Note that God, in the Bible, didn't even give himself a name - just "I am" (which is about as fundamental as you can get).
Just a minor point bordering on the unrelated, but the proper name of the biblical God is YHWH (see Isaiah 42:8). The Jews never actually pronounced it, as a sign of reverence, but it is commonly transliterated as Yahweh. For a long time it was mistakenly thought to be Jehovah, because the word "Adonai" was always written on top of YHWH (to prevent the accidental pronounciation of the Name, IIRC). You won't find it in the verses of the Bible because translaters always substitute it with LORD (in small caps). But if you flip to the introductory notes in the front, there should be an explanation.
For all of you who read Cryptonomicon, you might recall a joke about buying a pack of Magic cards and finding one with the large letters YHWH printed on it.
This book is just racking up the awards. It has been nominated for the most prestigious award of each major genre. This may be the first time in history that something like this has happened (too lazy to verify it myself though). Check it out:
In horror: Bram Stoker Award (winner)
In fantasy: World Fantasy Award (nominated, the winner has not been decided yet)
In sci-fi: Hugo Award (winner)
Look at the tons of other awards in Neil Gaiman's collection.
Buying CDs and DVDs from Japan costs a lot. For some reason, they're priced much higher there than they are in the US. Does anyone know the reason for that? It's cheaper for someone in Japan to order a DVD from amazon.com than getting it locally. Is there an MPAJ or RIAJ that's fixing the prices or something?
One thing that bothers me about science fiction and fantasy books is the cover art. Very often, it is a picture of the main character holding a weapon or something similarly tacky. Covers like these are one of the reasons why many people do not take speculative fiction seriously. They take one look at the cover and go, "Come on, that's supposed to have insight on the human condition? Riiiight."
For example, Hyperion by Dan Simmons was a fantastic read. John Keats, Chaucer, William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, etc. it's all in there. But what do we get on the cover? A picture of a monster covered with metal spikes.
There are exceptions, and lately it seems publishers are getting the right idea in this area. Neil Gaiman's American Gods has a wonderful cover, in which you don't actually see any gods. It's just a picture of a dark, lonely road, with lightning in the sky. It conveys the right feeling. Another example is Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon-- all black with a sort of cryptic symbol. Imagine if the publishers decided to put a picture of US marines shooting at enemy planes.
The Rowling novels are great. I enjoyed escaping away to Hogwarts for the duration that it took for me to read each one. Besides, the Hugo awards have to maintain our British heritage and what better way then to award the Hugo to a British author?
Make no mistake, although Neil Gaiman wrote American Gods and currently lives in the US, he is most certainly a British author. You can read the slashdot review for his book here.
Ironically enough though, file trading services are turning into corporate radio little by little. The trendy, unwashed masses type songs are the ones that are readily available online. Just like they're the only songs you hear on the radio. So it's difficult to get an idea of how a whole albumn sounds.
One file sharing service that seems to have maintained a low profile (aside from the spyware issues) is Audiogalaxy. It has the widest range of music I've ever seen in p2p. The most obscure bands that have ever released a CD are all there. Bands from non-english speaking countries too. Most of it is sorted into genres. Each artist/band has it's own page with links to pages of other similar bands.
Popular songs that get radio airplay are restricted so you can't download them. That's their concession with the RIAA to prevent from being shut down. In a way, that's a good thing. Because mostly only non-RIAA music is available for download, independant bands will get more exposure. I'm largely unaffected by the blocks on copyrighted RIAA files since I don't want to download those anyway.
If you're worried about spyware, just do what I do (I'm using linux) and create a no-privillege user account to run the audiogalaxy client from. That doesn't prevent them from logging your searches, but then even Google does that.
The other day I let a friend of mine use my noise cancelling headphones to listen to a CD he just bought. After fiddling with his CD Walkman for a bit, he still wasn't able to hear anything on the headphones. It turned out the CD he bought was N'Sync's greatest hits album, and the headphones were actively cancelling out all the noise from it leaving only the real music (ie silence).
it would be better served in that format... Except it would be like 3 seasons long... So, maybe a regular TV show where the entire series is written and shot before it airs... But the first season would have a lot of episodes with no action, so nobody would watch it...
That sounds an awful lot like Babylon 5, which isn't surprising since JMS acknowledged LOTR as an influence. Then there's the Minbari == Elves, Vorlons == Wizards issue.
"The Matrix" was essentially live-action anime, only there wasn't actually an animated version first.
That's not entirely true. Have you seen Ghost in the Shell? The storyline isn't that similar, but if you do a scene by scene comparison, you'll find that context and dialogue aside, many parts are almost a 1 to 1 mapping. Not that this takes anything away from the Matrix. The resemblances are strictly intentional, and the watermelon scene makes it clear that the Wachowskis were paying tribute to Ghost in the Shell.
You'd eventually get bored and attack your opponent. And then you'd get hit because by simply waiting for your opponent to attack you will always have an advantage.
This is known as "turtling". There is a big difference between that and defensively goading your opponent into leaving himself vulnerable by executing an attack at the wrong range or time. Interestingly, despite the apparent effectiveness of turtling, you will be hard pressed to find higher level tournaments where turtling players win.
Where I played it was considered "poor sportsmanship" to throw your opponent
And that is probably why you were faced with the turtling problem. When someone is passively standing there waiting for you to attack him, he's a prime target for being thrown. When you refrain from throwing, you miss out on a very important aspect of SF.
To hear the words directly from a high level player, please go to Domination 101 at Shoryuken.com.
What was Ken saying when he threw those fireball things? To me it always sounded like "COOL whip!"
It's "HADOKEN". The "HA" was very brief and the "DO" dragged on for a bit, so it's understandable that it might sound like "ha DOOOO kIN" or "a COOOL whip".
FWIW, I don't think the comparison between SF and chess is fair. Sure, the player may be thinking in "real time", but the complexity of moves, compounded by hard-and-fast rules coded into the game means that at the highest levels, it's a test of endurance or reflex response (or both), not game skill.
Although reflexes and dexterity are highly important, the high levels of play involve so much more. You have to control the space around you effectively. You have to know when it will benefit yourself to take the hit. You have to be aware of the range of your moves and those of your opponent. (A common technique is to stand just outside the range of his farthest reaching attack. The opponent, unnerved by your proximity, lashes out only to whiff just by a pixel. You then counter-attack his extended limb.)
A prime example of the mind games that go on is the "pyschic DP" (DP == Dragon Punch). It is so called because it appears to the observer that you've read your opponent's mind and countered his move in the exact same moment he initated it. What really happened is that you've been paying attention to the patterns of attack that your opponent is using. You know what his moves are, and what they are good for. So you set up your own pattern. Then when your opponent thinks he knows what's the next thing you'll do and tries to attack, you surpisingly just stand there. But it's too late, he's already pressed the button. WHAM! You proceed to nail his ass with your psychic DP.
In SF, there is a wide range of playable characters. Most of them have distinct styles and abilities. Your choice of character can result in a completely different way of playing. For those who don't quite see it yet, think of the character classes of Diablo 2. Necromancer plays completely different from Barbarian. There are characters that move very quickly and jump around all the time. There are others that keep their distance with long limbs or projectiles. Still others are big and slow but do huge amounts of damage if they can get close and actually hit you. Each character requires different amounts of reflex and dexteriety.
I don't think my girlfriend (or any non-geek) would agree:o)
On the contrary, many Street Fighter players aren't geeks. The most obvious example are the gangsta players (playas?). I'm sure there are at least a few geeks on slashdot who've been on the receiving end of gangsta violence after beating them at the game 3 times in a row. Oops, video games cause violence? No more than pool or poker.
Re:What about other games?
on
Bang The Machine
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Street Figter 2 was the first game with any real depth that let you play against another human. Before that, you could only show off your "skills" by beating the high score. This game significantly increased the social aspect of video gaming.
Unfortunately, it also significantly increased the actual physical violence in arcades. Now before you jump in and shout about columbine, the violence here was caused by not playing enough of the game. Most arcade fights are started by people who haven't played enough to get good at the game, resulting them losing. Like I said, this game has plenty of depth.
Street Fighter requires skill. In the beginning it was about doing those cool looking fireball moves. Then we discovered combos. Then the strategies started developing. The level it's played at nowadays involves mind games and knowing your oponent. This is not your father's video game (not that your father actually had video games). Many times, Street Fighter has even been compared with chess. I await the day when it will be an official Olympic sport. Heh. Imagine the judging disputes when one player abuses a game glitch.
Graduate students in Germany succeeded in creating a batch of self-contained, self-replicating, nanobots. Grey goo at eleven.
Researchers at MIT unveiled the latest advancement in artificial intelligence--the integration of several key projects. Major groups include Skynet, Technocore, Wintermute, Jane, and Matrix.
A team of scientists working in secret in Antarctica have announced the successful trial run of the Temporal Manipulation Device, a.k.a. the "Time Machine". Joining them at the press conference was Elvis Presley, known for revolutionizing the music industry with his hit song Smells Like Teen Spirit.
What happens if a spectator gets a little too attached to the prey and brings a high-powered flashlight?
I believe that would constitute divine intervention. Given the proper conditioning by the "gods", the robots may even change their behavior to earn favor from the gods. Naturally, there will be other robots that will lean towards agnosticism and atheism.
He said that if he goes to jail, it will be because of his opinions. Clearly he has broken the law by defacing websites and what not, but does that warrant the treatment he's going through? It seems like the government is pulling another Kevin Mitnick here. They're blowing things way out of proportion.
This reminds Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It was the story that turned the comic book industry around. The tale is set some years in the future of Gotham city where Batman is over 50 and has long retired. He is but a myth known only to the oldest cops, who were but rookies when the Bat Signal still shined. He tries as best he can to live a normal life, but the bat gives him no rest. He wears his cape and cowl again to put things right in his city once more.
He does this while battling against his own body, which now has all the pains of old age. It's a beautiful. There's even the climatic battle where Superman is sent by the president of the USA to take Batman out. Batman, way past his prime, fights the immortal Superman, and wins! You have to see it to believe it.
*Ahem* Now getting back on topic, this is exactly the kind of story that will give Indiana Jones the closure it needs.
Those of us who have played Sim Ant before would probably see some advantages to using "pheremone" based routing on the internet. There is a fundamental difference, however, between real ants, and computers on the internet. Real ants are genetically programmed with loyalty to their hive. Computers, on the other hand, are plagued with script kiddies, worms and greedy lawyers.
The potential for havoc is high if this scheme is ever implemented and script kiddies all over start leaving fake "pheremone" trails around the internet.
I wonder if this could have been averted if the FBI put their resources into preventing terrorism instead of things like Carnivore, and arresting Russian programmers. Granted Carnivore is supposed to prevent things like these, but terrorists that have the ability to coordinate an attack of this scale won't be using conventional email to communicate anyway. I hope they don't try to use this to outlaw encryption.
There is an article at shoryuken.com about the reasons for the decline of the arcade. It makes some excellent points on why the home console is not responsible for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Lois: What color is my underwear?
Superman: Whoa!
Just a minor point bordering on the unrelated, but the proper name of the biblical God is YHWH (see Isaiah 42:8). The Jews never actually pronounced it, as a sign of reverence, but it is commonly transliterated as Yahweh. For a long time it was mistakenly thought to be Jehovah, because the word "Adonai" was always written on top of YHWH (to prevent the accidental pronounciation of the Name, IIRC). You won't find it in the verses of the Bible because translaters always substitute it with LORD (in small caps). But if you flip to the introductory notes in the front, there should be an explanation.
For all of you who read Cryptonomicon, you might recall a joke about buying a pack of Magic cards and finding one with the large letters YHWH printed on it.
In horror: Bram Stoker Award (winner)
In fantasy: World Fantasy Award (nominated, the winner has not been decided yet)
In sci-fi: Hugo Award (winner)
Look at the tons of other awards in Neil Gaiman's collection.
Buying CDs and DVDs from Japan costs a lot. For some reason, they're priced much higher there than they are in the US. Does anyone know the reason for that? It's cheaper for someone in Japan to order a DVD from amazon.com than getting it locally. Is there an MPAJ or RIAJ that's fixing the prices or something?
Patient: Doctor, I think I'm going crazy!
Psychiatrist: Why do you say that?
Patient: Lately, I think I've been hearing voices in my head.
Psychiatrist: And what do these... voices say?
Patient: "You can save up to $200 if you switch to the AT&T premium long distance plan." Please make it stop!
Psychiatrist: Now I see what the problem is. What you need is to see a dentist.
I dunno man, that "%" key can look awfully appetizing after 5 hours of nethack.
Plus, the cover art is usually pretty cool
One thing that bothers me about science fiction and fantasy books is the cover art. Very often, it is a picture of the main character holding a weapon or something similarly tacky. Covers like these are one of the reasons why many people do not take speculative fiction seriously. They take one look at the cover and go, "Come on, that's supposed to have insight on the human condition? Riiiight."
For example, Hyperion by Dan Simmons was a fantastic read. John Keats, Chaucer, William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, etc. it's all in there. But what do we get on the cover? A picture of a monster covered with metal spikes.
There are exceptions, and lately it seems publishers are getting the right idea in this area. Neil Gaiman's American Gods has a wonderful cover, in which you don't actually see any gods. It's just a picture of a dark, lonely road, with lightning in the sky. It conveys the right feeling. Another example is Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon-- all black with a sort of cryptic symbol. Imagine if the publishers decided to put a picture of US marines shooting at enemy planes.
The Rowling novels are great. I enjoyed escaping away to Hogwarts for the duration that it took for me to read each one. Besides, the Hugo awards have to maintain our British heritage and what better way then to award the Hugo to a British author?
Make no mistake, although Neil Gaiman wrote American Gods and currently lives in the US, he is most certainly a British author. You can read the slashdot review for his book here.
Ironically enough though, file trading services are turning into corporate radio little by little. The trendy, unwashed masses type songs are the ones that are readily available online. Just like they're the only songs you hear on the radio. So it's difficult to get an idea of how a whole albumn sounds.
One file sharing service that seems to have maintained a low profile (aside from the spyware issues) is Audiogalaxy. It has the widest range of music I've ever seen in p2p. The most obscure bands that have ever released a CD are all there. Bands from non-english speaking countries too. Most of it is sorted into genres. Each artist/band has it's own page with links to pages of other similar bands.
Popular songs that get radio airplay are restricted so you can't download them. That's their concession with the RIAA to prevent from being shut down. In a way, that's a good thing. Because mostly only non-RIAA music is available for download, independant bands will get more exposure. I'm largely unaffected by the blocks on copyrighted RIAA files since I don't want to download those anyway.
If you're worried about spyware, just do what I do (I'm using linux) and create a no-privillege user account to run the audiogalaxy client from. That doesn't prevent them from logging your searches, but then even Google does that.
I still think cmdrtaco's mame cabinet looks better. As far as I know, I doesn't play MP3s just yet, but that can be worked out in the software, right?
The other day I let a friend of mine use my noise cancelling headphones to listen to a CD he just bought. After fiddling with his CD Walkman for a bit, he still wasn't able to hear anything on the headphones. It turned out the CD he bought was N'Sync's greatest hits album, and the headphones were actively cancelling out all the noise from it leaving only the real music (ie silence).
it would be better served in that format... Except it would be like 3 seasons long... So, maybe a regular TV show where the entire series is written and shot before it airs... But the first season would have a lot of episodes with no action, so nobody would watch it...
That sounds an awful lot like Babylon 5, which isn't surprising since JMS acknowledged LOTR as an influence. Then there's the Minbari == Elves, Vorlons == Wizards issue.
"The Matrix" was essentially live-action anime, only there wasn't actually an animated version first.
That's not entirely true. Have you seen Ghost in the Shell? The storyline isn't that similar, but if you do a
scene by scene comparison, you'll find that context and dialogue aside, many parts are almost a 1 to 1 mapping. Not that this takes anything away from the Matrix. The resemblances are strictly intentional, and the watermelon scene makes it clear that the Wachowskis were paying tribute to Ghost in the Shell.
You'd eventually get bored and attack your opponent. And then you'd get hit because by simply waiting for your opponent to attack you will always have an advantage.
This is known as "turtling". There is a big difference between that and defensively goading your opponent into leaving himself vulnerable by executing an attack at the wrong range or time. Interestingly, despite the apparent effectiveness of turtling, you will be hard pressed to find higher level tournaments where turtling players win.
Where I played it was considered "poor sportsmanship" to throw your opponent
And that is probably why you were faced with the turtling problem. When someone is passively standing there waiting for you to attack him, he's a prime target for being thrown. When you refrain from throwing, you miss out on a very important aspect of SF.
To hear the words directly from a high level player, please go to
Domination 101 at Shoryuken.com.
What was Ken saying when he threw those fireball things? To me it always sounded like "COOL whip!"
It's "HADOKEN". The "HA" was very brief and the "DO" dragged on for a bit, so it's understandable that it might sound like "ha DOOOO kIN" or "a COOOL whip".
FWIW, I don't think the comparison between SF and chess is fair. Sure, the player may be thinking in "real time", but the complexity of moves, compounded by hard-and-fast rules coded into the game means that at the highest levels, it's a test of endurance or reflex response (or both), not game skill.
Although reflexes and dexterity are highly important, the high levels of play involve so much more. You have to control the space around you effectively. You have to know when it will benefit yourself to take the hit. You have to be aware of the range of your moves and those of your opponent. (A common technique is to stand just outside the range of his farthest reaching attack. The opponent, unnerved by your proximity, lashes out only to whiff just by a pixel. You then counter-attack his extended limb.)
A prime example of the mind games that go on is the "pyschic DP" (DP == Dragon Punch). It is so called because it appears to the observer that you've read your opponent's mind and countered his move in the exact same moment he initated it. What really happened is that you've been paying attention to the patterns of attack that your opponent is using. You know what his moves are, and what they are good for. So you set up your own pattern. Then when your opponent thinks he knows what's the next thing you'll do and tries to attack, you surpisingly just stand there. But it's too late, he's already pressed the button. WHAM! You proceed to nail his ass with your psychic DP.
In SF, there is a wide range of playable characters. Most of them have distinct styles and abilities. Your choice of character can result in a completely different way of playing. For those who don't quite see it yet, think of the character classes of Diablo 2. Necromancer plays completely different from Barbarian. There are characters that move very quickly and jump around all the time. There are others that keep their distance with long limbs or projectiles. Still others are big and slow but do huge amounts of damage if they can get close and actually hit you. Each character requires different amounts of reflex and dexteriety.
I don't think my girlfriend (or any non-geek) would agree :o)
On the contrary, many Street Fighter players aren't geeks. The most obvious example are the gangsta players (playas?). I'm sure there are at least a few geeks on slashdot who've been on the receiving end of gangsta violence after beating them at the game 3 times in a row. Oops, video games cause violence? No more than pool or poker.
Street Figter 2 was the first game with any real depth that let you play against another human. Before that, you could only show off your "skills" by beating the high score. This game significantly increased the social aspect of video gaming.
Unfortunately, it also significantly increased the actual physical violence in arcades. Now before you jump in and shout about columbine, the violence here was caused by not playing enough of the game. Most arcade fights are started by people who haven't played enough to get good at the game, resulting them losing. Like I said, this game has plenty of depth.
Street Fighter requires skill. In the beginning it was about doing those cool looking fireball moves. Then we discovered combos. Then the strategies started developing. The level it's played at nowadays involves mind games and knowing your oponent. This is not your father's video game (not that your father actually had video games). Many times, Street Fighter has even been compared with chess. I await the day when it will be an official Olympic sport. Heh. Imagine the judging disputes when one player abuses a game glitch.
In other news:
Graduate students in Germany succeeded in creating a batch of self-contained, self-replicating, nanobots. Grey goo at eleven.
Researchers at MIT unveiled the latest advancement in artificial intelligence--the integration of several key projects. Major groups include Skynet, Technocore, Wintermute, Jane, and Matrix.
A team of scientists working in secret in Antarctica have announced the successful trial run of the Temporal Manipulation Device, a.k.a. the "Time Machine". Joining them at the press conference was Elvis Presley, known for revolutionizing the music industry with his hit song Smells Like Teen Spirit.
I believe that would constitute divine intervention. Given the proper conditioning by the "gods", the robots may even change their behavior to earn favor from the gods. Naturally, there will be other robots that will lean towards agnosticism and atheism.
He said that if he goes to jail, it will be because of his opinions. Clearly he has broken the law by defacing websites and what not, but does that warrant the treatment he's going through? It seems like the government is pulling another Kevin Mitnick here. They're blowing things way out of proportion.
This reminds Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It was the story that turned the comic book industry around. The tale is set some years in the future of Gotham city where Batman is over 50 and has long retired. He is but a myth known only to the oldest cops, who were but rookies when the Bat Signal still shined. He tries as best he can to live a normal life, but the bat gives him no rest. He wears his cape and cowl again to put things right in his city once more.
He does this while battling against his own body, which now has all the pains of old age. It's a beautiful. There's even the climatic battle where Superman is sent by the president of the USA to take Batman out. Batman, way past his prime, fights the immortal Superman, and wins! You have to see it to believe it.
*Ahem* Now getting back on topic, this is exactly the kind of story that will give Indiana Jones the closure it needs.
Now all it needs is a red oscillating light mounted on the the front and a Turbo Boost button.
Those of us who have played Sim Ant before would probably see some advantages to using "pheremone" based routing on the internet. There is a fundamental difference, however, between real ants, and computers on the internet. Real ants are genetically programmed with loyalty to their hive. Computers, on the other hand, are plagued with script kiddies, worms and greedy lawyers.
The potential for havoc is high if this scheme is ever implemented and script kiddies all over start leaving fake "pheremone" trails around the internet.
I wonder if this could have been averted if the FBI put their resources into preventing terrorism instead of things like Carnivore, and arresting Russian programmers. Granted Carnivore is supposed to prevent things like these, but terrorists that have the ability to coordinate an attack of this scale won't be using conventional email to communicate anyway. I hope they don't try to use this to outlaw encryption.
There is an article at shoryuken.com about the reasons for the decline of the arcade. It makes some excellent points on why the home console is not responsible for it.