Re:Translated for the America-Impaired
on
Who Needs Radio?
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· Score: 1
"Please forgive me for not being familiar with his show (lately, if it's not on Cartoon Network, I don't watch it). When he reads his letters, does he try to respond to them over the air? Thank writers for positive letters? Try to offer a counterpoint or two to his detractors? Or does he just read the letters and leave it at that, letting the viewer/listener come to their own conclusion?"
A combination of both, really. He normally takes a few minutes at the end of the show to respond to viewer letters and e-mails. He normally just reads them, but if he has a comment to make about what a viewer said (in favor of or against his points) he will do that.
I really don't think that will ever be a feature in Internet Explorer. There are way too many businesses that use IE exclusively, and this would serve to alienate quite a few of the ones who make a great deal of money off the fact that there is no native pop-up blocking. I really would never count on that being something native in IE; those companies are counting on people not wanting to go to the extra work to use a different browser or even just the Google toolbar, and in most cases, I think that's exactly the way things turn out.
I am so completely and utterly floored by this news. I never thought I would live to see another Bard's Tale game, but I'm thrilled I am. I think The Bard's Tale did more than most other series released around that time to really burnish and foster the CRPG genre as one of significance and creativity... I'm not sure how many games of today can trace their lineage directly to The Bard's Tale, but it certainly strikes me as a game (and series) as influential and groundbreaking as it was fun to play. I'm glad to see it coming back, and I certainly hope it remains somewhat faithful to the precepts that made the original(s) so good.
I can't help but wonder what share the artists will receive from this and future settlements. Because, of course, that's who the RIAA is doing this for, right?
I can't let your comment about "get hungry and learn to love the feeling" just go by. Being hungry and staying hungry is about the worst thing anyone can do who's interested in losing weight. Hunger is your body's way of telling you it's running low on fuel and needs to be replenished. It's sort of like driving your car when the needle's on red. Sure, you might be able to make it another few miles, but is it really necessary to risk it?
A great deal of the other stuff you say is right, though--eating just a little bit (preferably enough to remove the hungry feeling, but not exactly feeling anything approaching full) is a much better way of dealing with feeling hungry. You're giving your body the nutrition it needs to carry on and preventing yourself from gorging on other, potentially less healthy, stuff later.
And, of course, exercise always helps but isn't strictly necessary. In my experience, correctly knowing when to eat--or not eat--is really the primary thing that affects people's weight. It may be difficult to change one's mindset in order to control it, but it can be done. I did it, and went from weighing somewhere in the 230-250 area to being 175-180 and keeping it off for the better part of six years now.
It was named this due to the "q,w,e,r,t,y" pattern in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard. QWERTY was originally designed by Christopher Sholes to slow typing down.
No no no. QWERTY was not designed to slow typists down, it was designed to allow typists to type faster. The article is correct in pointing out that the hammers of the keys could get "tangled" or locked together, but the conclusion is wrong. While those handle problems were seldom catastrophic, they took time to fix, which could take time away from typing. By moving around the most commonly-used keys, people could type with a lot less fear of having to fix the hammers, and thus type more, longer, and faster.
And, of course, the fact that all the keys needed to spell the word "typewriter" are on the upper row of keys and easy for anyone to find even if they've had no typing training, is not exactly a coincidence, either.:)
I think there's pretty much no chance that Microsoft will ever institute some sort of pop-up blocking in Internet Explorer. I think Microsoft is well aware that--for better or worse--their browser is the industry standard, and incorporating pop-up blocking would bother a lot of people. Why shoot themselves in the foot?
This whole article asumes that Harry Potter is high art
Actually, no, that's not what the whole article assumes. Rich doesn't say that he considers any of the Harry Potter books art, merely that they're something good that the target audience is willing to not only go out of their way to read, but also pay for. His point is merely that something of quality can still actually sell, and that it doesn't necessarily need to market itself to the lowest common denominator in order to succeed.
And, at the risk of being moderated redundant, as others have said, the books receive media attention because they're so popular, not the other way around. The books were huge sellers before all the media attention started, and if it were suddenly to go away, that wouldn't change--the people who read and love the books would search out the new ones without all the news stories.
Right, I meant the "first" season, but I typed "last" for some reason. Sorry about that. That's what I get for not taking full advantage of the preview option!:)
On DS9, you just had guys, and sometimes they were good, and sometimes they wern't.
Well, see, I'm not so sure about that. Which of the lead characters in the show were ever on the wrong side? Kira? O'Brien? Sisko? At its core, Deep Space Nine was identical to the previous series. You had the good guys (in the credits) and everyone else was... well, everyone else. I will admit that there were more shades of grey in the secondary characters in DS9 than in other Star Trek series, but the effect was really the same. This wasn't like Babylon 5 where a major character could turn out to be a traitor or could just die all of the sudden. With DS9, you really did know what you were getting all the time.
A lot of people liked it more than The Next Generation, but I never did--I always hear the argument that it did story arcs and stuff, and it did toward the end, but I thought they were always sloppy and poorly conceived. Like where the Guardians in the wormhole just made 2800 (or whatever) Dominion ships vanish. It was the literal defintion of a deus ex machina and it was insulting to me dramatically. It was just the same old unexciting acting, neat packages, and bland, flavorless, safe storytelling, packaged a bit differently and occasionally spread out over a few different episodes instead of just one. It was still second-generation Trek with all the built-in problems that entailed.
The only way star trek could possibly hope to become relavant is to do what they loathe the most -- Make it a drama with contiguous episodes.
No, that's not really what Star Trek needs to become relevant. Remember that the original Star Trek did just fine with almost nothing but individual episodes that didn't really connect to each other. But that series had writers willing to write intelligently and take chances. None of the new series have really had that. They have to be sanitized, inoffensive, familiar. When is the last time an episode of Star Trek really took a chance, made a bold stand on something? That's just not what Star Trek is about anymore.
Babylon 5 was the show that sacrificed its episode-by-episode pleasure in favor of a lengthy story arc, and it got away with it because its creator really knew what he was doing. The long story arcs in Deep Space Nine and, to a lesser extent, Voyager were embarrassing because they lacked continuity, forethought, and dramatic integrity, exactly what J. Michael Straczynski brought to Babylon 5. Note I'm not saying Babylon 5 was perfect--it wasn't. But it did this better than Star Trek ever has because it was its entire purpose for being. The Star Trek writers don't know how to do this.
And they shouldn't need to. They need to be true to the precepts that Roddenberry built the show on. But they don't want to do that, because he's dead and Berman is in charge. And with every new "innovation," he buries Star Trek further and further. It's sad, but it's the way it is.
It might be time to put Star Trek to bed. Babylon 5 was the first revolution. What's the next one? I think we're ready.
...because the ridiculous stuff this article talks about would make me want to stop. Now they're thinking of introducing the Borg into Enterprise?!? Why? So they can completely reconfigure that race again?
Nevermind that they had never been heard of prior to the last season of The Next Generation, and nevermind that Voyager already tried to ret-con it so that Seven of Nine's parents actually knew about them prior to the events of "The Best of Both Worlds," and nevermind that each successive appearance of the Borg in TV and film has made them less interesting, but can the writers come up with no better ideas? Even after the Borg were introduced in The Next Generation, the writers kept trying new things and didn't rely on them. Deep Space Nine's Dominion plotline was dramatically insulting, but they found a way to deal with non-Borg life. Voyager I can understand, since that show took place a long way away from the Federation, but... but... Enterprise?!?
Mr. Berman, hear this: If you have to rely on the Borg to make your show interesting, you need new writers! And quick!
I'd love to hear exactly what it was they cut out of Ultima 8
So would I. Ultima IX was, as far as I am aware, chopped to shreds and released in a form that completely betrays its original intent. Ultima VIII, despite its imperfections, simply looks and plays better; it's intelligently designed and cohesive. In short, it feels like the creators got exactly the game the game they were trying to write, whether or not theey actually did. Ultima IX feels like it was a gigantic compromise, patchy and completely lacking in focus. From all I hear, that is exactly what it was.
Regardless, it's a sad ending to the Ultima series... Ultima VIII held a lot of promise and suggested the series still had plenty of fresh, invigorating places to go. Ultima IX felt old, tired, and boring, though it looked absolutely spectacular. But, as I was raised on Infocom text adventures, and games that didn't have nigh infinite resources on which to draw, I look for content first and graphics much later.
Some of Garriott's comments are just bizarre to me
on
Spector, Garriott on Games
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· Score: 3, Insightful
And as Ultima 8 got into scheduling trouble, as every Ultima always did, rather than make a decision as we had in the past to hold the game until it was polished, we began to cut things out to stay on schedule. And we cut and we cut and we cut and the game that was finally released was not only shipped early even for the cut version (and therefore buggy), but also had its guts ripped out as far as being an Ultima.
and
So, Ultima 9, throughout its development, was the bastard child of Electronic Arts and suffered from that lack of support. But we persevered anyway, and I think it came out pretty well. There were some areas I wish we could have taken the time to make better, but considering the rocky road of internal support it had, it actually turned out quite nicely.
I guess I pretty much have the opposite feelings about his games. I thought Ultima VIII, for all its problems, was at least interesting and playable, and it kept my interest right until the very end. I didn't think there was much of anything worthwhile about Ultima IX at all, and I gave up somewhere near halfway through. It seemed to take great job in subverting everything that had made Ultima what it was for almost two decades.
Nothing in that game seemed to resemble anything I was familiar with, and I'd played all the Ultima games (including both Ultima Underworld titles, Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams). Ultima VIII was completely different from what had come before, but it had to operate under a different set of rules, because it took place in a different universe/dimension as far removed from Britannia as Earth was. Ultima IX could utilize no such excuse... It just made no sense, and was boring as heck, despite being graphically superior to... well... almost everything.
I agree with Garriott about Ultima VII being the Ultima of Ultimas, though. Those were the days!
I also seem to remember him on an episode of Friends. I think he played a zookeeper or a zoo caretaker or something (this tied in with Ross in some way, but I don't remember exactly how). And, of course, he appeared a number of times on The Tracey Ullman Show. He's very talented... they all are.
...has Athlon come up with a way to deal with heat issues yet? I have an 1800, and the heat problems are almost unbearable with it, so I can't imagine what they'd be like with a 2600. Is there anything that can be done on the processor side, or is it really just a question of ventilation, fans, and/or water cooling? I have four or five fans in my computer now, and it's just not enough. I have to have the case open and an external fan pointing inside, and I certainly don't like having to do that.
You wouldn't get much use from over 1G pr0n unless you had a great hand.:P
I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it was very funny.;)
The show's problems really began last season...
on
The End of The X-Files
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· Score: 1, Redundant
...when David Duchovny's Fox Mulder was regulated to a non-entity. I don't think anyone ever really cared about any of the alien conspiracy storyline, it was the Mulder-Scully dynamic that mattered to them. It infused EVERYTHING in the show, and the constant interplay of those two characters made the show fun to watch, not the stories themsleves. When that was gone (and it simply wasn't present with Robert Patrick), the show as a whole felt empty and pointless.
Of course, I think the problem really began after the movie, which more or less validated Mulder's view. As soon as the viewers could say, with absolute certainty, that there were or were not aliens in the universe of The X-Files, the show started losing its grip.
These are problems that didn't have to occur, but they did, and The X-Files is now really a shadow of its former self. The X-Files used to be great, now it just... is. Barely.
The game you're thinking of is Rocky's Boots. And a great game it was! I learned a lot of stuff from that game back when I was younger. But that was back when edutainment software was both educational and entertaining, something that's much harder to find today!
You can kill the thief. He's just really tough.
Not if you wait until the end of the game and load him down with treasures first. But I don't recommend trying to kill him early on.
There is, of course, the "intended" solution to the problem, which is to put all the fluff you find in the game (there are four pieces) into the flowerpot from the whale, wait until a plant sprouts, then carry it into the sauna. The fruit that grows, when eaten, will provide the name of the tool you need to give Marvin.
Slashdot Mirror
...it was even funnier when Will Rogers first said it 70 years ago or so. :)
"Please forgive me for not being familiar with his show (lately, if it's not on Cartoon Network, I don't watch it). When he reads his letters, does he try to respond to them over the air? Thank writers for positive letters? Try to offer a counterpoint or two to his detractors? Or does he just read the letters and leave it at that, letting the viewer/listener come to their own conclusion?"
A combination of both, really. He normally takes a few minutes at the end of the show to respond to viewer letters and e-mails. He normally just reads them, but if he has a comment to make about what a viewer said (in favor of or against his points) he will do that.
Lack of native popup blocking.
I really don't think that will ever be a feature in Internet Explorer. There are way too many businesses that use IE exclusively, and this would serve to alienate quite a few of the ones who make a great deal of money off the fact that there is no native pop-up blocking. I really would never count on that being something native in IE; those companies are counting on people not wanting to go to the extra work to use a different browser or even just the Google toolbar, and in most cases, I think that's exactly the way things turn out.
I am so completely and utterly floored by this news. I never thought I would live to see another Bard's Tale game, but I'm thrilled I am. I think The Bard's Tale did more than most other series released around that time to really burnish and foster the CRPG genre as one of significance and creativity... I'm not sure how many games of today can trace their lineage directly to The Bard's Tale, but it certainly strikes me as a game (and series) as influential and groundbreaking as it was fun to play. I'm glad to see it coming back, and I certainly hope it remains somewhat faithful to the precepts that made the original(s) so good.
I can't help but wonder what share the artists will receive from this and future settlements. Because, of course, that's who the RIAA is doing this for, right?
A great deal of the other stuff you say is right, though--eating just a little bit (preferably enough to remove the hungry feeling, but not exactly feeling anything approaching full) is a much better way of dealing with feeling hungry. You're giving your body the nutrition it needs to carry on and preventing yourself from gorging on other, potentially less healthy, stuff later.
And, of course, exercise always helps but isn't strictly necessary. In my experience, correctly knowing when to eat--or not eat--is really the primary thing that affects people's weight. It may be difficult to change one's mindset in order to control it, but it can be done. I did it, and went from weighing somewhere in the 230-250 area to being 175-180 and keeping it off for the better part of six years now.
No no no. QWERTY was not designed to slow typists down, it was designed to allow typists to type faster. The article is correct in pointing out that the hammers of the keys could get "tangled" or locked together, but the conclusion is wrong. While those handle problems were seldom catastrophic, they took time to fix, which could take time away from typing. By moving around the most commonly-used keys, people could type with a lot less fear of having to fix the hammers, and thus type more, longer, and faster. And, of course, the fact that all the keys needed to spell the word "typewriter" are on the upper row of keys and easy for anyone to find even if they've had no typing training, is not exactly a coincidence, either. :)
I think there's pretty much no chance that Microsoft will ever institute some sort of pop-up blocking in Internet Explorer. I think Microsoft is well aware that--for better or worse--their browser is the industry standard, and incorporating pop-up blocking would bother a lot of people. Why shoot themselves in the foot?
Actually, no, that's not what the whole article assumes. Rich doesn't say that he considers any of the Harry Potter books art, merely that they're something good that the target audience is willing to not only go out of their way to read, but also pay for. His point is merely that something of quality can still actually sell, and that it doesn't necessarily need to market itself to the lowest common denominator in order to succeed.
And, at the risk of being moderated redundant, as others have said, the books receive media attention because they're so popular, not the other way around. The books were huge sellers before all the media attention started, and if it were suddenly to go away, that wouldn't change--the people who read and love the books would search out the new ones without all the news stories.
Right, I meant the "first" season, but I typed "last" for some reason. Sorry about that. That's what I get for not taking full advantage of the preview option! :)
It was a typo. I apologize for the error. I meant "first," but I typed "last." It happens. Sorry.
Well, see, I'm not so sure about that. Which of the lead characters in the show were ever on the wrong side? Kira? O'Brien? Sisko? At its core, Deep Space Nine was identical to the previous series. You had the good guys (in the credits) and everyone else was... well, everyone else. I will admit that there were more shades of grey in the secondary characters in DS9 than in other Star Trek series, but the effect was really the same. This wasn't like Babylon 5 where a major character could turn out to be a traitor or could just die all of the sudden. With DS9, you really did know what you were getting all the time.
A lot of people liked it more than The Next Generation, but I never did--I always hear the argument that it did story arcs and stuff, and it did toward the end, but I thought they were always sloppy and poorly conceived. Like where the Guardians in the wormhole just made 2800 (or whatever) Dominion ships vanish. It was the literal defintion of a deus ex machina and it was insulting to me dramatically. It was just the same old unexciting acting, neat packages, and bland, flavorless, safe storytelling, packaged a bit differently and occasionally spread out over a few different episodes instead of just one. It was still second-generation Trek with all the built-in problems that entailed.
No, that's not really what Star Trek needs to become relevant. Remember that the original Star Trek did just fine with almost nothing but individual episodes that didn't really connect to each other. But that series had writers willing to write intelligently and take chances. None of the new series have really had that. They have to be sanitized, inoffensive, familiar. When is the last time an episode of Star Trek really took a chance, made a bold stand on something? That's just not what Star Trek is about anymore.
Babylon 5 was the show that sacrificed its episode-by-episode pleasure in favor of a lengthy story arc, and it got away with it because its creator really knew what he was doing. The long story arcs in Deep Space Nine and, to a lesser extent, Voyager were embarrassing because they lacked continuity, forethought, and dramatic integrity, exactly what J. Michael Straczynski brought to Babylon 5. Note I'm not saying Babylon 5 was perfect--it wasn't. But it did this better than Star Trek ever has because it was its entire purpose for being. The Star Trek writers don't know how to do this.
And they shouldn't need to. They need to be true to the precepts that Roddenberry built the show on. But they don't want to do that, because he's dead and Berman is in charge. And with every new "innovation," he buries Star Trek further and further. It's sad, but it's the way it is.
It might be time to put Star Trek to bed. Babylon 5 was the first revolution. What's the next one? I think we're ready.
Nevermind that they had never been heard of prior to the last season of The Next Generation, and nevermind that Voyager already tried to ret-con it so that Seven of Nine's parents actually knew about them prior to the events of "The Best of Both Worlds," and nevermind that each successive appearance of the Borg in TV and film has made them less interesting, but can the writers come up with no better ideas? Even after the Borg were introduced in The Next Generation, the writers kept trying new things and didn't rely on them. Deep Space Nine's Dominion plotline was dramatically insulting, but they found a way to deal with non-Borg life. Voyager I can understand, since that show took place a long way away from the Federation, but... but... Enterprise?!?
Mr. Berman, hear this: If you have to rely on the Borg to make your show interesting, you need new writers! And quick!
So would I. Ultima IX was, as far as I am aware, chopped to shreds and released in a form that completely betrays its original intent. Ultima VIII, despite its imperfections, simply looks and plays better; it's intelligently designed and cohesive. In short, it feels like the creators got exactly the game the game they were trying to write, whether or not theey actually did. Ultima IX feels like it was a gigantic compromise, patchy and completely lacking in focus. From all I hear, that is exactly what it was.
Regardless, it's a sad ending to the Ultima series... Ultima VIII held a lot of promise and suggested the series still had plenty of fresh, invigorating places to go. Ultima IX felt old, tired, and boring, though it looked absolutely spectacular. But, as I was raised on Infocom text adventures, and games that didn't have nigh infinite resources on which to draw, I look for content first and graphics much later.
Nothing in that game seemed to resemble anything I was familiar with, and I'd played all the Ultima games (including both Ultima Underworld titles, Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams). Ultima VIII was completely different from what had come before, but it had to operate under a different set of rules, because it took place in a different universe/dimension as far removed from Britannia as Earth was. Ultima IX could utilize no such excuse... It just made no sense, and was boring as heck, despite being graphically superior to... well... almost everything.
I agree with Garriott about Ultima VII being the Ultima of Ultimas, though. Those were the days!
...but which performer(s) on South Park are Scientologists?
I also seem to remember him on an episode of Friends. I think he played a zookeeper or a zoo caretaker or something (this tied in with Ross in some way, but I don't remember exactly how). And, of course, he appeared a number of times on The Tracey Ullman Show. He's very talented... they all are.
...has Athlon come up with a way to deal with heat issues yet? I have an 1800, and the heat problems are almost unbearable with it, so I can't imagine what they'd be like with a 2600. Is there anything that can be done on the processor side, or is it really just a question of ventilation, fans, and/or water cooling? I have four or five fans in my computer now, and it's just not enough. I have to have the case open and an external fan pointing inside, and I certainly don't like having to do that.
You wouldn't get much use from over 1G pr0n unless you had a great hand. :P
;)
I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it was very funny.
...when David Duchovny's Fox Mulder was regulated to a non-entity. I don't think anyone ever really cared about any of the alien conspiracy storyline, it was the Mulder-Scully dynamic that mattered to them. It infused EVERYTHING in the show, and the constant interplay of those two characters made the show fun to watch, not the stories themsleves. When that was gone (and it simply wasn't present with Robert Patrick), the show as a whole felt empty and pointless.
Of course, I think the problem really began after the movie, which more or less validated Mulder's view. As soon as the viewers could say, with absolute certainty, that there were or were not aliens in the universe of The X-Files, the show started losing its grip.
These are problems that didn't have to occur, but they did, and The X-Files is now really a shadow of its former self. The X-Files used to be great, now it just... is. Barely.
If they make all of those changes, how can it still be considered Ultima?
The game you're thinking of is Rocky's Boots. And a great game it was! I learned a lot of stuff from that game back when I was younger. But that was back when edutainment software was both educational and entertaining, something that's much harder to find today!
You can kill the thief. He's just really tough. Not if you wait until the end of the game and load him down with treasures first. But I don't recommend trying to kill him early on.
There is, of course, the "intended" solution to the problem, which is to put all the fluff you find in the game (there are four pieces) into the flowerpot from the whale, wait until a plant sprouts, then carry it into the sauna. The fruit that grows, when eaten, will provide the name of the tool you need to give Marvin.