I know, and I was going to buy a Roomba, too. Now I guess I'll just have to use an ordinary vacuum for a while longer. Oh well, I guess the exercise is good for me....
I know it's fashionable these days to claim to be a libertarian of one stripe or another, but the fundamental philosophy of libertarianism -- "greed is the ultimate good" -- is to share a large part of the blame here.
The fundamental philosophy of libertarianism is that Liberty is the ultimate good. Government bureaucrats are the ones responsible for the current mass slaughter in Iraq, and are indeed Satanic.
*Note, grandparent was intened as sarcasm, which is why I referred to those beacons of goodness (and current CIA assets) Islam "Boil Them Alive" Karimov and Momar "Wasn't He One of the Big Terrorists Under Reagan" Khadafi. (i.e. They are exactly like Hussein was when he was a CIA asset.)
Though I endorse any chance to link to that picture.
Hmm, I got modded down as a troll, this is what I wrote:
That is, of course, because the only way Liberty can exist in America is if the government is forcing people to do things.
Of course, personally, I would prefer not to serve myself, maybe the government could just force me to let some troops stay in my house for free instead? I can't imagine any real American having a problem with that, think of the housing costs it would save!
Nolan Bushnell after Atari got aquired by Time/Warner, he was forced out and it was run into the ground. E. T. in landfills anyone? Atari Pacman?
Gary Gygax was forced out of TSR, TSR goes under and gets bought by Wizards of the Coast.
Infocom's a little different, as it was actually some of the people who founded the company who starved the games division so they could move into the high profit world of business software. Another great games company bites the dust and disappears....
The game industry is a nasty vicious industry, full of land sharks who look at you and say, "Hi there... chum!"
Basically, Nintendo got nervous about what Sony was doing (The SNES CD-Rom extension). It seemed like Sony intended to use their deal with Nintendo to take over the video game industry and make Nintendo dependant on them. Of course, Sony did end up taking control of the video game industry, but Nintendo remained an independant company.
South Korea's music industry and state prosecutors have filed lawsuits against Soribada and its users since 2002. But with courts still reviewing the cases, most sites are still operating.
Music industry executives' hopes were raised recently when copyright violation lawsuits forced Bugsmusic to stop its free download service. It agreed to do so from November.
But while this cheered the recording industry, music retailers have seen few benefits.
"Now recording companies are trying to make more profit through a streaming service or mobile phones service, and the Internet is a mainstream music market," said Min Soon-sung, president of the Korean Records Retailers' Association.
Which he did, you know, in support of his fellow Axis power, Japan. Probably the United States would have had to forget about Europe and focus on the Pacific, such was American rage, if Hitler hadn't decided "we're all in this together." Then again, that's just speculation, but even though Bush wanted to attack Iraq first thing, he realized that he had to start with Afghanistan.
"One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory."
-- Chou En-lai
It's a short film from Journeyman Pictures (the link has a pretty long clip), the most interesting scene to me (from the clip) is this one:
The army's current tactics are winning no friends. As a platoon approaches a house at night, the owner mistakes the soldiers for thieves and fires a shot into the air. It's an action he will live to regret. Troops kick his door in and move to arrest him. "Welcome, Welcome," the man says. But the soldiers can't understand him and don't have a translator. "I might shoot you. Get the fuck over here. Get the fuck over here now," a soldier screams. Terrified the man starts praying but even his praying antagonises the troops. "Who the fuck are you talking to? Shut the fuck up!" one shouts.
That is, of course, because the only way Liberty can exist in America is if the government is forcing people to do things.
Of course, personally, I would prefer not to serve myself, maybe the government could just force me to let some troops stay in my house for free instead? I can't imagine any real American having a problem with that, think of the housing costs it would save!
I don't know though. I don't think the federal Government could make deals with Saddam Hussein. They only make deals with benign people like Momar Khadafi and Islam Karamov. Very idealistic is our Federal Government, with only the best interests of people at heart.
Our President talks of bringing freedom to the world, but I have a feeling he's never read any of the works I'm describing either (he may have read a certain book by Macchiavelli however, or at least some of his aides clearly have).
I'll listen to a lot of criticisms of our president. You can say he's a drooling moron who could easily be outsmarted by a monkey. You could say he's a twisted, evil man who enjoys the suffering of the innocent. You could say that he's a deranged 'dry-drunk' with delusions that he has been personally chosen by God to banish evil from the world. I'll even agree with those criticisms.
But I will not sit back and listen to accusations that he has read a book.
If I were a Hong Kong company, this is exactly the kind of thing I would come up with. It's not my fault (unless I'm very old) that there aren't enough eligible women in the general population.
Heck, I'd need to be very rich and successful in order to have any chance of attracting a woman, because there is huge competition. Besides, maybe this would, in some small way, help to pacify the competition.
"Bare Branches" are becoming a big problem in China. These are men who are not going to find real women, because they're just aren't enough of them for most of them to pair up. That's what happens when you have extreme male chauvinism paired up with draconian birth control policies. (We are not talking small numbers here, something along the order of 30 million is one estimate in China alone.) Normally, this sort of thing would be self-correcting, through the inevitable warfare and violence that comes from such insanely out of wack sex ratios. However, modern war is pretty hard on the civilian population which includes women and children, so I don't even know if that will help.
Also note that fantasy authors such as Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are not only OK with conservative Christians, but their works are often sold in Christian bookstores.
Which is, of course, rank hypocrisy. Why? Because the people in the Chronicles of Narnia worship a Lion God named Aslan. This is no different than making "I am who am" be represented by a Golden Calf.
Being an atheist, I hate having to lecture Christians on their religious beliefs, but Narnia should be as unacceptable as Greyhawk.
The thing about convergance is that it has never been pushed or pursued by the average consumer. Think of the wildly successful (note sarcasm) 3DO or SegaCD, two early experiments in digital convergance.
So why has it been pursued? Simple, because it is believed that the first company to create a "digital hub" that is widely accepted by most consumers will have tremendous leverage. Sony entered the video game industry with the specific dream of creating this "digital hub," a device that would handle all entertainment and information needs.
Microsoft entered the videogame business because they feared Sony might succeed, and might create an information appliance that would replace the personal computer for the average user.
Imagine if 90% of DVD Players, "WebTVs", DVRs, and CD Players and game machines were represented by a single device, call it the Sony Playstation X (you also need to imagine that the most popular way to do common tasks currently done on PC were done on this device). Well, all the manufacturers of DVDs and CDs, and all the producers of content for the Web and TV would be beholden to Sony. We all know the way Microsoft in the past has added things to their OS to wreak havoc with their competition, and because they were a semi-monopoly, all anyone could do was complain and try litigation. It's because Microsoft understands this so well that they decided to pour money into the XBOX, and why there will be an XBOX II even though XBOX hasn't been a big success.
Look at Sony, they are great believers in locking out content if they don't want it on their systems. They've learned quite a bit from dealing with mod chipping and have had great success getting their Digital Millenium Copyright Act enacted into US Federal Law. If they succeed, they will have unprecedented power over information.
SEGA has been a bigger failure since becoming game developers for other systems than they were when they were pushing their own hardware. In fact, they've failed so badly that they went through a hostile takeover by the Sammy corporation, and they are pretty much the same as Atari, a cool brand name that no longer represents a real company.
What has been SEGA's breakout hit since going third party? I can't think of a single one.
I like The Motley Fool, from their June 10th, 2004 article:
Here's the sad truth: SCO is working hard to erase whatever viability it had as a software provider. It is now little more than a shell -- a lawsuit with a fancy name. We saw this coming awhile back when the company's sugar daddy, hedge fund BayStar Capital, muscled the firm away from its languishing enterprise business and demanded it concentrate on the litigation. A legal victory looks highly unlikely, and even if a decision went SCO's way, the probable remedy would not be money for SCO, but a rewrite for Linux, something the open-source community would accomplish in the blink of an eye.
At 5 bucks a share, with almost nothing available to short, SCO isn't worth much of your investing effort. But it's definitely worth watching, if only as an example of the way a company can be run into the ground, taking investors along.
-- SCO Keeps Sinking
Dance Dance Revolution, Tetris, Puyo Puyo, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and WarioWare, do you have any recommendations on what official Dreamcast games I could pick up at a local used game store and enjoy?
Let's see:
I've never played Samba de Amigo so I can't recommend it for Dance, Dance Revolution. Besides, it's going to be hard to find controller maracas now.
Hmm... for Tetris and Puyo Puyo I can suggest Bust A Move 4 and possibly Chu Chu Rocket
For Super Smash Bros. Melee there are two games, Ooga Booga is an excessively silly arena type combat game (I really like this one) and Tech Romancer is a fighting game which nods to famous anime Mech series, but isn't ultra serious. (Not one of my favorites, personally, but a lot of people really like it.) Oh, and Bomberman is really good on Dreamcast, sort of a cross between an arena game and a puzzle game.
Hmm... let's see, the last one is Wario Ware, I can't think of a thing. That doesn't mean there isn't anything, just that I don't know it.
I liked the gambling games in Shenmue II, but it isn't really the same... and of course SegaGAGA never came out in the US, so I've no idea what it is like.
I think I'm something of an idealist when it comes to piracy. I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly "out of print" games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means "Ok to steal."
-- Dave Long
Um, actually, what out of print is supposed to mean is that the whatever it is is no longer of enough interest to be published, or is tied up in some nasty, ugly, copyright dispute that will never be settled and therefore it can't be published again. (Miracleman anyone?)
Superman: You destroyed those planets, didn't you? And every living soul on them!
Brainiac: Only their knowledge was important. It was what I was programmed to collect and protect.
Superman: But why kill?
Brainiac: The fewer beings who have the knowledge, the more precious it becomes.
Slashdot Mirror
I know, and I was going to buy a Roomba, too. Now I guess I'll just have to use an ordinary vacuum for a while longer. Oh well, I guess the exercise is good for me....
http://www.x10.com/
*Note, grandparent was intened as sarcasm, which is why I referred to those beacons of goodness (and current CIA assets) Islam "Boil Them Alive" Karimov and Momar "Wasn't He One of the Big Terrorists Under Reagan" Khadafi. (i.e. They are exactly like Hussein was when he was a CIA asset.)
Though I endorse any chance to link to that picture.
Nolan Bushnell after Atari got aquired by Time/Warner, he was forced out and it was run into the ground. E. T. in landfills anyone? Atari Pacman?
Gary Gygax was forced out of TSR, TSR goes under and gets bought by Wizards of the Coast.
Infocom's a little different, as it was actually some of the people who founded the company who starved the games division so they could move into the high profit world of business software. Another great games company bites the dust and disappears....
The game industry is a nasty vicious industry, full of land sharks who look at you and say, "Hi there... chum!"
Basically, Nintendo got nervous about what Sony was doing (The SNES CD-Rom extension). It seemed like Sony intended to use their deal with Nintendo to take over the video game industry and make Nintendo dependant on them. Of course, Sony did end up taking control of the video game industry, but Nintendo remained an independant company.
1941: Germany and Italy declare war on US
Which he did, you know, in support of his fellow Axis power, Japan. Probably the United States would have had to forget about Europe and focus on the Pacific, such was American rage, if Hitler hadn't decided "we're all in this together." Then again, that's just speculation, but even though Bush wanted to attack Iraq first thing, he realized that he had to start with Afghanistan.
Iraq - On The Brink
It's a short film from Journeyman Pictures (the link has a pretty long clip), the most interesting scene to me (from the clip) is this one:
Of course, personally, I would prefer not to serve myself, maybe the government could just force me to let some troops stay in my house for free instead? I can't imagine any real American having a problem with that, think of the housing costs it would save!
I don't know though. I don't think the federal Government could make deals with Saddam Hussein. They only make deals with benign people like Momar Khadafi and Islam Karamov. Very idealistic is our Federal Government, with only the best interests of people at heart.
But I will not sit back and listen to accusations that he has read a book.
DOSBox
Sam and Max works fine for me.
Hmm... well, I guess people trading stocks have lots of disposable income to spend on game consoles, that's why they advertised there, right?
Heck, I'd need to be very rich and successful in order to have any chance of attracting a woman, because there is huge competition. Besides, maybe this would, in some small way, help to pacify the competition.
"Bare Branches" are becoming a big problem in China. These are men who are not going to find real women, because they're just aren't enough of them for most of them to pair up. That's what happens when you have extreme male chauvinism paired up with draconian birth control policies. (We are not talking small numbers here, something along the order of 30 million is one estimate in China alone.) Normally, this sort of thing would be self-correcting, through the inevitable warfare and violence that comes from such insanely out of wack sex ratios. However, modern war is pretty hard on the civilian population which includes women and children, so I don't even know if that will help.
Being an atheist, I hate having to lecture Christians on their religious beliefs, but Narnia should be as unacceptable as Greyhawk.
So why has it been pursued? Simple, because it is believed that the first company to create a "digital hub" that is widely accepted by most consumers will have tremendous leverage. Sony entered the video game industry with the specific dream of creating this "digital hub," a device that would handle all entertainment and information needs.
Microsoft entered the videogame business because they feared Sony might succeed, and might create an information appliance that would replace the personal computer for the average user.
Imagine if 90% of DVD Players, "WebTVs", DVRs, and CD Players and game machines were represented by a single device, call it the Sony Playstation X (you also need to imagine that the most popular way to do common tasks currently done on PC were done on this device). Well, all the manufacturers of DVDs and CDs, and all the producers of content for the Web and TV would be beholden to Sony. We all know the way Microsoft in the past has added things to their OS to wreak havoc with their competition, and because they were a semi-monopoly, all anyone could do was complain and try litigation. It's because Microsoft understands this so well that they decided to pour money into the XBOX, and why there will be an XBOX II even though XBOX hasn't been a big success.
Look at Sony, they are great believers in locking out content if they don't want it on their systems. They've learned quite a bit from dealing with mod chipping and have had great success getting their Digital Millenium Copyright Act enacted into US Federal Law. If they succeed, they will have unprecedented power over information.
See it, but tear your own eyes out first.
What has been SEGA's breakout hit since going third party? I can't think of a single one.
Comics Reality Checks II: The Bouncing Boy Test
Hmm... for Tetris and Puyo Puyo I can suggest Bust A Move 4 and possibly Chu Chu Rocket
For Super Smash Bros. Melee there are two games, Ooga Booga is an excessively silly arena type combat game (I really like this one) and Tech Romancer is a fighting game which nods to famous anime Mech series, but isn't ultra serious. (Not one of my favorites, personally, but a lot of people really like it.) Oh, and Bomberman is really good on Dreamcast, sort of a cross between an arena game and a puzzle game.
Hmm... let's see, the last one is Wario Ware, I can't think of a thing. That doesn't mean there isn't anything, just that I don't know it.
I liked the gambling games in Shenmue II, but it isn't really the same... and of course SegaGAGA never came out in the US, so I've no idea what it is like.