See, it isn't that we straight ladies don't want our boy toys taken away. It's that we prefer to keep our humanity intact.
What you're talking about - establishing an entire society with only one gender - can only be done through atrocity. Think about it for a second. Even if two women can reproduce without a man, we still have half the population male, and nothing is stopping us from reproducing naturally. We would have to kill the already living men, or forcibly take away their right to reproduce. We would, in essence, have to start a gender holocaust. You really think women are willing to commit such atrocities just to get around catcalls and obnoxious frat guys? We are not savages.
It's not the primitive state of biological science that stands between us and the establishment of a one-gender female world. It's women's respect for the rights of men. If people stop believing in that, we will have a war on our hands when science catches up with our fevered imaginations.
See, I remember the halcyon days when games were expected to come with extra material like this. Even the grail diary that came with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was part of a primitive form of copy protection, added to the game. You got to literally pore through the grail diary looking for clues, and taking in all sorts of gorgeous artwork and background info. (LucasArts was particularly good at designing these props - probably since they had some movie art designers in the house.)
Extra content like credits, extra scenes, or "making of" stuff was unlocked by actually playing the game, maybe also entering a cheat code. (Actually, you can unlock DVD-like developer commentary in Sly Cooper by beating those gawddamn evil time trials. It replaces the level background music as you run through it.) I have no idea why, at the insane price point games have got to these days, we can't put more "premium" content in the box for everyone.
I'm not entirely up on the whole Halliburton issue, but I understood that they got a number of no-bid contracts over several years to do a wide range of things in Iraq. Would you say that the 1997 contract covers all of those? Do you know if the contract was in the original text of the 1997 bill? Most bills get riders attached and major clause edits before they hit the floor for voting. If it was added in committee, there's a good chance that this still points to some corruption on the part of someone connected to Halliburton. Is there precedent for entering contracts for "unspecified services to the military at an unspecified place and time in the future"? Was Halliburton named in the law, or was a committee appointed to find the contractor?
Also, regardless of whether their position as no-bid contractor was legitimate, do you believe they did a job that was worth the trust inherent in such a contract? Do you believe they were held accountable for their results?
Do you believe that these questions are in themselves unreasonable?
I dunno...banning everyone who doesn't sign a loyalty oath from a meeting designed to give the people access to the President comes pretty close to trampling on the right to petition for redress of greivances. If he had been the challenging candidate, he may have been able to get away with it just being a matter of "political savvy." But he is the President. The questions brought up in that meeting, had it been a real meeting and not a groomed praise group, would have undoubtedly involved how the President had acted in his first term.
Every American has the right to have their criticism of the government heard by the government. Every American has the right to demand accountability. A President who locks himself away behind loyalty oaths, yes-men and closed doors comes frighteningly close to negating those rights.
Sony announced wi-fi on PSP before Nintendo even announced the DS
Sony has a policy of "announce early, develop as we go." Nintendo has a policy of "don't announce until it's finalized." It's not surprising that Sony announced the PSPs features first. And even if the PSPs functionality was announced first, the DS was released first. So obviously they were both working on it at the same time, even if Sony announced first. Either that, or Ninty has really fast reaction times.
Most DS games use the d-pad, last I checked.
Whaaaaa? Try to play Warioware Touched, Pac Pix, Kirby Canvas Curse, Electroplankton, Feel the Magic, Nintendogs, Polarium, or Yoshi Touch and Go with the d-pad. You can technically play Meteos with the d-pad, but after a certain level of complexity you need that stylus. I know this doesn't count as "most" of the games for the DS, but it seems clear that the top shelf titles are the ones that use the touch screen as much as possible.
I don't think it had so much to do with the age-appropriateness of the games as the game format. PSP games are essentially PSX games on a different resolution screen - it's a push-button console in a smaller box. The DS has extra functionality that changes the kind of games that can be played on it, making two entirely different markets. DS games simply can't be played on the PSP, and PSP games aren't worth much on the DS if they don't take advantage of the touch screen and rely on the big PSP screen for flash. This would be true even if they covered the same age niche.
So I think it's true that the competition between the DS and the PSP can't be characterized the way we see the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube competition, where most big titles will come out for all 3 consoles and your choice comes down to nitty things like poly counts and online options.
On the other hand, I suspect Sony says there isn't a conflict because they are losing.
One could easily argue that the GameFAQs boards are serving as a conduit for basic socialization and concept sparring, which is inherently clumsy, imperfect, offensive, fleet-footed, overzealous and entirely necessary for the development of a sharp brain.
So many people here bash the average American for not thinking enough. What they seem to forget is that, wonderful as it is, freedom of thought is hard to maintain. People are hungry for acceptance and validation, and there are unscrupulous people of every stripe standing on the street corners yelling, "Come to us and be part of the Movement! All you have to do is believe!"
Maintaining belief is a game - talking about the truth is the equivalent of upending the board.
We're doing all we can to break through the confusion of bad communications and viral misinformation. And with things like Wikipedia and the all-seeing power of Google, average people are coming closer and closer to having the truth at their fingertips. The only question is, will they value it?
That is true for concepts, not for people. American people constantly define the concepts that can be called "American." People like Thoreau, Kerouac, and even Ed Sullivan were defining the patina of "American" ideals long after the constitution was penned.
Patriotic loyalty such as would label people "un-American" did not become a part of the American ideal until the anti-Communism movements of the 1950s. By your definition, the move to distinguish "true Americans" is in itself un-American.
I'd like to see more games based on a micropayment model like Puzzle Pirates' Doubloon Oceans. Doubloons are basically quarters that you put into the "machine" of the game to buy things like swords and ships. The payments scale with how involved you want to be in the game, so there's a very low barrier of entry for those who just want to play casually.
If you want to be an island governor with a fleet of deadly black pearls, you pay more, but probably not as much as you would subscribing for all the time it took to build up your fleet. And if you want to log off for six months while you finish your doctoral thesis or write that symphony (okay, okay...or play that other MMO), you don't lose months of subscription fees. Also, the game client is free.
No, he's right. There is a "cycle" of water surface temperatures that occurs over 50 years or so. Apparently it's called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and you can read a bit about it here. Of course, if we accept that the AMO can cause a cyclical rise and fall in the occurrence of hurricanes, we have to accept that global warming could also be a factor, since they affect the same variable in the formation of the storm.
While I agree that pumping out sequel after sequel can only cheapen the franchise, I think that the first game really needed a sequel. It was short - only ten levels needed to finish the game, most could be played under ten minutes (in fact, they had to be since the game was timed) and the game form itself left us imagining all the wonderful crap we could roll up, if only there were more levels! My first thought on finishing the game was, "there needs to be a sequel. I need to play it NOW."
As many people have pointed out, he did not make the game to sell for commercial purposes. He rightfully shouldn't have been selling it, since it was an implementation of an earlier game. (Although it isn't as though Burger Time is an entirely untainted brand. It was being copied while it was on the market, and I doubt it's being maintained any more. However, thanks to opt-out copyright, we have to just assume.) Plus, it's more likely that Fuddruckers would have simply removed his game from the site if he'd asked for money. No "lucrative business deal" about it.
Also, I don't know who told you that a company can indemnify someone against copyright infringement that was done independently of the company. There is no law or regulation that allows for that.
Having feathers does not imply that one is able to fly. See, for example, the early offspring of every avian species; also penguins, emus, and the dearly departed dodo. Only a very small portion of the feathers on a bird's body are used for flight. The rest are used for insulation and waterproofing. It's probable that this was the advantage of feathers on these early reptiles.
We know that feathers, scales, and fur are all made of the same materials and share other traits (for example, they all grow toward the back of the body). It is not surprising that baby birds appear fuzzy; down is essentially hair arranged in a branching formation. It's likely that the first "feathers" were very heavy and resembled scales more directly than what we call "feathers" today. These would not have any inherent lifting power, because a) they would be heavy enough to negate any possibility of manipulating airflow, mainly due to the fact that they would rely on a solid shaft, and b) they would be grown in place of regular scales, instead of protruding in a wing formation. Also, c) most dinosaurs would be too heavy to be lifted in the first place. Pterosaurs and birds share the flight adaptation of having hollow bones. How long do you think it took for that to develop?
It is hardly a hop, skip, and a jump from having feathers to being able to soar across the prehistoric sky.
What in the world is wrong with people admitting...
Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which the speaker assumes that which he sets out to prove. Approach the subject from a less fallacious standpoint, and you're less likely to get shot down.
It's the same thing as the "agree with the professor" effect. Of all the undergraduate papers produced in a class, say 80% of them are likely to be C material or below. Therefore, there is only a 1 in 5 chance of getting a high grade on any given paper. A student disagreeing with the professor has a 4 in 5 chance of getting a low grade, the same as anyone else in a class with these figures. But if the student begs the question, and assumes that his paper will be graded low because he disagrees with the professor, he is more likely to write in a defensive or combative way that degrades the quality of his paper, effectively diminishing the odds that he will earn a B or higher. From this experience he derives the conclusion that the professor marks down papers that disagree with his own teachings. And the process propagates itself once more.
In other words, when you act as though your ideas are discriminated against, you will always find ready fuel for that theory in entirely reasonable responses.
That's how public television gets it's donation money, at least around here. "Donate in the silver plan and get this handsome Black Adder tote bag!" We used to donate to get cool merch from british TV shows that only came to the US through public television. It's not an uncommon system for raising money.
Nah...you need NES cartridges to play in this machine. I'm sure most people will prefer to download the games through the Revolution and play with the fancy new controller rather than go searching for old carts on Ebay (or, if you're very lucky, a local used game store). This is for the "hardcore retro" who either have a large NES collection already, or are willing to go out of their way just to get the cool factor of playing on a good approximation of the original hardware.
Now that I think about it, it would be pretty cool to see new games hit the shelves in those old cartridge shells. Ah, the memories...
Not true, sadly, under the USian "opt-out" system of copyright law. Every new work is assumed to be "all rights reserved" unless the creator lays down other copyright terms. When I was young, this system was a golden treasure to creative people, or so it seemed. It meant that no one could rip you off, even if you didn't have the ten bucks to register with the copyright office. There were no tiers of protection, everything belonged to its proper owner and all was right with the world.
Of course, these days I see the system in a slightly different light.
Actually, if you can show that your comments were truthful, it's likely that the suit would be thrown out before you go to trial. The company would probably get fined for filing a gratuitous lawsuit as well. In fact, if you recieved a C&D like the idiotic one involved in this case, you could probably countersue for the company's attempt to diminish your right to free speech at their convenience before the original suit is heard.
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie.
And the great panacea of the Internet is that those lies are fact-checked and debunked almost immediately.
We no longer live in a world where everyone must go to the town square to hear the latest news. Every person reading this has the power to do research. Most minunderstandings can be cleared up with a quick trip to Google, or, at most, a quickly-written email.
Reading over it, it seems like the only way to cross this patent would be to make a game very similar to Eternal Darkness, which I'm sure is what they were trying to prevent. (And with good reason, too. I can remember playing the game, thinking, "Hey, this is a really great idea. Too bad everyone else is just going to copy it in the next few years. They should patent it or something.")
Now that they have the patent, they'll be making an Eternal Darkness 2, right Nintendo? Eh? Eh?
WarioWare: Twisted comes with a gyroscopic control/rumble pack unit attached to the cart, and it works very well. The gyroscope recalibrates at the beginning of every minigame, so changing the way you hold the controller won't screw you up. You don't even need to tell it if you're playing on a GBA or a DS (right side up or upside down). The gyroscope is very sensitive even to small movements, which means that games with very exact tilt controls are playable, although they take a LOT of concentration.
Yoshi Topsy-Turvy was released at the same time and contains a 1-axis tilt sensor, not a gyroscope. It is substantially harder to use, since the tilt sensor behaves strangely if you accidentally tilt the machine along the wrong axis, and the responses seem a bit slower.
A lot of people I've talked to seem to have this instinctive understanding that these are test games for the components that will go in the revolution controller. I hope to god they don't use the tilt sensor. Topsy-Turvy is fun, but I couldn't see many uses for the tilt sensor as a general feature.
It's actually unclear as to whether, historically, the male pronoun was truly intended to be gender-neutral, or if we got that idea from reinterpreting statements originally meant to refer to males. Remember that the last 500 years of western history have been marked by huge expansions of the rights of different kinds of males, expanding the rights of the poor, former slaves, etc. So using the word "man" as a collective may not have been intended to mean "all human beings." In fact, we know that the singular feminine was still used to refer to women in collective not long ago, because Margaret Fuller published a book in 1845 called "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." It wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that up to this time, Woman meant all women and Man meant all men.
This is a gaming article. If you read the core books for White Wolf's pen and paper role playing games (particularly Mage 2nd edition), you'll see that the writers always refer to the character in general as "she." This was partly in protest to Dungeons and Dragons, whose books included a disclaimer indicating more or less the sentiment the parent expressed. It's quite possible that the article author was influenced by this, since it deals with issues in the area of gaming.
Also, in response to your constitution argument, I did a quick word search. The U.S. Constitution contains neither the word "woman" nor the word "man," in any variation of plurality. The founding fathers probably wrote with great care not to exclude anyone from citizenship on the petty basis of semantics. We are referred to as "people." Both the members of congress and the President are referred to as "he" in sparse usage, without ever calling them "men". (The term "congressman" is not found.)
This certainly does not imply that, even taken as literally as possible, the constitution does not grant basic rights to women. (In fact, it makes not even implied restrictions upon women who want to take on the position, of, say, Secretary of State.) We do not have women voters because the constitution says "man" all over when it means "person." The gendered language in the constitution was so sparse, that it isn't too great a leap of faith to believe that women were intended to have all the rights of citizenship from the beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
See, it isn't that we straight ladies don't want our boy toys taken away. It's that we prefer to keep our humanity intact.
What you're talking about - establishing an entire society with only one gender - can only be done through atrocity. Think about it for a second. Even if two women can reproduce without a man, we still have half the population male, and nothing is stopping us from reproducing naturally. We would have to kill the already living men, or forcibly take away their right to reproduce. We would, in essence, have to start a gender holocaust. You really think women are willing to commit such atrocities just to get around catcalls and obnoxious frat guys? We are not savages.
It's not the primitive state of biological science that stands between us and the establishment of a one-gender female world. It's women's respect for the rights of men. If people stop believing in that, we will have a war on our hands when science catches up with our fevered imaginations.
Psssssst.....hey buddy, women read slashdot!
See, I remember the halcyon days when games were expected to come with extra material like this. Even the grail diary that came with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was part of a primitive form of copy protection, added to the game. You got to literally pore through the grail diary looking for clues, and taking in all sorts of gorgeous artwork and background info. (LucasArts was particularly good at designing these props - probably since they had some movie art designers in the house.)
Extra content like credits, extra scenes, or "making of" stuff was unlocked by actually playing the game, maybe also entering a cheat code. (Actually, you can unlock DVD-like developer commentary in Sly Cooper by beating those gawddamn evil time trials. It replaces the level background music as you run through it.) I have no idea why, at the insane price point games have got to these days, we can't put more "premium" content in the box for everyone.
Hmm...
I'm not entirely up on the whole Halliburton issue, but I understood that they got a number of no-bid contracts over several years to do a wide range of things in Iraq. Would you say that the 1997 contract covers all of those? Do you know if the contract was in the original text of the 1997 bill? Most bills get riders attached and major clause edits before they hit the floor for voting. If it was added in committee, there's a good chance that this still points to some corruption on the part of someone connected to Halliburton. Is there precedent for entering contracts for "unspecified services to the military at an unspecified place and time in the future"? Was Halliburton named in the law, or was a committee appointed to find the contractor?
Also, regardless of whether their position as no-bid contractor was legitimate, do you believe they did a job that was worth the trust inherent in such a contract? Do you believe they were held accountable for their results?
Do you believe that these questions are in themselves unreasonable?
I dunno...banning everyone who doesn't sign a loyalty oath from a meeting designed to give the people access to the President comes pretty close to trampling on the right to petition for redress of greivances. If he had been the challenging candidate, he may have been able to get away with it just being a matter of "political savvy." But he is the President. The questions brought up in that meeting, had it been a real meeting and not a groomed praise group, would have undoubtedly involved how the President had acted in his first term.
Every American has the right to have their criticism of the government heard by the government. Every American has the right to demand accountability. A President who locks himself away behind loyalty oaths, yes-men and closed doors comes frighteningly close to negating those rights.
Sony announced wi-fi on PSP before Nintendo even announced the DS
Sony has a policy of "announce early, develop as we go." Nintendo has a policy of "don't announce until it's finalized." It's not surprising that Sony announced the PSPs features first. And even if the PSPs functionality was announced first, the DS was released first. So obviously they were both working on it at the same time, even if Sony announced first. Either that, or Ninty has really fast reaction times.
Most DS games use the d-pad, last I checked.
Whaaaaa? Try to play Warioware Touched, Pac Pix, Kirby Canvas Curse, Electroplankton, Feel the Magic, Nintendogs, Polarium, or Yoshi Touch and Go with the d-pad. You can technically play Meteos with the d-pad, but after a certain level of complexity you need that stylus. I know this doesn't count as "most" of the games for the DS, but it seems clear that the top shelf titles are the ones that use the touch screen as much as possible.
Err...
I don't think it had so much to do with the age-appropriateness of the games as the game format. PSP games are essentially PSX games on a different resolution screen - it's a push-button console in a smaller box. The DS has extra functionality that changes the kind of games that can be played on it, making two entirely different markets. DS games simply can't be played on the PSP, and PSP games aren't worth much on the DS if they don't take advantage of the touch screen and rely on the big PSP screen for flash. This would be true even if they covered the same age niche.
So I think it's true that the competition between the DS and the PSP can't be characterized the way we see the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube competition, where most big titles will come out for all 3 consoles and your choice comes down to nitty things like poly counts and online options.
On the other hand, I suspect Sony says there isn't a conflict because they are losing.
One could easily argue that the GameFAQs boards are serving as a conduit for basic socialization and concept sparring, which is inherently clumsy, imperfect, offensive, fleet-footed, overzealous and entirely necessary for the development of a sharp brain.
Rock on yourself, man!
So many people here bash the average American for not thinking enough. What they seem to forget is that, wonderful as it is, freedom of thought is hard to maintain. People are hungry for acceptance and validation, and there are unscrupulous people of every stripe standing on the street corners yelling, "Come to us and be part of the Movement! All you have to do is believe!"
Maintaining belief is a game - talking about the truth is the equivalent of upending the board.
We're doing all we can to break through the confusion of bad communications and viral misinformation. And with things like Wikipedia and the all-seeing power of Google, average people are coming closer and closer to having the truth at their fingertips. The only question is, will they value it?
That is true for concepts, not for people. American people constantly define the concepts that can be called "American." People like Thoreau, Kerouac, and even Ed Sullivan were defining the patina of "American" ideals long after the constitution was penned.
Patriotic loyalty such as would label people "un-American" did not become a part of the American ideal until the anti-Communism movements of the 1950s. By your definition, the move to distinguish "true Americans" is in itself un-American.
I'd like to see more games based on a micropayment model like Puzzle Pirates' Doubloon Oceans. Doubloons are basically quarters that you put into the "machine" of the game to buy things like swords and ships. The payments scale with how involved you want to be in the game, so there's a very low barrier of entry for those who just want to play casually.
If you want to be an island governor with a fleet of deadly black pearls, you pay more, but probably not as much as you would subscribing for all the time it took to build up your fleet. And if you want to log off for six months while you finish your doctoral thesis or write that symphony (okay, okay...or play that other MMO), you don't lose months of subscription fees. Also, the game client is free.
No, he's right. There is a "cycle" of water surface temperatures that occurs over 50 years or so. Apparently it's called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and you can read a bit about it here. Of course, if we accept that the AMO can cause a cyclical rise and fall in the occurrence of hurricanes, we have to accept that global warming could also be a factor, since they affect the same variable in the formation of the storm.
While I agree that pumping out sequel after sequel can only cheapen the franchise, I think that the first game really needed a sequel. It was short - only ten levels needed to finish the game, most could be played under ten minutes (in fact, they had to be since the game was timed) and the game form itself left us imagining all the wonderful crap we could roll up, if only there were more levels! My first thought on finishing the game was, "there needs to be a sequel. I need to play it NOW."
This is the man responsible for Mario, DK, and Zelda.
And Metroid. And F-Zero. And Starfox. And Pikmin. And Earthbound - sweet, sweet Earthbound...
As many people have pointed out, he did not make the game to sell for commercial purposes. He rightfully shouldn't have been selling it, since it was an implementation of an earlier game. (Although it isn't as though Burger Time is an entirely untainted brand. It was being copied while it was on the market, and I doubt it's being maintained any more. However, thanks to opt-out copyright, we have to just assume.) Plus, it's more likely that Fuddruckers would have simply removed his game from the site if he'd asked for money. No "lucrative business deal" about it.
Also, I don't know who told you that a company can indemnify someone against copyright infringement that was done independently of the company. There is no law or regulation that allows for that.
Having feathers does not imply that one is able to fly. See, for example, the early offspring of every avian species; also penguins, emus, and the dearly departed dodo. Only a very small portion of the feathers on a bird's body are used for flight. The rest are used for insulation and waterproofing. It's probable that this was the advantage of feathers on these early reptiles.
We know that feathers, scales, and fur are all made of the same materials and share other traits (for example, they all grow toward the back of the body). It is not surprising that baby birds appear fuzzy; down is essentially hair arranged in a branching formation. It's likely that the first "feathers" were very heavy and resembled scales more directly than what we call "feathers" today. These would not have any inherent lifting power, because a) they would be heavy enough to negate any possibility of manipulating airflow, mainly due to the fact that they would rely on a solid shaft, and b) they would be grown in place of regular scales, instead of protruding in a wing formation. Also, c) most dinosaurs would be too heavy to be lifted in the first place. Pterosaurs and birds share the flight adaptation of having hollow bones. How long do you think it took for that to develop?
It is hardly a hop, skip, and a jump from having feathers to being able to soar across the prehistoric sky.
What in the world is wrong with people admitting...
Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which the speaker assumes that which he sets out to prove. Approach the subject from a less fallacious standpoint, and you're less likely to get shot down.
It's the same thing as the "agree with the professor" effect. Of all the undergraduate papers produced in a class, say 80% of them are likely to be C material or below. Therefore, there is only a 1 in 5 chance of getting a high grade on any given paper. A student disagreeing with the professor has a 4 in 5 chance of getting a low grade, the same as anyone else in a class with these figures. But if the student begs the question, and assumes that his paper will be graded low because he disagrees with the professor, he is more likely to write in a defensive or combative way that degrades the quality of his paper, effectively diminishing the odds that he will earn a B or higher. From this experience he derives the conclusion that the professor marks down papers that disagree with his own teachings. And the process propagates itself once more.
In other words, when you act as though your ideas are discriminated against, you will always find ready fuel for that theory in entirely reasonable responses.
That's how public television gets it's donation money, at least around here. "Donate in the silver plan and get this handsome Black Adder tote bag!" We used to donate to get cool merch from british TV shows that only came to the US through public television. It's not an uncommon system for raising money.
Nah...you need NES cartridges to play in this machine. I'm sure most people will prefer to download the games through the Revolution and play with the fancy new controller rather than go searching for old carts on Ebay (or, if you're very lucky, a local used game store). This is for the "hardcore retro" who either have a large NES collection already, or are willing to go out of their way just to get the cool factor of playing on a good approximation of the original hardware.
Now that I think about it, it would be pretty cool to see new games hit the shelves in those old cartridge shells. Ah, the memories...
Not true, sadly, under the USian "opt-out" system of copyright law. Every new work is assumed to be "all rights reserved" unless the creator lays down other copyright terms. When I was young, this system was a golden treasure to creative people, or so it seemed. It meant that no one could rip you off, even if you didn't have the ten bucks to register with the copyright office. There were no tiers of protection, everything belonged to its proper owner and all was right with the world.
Of course, these days I see the system in a slightly different light.
Actually, if you can show that your comments were truthful, it's likely that the suit would be thrown out before you go to trial. The company would probably get fined for filing a gratuitous lawsuit as well. In fact, if you recieved a C&D like the idiotic one involved in this case, you could probably countersue for the company's attempt to diminish your right to free speech at their convenience before the original suit is heard.
IANAL, TINLA et al
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie.
And the great panacea of the Internet is that those lies are fact-checked and debunked almost immediately.
We no longer live in a world where everyone must go to the town square to hear the latest news. Every person reading this has the power to do research. Most minunderstandings can be cleared up with a quick trip to Google, or, at most, a quickly-written email.
Gah! Mod points! Where are my mod points!?
Reading over it, it seems like the only way to cross this patent would be to make a game very similar to Eternal Darkness, which I'm sure is what they were trying to prevent. (And with good reason, too. I can remember playing the game, thinking, "Hey, this is a really great idea. Too bad everyone else is just going to copy it in the next few years. They should patent it or something.")
Now that they have the patent, they'll be making an Eternal Darkness 2, right Nintendo? Eh? Eh?
WarioWare: Twisted comes with a gyroscopic control/rumble pack unit attached to the cart, and it works very well. The gyroscope recalibrates at the beginning of every minigame, so changing the way you hold the controller won't screw you up. You don't even need to tell it if you're playing on a GBA or a DS (right side up or upside down). The gyroscope is very sensitive even to small movements, which means that games with very exact tilt controls are playable, although they take a LOT of concentration.
Yoshi Topsy-Turvy was released at the same time and contains a 1-axis tilt sensor, not a gyroscope. It is substantially harder to use, since the tilt sensor behaves strangely if you accidentally tilt the machine along the wrong axis, and the responses seem a bit slower.
A lot of people I've talked to seem to have this instinctive understanding that these are test games for the components that will go in the revolution controller. I hope to god they don't use the tilt sensor. Topsy-Turvy is fun, but I couldn't see many uses for the tilt sensor as a general feature.
It's actually unclear as to whether, historically, the male pronoun was truly intended to be gender-neutral, or if we got that idea from reinterpreting statements originally meant to refer to males. Remember that the last 500 years of western history have been marked by huge expansions of the rights of different kinds of males, expanding the rights of the poor, former slaves, etc. So using the word "man" as a collective may not have been intended to mean "all human beings." In fact, we know that the singular feminine was still used to refer to women in collective not long ago, because Margaret Fuller published a book in 1845 called "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." It wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that up to this time, Woman meant all women and Man meant all men.
This is a gaming article. If you read the core books for White Wolf's pen and paper role playing games (particularly Mage 2nd edition), you'll see that the writers always refer to the character in general as "she." This was partly in protest to Dungeons and Dragons, whose books included a disclaimer indicating more or less the sentiment the parent expressed. It's quite possible that the article author was influenced by this, since it deals with issues in the area of gaming.
Also, in response to your constitution argument, I did a quick word search. The U.S. Constitution contains neither the word "woman" nor the word "man," in any variation of plurality. The founding fathers probably wrote with great care not to exclude anyone from citizenship on the petty basis of semantics. We are referred to as "people." Both the members of congress and the President are referred to as "he" in sparse usage, without ever calling them "men". (The term "congressman" is not found.)
This certainly does not imply that, even taken as literally as possible, the constitution does not grant basic rights to women. (In fact, it makes not even implied restrictions upon women who want to take on the position, of, say, Secretary of State.) We do not have women voters because the constitution says "man" all over when it means "person." The gendered language in the constitution was so sparse, that it isn't too great a leap of faith to believe that women were intended to have all the rights of citizenship from the beginning.