I thought I'd also make the observation that Sephiroth is really just Kefka in another suit. They both are infused with forms of magic, and both go insane, craving power and dominance. Kefka was, however, the better villain.
Which wound up mostly covering Sephiroth's backstory, not Cloud's. Cloud's backstory was done only through a secret cutscene in the lab. Without that, you end with Cloud being a washed-up failure who suddenly winds up in Midgard with that big sword.
Having played and loved BOTH FFVI and FFVII, I will agree with you on this one. That needed to be part of the main storyline sequence. Having gone back and put the story together from multiple sources, and now knowing it in its entirety, the game isn't even really about Sephiroth at all, he's only the foil.
Where FFVI concentrated on many different characters without ever linking most of them together (aside from Locke/Celes, Edgar/Sabin, and Strago/Relm/Shadow), FFVII concentrates on one, Cloud. It's all about him.
The FFVII's cohesiveness was hindered by the particularly bad choice of keeping that essential storyline-bit an optional side-quest. But FFVI also had cohesiveness problems. After the world dies, the storyline follows a tattered, inconsistent path as you gather up the main characters and get a new airship. After that, nothing is tied together anymore. There's character development, but it's scattered, separately, in a dozen places across the entire world, most of them optional sidequests. It's a bit of a letdown after the cohesive plot development of the first half.
In the end, I'm not sure which game's failure is the most significant. But the emotional impact of VII was more widely felt, and the world was pretty well-designed. Further, the musical composition for VII was quite possibly the pinnacle of that composer's career and was simply spectacular. I'm going to say that, once all is known and pieced together, VII simply has more staying power than VI because we can identify more clearly with the single protagonist and his relationships.
If you like tweaking you can get more than 512 RAM on Win98 already. However, I suspect that if Windows 98 were ever GPLed, the Linux community would take one look at it, then proceed to gouge their eyes out.
If you simply say 'if...was', then we assume it might actually have happened at some point in the past, but you just aren't sure, whereas what you're really trying to say is that it might happen at some point in the future. So, use 'were'.
FMV, which you seem to dismiss, was a big part of FFVII's ability to evoke emotion in a way that no previous FF ever had. A lot of fans have an emotional attachment to the world created by VII, myself included. FMV made the experience more 'real' (Aeris' death?)
It was a lot harder to develop an attachment for the previous games, when all we had were sprites. This emotional aspect is what separates FFVII from FFVI.
By contrast, the way we do it is we have some mummy sheep, and for every fifty or so we get a daddy sheep. Then some time in about September or October we leave all the daddy sheep in a big field with all the mummy sheep. After a couple of weeks...
...we get a set of lambs with completely untested genomes. Several of them will be stillborn. Another percentage will be born deformed. Some will carry genetic diseases, or recessive lethals and die within their first few months. If they don't die right away, there's every likelihood they'll be butchered and cut up for legs of lamb for the supermarkets.
You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Have you ever taken a single university-level Genetics course? I would be stunned if you had, Luddite.
This is far more complex than what has been going on for centuries in plants.
And yet the end result is the same: a genetic copy of the original. The burden of proof falls upon your side, my friend. You must show how a copy can be different from the original. Tests have shown the foodstuffs are chemically identical, with no toxins present, and I don't think I need to tell you that the genome of a plant or animal cannot "get into" a human being through ingestion.
Copying a genome is copying a genome, regardless of whether it's a plant or animal. The end result is the same. You have an identical copy, and that begs the question: If A=B, why must B be labeled if A need not be?
Cloned food isn't necessarily genetically engineered at all. In the case of beef, there's no engineering beyond breeding. All they do is find a natural specimen of cow and clone (copy) its genome. That's not "frankenfood", it's creating artificial identical twins.
Protein (including any DNA, unless you're swallowing a. pylori bacteria) is broken down in the stomach under the action of acid and pepsin, into constituent amino acids. At this point, the specific genotype of the cow becomes a moot question. It's gone. The only health question post-breakdown is whether a toxin is present in the meat.
The diseases you describe occurring in cloned animals, due to abnormalities in their genomes as a result of cloning, are genetic in nature. The are not communicable any more than I could give you Multiple Sclerosis or Sickle-Cell Anemia by breathing on your neck. To suggest cloned meat poses some kind of nebulous danger to humans when it is passing inspection is utter foolishness. Show us how; come up with a theory and evidence of transmission. Otherwise, kindly shut up.
At our university, the ethics approval form for new research involving any organism is about 8 pages long, must be filled out by the professor and signed off by a licensed veterinarian and two other senior faculty members, and finally approved by something called an "ethics board". Even for something as simple as mouse breeding. The process can take over a year.
Fitness of the parents, their ability and proclivity to reproduce, and the fitness of their offspring, and their ability and proclivity to reproduce, ad infinitum.
Bacteria multiply asexually quite rapidly, but (barring mutation and conjugation) if a strain is susceptible to some antibiotic (penicillin), they won't succeed on a penicillin plate even with a million clones, whereas a penicillin-resistant strain dividing much more slowly will become the new monoculture overnight, even from a happy few.
High degrees of specialization usually have trade-offs. I wouldn't be surprised if the high expression of genes for athletic performance had epistatic effects on other genes, perhaps such as spending more protein on muscle building at the expense of other vital systems.
The human genome is a maze of interconnecting fibers, each supporting another. You can definitely say by pulling one fiber out that it causes a big defect (cerebral paulsy, down's syndrome), but you can't say just by looking that any one fiber is more important than another.
I'm a recent convert from the anti-gun side after experiencing a real school shooting here in Montreal while I was at Dawson. A lot of the anti-gun bias is indeed a stereotype of gun-owners as homicidal maniacs, and guns themselves as some kind of inherent danger to society.
I don't believe that anymore. You can't go backwards. We live in a world of guns. Restricting firearms will reduce accidents, but it also renders the law-abiding populace a very tempting, unarmed, vulnerable target. I really have to wonder which scenario is better.
Do you think by doing this, as a single person, you will make a difference? Let me tell you, contrary to what motivational speakers and children's television stars would have told you as a child, a single person does not make a difference by themselves.
Single persons make a difference by getting other, larger groups of many persons to follow them. You are not doing this.
What you are doing, is wasting your time. Feel free to keep doing so, as it hurts no one but yourself, but have no delusions about saving the world from anyone.
Some temperature monitors on critical, exposed devices would also help. All you need is the CPU temperature diode present on just about every motherboard sold today. In fact, how about many of them, arranged at strategic positions on the spacecraft hull to give real-time temperature information to the satellite's computer? I guess complicated ideas like these get ignored in favor of simpler solutions, like relying on large chains of command and bureaucratic procedures carried out 30 light-minutes from the point of failure.
Slashdot Mirror
Fine. I mourn the Jack Valenti of the 1940s. I piss on the Jack Valenti of the 80s, 90s, and '00s.
I thought I'd also make the observation that Sephiroth is really just Kefka in another suit. They both are infused with forms of magic, and both go insane, craving power and dominance. Kefka was, however, the better villain.
Having played and loved BOTH FFVI and FFVII, I will agree with you on this one. That needed to be part of the main storyline sequence. Having gone back and put the story together from multiple sources, and now knowing it in its entirety, the game isn't even really about Sephiroth at all, he's only the foil.
Where FFVI concentrated on many different characters without ever linking most of them together (aside from Locke/Celes, Edgar/Sabin, and Strago/Relm/Shadow), FFVII concentrates on one, Cloud. It's all about him.
The FFVII's cohesiveness was hindered by the particularly bad choice of keeping that essential storyline-bit an optional side-quest. But FFVI also had cohesiveness problems. After the world dies, the storyline follows a tattered, inconsistent path as you gather up the main characters and get a new airship. After that, nothing is tied together anymore. There's character development, but it's scattered, separately, in a dozen places across the entire world, most of them optional sidequests. It's a bit of a letdown after the cohesive plot development of the first half.
In the end, I'm not sure which game's failure is the most significant. But the emotional impact of VII was more widely felt, and the world was pretty well-designed. Further, the musical composition for VII was quite possibly the pinnacle of that composer's career and was simply spectacular. I'm going to say that, once all is known and pieced together, VII simply has more staying power than VI because we can identify more clearly with the single protagonist and his relationships.
If you simply say 'if...was', then we assume it might actually have happened at some point in the past, but you just aren't sure, whereas what you're really trying to say is that it might happen at some point in the future. So, use 'were'.
FMV, which you seem to dismiss, was a big part of FFVII's ability to evoke emotion in a way that no previous FF ever had. A lot of fans have an emotional attachment to the world created by VII, myself included. FMV made the experience more 'real' (Aeris' death?)
It was a lot harder to develop an attachment for the previous games, when all we had were sprites. This emotional aspect is what separates FFVII from FFVI.
I never said it was.
Commas represent pauses in speech. Speaking that headline, you'd pause in exactly the same place.
If ever there was the time for the Foe feature, this is it.
I challenge thee to a duel of honour. Be our differences resolved in like fashion.
A short migraine is still a migraine. The patent system is a clusterfuck.
You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Have you ever taken a single university-level Genetics course? I would be stunned if you had, Luddite.
And yet the end result is the same: a genetic copy of the original. The burden of proof falls upon your side, my friend. You must show how a copy can be different from the original. Tests have shown the foodstuffs are chemically identical, with no toxins present, and I don't think I need to tell you that the genome of a plant or animal cannot "get into" a human being through ingestion.
Copying a genome is copying a genome, regardless of whether it's a plant or animal. The end result is the same. You have an identical copy, and that begs the question: If A=B, why must B be labeled if A need not be?
Cloned food isn't necessarily genetically engineered at all. In the case of beef, there's no engineering beyond breeding. All they do is find a natural specimen of cow and clone (copy) its genome. That's not "frankenfood", it's creating artificial identical twins.
I think it speaks more to some pretty ridiculous stress levels that have historically been placed upon doctors-to-be.
Protein (including any DNA, unless you're swallowing a. pylori bacteria) is broken down in the stomach under the action of acid and pepsin, into constituent amino acids. At this point, the specific genotype of the cow becomes a moot question. It's gone. The only health question post-breakdown is whether a toxin is present in the meat.
The diseases you describe occurring in cloned animals, due to abnormalities in their genomes as a result of cloning, are genetic in nature. The are not communicable any more than I could give you Multiple Sclerosis or Sickle-Cell Anemia by breathing on your neck. To suggest cloned meat poses some kind of nebulous danger to humans when it is passing inspection is utter foolishness. Show us how; come up with a theory and evidence of transmission. Otherwise, kindly shut up.
I use Hydrogenol instead.
At our university, the ethics approval form for new research involving any organism is about 8 pages long, must be filled out by the professor and signed off by a licensed veterinarian and two other senior faculty members, and finally approved by something called an "ethics board". Even for something as simple as mouse breeding. The process can take over a year.
Utterly retarded.
Evolution rewards based on many factors:
Fitness of the parents, their ability and proclivity to reproduce, and the fitness of their offspring, and their ability and proclivity to reproduce, ad infinitum.
Bacteria multiply asexually quite rapidly, but (barring mutation and conjugation) if a strain is susceptible to some antibiotic (penicillin), they won't succeed on a penicillin plate even with a million clones, whereas a penicillin-resistant strain dividing much more slowly will become the new monoculture overnight, even from a happy few.
High degrees of specialization usually have trade-offs. I wouldn't be surprised if the high expression of genes for athletic performance had epistatic effects on other genes, perhaps such as spending more protein on muscle building at the expense of other vital systems.
The human genome is a maze of interconnecting fibers, each supporting another. You can definitely say by pulling one fiber out that it causes a big defect (cerebral paulsy, down's syndrome), but you can't say just by looking that any one fiber is more important than another.
You should really be more careful before libelling/slandering people. You're not alone, though.
Would mod you up if I could, sorry.
I'm a recent convert from the anti-gun side after experiencing a real school shooting here in Montreal while I was at Dawson. A lot of the anti-gun bias is indeed a stereotype of gun-owners as homicidal maniacs, and guns themselves as some kind of inherent danger to society.
I don't believe that anymore. You can't go backwards. We live in a world of guns. Restricting firearms will reduce accidents, but it also renders the law-abiding populace a very tempting, unarmed, vulnerable target. I really have to wonder which scenario is better.
Do you think by doing this, as a single person, you will make a difference? Let me tell you, contrary to what motivational speakers and children's television stars would have told you as a child, a single person does not make a difference by themselves.
Single persons make a difference by getting other, larger groups of many persons to follow them. You are not doing this.
What you are doing, is wasting your time. Feel free to keep doing so, as it hurts no one but yourself, but have no delusions about saving the world from anyone.
And yet, it failed.
Friended, because you also despise the word "blog".
Some temperature monitors on critical, exposed devices would also help. All you need is the CPU temperature diode present on just about every motherboard sold today. In fact, how about many of them, arranged at strategic positions on the spacecraft hull to give real-time temperature information to the satellite's computer? I guess complicated ideas like these get ignored in favor of simpler solutions, like relying on large chains of command and bureaucratic procedures carried out 30 light-minutes from the point of failure.