If I remember aright, when Kennedy declared the intention to go to the Moon, the USA had fifteen minutes of manned spaceflight experience, from a SpaceShipOne-style suborbital hop. That was in 1961. Eight years later, Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquillity.
The Indians have till 2020? That's fourteen years. It can be done. I doubt it will be done, unless the Indian government is really serious about this, but it's definitely not out of the question.
Advantage would accrue to India, as well. Global prestige, and the perception of their country as technologically sophisticated. People would take homegrown Indian technology more seriously. That could boost the economy a hell of a lot.
Hypothetical Numbers: Suppose 1/2 the population doesn't care, but votes anyway, by flipping a coin for rep or dem. Now, of the remaining half, who do care, suppose that just under one third will vote rep, just under one third dem, and just over one third will vote for the independent candidate. If everyone who doesn't care stayed home, the independent would have a plurality.
Quite so. If there are people who care so little about the way the country is run that they cannot be bothered to take the time to inform themselves and go to vote, well, I personally would prefer it if they didn't. Every random vote cast by these idiots on the basis of I Like His Hair, or He Comes Across Well On The TV, or My Witch-Doctor Told Me To, dilutes the votes of the rest of us. If 50% of the electorate stays home, great! That's doubled the significance of my vote, right there!
I can think of at least 20 more important issues that would decide how I would vote today before video games comes into play.
There are people who vote based on something they do for one hour a week. Most of us here spend a lot more of our lives gaming than anyone not a priest does at church. Why shouldn't we vote against politicians who want to restrict our freedom to play what the hell we like?
Re:AIDS Hoax-Ten reasons HIV is not the cause of A
on
AIDS Can Fight AIDS
·
· Score: 1
how to heal themselves
By having a strong immune response to infection.
and what makes them sick...
Not having a strong immune response to infection, possibly because all the T cells have been wiped out by a virus.
I have a problem with a theory like this. If all that ice (a kilometer of it?) could have melted as recently as 2,000 years ago, how did all of our planet's endlessly diverse planet life grow and propagate globally in such a short time period?
It melted in 2,000 years, not 2,000 years ago.
Never mind the trees. 2,000 years ago was the year 6 AD. Augustus Caesar is emperor in Rome. If I recall my history aright, he's not sitting on top of a kilometer-thick glacier.
... the Nautilus Pirates hold the UN presidency at the moment, and they always veto any proposals to Launch Solar Shade. You'd think they wanted the sea levels to rise dramatically...
I thought the joke with Borat was that the British believe all Americans to be ignorant rednecks. When the British make fun of themselves, they're funny. When they make fun of us, they quickly become annoying.
He's been doing Borat in the UK for years now. But the movie has to be in America. It's where the money is to get movies made, and it's where there are still people who won't take one look at him, say 'Hang on, aren't you the guy who did Ali G?' and tell him to piss off. Cohen's too famous here now.
I've seen quite a few Ali G episodes and most of the pre-release hype for Borat, and it sort of strikes me that Cohen's comedy is pure anti-muslim bigotry.
In other news today, Swift advocated cannibalism as a solution to poverty in Ireland. What a monster.
Seriously, you're missing the point here entirely. The way Ali G and Borat work is by simultaneously making fun of the ignorant bigotry of the characters themselves, and also taking advantage of liberal tolerance of them. Thus Ali G is in the first place a straightforward parody of middle-class white English kids who ape American gangsta culture, but is also a vehicle by which Cohen can entrap public figures into making fools of themselves: they try to seem tolerant and accepting of what they take for a representative of Contemporary Youth Culture, and end up walking straight into it.
Unfortunately, Ali G ended up being adopted as an icon by middle-class white English kids who ape American gangsta culture and who didn't quite realise that half the joke was on them. Thus, after selling out spectacularly and milking the character for all he was worth, it was time to bring Borat to the fore.
Borat is a more sophisticated caricature than Ali G. He's a mish-mash of Slavic and Eastern European stereotypes, and bear in mind that what with the Iron Curtain and all, stereotypes about Eastern Europe are decades out of date, going back to before the Holocaust made anti-Semitism unspeakable. Stereotypes rooted in a nasty past of peasants and pogroms. Borat is a fossil out of this past. In the name of tolerance to a different culture, the people Borat meets will bend over backwards not to give offence, and then the fun lies in finding out just how far the faux-Kazakh guy can go and get away with it, and how hypocritical we're prepared to be in tolerating Borat's intolerance. And, for that matter, in finding out just how different to our ignorant peasant forebears we Western urban sophisticates really are, beneath the surface.
The only concern I really have is about how it all reflects on Kazakhstan itself. From what I've heard, though, they've caught on that the joke's not on them at all, that it's rather a good joke, and that there's no such thing as bad publicity. At least now we've heard of Kazakhstan...
I haven't seen Borat's film - I'll be seeing it on Friday, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I was never inclined to see the Ali G film, but Borat I think has a lot more potential.
See the new Zelda on the Wii as a perfect example. I'm left handed...they just totally lost me as a customer.
Even I'm mildly annoyed. I'm right handed, but Link isn't. Even in the NES original, while facing in three of four directions he was left handed. And the manual to Zelda II specifically said that he holds the sword in his left hand.
I'd have put up with holding the wiimote in the wrong hand - it's only a matter of training, dammit! - if it meant playing the game the way Din, Farore and Nayru intended!
I'll take going to work while it's still dark over going home at dusk.
Seriously?
Either way you've got to drive in the dark, whether it's in the morning or in the evening. As it stands, I'm driving to work in the daylight, and driving home in the dark. Would I mind doing it the other way round? Not really. But I've no problem with the current arrangement either.
What I have a problem with is not the driving in the dark. It's getting up beforehand. I just can't get up before sunrise. It's not natural. For a few weeks around Christmas I have to force myself to do it, and I hate it hate it hate it. I'll gladly trade that hour of light in the evening for one in the morning, if it means I'm getting up with the sun the way a million years of evolution built me to do.
... not because I expect a fully realized system of high-school popularity politics, but because I want to play Skool Daze 2006 in glorious 3D. So far as I've heard the setting is very much a Beano Annual kind of thing. Elements of Winker Watson, elements of the Bash Street Kids. All done with a GTA engine. Sounds fantastic.
I am sick to the back teeth of Animal Crossing: Wild World.
It's getting old for me too. I mean, how many times can you WOW, TURNIP PRICE IS LIKE 478 BELLS! WOOT! BIGGER HOUSE HERE I COME!...
Erm, as I was saying... how many times can you go digging for HOLY CRAP COOL I'VE FINISHED MY STEGOSAURUS!
No, sorry, what was it... Ah yes. I'm sick to death of that evil bloody kitsune Crazy Redd and his forged artwork. Surely there should be another way of obtaining material for the museum's gallery. That's why I'm cross at Animal Crossing. Yep.
Oh, and I got called a redneck by the fashion zombie giraffe thing last week. That didn't please me.
And Firefox's inbuilt spellchecker doesn't know 'kitsune'. Silly thing.
An offshoot of the Scientology cult known as The Landmark Forum is using the DMCA against YouTube, Google and The Internet Archive because of a scathing French documentary about Landmark being shared on those sites.
On what basis? They aren't the copyright owner, nor are they the appointed representatives of the copyright owner. Until and unless the French documentary makers complain, what case do they have?
Oh I don't know. Maybe the millions of people who went and downloaded Firefox did it to...be more secure?
Sure. But that means that every Windows user who cares enough about their security and browsing experience to download and install a browser already did so, and they're now happily running Firefox or Opera. So, we ask again: if someone's STILL running IE6, why would they now go out of their way to download IE7?
It was true, perhaps even as little as 10 years ago, but now it's a bit misleading [...] men in plastic orange suits slapping people (Tango adverts) really undermine any idea that the US is far behind
I'm confused here. You've Been Tangoed was fifteen years ago. I was at primary school at the time. Everyone came in the day after that ad first aired and started slapping people in the face at random...
I only got to see the Virtual Console list after I'd posted; page wasn't loading for a while there. Original Megadrive games on the new Nintendo machine. Wow. If you'd told me back in 1992 that someday I'd sit down to play Sonic The Hedgehog on the new Nintendo console, I'd have laughed in your face...
Will it be possible to download an old game for free if you already have the physical cartridge?
No. Too easy to fake. Unless there was a system where you traded in your cartridge for the equivalent in Wii points - which wouldn't work, since there's no profit in it for Nintendo, and if anyone wants my gold NES Legend Of Zelda cartridge the phrase 'cold dead hands' will become significant to them.
I'm wondering how long it is before this is hacked, myself. Many, many people have gigabytes of roms from the long years of PC emulation. Set up a wireless router to spoof addresses so that Wii thinks it's connected to Nintendo when actually it's connected to your PC, and feed the thing your old downloaded roms. I'd guess Nintendo are doing some kind of crypto signing to prevent this attack, though.
10 Every month?? That's pretty aggressive - but then again how many games have they produced for NES, SNES, 64, etc? A few thousand im sure.
Remember, it needn't be only Nintendo games either. Go to third parties and say to them 'how would you like some free money?' They'll put their back catalogues up for download, no problem, because it costs them nothing to do it and they stand to get some money.
At a rate of ten a month, Nintendo will probably run out of NES, SNES and N64 ROMs some time around, oh... 2060. Assuming they only put up games that were actually worth playing, there'll still be enough to last the reasonable lifetime of the Wii.
... BAD! Well, except that they're almost certainly holding it back to give everyone time to finish Twilight Princess. They'll sell more that way.
Of the launch titles: OK, I call Twilight Princess, maybe Excitetruck, Wii Play (mainly for Duck Hunt 2 and the extra wiimote), Budokai Tenkaichi 2, Red Steel. Actually, cancel that. Just Twilight Princess. I'll look into buying another game some time around, oh... probably April.
How come there are no cheap Lego clones coming out of Asia? Is there a patent that is still active after all these years?
There are. They're never as good, though. I remember we had some Megabloks bricks once. The plastic's not quite the same and the moulding isn't as consistent - either they stick together too hard and can't be got apart, or they don't stick at all. They're decent enough as a cheap way to bulk out your collection of 2x4 Plain Rectangular Bricks, but can't be relied upon in the same way.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather have a Wii.
the Zune MP3 player is cancelled for everyone outside the US
I'd rather have an iPod (if I wasn't perfectly happy with my Rockbox'd iRiver).
Vista won't be out for home users before the big day
I'd rather have a lobotomy.
and even Final Fantasy XII won't reach Europe in time.
Never mind that, when's Final Fantasy III coming out for DS?
The Indians have till 2020? That's fourteen years. It can be done. I doubt it will be done, unless the Indian government is really serious about this, but it's definitely not out of the question.
Advantage would accrue to India, as well. Global prestige, and the perception of their country as technologically sophisticated. People would take homegrown Indian technology more seriously. That could boost the economy a hell of a lot.
Quite so. If there are people who care so little about the way the country is run that they cannot be bothered to take the time to inform themselves and go to vote, well, I personally would prefer it if they didn't. Every random vote cast by these idiots on the basis of I Like His Hair, or He Comes Across Well On The TV, or My Witch-Doctor Told Me To, dilutes the votes of the rest of us. If 50% of the electorate stays home, great! That's doubled the significance of my vote, right there!
There are people who vote based on something they do for one hour a week. Most of us here spend a lot more of our lives gaming than anyone not a priest does at church. Why shouldn't we vote against politicians who want to restrict our freedom to play what the hell we like?
By having a strong immune response to infection.
and what makes them sick...
Not having a strong immune response to infection, possibly because all the T cells have been wiped out by a virus.
It melted in 2,000 years, not 2,000 years ago.
Never mind the trees. 2,000 years ago was the year 6 AD. Augustus Caesar is emperor in Rome. If I recall my history aright, he's not sitting on top of a kilometer-thick glacier.
... the Nautilus Pirates hold the UN presidency at the moment, and they always veto any proposals to Launch Solar Shade. You'd think they wanted the sea levels to rise dramatically...
Usually the best kind.
He's been doing Borat in the UK for years now. But the movie has to be in America. It's where the money is to get movies made, and it's where there are still people who won't take one look at him, say 'Hang on, aren't you the guy who did Ali G?' and tell him to piss off. Cohen's too famous here now.
In other news today, Swift advocated cannibalism as a solution to poverty in Ireland. What a monster.
Seriously, you're missing the point here entirely. The way Ali G and Borat work is by simultaneously making fun of the ignorant bigotry of the characters themselves, and also taking advantage of liberal tolerance of them. Thus Ali G is in the first place a straightforward parody of middle-class white English kids who ape American gangsta culture, but is also a vehicle by which Cohen can entrap public figures into making fools of themselves: they try to seem tolerant and accepting of what they take for a representative of Contemporary Youth Culture, and end up walking straight into it.
Unfortunately, Ali G ended up being adopted as an icon by middle-class white English kids who ape American gangsta culture and who didn't quite realise that half the joke was on them. Thus, after selling out spectacularly and milking the character for all he was worth, it was time to bring Borat to the fore.
Borat is a more sophisticated caricature than Ali G. He's a mish-mash of Slavic and Eastern European stereotypes, and bear in mind that what with the Iron Curtain and all, stereotypes about Eastern Europe are decades out of date, going back to before the Holocaust made anti-Semitism unspeakable. Stereotypes rooted in a nasty past of peasants and pogroms. Borat is a fossil out of this past. In the name of tolerance to a different culture, the people Borat meets will bend over backwards not to give offence, and then the fun lies in finding out just how far the faux-Kazakh guy can go and get away with it, and how hypocritical we're prepared to be in tolerating Borat's intolerance. And, for that matter, in finding out just how different to our ignorant peasant forebears we Western urban sophisticates really are, beneath the surface.
The only concern I really have is about how it all reflects on Kazakhstan itself. From what I've heard, though, they've caught on that the joke's not on them at all, that it's rather a good joke, and that there's no such thing as bad publicity. At least now we've heard of Kazakhstan...
I haven't seen Borat's film - I'll be seeing it on Friday, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I was never inclined to see the Ali G film, but Borat I think has a lot more potential.
Giant. Green. Clockwork. Shoe.
Even I'm mildly annoyed. I'm right handed, but Link isn't. Even in the NES original, while facing in three of four directions he was left handed. And the manual to Zelda II specifically said that he holds the sword in his left hand.
I'd have put up with holding the wiimote in the wrong hand - it's only a matter of training, dammit! - if it meant playing the game the way Din, Farore and Nayru intended!
Seriously?
Either way you've got to drive in the dark, whether it's in the morning or in the evening. As it stands, I'm driving to work in the daylight, and driving home in the dark. Would I mind doing it the other way round? Not really. But I've no problem with the current arrangement either.
What I have a problem with is not the driving in the dark. It's getting up beforehand. I just can't get up before sunrise. It's not natural. For a few weeks around Christmas I have to force myself to do it, and I hate it hate it hate it. I'll gladly trade that hour of light in the evening for one in the morning, if it means I'm getting up with the sun the way a million years of evolution built me to do.
... not because I expect a fully realized system of high-school popularity politics, but because I want to play Skool Daze 2006 in glorious 3D. So far as I've heard the setting is very much a Beano Annual kind of thing. Elements of Winker Watson, elements of the Bash Street Kids. All done with a GTA engine. Sounds fantastic.
It's getting old for me too. I mean, how many times can you WOW, TURNIP PRICE IS LIKE 478 BELLS! WOOT! BIGGER HOUSE HERE I COME!...
Erm, as I was saying... how many times can you go digging for HOLY CRAP COOL I'VE FINISHED MY STEGOSAURUS!
No, sorry, what was it... Ah yes. I'm sick to death of that evil bloody kitsune Crazy Redd and his forged artwork. Surely there should be another way of obtaining material for the museum's gallery. That's why I'm cross at Animal Crossing. Yep.
Oh, and I got called a redneck by the fashion zombie giraffe thing last week. That didn't please me.
And Firefox's inbuilt spellchecker doesn't know 'kitsune'. Silly thing.
Not quite, but this is the first time they've actually liked us. I mean, given what Mr Gates used to think about computer hobbyists.
On what basis? They aren't the copyright owner, nor are they the appointed representatives of the copyright owner. Until and unless the French documentary makers complain, what case do they have?
Sure. But that means that every Windows user who cares enough about their security and browsing experience to download and install a browser already did so, and they're now happily running Firefox or Opera. So, we ask again: if someone's STILL running IE6, why would they now go out of their way to download IE7?
I'm confused here. You've Been Tangoed was fifteen years ago. I was at primary school at the time. Everyone came in the day after that ad first aired and started slapping people in the face at random...
I only got to see the Virtual Console list after I'd posted; page wasn't loading for a while there. Original Megadrive games on the new Nintendo machine. Wow. If you'd told me back in 1992 that someday I'd sit down to play Sonic The Hedgehog on the new Nintendo console, I'd have laughed in your face...
No. Too easy to fake. Unless there was a system where you traded in your cartridge for the equivalent in Wii points - which wouldn't work, since there's no profit in it for Nintendo, and if anyone wants my gold NES Legend Of Zelda cartridge the phrase 'cold dead hands' will become significant to them.
I'm wondering how long it is before this is hacked, myself. Many, many people have gigabytes of roms from the long years of PC emulation. Set up a wireless router to spoof addresses so that Wii thinks it's connected to Nintendo when actually it's connected to your PC, and feed the thing your old downloaded roms. I'd guess Nintendo are doing some kind of crypto signing to prevent this attack, though.
Remember, it needn't be only Nintendo games either. Go to third parties and say to them 'how would you like some free money?' They'll put their back catalogues up for download, no problem, because it costs them nothing to do it and they stand to get some money.
At a rate of ten a month, Nintendo will probably run out of NES, SNES and N64 ROMs some time around, oh... 2060. Assuming they only put up games that were actually worth playing, there'll still be enough to last the reasonable lifetime of the Wii.
Of the launch titles: OK, I call Twilight Princess, maybe Excitetruck, Wii Play (mainly for Duck Hunt 2 and the extra wiimote), Budokai Tenkaichi 2, Red Steel. Actually, cancel that. Just Twilight Princess. I'll look into buying another game some time around, oh... probably April.
There are. They're never as good, though. I remember we had some Megabloks bricks once. The plastic's not quite the same and the moulding isn't as consistent - either they stick together too hard and can't be got apart, or they don't stick at all. They're decent enough as a cheap way to bulk out your collection of 2x4 Plain Rectangular Bricks, but can't be relied upon in the same way.
I had a mental image here of five ninja babies with swords standing in the middle of a ruined town on top of a heap of thousands of corpses.