 70 db. It would serve the dual purpose of protecting pedestrians and brightening our days at each stop with some hot Kid Ory trombone playing.
I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a joke rather than a troll. Not a terribly funny joke, but the flood of "Insightful" moderations which followed was pretty darn funny.
The reason for this should be obvious: 1. Games are expensive, and therefore have a higher requirement of consumer satisfaction. 2. Game sequels are competing directly with the previous versions.
You can still buy HALO (or keep playing it if you already own it), and it will still be the same experience it was when it was new. In order to get you to shell out $50 - $60 for HALO II, the folks at Bungie and Microsoft need to make a game that is not only new and better, but enough better to make you want to play it. Make it could enough, and they've got a solid franchise (look at how many PS2 owners pre-ordered the new GTA.) Fall short, and word will spread quickly, resulting in utter failure.
Movies are different. You can't see "Shakespeare in Love" at the theater anymore, but for a mere $16, you and your date can give "Shakespeare in Love 2: Electric Boogaloo" a chance. If it sucks, no biggie.
The problem with this solution is that compressing a CD to 128 AAC only gets you down to about 40-50 MB or so. The iPod has a total of 32 MB memory for both caching songs and for the OS. That's plenty for loading one side or the other of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick," but not nearly enough to handle Prince's "Lovesexy."
Treating a CD as a single track will only become practical when some future version of the iPod offers 64 MB of ram (or more.)
I should be clear that what I'm doing is not really Atkins, and certainly not South Beach. There are certain high "Glucose Index" foods that I avoid, but I don't count carbs. There's even one or two breakfast cereals I can eat without raising my blood-sugar very much (such as Special K, which has the added benefit of printing thirtysomething hotties on the side of the box to promote it as a "weight loss" food. Nice to have something pleasant to look at as I eat.)
I have a healthy dose of skepticism about both Atkins and South Beach, but I strongly feel that people who are dangerously obese are probably better off slimming down with an unorthodox diet than remaining fat and eating at McDonald's every day.
Well, I can speak for my own experience without fear of contradiction anyway.
I had been hypoglycemic my entire life... until recently, when diabetic symptoms prompted me to buy a glucose-level tester and discover that I was hovering well over 200 all day, and frequently much higher.
By cutting out all foods sweetened with added sugar, all grains except for whole wheat and sourdough (which has enzymes that slow the digestion), all potato-based foods, and all pastas cooked past the "al dente" point. I also stepped up my work-outs from every other day to every day. My blood-glucose levels immediately improved. I now vary between the high 80s and low 100s, and seldom go over 120. All my diabetic symptoms are gone. I'm still working on losing weight, but I've never felt healthier in my life.
Best of all, I did not need to give up either beer or red meat, which I would consider a severe reduction in my quality of life.:)
The "GI" ratings in the back of the book "The Glycemic Life" probably helped me avert an early grave.
Holy shit. I post one simple rant about the pseudo-scientific myths surrounding Aspertame, and every goddamned person with a headache-causing allergy to the stuff immediately assumes I'm attacking them!
Calm down. I'm talking about the people who claim Nutrasweet causes memory loss and death, not allergy suffering people who avoid things which give them headaches (which is always a sensible policy.)
I'm speaking of the goofy general health warnings, such as those that were aired a few years ago on "The 700 Club," not the possibility that you, AC, might be allergic to it. I'm allergic to many common antibiotics myself, but I don't crusade to have them banned from the general public just because they are lethally dangerous to me, or call people "such an ass" for pointing out that they are safe.
I have in front of me, at this very moment, a carton of Blue Bunny "No Sugar Added" ice cream, which contains Splenda, and no sorbitol. Allow me to read to you from the side of the carton:
"Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect in sensitive persons."
This carton has been sampled by several people, including myself, but has remained in my freezer uneaten ever since. Damned if it didn't turn out that every last person who has tried so much as a single serving had the trots within the hour. I guess all six of us happened to be what they consider to be "sensitive persons."
So tell me, if it's "BS" that Splenda causes diarrhea, why does Blue Bunny participate in spreading this ugly lie of mine by printing a warning of that very side effect right on the side of every carton they sell?
Sing it with me now, Slashdotters. You all know the words.
Usage defines language, not the other way around.
The original etymology of the expression "which begs the question" is not relevant in any way. It has become extremely common to use that expression to mean, "which demands that the following question be asked," which, considering the common modern definition of the word "begs," actually makes more sense than the traditinal use of the phrase.
P.S. All nouns can be verbed.
P.P.S. The plural form of virus (in biology) is virus. (You're never infected with just one.) The collective plural for more than one type of biological virus is viruses, but it is not "wrong" to invent a plural like "virii" when speaking of more than one computer virus. Most of the jargon in our industry is comprised of words which were simply invented by people who don't know any Latin, and barely know how to write in English.
Wow. That would be a good point if it was an actual fact that you need a credit card number. I just helped a friend redeem a bunch of caps on her computer last week. No credit card needed.
Diet Pepsi is not carcinogenic. Saccharine has not been used in either Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi since NutraSweet (a.k.a. "Aspartame") was introduced in the 80s.
There are all kinds of people (a.k.a. "kooks") who are now trying to tell you that Aspartame is bad for you. Funny how they came to that opinion just as NutraSweet's patent on Aspartame ran out, so anybody can produce a generic form of it cheaply.
I'm convinced that all this hand-wringing about Aspartame is driven by a desire to sell you on new sweeteners, like Splenda. Every time I "follow the money" on somebody issuing warnings about the Aspartame in Diet Coke, I discover somebody who's competing with it.
(Splenda and Sorbitol, by the way, often contain warning that "large quantities my cause mild diarrhea," by which they mean "even a few drops of this stuff will make you explosively burst out liquid faster than a fire hose within the hour, making severe dysentery seem healthy by comparison.")
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, screw it. Quoting Adams is getting to be as pointless, annoying and overdone as quoting Monty Python.
Pac Man was played by Gen-Xers. In other words, people who are currently working in cubicles and spending the weekends with their kids.
Raves are populated entirely by Gen-Y kiddies who have no idea what Pac Man is, let alone spent any real time playing it.
If you somehow tied Pac Man to listening to really crappy hair metal like Poison or LA Guns while drinking Old Milwaukee beer out of tupperware containers at 1990 college parties or playing Nintendo hockey in the dorms, then maybe, just maybe, you would have been on to something.
P.S. Pac Man didn't have repetitive electronic music, either. There were brief melodies during the little interstitial scenes, but the game itself was sound effects only.
If you are writing a script for a spy thriller, hacking into a computer system becomes identical to a safe-cracking: A specialist does arcane tech stuff while the hero brandishes a gun and stands guard. This should never take more than a minute or so, unless you have a "B" story to cut away to, in which case it can take hours.
Crucial data must exist on only one copy of portable media, which can't be duplicated (more than maybe once), erased, or even remain on the computer it came from. Otherwise, the file in question fails to work as a "McGuffin", and lazy writers can't make use of it.
People who understand computers are like good mechanics. If a grease monkey can make a working airplane out of two broken ones of completely different designs, then a good hacker can log onto the alien computer systems with his Powerbook.
Film directors tend to be old guys who don't really understand how computers work, so they frame them in contexts which they grok. This is also why sci-fi directors almost never get deep-space physics right. Ships on Star Trek move like naval vessels because directors know how to do that. When there's no "up," no gravity, no friction to slow your inertia, and no objects close enough for your movement to be observed by the naked eye, the typical director is utterly lost. Hense, when Kirk outwits Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking patterns, he does so by moving the Enterprise "down" while retaining the same Y axis. It's essentially a submarine attack, rather than a battle between free-moving objects with no fixed reference apart from the nebula they are drifting through. Film directors get submarines. They don't get the void of space.
Once Rockstar finally ported GTA-III and GTA:VC to the X-Box, my PS2-owning friends looked at the X-Box a lot more favorably. It now played their very favorite PS2 games, and also a few X-Box exclusive games which they envied.
By the time I'm completely bored with those two games, the new one will probably be ported over as well.
The Cluetrain Manefesto was published years ago - Speaking like an aristocrat no longer impresses anybody. Spell carefully and use conversational English. Those are the only rules now.
That said, I would say that the decline of the Simpsons has a lot more to do with writer turn-over than anything else.
Four stars out of ten. Good for a rental; or to show off your home theater setup. Sort of like "Stargate"... except it also has a clown-haired Milla Jovovich dressed in bandages.
You sir, are clearly high.
Episode 2, in which Bart cheats on his standardized test and gets places in a "gifted" school, remains one of the funniest half-hours in the history of television. Likewise the season-one family therapy episode in which the whole family (including Maggie) are hooked up to a machine that allows them to electrocute one another. Nothing from recent seasons can compare to it.
All the funniest characters on the show, including "Bleeding Gums" Murphy, Krusty, Monty Burns, Principal Skinner, Apu, Sideshow Bob, Troy McClure, etc., were introduced during those first couple years.
I'm the only one who wears my shoes, so why would I want shoes that adjust to the person wearing them? I can buy shoes that are correct for my size, weight, and running style right out of the box. I try on shoes until I find a pair that do the job for me, and I'm good to go. They will never need to accomodate anybody else, so being adjustable is not an asset.
Actually, I'm explaining why movie sequels are usually cheap, disposable, and guaranteed to farm a little more cash for the production company regardless of quality, while game sequels are major projects with a high level or pressure on the creators to make something worthwile.
Hence, sucky move sequels and high-quality game sequels.
If trains were truly "cost-effective" we wouldn't need to spend any tax money on them... just pay for them with the fares of those who ride them.
Minneapolis is getting one of those new street-level electric trains this summer, which has that exact problem. Personally, I wish it was never built, but now that it's here, I advocate hooking up PA speakers which play traditional dixieland jazz at about 70 db. It would serve the dual purpose of protecting pedestrians and brightening our days at each stop with some hot Kid Ory trombone playing.
I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a joke rather than a troll. Not a terribly funny joke, but the flood of "Insightful" moderations which followed was pretty darn funny.
You can still buy HALO (or keep playing it if you already own it), and it will still be the same experience it was when it was new. In order to get you to shell out $50 - $60 for HALO II, the folks at Bungie and Microsoft need to make a game that is not only new and better, but enough better to make you want to play it. Make it could enough, and they've got a solid franchise (look at how many PS2 owners pre-ordered the new GTA.) Fall short, and word will spread quickly, resulting in utter failure.
Movies are different. You can't see "Shakespeare in Love" at the theater anymore, but for a mere $16, you and your date can give "Shakespeare in Love 2: Electric Boogaloo" a chance. If it sucks, no biggie.
Treating a CD as a single track will only become practical when some future version of the iPod offers 64 MB of ram (or more.)
I have a healthy dose of skepticism about both Atkins and South Beach, but I strongly feel that people who are dangerously obese are probably better off slimming down with an unorthodox diet than remaining fat and eating at McDonald's every day.
I had been hypoglycemic my entire life... until recently, when diabetic symptoms prompted me to buy a glucose-level tester and discover that I was hovering well over 200 all day, and frequently much higher.
By cutting out all foods sweetened with added sugar, all grains except for whole wheat and sourdough (which has enzymes that slow the digestion), all potato-based foods, and all pastas cooked past the "al dente" point. I also stepped up my work-outs from every other day to every day. My blood-glucose levels immediately improved. I now vary between the high 80s and low 100s, and seldom go over 120. All my diabetic symptoms are gone. I'm still working on losing weight, but I've never felt healthier in my life.
Best of all, I did not need to give up either beer or red meat, which I would consider a severe reduction in my quality of life. :)
The "GI" ratings in the back of the book "The Glycemic Life" probably helped me avert an early grave.
Yes.
Does it give you the hershey squirts?
Dear Lord in Heavan, I thought I was going to achieve escape velocity and end up in orbit.
Any other personally intrusive questions I can answer over the whole damned Internet for you?
Calm down. I'm talking about the people who claim Nutrasweet causes memory loss and death, not allergy suffering people who avoid things which give them headaches (which is always a sensible policy.)
I'm speaking of the goofy general health warnings, such as those that were aired a few years ago on "The 700 Club," not the possibility that you, AC, might be allergic to it. I'm allergic to many common antibiotics myself, but I don't crusade to have them banned from the general public just because they are lethally dangerous to me, or call people "such an ass" for pointing out that they are safe.
"Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect in sensitive persons."
This carton has been sampled by several people, including myself, but has remained in my freezer uneaten ever since. Damned if it didn't turn out that every last person who has tried so much as a single serving had the trots within the hour. I guess all six of us happened to be what they consider to be "sensitive persons."
So tell me, if it's "BS" that Splenda causes diarrhea, why does Blue Bunny participate in spreading this ugly lie of mine by printing a warning of that very side effect right on the side of every carton they sell?
And like they say: If you can't give cancer to a white lab rat, you're just not trying.
(sigh)
Sing it with me now, Slashdotters. You all know the words.
Usage defines language, not the other way around.
The original etymology of the expression "which begs the question" is not relevant in any way. It has become extremely common to use that expression to mean, "which demands that the following question be asked," which, considering the common modern definition of the word "begs," actually makes more sense than the traditinal use of the phrase.
P.S. All nouns can be verbed.
P.P.S. The plural form of virus (in biology) is virus. (You're never infected with just one.) The collective plural for more than one type of biological virus is viruses, but it is not "wrong" to invent a plural like "virii" when speaking of more than one computer virus. Most of the jargon in our industry is comprised of words which were simply invented by people who don't know any Latin, and barely know how to write in English.
Wow. That would be a good point if it was an actual fact that you need a credit card number. I just helped a friend redeem a bunch of caps on her computer last week. No credit card needed.
There are all kinds of people (a.k.a. "kooks") who are now trying to tell you that Aspartame is bad for you. Funny how they came to that opinion just as NutraSweet's patent on Aspartame ran out, so anybody can produce a generic form of it cheaply.
I'm convinced that all this hand-wringing about Aspartame is driven by a desire to sell you on new sweeteners, like Splenda. Every time I "follow the money" on somebody issuing warnings about the Aspartame in Diet Coke, I discover somebody who's competing with it.
(Splenda and Sorbitol, by the way, often contain warning that "large quantities my cause mild diarrhea," by which they mean "even a few drops of this stuff will make you explosively burst out liquid faster than a fire hose within the hour, making severe dysentery seem healthy by comparison.")