Okay, yes, it used to be used as a human anaesthetic. That's what dissociatives are generally used for in medicine =). IIRC, ketamine used to be used in the same way. Of course, now it's limited to veterinary applications because of the side effects.
I don't see anything in there about the military giving it to soldiers to turn them into fearless berserkers, though. My (admittedly limited) experience is that it will sometimes have that effect, but can also completely incapacitate its users with fear, or by distancing them too far from reality.
The military did experiment with BZ in Vietnam, but there's been virtually no information released on how it was used and who it was given to. Personally I wouldn't trust anyone who's hallucinating with a weapon. It's just too unpredictable of a state.
Whatever happened to the good old days of pumping soldiers full of angel dust to rid them of fear?
Um, source?
From my experience, PCP would be a terrible thing to give soldiers. You'd end up with a Jacob's Ladder scenario where they become afraid of - and attack - friends and enemies at random.
- Black dress shirt - Black tie - Black dress pants - Black socks - Black dress shoes - Bla^H^H^H Charcoal suit jacket
At least I know from the photo in the article that 80s fashion is coming back with a vengeance. Can we skip to the part where all women wear black fishnet and have hair that sticks out farther than their shoulders? Because that would be pretty awesome.
I'd look for a second- or third-hand 8-bus mixing console. The console would feed four stereo amps (from garage sales, thrift stores, whatever), and the amps would be hooked to four sets of stereo speakers.
If you look carefully, you can find stereo receivers from the 80s that have two sets of stereo speaker outputs, so you could have eight sets of stereo speakers.
The console would also be useful because you could have a number of different inputs, and pipe them to different areas of the house. So maybe the living room and basement are getting Skinny Puppy, and the kitchen and garage are getting military scanner traffic from a streaming audio server.
Everything but the console would be super-cheap. I have a (dual stereo) receiver, four halfway decent speakers, and two crappy speakers that I got from the "free stuff pile" at my old apartment building, for example. I would imagine a 70s or 80s 8-bus console could be had relatively cheaply too, as long as you don't look for a pro studio model in mint condition. Cheaper than the products other people are linking to, at least.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but...
on
HAARP Amping It Up
·
· Score: 1
There is an absolutely giant blacked-out rectangle a short distance from the HAARP array if you look at Google Maps. Virtual Earth doesn't seem to have photos of that area that are high-res enough to see anything useful.
Even if it's not related, I'm really curious what is so big that needs to be kept secret.
What makes this any more important than the average slashdot comment outside of a historical context?
Why is the historical context a footnote?
Having windows into previous eras - and the writing of those eras is as close as we can get to reading the thoughts of people back then - is incredibly valuable.
I still haven't seen Romeo + Juliet, but the 1995 version of Richard III was kind of like that - a modern film, set in an alternate-history WWII era where Britain is fascist.
The language was a little jarring at first, since it sounds so excessively formal to my ears, but I ended up liking it quite a bit.
Add all this up with the entitlement that many MMORPG players feel they deserve, and you get a bunch of people bitching about everything, tying up the reps time, and making getting anything accomplished that much more difficult.
Yeah, the impression I'm getting is that Sony has realized that the number of people who liked the old version of the game was very small. Those people liked it a lot, but there weren't enough of them to make it profitable to dump a bunch of money into making that model work.
So they went and changed a large chunk of the game - not in an attempt to make the existing players happy, but to try and get a mass of new subscribers.
Meanwhile, the old-school players are getting upset that the game is even LESS like the way they wanted it than it was before, not realizing that Sony wasn't targeting them with the changes.
This is part of the reason I don't play online-based games. With an offline game, I buy it, and it stays the same forever. I'm not dependent on changing market conditions.
I guess what it boils down to is that in its old direction, SWG was a failure in the marketplace - and would have remained that way even if the bugs were fixed. The options Sony had were to drastically rework it, or shut it down entirely. Would the people who are getting angry about the changes have preferred the latter?
To have Microsoft call you on your bad business practices...
Yes, how wonderful and convenient that a benevolent company like Microsoft has bravely stepped up to remove the software of one of their biggest competitors from the computers of the helpless computer-using public.
Clearly the only proper course of action is to support this generous and gentle giant of the technology world by purchasing their new gaming console - coincidentally just released - and as many games and accessories for it as possible.
Yeah... Microsoft also makes computer software that depends on an online service for a good portion of its functionality.
Any modern desktop OS meets that criteria, because so many applications are internet-based.
There is no good reason for Xbox owners to have to have Live in order to get the full version of games like Ninja Gaiden on the original and Oblivion on the 360.
My guess is that you signed up for a free trial of one of the music services...then when the free trial expired, you didn't pony up the money.
I am actually not a dumbass, as amazing as it may seem. This was a library of music (from WaxTrax) clearly labelled as free.
Yeah, they've created plenty of DRM technology, but they aren't trying to stop people from using more reasonable file formats.
Of course they are. Palladium? Like I mentioned? That's what the "Trusted" platform is all about.
Xbox Live is nothing but an added feature.
It started out that way. Now if you don't have Live, games like Ninja Gaiden are crippled. Oblivion on the 360 is going to REQUIRE you to buy items in the Live Marketplace in order to get the full experience.
This isn't an intrusive or crippled technology
It certainly meets the dictionary definition of "crippled."
Yes, they're pushing for software subscriptions, but how does that relate to game consoles or DRM?
Because in order for a software subscription system to work, the software must disable itself if you don't pay up.
That you'll need an HDCP (right abbreviation?) monitor to view them in hi-def? That's hardly a Microsoft decision.
It's their OS, so it's their decision.
Sony trying to cripple CDs to the point they can't even legally be called CDs anymore?
MS did the same thing with their proprietary DVD format for the Xbox, and their WMV "DVDs" like the one included with the T2 Extreme Edition.
Or creating a handheld (the PSP) that can play videos on a great screen, but doesn't accept any of the widely used video formats.
MS did the same thing with the Xbox and ripped audio.
Or BluRay, which has won over movie studios by having the strongest copy protection and by not requiring managed copy.
If HD-DVD retains that vapourware "feature," when it's actually in mass market, we can talk, but it's still a minor point. "Managed copy" is a table scrap for huge media conglomerates to throw to consumers.
Sacrifice (which Zonk mentioned in the summary) uses a very similar interface, and is also a lot of fun. I prefer BZ's sci-fi setting, but Sacrifice is really good, and has some neat high-level magic with enormous effects.
I have BZ2, but never got around to playing it. I'll try that mod you mention when I have a chance.
Would you be willing to elaborate more on your line of thinking?
When I think of MS, I think:
- First company to require online/phone activation of a mainstream product (Windows XP). - Inventor of Windows Media, the format that made useless an entire library of "free*" (as in "*some restrictions apply") music I'd downloaded when the authentication server was turned off. - First company to market a game console that depends on an online service for a good portion of its functionality. - First company (at least, that I know of) to market a non-streaming video file format (WMV) that lets the author block random access, so you can't skip commercials. - Palladium - HailStorm - The biggest development company pushing for software subscriptions instead of purchases. - Restricted HD-DVD video in Vista.
I know Sony has done some stupid things, like ATRAC/Memory Stick/other-proprietary-format and the rootkit, but at least to my knowledge they have put far fewer intrusive and crippled technologies on the market than MS. If I've missed out on something big, I'd really like to hear about it.
As for Nintendo, right now they're relatively benign, but I still remember them well for the things in my original post.
If they were still innovating like they did back in the days of the VCR and the Walkman then they wouldn't be needing to treat customers like criminals in order to screw money out of them.
Microsoft is certainly no better. I wouldn't be surprised if they're astroturfing some of the anti-Sony sentiment in the hopes of making people forget about "Trusted" Computing, DRM, et cetera.
Nintendo are the ones who invented unlicensed third-party lockout chips for home consoles, censored tons of games, and fixed retail prices for NES titles. I'm sure if they would act the same as Sony and MS again given the chance.
Old growth uber alles? Zero emissions macht frei? Um, okay.
BMW has had hydrogen fuel technology for 30 years now. Cars that run on water, and emit only water vapor at the tailpipe. Now why in the HELL haven't we seen THESE on the market?!?!
Hydrogen fuel cells do not "run on water." You can certainly get hydrogen *from* water, but it requires more energy than the fuel cell gives you back when you put the hydrogen in.
A: China is the ultimate paradox. On the one hand they have become a fairly rich country similar to where America was in 1940's-50s. They also believe that they belong in the international trading world. But on the other hand, they are blocking a service because it may (most likely will) compete with their established companies.
Q: I heard that China is always cruel or mean. What's their problem?
A: Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other countries, China can be mean OR totally awesome.
Q: What does China do when they're not cutting off dissidents' heads or blocking Skype?
A: Most of their free time is spent building ballistic missiles and spacecraft, but sometime they begin a pilot program to create arcologies in rural parts of the country. (Ask Mark if you don't believe me.)
When I think of game maps, I think of the printed ones that used to come in the box with most RPGs.
I've got the giant Blood Omen map from the official strategy guide and Vvardenfell from Morrowind framed on my walls (and the absolutely enormous Mordor map that my sister got me a few years ago, although that's not really game-related).
Waiting for me to pick up frames, I've got Might & Magic II (I seems to have been misplaced), the two Star Saga games, and a few others. I guess I like the idea of relics of a fictional world, as if part of them were made real.
Nice display, though. He should put Zebes (the Super Metroid version) up on it.
Someone who is religious is different from someone who was schooled to deliberately not understand the difference between a scientific theory and what is more or less a religious belief.
I'm very glad that when I was a kid, some of my teachers took the time to go over logic and reason instead of just facts. Being able to figure something out is more useful than knowing specific tidbits of knowledge, because you can generally use that skill to find the knowledge when you need to.
Teaching creationism as something that's in the same category as evolution is a huge blow to that potentially developing framework of logic in someone's mind. There's nothing wrong with it as a religious belief, it just doesn't belong in a science class any more than cake recipes belong in a geometry class.
Getting heavy things into space is expensive. Why not use nanotube material (since we're talking at least two decades out) to make a giant bag with a very long cable attached? At the end of the cable is a much smaller bag. The big bag goes around the asteroid, and the little one is filled with a chunk that's knocked off of it. When the entire contraption gets near a planet or moon (other than Earth, obviously), it tosses the smaller bag into the gravity well. It acts like a sea anchor, and slingshots the asteroid onto a different trajectory. The bag would probably come apart, but not before changing the course enough for the asteroid to miss the Earth.
If the asteroid were known to be very solid, you could even forego the bag and tie the cable around like a gift bow.
If you REALLY built it well, maybe you could put the asteroid into orbit around the moon/other planet and hollow it out to use as a space station, a solid platform to build communications relay gear or robotic probe staging equipment on, or even a space elevator for a body other than Earth.
Whose bright idea was it to fragment a game console into sublevels?
The same company that's selling about 37 different, ambiguously-named versions of its next operating system.
I really think the gaming industry is headed for another crash. I was pretty young during the original one, but I remember a few things that seem suspiciously familiar now.
Coleco had at least three expansion modules for the Colecovision, none of which ever got used except the Atari 2600 "adaptor" that cost as much as a standalone 2600. Mattel did the same thing with the Intellivision II. Both of them (and Atari) tried to sell their systems as the centerpiece of something bigger (home computing, etc.) and it flopped.
This is what I think of when Microsoft tries to sell a pretend version and a real version of the 360, and adds on "media center functionality." It's what I think of when Nintendo announces a console based on having a whole pile of possible controller options.
I also think the increasing prices are going to be a problem. $40-$50 is a nice round number to sell games for when they're first released. As soon as you get up into the $60-$70 range, it suddenly looks like a much bigger chunk of change. Obviously hardcore gamers won't mind so much, but they only make up a small part of the market.
I guess that seems like the main problem to me - back in the 80s and now. The manufacturers seem to forget that the hardcore gamers and/or people who can throw a bunch of money into gaming are a vocal minority. That people who don't work for their company don't generally use their gaming console as the centerpiece of anything. MS could have done two systems the smart way - by having a basic system that was actually useable, and a more expensive one for the hardcore gamers. Out of the entire Real Edition, the only thing I want is the hard drive. I don't play online games, so I don't need the headset. I don't care if my controllers are wired. Maybe they think that by bundling all that stuff in they'll convert me into an online gamer so they can get more of my money from Live? I might be an oddity, but their incessant focus on that is actually making me LESS likely to buy a 360 at all./ramble
Another poster talked about building a vertical-axis turbine from plastic 55-gallon drums. I'm no mechanical engineer, but couldn't you build a simple one from those as the blades and PVC or other synthetic pipe as the axle? Obviously you'd need some bearings, but those would be relatively tiny. Depending on the height, I would think you could put the generator itself (with all its radar-reflecting parts) at or below ground level.
Of course, I'm not a radar technician either, so maybe my assumption that plastic and PVC are radar-neutral is wrong.
It's missing the theatrical cut of The Wrath of Khan, which I vastly prefer to the extended/alternate footage television version on the two-disc set - and I'm not even a big enough dork to own ANY of the television episodes.
Over two thousand dollars and they can't throw in a second copy of the best Trek film evar? What a swindle.
Man, I think the first Slashdot post I ever made was a complaint that the two-disc set didn't include the original release. What were they thinking? Extended is great. Replacing certain scenes - that I thought were great - with alternate takes, and then not including both versions a la the Terminator 2 DVD, that's lame.
NASA "enhances" photos and they make great posters.
Yes, God damn NASA for not releasing X-ray, gamma, infrared, ultraviolet, microwave, and radio-wave imagery in the original bands of the spectrum! My taxes line their bloated wallets and they can't even manage to put JPEGs on their site that emit hard radiation so I can see exactly the same thing they do with their so-called "space telescopes"!
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, yes, it used to be used as a human anaesthetic. That's what dissociatives are generally used for in medicine =). IIRC, ketamine used to be used in the same way. Of course, now it's limited to veterinary applications because of the side effects.
I don't see anything in there about the military giving it to soldiers to turn them into fearless berserkers, though. My (admittedly limited) experience is that it will sometimes have that effect, but can also completely incapacitate its users with fear, or by distancing them too far from reality.
The military did experiment with BZ in Vietnam, but there's been virtually no information released on how it was used and who it was given to. Personally I wouldn't trust anyone who's hallucinating with a weapon. It's just too unpredictable of a state.
Whatever happened to the good old days of pumping soldiers full of angel dust to rid them of fear?
Um, source?
From my experience, PCP would be a terrible thing to give soldiers. You'd end up with a Jacob's Ladder scenario where they become afraid of - and attack - friends and enemies at random.
8 channel, or 8 bus?
I will feel very old if an 8-bus Mackie is going for under $100. Then I will buy three of them.
A variation I use in addition to the above:
- Black dress shirt
- Black tie
- Black dress pants
- Black socks
- Black dress shoes
- Bla^H^H^H Charcoal suit jacket
At least I know from the photo in the article that 80s fashion is coming back with a vengeance. Can we skip to the part where all women wear black fishnet and have hair that sticks out farther than their shoulders? Because that would be pretty awesome.
I'd look for a second- or third-hand 8-bus mixing console. The console would feed four stereo amps (from garage sales, thrift stores, whatever), and the amps would be hooked to four sets of stereo speakers.
If you look carefully, you can find stereo receivers from the 80s that have two sets of stereo speaker outputs, so you could have eight sets of stereo speakers.
The console would also be useful because you could have a number of different inputs, and pipe them to different areas of the house. So maybe the living room and basement are getting Skinny Puppy, and the kitchen and garage are getting military scanner traffic from a streaming audio server.
Everything but the console would be super-cheap. I have a (dual stereo) receiver, four halfway decent speakers, and two crappy speakers that I got from the "free stuff pile" at my old apartment building, for example. I would imagine a 70s or 80s 8-bus console could be had relatively cheaply too, as long as you don't look for a pro studio model in mint condition. Cheaper than the products other people are linking to, at least.
There is an absolutely giant blacked-out rectangle a short distance from the HAARP array if you look at Google Maps. Virtual Earth doesn't seem to have photos of that area that are high-res enough to see anything useful.
Even if it's not related, I'm really curious what is so big that needs to be kept secret.
What makes this any more important than the average slashdot comment outside of a historical context?
Why is the historical context a footnote?
Having windows into previous eras - and the writing of those eras is as close as we can get to reading the thoughts of people back then - is incredibly valuable.
I still haven't seen Romeo + Juliet, but the 1995 version of Richard III was kind of like that - a modern film, set in an alternate-history WWII era where Britain is fascist.
The language was a little jarring at first, since it sounds so excessively formal to my ears, but I ended up liking it quite a bit.
Add all this up with the entitlement that many MMORPG players feel they deserve, and you get a bunch of people bitching about everything, tying up the reps time, and making getting anything accomplished that much more difficult.
Yeah, the impression I'm getting is that Sony has realized that the number of people who liked the old version of the game was very small. Those people liked it a lot, but there weren't enough of them to make it profitable to dump a bunch of money into making that model work.
So they went and changed a large chunk of the game - not in an attempt to make the existing players happy, but to try and get a mass of new subscribers.
Meanwhile, the old-school players are getting upset that the game is even LESS like the way they wanted it than it was before, not realizing that Sony wasn't targeting them with the changes.
This is part of the reason I don't play online-based games. With an offline game, I buy it, and it stays the same forever. I'm not dependent on changing market conditions.
I guess what it boils down to is that in its old direction, SWG was a failure in the marketplace - and would have remained that way even if the bugs were fixed. The options Sony had were to drastically rework it, or shut it down entirely. Would the people who are getting angry about the changes have preferred the latter?
To have Microsoft call you on your bad business practices...
Yes, how wonderful and convenient that a benevolent company like Microsoft has bravely stepped up to remove the software of one of their biggest competitors from the computers of the helpless computer-using public.
Clearly the only proper course of action is to support this generous and gentle giant of the technology world by purchasing their new gaming console - coincidentally just released - and as many games and accessories for it as possible.
Yeah... Microsoft also makes computer software that depends on an online service for a good portion of its functionality.
Any modern desktop OS meets that criteria, because so many applications are internet-based.
There is no good reason for Xbox owners to have to have Live in order to get the full version of games like Ninja Gaiden on the original and Oblivion on the 360.
My guess is that you signed up for a free trial of one of the music services...then when the free trial expired, you didn't pony up the money.
I am actually not a dumbass, as amazing as it may seem. This was a library of music (from WaxTrax) clearly labelled as free.
Yeah, they've created plenty of DRM technology, but they aren't trying to stop people from using more reasonable file formats.
Of course they are. Palladium? Like I mentioned? That's what the "Trusted" platform is all about.
Xbox Live is nothing but an added feature.
It started out that way. Now if you don't have Live, games like Ninja Gaiden are crippled. Oblivion on the 360 is going to REQUIRE you to buy items in the Live Marketplace in order to get the full experience.
This isn't an intrusive or crippled technology
It certainly meets the dictionary definition of "crippled."
Yes, they're pushing for software subscriptions, but how does that relate to game consoles or DRM?
Because in order for a software subscription system to work, the software must disable itself if you don't pay up.
That you'll need an HDCP (right abbreviation?) monitor to view them in hi-def? That's hardly a Microsoft decision.
It's their OS, so it's their decision.
Sony trying to cripple CDs to the point they can't even legally be called CDs anymore?
MS did the same thing with their proprietary DVD format for the Xbox, and their WMV "DVDs" like the one included with the T2 Extreme Edition.
Or creating a handheld (the PSP) that can play videos on a great screen, but doesn't accept any of the widely used video formats.
MS did the same thing with the Xbox and ripped audio.
Or BluRay, which has won over movie studios by having the strongest copy protection and by not requiring managed copy.
If HD-DVD retains that vapourware "feature," when it's actually in mass market, we can talk, but it's still a minor point. "Managed copy" is a table scrap for huge media conglomerates to throw to consumers.
Sacrifice (which Zonk mentioned in the summary) uses a very similar interface, and is also a lot of fun. I prefer BZ's sci-fi setting, but Sacrifice is really good, and has some neat high-level magic with enormous effects.
I have BZ2, but never got around to playing it. I'll try that mod you mention when I have a chance.
Would you be willing to elaborate more on your line of thinking?
When I think of MS, I think:
- First company to require online/phone activation of a mainstream product (Windows XP).
- Inventor of Windows Media, the format that made useless an entire library of "free*" (as in "*some restrictions apply") music I'd downloaded when the authentication server was turned off.
- First company to market a game console that depends on an online service for a good portion of its functionality.
- First company (at least, that I know of) to market a non-streaming video file format (WMV) that lets the author block random access, so you can't skip commercials.
- Palladium
- HailStorm
- The biggest development company pushing for software subscriptions instead of purchases.
- Restricted HD-DVD video in Vista.
I know Sony has done some stupid things, like ATRAC/Memory Stick/other-proprietary-format and the rootkit, but at least to my knowledge they have put far fewer intrusive and crippled technologies on the market than MS. If I've missed out on something big, I'd really like to hear about it.
As for Nintendo, right now they're relatively benign, but I still remember them well for the things in my original post.
If they were still innovating like they did back in the days of the VCR and the Walkman then they wouldn't be needing to treat customers like criminals in order to screw money out of them.
Microsoft is certainly no better. I wouldn't be surprised if they're astroturfing some of the anti-Sony sentiment in the hopes of making people forget about "Trusted" Computing, DRM, et cetera.
Nintendo are the ones who invented unlicensed third-party lockout chips for home consoles, censored tons of games, and fixed retail prices for NES titles. I'm sure if they would act the same as Sony and MS again given the chance.
the environazis
Old growth uber alles? Zero emissions macht frei? Um, okay.
BMW has had hydrogen fuel technology for 30 years now. Cars that run on water, and emit only water vapor at the tailpipe. Now why in the HELL haven't we seen THESE on the market?!?!
Hydrogen fuel cells do not "run on water." You can certainly get hydrogen *from* water, but it requires more energy than the fuel cell gives you back when you put the hydrogen in.
Q: Why is everyone so obsessed about China?
A: China is the ultimate paradox. On the one hand they have become a fairly rich country similar to where America was in 1940's-50s. They also believe that they belong in the international trading world. But on the other hand, they are blocking a service because it may (most likely will) compete with their established companies.
Q: I heard that China is always cruel or mean. What's their problem?
A: Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other countries, China can be mean OR totally awesome.
Q: What does China do when they're not cutting off dissidents' heads or blocking Skype?
A: Most of their free time is spent building ballistic missiles and spacecraft, but sometime they begin a pilot program to create arcologies in rural parts of the country. (Ask Mark if you don't believe me.)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
However, from what I've read, allofmp3.com is legal
It is legal. That doesn't mean it's any more ethical to use it than to just bootleg the tracks off of p2p.
When I think of game maps, I think of the printed ones that used to come in the box with most RPGs.
I've got the giant Blood Omen map from the official strategy guide and Vvardenfell from Morrowind framed on my walls (and the absolutely enormous Mordor map that my sister got me a few years ago, although that's not really game-related).
Waiting for me to pick up frames, I've got Might & Magic II (I seems to have been misplaced), the two Star Saga games, and a few others. I guess I like the idea of relics of a fictional world, as if part of them were made real.
Nice display, though. He should put Zebes (the Super Metroid version) up on it.
Someone who is religious is different from someone who was schooled to deliberately not understand the difference between a scientific theory and what is more or less a religious belief.
I'm very glad that when I was a kid, some of my teachers took the time to go over logic and reason instead of just facts. Being able to figure something out is more useful than knowing specific tidbits of knowledge, because you can generally use that skill to find the knowledge when you need to.
Teaching creationism as something that's in the same category as evolution is a huge blow to that potentially developing framework of logic in someone's mind. There's nothing wrong with it as a religious belief, it just doesn't belong in a science class any more than cake recipes belong in a geometry class.
Getting heavy things into space is expensive. Why not use nanotube material (since we're talking at least two decades out) to make a giant bag with a very long cable attached? At the end of the cable is a much smaller bag. The big bag goes around the asteroid, and the little one is filled with a chunk that's knocked off of it. When the entire contraption gets near a planet or moon (other than Earth, obviously), it tosses the smaller bag into the gravity well. It acts like a sea anchor, and slingshots the asteroid onto a different trajectory. The bag would probably come apart, but not before changing the course enough for the asteroid to miss the Earth.
If the asteroid were known to be very solid, you could even forego the bag and tie the cable around like a gift bow.
If you REALLY built it well, maybe you could put the asteroid into orbit around the moon/other planet and hollow it out to use as a space station, a solid platform to build communications relay gear or robotic probe staging equipment on, or even a space elevator for a body other than Earth.
Whose bright idea was it to fragment a game console into sublevels?
/ramble
The same company that's selling about 37 different, ambiguously-named versions of its next operating system.
I really think the gaming industry is headed for another crash. I was pretty young during the original one, but I remember a few things that seem suspiciously familiar now.
Coleco had at least three expansion modules for the Colecovision, none of which ever got used except the Atari 2600 "adaptor" that cost as much as a standalone 2600. Mattel did the same thing with the Intellivision II. Both of them (and Atari) tried to sell their systems as the centerpiece of something bigger (home computing, etc.) and it flopped.
This is what I think of when Microsoft tries to sell a pretend version and a real version of the 360, and adds on "media center functionality." It's what I think of when Nintendo announces a console based on having a whole pile of possible controller options.
I also think the increasing prices are going to be a problem. $40-$50 is a nice round number to sell games for when they're first released. As soon as you get up into the $60-$70 range, it suddenly looks like a much bigger chunk of change. Obviously hardcore gamers won't mind so much, but they only make up a small part of the market.
I guess that seems like the main problem to me - back in the 80s and now. The manufacturers seem to forget that the hardcore gamers and/or people who can throw a bunch of money into gaming are a vocal minority. That people who don't work for their company don't generally use their gaming console as the centerpiece of anything. MS could have done two systems the smart way - by having a basic system that was actually useable, and a more expensive one for the hardcore gamers. Out of the entire Real Edition, the only thing I want is the hard drive. I don't play online games, so I don't need the headset. I don't care if my controllers are wired. Maybe they think that by bundling all that stuff in they'll convert me into an online gamer so they can get more of my money from Live? I might be an oddity, but their incessant focus on that is actually making me LESS likely to buy a 360 at all.
But I don't see how it would be radar neutral...
Another poster talked about building a vertical-axis turbine from plastic 55-gallon drums. I'm no mechanical engineer, but couldn't you build a simple one from those as the blades and PVC or other synthetic pipe as the axle? Obviously you'd need some bearings, but those would be relatively tiny. Depending on the height, I would think you could put the generator itself (with all its radar-reflecting parts) at or below ground level.
Of course, I'm not a radar technician either, so maybe my assumption that plastic and PVC are radar-neutral is wrong.
It's missing the theatrical cut of The Wrath of Khan, which I vastly prefer to the extended/alternate footage television version on the two-disc set - and I'm not even a big enough dork to own ANY of the television episodes.
Over two thousand dollars and they can't throw in a second copy of the best Trek film evar? What a swindle.
Man, I think the first Slashdot post I ever made was a complaint that the two-disc set didn't include the original release. What were they thinking? Extended is great. Replacing certain scenes - that I thought were great - with alternate takes, and then not including both versions a la the Terminator 2 DVD, that's lame.
NASA "enhances" photos and they make great posters.
Yes, God damn NASA for not releasing X-ray, gamma, infrared, ultraviolet, microwave, and radio-wave imagery in the original bands of the spectrum! My taxes line their bloated wallets and they can't even manage to put JPEGs on their site that emit hard radiation so I can see exactly the same thing they do with their so-called "space telescopes"!