Shingen the Ruler was my favorite strategy game for the NES, hands down. While Nobunaga's Ambition and the other KOEI games gave more play options, Shingen the Ruler didn't have to turn up the "dick factor" to make up for poor AI. With Shingen, there was one well balanced scenerio, and only one difficulty level. Hard. While the scenario was difficult and started you out at a SIGNIFICANT disadvantage both militarily and economically, the combat system let you use your ranged units to maximum effect, and blood your units in raids and defense action until they were veteran enough to take on campaign.
I would sosososososo love to find a version that had been ported for the PC, or even better, the Gameboy or DS. That would be about the ultimate travel game.
I would like to point out that, I don't know, say... A couple BILLION other people believe in this same "mystical sky pixie". I guess they must all be insane as well. Call me a bible thumper if you want, but faith, despite some fine examples that I can think of to the contrary, is not the same thing as insanity.
SCI-Fi has only picked up the old episodes of Firefly, not contracted for new ones to be created. Probably the only reason they were able to pick up the old series cheap enough was so that "Serenity" could get some pre-release cross-promotion.
Sorry to burst your bubble there pal. I wish it were true, but alas, that is not the case. It would be just too expensive for SCI-Fi to bring back "Firefly" right now. SCI-Fi already has 3 high cost original series currently in production, as well as their schlock-tastic "creature feature" movies to pay for. Maybe it would make financial sense if "Serenity" makes huge bank at the box office, but probably not.
It goes like this. Every single person in my "geek circle" of friends really enjoyed the DVDs despite only two of us actually watching the show when it was on air. To get these 20 or so people to agree on ANYTHING is a herculean task. I really think there is something special about the show that goes beyond hype/ peer-pressure/herd mentality that the fan-boy community often operates with.
The fact that you took the time to post about it indicates to me that you have some (if minor) curiosity about the pheomenon. Just plop down the four bucks at blockbuster and check out the first disk. Then you can pass judgement guilt-free, knowing that you have made an informed decision.:)
Using a book like this for the lame and lazy? Screw that! Any tool that you can use to improve the gaming experience is fair game as far as I am concerned. And a book like this is all about improving the experience of the players and the DM. Now granted, it may be slanted to the less experienced DMs out there, but if it helps someone "polish their craft", then I say use it. Sure, if every adventure a DM uses comes straght from a book, that would probably be lame, but if you think that a book like would help your game, why not?
Sorry, but I have to disagree on that one. I think the new rules actually breathed a lot of life into a very old, very clunky system. While we had some great times playing our old 1st/2nd ed. characters, the d20 mechanics are really elegant, and I think they enhance the fun. We had pretty much given up on AD&D (after 15+ years for some of us), but now it is our groups preferred game again.
Hit a little too close to the belt? A belt made large with Cheetos and Mountain Dew methinks? Join the club pal. But please, lighten up, as it was legitimately funny.
Here in St. Louis, "Ghost in the Shell II" was running in on one screen for one week, and that was almost two months after the initial release to U.S. theatres.
I can't imagine why it didn't do very well at the Box Office.
/sarcasm off.
If you work at a movie house that shows midnight movies or the occasional Sunday afternoon "Arthouse" show, convince your boss that this sort of thing is the way to go. Then promote it. Otherwise, the grosses will stay infinitesimal, even if the DVD sells well
.
Uh, actually it would create fissile isotope of U and Pu suitable for turning into weapons, but it would be an ENORMOUS pain in the ass to do so. It would probably be cheaper (and safer) to refine it from scratch, and it would damn sure be cheaper just to steal already enriched material. So that in itself is a barrier to entry for the crazy wackos of the world. Thankfully.
While it is true that bombarding fission products (or any other radiological waste) does in fact create more waste, the half lives of the transmuted wastes is *generally* shorter then that of some of the more long-lived wastes.
I think that was the gist of the research that I have read. Sorry, but I couldn't find a citing.
The process they are using will not (shouldn't anyway) affect the isotopic distribution of the carbon, so technically you could probably still "carbon date" it. But, since they were using boards bought at a local lumberyard, it wouldn't tell them much.
If you want more on the specifics of carbon dating, check the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
As far as accelerating radioactive decay, there is some interesting research out there about bombarding fission products with accelerated particles and causing a several-fold reduction in decay times. A former ASU nuclear physics professor envisioned one method for it:
http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess/
A note of caution: The "Roy Process" web site is run by the former professor's "Agent" so its slanted more for sales than education.
You really answered your own question. They have to test out all the new language libraries (multiple), test the brand new servers in "real world" conditions (something that I wish they would have done more of before US release) and generally make sure everything is working correctly before they start charging a monthly fee.
Now, if they can just fix a few of the glaring bugs along the way, like NOT having the boat dump you in the ocean when you transition between zones. "Oh good, my hearthstone is charged up. I'm going to try to get to Darnassus again."
If you think that your work place is too loud (i.e. your hearing is being damaged, not you have an annoyingly loud co-worker) and that your employer should do something about it there is something you can do.
1. Ask your employer if it needs to be fixed. They have an obligation to prevent/mitigate exposure of their employees to hazards.
2. Go to radio shack and buy a cheap sound meter and measure it yourself. The action level is 85 dBa, Time Weighted Average over an 8 hour shift. The action level for itermittent sounds is 90 dBa.
The great thing about abridged books is that it really forces a long-winded author to get off his cliche and tell the story. So, with a 900 page book, you can cut it down to a "reasonable" 8 hours of tape.
Long-winded tomes are about the only time I recommend abridgements, though. While it is possible to cut a 300 page novel down to a 3 hour cassette, IMHO there usually isn't enough left to trouble yourself with.
And just as a point of reference, I have greatly enjoyed most of Stephenson's work, but the first half of Quicksilver did not flow like its namesake. The middle half did pick up considerably with the introduction of the Shaftoe brothers. So I will give it a try.
Several years ago, my local comics/gaming store almost stopped carrying GW stuff, partly because it was overpriced through the roof, but mostly because the owner got fed up with the BS associated with selling GW product. GW had the audacity to set the minimum price for all of their products. WH stuff had to be routinely excluded from store-wide sales, because the deep discount (20% off of retail as I recall) would have violated the distributer sales contracts. Now IANAL, but that sounds like the definition of anti-competitive monopoly-type, market manipulation to me.
I really, there is a noble, non-speaking horse, and a noble, speaking Native American (definitely not an Indian) all on a quest for Freedom (with a capital F) from the Man (with a capital Whitey).
It really spoke to my 1/16 Choctau heritage, all that nobleness and freedom and crap.
/sarcasm off
Lets face it. "Spirited Away" was just in a whole nother catergory then the rest of the drivel. I think it could have been included for Best Picture, had the acadamy not been so obsesed with dancing girls this year. Not that dancing girls are such a bad thing:) Viva la Frankoswski!
Spam is a numbers game. From the reports that I have read, the total cost for sending out a big batch of spam, say half a million addresses, is about $3000 US. The profit by the spammer on one of those batches can average anywhere from -$1000 to + $2000. Now, if each one of those addresses cost a penny, $0.01, to reach, Mr. casio says it would cost $10,000 for that batch of spam.
That my friend would be the death of the current spammer buisness model. Yes, you would still get targeted adds, but in smaller numbers, and maybe, just maybe, for something you might be interested in seeing.
Of course, that would be just until some 733t h@xor figures a way around the collection scheme. But we can all dream, can't we?
So about 6 months after convincing my parents to help me buy my first computer in high school, I decided that my 386DX running at all of 33 Mhz needed better sound for uh... school. Ok, so it was for Wing Commander. Sue me. Anyway, I saved up my earnings from the Pizza Hut and purchased a soundblaster card. No where did any of the documentation actually tell me how to install it mind you, this was way before all that. We were talking DOS 5.0 here. Long story short - I open up the case with the cord plugged in and the computer running. I plug in the card. There are bad smells and some sparks as I recall. I pull the card back out, unplug everything, and try it in a less stupid manner. Everything seems to work ok, and I my Rapier flew fine, so I figured all was good. At least until a friend and I ran some benchmarks a few months later and discovered my math co-processor no longer worked. Oops.
Luckily, the insurance from a house fire the week of graduation managed to send me to college with fully functioning 486. Never did replace that copy of the Wing Commander though...
P. S. Bonus Safety Tip -> Throw away old (10+ yrs) extension cords. Seriously they can be dangerous to families, pets, letter jackets, and comic book collections:(
Best strategy/war game for the NES. Much better then Nobanaga's Ambition, which while groundbreaking and all that, only had a sliding "dick factor" for probabilities instead of decent AI (I know it's 8-bit, but did you ever try it on level 5? Ridiculous. Same with the SNES version) Shingen was as deep, but with a better battle system, and after being tied to Shinano province for so many games, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for those crazy Takedas. Even if in RL they were for the most part "not-nice" people.
Don't just stop with squads of computers hunting people over the net in FPS games. We can shrink them down put them in indestructible exoskeletons with nuclear batteries to hunt down actual people! Then we can wrap in fake skin and send them back in time to... uh...
Keep in mind that some of the most favorable locations for wind power have been tapped already. The rate of increase for electric capacity provided by wind is far from guaranteed and isn't always driven by market forces, but government grants. Only when it is cheap enough that your local utility can get a better return on their capital investment than another little gas burner will wind power truly have a shot at providing most of our power.
And even then wind can't provide 100%. You need a mix of electricity generation methods. Sometimes the wind won't blow. Sometimes the sun doesn't shine. And besides, a unified power grid would make it too easy for aliens to take out our grid. (Apologies to Alan Dean Foster) Fisson power does produce waste, but in tiny quantities compared to any fossil burners, and the nuke industry averages more than 90% availability. Compare that to solar (50% max, higher near the equator) or wind (wildly variable)
The Solution seems simple to me. Limit the amount of reviews any one person can post. That limits the amount that any one person can skew the results with their boilerplate/spam reviews. Of course then you would have to institutes some sort of IP tracker to keep people from posting under multiple aliases, but it would basicaly kill off the Amazon Power Reviewers, but I am fine with that.
Slashdot Mirror
I would sosososososo love to find a version that had been ported for the PC, or even better, the Gameboy or DS. That would be about the ultimate travel game.
I would like to point out that, I don't know, say... A couple BILLION other people believe in this same "mystical sky pixie". I guess they must all be insane as well. Call me a bible thumper if you want, but faith, despite some fine examples that I can think of to the contrary, is not the same thing as insanity.
Sorry to burst your bubble there pal. I wish it were true, but alas, that is not the case. It would be just too expensive for SCI-Fi to bring back "Firefly" right now. SCI-Fi already has 3 high cost original series currently in production, as well as their schlock-tastic "creature feature" movies to pay for. Maybe it would make financial sense if "Serenity" makes huge bank at the box office, but probably not.
The fact that you took the time to post about it indicates to me that you have some (if minor) curiosity about the pheomenon. Just plop down the four bucks at blockbuster and check out the first disk. Then you can pass judgement guilt-free, knowing that you have made an informed decision. :)
Using a book like this for the lame and lazy? Screw that! Any tool that you can use to improve the gaming experience is fair game as far as I am concerned. And a book like this is all about improving the experience of the players and the DM. Now granted, it may be slanted to the less experienced DMs out there, but if it helps someone "polish their craft", then I say use it. Sure, if every adventure a DM uses comes straght from a book, that would probably be lame, but if you think that a book like would help your game, why not?
Sorry, but I have to disagree on that one. I think the new rules actually breathed a lot of life into a very old, very clunky system. While we had some great times playing our old 1st/2nd ed. characters, the d20 mechanics are really elegant, and I think they enhance the fun. We had pretty much given up on AD&D (after 15+ years for some of us), but now it is our groups preferred game again.
What the hell is up with that? If it is good, and you want it, why not just buy the damn books? Life is short, why make such arbitrary rules?
Hit a little too close to the belt? A belt made large with Cheetos and Mountain Dew methinks? Join the club pal. But please, lighten up, as it was legitimately funny.
I can't imagine why it didn't do very well at the Box Office.
If you work at a movie house that shows midnight movies or the occasional Sunday afternoon "Arthouse" show, convince your boss that this sort of thing is the way to go. Then promote it. Otherwise, the grosses will stay infinitesimal, even if the DVD sells well .
No, but if you want to buy two more displays, you can simulate them at full size.
Uh, actually it would create fissile isotope of U and Pu suitable for turning into weapons, but it would be an ENORMOUS pain in the ass to do so. It would probably be cheaper (and safer) to refine it from scratch, and it would damn sure be cheaper just to steal already enriched material. So that in itself is a barrier to entry for the crazy wackos of the world. Thankfully.
I think that was the gist of the research that I have read. Sorry, but I couldn't find a citing.
If you want more on the specifics of carbon dating, check the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
As far as accelerating radioactive decay, there is some interesting research out there about bombarding fission products with accelerated particles and causing a several-fold reduction in decay times. A former ASU nuclear physics professor envisioned one method for it:
http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess/
A note of caution: The "Roy Process" web site is run by the former professor's "Agent" so its slanted more for sales than education.
Now, if they can just fix a few of the glaring bugs along the way, like NOT having the boat dump you in the ocean when you transition between zones. "Oh good, my hearthstone is charged up. I'm going to try to get to Darnassus again."
1. Ask your employer if it needs to be fixed. They have an obligation to prevent/mitigate exposure of their employees to hazards.
2. Go to radio shack and buy a cheap sound meter and measure it yourself. The action level is 85 dBa, Time Weighted Average over an 8 hour shift. The action level for itermittent sounds is 90 dBa.
The great thing about abridged books is that it really forces a long-winded author to get off his cliche and tell the story. So, with a 900 page book, you can cut it down to a "reasonable" 8 hours of tape. Long-winded tomes are about the only time I recommend abridgements, though. While it is possible to cut a 300 page novel down to a 3 hour cassette, IMHO there usually isn't enough left to trouble yourself with. And just as a point of reference, I have greatly enjoyed most of Stephenson's work, but the first half of Quicksilver did not flow like its namesake. The middle half did pick up considerably with the introduction of the Shaftoe brothers. So I will give it a try.
Several years ago, my local comics/gaming store almost stopped carrying GW stuff, partly because it was overpriced through the roof, but mostly because the owner got fed up with the BS associated with selling GW product. GW had the audacity to set the minimum price for all of their products. WH stuff had to be routinely excluded from store-wide sales, because the deep discount (20% off of retail as I recall) would have violated the distributer sales contracts. Now IANAL, but that sounds like the definition of anti-competitive monopoly-type, market manipulation to me.
It really spoke to my 1/16 Choctau heritage, all that nobleness and freedom and crap.
Lets face it. "Spirited Away" was just in a whole nother catergory then the rest of the drivel. I think it could have been included for Best Picture, had the acadamy not been so obsesed with dancing girls this year. Not that dancing girls are such a bad thing :) Viva la Frankoswski!
That my friend would be the death of the current spammer buisness model. Yes, you would still get targeted adds, but in smaller numbers, and maybe, just maybe, for something you might be interested in seeing.
Of course, that would be just until some 733t h@xor figures a way around the collection scheme. But we can all dream, can't we?
Luckily, the insurance from a house fire the week of graduation managed to send me to college with fully functioning 486. Never did replace that copy of the Wing Commander though...
P. S. Bonus Safety Tip -> Throw away old (10+ yrs) extension cords. Seriously they can be dangerous to families, pets, letter jackets, and comic book collections:(
Best strategy/war game for the NES.
Much better then Nobanaga's Ambition, which while groundbreaking and all that, only had a sliding "dick factor" for probabilities instead of decent AI (I know it's 8-bit, but did you ever try it on level 5? Ridiculous. Same with the SNES version) Shingen was as deep, but with a better battle system, and after being tied to Shinano province for so many games, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for those crazy Takedas. Even if in RL they were for the most part "not-nice" people.
Never mind. It may not be that great of an idea
Yeah, but to be fair, they were running it on a gameboy advanced.
And even then wind can't provide 100%. You need a mix of electricity generation methods. Sometimes the wind won't blow. Sometimes the sun doesn't shine. And besides, a unified power grid would make it too easy for aliens to take out our grid. (Apologies to Alan Dean Foster) Fisson power does produce waste, but in tiny quantities compared to any fossil burners, and the nuke industry averages more than 90% availability. Compare that to solar (50% max, higher near the equator) or wind (wildly variable)
The Solution seems simple to me. Limit the amount of reviews any one person can post. That limits the amount that any one person can skew the results with their boilerplate/spam reviews. Of course then you would have to institutes some sort of IP tracker to keep people from posting under multiple aliases, but it would basicaly kill off the Amazon Power Reviewers, but I am fine with that.