I keep hoping to see Wedding Crashers on one of these lists, because it fits the Joseph Campbell monomyth mold too. Except, it's not fantasy (in the classic sense at least).
If you're allowing the sort of sci-fi you mentioned, then Contact would be an excellent place for middle schoolers to start.
Also, Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It's a bit outdated considering it was written before we even visited the moon, but that's a point you ask them to write up in their report.
It's been a long time since I've seen it - came out in 1994, so I'm guessing about that long - but I'm pretty sure they used an omnidirectional treadmill in the movie Disclosure, not that most people remember the VR elements from the movie. Pretty sure Michael Crichton described them in the book, too.
I don't wish ill on the company, but I hope that the WiiU is the end of Nintendo hardware, and that they'll start publishing games for other companies' hardware. Not unlike Sega. The Wii may have been an innovation with motion-controlled gaming, but it's a dubious innovation and was topped by Microsoft's Kinect (which is also dubious; I basically use mine to bark commands at my squadmates in single-player Mass Effect 3). The 3DS hasn't really been a success. Maybe it's time for them to realize that they could make serious money by putting their games on IOS, on XBLA, on PSN.
I would gladly pay money to Nintendo if they released their past titles on XBLA, IOS, Android, etc. I'd love to carry around Super Mario Bros. on my iPad. (Yes, I know I could probably jailbreak and emulate. I'd rather be legit.)
I ordered the 8GB model, expecting to have to wait the 1 to 2 weeks quoted for it to ship. My order shipped the next day. It's sitting in a closet, still in the shipping box, because it's for my son's 10th birthday, which is a month away.
I remember hearing that a lot of the original Pac Man cabinets were revamped for Ms. Pac Man when it was released - the boards replaced and the cabinet reskinned - which is why it's very difficult to find a vintage Pac Man cabinet. But like BigSes said, Ms is simply more fun, which would explain why it's the only one you see now. (Except for Pac Man Championship Edition, which is insanely cool. Hope the new edition adds an infinite play mode.)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400 (oh, and 10.6.4 - forgot about that last point upgrade). I have the res set to 1920x1080 and most of the options set to low or medium.
I'm playing Starcraft II on the last-gen iMac (purchased about four months ago) on OS X 10.6.3. The game is stable during gameplay, but it's crashed on me several times in cutscenes, onboard the Hyperion, or even in the main menu (ironically, while I was bringing up the menu to quit the game).
oh btw am i mistaken that ad block plus actually DOES NOT DOWNLOAD THE ADS IT BLOCKS
I wish ad blockers *would* download the ads, but not display them. It would never result in a click, but it would result in a view, so depending on the ad deal between publisher and advertiser, the site may still get credit.
I figured once that it cost me $0.40 per day to make coffee at home, given the weight of beans I grind per pot and the filtered water I use. That's $146 per year, or $104 if I only made it five days a week. So, $60 to $120 per year isn't far off.
I had a similar, though better informed, experience with escolar. My wife and I were planning on having a nice anniversary dinner at an upscale restaurant in Austin, TX. Escolar was on their online menu, and I read up on it. The Wikipedia article is very precise in its description of its symptoms, and that it's banned in other countries. I thought, bah, it can't really do that to you...can it? It was one of two options on their prixe fixe menu, and I can cook a good steak myself, so it's what I ordered. After dinner, we walked a couple blocks over to a bar off 6th Street. As the lady at the door was going to take our cover charge, I suddenly felt like my bowels were going to violently void themselves. We ducked out of line and hurried back to the hotel. I made it just in time, and had one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had on a toilet. The symptom descriptions were very accurate.
I've had various naming schemes at employers. One, it was sea creatures (the name of the company was The Pond). Another, military aircraft (the owner was a vet who spent his Army years flying helicopters). Another, the staff picked so it was a mishmash, though our SpamAssassin cluster used names of successful US presidential assassins (though when we got to McKinley's and couldn't spell it, it was marking the end of the meme). Yet another, trees.
For my personal stuff, though, I use names of famous dogs, and I try not to recycle them. I've used Toto, Fido, Speck, Einstein, Astro, Scooby, Nipper, Laika, Strelka, and a lot more. My latest are Gromit (can't believe that in 10 years I'd never used it!) and Petey.
The story's icon inspires me: Pac Man should be revived as a first person eater!
Part of the greatness of Pac-Man was that you could see the entire board at once and plan your route accordingly. A first-person perspective would take that away. Sure, you could have a map, but that clutters the HUD and mars the immersion.
But, I haven't seen anyone mention the superb Pac-Man Championship Edition. It took everything great about Pac-Man, improved the visuals, and tweaked the gameplay just enough to make it new.
I was a manager at an ISP shop that unionized (I came in after the unionization effort), and I offer a hearty "hear, hear" to your comments, particularly the first paragraph. At that business in particular, it was largely because a general manager came in who expected the staff to, you know, *work*. They unionized to protect their right to be slackers. I was hired to deal with the slacker admin staff so the GM didn't have to. When the business started going under (not directly due to the unionization; bad business models tend to do that), it really hurt that I had to let the more junior admins go when they were the ones who actually worked.
I see a lot of other replies to this comment, but I'll throw out my personal experience...
I'm 32. I was homeschooled in 2nd grade, then again in 6th through the end of high school. 5th grade was at a private school. If I had to do it over and had my choice, I would've gone to public schools. I've done well for myself, but I wasn't equipped to deal with other people (despite church and near-daily classes at a private school) and was intimidated enough by large groups of my peers that I avoided going to a college where I could've studied the fields I wanted to study. I could've worked with computers (my parents weren't well off, so we were well behind the technology curve, even for the late 80s/early 90s). I could've had some journalism experience in high school to pursue that in college. My life would be wildly different, and I think in a lot of ways better. I've struggled against the drawbacks of my education rather than excelling because of its benefits. I have a five-year-old son, and I don't want to give him that same experience. We're sending him to a private school, and it's a good one (unlike the ultra-conservative craphole my parents sent me to).
...and give us the statistics on the percentage of overall sales for a console by ESRB rating. "M" rated games may be a smaller percentage of overall games for the PS3 or Xbox 360, but I'll wager that they account for a large percentage of the overall sales.
Three of them (and the PS) are 100% correct. One is flat out wrong, but on the right track. One in context is a possibility. Don't know about the other three. They left out two pretty big ones (or at least I think they're big). This is from reading the last three chapters and the epilogue.
I let out a yelp of glee when I saw that Oingo Boingo was going to be included. Sure, if they were going to pick any '80s era Boingo, there's plenty of other great tracks (hell, if they were going to take anything from that album, I'd rather have "Imposter"), but they're still one of my favorite bands, and just having one of their songs on there makes me happy. At least I'll have an excuse to yell "HE LIKED TO BURN THINGS!" without looking like a total idiot...
The Matrix Trilogy: May 22nd on HD DVD. Choose your flavor: either a 3-disc set with the movies and minimal extras, or a 5-disc set that includes all the extras from the huge 10-disc DVD set.
Looks like Universal Access is now a company called Vanco Direct. Seeing that name was a blast from the past. My first job in the tech field was with a small ISP that had dreams of being much bigger. The guy who owned it was very good at spending his parents' money and coming up with big ideas. He fast-talked Universal Access into buying the company and giving him a job. About six months later, they fired him, and about a year later (in about 2001 or so), UA closed down our little ISP because other parts of their operation weren't profitable. This was after they IPOed. The stock hit $70 or $80 in the first few days. A few months later when they gave us ISP employees 500 shares as a bonus, it was at about $25 when they told us we were getting it, and a month or so later when we could sell it was down to about $5. I sold as soon as I possibly could. My co-workers weren't so lucky; they waited until it was under $1. It was eventually delisted.
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I keep hoping to see Wedding Crashers on one of these lists, because it fits the Joseph Campbell monomyth mold too. Except, it's not fantasy (in the classic sense at least).
If you're allowing the sort of sci-fi you mentioned, then Contact would be an excellent place for middle schoolers to start.
Also, Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It's a bit outdated considering it was written before we even visited the moon, but that's a point you ask them to write up in their report.
It's been a long time since I've seen it - came out in 1994, so I'm guessing about that long - but I'm pretty sure they used an omnidirectional treadmill in the movie Disclosure, not that most people remember the VR elements from the movie. Pretty sure Michael Crichton described them in the book, too.
I'd hate if someone from the government ever got ahold of my searches while watching Breaking Bad...
Isn't that a better test of people's poor reading comprehension and listening skills?
I don't wish ill on the company, but I hope that the WiiU is the end of Nintendo hardware, and that they'll start publishing games for other companies' hardware. Not unlike Sega. The Wii may have been an innovation with motion-controlled gaming, but it's a dubious innovation and was topped by Microsoft's Kinect (which is also dubious; I basically use mine to bark commands at my squadmates in single-player Mass Effect 3). The 3DS hasn't really been a success. Maybe it's time for them to realize that they could make serious money by putting their games on IOS, on XBLA, on PSN.
I would gladly pay money to Nintendo if they released their past titles on XBLA, IOS, Android, etc. I'd love to carry around Super Mario Bros. on my iPad. (Yes, I know I could probably jailbreak and emulate. I'd rather be legit.)
Douglas Adams nailed it...again.
Many of those businesses are already required to use TLS, which while not SMTPS, it performs essentially the same role.
I ordered the 8GB model, expecting to have to wait the 1 to 2 weeks quoted for it to ship. My order shipped the next day. It's sitting in a closet, still in the shipping box, because it's for my son's 10th birthday, which is a month away.
I remember hearing that a lot of the original Pac Man cabinets were revamped for Ms. Pac Man when it was released - the boards replaced and the cabinet reskinned - which is why it's very difficult to find a vintage Pac Man cabinet. But like BigSes said, Ms is simply more fun, which would explain why it's the only one you see now. (Except for Pac Man Championship Edition, which is insanely cool. Hope the new edition adds an infinite play mode.)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400 (oh, and 10.6.4 - forgot about that last point upgrade). I have the res set to 1920x1080 and most of the options set to low or medium.
I'm playing Starcraft II on the last-gen iMac (purchased about four months ago) on OS X 10.6.3. The game is stable during gameplay, but it's crashed on me several times in cutscenes, onboard the Hyperion, or even in the main menu (ironically, while I was bringing up the menu to quit the game).
oh btw am i mistaken that ad block plus actually DOES NOT DOWNLOAD THE ADS IT BLOCKS
I wish ad blockers *would* download the ads, but not display them. It would never result in a click, but it would result in a view, so depending on the ad deal between publisher and advertiser, the site may still get credit.
I figured once that it cost me $0.40 per day to make coffee at home, given the weight of beans I grind per pot and the filtered water I use. That's $146 per year, or $104 if I only made it five days a week. So, $60 to $120 per year isn't far off.
I had a similar, though better informed, experience with escolar. My wife and I were planning on having a nice anniversary dinner at an upscale restaurant in Austin, TX. Escolar was on their online menu, and I read up on it. The Wikipedia article is very precise in its description of its symptoms, and that it's banned in other countries. I thought, bah, it can't really do that to you...can it? It was one of two options on their prixe fixe menu, and I can cook a good steak myself, so it's what I ordered. After dinner, we walked a couple blocks over to a bar off 6th Street. As the lady at the door was going to take our cover charge, I suddenly felt like my bowels were going to violently void themselves. We ducked out of line and hurried back to the hotel. I made it just in time, and had one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had on a toilet. The symptom descriptions were very accurate.
I've had various naming schemes at employers. One, it was sea creatures (the name of the company was The Pond). Another, military aircraft (the owner was a vet who spent his Army years flying helicopters). Another, the staff picked so it was a mishmash, though our SpamAssassin cluster used names of successful US presidential assassins (though when we got to McKinley's and couldn't spell it, it was marking the end of the meme). Yet another, trees.
For my personal stuff, though, I use names of famous dogs, and I try not to recycle them. I've used Toto, Fido, Speck, Einstein, Astro, Scooby, Nipper, Laika, Strelka, and a lot more. My latest are Gromit (can't believe that in 10 years I'd never used it!) and Petey.
The story's icon inspires me: Pac Man should be revived as a first person eater!
Part of the greatness of Pac-Man was that you could see the entire board at once and plan your route accordingly. A first-person perspective would take that away. Sure, you could have a map, but that clutters the HUD and mars the immersion.
But, I haven't seen anyone mention the superb Pac-Man Championship Edition. It took everything great about Pac-Man, improved the visuals, and tweaked the gameplay just enough to make it new.
I was a manager at an ISP shop that unionized (I came in after the unionization effort), and I offer a hearty "hear, hear" to your comments, particularly the first paragraph. At that business in particular, it was largely because a general manager came in who expected the staff to, you know, *work*. They unionized to protect their right to be slackers. I was hired to deal with the slacker admin staff so the GM didn't have to. When the business started going under (not directly due to the unionization; bad business models tend to do that), it really hurt that I had to let the more junior admins go when they were the ones who actually worked.
I see a lot of other replies to this comment, but I'll throw out my personal experience...
I'm 32. I was homeschooled in 2nd grade, then again in 6th through the end of high school. 5th grade was at a private school. If I had to do it over and had my choice, I would've gone to public schools. I've done well for myself, but I wasn't equipped to deal with other people (despite church and near-daily classes at a private school) and was intimidated enough by large groups of my peers that I avoided going to a college where I could've studied the fields I wanted to study. I could've worked with computers (my parents weren't well off, so we were well behind the technology curve, even for the late 80s/early 90s). I could've had some journalism experience in high school to pursue that in college. My life would be wildly different, and I think in a lot of ways better. I've struggled against the drawbacks of my education rather than excelling because of its benefits. I have a five-year-old son, and I don't want to give him that same experience. We're sending him to a private school, and it's a good one (unlike the ultra-conservative craphole my parents sent me to).
...and give us the statistics on the percentage of overall sales for a console by ESRB rating. "M" rated games may be a smaller percentage of overall games for the PS3 or Xbox 360, but I'll wager that they account for a large percentage of the overall sales.
Three of them (and the PS) are 100% correct. One is flat out wrong, but on the right track. One in context is a possibility. Don't know about the other three. They left out two pretty big ones (or at least I think they're big). This is from reading the last three chapters and the epilogue.
I let out a yelp of glee when I saw that Oingo Boingo was going to be included. Sure, if they were going to pick any '80s era Boingo, there's plenty of other great tracks (hell, if they were going to take anything from that album, I'd rather have "Imposter"), but they're still one of my favorite bands, and just having one of their songs on there makes me happy. At least I'll have an excuse to yell "HE LIKED TO BURN THINGS!" without looking like a total idiot...
The Matrix Trilogy: May 22nd on HD DVD. Choose your flavor: either a 3-disc set with the movies and minimal extras, or a 5-disc set that includes all the extras from the huge 10-disc DVD set.
Looks like Universal Access is now a company called Vanco Direct. Seeing that name was a blast from the past. My first job in the tech field was with a small ISP that had dreams of being much bigger. The guy who owned it was very good at spending his parents' money and coming up with big ideas. He fast-talked Universal Access into buying the company and giving him a job. About six months later, they fired him, and about a year later (in about 2001 or so), UA closed down our little ISP because other parts of their operation weren't profitable. This was after they IPOed. The stock hit $70 or $80 in the first few days. A few months later when they gave us ISP employees 500 shares as a bonus, it was at about $25 when they told us we were getting it, and a month or so later when we could sell it was down to about $5. I sold as soon as I possibly could. My co-workers weren't so lucky; they waited until it was under $1. It was eventually delisted.
Ah, the good old days of the dot-com bubble.