Back in our school, there's a general thing that the last day of term is pretty much a 'free' day. It wasn't uncommon for a few kids to bring in their Playstation, and the IT room was pretty much free to play games.
The games available were limited by what people could bring in and what would run on the computers, then P133s. Despite the high age rating, multiplayer matches of Duke Nukem were common. Quake was available, but ran relatively slowly. Having said this, the whole event was unofficial so nobody ever checked into the legality of installing one copy of a game onto 20 computers or allowing minors to play 15-rated and 18-rated games.
What you allow at an organised event is pretty much up to yourself. Notably, any easy-to-play multiplayer games that appeal to a wide audience are good choices. Stardock's Stellar Frontier is an easily recommended choice, since it's free to download (registration required if you want access to lasers and similar in-game weapons).
Assuming it translates smarter than Babelfish and some of the crazy entries at Animelyrics, this would be an excellent device indeedy. Do you suppose it would outputs only in Romajii, though? What about katakana, hiragana and kanji? Nevermind, authenticity isn't anywhere near as important as Pocky, DiGi Charat and Hapatai.
Whoops, I misread "Thailand's 7-Eleven stores" as "Thailand's 7 ELVEN stores"!
I was really worried for a while there that our DM would get a hold of this article, and suddenly every damn Elf we fight has no trouble from my Burning Hands and Flaming Sphere spells...
Fingerprints aren't secure! Haven't you ever watched Babylon 5, Dark Angel or The Outer Limits? All it takes is for someone to dust your Red Bull glass or spray glue on their palm and shake your hand, and BAM, they got your 'prints. I read it on Slashdot / saw it on sci-fi, respectively, so it must be true.
Wait, this gives me an idea. Excuse me for a moment, people... I just have to, uh, go buy some, er, glue at the supermarket. If anyone sees CowboyNeal before I return, tell him to wait up... I'd really like to buy that guy a drink and shake his hand;D
Never mind 'stripped down'. As I type this, a flash popup has crashed Internet Explorer and the start bar is all screwy.
I gave up counting the crashometer on my website once it reached 250 BSODs, 300 or so GPFs and 15 spontaneous restarts or shutdowns with no reason given.
In the UK, and presumably most of Europe, there's already an age suitability rating system in place for games. While it's a legal requirement as per the movie rating system here (U, PG, 15, 18), most games containing 'mature' content will be clearly labelled. If my memory serves me correctly, Mortal Kombat was given a 15 rating and Duke Nukem a dubious 18.
Most game shops I know will not sell a 15 or 18-rated game to a kid who's obviously underage - I don't know if this is a legal requirement as with tobacco and alcohol, or just the industry 'policing' itself. Obviously, this doesn't stop an adult buying the game and giving it straight to a kid (the same thing can unfortunately happen here with minors and alcohol), but it's at least some measure that prevents kids from buying an unsuitable game.
That's nothing. I accidentally repeated myself four times in the chat window at Everything2, and five minutes later found every one of my writeups voted down to zero.
No point in complaining, though - they're imaginary points handed out by anonymous nobodies, after all. Keep whor^H^H^H^Hposting, I'm sure we'll both make twenty-five karma in no time.
Either way, you can count yourself the luckiest man alive that you just made two points with a story submission complaint.;)
The greatest thing about Free, as in free software is that it's most often also free as in open software, free as in freedom and free as in free beer. ^_^
Used to be that Galaxians, Pacman and Worm were getting a reworking on the Amiga in the form of Deluxe Galaga, Deluxe Pacman and Megaworm... now it's the Amiga shareware's turn for the remix. Hooray!
We've even seen Populous get a rebirth with Lionhead's Black & White, and Quake with Half-Life's Deathmatch Classic. I wouldn't be surprised in five years time to see a reworking of GTA or Baldur's Gate 2. (Takers, anyone?):D
Open source is a really nifty system. The programmers get buckets of free help, beta testing and distribution, the users get limitless free-as-in-beer software and Bill Gates gets one less ivory back scratcher every time a thousand copies of Linux are sold. Everyone's a winner.
Still, a couple of programmers I've spoken to say are actually against Open Source. They argue since they spend hours coding, debugging and maintaining a program, shouldn't they be allowed to make an honest buck in return? I guess that's their decision, and ya just gotta respect it - some want the money, others just want to help create nice software for everyone.
And what if you don't like b33r? What if you're a teetotaler, a recovering alcoholic or a PHP hack? Can I create software that's free as in Coca-cola instead?
I can't remember the last time a game had so much TV advertising devoted to it... at least in the UK. Is it really any surprise that a game with such a wide potential audience and so much advertising is the such a high-selling game?
The idea of charging spammers for their spam isn't entirely new. A few people I've spoken to people on USENET claim include a disclaimer in their signatures, charging $500USD for unsolicited mail.
On a few occasions, they say they've even managed to successfully claim their fee.
Here are a few rules I've learned over the years while working on my website, Jonnydigital.com.</pimp>
Make sure your site has an easy to spell, easy to remember address. A minor problem with my own is people misspelling Jonny as Johnny when typing the URL. Don't choose a name that can be misconstrued in any way.
Check your site in multiple browsers. A lot of sites look just fine in IE, but totally b0rk up in a text-based browser or Netscape. Make sure your website looks exactly as intended in IE, Netscape, Opera and Lynx before publishing it.
Don't use Java(script) when you don't have to. Scrolly text and shiny buttons might look clever, but remember that a Java applet takes longer to download than a simple image or text link. Besides which, IE doesn't always render Javascript properly.
Update regularly. People will come to your site often if they're sure they'll see new and interesting content. Regular updates can make the difference between Mitsukai and Slashdot.
Keep images small! Large images can take a while to download on a slow connection, and remember that if you pay for bandwidth, large files can start costing you a lot of money. (Especially if your site gets slashdotted ^_^) Keep filesizes small - JPEGs for photographs, PNG for buttons.
Slashdot Mirror
I took the red and white chequered pill.
Back in our school, there's a general thing that the last day of term is pretty much a 'free' day. It wasn't uncommon for a few kids to bring in their Playstation, and the IT room was pretty much free to play games.
The games available were limited by what people could bring in and what would run on the computers, then P133s. Despite the high age rating, multiplayer matches of Duke Nukem were common. Quake was available, but ran relatively slowly. Having said this, the whole event was unofficial so nobody ever checked into the legality of installing one copy of a game onto 20 computers or allowing minors to play 15-rated and 18-rated games.
What you allow at an organised event is pretty much up to yourself. Notably, any easy-to-play multiplayer games that appeal to a wide audience are good choices. Stardock's Stellar Frontier is an easily recommended choice, since it's free to download (registration required if you want access to lasers and similar in-game weapons).
Sweet! I can use it to translate my anime (no self-respecting nerd would even consider watching the dub!) and Japanese pop music!
Assuming it translates smarter than Babelfish and some of the crazy entries at Animelyrics, this would be an excellent device indeedy. Do you suppose it would outputs only in Romajii, though? What about katakana, hiragana and kanji? Nevermind, authenticity isn't anywhere near as important as Pocky, DiGi Charat and Hapatai.
Yatta, yatta...
Oh no, you're not fooling me again with this 'robot' malarkey.
Far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't have compartments for crayons and ID cards and demand to play 'hider-seeker' every ten minutes, it ain't my robot.
(You kids today... doesn't anyone remember Planetfall?)
Predicted Items:
Fireball
Dispel Magic
Lightning Bolt
Fly
Haste
Vampiric Touch
Stinking Cloud
Hold Person
empty slot
Web
Clairvoyance
Water Breathing
:)
It even manages to choose spells of the exact same spell level! I guess having the archives of rec.games.frp.dnd on Google Groups must really help
Heck, it even guesses water type Pokémon correctly. Now that's what I call an interesting site.
Shouldn't that be LAN speed record?
Whoops, I misread "Thailand's 7-Eleven stores" as "Thailand's 7 ELVEN stores"!
I was really worried for a while there that our DM would get a hold of this article, and suddenly every damn Elf we fight has no trouble from my Burning Hands and Flaming Sphere spells...
Oh, most of the web is still around... it just looks like pages are decaying because every link you click has already been Slashdotted ;)
Fingerprints aren't secure! Haven't you ever watched Babylon 5, Dark Angel or The Outer Limits? All it takes is for someone to dust your Red Bull glass or spray glue on their palm and shake your hand, and BAM, they got your 'prints. I read it on Slashdot / saw it on sci-fi, respectively, so it must be true.
;D
Wait, this gives me an idea. Excuse me for a moment, people... I just have to, uh, go buy some, er, glue at the supermarket. If anyone sees CowboyNeal before I return, tell him to wait up... I'd really like to buy that guy a drink and shake his hand
Can anyone say Slashdot roleplaying? ;)
I gave up counting the crashometer on my website once it reached 250 BSODs, 300 or so GPFs and 15 spontaneous restarts or shutdowns with no reason given.
Bring back Amiga, I say... ;D
In the UK, and presumably most of Europe, there's already an age suitability rating system in place for games. While it's a legal requirement as per the movie rating system here (U, PG, 15, 18), most games containing 'mature' content will be clearly labelled. If my memory serves me correctly, Mortal Kombat was given a 15 rating and Duke Nukem a dubious 18.
Most game shops I know will not sell a 15 or 18-rated game to a kid who's obviously underage - I don't know if this is a legal requirement as with tobacco and alcohol, or just the industry 'policing' itself. Obviously, this doesn't stop an adult buying the game and giving it straight to a kid (the same thing can unfortunately happen here with minors and alcohol), but it's at least some measure that prevents kids from buying an unsuitable game.
That's nothing. I accidentally repeated myself four times in the chat window at Everything2, and five minutes later found every one of my writeups voted down to zero.
;)
No point in complaining, though - they're imaginary points handed out by anonymous nobodies, after all. Keep whor^H^H^H^Hposting, I'm sure we'll both make twenty-five karma in no time.
Either way, you can count yourself the luckiest man alive that you just made two points with a story submission complaint.
The greatest thing about Free, as in free software is that it's most often also free as in open software, free as in freedom and free as in free beer. ^_^
Used to be that Galaxians, Pacman and Worm were getting a reworking on the Amiga in the form of Deluxe Galaga, Deluxe Pacman and Megaworm... now it's the Amiga shareware's turn for the remix. Hooray!
We've even seen Populous get a rebirth with Lionhead's Black & White, and Quake with Half-Life's Deathmatch Classic. I wouldn't be surprised in five years time to see a reworking of GTA or Baldur's Gate 2. (Takers, anyone?) :D
(we're all using Opera, I tell ya... Opera!)
Still, a couple of programmers I've spoken to say are actually against Open Source. They argue since they spend hours coding, debugging and maintaining a program, shouldn't they be allowed to make an honest buck in return? I guess that's their decision, and ya just gotta respect it - some want the money, others just want to help create nice software for everyone.
And what if you don't like b33r? What if you're a teetotaler, a recovering alcoholic or a PHP hack? Can I create software that's free as in Coca-cola instead?
"Neverwinter nights will be released soon. We promise!"
Microsoft Excel.
True. The $500 fee was, I believe, a "handling and archiving charge", at the user's discretion (sp?).
On a few occasions, they say they've even managed to successfully claim their fee.
Homer? Naw, I'm pretty sure Gygax met Fry, on Futurama.
Happy to share these with you!