You'll forgive me for laughing when your comment is basically "My opinions are better than yours." I'm glad that you have such a high opinion of yourself, but my opinions are mine, and quite frankly I could care less whether you agree with them or not.
My list of greatest comic books ever written include (in no particular order):
-Moore's The Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen (and of course V)
-Ellis' Transmetropolitan (and perhaps Preacher by the same writer, though I'd like to see *that* put to film)
-Spiegelman's Maus
-Sin City
Now, I don't know whether you prefer "classic" comic books, but I consider the above comics/series to be the best the industry's offered in the past couple of decades. You got any better ones?
As for the film being flawed: it's a conversion, so it's not going to be perfect, but it's the closest conversion of a comic to film that I've ever seen, not just in terms of story but style.
I've used x86 computers for 25 odd years. I like the ability to build my own computer, and yes, I like the fact that there are more games for the PC than for a Mac. But if Apple were to sell me a copy of OSX for the x86, I'd buy it without hesitation. Whether I continued to use it or not would depend on their hardware support. But if they simply move from one architecture to another & require users to buy new hardware? I'm not as interested.
If Apple wants me to spend $1000-1500 for a new computer that's lower spec'd than what I can build myself, they're going to have to let me try it out first on my current system. $129 is almost an impulse buy for me. $1000? Not so much.
(Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a graphics whore.)
What freeware games released in 2005 are as *fun* as the Fallout series, or System Shock 2, or Deus Ex? I'm a regular visitor of Home of the Underdogs, and I haven't seen anything yet this year that's worth playing for more than a few seconds. Fate is the one indie game that might be an exception, but it's shareware. So? Suggestions?
If you'd like to encourage your grandson to become a more social gamer (he likes monopoly, so it's very possible), I'd suggest a more "hard-core" board game like Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan. I don't know how old your grandson is, but I know kids as young as 12 that enjoy both.
There's a huge slump in video gaming lately, mostly to do with the fact that new consoles are a year away (so who wants to put out a blockbuster game for the older ones?) and PC gaming's been going downhill for years. Unless you want to give him GTA:SA or Battlefield 2, there's nothing good out for the PC lately. I know that I just shrug and go back to playing Steve Jackson's Hacker or Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers, but I don't know how many people out there know that there are some incredible board games that rival anything video gaming has to offer (Puerto Rico & Tigris and Euphrates, for instance.) Board Game Geek has the full story:)
Compare your Geo's zero-to-60mph time with a hybrid. You'll find your answer there.
Not to nitpick, but the only way that a Geo's going to get up to 60 mph is if it's going downhill and you've got a sail the size of a Winnebago attached to the roof. And that's on a good day.
I've used the In-Win S500, V500T, and am ordering the S500T. These are fantastic cases with amazing build quality and excellent thermal & acoustic dynamics as well. Why anybody would bother with anything else, I have no idea.
Speaking as a tattooed geek myself, after reading the blurb, I thought that there was no way that this guy could pull it off, but it's definitely very cool. I would personally never tattoo images of video games on my body, but this is tasteful, fun, and looks aesthetically nice. I'm not sure that anybody would mistake it for a totem pole, but that's beside the point.
(And you got it done in the ditch, too! I've only got a bit done on my inner wrist, but getting *pong* done there, with all that blackwork? Ouch! Good thing the artist didn't tell you that that area's one of the most painful places to tattoo on the body, eh?:)
"I disagree with "ethical" opposition to embryonic stem cell research, because 1) I disagree that an embryo is a person and 2) because I find that those who oppose ESCR because "it's murder" are just fine with killing criminals and foreign civilians."
I think that the majority of those who oppose abortion & stem cell resarch also oppose war and the death penalty. I might be a minority here, but I believe that we should respect life at all costs and in all arenas, including scientific. I also don't believe in genetic testing in the workplace due to privacy concerns. I'm just one person, but at least I'm one person you know now who isn't hypocriticial IRT stem cell research and war/death penalty.
So if all spammers are making money by selling email addresses but they're making no money off of selling products, then who the heck is making money here? Where's 3. Profit!!!
Check the dates - the post you're quoting was written on April 26, 1984, whereas the post I quoted was a week later on May 2, 1984. So, not a mistake. Funny now?;)
I know this is way offtopic, but I just love this post from that thread:
Sorry, not to harp, but...a Laserdisk as to a CD disk as a Space Shuttle at launch is to OS-360. Both are big, and impressive--each in its way--but one is, if not the pinnacle of cahievement in its field, a milestone on the way; while the other is just a big, ugly abortion. I submit that CD is the latter. The head on a CD disk does make contact with the recording surface, unlike the Laserdisk. Both the media and the read head suffer from this. I've heard a rumor that the CD is to soon be no more, while the future of the Laserdisk seems assured, so let's not mix the two, eh?
In a nitpicking mood,
Dave Ihnat ihuxx!ignatz
I, for one, welcome our future-assured Laserdisk overlords!
"Right, so you are accepting the premise up front and ignoring the possibilties. That is what separates science from blind belief."
There's a difference between blindly accepting something without examining alternatives and consciously accepting something after discarding other alternatives.
The Gamecube has a larger global marketshare than the Xbox. You make it sound as if they're chugging along trying to catch up with Sony and Microsoft. I'll give you the fact that Nintendo isn't as big as it used to be, but that in no way means that the innovations of the Revo will be cast to the side because nobody will use it.
"The difference, of course, is that the BB should be viewed as a theory... while belief in the 'creator' is accepted up front with no possibility for there being another explanation."
I believe that God exists. There are other possibilites but I've deliberately chosen to push them aside.
"A hard-core theist will try to discredit the BB theory of the beginning of the universe by pointing to the lack of a cause but they blindly accept the creation of the universe by a devine force that just popped up from nowhere."
It doesn't really matter what a theist believes; the fact of the matter is that the big bang theory cannot currently be proven. Even if somebody who believed that he was a big fluffy pink elephant pointed this out, it would still be true. This is why you should criticise what people say rather than what they believe.
Christians like myself believe that God exists. It's completely a matter of faith, not physical proof. Likewise, scientists who believe in the Big Bang accept it because of faith, not because of physical proof. From a faith-based perspective, both theories (God and BB) are perfectly acceptable; from an evidence-based perspective, neither are - neither God nor the Big Bang can be empirically proven. Most Christians consider this to be acceptable, because their belief in God isn't dependent on facts, but as far as I know science doesn't operate on raw faith.
So let's not denigrate those who keep a little mystery where others fake certainty.
This is the most insightful statement I've ever read on slashdot. From a bapist who's a heck of a lot more conservative than the grandparent, thank you!
Regardless of whether macroevolution is "scientific" or not (just because you disagree with other scientists, IMHO, it doesn't mean that the concept falls in the domain of ID), my main point was that the origin of the Big Bang requires as much belief as believing in an omniscient and omnipresent creator. Care to comment on that?
Here's an article that sums up macroevolution as an interdisciplinary subject. Yes, macroevolution is a neo-Darwinist concept, but everything I said about macroevolution being thus far unobserved can be transferred to punctuated equilibrium, for example.
"Evolutionism is just as much religion as any Christian faith."
You mean "The cause of the Big Bang is just as much religion as any Christian faith." This will always stymie those who are against creationism, because the cause of the Big Bang is inherently unknowable and unprovable, & requires as much faith as believing in God, Yahweh, or Allah. And yet, somehow, the same people who criticise those with religious beliefs for believing in a deity that they've never personally seen or talked to are perfectly comfortable in accepting that the Big Bang took place without knowing or caring what caused it. Huh.
As far as I understand it, microevolution is very provable & has been observed; macroevolution (which is what you're probably talking about), on the other hand and IMHO, has not been observed. This is fairly controversial & I'm not up on the latest research, so if somebody's got some proof here, I'd be interested to hear it.
I'm sorry you feel so negative about the profession, but you should know that there are journalists out there who actually care about the work more than they care about advertising policies or political biases. A couple people making up stories or sources doesn't mean that the entire profession is ridden with termites.
...but I would simply use a random alphanumeric password (insert your security program of choice, so long as it's secure) that's too long to remember (twenty or thirty digits should do it) & keep it in my wallet. You get subpoenaed, you "lose" the code down the toilet and quite correctly claim that you can't remember the password. I don't know what the statistics are on brute forcing passwords, but if you make it long enough perhaps there's a chance it won't get broken in your lifetime.
Can anybody else confirm that this works? I never got past the boat section of the game, but if this ends the motion sickness I'd definitely like to get back into the game.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll forgive me for laughing when your comment is basically "My opinions are better than yours." I'm glad that you have such a high opinion of yourself, but my opinions are mine, and quite frankly I could care less whether you agree with them or not.
-Moore's The Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen (and of course V)
-Ellis' Transmetropolitan (and perhaps Preacher by the same writer, though I'd like to see *that* put to film)
-Spiegelman's Maus
-Sin City
Now, I don't know whether you prefer "classic" comic books, but I consider the above comics/series to be the best the industry's offered in the past couple of decades. You got any better ones?
As for the film being flawed: it's a conversion, so it's not going to be perfect, but it's the closest conversion of a comic to film that I've ever seen, not just in terms of story but style.
I would have said the same thing about Sin City two years ago, and I would have been dead wrong.
Good grief, it's like I didn't proofread my post ;) Windows vs OSX, and driver support, not hardware support. Heh.
If Apple wants me to spend $1000-1500 for a new computer that's lower spec'd than what I can build myself, they're going to have to let me try it out first on my current system. $129 is almost an impulse buy for me. $1000? Not so much.
Why would they move to the Intel platform for performance/cost reasons and then tie their new Mactel boxes with proprietary processors?
What freeware games released in 2005 are as *fun* as the Fallout series, or System Shock 2, or Deus Ex? I'm a regular visitor of Home of the Underdogs, and I haven't seen anything yet this year that's worth playing for more than a few seconds. Fate is the one indie game that might be an exception, but it's shareware. So? Suggestions?
There's a huge slump in video gaming lately, mostly to do with the fact that new consoles are a year away (so who wants to put out a blockbuster game for the older ones?) and PC gaming's been going downhill for years. Unless you want to give him GTA:SA or Battlefield 2, there's nothing good out for the PC lately. I know that I just shrug and go back to playing Steve Jackson's Hacker or Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers, but I don't know how many people out there know that there are some incredible board games that rival anything video gaming has to offer (Puerto Rico & Tigris and Euphrates, for instance.) Board Game Geek has the full story :)
Not to nitpick, but the only way that a Geo's going to get up to 60 mph is if it's going downhill and you've got a sail the size of a Winnebago attached to the roof. And that's on a good day.
I've used the In-Win S500, V500T, and am ordering the S500T. These are fantastic cases with amazing build quality and excellent thermal & acoustic dynamics as well. Why anybody would bother with anything else, I have no idea.
(And you got it done in the ditch, too! I've only got a bit done on my inner wrist, but getting *pong* done there, with all that blackwork? Ouch! Good thing the artist didn't tell you that that area's one of the most painful places to tattoo on the body, eh? :)
I think that the majority of those who oppose abortion & stem cell resarch also oppose war and the death penalty. I might be a minority here, but I believe that we should respect life at all costs and in all arenas, including scientific. I also don't believe in genetic testing in the workplace due to privacy concerns. I'm just one person, but at least I'm one person you know now who isn't hypocriticial IRT stem cell research and war/death penalty.
So if all spammers are making money by selling email addresses but they're making no money off of selling products, then who the heck is making money here? Where's 3. Profit!!!
Check the dates - the post you're quoting was written on April 26, 1984, whereas the post I quoted was a week later on May 2, 1984. So, not a mistake. Funny now? ;)
Sorry, not to harp, but...a Laserdisk as to a CD disk as a Space Shuttle at launch is to OS-360. Both are big, and impressive--each in its way--but one is, if not the pinnacle of cahievement in its field, a milestone on the way; while the other is just a big, ugly abortion. I submit that CD is the latter. The head on a CD disk does make contact with the recording surface, unlike the Laserdisk. Both the media and the read head suffer from this. I've heard a rumor that the CD is to soon be no more, while the future of the Laserdisk seems assured, so let's not mix the two, eh?
In a nitpicking mood,
Dave Ihnat
ihuxx!ignatz
I, for one, welcome our future-assured Laserdisk overlords!
There's a difference between blindly accepting something without examining alternatives and consciously accepting something after discarding other alternatives.
The Gamecube has a larger global marketshare than the Xbox. You make it sound as if they're chugging along trying to catch up with Sony and Microsoft. I'll give you the fact that Nintendo isn't as big as it used to be, but that in no way means that the innovations of the Revo will be cast to the side because nobody will use it.
I believe that God exists. There are other possibilites but I've deliberately chosen to push them aside.
"A hard-core theist will try to discredit the BB theory of the beginning of the universe by pointing to the lack of a cause but they blindly accept the creation of the universe by a devine force that just popped up from nowhere."
It doesn't really matter what a theist believes; the fact of the matter is that the big bang theory cannot currently be proven. Even if somebody who believed that he was a big fluffy pink elephant pointed this out, it would still be true. This is why you should criticise what people say rather than what they believe.
Christians like myself believe that God exists. It's completely a matter of faith, not physical proof. Likewise, scientists who believe in the Big Bang accept it because of faith, not because of physical proof. From a faith-based perspective, both theories (God and BB) are perfectly acceptable; from an evidence-based perspective, neither are - neither God nor the Big Bang can be empirically proven. Most Christians consider this to be acceptable, because their belief in God isn't dependent on facts, but as far as I know science doesn't operate on raw faith.
This is the most insightful statement I've ever read on slashdot. From a bapist who's a heck of a lot more conservative than the grandparent, thank you!
Regardless of whether macroevolution is "scientific" or not (just because you disagree with other scientists, IMHO, it doesn't mean that the concept falls in the domain of ID), my main point was that the origin of the Big Bang requires as much belief as believing in an omniscient and omnipresent creator. Care to comment on that?
Here's an article that sums up macroevolution as an interdisciplinary subject. Yes, macroevolution is a neo-Darwinist concept, but everything I said about macroevolution being thus far unobserved can be transferred to punctuated equilibrium, for example.
You mean "The cause of the Big Bang is just as much religion as any Christian faith." This will always stymie those who are against creationism, because the cause of the Big Bang is inherently unknowable and unprovable, & requires as much faith as believing in God, Yahweh, or Allah. And yet, somehow, the same people who criticise those with religious beliefs for believing in a deity that they've never personally seen or talked to are perfectly comfortable in accepting that the Big Bang took place without knowing or caring what caused it. Huh.
As far as I understand it, microevolution is very provable & has been observed; macroevolution (which is what you're probably talking about), on the other hand and IMHO, has not been observed. This is fairly controversial & I'm not up on the latest research, so if somebody's got some proof here, I'd be interested to hear it.
I'm sorry you feel so negative about the profession, but you should know that there are journalists out there who actually care about the work more than they care about advertising policies or political biases. A couple people making up stories or sources doesn't mean that the entire profession is ridden with termites.
...but I would simply use a random alphanumeric password (insert your security program of choice, so long as it's secure) that's too long to remember (twenty or thirty digits should do it) & keep it in my wallet. You get subpoenaed, you "lose" the code down the toilet and quite correctly claim that you can't remember the password. I don't know what the statistics are on brute forcing passwords, but if you make it long enough perhaps there's a chance it won't get broken in your lifetime.
Can anybody else confirm that this works? I never got past the boat section of the game, but if this ends the motion sickness I'd definitely like to get back into the game.