I bought the RQ2 boxed set and was floored by how clean and elegant the rules were. Until then I had only played AD&D, Gamma World, Traveler and Top Secret, which were horribly unrealistic messes (though fun). Oh, and Melee/Wizard/The Fantasy Trip (GURPS predecessor) which was another nice, clean system. I recall that I adapted the Wizard magic system to Runequest and it worked fairly well.
Personally I've always liked Paranoia's approach... Player questioning you? They are disloyal commie traitors. No, they were disloyal commie mutant traitors. You are obviously a mutant sympathizer. Please report to the Disintegration Chamber for re-education.
Waiting to get in to a Weird Al concert a couple of days ago, I was in line behind a couple of teenagers who were talking about how much they liked 70s and 80s rock. They mentioned ZZ Top and Foreigner and a few others.
Perhaps I'm too pessimistic, but I see 'studies' like this one heralding the end of the time when the game was the product, and the beginning of the time when the player is the product.
Thankfully, there are free (in all senses of the word) alternatives.
You're living on the edge, man. Don't you realize that by logging in as a user, any user, you put your precious files and data at risk? That's why the only wise decision, when faced by that "login:" or "Username" prompt, is to shut the machine down and just walk away. It's not worth it.
And they'd be perfectly free to do so. But if by removing one excuse not to vote, it gets a few percent greater turnout, it would be well worth it, I think. I say this as a formerly-apathetic 41-year old who voted for the first time ever in 2004, but who really and truly did intend to vote in 2000 but had work explode on him.
Are physical hacks and network hacks part of the same spectrum? Well, the Defcon organizers sure think so. The winners of the capture the flag event all get to go to Defcon for free for life. So does the winner of the lockpick competition. I didn't see anyone who seemed to think that was out of line. Lockpicking has been big at the last couple of HOPE conferences, too.
I have it on good authority that certain hand gestures can be used to convey certain of those evil words. We need to ban hands, too. It's the only way to be sure!
Another example: According to my French-Canadian WoW guildmates, "tabernacle" is considered to be a bit of a dirty word there, but here in the US it doesn't have any bad connotations.
If tanks are travelling in a city without infantry, they're basically dead meat anyway. Stalingrad provides a wonderful example of this, by the by. And the Battle of Kursk an even better one - the Germans employed their Ferdinands in Kursk as the spearhead of the attack. Fredinands had immensely thick armour, and were basically invulnerable to anti-tank weapons of the day. So the Ferds advanced, and the Soviet anti-tank weapons bounced off harmlessly. Alas, they didn't bounce off the other tanks and infantry present. So the Ferds found themselves all alone out there. And the Soviet infantry walked up behind them (note that the Ferdinand was turretless), dropped satchel charges on them, and blew them all to hell. If I remember right, the early Ferdinands didn't even have a bow machine-gun to discourage Soviet infantry.
How hard can it be to build miniature (footprint of wheelchair), remote-controlled tanks with a bunch of cameras all around it, lethal and nonlethal armaments, and a big booming microphone so it can bark orders? Such as "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"?
I guess that listeners aren't the radio station's customers. Of course they're not. The consumers (excuse me, the 'listeners') are the product; the advertisers are the customer.
I had an Atari 800 at home, but used an Apple ][ at school. I modified Apple DOS such that if you booted from one of my floppies, you were forced to enter a password before the boot process would complete. Every time you entered an incorrect character, the next character from the string:
You are a rotting, slime-covered filth.
would print. My modified DOS would only propagate if you formatted a floppy that had been booted from one of my modified disks. It wouldn't have been too hard to make it self-propagating by the same technique that the author of Elk Cloner used. I had a copy of 'Beneath Apple DOS', which my friends and I referred to as the New Testament, versus the Old Testament which was the Apple ][ reference manual.
When I visited the National Cryptologic Museum I bought a very nice mug with the NSA logo on it. Within a few years it had developed a couple of long, nasty cracks and leaked like the proverbial sieve. The jokes pretty much wrote themselves.
One of the few things from my "Plato and the Beginnings of Philosophy" class of 20+ years ago that remains in my head is a statement something like "The best ruler is the most-qualified one who wants the job least", the theory being that if they're really well-qualified to rule, their sense of duty will lead to them doing their best even though they didn't want the job.
I don't relish the idea of missing out on a popular thing, missing the laugh in jokes and quotes, and generally not participating in this part of my culture. Hi there! Nice to meet you. I'm your complete opposite:-).
Slashdot Mirror
I bought the RQ2 boxed set and was floored by how clean and elegant the rules were. Until then I had only played AD&D, Gamma World, Traveler and Top Secret, which were horribly unrealistic messes (though fun). Oh, and Melee/Wizard/The Fantasy Trip (GURPS predecessor) which was another nice, clean system. I recall that I adapted the Wizard magic system to Runequest and it worked fairly well.
Lack of absence of evidence may or may not be the same as lack of evidence of absence.
Waiting to get in to a Weird Al concert a couple of days ago, I was in line behind a couple of teenagers who were talking about how much they liked 70s and 80s rock. They mentioned ZZ Top and Foreigner and a few others.
Perhaps I'm too pessimistic, but I see 'studies' like this one heralding the end of the time when the game was the product, and the beginning of the time when the player is the product.
Thankfully, there are free (in all senses of the word) alternatives.
You're living on the edge, man. Don't you realize that by logging in as a user, any user, you put your precious files and data at risk? That's why the only wise decision, when faced by that "login:" or "Username" prompt, is to shut the machine down and just walk away. It's not worth it.
And they'd be perfectly free to do so. But if by removing one excuse not to vote, it gets a few percent greater turnout, it would be well worth it, I think. I say this as a formerly-apathetic 41-year old who voted for the first time ever in 2004, but who really and truly did intend to vote in 2000 but had work explode on him.
It means you crossed the streams. It would be Bad.
I have it on good authority that certain hand gestures can be used to convey certain of those evil words. We need to ban hands, too. It's the only way to be sure!
Another example: According to my French-Canadian WoW guildmates, "tabernacle" is considered to be a bit of a dirty word there, but here in the US it doesn't have any bad connotations.
Yes, exactly.
:-).
This was not a serious attempt to secure my data.
I had an Atari 800 at home, but used an Apple ][ at school. I modified Apple DOS such that if you booted from one of my floppies, you were forced to enter a password before the boot process would complete. Every time you entered an incorrect character, the next character from the string:
would print. My modified DOS would only propagate if you formatted a floppy that had been booted from one of my modified disks. It wouldn't have been too hard to make it self-propagating by the same technique that the author of Elk Cloner used. I had a copy of 'Beneath Apple DOS', which my friends and I referred to as the New Testament, versus the Old Testament which was the Apple ][ reference manual.
When I visited the National Cryptologic Museum I bought a very nice mug with the NSA logo on it. Within a few years it had developed a couple of long, nasty cracks and leaked like the proverbial sieve. The jokes pretty much wrote themselves.
One of the few things from my "Plato and the Beginnings of Philosophy" class of 20+ years ago that remains in my head is a statement something like "The best ruler is the most-qualified one who wants the job least", the theory being that if they're really well-qualified to rule, their sense of duty will lead to them doing their best even though they didn't want the job.
That's great until they start interfering with your keyboard.
vvvvvnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnm,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
It's not a film, but I'd include Babylon 5 as being among the milestones.
The "Thousand Year Reich" lasted less than 10; I'd bet that the 10-year DRM lasts less than one.
Damn you! I was waiting for the inevitable iPhone Dissection story to post a comment with that quote! :-)
"I know not with what computer WW3 will be simulated, but WW4 will be simulated with sticks and stones."