Pah. Real Daleks evolved from Kaleds. HU-MANS ARE UN-WOR-THY TO BE DA-LEKS!
And don't even get me started on Cybermen. THEY evolved from humans (though there seems to be some confusion as to exactly which twin-planet-of-Earth they were actually from.) AND THEY ARE BET-TER ON-LY AT DY-ING!
I'm not talking "Sabertooth tigers changed into the tigers we have today". That's the same species, with some mods over the years.
Actually, it isn't. Sabretooths were not tigers. They were cats all right, but not tigers; the name has fallen into disuse, and you might hear 'sabretooth', 'sabretooth cat' or 'smilodon', which last one I find quite delightful.
To properly answer your question, however, please clearly define 'species' and what the dividing line between the two is. I believe biologists tend to favour 'if two animals can breed together to produce fertile offspring, they're the same species'. In which case may I present to you a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua, both dogs, descended from the grey wolf, and invite you to speculate on how they might go about mating?
This line of thought reminded me of a post I made a while back. I got quite condemnatory about the biblical inerrantists.
To my mind, they're as much idolaters as any Bronze Age primitive bowing before a golden statue. Their idol isn't a graven image in stone or metal, but in paper and ink, and no less false for it. They worship the Bible, not God.
I buy into what you're saying, but it seems to mean there must be fewer and fewer nitches for a new species to develop and become sucessful. Any intermediate species would not be as good at doing whatever (hunting, gathering, building shelter, whatever) as the established species, and would die out. Then evolution should essentialy stop at some point. Is that what happens?
Only if the environment stays the same. Ice ages come and go, and mammoths evolve and then die out. Continents drift, and what was once a unified population of species A diverges on separate landmasses into species B and C. Deserts become forests, forests become plains. Sea levels drop and suddenly life on the mainland has to compete with the dangerous killer species that used to be trapped on the island. Species have to keep adapting to the changing environment.
If the environment stays the same for a long time, though, then a species can go unchanged for millions of years. If what it has works well, why change? Some creatures - like crocodiles and sharks - are pretty much the same today as they were when they used to compete with dinosaurs. Their lifestyles haven't changed much, so on the whole they've just varied in size.
As I understand it (IANABiologist) what really gives new ideas their chance is a mass extinction. The extinction of the dinosaurs (probably a result of a bloody great meteor) gave mammals their chance to fill the vacant niches. Similar wipeouts during the time of the dinosaurs wiped out the likes of Allosaurus and Stegosaurus and left room for T. Rex and Triceratops. Suddenly the competition is dead, and there's a new opportunity for life to exploit.
I find the lack of 'intermediate' species, (like fish who are starting to grow legs, or whatever) difficult for me to accept. I'm asking myself why these species are not common in nature. Does that mean I cannot accept scientific understanding, or does it mean I'm observent enough to have more questions?
Probably means you've misunderstood the theory. Oh, and overlooked the amphibians, too.
Suppose there's a world in which there are fish in the sea but no vertebrates on land (the insects got there millions of years earlier, though). A fish moving towards the amphibian lifestyle has competition in the sea, but no competition on land and if it plays its cards right it can flourish. In time some of its descendants might come to live entirely on land.
Fast forward half a billion years. Now land and sea are both well stocked with life adapted to all available niches. What role now for a fish trying to make a living on the shore? Not much. Seagull bait. Between the well-adapted fishes still in the sea and the well-adapted animals on land, the intermediate has no niche.
Intermediate forms, in general, are dead. This is why so many people are out in the world digging for fossils. You wouldn't expect to see a half-fish-half-mammal in the world today, but somewhere in the past you might hope to dig up a fossil of one of the earliest vertebrates to settle on land.
I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"
I'm also told by evolutionists that Americans descended from the English. And yet here we are, fifty million of us. Shouldn't we all be Americans by now?
As much sense as the theory of evolution may make, it really is important to remember that it is still a theory, and a theory in the Oxford Dictionary meaning ("a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something"). It hasn't actually been proven
So is, and neither has, the theory that the Earth is roughly spherical and orbits the Sun once a year.
But, FWIW, that was my first since the NES:-) I've been PC-only since Civilization, and Nintendo have only now lured me back. Twilight Princess, oh GOD...
... suppose I have a safe in my house. In the safe are my secrets, written on paper. The safe is made of unobtainium and is impossible to force short of a nuclear strike. Now the police arrive with a warrant to search my house, and, on finding the safe, demand that I open it so that they might search inside it. I refuse to do so.
Certainly I would expect to get into a good deal of legal trouble as a result.
Now, instead of writing my secrets on paper and storing them in a safe, I write them on disk and encrypt them strongly. When the police arrive with their search warrant, why shouldn't I be obliged to decrypt the contents of my disks, just as much as I would be obliged to open my safe?
There's plenty else in the RIP Act to despise, and the implementation is bad throughout, but the principle isn't quite as appalling as it seems.
DBZ games are bloody awful, unless you're a fan of the series, in which case sometimes they're great.
I recall discovering the Yamucha vs Vegeta hidden fight in Budokai 3 a while back. It was the last time I played it, Budokai Tenkaichi came out a week later.
The fighting mechanism in Budokai 3 is fairly clumsy, and most moves are essentially different graphics on the same few button combinations. As a fighting game, it sucks. But as a Dragonball Z simulation it's perfect.
The scenario was a grudge match, presumably over Buruma: Yamucha had challenged Vegeta at the Tenkaichi Budokai. Everyone thought it was suicide. In he goes anyway. Now, it seems the AI is programmed, to some extent, to roleplay. Vegeta seemed almost to be holding back. I pummelled him damn hard, but of course Yamucha against the Saiyajin prince doesn't do much damage. Still, he was getting worn down very, very slowly, and not really landing anything on me... YES! I'm WINNING! HA! Not so hard after all, eh, Vegeta?
Ah, but he isn't using his full power yet!
* whack! * Vegeta connects with a powerful blow, and gets the ki together and the breathing space to become a Super Saiyajin. Oh shit. Next move, up in the air: BIGGGGGU BAAAAANNNNNGGGGU ATTTTTAAAAAAAKKKKKKKU! Ow. Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow. Pain.
Down comes Vegeta to finish me off. Edge of the arena. Doomed. Wait... hang on... left over from when I fought Dr Gero, don't I still have?... AH! Last chance. Dodge, back off, Senzu bean! Full health!
Cue another minute or two of desperate melee brawling, and somehow I manage to finally kick Vegeta out of the arena.
Magnificent. True Dragonball Z. Long, pointless, drawn out to incredible length. Halfway through it turns out one combatant wasn't using full power and he goes Super Saiyan. Flashy spectacular special move. Further brawling. Other combatant pulls Senzu bean out of ass and is restored to full health. Even more brawling. Eventual victory for our hero.
But if you don't like DBZ for itself, you'll undoubtedly hate the games.
As for Budokai Tenkaichi 2: I'm kind of hoping they'll use the Wiimote creatively. Trunks' sword is obvious, but I'm really hoping they implement some of the special moves as gestures. I want to stand in front of the TV, Wiimote in hand, and perform the hand movements for a Makankosappo.
Oh, and the possibilities for multiplayer are incredible. Fusion Dance, anyone?
I keep meaning to buy Supersonic Warriors 2 for the DS. I wonder if it uses the microphone? Perhaps you do double damage if you shout 'Ka... me... ha... me... HAAAA!' along with the game?
As a white male from the UK... How many terrorist attacks have there been where a white / christian person was involed? 0 (Zero)
You're from the UK and you say this? Wow. I'd understand if you were an American, but seriously, you should know better. I have three words for you. No, in fact just three letters. Type them into Google if you're truly so monumentally ignorant.
But I kinda like unique stuff like using VBA funcions in Queries - it's horrendously slow, but, actually fun knowing you can write a query that can do anything.
I hate myself every time I do that. Filthy betrayal of all I claim to stand for. But I keep on doing it.
(it's dangerous, Access love requerying to refresh the screen).
Oh hell yeah. Scrolling up and down the query output window when you've created some hybrid SQL / VBA atrocity can be so very much fun:-)
The summary says "The console has taken just ten months to sell 20 Million units", but it should be "20 months to sell 10 million units." The DS was released in Nov. 2004.
Might it refer to the DS Lite? Ten months sounds about right for the timescale on which that's been available in Japan, and from what I hear they've been unable to keep them in the shops at all...
Of course not. Banks are very insistent that their ATMs report withdrawals accurately. Money is important. Votes, though... I mean, what's the worst that can happen if you miscount votes slightly? You'd only end up with Kodos instead.
Did Americans actually build that? Or did Americans define the basic protocols and build a barebones network, and then let anyone who wanted to take it from there?
Because, and I realise this assumes you read the article, the whole point here is that the French have built a network over there that pisses all over what's available to the Americans. The parts of the Internet built by the French are, apparently, superior to what the Americans have.
Still, don't fret about it. It's just like how England invented football, and now someone else is better at it. And rugby. And cricket. And mercantile imperialism...
Retailers not 17 year olds, retailers won't stock it on the shelves if it's AO. Why?, because in some twisted marketing mindspace things nasty enough for mature teenagers only (graphic violence and aluded to sex) is credible, where-as adult only items (boobs) are the kiss of death to your credibility as a store.
Hmm. Interesting.
Very well... when the time comes to release GTA: TOKYO 2050 or whatever the next version might be, release the FULL-BLOODED version which Rockstar actually want to put out, and also the PARENT-SAFE version for Wal-Mart, in which we replace all the sex scenes with, oh, our hero dancing happily with Barney the Dinosaur or something like that.
Then put up the patch to convert PARENT-SAFE up to FULL-BLOODED on ftp. Like the Carmageddon guys did back in the day, when censors forced them to replace pedestrians with green-blooded zombies. Back then, every PC games magazine put the Carmageddon blood patch on every cover disk for months, for the benefit of non-wired readers. I'm quite sure the same would happen with GTA.
If you make it absolutely clear that the patch is AO content and will convert your wholesome, ultra-violent GTA game to a sexually deviant, ultra-violent GTA game, and that it's for those who accidentally bought the wrong version, you should be in the clear. There's no sex on the disk bought by the parents in the shop - so they knew what they were buying. There's plenty of sex on the later download, but hey - if you install AO patches, you expect AO content, right?
Parents thought they knew what they were buying for their kids, and may have been okay with the violence but not the sexuality of the "hot coffee" scene.
From esrb.org:
MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.
So, parents bought San Andreas for their 17-year-old kids, thinking it contained sexual content, but not graphic sexual content...? Or perhaps they bought it for their 12-year-old kids, not giving a damn what it contained as long as it shut the little sods up for a while? How many parents actually know what the little symbols on the game mean anyway?
Yeah. And I daresay controversy like this only makes kids want San Andreas all the more.
Why not just rate every damn thing 'AO'? Certainly in the UK, GTA and similar games are rated '18' just for the violence, so 'Hot Coffee' wasn't a problem. Had it been included fully in the game, it would still have been an '18'.
There's no way a GTA game should be aimed at children. What's the quarrel between an 'M', which I gather means '17', and an 'AO' which means '18'? Shame to lose out on the seventeen-year-old market, I suppose, but it would free Rockstar to put what the hell they liked into the game without worrying about whether some deleted scene will resurface and cause trouble.
Before anybody rings me up for inaccuracy... Let me correct that Hot Coffee deserves an AO rating, whlie GTA only wore an M.
Which, as I understand it, means San Andreas was originally rated suitable for people aged 17 and up, but with the restoration of the supposedly deleted scene it ought to have been rated only for people aged 18 and up.
Yeah. I can see why this is a major upset. I mean, with the enormous difference between a naive, callow youth of 17 able to deal only with baseball-bat beatings, drive-by shootings, murder by bludgeoning with a massive purple dildo and armed sieges with the cops... and a grizzled, seasoned old 18-year-old who is mature enough to view a sex scene.
On the other hand, if someone had proposed at that time that in 2006 a spacecraft would launch from the Ukraine called "Genesis 1", and that mission control in Las Vegas would lose power at the last minute and would have to run an extension cord to the restaurant across the street for power, people would have thought that was the stupidest, most implausible thing they had ever heard.
I'm not so sure. There's a fair amount of SF from way back that assumes that space travel will be much like everything else humans do: a half-assed job held together by optimism, hacking and duct tape.
A lesser-known novel by Clarke which I would love to see filmed was A Fall Of Moondust, which has aged remarkably well. A pleasure-boat skimming a lake of dessicated moondust is caught by a moonquake and sinks beneath the dust. The rest of the novel is dedicated to the survival of the people on board, the colossal media circus that springs up, and the ingenuity of the engineers and hackers putting together a rescue operation out of cannibalised parts on an absolute shoestring.
It's a novel that has such a strong ring of truth about it. That's the danger we'll face, and that's how we'll overcome it. A hostile universe, waiting to be challenged with hope, hacks and duct tape.
In Europe, if you are English, you are English. You can be black, white, yellow, green or have the colors of Manchester United tattoed on your face. There's no difference.
I'm not entirely certain of that.
British is a very inclusive term. The United Kingdom itself consists of three and six-thirtyseconds distinct countries. The British Empire covered... well, pretty much the world.
As a result any bugger can reasonably call himself British. English, Scottish, Canadian, Aussie, most varieties of African, Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi, anyone from most of the Middle East, pretty much all of the Caribbean... 'British' isn't something that's ethnically defined, or even very much culturally defined - it's an historical phenomenon.
English, on the other hand... there I'm not so sure. It seems a slightly more exclusive term to me. I don't think I'd call an Indian straight off the boat 'English', though I'd certainly be happy to accept that he was British. His grandson, however, who was born here and speaks with a thick Brummie accent? Definitely English.
Then again, just what 'English' means is something none of us are really sure of. Does English nationality even have any meaning beyond waving St George's flag while Wayne Rooney makes an arse of himself? Hell, I'm English and I don't even care that much how the England team do - my first loyalty's to Liverpool, and half of their players are Spanish...
The concept of a Licence to Use is firmly, unquestionably, established both in UK and US legal jurisdictions and is the basis on which ALL software is licensed including under the GPL.
Rubbish. The GPL is not a licence to use, it is a licence to modify, copy and redistribute.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted
And, later on in the same document,
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
So, you need no licence to USE the software, any more than you need a licence to read a book. You only need the licence to modify it or redistribute it, activities which would otherwise be illegal under copyright law. You may use the software even if you reject the GPL entirely.
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And don't even get me started on Cybermen. THEY evolved from humans (though there seems to be some confusion as to exactly which twin-planet-of-Earth they were actually from.) AND THEY ARE BET-TER ON-LY AT DY-ING!
Actually, it isn't. Sabretooths were not tigers. They were cats all right, but not tigers; the name has fallen into disuse, and you might hear 'sabretooth', 'sabretooth cat' or 'smilodon', which last one I find quite delightful.
To properly answer your question, however, please clearly define 'species' and what the dividing line between the two is. I believe biologists tend to favour 'if two animals can breed together to produce fertile offspring, they're the same species'. In which case may I present to you a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua, both dogs, descended from the grey wolf, and invite you to speculate on how they might go about mating?
To my mind, they're as much idolaters as any Bronze Age primitive bowing before a golden statue. Their idol isn't a graven image in stone or metal, but in paper and ink, and no less false for it. They worship the Bible, not God.
Ah, here it is: Biblical Literalism Is Idolatry.
Only if the environment stays the same. Ice ages come and go, and mammoths evolve and then die out. Continents drift, and what was once a unified population of species A diverges on separate landmasses into species B and C. Deserts become forests, forests become plains. Sea levels drop and suddenly life on the mainland has to compete with the dangerous killer species that used to be trapped on the island. Species have to keep adapting to the changing environment.
If the environment stays the same for a long time, though, then a species can go unchanged for millions of years. If what it has works well, why change? Some creatures - like crocodiles and sharks - are pretty much the same today as they were when they used to compete with dinosaurs. Their lifestyles haven't changed much, so on the whole they've just varied in size.
As I understand it (IANABiologist) what really gives new ideas their chance is a mass extinction. The extinction of the dinosaurs (probably a result of a bloody great meteor) gave mammals their chance to fill the vacant niches. Similar wipeouts during the time of the dinosaurs wiped out the likes of Allosaurus and Stegosaurus and left room for T. Rex and Triceratops. Suddenly the competition is dead, and there's a new opportunity for life to exploit.
Probably means you've misunderstood the theory. Oh, and overlooked the amphibians, too.
Suppose there's a world in which there are fish in the sea but no vertebrates on land (the insects got there millions of years earlier, though). A fish moving towards the amphibian lifestyle has competition in the sea, but no competition on land and if it plays its cards right it can flourish. In time some of its descendants might come to live entirely on land.
Fast forward half a billion years. Now land and sea are both well stocked with life adapted to all available niches. What role now for a fish trying to make a living on the shore? Not much. Seagull bait. Between the well-adapted fishes still in the sea and the well-adapted animals on land, the intermediate has no niche.
Intermediate forms, in general, are dead. This is why so many people are out in the world digging for fossils. You wouldn't expect to see a half-fish-half-mammal in the world today, but somewhere in the past you might hope to dig up a fossil of one of the earliest vertebrates to settle on land.
Evolution is a theory. Some basic damn education in school would help you, apparently.
The heliocentric model is also a theory. What did you think it was, a yak?
I'm also told by evolutionists that Americans descended from the English. And yet here we are, fifty million of us. Shouldn't we all be Americans by now?
So is, and neither has, the theory that the Earth is roughly spherical and orbits the Sun once a year.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, is that you?
But, FWIW, that was my first since the NES :-) I've been PC-only since Civilization, and Nintendo have only now lured me back. Twilight Princess, oh GOD...
Certainly I would expect to get into a good deal of legal trouble as a result.
Now, instead of writing my secrets on paper and storing them in a safe, I write them on disk and encrypt them strongly. When the police arrive with their search warrant, why shouldn't I be obliged to decrypt the contents of my disks, just as much as I would be obliged to open my safe?
There's plenty else in the RIP Act to despise, and the implementation is bad throughout, but the principle isn't quite as appalling as it seems.
DBZ games are bloody awful, unless you're a fan of the series, in which case sometimes they're great.
I recall discovering the Yamucha vs Vegeta hidden fight in Budokai 3 a while back. It was the last time I played it, Budokai Tenkaichi came out a week later.
The fighting mechanism in Budokai 3 is fairly clumsy, and most moves are essentially different graphics on the same few button combinations. As a fighting game, it sucks. But as a Dragonball Z simulation it's perfect.
The scenario was a grudge match, presumably over Buruma: Yamucha had challenged Vegeta at the Tenkaichi Budokai. Everyone thought it was suicide. In he goes anyway. Now, it seems the AI is programmed, to some extent, to roleplay. Vegeta seemed almost to be holding back. I pummelled him damn hard, but of course Yamucha against the Saiyajin prince doesn't do much damage. Still, he was getting worn down very, very slowly, and not really landing anything on me... YES! I'm WINNING! HA! Not so hard after all, eh, Vegeta?
Ah, but he isn't using his full power yet!
* whack! * Vegeta connects with a powerful blow, and gets the ki together and the breathing space to become a Super Saiyajin. Oh shit. Next move, up in the air: BIGGGGGU BAAAAANNNNNGGGGU ATTTTTAAAAAAAKKKKKKKU! Ow. Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow. Pain.
Down comes Vegeta to finish me off. Edge of the arena. Doomed. Wait... hang on... left over from when I fought Dr Gero, don't I still have?... AH! Last chance. Dodge, back off, Senzu bean! Full health!
Cue another minute or two of desperate melee brawling, and somehow I manage to finally kick Vegeta out of the arena.
Magnificent. True Dragonball Z. Long, pointless, drawn out to incredible length. Halfway through it turns out one combatant wasn't using full power and he goes Super Saiyan. Flashy spectacular special move. Further brawling. Other combatant pulls Senzu bean out of ass and is restored to full health. Even more brawling. Eventual victory for our hero.
But if you don't like DBZ for itself, you'll undoubtedly hate the games.
As for Budokai Tenkaichi 2: I'm kind of hoping they'll use the Wiimote creatively. Trunks' sword is obvious, but I'm really hoping they implement some of the special moves as gestures. I want to stand in front of the TV, Wiimote in hand, and perform the hand movements for a Makankosappo.
Oh, and the possibilities for multiplayer are incredible. Fusion Dance, anyone?
I keep meaning to buy Supersonic Warriors 2 for the DS. I wonder if it uses the microphone? Perhaps you do double damage if you shout 'Ka... me... ha... me... HAAAA!' along with the game?
You're from the UK and you say this? Wow. I'd understand if you were an American, but seriously, you should know better. I have three words for you. No, in fact just three letters. Type them into Google if you're truly so monumentally ignorant.
I.
R.
A.
I hate myself every time I do that. Filthy betrayal of all I claim to stand for. But I keep on doing it.
(it's dangerous, Access love requerying to refresh the screen).
Oh hell yeah. Scrolling up and down the query output window when you've created some hybrid SQL / VBA atrocity can be so very much fun :-)
Might it refer to the DS Lite? Ten months sounds about right for the timescale on which that's been available in Japan, and from what I hear they've been unable to keep them in the shops at all...
Of course not. Banks are very insistent that their ATMs report withdrawals accurately. Money is important. Votes, though... I mean, what's the worst that can happen if you miscount votes slightly? You'd only end up with Kodos instead.
Did Americans actually build that? Or did Americans define the basic protocols and build a barebones network, and then let anyone who wanted to take it from there?
Because, and I realise this assumes you read the article, the whole point here is that the French have built a network over there that pisses all over what's available to the Americans. The parts of the Internet built by the French are, apparently, superior to what the Americans have.
Still, don't fret about it. It's just like how England invented football, and now someone else is better at it. And rugby. And cricket. And mercantile imperialism...
Hmm. Interesting.
Very well... when the time comes to release GTA: TOKYO 2050 or whatever the next version might be, release the FULL-BLOODED version which Rockstar actually want to put out, and also the PARENT-SAFE version for Wal-Mart, in which we replace all the sex scenes with, oh, our hero dancing happily with Barney the Dinosaur or something like that.
Then put up the patch to convert PARENT-SAFE up to FULL-BLOODED on ftp. Like the Carmageddon guys did back in the day, when censors forced them to replace pedestrians with green-blooded zombies. Back then, every PC games magazine put the Carmageddon blood patch on every cover disk for months, for the benefit of non-wired readers. I'm quite sure the same would happen with GTA.
If you make it absolutely clear that the patch is AO content and will convert your wholesome, ultra-violent GTA game to a sexually deviant, ultra-violent GTA game, and that it's for those who accidentally bought the wrong version, you should be in the clear. There's no sex on the disk bought by the parents in the shop - so they knew what they were buying. There's plenty of sex on the later download, but hey - if you install AO patches, you expect AO content, right?
From esrb.org:
MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.
So, parents bought San Andreas for their 17-year-old kids, thinking it contained sexual content, but not graphic sexual content...? Or perhaps they bought it for their 12-year-old kids, not giving a damn what it contained as long as it shut the little sods up for a while? How many parents actually know what the little symbols on the game mean anyway?
Why not just rate every damn thing 'AO'? Certainly in the UK, GTA and similar games are rated '18' just for the violence, so 'Hot Coffee' wasn't a problem. Had it been included fully in the game, it would still have been an '18'.
There's no way a GTA game should be aimed at children. What's the quarrel between an 'M', which I gather means '17', and an 'AO' which means '18'? Shame to lose out on the seventeen-year-old market, I suppose, but it would free Rockstar to put what the hell they liked into the game without worrying about whether some deleted scene will resurface and cause trouble.
Which, as I understand it, means San Andreas was originally rated suitable for people aged 17 and up, but with the restoration of the supposedly deleted scene it ought to have been rated only for people aged 18 and up.
Yeah. I can see why this is a major upset. I mean, with the enormous difference between a naive, callow youth of 17 able to deal only with baseball-bat beatings, drive-by shootings, murder by bludgeoning with a massive purple dildo and armed sieges with the cops... and a grizzled, seasoned old 18-year-old who is mature enough to view a sex scene.
Heh heh. I got my DS when the Lite came out in .uk. I had a wonderful time with the voice recognition on the damn thing.
"Red. Yellow. Black. Red. Red. Yellow. Black. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. BLUE! BLUE! BLUUUUUE! BUH LUH OOH! BLUE! BLUE! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU AND FUCK DOCTOR FUCKING KAWASHIMA! Huh? Oh! Yellow. Red. Yellow..."
I'm not so sure. There's a fair amount of SF from way back that assumes that space travel will be much like everything else humans do: a half-assed job held together by optimism, hacking and duct tape.
A lesser-known novel by Clarke which I would love to see filmed was A Fall Of Moondust, which has aged remarkably well. A pleasure-boat skimming a lake of dessicated moondust is caught by a moonquake and sinks beneath the dust. The rest of the novel is dedicated to the survival of the people on board, the colossal media circus that springs up, and the ingenuity of the engineers and hackers putting together a rescue operation out of cannibalised parts on an absolute shoestring.
It's a novel that has such a strong ring of truth about it. That's the danger we'll face, and that's how we'll overcome it. A hostile universe, waiting to be challenged with hope, hacks and duct tape.
I'm not entirely certain of that.
British is a very inclusive term. The United Kingdom itself consists of three and six-thirtyseconds distinct countries. The British Empire covered... well, pretty much the world.
As a result any bugger can reasonably call himself British. English, Scottish, Canadian, Aussie, most varieties of African, Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi, anyone from most of the Middle East, pretty much all of the Caribbean... 'British' isn't something that's ethnically defined, or even very much culturally defined - it's an historical phenomenon.
English, on the other hand... there I'm not so sure. It seems a slightly more exclusive term to me. I don't think I'd call an Indian straight off the boat 'English', though I'd certainly be happy to accept that he was British. His grandson, however, who was born here and speaks with a thick Brummie accent? Definitely English.
Then again, just what 'English' means is something none of us are really sure of. Does English nationality even have any meaning beyond waving St George's flag while Wayne Rooney makes an arse of himself? Hell, I'm English and I don't even care that much how the England team do - my first loyalty's to Liverpool, and half of their players are Spanish...
Rubbish. The GPL is not a licence to use, it is a licence to modify, copy and redistribute.
From the GPL itself:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted
And, later on in the same document,
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
So, you need no licence to USE the software, any more than you need a licence to read a book. You only need the licence to modify it or redistribute it, activities which would otherwise be illegal under copyright law. You may use the software even if you reject the GPL entirely.