Have these astronauts never played video games?
on
Playing Ball in Space
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· Score: 2
I find it hard to believe that it took 15 days for the astronauts to acclimatize to projectile motion without gravity. Any video game veteran has learned that instinct by interacting with Descent: Freespace, XWing, or even 3D Pong. These video games serve as excellent simulators; the astronauts must have never played any of them.
If aliens invade, I pray that Defender becomes standard training for our fighter pilots.
I just don't get this game.
on
Nethack 3.4.0
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· Score: 2
I still just don't get the appeal of this game. I think I must suck at it.
They say the game has replayability. But every game I've played is the same -- my dog dies around level 3, and I die around level 6, usually to a gnome in the caverns with the 'natural' design. By that time I've found one or two magic items which I usually cannot use.
They say you can do lots of things in this game; use cockatrices as weapons to stone monsters, etc. But every weird trick I've tried hasn't worked. I've never even seen a cockatrice (It would probably kill me quickly, anyway.) As far as I can tell, there's nothing to do in this game except bash monsters, collect treasure, and get killed. I can't even figure out how to cast spells.
I'm sure it's an okay game once you figure out the obtuse interface. But I just don't understand why people keep claiming it has such appeal.
Yes, despite every warning I've heard, there was a.ram format video that I really wanted to watch, and so I thought it would be okay to install RealPlayer just briefly. And now, I am living a nightmare.
My Windows 98 box, which was none too stable to begin with, is having serious problems with blue screen crashes and registry errors. RealPlayer auto-loads things on startup, most notably a scheduler that goes out and checks for updates once a week with no way to turn it off. It's taken over dozens of file types, even ones that it apparently doesn't handle. And -- most annoying of all -- it has no Uninstall option, which I would expect of any professional software. I think I've pulled all the auto-loading parts of this demonic software out of my startup scripts, but to really be rid of this evil thing I'm looking at a full reformatting of my hard drive.
No software package should ever put a system in that kind of state.
Now that modern astronomers have seen this comet, they're taking precise measurements of its orbit. By their calculations, they figure it should also have been visible about 340 years ago. (Or, put another way, its orbit has a 340 year period.) Then they checked the historical records for any comets mentioned about that time, and found one that fit. QED.
Everyone's already pointed out that Norrath is suffering deflation as a result of unlimited natural resources -- new items constantly reappear, driving down the cost of the old items.
But I'd be interested in seeing how the prices are changing for the few items that are truly unique in the game. Manastones and Rubicite armor are two examples that come to mind -- they were discontinued a few years ago, and they cannot be found anymore. But the original pieces still exist, and are floating around somewhere. I'd like to see what price they're going for these days -- I suspect they will have been subject to very high inflation.
You're right, the Wayback machine is not the largest collection of data -- not even the largest collection online. I work with the USGS's catalog of satellite data. They have over 300 terabytes of satellite imagery, and the collection is growing at a rate of about 1 terabyte per day.
The USGS collection comprises multiple instruments, but Landsat 7 is a big one, contributing about 100 terabytes that's searchable online.
Perhaps 'Largest TEXT Database' would be a better description of the Wayback Machine?
What is to stop a dead corporation's entire board and employees from just creating a totally new corporation doing exactly the same thing?
Intellectual property is owned by the corporation, not the board or employees. Part of a corporate death penalty should be to take all the IP it owns (GM seeds, chemical formulations and processes, software, etc) and make it public domain. Then the employees can recreate the company, but they will not have any monopolies nor guaranteed profits that they used to enjoy.
I don't think I'm in favor of a corporate death penalty -- I'd rather reduce the personhood of corporations than help it along -- but it could work if done correctly.
Wrong, or just an exception to every rule?
on
Message from Kabul
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· Score: 2
Passion for pop culture relentlessly undermined repressive governments like Poland, East Germany and the former Soviet Union.
Okay.
But could someone please explain to me about communist China?
At my previous job we had a hodepodge intranet of Convex supercomputers, PCs and Macs. Each of us at a minimum had a PC and a Mac in our office.
This one guy named Jim could not get his Windows 3.1 PC to work. The darn thing was the most insane collection of parts that the OEM could throw at us, and it crashed almost every time you booted it up. Once Jim got it booted, he'd leave it that way as long as possible. Jim always had a supernatural Pauli field -- every machine he touched started malfunctioning in some way -- but this PC was never more than barely functional.
I was the sysadmin of the network, and so it was I who found that computer all over the logs for our office. The insane PC had been trying to log into every computer on our network, including the supercomputers, with the username/password combo of 'root root'.
Needless to say, we checked that thing with a fine toothed comb. No viruses, no software running. Jim swore he knew nothing about the hack attempts. This was before we were attached to the internet, so there were no intrusions. We reformatted the drive, and a week later the PC started trying to hack our network again. That's when I told Jim to dismantle the thing and I'd get him another PC.
But that's not the weirdest thing I ever saw from computers Jim touched. The weirdest was when our Convex supercomputer -- again, unconnected to the internet -- started sending the word 'Jim' written in banner images twenty ASCII high to Jim's workstation. Again, he swore he knew nothing about it. I didn't even know 'banner' was installed on Convex UNIX. Fortunately this oddness only happened twice and then stopped. If I were forced to find the cause I don't think I would have succeeded.
I think what you're looking for is *interesting* characters, not necessarily superhuman ones.
The problems with Deep Space 9 and Voyager were not because their 'superheroes' were weak, but that they just weren't interesting enough, and the few interesting characters that did exist could not carry the show all by themselves.
The original series had interesting characters from the beginning (and TV standards then, it must be said, were more lax.) Next Generation stumbled for a while before the writers came up with ways to make the cast -- especially Picard -- interesting people to watch.
Andromeda is good show, and it seems to fit your 'superhero' theory well -- absolutely every member of the crew has some exceptional ability. But none of them are able to easily defeat what comes at them, and in the end none of them are exceptional members of the universe in which they live. Their abilities make them *interesting*, that's all.
Are the crew members of Enterprise interesting? I'll find out tonight. But personally, my biggest gripe with the Star Trek universe has never been with their characterization; I couldn't stand the moralistic plots, outrageous plot twists, and insultingly stupid technobabble. I'm interested to see if Enterprise can get over those problems that have plagued Star Trek for years.
They're not that dangerous. They're not self-replicating, which means that at most you'll kill 1 cell for every 1 nanotube in your solution. That could hurt if it gets in your bloodstream or somehow attacks an exposed nerve, but it will do no damage on exposed skin and only kill a layer or two of throat cells if ingested.
Compared to existing chemical weapons such as Sarin, you'd need a very large amount of nanotubes to kill a person, at a likely very high cost. It just isn't a very effective weapon.
The absolute worst-case scenario for a magnetic containment fusion reactor is an explosion that levels the building it's in. This would not be caused by a loss of power to the magnetic fields; it would have to be a specific imbalance in the fields that focussed the plasma into the wall of the unit. Just turning off the fields would cause the reaction to grind to a halt, possibly flash-destroying the interior of the containment vessel but probably not affecting anything outside.
Of course there are radioactive hazards. The most radioactive substance in the process is the Lithium used to line the reactor walls as a neutron shield, but as a solid metal lithium is not likely to cause a problem. Most likely to escape is the Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that's very hard to contain. But tritium gas is a very low risk substance, with a half-life of 12 days. It's not a big worry.
Fusion power is nowhere near as dangerous as fission.
Sorry, I'm typing too fast, and mixing up my troubled game developers.:)
'Funcom' created Anarchy Online. 'Cornered Rat' created WWII Online, a different, but equally poorly released, game. Just substitute 'Funcom' for 'Cornered Rat' in my above post, and sorry for the confusion.:)
WWII Online and Anarchy Online are currently neck-and-neck for 'worst MMOG release ever'.
Anarchy Online has barely playable code, memory leaks, and crashes.
WWII Online has barely playable code, terrible interface problems (three keys to fire a gun?), weird hardware requirements (can't drive a vehicle unless you have a certain kind of joystick!), and ridiculous bugs (gotta love those flying tanks.)
Because AO's problems were mostly technical and WWIIOL's problems were mostly caused by poor design, I used to think that WWIIOL was in the lead for the title of Worst Release. But now that Funcom is thinking of charging money for AO -- and Cornered Rat is still allowing people to play WWII gratis -- I think AO is edging WWIIOL out for the Worst MMOG Release Ever. Who will ultimately win (or, really, lose)? Stay tuned.
I did not play AO's beta (I don't do betas), but I played the second day of release. Or rather I tried to.
The technical glitches in this game are immense. Installing the game was tricky and difficult, and many people screwed it up so badly they corrupted their registries. Once installed, for days it was nearly impossible to log in. To open your account, they forced you to give them your credit card over an insecure web site. And the game crashed to desktop every five minutes or so.
It's gotten slightly better. But there are still problems logging in, horrible memory leaks, graphic card incompatibilities, and problems moving from zone to zone (play areas are divided by zone, with each zone usually hosted on a different server. If you can't zone, then you can either be where the monsters are or where the resupply shops are -- not both.) And these are just the technical problems; game system imbalances and exploitable bugs also exist, as they do in all games of this type but seldom in this quantity.
Although the game is barely playable, it is in no way finished software. Any software that misplaces 50 megabytes of RAM every hour and then crashes when it is forced to use a swap file is NOT ready for primetime. IMHO the game concept is sound and the underlying game is fun, but it's just not finished.
But Cornered Rat (the developers) decided to release this buggy game on schedule, due to budget problems. Approximately one month from now they're going to start charging people $12.95 a month to play. Then we'll see how many people are willing to pay for horribly broken software.
Re:Does it fix Myth II's problems?
on
Myth III Preview
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· Score: 2
Eh. Depends on how they put the demo together. If it's a small force mission with only a few units, you'll never see the collision bug. That only takes effect when you have large masses of units coming together (and then passing through one another:p).
The demo may illuminate some of the problems and/or solutions, but probably not all of them.
Does it fix Myth II's problems?
on
Myth III Preview
·
· Score: 3
Myth I was a groundbreaking game, with realistic troop movements and tactics. Loved it.
Myth II ruined the franchise, by allowing unrealistic encounters -- among other things, they removed the collision radius between units. Why they took a great engine and concept and screwed it up, I'll never understand.
I'm going to want some assurances that Myth III is faithful to the original, with some realism and thought in its design, before I try anything in that franchise again.
I'll mark down my karma bonus on this post, because it truly is flamebait.;) But the initial post was a valid privacy concern and my response to it.
What, is it okay to boycott RIAA and MPAA, but wrong to boycott Blizzard because 'they make kewl games'? Movie and music producers are the spawn of evil when they screw the public, but game producers can do no wrong? Or is there a cult of personality around CmdrTaco (who I admit is a neat guy) such that anyone whose opinion differs from his must be a destructive troll?
Come on, Slashdot. I wouldn't still be here if I didn't have some faith that as a group we acted with some logic.
I will not connect to Battle.net to get v1.06, the spyware version.
I will not buy the expansion.
I will be very cautious in buying anything from Blizzard in the future. Specifically, I'll wait until it's out for a while and look for reports of hidden spyware features.
But I will continue to play Diablo II v1.04 on my computer, until such time as I choose to delete it. Occassionally it's still fun, when I'm in the mood to just kill things. But as a single-player game, it's playability isn't going to last forever, and eventually I'll uninstall it.
Are you saying I'm a hypocrite because I'm not uninstalling it right now? They already have my money for this part of the game; deleting it after buying it wouldn't make a very effective protest.:)
Although it seems clear that Mr. Henson statements where intended as a joke, they also where bigoted, intolerant, and highly offensive.
Bullshit.
If you want to find offensive posts about scientology, look back in the a.r.s archives to about 1995. The flames were on full back then. I still remember one in particular that began with, "I am going to impale you on my clue stick. Maybe once my clue-bearing sperm chew their way through your clammy insides to your brain, you'll understand why you're such a fuckwit." Now *that's* bigoted and offensive. It was also highly entertaining.
(Go for -1 -- Flamebait, folks; I've got karma to burn.;) )
Mr. Henson's remarks were very reasonable WHEN TAKEN IN CONTEXT, for a man who is spending his life in opposition to a criminal organization. Read the posts; the missle 'threat' was an obvious joke, and the 'utterly destroy' quote was not only in the context of pickets and legal battles, but was originally lifted from the scienos' own scriptures. Every statement Mr. Henson made should have been protected by free speech, and his flight to Canada is a sad, sad reflection on America.
It's my job to look at satellite imagery of the Earth every day. And looking at these Mars pictures, I don't see many structures that I haven't seen in earth geology. The tubes (dunes or ravines), triangles (dunes), and other formations are all things you'd see if you looked in the right places on Earth.
The only features that did seem a little strange were the 'trees' images. While they could be lava flows, lava is usually not that fractal or inhomogeneous. They do look more like natural vegetation, although without scale on the images it's impossible to tell. So I'd dismiss immediately any claims of intelligent artifacts on Mars, but there may be some tantalizing possibilities for primitive forms of life.
Yeah, there is room for the former in the latter, but I'd *really* like to see a non-PC Trek universe when the Prime Directive was more of a guideline, female starship personell all wore skirts that showed their asses, and starship captains weren't afraid to throw down and open up the occasional can of phaser-powered whupass.
I want to see racism. I want to see sexism. I want to see the captain of the show bag all the cute alien hotties. I want facepaint rather than creative nose ridges.
And... like a previous poster put it, I want explosions. Lots of explosions. This is supposed to be the Star Trek equivalent of the old west, so lets get some kick-ass space dogfights going on.
You want 'Andromeda'. Yes, that show with Kevin Sorbo.
Seriously, 'Andromeda' is Roddenberry's view of the Star Trek universe 300 years after the fall of the Federation. It's not touchy-feelie, and it kicks some serious ass. It may not be as good as 'Farscape' (which is awe-inspiring), but it's a darn good show, and a lot better than anything done in years under the title of Star Trek.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it hard to believe that it took 15 days for the astronauts to acclimatize to projectile motion without gravity. Any video game veteran has learned that instinct by interacting with Descent: Freespace, XWing, or even 3D Pong. These video games serve as excellent simulators; the astronauts must have never played any of them.
If aliens invade, I pray that Defender becomes standard training for our fighter pilots.
I still just don't get the appeal of this game. I think I must suck at it.
They say the game has replayability. But every game I've played is the same -- my dog dies around level 3, and I die around level 6, usually to a gnome in the caverns with the 'natural' design. By that time I've found one or two magic items which I usually cannot use.
They say you can do lots of things in this game; use cockatrices as weapons to stone monsters, etc. But every weird trick I've tried hasn't worked. I've never even seen a cockatrice (It would probably kill me quickly, anyway.) As far as I can tell, there's nothing to do in this game except bash monsters, collect treasure, and get killed. I can't even figure out how to cast spells.
I'm sure it's an okay game once you figure out the obtuse interface. But I just don't understand why people keep claiming it has such appeal.
Yes, despite every warning I've heard, there was a .ram format video that I really wanted to watch, and so I thought it would be okay to install RealPlayer just briefly. And now, I am living a nightmare.
My Windows 98 box, which was none too stable to begin with, is having serious problems with blue screen crashes and registry errors. RealPlayer auto-loads things on startup, most notably a scheduler that goes out and checks for updates once a week with no way to turn it off. It's taken over dozens of file types, even ones that it apparently doesn't handle. And -- most annoying of all -- it has no Uninstall option, which I would expect of any professional software. I think I've pulled all the auto-loading parts of this demonic software out of my startup scripts, but to really be rid of this evil thing I'm looking at a full reformatting of my hard drive.
No software package should ever put a system in that kind of state.
Now that modern astronomers have seen this comet, they're taking precise measurements of its orbit. By their calculations, they figure it should also have been visible about 340 years ago. (Or, put another way, its orbit has a 340 year period.) Then they checked the historical records for any comets mentioned about that time, and found one that fit. QED.
Everyone's already pointed out that Norrath is suffering deflation as a result of unlimited natural resources -- new items constantly reappear, driving down the cost of the old items.
But I'd be interested in seeing how the prices are changing for the few items that are truly unique in the game. Manastones and Rubicite armor are two examples that come to mind -- they were discontinued a few years ago, and they cannot be found anymore. But the original pieces still exist, and are floating around somewhere. I'd like to see what price they're going for these days -- I suspect they will have been subject to very high inflation.
You're right, the Wayback machine is not the largest collection of data -- not even the largest collection online. I work with the USGS's catalog of satellite data. They have over 300 terabytes of satellite imagery, and the collection is growing at a rate of about 1 terabyte per day.
The USGS collection comprises multiple instruments, but Landsat 7 is a big one, contributing about 100 terabytes that's searchable online.
Perhaps 'Largest TEXT Database' would be a better description of the Wayback Machine?
It's okay. Just boil tapwater before you drink it; that will destroy any microscopic robots within.
First off, it should be noted that almost all the players in this little cast (except for Shifman) are members of anti-spam Usenet groups.
Yep. And in my book, that makes them heroes. What's the problem?
What is to stop a dead corporation's entire board and employees from just creating a totally new corporation doing exactly the same thing?
Intellectual property is owned by the corporation, not the board or employees. Part of a corporate death penalty should be to take all the IP it owns (GM seeds, chemical formulations and processes, software, etc) and make it public domain. Then the employees can recreate the company, but they will not have any monopolies nor guaranteed profits that they used to enjoy.
I don't think I'm in favor of a corporate death penalty -- I'd rather reduce the personhood of corporations than help it along -- but it could work if done correctly.
Okay.
But could someone please explain to me about communist China?
At my previous job we had a hodepodge intranet of Convex supercomputers, PCs and Macs. Each of us at a minimum had a PC and a Mac in our office.
This one guy named Jim could not get his Windows 3.1 PC to work. The darn thing was the most insane collection of parts that the OEM could throw at us, and it crashed almost every time you booted it up. Once Jim got it booted, he'd leave it that way as long as possible. Jim always had a supernatural Pauli field -- every machine he touched started malfunctioning in some way -- but this PC was never more than barely functional.
I was the sysadmin of the network, and so it was I who found that computer all over the logs for our office. The insane PC had been trying to log into every computer on our network, including the supercomputers, with the username/password combo of 'root root'.
Needless to say, we checked that thing with a fine toothed comb. No viruses, no software running. Jim swore he knew nothing about the hack attempts. This was before we were attached to the internet, so there were no intrusions. We reformatted the drive, and a week later the PC started trying to hack our network again. That's when I told Jim to dismantle the thing and I'd get him another PC.
But that's not the weirdest thing I ever saw from computers Jim touched. The weirdest was when our Convex supercomputer -- again, unconnected to the internet -- started sending the word 'Jim' written in banner images twenty ASCII high to Jim's workstation. Again, he swore he knew nothing about it. I didn't even know 'banner' was installed on Convex UNIX. Fortunately this oddness only happened twice and then stopped. If I were forced to find the cause I don't think I would have succeeded.
I think what you're looking for is *interesting* characters, not necessarily superhuman ones.
The problems with Deep Space 9 and Voyager were not because their 'superheroes' were weak, but that they just weren't interesting enough, and the few interesting characters that did exist could not carry the show all by themselves.
The original series had interesting characters from the beginning (and TV standards then, it must be said, were more lax.) Next Generation stumbled for a while before the writers came up with ways to make the cast -- especially Picard -- interesting people to watch.
Andromeda is good show, and it seems to fit your 'superhero' theory well -- absolutely every member of the crew has some exceptional ability. But none of them are able to easily defeat what comes at them, and in the end none of them are exceptional members of the universe in which they live. Their abilities make them *interesting*, that's all.
Are the crew members of Enterprise interesting? I'll find out tonight. But personally, my biggest gripe with the Star Trek universe has never been with their characterization; I couldn't stand the moralistic plots, outrageous plot twists, and insultingly stupid technobabble. I'm interested to see if Enterprise can get over those problems that have plagued Star Trek for years.
That's right...and 'Tuesday'. Yes, they've banned all songs that refer to 'Tuesday', regardless of the content.
As someone else here mentioned, this is still not censorship. What this is, is known as STUPIDITY.
They're not that dangerous. They're not self-replicating, which means that at most you'll kill 1 cell for every 1 nanotube in your solution. That could hurt if it gets in your bloodstream or somehow attacks an exposed nerve, but it will do no damage on exposed skin and only kill a layer or two of throat cells if ingested.
Compared to existing chemical weapons such as Sarin, you'd need a very large amount of nanotubes to kill a person, at a likely very high cost. It just isn't a very effective weapon.
The absolute worst-case scenario for a magnetic containment fusion reactor is an explosion that levels the building it's in. This would not be caused by a loss of power to the magnetic fields; it would have to be a specific imbalance in the fields that focussed the plasma into the wall of the unit. Just turning off the fields would cause the reaction to grind to a halt, possibly flash-destroying the interior of the containment vessel but probably not affecting anything outside.
Of course there are radioactive hazards. The most radioactive substance in the process is the Lithium used to line the reactor walls as a neutron shield, but as a solid metal lithium is not likely to cause a problem. Most likely to escape is the Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that's very hard to contain. But tritium gas is a very low risk substance, with a half-life of 12 days. It's not a big worry.
Fusion power is nowhere near as dangerous as fission.
Sorry, I'm typing too fast, and mixing up my troubled game developers. :)
:)
'Funcom' created Anarchy Online. 'Cornered Rat' created WWII Online, a different, but equally poorly released, game. Just substitute 'Funcom' for 'Cornered Rat' in my above post, and sorry for the confusion.
WWII Online and Anarchy Online are currently neck-and-neck for 'worst MMOG release ever'.
Anarchy Online has barely playable code, memory leaks, and crashes.
WWII Online has barely playable code, terrible interface problems (three keys to fire a gun?), weird hardware requirements (can't drive a vehicle unless you have a certain kind of joystick!), and ridiculous bugs (gotta love those flying tanks.)
Because AO's problems were mostly technical and WWIIOL's problems were mostly caused by poor design, I used to think that WWIIOL was in the lead for the title of Worst Release. But now that Funcom is thinking of charging money for AO -- and Cornered Rat is still allowing people to play WWII gratis -- I think AO is edging WWIIOL out for the Worst MMOG Release Ever. Who will ultimately win (or, really, lose)? Stay tuned.
I did not play AO's beta (I don't do betas), but I played the second day of release. Or rather I tried to.
The technical glitches in this game are immense. Installing the game was tricky and difficult, and many people screwed it up so badly they corrupted their registries. Once installed, for days it was nearly impossible to log in. To open your account, they forced you to give them your credit card over an insecure web site. And the game crashed to desktop every five minutes or so.
It's gotten slightly better. But there are still problems logging in, horrible memory leaks, graphic card incompatibilities, and problems moving from zone to zone (play areas are divided by zone, with each zone usually hosted on a different server. If you can't zone, then you can either be where the monsters are or where the resupply shops are -- not both.) And these are just the technical problems; game system imbalances and exploitable bugs also exist, as they do in all games of this type but seldom in this quantity.
Although the game is barely playable, it is in no way finished software. Any software that misplaces 50 megabytes of RAM every hour and then crashes when it is forced to use a swap file is NOT ready for primetime. IMHO the game concept is sound and the underlying game is fun, but it's just not finished.
But Cornered Rat (the developers) decided to release this buggy game on schedule, due to budget problems. Approximately one month from now they're going to start charging people $12.95 a month to play. Then we'll see how many people are willing to pay for horribly broken software.
Eh. Depends on how they put the demo together. If it's a small force mission with only a few units, you'll never see the collision bug. That only takes effect when you have large masses of units coming together (and then passing through one another :p).
The demo may illuminate some of the problems and/or solutions, but probably not all of them.
Myth I was a groundbreaking game, with realistic troop movements and tactics. Loved it.
Myth II ruined the franchise, by allowing unrealistic encounters -- among other things, they removed the collision radius between units. Why they took a great engine and concept and screwed it up, I'll never understand.
I'm going to want some assurances that Myth III is faithful to the original, with some realism and thought in its design, before I try anything in that franchise again.
Flamebait?!?
;) But the initial post was a valid privacy concern and my response to it.
I'll mark down my karma bonus on this post, because it truly is flamebait.
What, is it okay to boycott RIAA and MPAA, but wrong to boycott Blizzard because 'they make kewl games'? Movie and music producers are the spawn of evil when they screw the public, but game producers can do no wrong? Or is there a cult of personality around CmdrTaco (who I admit is a neat guy) such that anyone whose opinion differs from his must be a destructive troll?
Come on, Slashdot. I wouldn't still be here if I didn't have some faith that as a group we acted with some logic.
Let me be more plain.
:)
I already have Diablo II. Currently I'm at v1.04.
I will not connect to Battle.net to get v1.06, the spyware version.
I will not buy the expansion.
I will be very cautious in buying anything from Blizzard in the future. Specifically, I'll wait until it's out for a while and look for reports of hidden spyware features.
But I will continue to play Diablo II v1.04 on my computer, until such time as I choose to delete it. Occassionally it's still fun, when I'm in the mood to just kill things. But as a single-player game, it's playability isn't going to last forever, and eventually I'll uninstall it.
Are you saying I'm a hypocrite because I'm not uninstalling it right now? They already have my money for this part of the game; deleting it after buying it wouldn't make a very effective protest.
Although it seems clear that Mr. Henson statements where intended as a joke, they also where bigoted, intolerant, and highly offensive.
;) )
Bullshit.
If you want to find offensive posts about scientology, look back in the a.r.s archives to about 1995. The flames were on full back then. I still remember one in particular that began with, "I am going to impale you on my clue stick. Maybe once my clue-bearing sperm chew their way through your clammy insides to your brain, you'll understand why you're such a fuckwit." Now *that's* bigoted and offensive. It was also highly entertaining.
(Go for -1 -- Flamebait, folks; I've got karma to burn.
Mr. Henson's remarks were very reasonable WHEN TAKEN IN CONTEXT, for a man who is spending his life in opposition to a criminal organization. Read the posts; the missle 'threat' was an obvious joke, and the 'utterly destroy' quote was not only in the context of pickets and legal battles, but was originally lifted from the scienos' own scriptures. Every statement Mr. Henson made should have been protected by free speech, and his flight to Canada is a sad, sad reflection on America.
It's my job to look at satellite imagery of the Earth every day. And looking at these Mars pictures, I don't see many structures that I haven't seen in earth geology. The tubes (dunes or ravines), triangles (dunes), and other formations are all things you'd see if you looked in the right places on Earth.
The only features that did seem a little strange were the 'trees' images. While they could be lava flows, lava is usually not that fractal or inhomogeneous. They do look more like natural vegetation, although without scale on the images it's impossible to tell. So I'd dismiss immediately any claims of intelligent artifacts on Mars, but there may be some tantalizing possibilities for primitive forms of life.
Yeah, there is room for the former in the latter, but I'd *really* like to see a non-PC Trek universe when the Prime Directive was more of a guideline, female starship personell all wore skirts that showed their asses, and starship captains weren't afraid to throw down and open up the occasional can of phaser-powered whupass.
I want to see racism. I want to see sexism. I want to see the captain of the show bag all the cute alien hotties. I want facepaint rather than creative nose ridges.
And... like a previous poster put it, I want explosions. Lots of explosions. This is supposed to be the Star Trek equivalent of the old west, so lets get some kick-ass space dogfights going on.
You want 'Andromeda'. Yes, that show with Kevin Sorbo.
Seriously, 'Andromeda' is Roddenberry's view of the Star Trek universe 300 years after the fall of the Federation. It's not touchy-feelie, and it kicks some serious ass. It may not be as good as 'Farscape' (which is awe-inspiring), but it's a darn good show, and a lot better than anything done in years under the title of Star Trek.