I choose MSWord over the competing product for two features.
1) The fact that it comes pre-installed on my computer, and I'm nothing if not lazy. 2) The fact that it is the standard, and pretty much everyone can open my Word 2000 documents.
This looks like it will continue merrily into Office 2003, so long as I don't put DRM on my files.
Since the odds of that are only slightly lower than the odds of Microsoft going open source, I think I'm probably fine.
There is plenty of important value to be placed on science fiction without resorting to making things up. Science fiction does not drive science - one would be hard pressed to come up with an important scientific advance that would not have happened without science fiction.
No. If you want to justify science fiction, look at the ways in which the ability to create future worlds, or alien civilizations allows new ways to talk about problems that humans face today. Look at the metaphorical capabilities of it. Look at the simple fact that it entertains people - both geeks and "normal" people.
But don't delude yourself into thinking that science fiction is somehow necessary to science. If nothing else, the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment clearly did pretty well at science without science fiction.
This is not a knock against either Buffy or Coraline - I have Buffy seasons 1-7 on my bookshelf, and my Neil Gaiman collection is probably worth about $1000. But neither of them are science fiction. Coraline is a children's horror novel. A wonderful children's horror novel, but a children's horror novel all the same.
Maybe a case can be made for Buffy, since it's at least had sci-fi moments in its series, but Conversations With Dead People was not one of them.
I mean, yeah, a case can be made that the Hugos need to start acknowledging things beyond straight sci-fi if they're going to survive as a relevent and interesting award. But if they're going to do that, they should stop calling themselves a science fiction award. And they should also pause to ask whether, with the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards around, such a move is really necessary.
I think CNN or MSNBC shutting down would be wildly inappropriate - they are, ultimately, online newspapers, and such political activism would be quite inappropriate for their frontpage.
Now what would be good would be some opinion pieces on both sites about this, and some front page coverage of the issue - facts, details, and quotes both for and against.
But a large scale protest like that would be quite inappropriate.
We have a book review written by a friend of the authors of the book it reviews, and furthermore the authors of the book it reviews have taken public stances against the subject of the book?
Well, hell, in that case, David Manning said the book was "The most intriguing study of comic books ever written".
When you figure the amount of time it takes me to make a post, and the amount of time spent on the project, I suspect that, proportionally, you'd be wrong. =)
Blizzard almost certainly has a trademark on RTS games with names in the format of "XCraft". So when people are making a game that "plays like WC2", and furthermore has a title in the same format as Blizzard's games, they are entirely within their rights to say "Stop that, or we'll sue your bitch ass."
Are the new projects illegal? Probably not, though they want to be careful about trumpeting their connection to Freecraft. But the fact of the matter is that making new versions of WC2 is not exactly useful or productive...
I'm not really sure how giving away millions of dollars worth of media for free can "fail".
Except maybe if a bunch of whiny geeks complain that they don't like the format, instead of being thankful and praising this as one of the most substantial steps in making information free I can think of.
I tend to think of myself as a dedicated Nintendo loyalist.
On the whole, I genuinely like Nintendo and its games. And I usually feel obliged to put a positive spin on Nintendo news on/., particularly with the large number of rather vehement anti-Nintendo sorts that show up here.
So, in light of all of that, I'd like to say that this is an astonishingly stupid fucking idea.
The full four-player may be somewhat rare - but I have little doubt that if my neighbor or I had this game last year, that both of us, and probably my girlfriend too, would have been playing it pretty much constantly.
If you play the fun game we call "reading the post you're replying to", you'll notice the following sentence:
"Maybe if you took all three consoles, instead of just one, I'd find things to be different, but I consider having to pay $800 for the consoles to get as many good games in a generation a problem. But even if you take the PSX and the N64, there are not as many games I want to play as there are NES games in my collection that I still pick up."
You might accuse the PSX and N64 of being the past generation, and no longer applying... then again, with two years left in this generation of consoles, it's tough to judge the number of games that this generation put out as well, so I think either way is probably fare.
There's no system with every game being great. But if I take the list of NES games I own and consider worth owning, the list of SNES games, and the list of GC games I consider worth owning, the list gets smaller every console. (I exclude the N64 from this, due to my total hatred of the console)
Maybe if you took all three consoles, instead of just one, I'd find things to be different, but I consider having to pay $800 for the consoles to get as many good games in a generation a problem. But even if you take the PSX and the N64, there are not as many games I want to play as there are NES games in my collection that I still pick up.
I see the same trend in PC gaming. There are far more games I want to play on my 486 than there are on my brand new $3000 Gateway.
Pretty much no one refers to you as a member of the republic in KOTOR after you actually go sith with your allegiances. When you encounter Bastilla on the unknown planet, you can decisively "go evil", at which point no one will have much doubt who you're working for. Until that point, you're still ostensibly carrying out the mission of the Jedi council - even if you're privately already planning to betray them all.
I meant the GC/GBA link cable, not the multiplayer GBA one, which I agree, at the very least, should at least be one cable for the four users that the GBA can theoretically support. =)
Yes, Nintendo might turn more profit if they were a third party manufacturer. However, I don't think that's what Nintendo, as a collective, is interested in doing - I think they'd prefer to stay a niche product that tries to slowly expand its niche again towards dominance, knowing that there will always be enough people who will buy whatever console Zelda is on.
As I've said many times, they're much like Macintosh. Probably never going to rule the market. But not going anywhere either. And I think the world needs more companies like that. =)
Actually, Triton Labs, the folks that brought you the first backlit GBA solution, are allegedly at work on a Bluetooth link cable that will get rid of the cables too...
Just because I can't resist slapping anti-Nintendo trolls in the face...
I do not believe for a moment that Nintendo would be even remotely as good at making games for a system they didn't develop. One of the crucial aspects of Nintendo's management and design style is that the controllers and specs on the system are worked on by the game designers as well. Shigeru Miyamoto had substantial input into the controller design for the N64 and the GC.
Furthermore, Nintendo is one of the few companies to put out truly innovative hardware - the eReader, the GBA link cable, and the Wavebird all spring to mind. No, they don't always exploit this hardware fully, but in some instances (Animal Crossing being first and foremost in my mind) they do damn brilliant jobs of making their hardware synergize. If their Pac-Man game ever comes out, I have no doubt that it will be another masterpiece of synergy.
No, Nintendo could not do what they do without making their own hardware. It's that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
I choose MSWord over the competing product for two features.
1) The fact that it comes pre-installed on my computer, and I'm nothing if not lazy.
2) The fact that it is the standard, and pretty much everyone can open my Word 2000 documents.
This looks like it will continue merrily into Office 2003, so long as I don't put DRM on my files.
Since the odds of that are only slightly lower than the odds of Microsoft going open source, I think I'm probably fine.
We're just going to pretend that I can close my HTML tags the first time, OK?
Buffy 1-6
Buffy 7.
Pardon my slight exaggeration - the second half of season 7 is only on pre-order.
Buffy 1-6
7.
Pardon my slight exaggeration - the second half of season 7 is only on pre-order.
There is plenty of important value to be placed on science fiction without resorting to making things up. Science fiction does not drive science - one would be hard pressed to come up with an important scientific advance that would not have happened without science fiction.
No. If you want to justify science fiction, look at the ways in which the ability to create future worlds, or alien civilizations allows new ways to talk about problems that humans face today. Look at the metaphorical capabilities of it. Look at the simple fact that it entertains people - both geeks and "normal" people.
But don't delude yourself into thinking that science fiction is somehow necessary to science. If nothing else, the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment clearly did pretty well at science without science fiction.
This is not a knock against either Buffy or Coraline - I have Buffy seasons 1-7 on my bookshelf, and my Neil Gaiman collection is probably worth about $1000. But neither of them are science fiction. Coraline is a children's horror novel. A wonderful children's horror novel, but a children's horror novel all the same.
Maybe a case can be made for Buffy, since it's at least had sci-fi moments in its series, but Conversations With Dead People was not one of them.
I mean, yeah, a case can be made that the Hugos need to start acknowledging things beyond straight sci-fi if they're going to survive as a relevent and interesting award. But if they're going to do that, they should stop calling themselves a science fiction award. And they should also pause to ask whether, with the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards around, such a move is really necessary.
Oh well. Grats to Gaiman and Whedon anyway. =)
There are people (I was one of them) that would flatly reject that, and pick a different school over it.
Policies which decrease enrollment are generally to be avoided.
I think CNN or MSNBC shutting down would be wildly inappropriate - they are, ultimately, online newspapers, and such political activism would be quite inappropriate for their frontpage.
Now what would be good would be some opinion pieces on both sites about this, and some front page coverage of the issue - facts, details, and quotes both for and against.
But a large scale protest like that would be quite inappropriate.
We have a book review written by a friend of the authors of the book it reviews, and furthermore the authors of the book it reviews have taken public stances against the subject of the book?
Well, hell, in that case, David Manning said the book was "The most intriguing study of comic books ever written".
I can't wait for someone to commit a war crime, and claim they were inspired by America's Army...
Neither is granting returns on several year old merchandise.
When you figure the amount of time it takes me to make a post, and the amount of time spent on the project, I suspect that, proportionally, you'd be wrong. =)
Blizzard almost certainly has a trademark on RTS games with names in the format of "XCraft". So when people are making a game that "plays like WC2", and furthermore has a title in the same format as Blizzard's games, they are entirely within their rights to say "Stop that, or we'll sue your bitch ass."
Are the new projects illegal? Probably not, though they want to be careful about trumpeting their connection to Freecraft. But the fact of the matter is that making new versions of WC2 is not exactly useful or productive...
Because their first illegal activity got sensibly shut down, instead of moving on to interesting and productive goals, they're just trying again?
Ah well. At least they're not making yet another open source text editor...
I'm not really sure how giving away millions of dollars worth of media for free can "fail".
Except maybe if a bunch of whiny geeks complain that they don't like the format, instead of being thankful and praising this as one of the most substantial steps in making information free I can think of.
I tend to think of myself as a dedicated Nintendo loyalist.
/., particularly with the large number of rather vehement anti-Nintendo sorts that show up here.
On the whole, I genuinely like Nintendo and its games. And I usually feel obliged to put a positive spin on Nintendo news on
So, in light of all of that, I'd like to say that this is an astonishingly stupid fucking idea.
The full four-player may be somewhat rare - but I have little doubt that if my neighbor or I had this game last year, that both of us, and probably my girlfriend too, would have been playing it pretty much constantly.
And that's at least a threesome.
I think the people who will play this are college students, who will play it with their roommates.
I think it could probably succeed to people's expectations based on that market.
If you play the fun game we call "reading the post you're replying to", you'll notice the following sentence:
"Maybe if you took all three consoles, instead of just one, I'd find things to be different, but I consider having to pay $800 for the consoles to get as many good games in a generation a problem. But even if you take the PSX and the N64, there are not as many games I want to play as there are NES games in my collection that I still pick up."
You might accuse the PSX and N64 of being the past generation, and no longer applying... then again, with two years left in this generation of consoles, it's tough to judge the number of games that this generation put out as well, so I think either way is probably fare.
There's no system with every game being great. But if I take the list of NES games I own and consider worth owning, the list of SNES games, and the list of GC games I consider worth owning, the list gets smaller every console. (I exclude the N64 from this, due to my total hatred of the console)
Maybe if you took all three consoles, instead of just one, I'd find things to be different, but I consider having to pay $800 for the consoles to get as many good games in a generation a problem. But even if you take the PSX and the N64, there are not as many games I want to play as there are NES games in my collection that I still pick up.
I see the same trend in PC gaming. There are far more games I want to play on my 486 than there are on my brand new $3000 Gateway.
So, yeah, I think games have gone downhill.
No. They're not better.
Largely because good chunks of his posts (Most notably smell-o-vision) are absolutely hilarious.
I think he's less a troll than a rather warped little performance artist. I personally prefer to mod him +1 Funny.
Pretty much no one refers to you as a member of the republic in KOTOR after you actually go sith with your allegiances. When you encounter Bastilla on the unknown planet, you can decisively "go evil", at which point no one will have much doubt who you're working for. Until that point, you're still ostensibly carrying out the mission of the Jedi council - even if you're privately already planning to betray them all.
I meant the GC/GBA link cable, not the multiplayer GBA one, which I agree, at the very least, should at least be one cable for the four users that the GBA can theoretically support. =)
Yes, Nintendo might turn more profit if they were a third party manufacturer. However, I don't think that's what Nintendo, as a collective, is interested in doing - I think they'd prefer to stay a niche product that tries to slowly expand its niche again towards dominance, knowing that there will always be enough people who will buy whatever console Zelda is on.
As I've said many times, they're much like Macintosh. Probably never going to rule the market. But not going anywhere either. And I think the world needs more companies like that. =)
Actually, Triton Labs, the folks that brought you the first backlit GBA solution, are allegedly at work on a Bluetooth link cable that will get rid of the cables too...
Just because I can't resist slapping anti-Nintendo trolls in the face...
I do not believe for a moment that Nintendo would be even remotely as good at making games for a system they didn't develop. One of the crucial aspects of Nintendo's management and design style is that the controllers and specs on the system are worked on by the game designers as well. Shigeru Miyamoto had substantial input into the controller design for the N64 and the GC.
Furthermore, Nintendo is one of the few companies to put out truly innovative hardware - the eReader, the GBA link cable, and the Wavebird all spring to mind. No, they don't always exploit this hardware fully, but in some instances (Animal Crossing being first and foremost in my mind) they do damn brilliant jobs of making their hardware synergize. If their Pac-Man game ever comes out, I have no doubt that it will be another masterpiece of synergy.
No, Nintendo could not do what they do without making their own hardware. It's that simple.