According to Google, that would be: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden. As for France, it never left the alliance itself, but removed its forces from the integrated command (still sending them on some NATO operations when requested). In 2009 however, it rejoined the full structure.
Natural Up Direction: Okay, so in space, you don't really really truly need a natural up direction, but if you have a bunch of ships all going in the same direction, you certainly would want them all aligned to be the same way. I mean, just imagine trying to communicate if no-one cared what way they were rotated!
"Fleet! Look out on your left!" turns into:
"Jack, look out below! Paul, it's to your right! Mick, it's right in your front window sights, Tom, it's behind you!"
See why all the ships would be in a natural "up" direction? Simple communication. It's a formation for a reason.
For the fleet, of course. But there is no reason why Cylon Basestars would pop out on that same horizontal plane. That's where the natural 'up' feels dodgy to me.
Think they're over-reacting? Look at Warcraft. That was originally going to be a Warhammer game. Their legal team fell asleep on the job, didn't sign a properly binding agreement and Blizzard decided that they'd just remove the GW branding, give the game a slightly different name and keep all the royalties. To rub salt into the wound, they then released Starcraft which again was more than slightly familiar to GW fans.
They didn't seem to think that kind of things were an issue when they ripped off Aliens to make Space Hulk.
Well here, computer-minded teens started to request PCs before Doom. Before the influx of high-end VGA games, we regularly went to an Amiga/Atari-owner's house to play games. From then, more often than not, we tended to meet at my place to play the PC (Wolf3D level/graphics editing was a big favourite).
What year did they switch to the PC?
1991/1992 depending on the respective families finances. 1992 was a big year actually, thanks to the cheaper though short-lived Cyrix DLC processor, as well as 'Alone in the dark' which motivated most of us to get a sound blaster.
Of course, for the one whose family really couldn't afford it, it was 1995.
No. I dreamed of an Amiga at the time, as my Apple 2 was starting to be horribly outdated.
Have a look at the games i mentioned and you'll see that they're from 1991/1992. I maintain that this is when the high-end PC games overtook the Atari/Amiga for quality, and that it predated Doom (1993) by a couple years. This is the time when the PC turned into a powerful (though also expensive and arcane) gaming platform. It certainly wasn't the case before.
I recall my roommate trying to get the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual to run on his 1995 PC. He spent all weekend dicking-around with settings, and finally broke down and cried because it refused to work, and he had wasted $50.
I definitely can sympathize with that. Playing games during the MS-DOS years required one to get familiar with the arcane science of getting enough conventional memory/UMS/XMS and loading a mouse/sound driver at the same time... AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS hacking was an unfortunate but necessary hobby. Still, despite the failings of the OS, the end product - the game - was worth it to us.
Well, if the PC and Amiga versions of Civilization look the same to you, i guess at the time you found that Atari ST graphics looked as good as Amiga's. Our group didn't. Plus, lack of loading time thanks to that little thing called hard drive was quite marvelous for us at the time, but yeah, i'll grant you that it was available. Inferior but available.
As for WC, note that i mentioned Wing Commander 2. Sure, seen today, it's just a glorified arcade sim/shooter with cheesy storyline and videos, but back in time, it was mind-blowing. My mistake if it was available on Amiga/Atari and looked just as good. Finally, i wasn't shooting for a complete list, just taking a few examples. If you want to nitpick, go ahead and tell me you were playing Ultima 7 or Ultima Underworld on your Amiga in 1992 too.
I'm sure it's unfathomable for some people, but there's a reason why the amiga owners in our group all wanted (and ended up owning) a PC.
We are collecting data points like mad and its not looking good for extraterrestrial life. If ET life existed we would be seeing evidence of it along with the planets right now.
Those data points are a drop in the ocean considering the size of the galaxy we're taking them from. Factor in the size of the universe with a few hundreds of billion galaxies, and add to that the age of the universe vs the time-window in which the data points have been collected.
Our data points are as good as we can get right now and provide us with interesting insights, particularly on planetary systems formation, but they're utterly insignificant in the context of ET life, intelligent or not.
I'm the happy owner of one. After years spent looking at e-books and never finding one whose functionality/price was good enough, i almost found the holy grail. Battery life is brilliant, though something like 10 times less than advertised (i think they advertise 7500 page turns of autonomy, and my experience is that i can read books up to 800 pages on a full charge).
On DRM, the reader's best supported format is the sony one (.lrf files), which provides the best rendering, and which *can* support a DRM layer. It also happens to be a trivial format that also works without embedded restrictions. Therefore, you can download many books from the Gutenberg project in unencumbered lrf format from Manybooks.net. You can also convert many document formats (txt, rtf, html, doc) to unencumbered lrf. PDF support is not good though, as most A4 formatted pdfs will be too small when read in portrait, and will require you to scroll when in landscape. Good enough if you really need to access a pdf from time to time, but there's no way you'll ever read a book that way.
Finally, on accessing the device, mine doesn't work as a usb mass storage device, and i don't know if that's going to happen in the next models (sure hope so, obviously). However, there's a cross-platform open source driver available, which means that since i have the reader, i never had to use the crap software sony provides more than once, just to have a look. Never bothered again, and it doesn't run on my linux box anyway. That driver also comes with a GUI software, and many basic command line tools to access the device (cp, rm, ls etc), and to convert file formats (html2lrf being one of the most useful).
In the end, i really love that 'toy'. The hindrance of not having a backlight on the screen makes it more comfortable on the long run: no more visual fatigue than reading paper. The battery life is good, it is small enough to be carried comfortably (i'm looking at you iLiad), it can read most of the free books out there on the web. The main downside of course, is that you won't get access to the most recent books, as they're only sold with DRM, and usually not in Sony's format. Personally, i wasn't looking for that, so i'm fine, but this *is* a hindrance, and will be until ebook shops change their policies, which could take many years... Ah, and also, it's an ebook reader, nothing else. Well ok, it can display images and play mp3s, but that's really a waste of battery life. It doesn't browse the web, it has no wifi. It's only a book reader. But it's a damn good one.
World Rally Championship. Considering your interest wasn't grabbed by the standard city cars previously mentioned, i thought you might be looking for some other credentials from the manufacturer, but it seems motorsport is not your cup of tea.:)
Of course, i was half joking, as obviously, racing cars aren't of a direct interest for the common driving folk. Still, WRC is an interesting indictment of manufacturer's skills, as cars used in the competition have to originate from a mass produced series of vehicles. Plus, it's a challenge to build a vehicle fit for all surfaces, the races mixing asphalt and dirt sections. It's not quite the technological showcase as F1, but the tech transfer is more direct, with rally cars being far closer to their city brethens than F1s are.
You can even buy non-DRMed material via the iTMS - there are some independent labels up there who don't want to use DRM. It's still AAC, but it's not DRMed.
Could you provide sources or examples of this please? I read the opposite several times: that even independent labels music, already available elsewhere without DRM was DRMed in the iTMS, due to Apple's policy of forcing the same deal on every labels, with no discrimination/exception.
Not that i intend to buy anything from them, but it would be nice to have tham myth debunked if it is one.
To be honest, with the Exult engine for modern OS support and increased resolution, Ultima 7 BG/SI *still* is the pinnacle of computer RPGs as of now. No game since then has ever reached the blend of storyline, sidequesting and freedom of U7. And especially not the awful Pagan and Ascension...
Slashdot Mirror
According to Google, that would be: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden. As for France, it never left the alliance itself, but removed its forces from the integrated command (still sending them on some NATO operations when requested). In 2009 however, it rejoined the full structure.
And not all EU nations are in NATO. France is not.
France has rejoined NATO in 2009.
The fact that some people only now see Starship Troopers as perhaps somewhat sarcastic blows my mind. How can you miss it?
I was wondering the same. Happy to see i'm not alone...
Natural Up Direction: Okay, so in space, you don't really really truly need a natural up direction, but if you have a bunch of ships all going in the same direction, you certainly would want them all aligned to be the same way. I mean, just imagine trying to communicate if no-one cared what way they were rotated!
"Fleet! Look out on your left!" turns into:
"Jack, look out below! Paul, it's to your right! Mick, it's right in your front window sights, Tom, it's behind you!"
See why all the ships would be in a natural "up" direction? Simple communication. It's a formation for a reason.
For the fleet, of course. But there is no reason why Cylon Basestars would pop out on that same horizontal plane. That's where the natural 'up' feels dodgy to me.
It sounds like they are trying to fix my most hated part of the game, the combat system.
No mention, alas, of Wii motion-plus support. If the lightsaber can be handled like the sword in Wii Sports Resort, that's an instant-buy for me.
Think they're over-reacting? Look at Warcraft. That was originally going to be a Warhammer game. Their legal team fell asleep on the job, didn't sign a properly binding agreement and Blizzard decided that they'd just remove the GW branding, give the game a slightly different name and keep all the royalties. To rub salt into the wound, they then released Starcraft which again was more than slightly familiar to GW fans.
They didn't seem to think that kind of things were an issue when they ripped off Aliens to make Space Hulk.
Well here, computer-minded teens started to request PCs before Doom. Before the influx of high-end VGA games, we regularly went to an Amiga/Atari-owner's house to play games. From then, more often than not, we tended to meet at my place to play the PC (Wolf3D level/graphics editing was a big favourite).
What year did they switch to the PC?
1991/1992 depending on the respective families finances. 1992 was a big year actually, thanks to the cheaper though short-lived Cyrix DLC processor, as well as 'Alone in the dark' which motivated most of us to get a sound blaster.
Of course, for the one whose family really couldn't afford it, it was 1995.
VGA obviously, comparing the Amiga graphics to CGA would be downright insulting.
No. I dreamed of an Amiga at the time, as my Apple 2 was starting to be horribly outdated.
Have a look at the games i mentioned and you'll see that they're from 1991/1992. I maintain that this is when the high-end PC games overtook the Atari/Amiga for quality, and that it predated Doom (1993) by a couple years. This is the time when the PC turned into a powerful (though also expensive and arcane) gaming platform. It certainly wasn't the case before.
I recall my roommate trying to get the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual to run on his 1995 PC. He spent all weekend dicking-around with settings, and finally broke down and cried because it refused to work, and he had wasted $50.
I definitely can sympathize with that. Playing games during the MS-DOS years required one to get familiar with the arcane science of getting enough conventional memory/UMS/XMS and loading a mouse/sound driver at the same time... AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS hacking was an unfortunate but necessary hobby. Still, despite the failings of the OS, the end product - the game - was worth it to us.
Well, if the PC and Amiga versions of Civilization look the same to you, i guess at the time you found that Atari ST graphics looked as good as Amiga's. Our group didn't. Plus, lack of loading time thanks to that little thing called hard drive was quite marvelous for us at the time, but yeah, i'll grant you that it was available. Inferior but available.
As for WC, note that i mentioned Wing Commander 2. Sure, seen today, it's just a glorified arcade sim/shooter with cheesy storyline and videos, but back in time, it was mind-blowing. My mistake if it was available on Amiga/Atari and looked just as good. Finally, i wasn't shooting for a complete list, just taking a few examples. If you want to nitpick, go ahead and tell me you were playing Ultima 7 or Ultima Underworld on your Amiga in 1992 too.
I'm sure it's unfathomable for some people, but there's a reason why the amiga owners in our group all wanted (and ended up owning) a PC.
Prior to DOOM!, most decent PC games were available for Amiga / Atari ST, with better sound and graphics.
A few years before that, my Amiga/Atari buddies were already salivating when i could play Wing Commander II, Falcon 3.0 or Civilization.
I'll grant you that Doom put the final nail in the coffin, but the PC had already taken the edge for high-end quality games when it came out.
We are collecting data points like mad and its not looking good for extraterrestrial life. If ET life existed we would be seeing evidence of it along with the planets right now.
Those data points are a drop in the ocean considering the size of the galaxy we're taking them from. Factor in the size of the universe with a few hundreds of billion galaxies, and add to that the age of the universe vs the time-window in which the data points have been collected.
Our data points are as good as we can get right now and provide us with interesting insights, particularly on planetary systems formation, but they're utterly insignificant in the context of ET life, intelligent or not.
That many wands in a weapons shop? Must be a bones file.
Always bless the tin...
In that case though, there are packages that download the binary and package it properly (see http://packages.debian.org/testing/misc/googleearth-package).
I'm the happy owner of one. After years spent looking at e-books and never finding one whose functionality/price was good enough, i almost found the holy grail. Battery life is brilliant, though something like 10 times less than advertised (i think they advertise 7500 page turns of autonomy, and my experience is that i can read books up to 800 pages on a full charge).
On DRM, the reader's best supported format is the sony one (.lrf files), which provides the best rendering, and which *can* support a DRM layer. It also happens to be a trivial format that also works without embedded restrictions. Therefore, you can download many books from the Gutenberg project in unencumbered lrf format from Manybooks.net. You can also convert many document formats (txt, rtf, html, doc) to unencumbered lrf. PDF support is not good though, as most A4 formatted pdfs will be too small when read in portrait, and will require you to scroll when in landscape. Good enough if you really need to access a pdf from time to time, but there's no way you'll ever read a book that way.
Finally, on accessing the device, mine doesn't work as a usb mass storage device, and i don't know if that's going to happen in the next models (sure hope so, obviously). However, there's a cross-platform open source driver available, which means that since i have the reader, i never had to use the crap software sony provides more than once, just to have a look. Never bothered again, and it doesn't run on my linux box anyway. That driver also comes with a GUI software, and many basic command line tools to access the device (cp, rm, ls etc), and to convert file formats (html2lrf being one of the most useful).
In the end, i really love that 'toy'. The hindrance of not having a backlight on the screen makes it more comfortable on the long run: no more visual fatigue than reading paper. The battery life is good, it is small enough to be carried comfortably (i'm looking at you iLiad), it can read most of the free books out there on the web. The main downside of course, is that you won't get access to the most recent books, as they're only sold with DRM, and usually not in Sony's format. Personally, i wasn't looking for that, so i'm fine, but this *is* a hindrance, and will be until ebook shops change their policies, which could take many years... Ah, and also, it's an ebook reader, nothing else. Well ok, it can display images and play mp3s, but that's really a waste of battery life. It doesn't browse the web, it has no wifi. It's only a book reader. But it's a damn good one.
CEOs are people
Spoiler!!!
What comes after that though from both Blizzard and Arena.net will be very telling.
Warcraft 4, WoW 2, Starcraft 3, Diablo 3...
Then, after you watch it... go read up on who made it, how they made it, and how much it cost.
:)
First things first: after watching Primer, have an aspirin and watch it again. And again. And again. *Then* read about it.
World Rally Championship. Considering your interest wasn't grabbed by the standard city cars previously mentioned, i thought you might be looking for some other credentials from the manufacturer, but it seems motorsport is not your cup of tea. :)
Of course, i was half joking, as obviously, racing cars aren't of a direct interest for the common driving folk. Still, WRC is an interesting indictment of manufacturer's skills, as cars used in the competition have to originate from a mass produced series of vehicles. Plus, it's a challenge to build a vehicle fit for all surfaces, the races mixing asphalt and dirt sections. It's not quite the technological showcase as F1, but the tech transfer is more direct, with rally cars being far closer to their city brethens than F1s are.
Have a look at what car is driven to a record number of victories by the triple WRC champion. A Citroën...
You can even buy non-DRMed material via the iTMS - there are some independent labels up there who don't want to use DRM. It's still AAC, but it's not DRMed.
Could you provide sources or examples of this please? I read the opposite several times: that even independent labels music, already available elsewhere without DRM was DRMed in the iTMS, due to Apple's policy of forcing the same deal on every labels, with no discrimination/exception.
Not that i intend to buy anything from them, but it would be nice to have tham myth debunked if it is one.
spice weasel
I take it that the Sandworm's license doesn't comply with the DSFG then...
To be honest, with the Exult engine for modern OS support and increased resolution, Ultima 7 BG/SI *still* is the pinnacle of computer RPGs as of now. No game since then has ever reached the blend of storyline, sidequesting and freedom of U7. And especially not the awful Pagan and Ascension...