You have a point, but so does the GP. Notice that all but one of the games you mention are really rather long in the tooth by now. Now, if you look at a list of some of the Western story-driven single-player RPGs of the last decade that, I think, most would agree are classics --
Daggerfall (1996)
Baldur's Gate (1998, 1999)
Planescape: Torment (1999)
Deus Ex (2000)
Baldur's Gate II (2000, 2001)
Morrowind (2002, 2003)
Neverwinter Nights (2002, 2003)
Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
Oblivion (2006, 2007)
-- there's definitely a trickling off over time. NWN2, KotOR2 didn't flop, but they won't be remembered fondly; and combat-driven games, like the Icewind Dale and Dungeon Siege series, have done well enough, but they're really a different genre. Note also that there isn't anything in particular that folks are looking forward to at the moment. In short: I agree with you that there's plenty of room for more Western single-player RPGs, but it's not something that developers seem to be looking at right now.
I have looked hard for a Jar Jar model for UT2k4 or similar - to hunt down and kill, obviously. With every weapon available, one after the other. Alas, I have not found one, nor do I possess the skills to make one...
We either walk back from the shop with our groceries, or they're in the trailer with the baby. The 4 year old goes on a seat on the back of my bike, and the 6 year old cycles himself. But that's not uncommon in Cambridge (UK) -
You must admit Cambridge is kind of a weird exception, though: the town centre is far from car-friendly. Also, while your tactic works for light stuff, even with a trailer there's a limit to how many bottles of fruit juice you can carry in one trip! I'd also comment that relying on bicycles for travel in Cambridge kind of limits your shopping options -- to Sainsburys, or, er, the other Sainsburys... except for certain types of items, of course (cheese, meat, etc.).
it's almost definitely cheaper to live in town than to live out of town and run 2 cars.
FWIW, last I heard about property prices in Cambridge, it's cheaper to commute from Lille... and yes, I know someone who did that! (Not so good if you want to see your kids for more than 3 days a week, obviously.)
We do, it's just that for more recent years you remember the drek more vividly than the great films. Consider 2000: which of these stands out more in your memory --
Billy Elliot, Chicken Run, Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Dancer in the Dark, Gladiator, Memento, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? --- or
Battlefield Earth, Bedazzled, Charlie's Angels, Dude, Where's My Car?, Dungeons and Dragons, Gladiator, and so on
? (... and yes, putting Gladiator in both lists was intentional)
Your assessment may be completely correct, but I'd suggest their tactic may be more viable than you think: that is to say, that it doesn't matter whether their FUD persuades the PHBs or not. The real prize, it seems to me, is persuading companies' legal teams.
Then the idea goes into the public domain. Obviously if you've never made any money out of it, the monetary value of the idea is zero, so you won't pay tax; if there has been income (gross, not net, obviously), you should be taxed for all income over the lifetime of the idea, or release it to public domain.
Sounds like a decent compromise, really: it would ensure that all ideas become public domain as soon as they're no longer commercially viable.
I personally have only one reason, but it's a biggie: Adblock Plus. Its ad-blocking tools are many, many times easier to use, configure, auto-update, and more powerful than the ad-blocking built into Opera. Opera's ad-blocking improved enormously in version 9.x, but it's still a long way behind Adblock, let alone Adblock Plus. If something as powerful and as easy to use as Adblock Plus were available in Opera, I assure you I'd switch in a heartbeat.
The Athenian democrats had the idea of voting on this while people were still alive -- "ostracism", that is. Only it wasn't so much about deciding who was and was not a criminal, but rather about deciding who was too dangerous to have around, whether because they were too influential, too wealthy, or whatever.
However, they did also have mandatory examinations of public officials upon leaving office, a process called euthynia. Accounts were inspected by randomly selected committees; any citizen could bring an accusation against the official in a public court; embezzlement or corruption would lead to a fine ten times the amount received; incompetence was let off with a fine merely equal to the amount involved.
"Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation 'involved poor judgment.'"
Disciplinary Action Announced by Director of Schools
Director of Schools Marilyn Mathis has suspended lead teacher, Mr. Quentin Mastin, and assistant principal, Don Bartch, for unprofessional conduct and neglect of duty due to actions taken with Scales Elementary School students on May 10, 2007 at Fall Creek Falls State Park. The suspension is without pay and will commence on May 14, 2007 and continue through the end of this school year ending June 1, 2007.
and my memory for certain things is worse because I never really have to use it - stuff I want to know is either on my hard drive or a Google searech away.
Plato said the same thing about the technology of writing. He was right, and so are you. But I'd still rather have writing.
I'd like that too. I can't see any info anywhere about the dpi resolution, alas, and the image in the picture looks rather dim. Even so, this is a cheering advance.
It's not indeterminate. It looks like they're breaking at commas and verbs, and highlighting the finite verbs (including auxiliary and modal verbs). Trouble is, that won't work for many kinds of sentences. For example, the summary reformatted would start as follows:
== quote==
Scientists at a small startup
called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota have determined that the human brain is not wired properly
to read block text.
They have found that our eyes view text as if they're peering through a straw.
Not only does your brain see the text on the line you're reading,
but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below.
This causes your brain
to engage in a tug of war as it fights to filter and
ignore the noise.
The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension.
== end quote ==
The first sentence ends up as block text anyway, and I find the wildly varying lengths of clauses make the third sentence difficult to read too. I'm really not impressed, especially as they're going to have to pull some fancy tricks with AI to get the app to recognise verbs properly.
For example, a dumb programme would probably misidentify "tug" in the fourth sentence as a verb, "ignore" as a finite form when it's actually an infinitive, and probably also mistakenly highlight "is... reading" in the fifth sentence as an auxiliary-plus-participle combination, when it's actually verb-plus-gerund.
I teach ancient literature and languages. I'm not a historian per se, but I deal with it on a daily basis.
In general when ancient sources describe events concerning an individual, it is reasonable to infer that the individual existed; the events and deeds of that person are, generally speaking, what is going to be open to doubt.
In this specific case: self-proclaimed Messiahs, and cult-leaders whose followers attributed miracles to them, were a dime a dozen in the ancient Near East; they kept popping up every few decades, often more than one at a time. That being so, there's no particular reason to suppose Jesus was too much different from them, except in the trivial sense that his sect eventually took off. Questioning his existence is unhealthy scepticism (questioning the details of his biography, obviously, is not).
Not only does Lilypond produce better output than Finale, as the sibling post mentions, but it is also cross-platform, so you can use it in Windows if you want.
CCing everyone and their boss is not really a good idea, because it contains an implicit threat. If you act like you're ready to hold something over someone's head, even "just in case", people are going to react as though they've already been threatened.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a point, but so does the GP. Notice that all but one of the games you mention are really rather long in the tooth by now. Now, if you look at a list of some of the Western story-driven single-player RPGs of the last decade that, I think, most would agree are classics --
-- there's definitely a trickling off over time. NWN2, KotOR2 didn't flop, but they won't be remembered fondly; and combat-driven games, like the Icewind Dale and Dungeon Siege series, have done well enough, but they're really a different genre. Note also that there isn't anything in particular that folks are looking forward to at the moment. In short: I agree with you that there's plenty of room for more Western single-player RPGs, but it's not something that developers seem to be looking at right now.
I have looked hard for a Jar Jar model for UT2k4 or similar - to hunt down and kill, obviously. With every weapon available, one after the other. Alas, I have not found one, nor do I possess the skills to make one ...
You must admit Cambridge is kind of a weird exception, though: the town centre is far from car-friendly. Also, while your tactic works for light stuff, even with a trailer there's a limit to how many bottles of fruit juice you can carry in one trip! I'd also comment that relying on bicycles for travel in Cambridge kind of limits your shopping options -- to Sainsburys, or, er, the other Sainsburys ... except for certain types of items, of course (cheese, meat, etc.).
it's almost definitely cheaper to live in town than to live out of town and run 2 cars.FWIW, last I heard about property prices in Cambridge, it's cheaper to commute from Lille ... and yes, I know someone who did that! (Not so good if you want to see your kids for more than 3 days a week, obviously.)
? (... and yes, putting Gladiator in both lists was intentional)
Your assessment may be completely correct, but I'd suggest their tactic may be more viable than you think: that is to say, that it doesn't matter whether their FUD persuades the PHBs or not. The real prize, it seems to me, is persuading companies' legal teams.
"Later"? On or before 6 October 1991 is, technically, later I suppose, but not so's most people'd notice.
Then the idea goes into the public domain. Obviously if you've never made any money out of it, the monetary value of the idea is zero, so you won't pay tax; if there has been income (gross, not net, obviously), you should be taxed for all income over the lifetime of the idea, or release it to public domain.
Sounds like a decent compromise, really: it would ensure that all ideas become public domain as soon as they're no longer commercially viable.
Clearly, the rate of intellectual property tax would be assessed on an evaluation of total income from the idea over its whole lifetime.
That would ensure that the IP-ed idea would go public domain once it has (a) made money and (b) finished making money.
Mind revealing which? It'd be useful to know what to avoid.
I personally have only one reason, but it's a biggie: Adblock Plus. Its ad-blocking tools are many, many times easier to use, configure, auto-update, and more powerful than the ad-blocking built into Opera. Opera's ad-blocking improved enormously in version 9.x, but it's still a long way behind Adblock, let alone Adblock Plus. If something as powerful and as easy to use as Adblock Plus were available in Opera, I assure you I'd switch in a heartbeat.
The Athenian democrats had the idea of voting on this while people were still alive -- "ostracism", that is. Only it wasn't so much about deciding who was and was not a criminal, but rather about deciding who was too dangerous to have around, whether because they were too influential, too wealthy, or whatever.
However, they did also have mandatory examinations of public officials upon leaving office, a process called euthynia. Accounts were inspected by randomly selected committees; any citizen could bring an accusation against the official in a public court; embezzlement or corruption would lead to a fine ten times the amount received; incompetence was let off with a fine merely equal to the amount involved.
I rather like the idea.
Update:
Disciplinary Action Announced by Director of Schools
Director of Schools Marilyn Mathis has suspended lead teacher, Mr. Quentin Mastin, and assistant principal, Don Bartch, for unprofessional conduct and neglect of duty due to actions taken with Scales Elementary School students on May 10, 2007 at Fall Creek Falls State Park. The suspension is without pay and will commence on May 14, 2007 and continue through the end of this school year ending June 1, 2007.
Google is your friend.
Plato said the same thing about the technology of writing. He was right, and so are you. But I'd still rather have writing.
A few parts of Psychonauts work that way.
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do." -- S.H. Roberts
(Hope I got the wording and attribution right -- I had to rely on Google.)
Well, in several European countries you do.
I'd like that too. I can't see any info anywhere about the dpi resolution, alas, and the image in the picture looks rather dim. Even so, this is a cheering advance.
It's not indeterminate. It looks like they're breaking at commas and verbs, and highlighting the finite verbs (including auxiliary and modal verbs). Trouble is, that won't work for many kinds of sentences. For example, the summary reformatted would start as follows:
... reading" in the fifth sentence as an auxiliary-plus-participle combination, when it's actually verb-plus-gerund.
== quote==
Scientists at a small startup
called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota
have determined that the human brain
is not wired properly
to read block text.
They have found that our eyes
view text as if
they're peering through a straw.
Not only does your brain see the text on the line
you're reading,
but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below.
This causes your brain
to engage in a tug of war as it
fights to filter and
ignore the noise.
The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension.
== end quote ==
The first sentence ends up as block text anyway, and I find the wildly varying lengths of clauses make the third sentence difficult to read too. I'm really not impressed, especially as they're going to have to pull some fancy tricks with AI to get the app to recognise verbs properly.
For example, a dumb programme would probably misidentify "tug" in the fourth sentence as a verb, "ignore" as a finite form when it's actually an infinitive, and probably also mistakenly highlight "is
I teach ancient literature and languages. I'm not a historian per se, but I deal with it on a daily basis.
In general when ancient sources describe events concerning an individual, it is reasonable to infer that the individual existed; the events and deeds of that person are, generally speaking, what is going to be open to doubt.
In this specific case: self-proclaimed Messiahs, and cult-leaders whose followers attributed miracles to them, were a dime a dozen in the ancient Near East; they kept popping up every few decades, often more than one at a time. That being so, there's no particular reason to suppose Jesus was too much different from them, except in the trivial sense that his sect eventually took off. Questioning his existence is unhealthy scepticism (questioning the details of his biography, obviously, is not).
That's probably the most insightful answer that's been posted; thanks :-)
I see that maxim quoted a lot these days. I see the point it's making, of course; but I can't help wondering: what does prove causation, then?
Not only does Lilypond produce better output than Finale, as the sibling post mentions, but it is also cross-platform, so you can use it in Windows if you want.
CCing everyone and their boss is not really a good idea, because it contains an implicit threat. If you act like you're ready to hold something over someone's head, even "just in case", people are going to react as though they've already been threatened.
Liar. You can't get to level 100 until after you've killed Sauron.