The crew of Red Dwarf were killed in a radiation leak whilst Lister was in stasis as a punishment. To protect Lister the ship's computer, Holly, kept him in stasis and piloted Red Dwarf out of the solar system so that the irradiated ship would not cause a threat to Earth or anyone who might come looking for them.
It took 3 million years for the radiation to drop to a safe level, after which Holly revived Lister, which is why it is assumed the Lister is the last human alive. Red Dwarf had been travelling away from Earth for those 3 million years, which is why it would take so long to get back.
Showing "both sides" of every issue may be "fair and balanced" -- but if one of those sides is arguing that the atomic weight of helium is 5 or 3+3=17, it does nothing to promote popular knowledge of objective truths.
Sure it does. In the general populace, how many people do you think know the atmoic weight of helium? If some whackjob tried to claim in the mass media that its atomic weight was 5 you'd get commentary from scientists all over the place pointing out that he is wrong, why he is wrong, describing what atmoic weight is, and detailing the real atomic weight of helium. And there you have popular knowledge promoted.
What doesn't help is when someone continues to believe in a falsehood after it has been shown to be objectively false. But there's no reason to stifle the initial discussion, as it reaffirms what we have believed to be true.
I have an issue with one part however, it reads "...and the once lucrative album market has been overshadowed by downloaded singles, which mainly benefits Apple" and here I thought Apple made most of their money with their hardware sales and a pittance on each track, giving the majority to the producer."
The statement is not denying that Apple benefits from their hardware, it's only pointing out that the main beneficiary of downloaded singles is Apple.
If you think that's incorrect please feel free to write that, for example, 'I thought Apple made a pittance on each track, giving the majority to the producer'. There is no need to start an unnecssary Apple hardware/software profit discussion on this topic.
I can see your point. From my point of view, the 'Mario' characters serve a good purpose for Nintendo. I bought Mario Strikers Charged Football for my Wii. I didn't buy it because I like football games, because I don't actually like football that much. I bought it because it had the 'Mario' title, so I knew that it wouldn't be a serious attempt to create a simulation game. It would be like football, but made fun. And that's how Nintendo uses the characters to their benefit, by defining the style of the games' content through the use of the characters.
On top of that, if you buy the 'Mario' games you get a whole host of characters whose traits are common from game to game. Mario is the all-rounder, Bowser is big and heavy, Toad is light and agile, and so on. You don't need to work out which character to pick to get certain attributes for each and every game.
So, yes, if you don't get on with Mario it can be quite the hurdle to overcome, as the character is used all over the place. But by using him Nintendo have genuinely created a credible 'universe' of characters.
Taking the comment off the bulleting board is doubleplus lame. Makes it look like Apple can't deal with non cult members as customers.
That all really depends on the tone and message of the comment. For all we know, the comment was written when the poster was a little angry or alarmist, and the comment was merely moderated away. It's also possible that it was reasonable and asking simply for clarification, but without this information there is no way to judge whether the deletion of the comment was unwarranted or not.
Windows system requirements * PC with USB 2.0 port * Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later * iTunes 7.3 or later
It does not specify 32bit. There is no indication Vista Ultimate needs to Vista Ultimate 32bit.
And how should it specify that it does not support the 64-bit Windows OS?
Let me put it another way. I have a new item to sell to punters, and I market it. I know that it doesn't work with the 64-bit versions of Windows, so my system requirements only specify the versions of the OS it works with. I come up with this list:
* Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
There, that should do it. Hmm, I can't seem to specify 32-bit versions only using Microsoft's own naming conventions for their OS software. There's the rub.
Maybe it's a problem in that XP and 64-bit XP aren't compatible enough, or maybe it's a problem in that the names indicate greater compatibility than they should, or it could just be that there is no way of specifying the 32-bit version as cleanly as the 64-bit version. If the system requirements are misleading it's not directly Apple's fault, even if a footnote could have been added to exclude 64-bit Windows versions.
Sure, you couldn't go backwards and Mario was sluggish to turn, but the design of SMB was simply incredible. I could play the first SMB time and again still, because of the level design. It seems that most of the levels were hand-crafted, not just thrown together with a few platforms and enemies here and there. Get Mario up to speed and, if you were well-practiced, you could pretty much run at top speed through most levels, bounding from one platform to the next, jumping over or on enemies as they appeared on screen.
And my favourite aspect: if you were running at top speed and reached the end of the platform with just empty space in front of you, you could jump at the end of it, as a leap of faith, and the moving platform that was off-screen would be there waiting for you. Even if you didn't know this, you could wait and it would scroll on-screen. But you could jump and know that you would land somewhere safe. The game lent itself to fast and fluid gameplay. That is its genius.
Okay, I was, and still am, a Nintendo fan. To be honest, SMB, and its sequels (up to the sadly poor Super Mario Sunshine), have kept me a fan. I won an NES with my leet SMB skillorz, as well as impressing women. Well, one woman, and I kid you not. But I see design in SMB that I haven't seen elsewhere. I hated Sonic when he appeared, mostly because he was from Sega, but I tried to suppress that irrational side of me, and I gave one of the games a go. I got to a point in the level where I was on a ledge and had no visible platform to land on. I waited, and nothing floated in to view. I took the SMB approach, took a run up, went as fast as I could, and jumped. I landed on a spike. I stopped playing and never looked back.
Play SMB again, or find someone who remembers the levels and can play at full-speed, and look at the level design as the game flashes past. It still is a wonder to behold.
I'm of the opinion that the early game designers had to work more on making gameplay itself FUN since they had so little in the way of tech to work with.
It's an easy argument to make, but I think it's a little misguided. Sure, the technology of the day was less than we have now, but there were plenty of people trying to push it and squeeze the most out of any system they were working on. Whether it was writing better AI routines for enemies (Moebius on the C=64), finding out new ways of improving graphics (Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga was a graphical wankfest of a 'game'), or emulating speech synthesis in systems that had no speech synthesiser (on the Spectrum, I forget the game), there were programmers wanting to do things with the hardware that no one else had managed.
We still see this today, as it is persistent in the gaming world. It may not seem like it, but that's because everything looks better than it used to on the older platforms. It's 'easier' to create a game that has great graphics and sound, but there are still people who want to push the envelope one way or another, like with Doom 3 for example. There are also people who want to create fun games, like Introversion.
I think the only thing that has really changed is the technology, which allows developers to create games that are better looking and sounding than their predecessors. The same could, and probably was, said about going from 8-bit to 16-bit gaming platforms, and from the early consoles to the 8-bit computers. There will always be fun games, just as there will always be technology demos presented as games.
He didn't mention that his music collection was bought from the iTunes Music Store, just that his entire collection is in iTunes, the application. He may not have any issue with losing music because of DRM restrictions.
My entire music collection is in iTunes, but none of it is encumbered with DRM, as I ripped it from my own CDs.
I don't get it. There were many football games before Sensible World of Soccer. Really. Loads of them. We used to play tournaments in the computer shop I worked in at the time, and I remember a far more important game coming out.
We were playing Microrpose Soccer, and enjoying it, but soon after came Kick Off, by an unknown company in less-than-impressive packaging. Nevertheless, we loaded it in to the display Amiga and gave it a go.
Wow. No more was the ball stuck to the player's foot, the pitch wasn't two screens wide, and the player's didn't 'run' like sloths. Kick Off was fast, big, and required skill to hold on to the ball. It took a while to get used to, but it was the most enjoyable football game created up to that point, and it was as different from any other football game as you could get.
Microprose Soccer wasn't loaded in the shop again, we couldn't face the mediocrity after having played Kick Off. Sure, Sensi Soccer improved on some factors, but Kick Off was the game that led the revolution.
Besides why would an alien race need the whole galaxy? A small section would do.
A small section like a planet?
If a civilisation expands from a planet, why would they not expand further in the future? One planet isn't enough, so colonise the system. The system isn't enough, so colonise the galaxy.
It just sounds like you're a bit bitter, with all due respect. I notice that you didn't get a speeding ticket or any other citation directly related to your accident, so what's the problem? Your accident came through the normal course of driving, and it was treated as such. The ticket you got may not have taught you a lesson about being a safer driver, but I bet it makes you keep up to date with your tabs. That would be a lesson learnt.
As for your friend, he broke the law through speeding and was given a ticket for it. That he trashed his car in the process is his own fault, not the law officers'. If you take a step back from your own experience, I hope that you can see there is no absurdity in the situation, and that not being given a ticket would have been a bigger disgrace to justice.
It doesn't sound like you need to be protected from yourself, no.
Some people do, though. And it's not just protecting themselves, it's for the protection of others, too.
If someone carelessly walks across the road because of paying attention to some electronic gadget and they get hit by a car, and perhaps killed, what happens to the car driver? It can be terribly traumatic to have that happen to you, and can have consequences if not treated. Besides, just because someone acts irreponsibly now does not mean they will continue to, nor that they won't go on to be a productive member of society once they learn from their mistakes.
Maybe a law stating that it is illegal to listen to an iPod whilst crossing the road is going too far, and raising awareness of the issue through public channels would be a better idea. The idea isn't flawed, just the execution.
My buddy got in a car accident a while ago (he was driving "Vaay Too Fost"), and after getting injured and more or less totalling his car, he got a speeding ticket to top it all off. How is this protecting him?
What should they have done? Told him that they guess he's learnt his lesson, and that he should be more careful in the future? He broke the law, quite obviously according to your own account, and caused an accident as a result. Why shouldn't he get a ticket?
What if he had killed someone else in the accident because of his lawfully-reckless driving, would you be annoyed if they had charged him for manslaughter?
Slashdot Mirror
The crew of Red Dwarf were killed in a radiation leak whilst Lister was in stasis as a punishment. To protect Lister the ship's computer, Holly, kept him in stasis and piloted Red Dwarf out of the solar system so that the irradiated ship would not cause a threat to Earth or anyone who might come looking for them.
It took 3 million years for the radiation to drop to a safe level, after which Holly revived Lister, which is why it is assumed the Lister is the last human alive. Red Dwarf had been travelling away from Earth for those 3 million years, which is why it would take so long to get back.
That's harmful to the individuals but beneficial to the species.
But the point is that it is generally a slow climb to 52C, and a fast fall to 43C, over and over in an abusive thermal-stress scenario.
A change of a mere ±9 degrees is not an abusive thermal-stress scenario.
Take a look at Memset Hosting.
Showing "both sides" of every issue may be "fair and balanced" -- but if one of those sides is arguing that the atomic weight of helium is 5 or 3+3=17, it does nothing to promote popular knowledge of objective truths.
Sure it does. In the general populace, how many people do you think know the atmoic weight of helium? If some whackjob tried to claim in the mass media that its atomic weight was 5 you'd get commentary from scientists all over the place pointing out that he is wrong, why he is wrong, describing what atmoic weight is, and detailing the real atomic weight of helium. And there you have popular knowledge promoted.
What doesn't help is when someone continues to believe in a falsehood after it has been shown to be objectively false. But there's no reason to stifle the initial discussion, as it reaffirms what we have believed to be true.
I have an issue with one part however, it reads "...and the once lucrative album market has been overshadowed by downloaded singles, which mainly benefits Apple" and here I thought Apple made most of their money with their hardware sales and a pittance on each track, giving the majority to the producer."
The statement is not denying that Apple benefits from their hardware, it's only pointing out that the main beneficiary of downloaded singles is Apple.
If you think that's incorrect please feel free to write that, for example, 'I thought Apple made a pittance on each track, giving the majority to the producer'. There is no need to start an unnecssary Apple hardware/software profit discussion on this topic.
OTOH if you would like to see and experience the website the way the designer intended ...
I wouldn't call anyone who used Comic Sans a designer.
Then any changed would be reasily obvious,
Good idea, Scoob!
I can see your point. From my point of view, the 'Mario' characters serve a good purpose for Nintendo. I bought Mario Strikers Charged Football for my Wii. I didn't buy it because I like football games, because I don't actually like football that much. I bought it because it had the 'Mario' title, so I knew that it wouldn't be a serious attempt to create a simulation game. It would be like football, but made fun. And that's how Nintendo uses the characters to their benefit, by defining the style of the games' content through the use of the characters.
On top of that, if you buy the 'Mario' games you get a whole host of characters whose traits are common from game to game. Mario is the all-rounder, Bowser is big and heavy, Toad is light and agile, and so on. You don't need to work out which character to pick to get certain attributes for each and every game.
So, yes, if you don't get on with Mario it can be quite the hurdle to overcome, as the character is used all over the place. But by using him Nintendo have genuinely created a credible 'universe' of characters.
Taking the comment off the bulleting board is doubleplus lame. Makes it look like Apple can't deal with non cult members as customers.
That all really depends on the tone and message of the comment. For all we know, the comment was written when the poster was a little angry or alarmist, and the comment was merely moderated away. It's also possible that it was reasonable and asking simply for clarification, but without this information there is no way to judge whether the deletion of the comment was unwarranted or not.
iPhone requirements as of today:
Windows system requirements
* PC with USB 2.0 port
* Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
* iTunes 7.3 or later
It does not specify 32bit. There is no indication Vista Ultimate needs to Vista Ultimate 32bit.
And how should it specify that it does not support the 64-bit Windows OS?
Let me put it another way. I have a new item to sell to punters, and I market it. I know that it doesn't work with the 64-bit versions of Windows, so my system requirements only specify the versions of the OS it works with. I come up with this list:
* Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
There, that should do it. Hmm, I can't seem to specify 32-bit versions only using Microsoft's own naming conventions for their OS software. There's the rub.
Maybe it's a problem in that XP and 64-bit XP aren't compatible enough, or maybe it's a problem in that the names indicate greater compatibility than they should, or it could just be that there is no way of specifying the 32-bit version as cleanly as the 64-bit version. If the system requirements are misleading it's not directly Apple's fault, even if a footnote could have been added to exclude 64-bit Windows versions.
Ah, but WiFI is becomming more and more ubiquitous.
More ubiquitous?
Since non-unlimited data plans are... ...limited?
We'll have the hottest dos alive!
Sure, you couldn't go backwards and Mario was sluggish to turn, but the design of SMB was simply incredible. I could play the first SMB time and again still, because of the level design. It seems that most of the levels were hand-crafted, not just thrown together with a few platforms and enemies here and there. Get Mario up to speed and, if you were well-practiced, you could pretty much run at top speed through most levels, bounding from one platform to the next, jumping over or on enemies as they appeared on screen.
And my favourite aspect: if you were running at top speed and reached the end of the platform with just empty space in front of you, you could jump at the end of it, as a leap of faith, and the moving platform that was off-screen would be there waiting for you. Even if you didn't know this, you could wait and it would scroll on-screen. But you could jump and know that you would land somewhere safe. The game lent itself to fast and fluid gameplay. That is its genius.
Okay, I was, and still am, a Nintendo fan. To be honest, SMB, and its sequels (up to the sadly poor Super Mario Sunshine), have kept me a fan. I won an NES with my leet SMB skillorz, as well as impressing women. Well, one woman, and I kid you not. But I see design in SMB that I haven't seen elsewhere. I hated Sonic when he appeared, mostly because he was from Sega, but I tried to suppress that irrational side of me, and I gave one of the games a go. I got to a point in the level where I was on a ledge and had no visible platform to land on. I waited, and nothing floated in to view. I took the SMB approach, took a run up, went as fast as I could, and jumped. I landed on a spike. I stopped playing and never looked back.
Play SMB again, or find someone who remembers the levels and can play at full-speed, and look at the level design as the game flashes past. It still is a wonder to behold.
I'm of the opinion that the early game designers had to work more on making gameplay itself FUN since they had so little in the way of tech to work with.
It's an easy argument to make, but I think it's a little misguided. Sure, the technology of the day was less than we have now, but there were plenty of people trying to push it and squeeze the most out of any system they were working on. Whether it was writing better AI routines for enemies (Moebius on the C=64), finding out new ways of improving graphics (Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga was a graphical wankfest of a 'game'), or emulating speech synthesis in systems that had no speech synthesiser (on the Spectrum, I forget the game), there were programmers wanting to do things with the hardware that no one else had managed.
We still see this today, as it is persistent in the gaming world. It may not seem like it, but that's because everything looks better than it used to on the older platforms. It's 'easier' to create a game that has great graphics and sound, but there are still people who want to push the envelope one way or another, like with Doom 3 for example. There are also people who want to create fun games, like Introversion.
I think the only thing that has really changed is the technology, which allows developers to create games that are better looking and sounding than their predecessors. The same could, and probably was, said about going from 8-bit to 16-bit gaming platforms, and from the early consoles to the 8-bit computers. There will always be fun games, just as there will always be technology demos presented as games.
He didn't mention that his music collection was bought from the iTunes Music Store, just that his entire collection is in iTunes, the application. He may not have any issue with losing music because of DRM restrictions.
My entire music collection is in iTunes, but none of it is encumbered with DRM, as I ripped it from my own CDs.
I don't get it. There were many football games before Sensible World of Soccer. Really. Loads of them. We used to play tournaments in the computer shop I worked in at the time, and I remember a far more important game coming out.
We were playing Microrpose Soccer, and enjoying it, but soon after came Kick Off, by an unknown company in less-than-impressive packaging. Nevertheless, we loaded it in to the display Amiga and gave it a go.
Wow. No more was the ball stuck to the player's foot, the pitch wasn't two screens wide, and the player's didn't 'run' like sloths. Kick Off was fast, big, and required skill to hold on to the ball. It took a while to get used to, but it was the most enjoyable football game created up to that point, and it was as different from any other football game as you could get.
Microprose Soccer wasn't loaded in the shop again, we couldn't face the mediocrity after having played Kick Off. Sure, Sensi Soccer improved on some factors, but Kick Off was the game that led the revolution.
It's a weird fucking way to spell 'ridiculous'.
Another great example of a change in grammar I applaud is the transition to using "their" as a third-person, gender-neutral singular pronoun.
Singular "they" has been used in English since the time of Chaucer.
Mind you, the EuroFighter may greatly outclass an F-15.
Oh, it does.
Besides why would an alien race need the whole galaxy? A small section would do.
A small section like a planet?
If a civilisation expands from a planet, why would they not expand further in the future? One planet isn't enough, so colonise the system. The system isn't enough, so colonise the galaxy.
It just sounds like you're a bit bitter, with all due respect. I notice that you didn't get a speeding ticket or any other citation directly related to your accident, so what's the problem? Your accident came through the normal course of driving, and it was treated as such. The ticket you got may not have taught you a lesson about being a safer driver, but I bet it makes you keep up to date with your tabs. That would be a lesson learnt.
As for your friend, he broke the law through speeding and was given a ticket for it. That he trashed his car in the process is his own fault, not the law officers'. If you take a step back from your own experience, I hope that you can see there is no absurdity in the situation, and that not being given a ticket would have been a bigger disgrace to justice.
It doesn't sound like you need to be protected from yourself, no.
Some people do, though. And it's not just protecting themselves, it's for the protection of others, too.
If someone carelessly walks across the road because of paying attention to some electronic gadget and they get hit by a car, and perhaps killed, what happens to the car driver? It can be terribly traumatic to have that happen to you, and can have consequences if not treated. Besides, just because someone acts irreponsibly now does not mean they will continue to, nor that they won't go on to be a productive member of society once they learn from their mistakes.
Maybe a law stating that it is illegal to listen to an iPod whilst crossing the road is going too far, and raising awareness of the issue through public channels would be a better idea. The idea isn't flawed, just the execution.
My buddy got in a car accident a while ago (he was driving "Vaay Too Fost"), and after getting injured and more or less totalling his car, he got a speeding ticket to top it all off. How is this protecting him?
What should they have done? Told him that they guess he's learnt his lesson, and that he should be more careful in the future? He broke the law, quite obviously according to your own account, and caused an accident as a result. Why shouldn't he get a ticket?
What if he had killed someone else in the accident because of his lawfully-reckless driving, would you be annoyed if they had charged him for manslaughter?