And I've successfully paid hotel rent on Boardwalk before, its easy when you own all the Red and Orange properties! People obsess about getting Boardwalk and Park Place, and are willing to trade you Red and Orange for way less than their market value should be.
This is because of Jail. The most likely number to roll on two dice is 7, and 7 squares back from Park Lane is 'Go to Jail'. So, you go to Jail and on coming out you're very likely to land on Bow Street, Vine Street or Marlborough Street. You can get the oranges very cheaply in most games, and charge a fortune to the guy who's desperate to get both Park Lane and Mayfair.
There are other reasons why the games take forever, players are overly cautious. Even if the walls are caving in around them as a the one player with a monopoly begins to clean house, they will desperately hang on waiting to land on that one property that will give them a monopoly rather than have a fair exchange with another player.
Monopoly's a game that often rewards the bold. For instance, your archrival has landed on Free Parking (where he receives no reward and incurs no penalty, and moves on as normal on his next turn, just as it says in the rules). You realise that as things stand he has more room to build than you do, and in the long term you will lose, so on your turn you mortgage everything you can to raise the money to build Hotels on Piccadilly, Leicester Square and Coventry Street. If he lands on one of them - and the odds are good, because you know the probability distribution for two dice - then you are well set to turn the game around. If he does not then you're doomed, but then you were probably doomed anyway...
Disney Monopoly is another big offender. 'A game like that, it could literally take you days,' said Hastings, of Holliston, Mass.
Don't know if they've changed the rules for Disney Monopoly - usually variants just change street names and graphic design - but Monopoly should never take days, unless players are deliberately buying property from each other at inflated prices to prevent anyone going out of the game. Or unless people are refusing to trade cards so that nobody can form a complete colour group and build houses, in which case it's stalemate and you might as well call a draw.
After an hour or two of Monopoly the board should be full of houses. At that point the game ends fast; the ASSESSED FOR STREET REPAIRS and MAKE GENERAL REPAIRS cards are ruinously expensive to a big landlord. As a result, money comes out of the game a good deal faster than it comes into it from people passing GO. All those fees go to the Bank, leaving players with less and less money to pay the ever-larger rents, and the game must end soon.
You could, I suppose, invent a new game in which money did not ever leave the game and return to the Bank - perhaps you could put the money from fines and fees and so forth into some jackpot, and designate a square such that anybody landing there would collect all the wealth accumulated there - but that game would last forever, become incredibly frustrating once everybody had so much money that they didn't care about landing on Mayfair, and would basically not be Monopoly.
Okay, suppose you're Apple. BMG agrees to license you to make a copy of a Frank Sinatra song within France, providing you pay the $0.30 every time you do so. They agree to let you make a copy of the same Frank Sinatra song within Germany for $0.40 every time you do so. The act of making a copy is the act of allowing a person to download it and is dependent upon where the person doing the downloading is located. EU law enforces copyright separately in each country and just because you licensed the right to make a copy in France for $0.30 each copy, that does not grant you any right to do the same thing in Germany at any price.
Only because BMG says it doesn't grant the right. The EU says nothing on the matter. BMG can say 'We sell this licence which is good for all EU territories. In Germany we sell it at $0.40. In France we sell it at $0.30.' That would be legal. Of course savvy Germans would then buy the cheaper French licences, which is the point of having the single market and the single currency.
If the licence sold in France is not valid in Germany, that is entirely the record company's doing. Hence this investigation into these companies, and Apple for contributory infringement of the EU citizens' rights.
Just imagine if the US had laws that allowed the record companies to license music for different prices in different states. I'd say if the US was so stupid as to do that, then they're getting what they deserve, just as the EU is getting what they deserve for not actually enforcing their edict to require record companies to provide a single price for licensing in all of Europe.
I imagine they're allowed to charge whatever they like wherever they like. They're just not allowed, if they do so, to claim that the cheap North Dakota licence is only valid in North Dakota, and so use the law to prevent Californian people buying it in preference to the expensive California licence.
So here's the problem. The right to copy a song onto your personal computer in France is considered, under EU law, a different service than the right to download that same song onto your personal computer in Germany because the right to copy it (copyright) is enforced separately in each country. So if Apple did not restrict the sale of a song from the French store to people with a French credit card, then sure a German could purchase the copyright with their German card, but assuming they are in Germany, it would be illegal for them to actually download the song in Germany, because their license to copy only applies in France and they aren't in France.
What is likely to be illegal here is the record company's action in issuing such restrictive licences. Under the single market, a licence good in one member state should be good in all.
Forbidden Planet for me, every time. Thank God no-one has remade it.
Saw this play once, actually. Live-action, actors there in person on stage, you know the type. Had this Renaissance-era wizard and his daughter on this island with a monster and fairies and stuff, and a shipload of guys who end up there with them. Took me a while to realise it, but - total rip-off of Forbidden Planet! Amazed they got away with it really.
This is a law on U.S. banking, not internation gambling. All you idiot can grumble now, but the WTO has no authority on U.S. banking regulation.
Then if at some time the US government wants to protect the businesses in Detroit, it just bans US banks from making payments to Japanese car manufacturers, and it's all fair?
Until the EU is part of the axis of evil./me ducks
That will take until the day the money-men are no longer holding the reins of the warmongers. The EU is very, very, very rich. Declaring it part of the axis of evil would make a lot of very rich Americans substantially less rich, and so it probably wouldn't happen even if the French navy shelled New York.
the philosophically zen but emotionally void chen-xi wang, and the ruthless fire and brimstone of miriam godwinson were the most fun for me to emulate. of course, the cyber hippie (diedre skye) was another favorite.
Sheng-ji Yang is a paranoid reactionary fool intent on establishing a repressive dictatorship and stifling all creativity, while Godwinson is simply a dangerous fundamentalist and a threat to all intellectual integrity and human progress upon Planet. Dierdre Skye is at least reasonable, and her Green policies combine well with our current research projects into the nature of the xenofungus; of course our interest is purely scientific, while hers seems rather emotional. Oh, but I should tell you that it is in fact true: she does dance naked through the trees. The nanomachinery lab at Zarya Sunrise recently developed a new type of microlens allowing the construction of invisibly small spy cameras. We've seeded them throughout the pine forests at Gaia's Landing, and we're negotiating with MorganNet to obtain a fair price for the movie rights...
Many thanks, but I'm thinking that perhaps you've confused Hugh Grant with Hugh Laurie, who's currently starring as Doctor Gregory House
In fact, rewatching the episode, it was actually Richard E. Grant I'd confused with Hugh Laurie. Probably because I'm accustomed to seeing Hugh Laurie with Rowan Atkinson. Too many Doctors, too many Hughs, too many Grants, and it'd been eight years since I'd seen the thing anyway...
... Uranium's not all that abundant, we've known that for years. But the breeder reactors they're building in India can convert thorium to fissile material as a byproduct of their operation. There's enough potential energy in the available thorium supply to run the planet for an awfully long time. Whether it's economical to do so at present is another matter, but for long-term security there's no better consumable.
The truth is a perfectly surveyed world is a damn good idea, it's only a bad idea when human beings are at the helm.
It's only a bad idea if there is a helm. If there's a camera in every room, if everyone can be watched at any time, and if anyone can tune in to any camera at will, that would be fair. If, however, there's a class of bosses who can watch anyone they please, while not being watched themselves, then you have tyranny.
So where's the manual that says how to subvert a 1984-style world back into something that free people would care to live in?
Well, I would link to it, but you can be disappeared now for possession of terrorist training materials, so that probably wouldn't be the wisest move...
Bombadil as a 'Maia gone native' is pretty close to my own view on the matter, but I'd like to expand on it a bit.
Bombadil isn't a Maia, strictly speaking - Maia is a caste of the Ainur of Valinor. He's probably of their kind, but would not have been part of their society. He was there in the Forest before the Elves reached Eriador, which means he wasn't in Valinor in the time of the Trees. He's not Aule, as has been suggested by some - the Elves knew Aule well, and Aule was in Valinor when the Elves of old met Iarwain ben-Adar.
My guess is that he's an outsider - a spirit not of the original group, but who entered Arda later, as did for example Tulkas and Ungoliant. He arrived in Middle-earth during the darkness after the fall of Almaren and had nothing to do with the Valar - hence his position outside their classification, and absence from most ancient Elven lore.
He's settled in this location, being very much a moss-gatherer, and I think the Old Forest has become Bombadil's Ring. Just as Morgoth dissipated his power and indeed his personal essence into gaining control over the matter of Arda at large and into his monstrous hordes, and Sauron concentrated his into the Ring, Bombadil has merged himself into the Old Forest. He does not leave the forest - indeed I would guess he cannot leave the forest, that he simply would not exist beyond its borders. He's a personification now of the wood and the water and the stone.
I'm not sure the world outside even exists as a reality for him - people wander through the Forest from time to time and tell him stories of it, that's all. Hence Elrond's fear that Bombadil simply would not understand the need of keeping the Ring safe - the terror of Sauron would be just another funny story to him, and he'd care little for the Ring.
As for his immunity to any effect of the Ring itself, that also makes sense. The Ring plays on the will to power. Bombadil has no interest whatever in the world outside his forest, and within his forest his power is already total. What has the Ring to offer him? Nothing he'd want.
Still, Sauron could probably have destroyed Bombadil, again as Elrond feared. Fling flame into the forest from far afield, fill the river with poisons. Blight the land and burn the Old Forest and you destroy Bombadil's Ring, and he falls just as Sauron did.
IMO, the flagship games still really sell a console. E.g. Wii and Zelda.
Zelda isn't what's selling Wii. It was once - on launch night I and all the other fanboys in the queue were after that game - but not now. What's driving the insatiable demand for Wii now is Wii Sports. Those fanboys have gone home and played Zelda, but their families and friends have had a go on Tennis or Bowling and they want that for themselves. It's them who are now buying up all the Wiis that Nintendo can produce - the Zelda fans preordered months ahead of time, or just got it on Gamecube.
I think it saved them. The N64 did quite poorly, the Gamecube even worse, but for what seemed like two years the top two bestselling games every single week were Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue. Monochrome games on an antique console that made Nintendo fabulous amounts of money while Sony were owning the home console market.
a) Rights the family just gave away gratis, because they love movie projects so much.
Rights the old man sold decades ago for a relative pittance, back when the books were a niche nerdy thing, before the hippies caught onto them and inflicted a generation of kids called things like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild on the world...
According to 'the experts' it features several large battle scenes, and "would make a good movie".
The tale of Turin Turambar certainly would. Nargothrond ruined, dragonfire and orcs all around, our hero living in the wild as a bandit hunting monsters, reclaims birthright, slays dragon, discovers appalling truth, kills self... that would rule.
Slashdot Mirror
This is because of Jail. The most likely number to roll on two dice is 7, and 7 squares back from Park Lane is 'Go to Jail'. So, you go to Jail and on coming out you're very likely to land on Bow Street, Vine Street or Marlborough Street. You can get the oranges very cheaply in most games, and charge a fortune to the guy who's desperate to get both Park Lane and Mayfair.
Monopoly's a game that often rewards the bold. For instance, your archrival has landed on Free Parking (where he receives no reward and incurs no penalty, and moves on as normal on his next turn, just as it says in the rules). You realise that as things stand he has more room to build than you do, and in the long term you will lose, so on your turn you mortgage everything you can to raise the money to build Hotels on Piccadilly, Leicester Square and Coventry Street. If he lands on one of them - and the odds are good, because you know the probability distribution for two dice - then you are well set to turn the game around. If he does not then you're doomed, but then you were probably doomed anyway...
... Why not try a nice game of Draughts?
I've only ever played one Avalon Hill game. I used to play Acquire quite a lot with my dad when I was, oh, ten or eleven or so. I think I won once.
Don't know if they've changed the rules for Disney Monopoly - usually variants just change street names and graphic design - but Monopoly should never take days, unless players are deliberately buying property from each other at inflated prices to prevent anyone going out of the game. Or unless people are refusing to trade cards so that nobody can form a complete colour group and build houses, in which case it's stalemate and you might as well call a draw.
After an hour or two of Monopoly the board should be full of houses. At that point the game ends fast; the ASSESSED FOR STREET REPAIRS and MAKE GENERAL REPAIRS cards are ruinously expensive to a big landlord. As a result, money comes out of the game a good deal faster than it comes into it from people passing GO. All those fees go to the Bank, leaving players with less and less money to pay the ever-larger rents, and the game must end soon.
You could, I suppose, invent a new game in which money did not ever leave the game and return to the Bank - perhaps you could put the money from fines and fees and so forth into some jackpot, and designate a square such that anybody landing there would collect all the wealth accumulated there - but that game would last forever, become incredibly frustrating once everybody had so much money that they didn't care about landing on Mayfair, and would basically not be Monopoly.
"If only you could hear yourselves. 'Inalienable'. 'Human rights'."
Note for the record, Romulan ale not to be served at diplomatic functions...
Only because BMG says it doesn't grant the right. The EU says nothing on the matter. BMG can say 'We sell this licence which is good for all EU territories. In Germany we sell it at $0.40. In France we sell it at $0.30.' That would be legal. Of course savvy Germans would then buy the cheaper French licences, which is the point of having the single market and the single currency.
If the licence sold in France is not valid in Germany, that is entirely the record company's doing. Hence this investigation into these companies, and Apple for contributory infringement of the EU citizens' rights.
I imagine they're allowed to charge whatever they like wherever they like. They're just not allowed, if they do so, to claim that the cheap North Dakota licence is only valid in North Dakota, and so use the law to prevent Californian people buying it in preference to the expensive California licence.
What is likely to be illegal here is the record company's action in issuing such restrictive licences. Under the single market, a licence good in one member state should be good in all.
I see browsers and ISPs, but no search. Where in the name of all buggeration is Google?
Saw this play once, actually. Live-action, actors there in person on stage, you know the type. Had this Renaissance-era wizard and his daughter on this island with a monster and fairies and stuff, and a shipload of guys who end up there with them. Took me a while to realise it, but - total rip-off of Forbidden Planet! Amazed they got away with it really.
Then if at some time the US government wants to protect the businesses in Detroit, it just bans US banks from making payments to Japanese car manufacturers, and it's all fair?
And a battery life measured in seconds.
That will take until the day the money-men are no longer holding the reins of the warmongers. The EU is very, very, very rich. Declaring it part of the axis of evil would make a lot of very rich Americans substantially less rich, and so it probably wouldn't happen even if the French navy shelled New York.
Sheng-ji Yang is a paranoid reactionary fool intent on establishing a repressive dictatorship and stifling all creativity, while Godwinson is simply a dangerous fundamentalist and a threat to all intellectual integrity and human progress upon Planet. Dierdre Skye is at least reasonable, and her Green policies combine well with our current research projects into the nature of the xenofungus; of course our interest is purely scientific, while hers seems rather emotional. Oh, but I should tell you that it is in fact true: she does dance naked through the trees. The nanomachinery lab at Zarya Sunrise recently developed a new type of microlens allowing the construction of invisibly small spy cameras. We've seeded them throughout the pine forests at Gaia's Landing, and we're negotiating with MorganNet to obtain a fair price for the movie rights...
In fact, rewatching the episode, it was actually Richard E. Grant I'd confused with Hugh Laurie. Probably because I'm accustomed to seeing Hugh Laurie with Rowan Atkinson. Too many Doctors, too many Hughs, too many Grants, and it'd been eight years since I'd seen the thing anyway...
... Uranium's not all that abundant, we've known that for years. But the breeder reactors they're building in India can convert thorium to fissile material as a byproduct of their operation. There's enough potential energy in the available thorium supply to run the planet for an awfully long time. Whether it's economical to do so at present is another matter, but for long-term security there's no better consumable.
Yes, yes it is. They're very keen on the Wii in Japan.
It's only a bad idea if there is a helm. If there's a camera in every room, if everyone can be watched at any time, and if anyone can tune in to any camera at will, that would be fair. If, however, there's a class of bosses who can watch anyone they please, while not being watched themselves, then you have tyranny.
Well, I would link to it, but you can be disappeared now for possession of terrorist training materials, so that probably wouldn't be the wisest move...
Bombadil isn't a Maia, strictly speaking - Maia is a caste of the Ainur of Valinor. He's probably of their kind, but would not have been part of their society. He was there in the Forest before the Elves reached Eriador, which means he wasn't in Valinor in the time of the Trees. He's not Aule, as has been suggested by some - the Elves knew Aule well, and Aule was in Valinor when the Elves of old met Iarwain ben-Adar.
My guess is that he's an outsider - a spirit not of the original group, but who entered Arda later, as did for example Tulkas and Ungoliant. He arrived in Middle-earth during the darkness after the fall of Almaren and had nothing to do with the Valar - hence his position outside their classification, and absence from most ancient Elven lore.
He's settled in this location, being very much a moss-gatherer, and I think the Old Forest has become Bombadil's Ring. Just as Morgoth dissipated his power and indeed his personal essence into gaining control over the matter of Arda at large and into his monstrous hordes, and Sauron concentrated his into the Ring, Bombadil has merged himself into the Old Forest. He does not leave the forest - indeed I would guess he cannot leave the forest, that he simply would not exist beyond its borders. He's a personification now of the wood and the water and the stone.
I'm not sure the world outside even exists as a reality for him - people wander through the Forest from time to time and tell him stories of it, that's all. Hence Elrond's fear that Bombadil simply would not understand the need of keeping the Ring safe - the terror of Sauron would be just another funny story to him, and he'd care little for the Ring.
As for his immunity to any effect of the Ring itself, that also makes sense. The Ring plays on the will to power. Bombadil has no interest whatever in the world outside his forest, and within his forest his power is already total. What has the Ring to offer him? Nothing he'd want.
Still, Sauron could probably have destroyed Bombadil, again as Elrond feared. Fling flame into the forest from far afield, fill the river with poisons. Blight the land and burn the Old Forest and you destroy Bombadil's Ring, and he falls just as Sauron did.
Zelda isn't what's selling Wii. It was once - on launch night I and all the other fanboys in the queue were after that game - but not now. What's driving the insatiable demand for Wii now is Wii Sports. Those fanboys have gone home and played Zelda, but their families and friends have had a go on Tennis or Bowling and they want that for themselves. It's them who are now buying up all the Wiis that Nintendo can produce - the Zelda fans preordered months ahead of time, or just got it on Gamecube.
I think it saved them. The N64 did quite poorly, the Gamecube even worse, but for what seemed like two years the top two bestselling games every single week were Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue. Monochrome games on an antique console that made Nintendo fabulous amounts of money while Sony were owning the home console market.
Rights the old man sold decades ago for a relative pittance, back when the books were a niche nerdy thing, before the hippies caught onto them and inflicted a generation of kids called things like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild on the world...
The tale of Turin Turambar certainly would. Nargothrond ruined, dragonfire and orcs all around, our hero living in the wild as a bandit hunting monsters, reclaims birthright, slays dragon, discovers appalling truth, kills self... that would rule.