TIE Fighter was a good one. Different from X-Wing, at least at the start, because you had the fragile thing with no shields. I wasted, er, spent a lot of time on that game.
The graphics were good enough - I never had a problem with suspension of disbelief. I even tried to duck sometimes, when they were shooting at me.:-)
I enjoyed Privateer a lot. I let the story line go for quite a while, because the trading and whatnot was fun. And there was the add-on. I forget the name. Privateer 2 was pretty good, too, though not as good as the original. It was nice that they tried to add more depth, but it got a bit silly to be exterminating the "Tri-System League of Hunters" for the dozenth time.
I've never much been into online games, mostly because there are just too many people eager to bring it down to the lowest level.
I think that you meant "German Rating Boards typically have a very strong sense that violence is as inappropriate for entertainment..." At least, that is the thesis that the rest of the post supports.:-)
Leaving the value judgments about each approach aside, I would say that any time that, say, a six-year-old sees a movie that is targeted at an adult audience, the parents ought to follow up with some discussion of what they saw in the movie.
One question: Are the Germans also sensitive about violence in which people do not get hurt, like cartoons or The A-Team?
Wow. I think that that is the first time that I've seen a comment that is actually informative overflow that limit I have set, and give a "Read the rest of this comment" link.:-) Congratulations!;-)
Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. I took a linguistics course many years ago, and the instructor did most of the examples in Turkish. I think that he explained why, at one point, but that is gone from my memory. I loved the course, though. I was fortunate to have a strong background in Russian at the time (also mostly gone now), so I had exposure to non-Latin script and sounds beyond those that English has ('ts' and 'shch', for example). Even now, I can listen to a fluent Russian speaker and pick out the words, even though I no longer remember what each one means.
It's a very useful thing to study multiple languages, not only for the linguistic knowledge but also for the awareness that it gives of how the concept maps differ. I had a very hard time with Chinese (and never got to the point where I would say that I could speak the language), but Irish was somewhat easier. I am still having trouble with the pronunciation rules, though.:-) On the positive side concerning the Chinese, at least I can pronounce "Beijing" correctly - which escapes 99.9 percent of the people that I have heard on television trying to say the name of the capital of China.
You're right, the correct phrase is "An áit is áil led' chroí, leanfaidh do chosa." I copied it from a Foras na Gaeilge pamphlet without checking. Thanks.
I took a year of Irish in college (quite a few years ago), and I'm working on re-learning the language. I'm not yet far enough along to recognize a mistake like that immediately. I'm impressed that you put it together so well. There is a useful English/Irish dictionary here (if you didn't find it already).
I'd like to continue this conversation, though perhaps email might be better. Please use the address on my account, if you're interested.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of that. I had more of a problem with the fact that girls tended to hide their intelligence. I ended up marrying someone rather less intelligent, and it caused a lot of issues, many stemming from resentment on her part. You really live in a different world from someone who is noticeably less intelligent. Some people can handle that, some can't. But the second time around, I decided that I needed someone who could share all of my world. I think that I've found that, though fate has not so far been cooperative. We are working on it.:-)
I very much believe that, being, well, somewhat of a romantic.;-) Keep looking - you will find the right one. Ádh mór ort!
.... and they say girls can't do math:P pffff to that I say:-D My mother graduated summa cum laude with a degree in math. Being good at math, and intellectual ability in general, is a very attractive thing in a woman.:-)
As a thought experiment, imagine a circle on the surface of a sphere. If I remember correctly (and this was explained to me a *long* time ago), this is one representation of a non-euclidean geometry. The circle represents an intersection of a plane with the sphere, and the Euclidean representation of that circle lies in the plane. However, in the curved geometry represented by the circle and its defining center point on the surface of the sphere, the radius is somewhat longer than the radius in the planar geometry, meaning that pi on the surface of the sphere is somewhat less than the 3.141592654... to which we are accustomed, living in a world that is for the most part a flat geometry (to the limits of ordinary measurement).
The Wikipedia article agrees roughly with my memory (and is somewhat more detailed).:-) The geometry that I described above is an elliptic geometry, as opposed to a hyperbolic one, since it's usually pointless to tell someone to imagine a pseudosphere.:-)
In particular, the ACCC claims Trading Post breached the Trade Practices Act in 2005 when it used the names of NSW car dealerships Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota as hyperlinks to its own site.
These hyperlinks appeared in a shaded area titled "Sponsored Links" at the top of the results page, but appeared to be the dealerships' official sites, or at least affiliated with the dealerships.
It appears that there were links with the names of the complaining dealerships in the Sponsored Links section, which actually led to the web site of a competitor. Use as a keyword seems like it would not be a violation, but such links would be.
One appears to be the sponsored links section, which seems like it ought to be obvious to anyone looking at a results page.
The other issue is that Google appears to have sold the names of some local car dealerships as AdWords to a competitor. That seems to be a trademark violation, at very least. It does raise a question of responsibility, however. Is Google responsible for checking all uses of AdWords, to make sure that they are not trademark violations? Many cases are clear (as this one is), but others are more ambiguous. Clearly, Trading Post is in the wrong, but does Google share that responsibility?
Well, there's the whole problem of "absorb radioactivity" from that line that you quoted. As if it somehow removes the radioactivity and leaves everything else there. And the claim in the article is that it removes all radioactive substances from the water. Not by a series of filters, but by a single naturally-occurring substance.
I suspect that the researchers found something like a zeolite, and the writer sensationalized it for his own reasons (one of which might be misunderstanding). The researchers that were quoted seem to be reputable, but they don't support the article's more wild conclusions.
What Pakhomovsky described sounded something like a zeolite. The practical significance of a new zeolite would not seem to be all that great, however. What the article described is something much more than that - a substance that can "absorb radioactivity" and render radioactive water "completely safe".
Google returns only three hits for "Kolsky Research Institute" - all connected with this story.
As nice as it would be to believe that this is true, it sounds like pseudoscience to me. Absorbing any radioactive substance from water just does not sound plausible, given that absorption would be a micro-level physical process, or a chemical one, acting on a nuclear-level phenomenon.
I assume that you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution. And it was not a revolution in the way that we normally understand it. From the article: It was launched by the Communist Party of China's Chairman, Mao Zedong on May 16, 1966, officially as a campaign to rid China of its "liberal bourgeoisie" elements and to continue revolutionary class struggle. It is widely recognized, however, as a method to regain control of the party after the disastrous Great Leap Forward led to a significant loss of Mao's power to rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and would eventually manifest into waves of power struggles between rival factions both nationally and locally.
Many people did die, but the net result was that some people who already had power got more, and some people that had power lost it (and frequently their lives).
Not a problem. You're not the first. I understand that they have limited appeal to some (maybe most) people. That's the reason those are tagged with the [Beloved] label - so that those who were not interested could delete them without having to investigate.
I turned off messages for journal entries when they cut the retained messages from fifty to twenty-five. There were just too many, and they pushed out messages that I wanted to save. Now I read journal entries through the amigos page. So I only get messages for comment or journal replies, moderation, and relationship changes.
Yeah, I understand. All I've been doing is the poetry and the occasional odd news item. I have some things to write about, but no time to do them justice. Or, perhaps more honestly, when I do have the time, there are other things that are a higher priority. Which seems, in essence, to be "life".:-)
That last JE of yours was very interesting, but then you seemed to drop off the map for a while. The relationship change got my attention, though.:-) I've been reading the front page more often again, because I've actually had mod points after four years. So I'm looking for places to distribute karma.:-)
I think that you would. There's a picture of Werner von Braun next to the first stage on the Wikipedia page. I think that I may have just seen one of the fist stage engines. My memory is hazy, but I do not remember seeing something quite as big as in that photo.
The size of the first stage is striking, an effect that I did not get from seeing launches on television (yes, I'm old enough to remember). Of course, I was only about twelve when I saw it, so comparatively it was somewhat larger than it would seem now.:-)
John Sculley (then CEO of Apple) presented a video of something very much like this when he was a keynote speaker at UniForum in February of 1988. The video was quite well done, and very cool. IIRC, that was toward the beginning of Apple's use of Unix as a base for their OS. I'm not sure whether or not Apple ever took it any further.
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TIE Fighter was a good one. Different from X-Wing, at least at the start, because you had the fragile thing with no shields. I wasted, er, spent a lot of time on that game.
:-)
The graphics were good enough - I never had a problem with suspension of disbelief. I even tried to duck sometimes, when they were shooting at me.
I enjoyed Privateer a lot. I let the story line go for quite a while, because the trading and whatnot was fun. And there was the add-on. I forget the name. Privateer 2 was pretty good, too, though not as good as the original. It was nice that they tried to add more depth, but it got a bit silly to be exterminating the "Tri-System League of Hunters" for the dozenth time.
I've never much been into online games, mostly because there are just too many people eager to bring it down to the lowest level.
I think that you meant "German Rating Boards typically have a very strong sense that violence is as inappropriate for entertainment..." At least, that is the thesis that the rest of the post supports. :-)
Leaving the value judgments about each approach aside, I would say that any time that, say, a six-year-old sees a movie that is targeted at an adult audience, the parents ought to follow up with some discussion of what they saw in the movie.
One question: Are the Germans also sensitive about violence in which people do not get hurt, like cartoons or The A-Team?
Wow. I think that that is the first time that I've seen a comment that is actually informative overflow that limit I have set, and give a "Read the rest of this comment" link. :-) Congratulations! ;-)
:-) On the positive side concerning the Chinese, at least I can pronounce "Beijing" correctly - which escapes 99.9 percent of the people that I have heard on television trying to say the name of the capital of China.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. I took a linguistics course many years ago, and the instructor did most of the examples in Turkish. I think that he explained why, at one point, but that is gone from my memory. I loved the course, though. I was fortunate to have a strong background in Russian at the time (also mostly gone now), so I had exposure to non-Latin script and sounds beyond those that English has ('ts' and 'shch', for example). Even now, I can listen to a fluent Russian speaker and pick out the words, even though I no longer remember what each one means.
It's a very useful thing to study multiple languages, not only for the linguistic knowledge but also for the awareness that it gives of how the concept maps differ. I had a very hard time with Chinese (and never got to the point where I would say that I could speak the language), but Irish was somewhat easier. I am still having trouble with the pronunciation rules, though.
It's cruel.
You're right, the correct phrase is "An áit is áil led' chroí, leanfaidh do chosa." I copied it from a Foras na Gaeilge pamphlet without checking. Thanks.
I took a year of Irish in college (quite a few years ago), and I'm working on re-learning the language. I'm not yet far enough along to recognize a mistake like that immediately. I'm impressed that you put it together so well. There is a useful English/Irish dictionary here (if you didn't find it already).
I'd like to continue this conversation, though perhaps email might be better. Please use the address on my account, if you're interested.
I suppose that gibberish is in the eye of the beholder. :-) I was actually a bit surprised that it passed the comment filter.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of that. I had more of a problem with the fact that girls tended to hide their intelligence. I ended up marrying someone rather less intelligent, and it caused a lot of issues, many stemming from resentment on her part. You really live in a different world from someone who is noticeably less intelligent. Some people can handle that, some can't. But the second time around, I decided that I needed someone who could share all of my world. I think that I've found that, though fate has not so far been cooperative. We are working on it. :-)
;-) Keep looking - you will find the right one. Ádh mór ort!
I very much believe that, being, well, somewhat of a romantic.
If evil did not exist, good would be meaningless. The function of the moral mind is choice.
Good sig, btw. But why not 01100010011110010111010001100101001000000110110101100101?
.... and they say girls can't do math :P pffff to that I say :-D My mother graduated summa cum laude with a degree in math. Being good at math, and intellectual ability in general, is a very attractive thing in a woman. :-)
As a thought experiment, imagine a circle on the surface of a sphere. If I remember correctly (and this was explained to me a *long* time ago), this is one representation of a non-euclidean geometry. The circle represents an intersection of a plane with the sphere, and the Euclidean representation of that circle lies in the plane. However, in the curved geometry represented by the circle and its defining center point on the surface of the sphere, the radius is somewhat longer than the radius in the planar geometry, meaning that pi on the surface of the sphere is somewhat less than the 3.141592654... to which we are accustomed, living in a world that is for the most part a flat geometry (to the limits of ordinary measurement).
:-) The geometry that I described above is an elliptic geometry, as opposed to a hyperbolic one, since it's usually pointless to tell someone to imagine a pseudosphere. :-)
The Wikipedia article agrees roughly with my memory (and is somewhat more detailed).
It appears that there were links with the names of the complaining dealerships in the Sponsored Links section, which actually led to the web site of a competitor. Use as a keyword seems like it would not be a violation, but such links would be.
One appears to be the sponsored links section, which seems like it ought to be obvious to anyone looking at a results page.
The other issue is that Google appears to have sold the names of some local car dealerships as AdWords to a competitor. That seems to be a trademark violation, at very least. It does raise a question of responsibility, however. Is Google responsible for checking all uses of AdWords, to make sure that they are not trademark violations? Many cases are clear (as this one is), but others are more ambiguous. Clearly, Trading Post is in the wrong, but does Google share that responsibility?
Well, there's the whole problem of "absorb radioactivity" from that line that you quoted. As if it somehow removes the radioactivity and leaves everything else there. And the claim in the article is that it removes all radioactive substances from the water. Not by a series of filters, but by a single naturally-occurring substance.
I suspect that the researchers found something like a zeolite, and the writer sensationalized it for his own reasons (one of which might be misunderstanding). The researchers that were quoted seem to be reputable, but they don't support the article's more wild conclusions.
What Pakhomovsky described sounded something like a zeolite. The practical significance of a new zeolite would not seem to be all that great, however. What the article described is something much more than that - a substance that can "absorb radioactivity" and render radioactive water "completely safe".
Google returns only three hits for "Kolsky Research Institute" - all connected with this story.
As nice as it would be to believe that this is true, it sounds like pseudoscience to me. Absorbing any radioactive substance from water just does not sound plausible, given that absorption would be a micro-level physical process, or a chemical one, acting on a nuclear-level phenomenon.
I assume that you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution. And it was not a revolution in the way that we normally understand it. From the article:
It was launched by the Communist Party of China's Chairman, Mao Zedong on May 16, 1966, officially as a campaign to rid China of its "liberal bourgeoisie" elements and to continue revolutionary class struggle. It is widely recognized, however, as a method to regain control of the party after the disastrous Great Leap Forward led to a significant loss of Mao's power to rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and would eventually manifest into waves of power struggles between rival factions both nationally and locally.
Many people did die, but the net result was that some people who already had power got more, and some people that had power lost it (and frequently their lives).
Not a problem. You're not the first. I understand that they have limited appeal to some (maybe most) people. That's the reason those are tagged with the [Beloved] label - so that those who were not interested could delete them without having to investigate.
I turned off messages for journal entries when they cut the retained messages from fifty to twenty-five. There were just too many, and they pushed out messages that I wanted to save. Now I read journal entries through the amigos page. So I only get messages for comment or journal replies, moderation, and relationship changes.
Yeah, I understand. All I've been doing is the poetry and the occasional odd news item. I have some things to write about, but no time to do them justice. Or, perhaps more honestly, when I do have the time, there are other things that are a higher priority. Which seems, in essence, to be "life". :-)
:-) I've been reading the front page more often again, because I've actually had mod points after four years. So I'm looking for places to distribute karma. :-)
That last JE of yours was very interesting, but then you seemed to drop off the map for a while. The relationship change got my attention, though.
I think that you would. There's a picture of Werner von Braun next to the first stage on the Wikipedia page. I think that I may have just seen one of the fist stage engines. My memory is hazy, but I do not remember seeing something quite as big as in that photo.
The size of the first stage is striking, an effect that I did not get from seeing launches on television (yes, I'm old enough to remember). Of course, I was only about twelve when I saw it, so comparatively it was somewhat larger than it would seem now. :-)
Another legacy of Werner von Braun. :-)
That was careless of her.
Why'd you stop writing journal entries?
John Sculley (then CEO of Apple) presented a video of something very much like this when he was a keynote speaker at UniForum in February of 1988. The video was quite well done, and very cool. IIRC, that was toward the beginning of Apple's use of Unix as a base for their OS. I'm not sure whether or not Apple ever took it any further.
No, no. It would be "In Soviet Russia..." Er, sorry, can't quite bring myself to type that out.