A five milliwatt laser? What do you do with that, tease the cat?:)
My personal moments would be:
1) Making Star Commander Rank 1 in Star Raiders 2) Getting that @#%$^%!! Amulet of Yendor above ground. The nice thing about the latter is that by the time you're badass enough to pull it off, you're badass enough to slaughter all those annoying shop-keepers on the way back up.
How can it possibly be fair that your vote is worth twice as much as mine (or more), just because of where you live? Everyone should be equal, no matter whether they live in California or Wyoming.
I am going to assume you're not an American citizen, otherwise I'd feel compelled to flame you good and hard for such an ignorant statement.
The nation is called The United States of America, not The Big Shiny Happy Glob of America. It was founded on a principal of a bunch of mostly self-governing states, each with it's own set of laws and priorities. So if, for example, the people in your state didn't think alcohol was a good thing, they could implore the state legislature to outlaw it. And if another state thought weed should be legalized, ditto. In fact, some states had their own organized churches (which kinda shoots down the "separation of church and state" thing, but that's another rant).
The bi-cameral federal legislature (senate gives equal representation per state, house apportions according to population, both must agree for a law to pass) and the electoral college are mechanisms to insure this idea of state individuality.
There was a time when some very populous states started bossing around some of the less populous ones, you may have heard it called "The American Civil War". or as some call it "The War of Northern Agression". Very nasty bit of business, that. It was almost the end of the country.
If you find any of this intriquing I'm sure there are many places on the net (or even your public library) that can provide you with more information. Here in the United States this sort of thing (under the title "Civics") is taught in public schools.
I mean, they've got all those KNIVES and sharp things and ice-cream makers... of course it's going to lead a few impressionable minds into filleting their fellow students.
Galloping Gourmet or Psycho Killer? You be the judge.
I thought I read something as a kid (I grew up with the Apollo program and was enraptured with it) that the astronauts saved their, um, excretions for later analysis by NASA?
Or did NASA decide "you've seen one bag of space-whiz, you've seen'em all"?
A couple good "Beer & Pretzels" games....
on
Fun Tabletop Games?
·
· Score: 1
Nuclear War, a classic, still in print (and it has a couple expansions). Good for 4+ people, fast to set up and play. There's not a terrific amount of skill involved, but there's a high "screw you" factor, if you're into that sort of thing:)
And if you can find it, Family Business by Mayfair. Another fast game for 4+ people, and lots of backstabbing. Too bad it's not in print any more.
And I'll throw my "Me Too" behind Cosmic Encounter which IMHO has an absolutely huge replay value, particularly the old Eon version.
I'd throw in a caveat on Fluxx. Don't get me wrong, it's a cute little game, it's strong point is it's simplicity. You can teach non-gamer friends how to play it in about ten minutes. Given an hour, you could probably teach your cat how to play it.
The downside is it's simplicity - there's little (if any) skill involved in winning, and I've heard it referred to as a pointless excercise in card drawing.
Some will like it, some won't. In any case I think it's long-term replay value is limited. "Oh look, you played Death and Taxes, I win. Another game?" (yeah, games end about that quickly)
The thing is, these days, most young people see 'Star Trek' as a sort of nerdy, antisocial thing that only geeks and non-popular social outcasts would watch.
"These days"? I must have missed something - at what point in time was watching Star Trek up there with "Freinds" or "Seinfeld"?
For Windows update at least you have to hold your nose and run IE. If there's a way to do WinUpdate under Mozilla or Firefox I don't know it.
FWIW I started with Mozilla a couple years ago (gad, it was a HUGE improvement over IE), and switched to Firefox a few months ago. Firefox is enough for me.
Sounds like a wonderful little protection racket. You pay into the syndicate^wsystem so in the off chance something "bad" bappens to you, you can get help.
And refusing to pay for this "insurance" will no doubt greatly increase the odds of something "bad" happening to you.
Some car-rental companies sneak riders into their contracts saying that you have to pay extra $$$ every time you excede the speed limit. Then they use black boxes and GPS, download the data after you turn the car back in,and WHAM! Big surprise when you check your credit card bill.
At least this was the case a couple years ago, dunno if it's still going on.
WHY does the government feel it is important to manipulate the market prices for these people?
Because it's very bad politics when a six year old has to run two miles down the road to the nearest phone to tell the operator that his house is on fire and his parents are trapped inside.
What if you have a storage/processing device in your pocket or backpack and a human interface device on your wrist or in your eye/ear?
What if I have a wolf in the garage and a sheep in the attic? I'm sorry, but I just don't have these issues, and I doubt many people do. For "small" devices I want to share data with I have:
1) IR 2) Flash memory (CF cards, smart media et al) 3) Wires (gasp!), USB and Firewire work very well, thank you.
Those are all good enough for connecting me to DVR, DVD, CD player, tuner, digital camera, scanner, laptop, musical instuments, MP3 player, PDA, etc etc etc.
This seems to take care of all my needs at present. I can't imagine something that I need to put on my wrist that has to sync with every bloody thing in the house within an eyeblink. Not to mention adding additional noise pollution to the airwaves.
For longer-haul/big bandwidth I have 802.11b, and I love being able to sit on the front porch surfing the net. Or d/l movies from my Replay DVR to my laptop,
I'm all for tools, but before I buy it I have to find a use for it, and I can't see the use for Bluetooth, at least in my life. [shrug]
The fact that I just put my Replay on Pause while pointing the remote away from the unit would seem to suggest otherwise - light bounces. Good thing, too.
The bottom line is for anything that's as short-haul as Bluetooth I think either IR or a good old-fashioned cable would suffice. I just don't see the problem that Bluetooth solves.
Regardless of what anyone might think about Decipher's take on the Star Wars universe, they had a much better, cleaner game than the one WotC has produced.
It's easy to do it better once someone else has done it first.
As I see it there are two "faces" to CIS - one, the ISP/Portal aka AOL. This, in my experience, sucks - when I had CIS as my ISP I got way too many random disconnects, busy signals, and sub-56k connects. Could be just a local problem, but el-sucko none the less.
Next, there's "old" CIS, which is the community of forums. Think of it as Usenet (or alternately the old BBS scene) with moderation. No spam, no flaming, etc. And because the "undesirables" are kept out the community that remains actually has value - if you ask a question about x, it's very likely you'll get a useful answer without getting a flame job or RTFM or a goatsex link.
Anyway, it's the latter reason I've been on CIS for... hmmm, I guess more than a decade now. I just use the forums (via an off-line reader, makes life much easier) over my cable-modem ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
A five milliwatt laser? What do you do with that, tease the cat? :)
My personal moments would be:
1) Making Star Commander Rank 1 in Star Raiders
2) Getting that @#%$^%!! Amulet of Yendor above ground. The nice thing about the latter is that by the time you're badass enough to pull it off, you're badass enough to slaughter all those annoying shop-keepers on the way back up.
"I got yer potion of healing right HERE!"
How can it possibly be fair that your vote is worth twice as much as mine (or more), just because of where you live? Everyone should be equal, no matter whether they live in California or Wyoming.
I am going to assume you're not an American citizen, otherwise I'd feel compelled to flame you good and hard for such an ignorant statement.
The nation is called The United States of America, not The Big Shiny Happy Glob of America. It was founded on a principal of a bunch of mostly self-governing states, each with it's own set of laws and priorities. So if, for example, the people in your state didn't think alcohol was a good thing, they could implore the state legislature to outlaw it. And if another state thought weed should be legalized, ditto. In fact, some states had their own organized churches (which kinda shoots down the "separation of church and state" thing, but that's another rant).
The bi-cameral federal legislature (senate gives equal representation per state, house apportions according to population, both must agree for a law to pass) and the electoral college are mechanisms to insure this idea of state individuality.
There was a time when some very populous states started bossing around some of the less populous ones, you may have heard it called "The American Civil War". or as some call it "The War of Northern Agression". Very nasty bit of business, that. It was almost the end of the country.
If you find any of this intriquing I'm sure there are many places on the net (or even your public library) that can provide you with more information. Here in the United States this sort of thing (under the title "Civics") is taught in public schools.
At least that's the theory.
I mean, they've got all those KNIVES and sharp things and ice-cream makers... of course it's going to lead a few impressionable minds into filleting their fellow students.
Galloping Gourmet or Psycho Killer? You be the judge.
In fact, product placement in a sci-fi series could be even more effective.
Did Babylon 5 cause a spike in Zima sales? And look at the way Atari's fortunes soared after those giant billboard logos were placed in Blade Runner.
I thought I read something as a kid (I grew up with the Apollo program and was enraptured with it) that the astronauts saved their, um, excretions for later analysis by NASA?
Or did NASA decide "you've seen one bag of space-whiz, you've seen'em all"?
...Captain Quark and his intrepid crew!
Especially the Clones. Oh yes, the clones...
Nuclear War, a classic, still in print (and it has a couple expansions). Good for 4+ people, fast to set up and play. There's not a terrific amount of skill involved, but there's a high "screw you" factor, if you're into that sort of thing :)
And if you can find it, Family Business by Mayfair. Another fast game for 4+ people, and lots of backstabbing. Too bad it's not in print any more.
And I'll throw my "Me Too" behind Cosmic Encounter which IMHO has an absolutely huge replay value, particularly the old Eon version.
I'd throw in a caveat on Fluxx. Don't get me wrong, it's a cute little game, it's strong point is it's simplicity. You can teach non-gamer friends how to play it in about ten minutes. Given an hour, you could probably teach your cat how to play it.
The downside is it's simplicity - there's little (if any) skill involved in winning, and I've heard it referred to as a pointless excercise in card drawing.
Some will like it, some won't. In any case I think it's long-term replay value is limited. "Oh look, you played Death and Taxes, I win. Another game?" (yeah, games end about that quickly)
Didn't Xenix become only available with the XT.
Ahhh...yeah, I think you're right. You needed a hard drive to load that beast.
I still want to know why the function 9 call terminates the string with a dollar sign. Did Kidall take that to the grave with him?
MS-DOS was IBM's attempt to cripple the PC so badly that it wouldn't compete with their real computers.
I seem to remember that the 5150 model PC shipped without an operating system.
I also seem to remember that Xenix was one of the operating systems you could buy for it.
The thing is, these days, most young people see 'Star Trek' as a sort of nerdy, antisocial thing that only geeks and non-popular social outcasts would watch.
"These days"? I must have missed something - at what point in time was watching Star Trek up there with "Freinds" or "Seinfeld"?
Is this another Star Trek series? I keep losing track. That's like, what, seventy or so now, right?
What I would find much more interesting would be the DEATH of the Federation.
That would be interesting.
See "Andromeda".
On second thought, don't. Since the 2nd season it's pinned the suckosity meter.
For Windows update at least you have to hold your nose and run IE. If there's a way to do WinUpdate under Mozilla or Firefox I don't know it.
FWIW I started with Mozilla a couple years ago (gad, it was a HUGE improvement over IE), and switched to Firefox a few months ago. Firefox is enough for me.
Sounds like a wonderful little protection racket. You pay into the syndicate^wsystem so in the off chance something "bad" bappens to you, you can get help.
And refusing to pay for this "insurance" will no doubt greatly increase the odds of something "bad" happening to you.
Where can I get a piece of this action?
Some car-rental companies sneak riders into their contracts saying that you have to pay extra $$$ every time you excede the speed limit. Then they use black boxes and GPS, download the data after you turn the car back in,and WHAM! Big surprise when you check your credit card bill.
At least this was the case a couple years ago, dunno if it's still going on.
Why should rural dwellers get help from the rest of us on paying for their phone connection?
For the same reason that everyone in a city pays taxes to fund the police and the fire department, even though they might never need either.
A telephone in a remote area is not a luxury, it's a lifeline.
WHY does the government feel it is important to manipulate the market prices for these people?
Because it's very bad politics when a six year old has to run two miles down the road to the nearest phone to tell the operator that his house is on fire and his parents are trapped inside.
What if you have a storage/processing device in your pocket or backpack and a human interface device on your wrist or in your eye/ear?
What if I have a wolf in the garage and a sheep in the attic? I'm sorry, but I just don't have these issues, and I doubt many people do. For "small" devices I want to share data with I have:
1) IR
2) Flash memory (CF cards, smart media et al)
3) Wires (gasp!), USB and Firewire work very well, thank you.
Those are all good enough for connecting me to DVR, DVD, CD player, tuner, digital camera, scanner, laptop, musical instuments, MP3 player, PDA, etc etc etc.
This seems to take care of all my needs at present. I can't imagine something that I need to put on my wrist that has to sync with every bloody thing in the house within an eyeblink. Not to mention adding additional noise pollution to the airwaves.
For longer-haul/big bandwidth I have 802.11b, and I love being able to sit on the front porch surfing the net. Or d/l movies from my Replay DVR to my laptop,
I'm all for tools, but before I buy it I have to find a use for it, and I can't see the use for Bluetooth, at least in my life. [shrug]
IR requires unobstructed line of sight
The fact that I just put my Replay on Pause while pointing the remote away from the unit would seem to suggest otherwise - light bounces. Good thing, too.
The bottom line is for anything that's as short-haul as Bluetooth I think either IR or a good old-fashioned cable would suffice. I just don't see the problem that Bluetooth solves.
Decade, century, whatever... where's my remote...
click. click. click.
Let's see, we've had short distance wireless comm via infrared for what - a quarter of a decade?
Yet another solution in search of a problem.
Regardless of what anyone might think about Decipher's take on the Star Wars universe, they had a much better, cleaner game than the one WotC has produced.
It's easy to do it better once someone else has done it first.
That goes for both M:tG and D&D.
It's hard to disconnect from those big ISPs? Garsh, that's really bad customer service. I wonder how that make so much money?
Summary: Duh.
As I see it there are two "faces" to CIS - one, the ISP/Portal aka AOL. This, in my experience, sucks - when I had CIS as my ISP I got way too many random disconnects, busy signals, and sub-56k connects. Could be just a local problem, but el-sucko none the less.
Next, there's "old" CIS, which is the community of forums. Think of it as Usenet (or alternately the old BBS scene) with moderation. No spam, no flaming, etc. And because the "undesirables" are kept out the community that remains actually has value - if you ask a question about x, it's very likely you'll get a useful answer without getting a flame job or RTFM or a goatsex link.
Anyway, it's the latter reason I've been on CIS for... hmmm, I guess more than a decade now. I just use the forums (via an off-line reader, makes life much easier) over my cable-modem ISP.