I agree completely, the SNES games are definitely my favorites. I don't know if it's nostalgia or what, but although I enjoyed FF VII on the PlayStation, the rest just didn't hold my interest at all. Too much focus on pretty graphics and being "detailed" (er, complicated). Give me FF II anytime:) It's what got me into the RPG genre all those years ago.
Heh, back in the day, my mom saw Virtual Boys on clearance at Toys R Us and decided that my little brother needed not one, but two of them for his rapidly expanding console collection (they were literally like $20 each). She also proceeded to buy out all of their games for a mere $5 a piece (so what did that run her, another $20 or so?). At first we were excited; I mean, how many kids' moms randomly buy them game consoles for the hell of it, let alone a backup? Then the play commenced. They probably wouldn't have been *that* bad if they didn't have brain searing red-on-black graphics, but the unfortunate truth is that they did, and all four of us kids were extremely nauseous after about an hour with our new toys. Talk about a let down:)
When my siblings and I were young, we went through a very trying time when our Speak and Spell was posessed by the devil. We were minding our own business when the damn thing turned on by itself and started spouting random sentence fragments. As if this wasn't scary enough, the power button completely ceased to function. When we tried turning it off, the screen started scrolling unintelligible glyphs and it dropped the english language entirely and began speaking in tongues. The worst part was that those things have one of those damn impenetrable battery compartments that can only be opened with a coin or similar flat object, so while my younger sisters cried I had to run around and try to find something to kill it with. Quite traumatizing for a bunch of children under the age of 12.
Re:Low cost alternative?
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Solar Surgery
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· Score: 2, Insightful
They're not exactly talking about shipping this (after the obvious years of research ahead of it) to the Dr. Nicks of Springfield, USA--as the article stated, it's intended for third world countries, where people can't afford shoes, let alone high-tech medical care. The doctors in these areas are not necessarily any less skilled than the guy at your local hospital that charges a $150 consultation fee, they just have a sense of duty to *help* people as opposed to using their degrees to make wads of money.
"...the something's connected to the...red thing...the red thing's connected to my...wrist watch...uh oh..."
UV light, in the grand scheme of things, does have properties that allow it to kill bacteria, but it is largely ineffective except in strongly controlled situations. First off, it only kills bacteria that are exposed to the light. Bacteria "hiding out" underneath, inside, or between things won't be affected. Second, not all species or strains of bacteria are susceptible (esp. those that produce spores, as someone previously mentioned). Third, in general UV light is fairly weak when it comes to killing microbes. It works by causing mutations (pyrimidine dimers) in bacterial cells that essentially cause the cell to shut down (same reason we get sunburned from too much UV exposure). However, a large number of these dimers have to form and pile up in the cell's DNA before it will die, because cells have their own DNA repair systems working overtime to make sure such a thing doesn't happen. Therefore, while some bacteria will die, some will survive.
That being said, I also must add that I think the UV lamp idea is great. Again, it won't exactly sterilize a room like pressurizing it with hot, steamy air would (a'la an autoclave), but it would still decrease the number of buggers floating around in hallways and such, which is definitely not a bad thing.
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I agree completely, the SNES games are definitely my favorites. I don't know if it's nostalgia or what, but although I enjoyed FF VII on the PlayStation, the rest just didn't hold my interest at all. Too much focus on pretty graphics and being "detailed" (er, complicated). Give me FF II anytime :) It's what got me into the RPG genre all those years ago.
Heh, back in the day, my mom saw Virtual Boys on clearance at Toys R Us and decided that my little brother needed not one, but two of them for his rapidly expanding console collection (they were literally like $20 each). She also proceeded to buy out all of their games for a mere $5 a piece (so what did that run her, another $20 or so?). At first we were excited; I mean, how many kids' moms randomly buy them game consoles for the hell of it, let alone a backup? Then the play commenced. They probably wouldn't have been *that* bad if they didn't have brain searing red-on-black graphics, but the unfortunate truth is that they did, and all four of us kids were extremely nauseous after about an hour with our new toys. Talk about a let down :)
When my siblings and I were young, we went through a very trying time when our Speak and Spell was posessed by the devil. We were minding our own business when the damn thing turned on by itself and started spouting random sentence fragments. As if this wasn't scary enough, the power button completely ceased to function. When we tried turning it off, the screen started scrolling unintelligible glyphs and it dropped the english language entirely and began speaking in tongues. The worst part was that those things have one of those damn impenetrable battery compartments that can only be opened with a coin or similar flat object, so while my younger sisters cried I had to run around and try to find something to kill it with. Quite traumatizing for a bunch of children under the age of 12.
They're not exactly talking about shipping this (after the obvious years of research ahead of it) to the Dr. Nicks of Springfield, USA--as the article stated, it's intended for third world countries, where people can't afford shoes, let alone high-tech medical care. The doctors in these areas are not necessarily any less skilled than the guy at your local hospital that charges a $150 consultation fee, they just have a sense of duty to *help* people as opposed to using their degrees to make wads of money. "...the something's connected to the...red thing...the red thing's connected to my...wrist watch...uh oh..."
UV light, in the grand scheme of things, does have properties that allow it to kill bacteria, but it is largely ineffective except in strongly controlled situations. First off, it only kills bacteria that are exposed to the light. Bacteria "hiding out" underneath, inside, or between things won't be affected. Second, not all species or strains of bacteria are susceptible (esp. those that produce spores, as someone previously mentioned). Third, in general UV light is fairly weak when it comes to killing microbes. It works by causing mutations (pyrimidine dimers) in bacterial cells that essentially cause the cell to shut down (same reason we get sunburned from too much UV exposure). However, a large number of these dimers have to form and pile up in the cell's DNA before it will die, because cells have their own DNA repair systems working overtime to make sure such a thing doesn't happen. Therefore, while some bacteria will die, some will survive. That being said, I also must add that I think the UV lamp idea is great. Again, it won't exactly sterilize a room like pressurizing it with hot, steamy air would (a'la an autoclave), but it would still decrease the number of buggers floating around in hallways and such, which is definitely not a bad thing.
Try Webmin (www.webmin.com). Its Samba module is Windows-simplicity itself. Plus you get the nice granularity of linux! :)