If you look at the library itself (www.baen.com/library) you'll see lots of authors have agreed to this, including Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle, David Weber (The Honor Harrington books are one of Baen's main lines), David Drake. Also as part of their free samples I've seen sections from Spider Robinson and a few other people where they give you the first 6 or so chapters of the book
Also, Stephen King's case used encryption, which is commented on in the article as being a flat-out bad idea. Never make it hard for the public to use your product if you can help it.
The Baen Library is an excellent experiment - it involves giving away free books, and also a $10/month subscription service where you preview rough drafts and new books up to 3 months before they are published.
It's not just one guy putting his books online and giving them away because he can't get published, it's an attempt to work with the public, rather then assume we are all criminals
Reading the article is still too hard for you I see
Nor can this be explained, as the sharp rise in sales of Mother of Demons perhaps can, as the result of me becoming better known as an author. David Drake, not me, is listed as the lead author of An Oblique Approach-and Dave has been a very well known SF author for twenty years.
It's a website that's just full of 100% Real artifacts.
Shame the artifacts are what happens when you use Photoshop to magnify something 500%, then completly abuse the filters and levels until you arn't so much looking at the image as a blurred and messy bunch of pixels
Then declare that you can detect "Regularity" and issue a press release / book / start a new talk show circuit.
My favorite (was where he discovered that on the walls of an ancient Egyptian pyramid, there was a hyroglyph that looked like the Millenium Falcon and Luke's Landspeeded(He has since removed that image, as I can't see it in the archive, but http://www.enterprisemission.com/images/tankcomp.j pg shows that he is now comparing the same set of markings it to a M1-A1)
Hoagland, he's not up there with the "Aircraft Contrails are spreading chemicals that destroy our precious bodily fluids" but worth a visit none the less
And while you are there, don't forget to print out a copy of http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ to put on your wall, preferably next to the ship date or schedule for your latest project. Makes an excellent background for your desktop also
Make note of 2000 SG344, which has a cumulative 1 in 1300 chance of hitting us in the period of 2068-2101 also.
Or go to the Java Orbital Diagram and check out August 2049 for Asteroid 2002 CU11
When was the last time you bought a lottery ticket ? What are the odds on that-life changing event, vs the odds on that page ?
Here ends my happy thoughts for the day
Originally Patented in South Aftrica in 1995
on
Personal Shark Repellant
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I know they have been used a bit in Western Australia by professional abalone divers, and also in the Sydney Olympics in the harbor divers.
Looks like they just made a nice small one for the consumer market
(Of course, it helps if we stop dressing up like their favorite food and doing seal impressions around them, but hey, it's never our fault, is it)
Much better then "System backup on the weekend is running longer then we expected and some systems will be down"
I actually liked this comment from further down
CLOSE ENCOUNTER: On March 8, 2002, a 70-meter wide asteroid glided by Earth only 1.2 times more distant than the Moon. Named 2002 EM7, the space rock approached our planet from the direction of the Sun and was discovered by MIT's LINEAR search program four days after the flyby. Recent observations suggest that the asteroid won't come so close again for at least 100 years.
Try to place yourself between the sun and the enemy. This puts the glare of the sun in the enemy's eyes and makes it difficult to see you and impossible for him to shoot with any accuracy.
It's gotten now so that the US Public and US News media simply find it amazing that US Soldiers can get hurt and die in a war.
So, the USArmy have to react to this by making their soldiers much tougher and less likely to be hurt. Thus you are sending soldiers out in $5 to $10 million dollar armour (by the time development costs are factored in) to fight against people armed with $2000 rifles and street clothes
The danger is that you end up flipping right over to the material-cost issue. Remember the insane news reports when a Stealth Fighter was shot down ? Combine that with body-count-syndrome and you'll end up with:
"3 Soldiers were killed today in an ambush in Tasmania today, and a further 4 were injured by cybothylacines. A total of 14 PBA-4C's were damaged or destroyed, with a total cost of over 100 million dollars added to the death toll"
"President Winona Ryder rejected claims that the Tasmanian Uprising was a waste of cash, pointing out that the New Zealand invasion had to be stopped at all costs"
At my highschool, where the entire school had 1 x Apple ][ Classic, players who entered my name had a 50% chance of a heatwave, and a 0% chance of rain.
You haven't seen Street Fighter until you see Jackie Chan get beaten up by Ken Masters or Jackie Chan come back into the fight dressed as...
I won't tell you. Check out this 8 meg mpeg to see
Um, based on his state of mind for the 20 years leading up to his death I highly doubt that he knew anything.
Gene started with a show based on Voyage of the Space Beagle (which he had already optioned), Forbidden Planet and Wagon Train, and then spent the rest of his life congratulating himself on his creativity.
Look up any non-Paramount reference and you'll see that a lot of hard-working people helped make Trek what it is, like Dorothy Fontana, Sam Peoples, David Gerrold, and Gene was really good at taking the credit and doing the PR work while enjoying a wide variety of recreational pharmaceuticals
Or for a laugh, have a look at his original series bible for ST : TNG BEFORE it got the heavy workover. Hint : Marina Sirtis was playing the ships Sexual Therapist, and you'll never guess what her therapy was....
- Angstmaster-2000 telepathic poets in space actually called Byron (start of B5 Season 5)
- Crusade, with special effects *worse* then then those available in computer games at the time. Oh and Technomages. Shudder. One of those shows not so much cancelled as dragged out the back and put out of our misery.
- The Legends of the Rangers Tae-Bo Weapons System, and a moral creed lifted straight out of "Galaxy Quest" (NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!)
Give him a strict budget, some different writers and a pre-planned polished storyline, and he's fine.
Let him run free, and it's a disaster. I call it FrankHerbertitis (Frank Herbert + John Campbell [ed] = Dune. Frank Herbert on his own = Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune...)
On the bright side, at least we have Gene Roddenenbury back, in $pirit if not in flesh...
At 85, Chuck signed a long term contract with Warner Bros. to supervise the animation department. His thoughts on the contract were "At 85 you can only think ahead for the next 50 years or so."
Damn. 45 More years of Chuck Jones we'll miss out on
Nope, Alias was cut, other shows are being sped up though, and the pitch dropped again to avoid the chipmunk effect. That's only good for a few minutes in a normal film though
Alias had flat out *stupid cuts* like:
SVCD : Sydney goes running down stairs, sees steel door, shoots hinges, shouldercharges door open
7 : Sydney goes running down stairs, shouldercharges steel door open
SVCD : Sydney is shown dying her hair red to match the stolen passport, turning up at the airport, pretending to be an airhead at the counter then sitting on the plane
7 : Sydney is shown turning up at the airport with new haircolor, then is shown sitting on the plane
We are talking really obvious cuts for anyone who had seen the original episode before...
Oh well, time to burn another set of episodes 1-14 to spread around.
I live in Australia. They screened the first episode of Alias last week.
It was 7 and a half minutes shorter then the one I have on SVCD. I'd told around four dozen people to watch the show based on the preview that I'd gotten, and they watched a episode that was hacked to shreads.
The Buffy Musical is coming soon. That's going to be 9 minutes shorter then the one I have on SVCD according to the same station.
Channel 10 has once reportedly played an episode of the Simpsons without editing anything out, but noone has managed to prove it. Normally they edit around 40 to 90 seconds from each episode, including most Itchy and Scratchy jokes for the 6:00pm timeslot. They haven't shown Futurama in 2 and a half years.
For amusement, take a DVD of a normal film, and play it at the same time the same film is on TV. Pause for breaks, and 9 time out of 10 the TV show will finish before the DVD does, due to overcranking and microcuts.
We are talking about TV Stations that take 30-minute comedies, and show one episode, then half of the next episode to fill the hour, then next week you see the other half of the episode.
If the damn TV stations are not going to show me the full episode so they can get their 12 1/2 minutes of ads in per hour, then I'll just keep downloading the original episodes until they learn to break out of their "Show Must End at 8:30 / 9:30 / 10:30" mindset.
And if they keep increasing the amount and the VOLUME of ads, then that just means I'll burn the CD's and share them with everyone else, who then gives me their shows they got this week, and we all save wear and tear on our volume control.
If the vendor reduces the quality of the service they provide, I'm choosing to get the same product from another location, even though it's costing me $3-$10 per episode.
"Clearly when the community did not toss spammers off the face of the earth, it was a lost cause at that point,"
Blaming the Community ? Jesus Christ, where was this guy hiding ?
When the spammers came on the internet, we forwarded proof to their upstream providers and peers. We traced accounts, poured through headers and decyphered the forgeries. We filled out complaints with the Better Business / Trade Practices commisions.
When that failed, the community rung and harrased them at home. We published pictures of their house with their street address, and even visited their little hole in the wall frontends. We flooded their mail boxs and voice mail, and tried to annoy them at every chance.
Then you had UUnet, who took 3 to 6 months to cancel accounts, Earthlink, who basically ignored us for years at a time and a variety of other companies that dragged their heels at every opportunity in order to maximize their revenue.
The comunity isn't to blame for Spammers, it was the companys who realised they could make a dollar selling spamming services, and that they listened to their bank managers over the people who pointed out the dangerous precident.
There isn't any way I'll let you blame that on us.
- A news.admin.net-abuse and news.admin.net-abuse.* survivor
Best bug found so far - it seems all the new textures and models for clothing and armour are occasionally not being drawn. It is not known yet if this is the fabled "bonus" for signing up for the game early.
Boy those skinners really need to get out more.
On the bright side, if it's a bug, surely you could duplicate it with a simple client side memory resident program.
And, of course, once you have written said program,you could sell it on Ebay for only $139.99 and make yourself rich from 13 year old boys.
No, the entire game was suddenly upgraded to DirectX 8.1, meaning if you bought the original game, expansion one or expansion two, all of which say windows 95 on the box, they don't work as of two days ago. The first a lot of people knew about this was when the game stopped running, literally.
They retroactivly withdrew support for Windows 95, which is a bit rough because this isn't Wolfenstein 3D - a lot of people are out there with sub-par systems running around in areas from the original game, and no interest in going to the new uber^3 areas.
On top of it, this third expansion is *still* being advertised as being for Windows 95.
My last job was at a hobby store that sold Meccano sets all the way up to Number 10. In about '91-'92 in one of the frequest Meccano management changeovers they Ditched the #1-#10 series (with the 1x,2x etc) and just went to the #1-#6 sets and introduced all-plastic sets with larger sets.
The original #10 set could build a nice locomotive, cranes, and a working Eifel tower, as well as every model from the #1 to #9 sets. In fact, our store had a 15 foot tall Eiffel tower at the front of it, which seemed to eternally rain bolts, a 10 foot long ship, steam powered Ferris wheels.
But then they fell into the Lego Trap, and started making things too pre-defined. Also, they ditched all the brass gears and went too much into Brass Bushing / plastic parts (CURSE YOU MS22P !!)
The Blocksetting crane instructions basically said "You need this many parts, here's a picture of the pully set, here's a picture from below of the rotating part, heres some more pictures from each side, right build it!"
Was a puzzle as well as a engineering challenge.
Toys always seem to be being dumbed down nowadays.
Team Banzai botanical agronomists have been for years hard at work on the problem of hunger in Third World countries under constant revolutionary turmoil. A non-political, humanitarian effort, their goal has been to find ways to feed starving peoples in remote areas where traditional food delivery systems prove woefully inadequate. Often the only way to get the nourishment into the bellies of the needy is to hit and run, avoiding all petty ideological side-taking.
What you see in the Critical Stress Lab is a revolutionary watermelon capable of withstanding impact pressures of 300,000 pounds per square inch! Sweet, juicy and vitamin-packed, this remarkable fruit can be dropped from the bomb bays of low-flying aircraft into the backyards of disenfranchised villagers in the remotest backwaters of this angry planet. Just another Team Banzai effort to cut through all the unnecessary crap around us and help people help themselves. Look for high-impact, low cholesterol eggs next... and sooner than you think, shatter-proof whole-wheat taco shells.
Richard Hoagland, over at enterprisemission.com / lunaranomalies.com called this special 'Particulary silly', 'Naive' and Absurd'
Having people at NASA call you on your theory is almost a symbol of pride
Having a person who accuses NASA of covering up Tank Turrets on Mars, giant crystal domes on the Moon, and Starwars spaceships in ancient egyptian tombs call you silly is pretty much the kiss of death for anyone.
It's Science Fiction if, presuming technical competence on the part of the writer, he genuinely believes it could happen. Otherwise, it's Fantasy.
John W. Campbell, Jr. 1937
The fact that even the most basic research would reveal that the 'Face on Mars' is a hill seems to indicate less of a 'Lets make a thought provoking science fiction film' and more of a :
'Look - James Cameron is thinking about a Mars Mini series! These three books, all with Mars in their title are selling lots! They landed this robot thing on Mars, and lots of people watched! Something on Mars is swallowing our space probes. Hey, people are researching DNA! Let's make a movie about it! More Drinks !
Just think. For the cost of this film and it's associated advertising budget, NASA could have launched 2 more probes. It's not Science Fiction. It's a tragedy.
When people ask "What has the space program done for us", people reply 'Tang' or 'Teflon' or 'Concentrated Orange Juice'.
They are trivialities that distract from the true answer.
What's the Weather going to be like tommorow ? How do you know ?
Strange, that a country that seemed to spend half of 1999 getting hit by hurricanes and storms, suddenly forgets why they get 2 day warnings before hand. What would the Eastern seaboard be like if they got 30 minutes warning instead ? How many people would die ?
But even weather prediction isn't the most important gift.
When did the enviromental movement really start to get into high gear ? The Silent Spring was certainly the first widely known warning, but what is the standard image of the enviromental lobby ?
When we started getting pictures like the above - not a vast limitless area that we can do anything we like to, but a small blue ball, hovering above the horizon of the moon, or the last crescent of the Earth taken by a space probe that is sailing into an almost infinte darkness. That's when terms like 'Small' and 'Fragile' began to be used about the Earth, which was historically regarded as the largest thing you can imagine.
Look at any enviromental message, and you will almost always find a shot of the Earth from space. These pictures have made quite an impression on the thought processes of this race.
And the impression is so deepy ingrained, that most people never think where they came from.
Whatever money NASA spends, it's a bargain, for the results of their programs might just save the planet from ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the only one that he gave information on
If you look at the library itself (www.baen.com/library) you'll see lots of authors have agreed to this, including Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle, David Weber (The Honor Harrington books are one of Baen's main lines), David Drake. Also as part of their free samples I've seen sections from Spider Robinson and a few other people where they give you the first 6 or so chapters of the book
Also, Stephen King's case used encryption, which is commented on in the article as being a flat-out bad idea. Never make it hard for the public to use your product if you can help it.
The Baen Library is an excellent experiment - it involves giving away free books, and also a $10/month subscription service where you preview rough drafts and new books up to 3 months before they are published.
It's not just one guy putting his books online and giving them away because he can't get published, it's an attempt to work with the public, rather then assume we are all criminals
Reading the article is still too hard for you I see
Nor can this be explained, as the sharp rise in sales of Mother of Demons perhaps can, as the result of me becoming better known as an author. David Drake, not me, is listed as the lead author of An Oblique Approach-and Dave has been a very well known SF author for twenty years.
http://www.enterprisemission.com
j pg shows that he is now comparing the same set of markings it to a M1-A1)
It's a website that's just full of 100% Real artifacts.
Shame the artifacts are what happens when you use Photoshop to magnify something 500%, then completly abuse the filters and levels until you arn't so much looking at the image as a blurred and messy bunch of pixels
Then declare that you can detect "Regularity" and issue a press release / book / start a new talk show circuit.
My favorite (was where he discovered that on the walls of an ancient Egyptian pyramid, there was a hyroglyph that looked like the Millenium Falcon and Luke's Landspeeded(He has since removed that image, as I can't see it in the archive, but http://www.enterprisemission.com/images/tankcomp.
Hoagland, he's not up there with the "Aircraft Contrails are spreading chemicals that destroy our precious bodily fluids" but worth a visit none the less
And while you are there, don't forget to print out a copy of http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ to put on your wall, preferably next to the ship date or schedule for your latest project. Makes an excellent background for your desktop also
Make note of 2000 SG344, which has a cumulative 1 in 1300 chance of hitting us in the period of 2068-2101 also.
Or go to the Java Orbital Diagram and check out August 2049 for Asteroid 2002 CU11
When was the last time you bought a lottery ticket ? What are the odds on that-life changing event, vs the odds on that page ?
Here ends my happy thoughts for the day
I know they have been used a bit in Western Australia by professional abalone divers, and also in the Sydney Olympics in the harbor divers. Looks like they just made a nice small one for the consumer market
(Of course, it helps if we stop dressing up like their favorite food and doing seal impressions around them, but hey, it's never our fault, is it)
Much better then "System backup on the weekend is running longer then we expected and some systems will be down"
I actually liked this comment from further down
CLOSE ENCOUNTER: On March 8, 2002, a 70-meter wide asteroid glided by Earth only 1.2 times more distant than the Moon. Named 2002 EM7, the space rock approached our planet from the direction of the Sun and was discovered by MIT's LINEAR search program four days after the flyby. Recent observations suggest that the asteroid won't come so close again for at least 100 years.
Try to place yourself between the sun and the enemy. This puts the glare of the sun in the enemy's eyes and makes it difficult to see you and impossible for him to shoot with any accuracy.
Oswald Boelcke, 1916
I was messing with the Prototype for this, and after I tried about the 40th sign, I got this back
I LITY ****
Warning !
Wrong Way
**** HELPI'MBEINGHELDPRISONERINAWIRELESSTRANSLATINGFAC
Go Back
It's gotten now so that the US Public and US News media simply find it amazing that US Soldiers can get hurt and die in a war.
:
So, the USArmy have to react to this by making their soldiers much tougher and less likely to be hurt. Thus you are sending soldiers out in $5 to $10 million dollar armour (by the time development costs are factored in) to fight against people armed with $2000 rifles and street clothes
The danger is that you end up flipping right over to the material-cost issue. Remember the insane news reports when a Stealth Fighter was shot down ? Combine that with body-count-syndrome and you'll end up with
"3 Soldiers were killed today in an ambush in Tasmania today, and a further 4 were injured by cybothylacines. A total of 14 PBA-4C's were damaged or destroyed, with a total cost of over 100 million dollars added to the death toll"
"President Winona Ryder rejected claims that the Tasmanian Uprising was a waste of cash, pointing out that the New Zealand invasion had to be stopped at all costs"
Download the Lemonade stand rom from here
At my highschool, where the entire school had 1 x Apple ][ Classic, players who entered my name had a 50% chance of a heatwave, and a 0% chance of rain.
Noone ever caught that as far as I know
You haven't seen Street Fighter until you see Jackie Chan get beaten up by Ken Masters or Jackie Chan come back into the fight dressed as...
I won't tell you. Check out this 8 meg mpeg to see
Um, based on his state of mind for the 20 years leading up to his death I highly doubt that he knew anything.
Gene started with a show based on Voyage of the Space Beagle (which he had already optioned), Forbidden Planet and Wagon Train, and then spent the rest of his life congratulating himself on his creativity.
Look up any non-Paramount reference and you'll see that a lot of hard-working people helped make Trek what it is, like Dorothy Fontana, Sam Peoples, David Gerrold, and Gene was really good at taking the credit and doing the PR work while enjoying a wide variety of recreational pharmaceuticals
Or for a laugh, have a look at his original series bible for ST : TNG BEFORE it got the heavy workover. Hint : Marina Sirtis was playing the ships Sexual Therapist, and you'll never guess what her therapy was....
B5 was crusing fine until Season 4
Since then we had
- Angstmaster-2000 telepathic poets in space actually called Byron (start of B5 Season 5)
- Crusade, with special effects *worse* then then those available in computer games at the time. Oh and Technomages. Shudder. One of those shows not so much cancelled as dragged out the back and put out of our misery.
- The Legends of the Rangers Tae-Bo Weapons System, and a moral creed lifted straight out of "Galaxy Quest" (NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!)
Give him a strict budget, some different writers and a pre-planned polished storyline, and he's fine.
Let him run free, and it's a disaster. I call it FrankHerbertitis (Frank Herbert + John Campbell [ed] = Dune. Frank Herbert on his own = Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune...)
On the bright side, at least we have Gene Roddenenbury back, in $pirit if not in flesh...
From IMDB
At 85, Chuck signed a long term contract with Warner Bros. to supervise the animation department. His thoughts on the contract were "At 85 you can only think ahead for the next 50 years or so."
Damn. 45 More years of Chuck Jones we'll miss out on
Nope, Alias was cut, other shows are being sped up though, and the pitch dropped again to avoid the chipmunk effect. That's only good for a few minutes in a normal film though
:
Alias had flat out *stupid cuts* like
SVCD : Sydney goes running down stairs, sees steel door, shoots hinges, shouldercharges door open
7 : Sydney goes running down stairs, shouldercharges steel door open
SVCD : Sydney is shown dying her hair red to match the stolen passport, turning up at the airport, pretending to be an airhead at the counter then sitting on the plane
7 : Sydney is shown turning up at the airport with new haircolor, then is shown sitting on the plane
We are talking really obvious cuts for anyone who had seen the original episode before...
Oh well, time to burn another set of episodes 1-14 to spread around.
I live in Australia. They screened the first episode of Alias last week.
It was 7 and a half minutes shorter then the one I have on SVCD. I'd told around four dozen people to watch the show based on the preview that I'd gotten, and they watched a episode that was hacked to shreads.
The Buffy Musical is coming soon. That's going to be 9 minutes shorter then the one I have on SVCD according to the same station.
Channel 10 has once reportedly played an episode of the Simpsons without editing anything out, but noone has managed to prove it. Normally they edit around 40 to 90 seconds from each episode, including most Itchy and Scratchy jokes for the 6:00pm timeslot. They haven't shown Futurama in 2 and a half years.
For amusement, take a DVD of a normal film, and play it at the same time the same film is on TV. Pause for breaks, and 9 time out of 10 the TV show will finish before the DVD does, due to overcranking and microcuts.
We are talking about TV Stations that take 30-minute comedies, and show one episode, then half of the next episode to fill the hour, then next week you see the other half of the episode.
If the damn TV stations are not going to show me the full episode so they can get their 12 1/2 minutes of ads in per hour, then I'll just keep downloading the original episodes until they learn to break out of their "Show Must End at 8:30 / 9:30 / 10:30" mindset.
And if they keep increasing the amount and the VOLUME of ads, then that just means I'll burn the CD's and share them with everyone else, who then gives me their shows they got this week, and we all save wear and tear on our volume control.
If the vendor reduces the quality of the service they provide, I'm choosing to get the same product from another location, even though it's costing me $3-$10 per episode.
It had be a lot damn less annoying then that goddamn poppup ad
Multi Page clickthroughs + fancy popup adds = Gave up about #6.
"Clearly when the community did not toss spammers off the face of the earth, it was a lost cause at that point,"
Blaming the Community ? Jesus Christ, where was this guy hiding ?
When the spammers came on the internet, we forwarded proof to their upstream providers and peers. We traced accounts, poured through headers and decyphered the forgeries. We filled out complaints with the Better Business / Trade Practices commisions.
When that failed, the community rung and harrased them at home. We published pictures of their house with their street address, and even visited their little hole in the wall frontends. We flooded their mail boxs and voice mail, and tried to annoy them at every chance.
Then you had UUnet, who took 3 to 6 months to cancel accounts, Earthlink, who basically ignored us for years at a time and a variety of other companies that dragged their heels at every opportunity in order to maximize their revenue.
The comunity isn't to blame for Spammers, it was the companys who realised they could make a dollar selling spamming services, and that they listened to their bank managers over the people who pointed out the dangerous precident.
There isn't any way I'll let you blame that on us.
- A news.admin.net-abuse and news.admin.net-abuse.* survivor
Best bug found so far - it seems all the new textures and models for clothing and armour are occasionally not being drawn. It is not known yet if this is the fabled "bonus" for signing up for the game early.
Boy those skinners really need to get out more.
On the bright side, if it's a bug, surely you could duplicate it with a simple client side memory resident program.
And, of course, once you have written said program,you could sell it on Ebay for only $139.99 and make yourself rich from 13 year old boys.
Topless Female Elven Paladin
Topless Female Barbarian Shaman
Naked Female Half Elf Warrior From Rear and Front
Naked Male Elven caster with carefully placed spellbook
No, the entire game was suddenly upgraded to DirectX 8.1, meaning if you bought the original game, expansion one or expansion two, all of which say windows 95 on the box, they don't work as of two days ago. The first a lot of people knew about this was when the game stopped running, literally.
They retroactivly withdrew support for Windows 95, which is a bit rough because this isn't Wolfenstein 3D - a lot of people are out there with sub-par systems running around in areas from the original game, and no interest in going to the new uber^3 areas.
On top of it, this third expansion is *still* being advertised as being for Windows 95.
Amazon are still advertising
Everquest: Shadows Of Luclin With Free Book "Tome of Lore"
Our Price: $29.99
Platform: Windows 95 / 98
Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours
My last job was at a hobby store that sold Meccano sets all the way up to Number 10. In about '91-'92 in one of the frequest Meccano management changeovers they Ditched the #1-#10 series (with the 1x,2x etc) and just went to the #1-#6 sets and introduced all-plastic sets with larger sets.
The original #10 set could build a nice locomotive, cranes, and a working Eifel tower, as well as every model from the #1 to #9 sets. In fact, our store had a 15 foot tall Eiffel tower at the front of it, which seemed to eternally rain bolts, a 10 foot long ship, steam powered Ferris wheels.
But then they fell into the Lego Trap, and started making things too pre-defined. Also, they ditched all the brass gears and went too much into Brass Bushing / plastic parts (CURSE YOU MS22P !!)
But compare
The cheap plastic junk of today with
with the beauty of
The Block Setting Crane from the old #10 set
The Blocksetting crane instructions basically said "You need this many parts, here's a picture of the pully set, here's a picture from below of the rotating part, heres some more pictures from each side, right build it!"
Was a puzzle as well as a engineering challenge.
Toys always seem to be being dumbed down nowadays.
mike.laughlabs.co.uk ?
michelle.laughlabs.co.uk ?
After all, computers analysing humor have been talked about before -in this book
But are the Watermelons Air Droppable ?
From Buckaroo Banzai Faq Part 16
Director W.D. Richter
Team Banzai botanical agronomists have been for years hard at work on the problem of hunger in Third World countries under constant revolutionary turmoil. A non-political, humanitarian effort, their goal has been to find ways to feed starving peoples in remote areas where traditional food delivery systems prove woefully inadequate. Often the only way to get the nourishment into the bellies of the needy is to hit and run, avoiding all petty ideological side-taking.
What you see in the Critical Stress Lab is a revolutionary watermelon capable of withstanding impact pressures of 300,000 pounds per square inch! Sweet, juicy and vitamin-packed, this remarkable fruit can be dropped from the bomb bays of low-flying aircraft into the backyards of disenfranchised villagers in the remotest backwaters of this angry planet. Just another Team Banzai effort to cut through all the unnecessary crap around us and help people help themselves. Look for high-impact, low cholesterol eggs next... and sooner than you think, shatter-proof whole-wheat taco shells.
Richard Hoagland, over at enterprisemission.com / lunaranomalies.com called this special 'Particulary silly', 'Naive' and Absurd'
Having people at NASA call you on your theory is almost a symbol of pride
Having a person who accuses NASA of covering up Tank Turrets on Mars, giant crystal domes on the Moon, and Starwars spaceships in ancient egyptian tombs call you silly is pretty much the kiss of death for anyone.
It's Science Fiction if, presuming technical competence on the part of the writer, he genuinely believes it could happen. Otherwise, it's Fantasy.
John W. Campbell, Jr. 1937
The fact that even the most basic research would reveal that the 'Face on Mars' is a hill seems to indicate less of a 'Lets make a thought provoking science fiction film' and more of a :
'Look - James Cameron is thinking about a Mars Mini series! These three books, all with Mars in their title are selling lots! They landed this robot thing on Mars, and lots of people watched! Something on Mars is swallowing our space probes. Hey, people are researching DNA! Let's make a movie about it! More Drinks !
Just think. For the cost of this film and it's associated advertising budget, NASA could have launched 2 more probes. It's not Science Fiction. It's a tragedy.
When people ask "What has the space program done for us", people reply 'Tang' or 'Teflon' or 'Concentrated Orange Juice'.
They are trivialities that distract from the true answer.
What's the Weather going to be like tommorow ? How do you know ?
Strange, that a country that seemed to spend half of 1999 getting hit by hurricanes and storms, suddenly forgets why they get 2 day warnings before hand. What would the Eastern seaboard be like if they got 30 minutes warning instead ? How many people would die ?
But even weather prediction isn't the most important gift.
When did the enviromental movement really start to get into high gear ? The Silent Spring was certainly the first widely known warning, but what is the standard image of the enviromental lobby ?
When we started getting pictures like the above - not a vast limitless area that we can do anything we like to, but a small blue ball, hovering above the horizon of the moon, or the last crescent of the Earth taken by a space probe that is sailing into an almost infinte darkness. That's when terms like 'Small' and 'Fragile' began to be used about the Earth, which was historically regarded as the largest thing you can imagine.
Look at any enviromental message, and you will almost always find a shot of the Earth from space. These pictures have made quite an impression on the thought processes of this race.
And the impression is so deepy ingrained, that most people never think where they came from.
Whatever money NASA spends, it's a bargain, for the results of their programs might just save the planet from ourselves.