He couldn't have GPL'ed his program because its based on work copywrited by Apple, specifically, Apple's Hack TV sample code, and he gives Apple credit for it. Am I to understand you didn't actually *gasps* follow the link?;-)
Third, the GPL is a *license
He did provided a license (of sorts) on his download page that licensed anyone to use the software freely but prohibited anyone from selling it. The baddy in this case was caught selling it.
So this story has implications with respect to GPL..um...how? The only conclusion I can logically reach is that he coulda, shoulda released it under the GPL so as to protect himself from this.
As already noted, theres no way he could've placed his work under the GPL. And I think his main point was that it pretty much doesn't matter what license you provide with your software if you can't back it up with enforcement (i.e. [a, some] lawyer(s))
And I think I know someone who is cranky and needs a nap.:-)
What is Bluetooth? As far as I can tell its a way of connecting various devices wirelessly.
But what if instead all the devices you wanted to connect to were connected to the Internet? (whether wireless or wired is moot at that point, non-mobile devices like faxes, printers, etc. can be wired if its convenient). Wouldn't it be preferrable to get your device on the net so that you can connect to those devices, and do email, surfing, etc.?
The problem Bluetooth wants to solve is already being solved by something else. Something that does what Bluetooth does, and more.
Of course ethernet != internet (lots of other protocols ride on ether too, e.g. AppleTalk) but you and I both know any new applications are almost surely going to be built on TCP/IP.
I'm willing to place my bet on overcoming the simple engineering problem of fitting 802.11 functionality into a small footprint device, rather than Bluetooth, which has to overcome market resistance to an untested solution that isn't compatible with anything else.. *shrugs* guess time will tell...
The broad point is that with 802.11 lots of devices like printers, faxes, etc. can be on the Internet and printed to from any device that has access priveleges. Someone made the analogy that 802.11 replaces ethernet while Bluetooth replaces serial and paralell cables. Well, who needs serial or paralell devices when all those devices are available on the network?
With Bluetooth only other Bluetooth devices can make use of those services.
The only obstacle is getting 802.11 to fit in small-profile devices like palm-tops. The upside to solving that problem is that then those devices will be on the Internet too! Sounds good to me.
A Jupiter-sized planet occupying a (roughly) Jupiter-sized orbit leaves room for smaller rocky planets in smaller orbits. The theory of solar system formation is that small dense planets (rocky, lots of metals, etc) form closer to a star because of gravitational forces in the proto-star. This makes them difficult to detect with the perturbation technique.
So Eridani could very well have an Earth- or Mars-sized planet in orbit.
To respond to the rant portion: I think the Ask Slashdot features are less about giving this one particular guy an answer, and more about taking his question as a starting point for further discussion. You'll note that the majority of the responses are not one line "you should check out X". Most contain extra info like, I've used this and it works, or here are some caveats, or is it even reasonable to expect free VPN software? etc. This extra information is worth far more than a simple link.
>>> Actually, the knights dissapearance had abosulutely nothing whatsoever to do with gunpowder. >> The end of the Knight on the battlefield was due to the invention of the Pike, the widespread use of the crossbow, and the English Longbow.
Actually missile weapons altogether had nothing to do with the disappearance of armored knights. (Missile weapons meaning firearms or bolt type missiles).
A knight is an armored soldier. But the armor was so heavy that it was impractical to wear on foot, so all knights were mounted. Devise a means of unmounting him, and a knight is a sitting duck (turtle is a better image). Military strategy employed many such techniques (once the cultural bias against it disappeared). The pike, stakes driven into the ground, fire pits, etc. all served this purpose.
Armor technology of the day was capable of repelling all but the most lucky of missiles (through the eye holes, between joints, etc.) There was even a standardized test for this - how close an archer would have to be to pierce the armor (maximillian armor was the penultimate in this area. I forget what its test was). There was even a mechanical arrow shooting device that could be used to accurately reproduce the test.
It wasn't missile weapons that defeated mounted armored knights, it was military tactics. The reason the tactics took so long to develop was because of the huge cultural bias against allowing foot soldiery (i.e. commoners) to kill knights (i.e. nobility).
>>> The rapier was an idea that never really took hold with anyone that had to use his sword for a living (professional soldiers, et cetera) due to its low strength. It looked nice, and was very swift, but just couldn't stand up to the rigors of combat. Anyone that tried to use on in real battle quickly realised their mistake (and if they were lucky were able to correct it).
The rapier was used primarily by members of the upper class for a) self defense while in a city, and b) as a dueling weapon
There were however lightweight bladed weapons used by professional soldiers even after the widespread use of firearms. Sabers, for instance, were standard issue for the cavalry all the way up to and including WW1.
Manhattan is a tiny part of the greater NYC metro area.
There are pockets of Silicon Valley - like Palo Alto or Atherton - that are probably quite a bit more expensive than Manhattan. Half a million is the average home price *for the whole region*.
And renting individual rooms sound pretty good after you hear about the cases of 2 or 3 families - upwards of 15 or 16 people - sharing one 2 bedroom apartment in Silicon Valley.
Yeah this place is nirvanna - expensive, crowded, polluted, devoid of culture. No wonder I'm leaving.
...people like Jon Katz comparing the pirating of copyrighted music to open source/free software. Um, excuse me but there is one *big* difference: an author of a free software package gave written permission to end users to copy, modify, or whatever his software. I don't remember hearing that Metallica or Dr. Dre gave anyone that permission.
It's not free unless the owner says so. This attitude of "I want it but I don't want to pay money for it, I think it should be free anyways so I'll just steal it" has got to stop. Have some respect for the people who poored blood, sweat, and tears into their craft.
You're simply spouting off about how you think things should work with very little if any experience with the game, and without offering any constructive suggestions.
There is randomness in EQ. Its not 100% random because it doesnt make *sense* for things to be 100% random. Would you go to Washington D.C. and expect to find the president in a random location anywhere in the city? No, you would expect to find him at the White House. So now there is a pattern, and patterns can be exploited.
And the bit about account sales on ebay- what is Verant supposed to do? You can't prevent people from calling the tech support lines, even if their complaint is invalid. Once the person has tied up valuable tech support time it has cost Verant money. In addition, account buyers are generally very disruptive in-game, either through cluelessness or incompetence, or sheer obnoxiousness (i.e. their account got banned for some obnoxious reason and so they buy another one on ebay and resume their previous levels of obnoxiousness)
Ugh. Most of the players in the community asked for these changes. Verant was simply responding to them. And now they get flamed on/. by a bunch of people who know nothing of these things?
> Home video-game machines have been out for barely a generation.
Huh? game consoles have been around for more than 20 years. Or do you mean human generation?
In any case, this is not the first time that a game console has had backwards compatibility. The Atari 7800 had backwards compatibility for playing 2600 cartridges (unlike the 5200, which failed miserably)
I don't know how much of a factor that was in the 7800's favor, but it was quite a bit more successful than the 5200. (of course, that was during the game console 'dark ages' when they were hugely un-popular)
You're missing it. what you have are ethics (the principles you use to guide your own actions). Morals really are the principles that a society generally accepts as standard behavior. Morals are kind of a contract between you and the other members of your society (i won't kill you and you won't kill me and we both benefit).
They definitely exist, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. But cross them at your own peril.
The problem arises when a minority group claims that its principles are moral (i.e. they apply to all of society) when they aren't in fact shared by the majority. Abortion is an obvious example - the majority feel that abortion under some circumstances is ok (the set of circumstances varies of course).
This sort of thing (draping yourself in the mantle of morality) seems to happen a lot more now than in the past. I don't know why.
This is not about the internet. This is not about pornography, it is not about copyright, it is not about piracy, it is not about cryptography. It's about information control.
Information is power. The internet has an unfettered flow of information. Therefore the internet is the ultimate powerbase. </i>
These two statements conflict with each other. If power is control of information, and the internet is the ultimate powerbase, then the internet does not have an unfettered (i.e. uncontrolled) flow of information. Conversely, if the internet has an unfettered flow of information there are no controls and therefore no power. You can't have both.
Too often these sorts of discussions devolve into who controls what people see, hear, and/or read. I feel that this is a naive - or at least unrealistic - way of looking at things. There is no cabal of fundamentalist religious militia wackos controling the flow of information (nor is there a pinko commy dope-smoking hacker cabal, nor a... you get the idea) I would even go further, that in a society as large and complex as ours, there can be no such single group that controls all information.
The reality is that the audience is in control. Its a pull model, not a push model. If the majority of the audience wants to listen to falwell sermons, watch pro wrestling, monster truck tractor pulls, etc. <b> and they are willing to pay for it </b> then that is what they will get.
If what the audience (i.e. the consumers of information) wants is blocked by censorware then ultimately the censorware will be removed, whether by first ammendment means, or financial means (i.e. "my isp, BibleThumpers.com, blocks foobar, and i like to read/listen to/watch foobar every morning while reading the comics and eating Dunkin' Donuts before leaving for work, so i'm going to switch to Beelzebub.com which i heard doesn't have filters") or some other means.
All that must be done is to educate people that this is going on. Crusading against it is futile. Only the people can do anything about it, and they simply need to be informed that it is happening. Clandestine, underhanded erosion of our rights should not be tolerated. Censoring should go on only with the full knowledge of the censorees. (is that a reall word?:-)
When I started gaming, back in 1983 or so, nearly all games were as original the Warcrafts or the Dooms. Or so it seemed.
I've been gaming a lot longer than that, and i can tell you, since day one the games industry has been every bit as bad as the GameZero article claims (and for that matter no better, or worse, than other entertainment industries)
The very first cabinet arcade game, Computer Space, was a rip-off of a pdp-11 game called Space War that some university hackers developed in their spare time.
www.spies.com/arcade/photos/computerspace.jpg is a photo of the Computer Space that was in the collection of the National Coin-op and Arcade Museum, which was located in St. Louis before it shut down. On the plaque to the left, you can just make out the name and the year, 1971. The last time I was at the museum they had two Computer Spaces, one in a green cabinet and one in red. Both were operational at the time.
Name a game that you remember from the early 80s and 9 times out of 10 it was derivative of an older game, or even a blatant copy of something else; it just seemed fresh and creative to you because you were new to gaming and ignorant of its history. Thats the nature of human creativity, everything builds on what came before.
The old days were neither better nor qualitatively different from today
sure the story is of paramount importance, but to acheive commercial success it needs both that and nice visual effects and some action.
i played some d&d in the late 70s/early 80s. frankly it bored me. there was simply too much accounting/paperwork, long periods of painstakingly crawling some dungeon opening empty chests and following dead end 'narrow tunnel with a rivulet of dank water flowing in the middle of it'.
yawn.
i liked the themes and atmosphere of d&d but found playing the game tedious.
in the early 80s d&d style computer games were very popular and i enjoyed playing those. i remember ultima II, and ultima III was simply mindblowing, and ultima IV was an opus. Wizardry was nice, but not nearly as fun or easy to play as ultima. then bard's tale came along and blew the doors off everything else. (sort of like how, a decade later, wolfenstein came along and blew the doors off the shooter genre)
then in the late 80s TSR realized that computer gaming was where it was at, and started licensing their properties. I remember the original trio of "gold box" AD&D computer games from SSI (starting with Pools of Radiance, a classic).
and with massively persistent online rpgs, we get back the social aspects (although i and my friends would play games like bard's tale together, taking turns at the keyboard, so i personally never felt like i lost the social aspects)
the key to computer based role-playing is that the computer not only took care of the tedious accounting and die-rolling, but it also lent a hand in visualizing the game. who can forget the first time they saw a beholder float up and whack them in ultima? in the same way, a live-action movie will give us a visual representation of role-playing that paper and dice never could. for those of us that grew up to be something other than accountants or screenwriters, seeing the game brought to life is actually an exciting and enjoyable thing.
... usually is of a particular shape so that it will fit into a slot on the cell-wall of a cell (think key and keyhole if you need a metaphor). if the virus 'mutated' so that it had a differently shaped key the drug would be ineffective but so would the virus.
caveat: i'm no biologist, i'm just remembering what i learned in college biology
so the civilizations of ancient Rome, China, Persia, Inca, etc. and modern civilizations like the British Empire were the size of small city states?
up until the 1900s all civilizations used the same form of waste disposal: dump it in the nearest river. that goes for the British in the 18th and 19th centuries as much as for the Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries.
that list had too many redundant items... the telegraph and telephone are both bi-directional communications widgets, pick one or the other. the radio and television are unidirectional broadcast communications widgets, pick one or the other. The vacuum tube and the transistor are both examples of solid state logic, pick one or the other.
and none of those (or the personal computer) are as fundamental to all modern electronics as the transistor. simply leaving the transistor on the list and dropping the others would have freed up 5 slots for more important inventions.
also, i think software might deserve a spot on the list. its not a physical, tangible thing, sure, but several large software projects are among the largest most complicated things engineered by man. and remember, the discipline or science or what have you of developing software is only ~60 years old. so its impact on humanity is mostly still in the future.
and the hand dryer? i won't bother commenting on that one:-)
Slashdot Mirror
First, the guy failed to GPL his work.
;-)
:-)
He couldn't have GPL'ed his program because its based on work copywrited by Apple, specifically, Apple's Hack TV sample code, and he gives Apple credit for it. Am I to understand you didn't actually *gasps* follow the link?
Third, the GPL is a *license
He did provided a license (of sorts) on his download page that licensed anyone to use the software freely but prohibited anyone from selling it. The baddy in this case was caught selling it.
So this story has implications with respect to GPL..um...how? The only conclusion I can logically reach is that he coulda, shoulda released it under the GPL so as to protect himself from this.
As already noted, theres no way he could've placed his work under the GPL. And I think his main point was that it pretty much doesn't matter what license you provide with your software if you can't back it up with enforcement (i.e. [a, some] lawyer(s))
And I think I know someone who is cranky and needs a nap.
What is Bluetooth? As far as I can tell its a way of connecting various devices wirelessly.
But what if instead all the devices you wanted to connect to were connected to the Internet? (whether wireless or wired is moot at that point, non-mobile devices like faxes, printers, etc. can be wired if its convenient). Wouldn't it be preferrable to get your device on the net so that you can connect to those devices, and do email, surfing, etc.?
The problem Bluetooth wants to solve is already being solved by something else. Something that does what Bluetooth does, and more.
Of course ethernet != internet (lots of other protocols ride on ether too, e.g. AppleTalk) but you and I both know any new applications are almost surely going to be built on TCP/IP.
I'm willing to place my bet on overcoming the simple engineering problem of fitting 802.11 functionality into a small footprint device, rather than Bluetooth, which has to overcome market resistance to an untested solution that isn't compatible with anything else.. *shrugs* guess time will tell...
The implementation differences are just details.
The broad point is that with 802.11 lots of devices like printers, faxes, etc. can be on the Internet and printed to from any device that has access priveleges. Someone made the analogy that 802.11 replaces ethernet while Bluetooth replaces serial and paralell cables. Well, who needs serial or paralell devices when all those devices are available on the network?
With Bluetooth only other Bluetooth devices can make use of those services.
The only obstacle is getting 802.11 to fit in small-profile devices like palm-tops. The upside to solving that problem is that then those devices will be on the Internet too! Sounds good to me.
...and start an open source project to recreate Be's OOP APIs. They were the interesting part of the system anyways (IMHO).
Actually, I always wondered why Be never did this themselves. They might have seen more apps ported to BeOS had they done so.
nt
A Jupiter-sized planet occupying a (roughly) Jupiter-sized orbit leaves room for smaller rocky planets in smaller orbits. The theory of solar system formation is that small dense planets (rocky, lots of metals, etc) form closer to a star because of gravitational forces in the proto-star. This makes them difficult to detect with the perturbation technique.
So Eridani could very well have an Earth- or Mars-sized planet in orbit.
To respond to the rant portion: I think the Ask Slashdot features are less about giving this one particular guy an answer, and more about taking his question as a starting point for further discussion. You'll note that the majority of the responses are not one line "you should check out X". Most contain extra info like, I've used this and it works, or here are some caveats, or is it even reasonable to expect free VPN software? etc. This extra information is worth far more than a simple link.
Fuel cells don't generate power by combusting the alcohol fuel, so a comparison to alcohol burning internal combustion engines is irrelevant.
And just so you know, fuel cell technology can also be used to consume non-renewable resources like natural gas.
Ya might want to learn something about the subject before ya go and spout off. Just a thought.
>>>
Actually, the knights dissapearance had abosulutely nothing whatsoever to do with gunpowder.
>>
The end of the Knight on the battlefield was due to the invention of the Pike, the widespread use of the crossbow, and the English Longbow.
Actually missile weapons altogether had nothing to do with the disappearance of armored knights. (Missile weapons meaning firearms or bolt type missiles).
A knight is an armored soldier. But the armor was so heavy that it was impractical to wear on foot, so all knights were mounted. Devise a means of unmounting him, and a knight is a sitting duck (turtle is a better image). Military strategy employed many such techniques (once the cultural bias against it disappeared). The pike, stakes driven into the ground, fire pits, etc. all served this purpose.
Armor technology of the day was capable of repelling all but the most lucky of missiles (through the eye holes, between joints, etc.) There was even a standardized test for this - how close an archer would have to be to pierce the armor (maximillian armor was the penultimate in this area. I forget what its test was). There was even a mechanical arrow shooting device that could be used to accurately reproduce the test.
It wasn't missile weapons that defeated mounted armored knights, it was military tactics. The reason the tactics took so long to develop was because of the huge cultural bias against allowing foot soldiery (i.e. commoners) to kill knights (i.e. nobility).
>>>
The rapier was an idea that never really took hold with anyone that had to use his sword for a living (professional soldiers, et cetera) due to its low strength. It looked nice, and was very swift, but just couldn't stand up to the rigors of combat. Anyone that tried to use on in real battle quickly realised their mistake (and if they were lucky were able to correct it).
The rapier was used primarily by members of the upper class for a) self defense while in a city, and b) as a dueling weapon
There were however lightweight bladed weapons used by professional soldiers even after the widespread use of firearms. Sabers, for instance, were standard issue for the cavalry all the way up to and including WW1.
Manhattan is a tiny part of the greater NYC metro area.
There are pockets of Silicon Valley - like Palo Alto or Atherton - that are probably quite a bit more expensive than Manhattan. Half a million is the average home price *for the whole region*.
And renting individual rooms sound pretty good after you hear about the cases of 2 or 3 families - upwards of 15 or 16 people - sharing one 2 bedroom apartment in Silicon Valley.
Yeah this place is nirvanna - expensive, crowded, polluted, devoid of culture. No wonder I'm leaving.
...people like Jon Katz comparing the pirating of copyrighted music to open source/free software. Um, excuse me but there is one *big* difference: an author of a free software package gave written permission to end users to copy, modify, or whatever his software. I don't remember hearing that Metallica or Dr. Dre gave anyone that permission.
It's not free unless the owner says so. This attitude of "I want it but I don't want to pay money for it, I think it should be free anyways so I'll just steal it" has got to stop. Have some respect for the people who poored blood, sweat, and tears into their craft.
You're simply spouting off about how you think things should work with very little if any experience with the game, and without offering any constructive suggestions.
/. by a bunch of people who know nothing of these things?
There is randomness in EQ. Its not 100% random because it doesnt make *sense* for things to be 100% random. Would you go to Washington D.C. and expect to find the president in a random location anywhere in the city? No, you would expect to find him at the White House. So now there is a pattern, and patterns can be exploited.
And the bit about account sales on ebay- what is Verant supposed to do? You can't prevent people from calling the tech support lines, even if their complaint is invalid. Once the person has tied up valuable tech support time it has cost Verant money. In addition, account buyers are generally very disruptive in-game, either through cluelessness or incompetence, or sheer obnoxiousness (i.e. their account got banned for some obnoxious reason and so they buy another one on ebay and resume their previous levels of obnoxiousness)
Ugh. Most of the players in the community asked for these changes. Verant was simply responding to them. And now they get flamed on
sheesh.
I have ADSM running on a linux server here. Been happy with it so far (its backing up to a AIX server that another dept. manages)
What other backup software for Linux do you have experience with (both good & bad)?
I wonder if 64 RS/6000s running LinuxPPC would have a better or worse price/GFLOP ratio?
> Home video-game machines have been out for barely a generation.
Huh? game consoles have been around for more than 20 years. Or do you mean human generation?
In any case, this is not the first time that a game console has had backwards compatibility. The Atari 7800 had backwards compatibility for playing 2600 cartridges (unlike the 5200, which failed miserably)
I don't know how much of a factor that was in the 7800's favor, but it was quite a bit more successful than the 5200. (of course, that was during the game console 'dark ages' when they were hugely un-popular)
You're missing it. what you have are ethics (the principles you use to guide your own actions). Morals really are the principles that a society generally accepts as standard behavior. Morals are kind of a contract between you and the other members of your society (i won't kill you and you won't kill me and we both benefit).
They definitely exist, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. But cross them at your own peril.
The problem arises when a minority group claims that its principles are moral (i.e. they apply to all of society) when they aren't in fact shared by the majority. Abortion is an obvious example - the majority feel that abortion under some circumstances is ok (the set of circumstances varies of course).
This sort of thing (draping yourself in the mantle of morality) seems to happen a lot more now than in the past. I don't know why.
This is not about the internet. This is not about pornography, it is not about copyright, it is not about piracy, it is not about cryptography. It's about information control.
:-)
Information is power. The internet has an unfettered flow of information. Therefore the internet is the ultimate powerbase. </i>
These two statements conflict with each other. If power is control of information, and the internet is the ultimate powerbase, then the internet does not have an unfettered (i.e. uncontrolled) flow of information. Conversely, if the internet has an unfettered flow of information there are no controls and therefore no power. You can't have both.
Too often these sorts of discussions devolve into who controls what people see, hear, and/or read. I feel that this is a naive - or at least unrealistic - way of looking at things. There is no cabal of fundamentalist religious militia wackos controling the flow of information (nor is there a pinko commy dope-smoking hacker cabal, nor a... you get the idea) I would even go further, that in a society as large and complex as ours, there can be no such single group that controls all information.
The reality is that the audience is in control. Its a pull model, not a push model. If the majority of the audience wants to listen to falwell sermons, watch pro wrestling, monster truck tractor pulls, etc. <b> and they are willing to pay for it </b> then that is what they will get.
If what the audience (i.e. the consumers of information) wants is blocked by censorware then ultimately the censorware will be removed, whether by first ammendment means, or financial means (i.e. "my isp, BibleThumpers.com, blocks foobar, and i like to read/listen to/watch foobar every morning while reading the comics and eating Dunkin' Donuts before leaving for work, so i'm going to switch to Beelzebub.com which i heard doesn't have filters") or some other means.
All that must be done is to educate people that this is going on. Crusading against it is futile. Only the people can do anything about it, and they simply need to be informed that it is happening. Clandestine, underhanded erosion of our rights should not be tolerated. Censoring should go on only with the full knowledge of the censorees. (is that a reall word?
note to slashdot: html extrans seems to be broken
a tiny lcd, on an arm extending out on front of one eye. the apparent size is the same as ~20" monitor.
just need to get the resolution up.
i think its sony that has one on the market already, intended more for watching movies on a discman, so the resolution is pretty low...
When I started gaming, back in 1983 or so, nearly all games were as original the Warcrafts or the Dooms. Or so it seemed.
I've been gaming a lot longer than that, and i can tell you, since day one the games industry has been every bit as bad as the GameZero article claims (and for that matter no better, or worse, than other entertainment industries)
The very first cabinet arcade game, Computer Space, was a rip-off of a pdp-11 game called Space War that some university hackers developed in their spare time.
www.spies.com/arcade/photos/computerspace.jpg is a photo of the Computer Space that was in the collection of the National Coin-op and Arcade Museum, which was located in St. Louis before it shut down. On the plaque to the left, you can just make out the name and the year, 1971. The last time I was at the museum they had two Computer Spaces, one in a green cabinet and one in red. Both were operational at the time.
Name a game that you remember from the early 80s and 9 times out of 10 it was derivative of an older game, or even a blatant copy of something else; it just seemed fresh and creative to you because you were new to gaming and ignorant of its history. Thats the nature of human creativity, everything builds on what came before.
The old days were neither better nor qualitatively different from today
sure the story is of paramount importance, but to acheive commercial success it needs both that and nice visual effects and some action.
i played some d&d in the late 70s/early 80s. frankly it bored me. there was simply too much accounting/paperwork, long periods of painstakingly crawling some dungeon opening empty chests and following dead end 'narrow tunnel with a rivulet of dank water flowing in the middle of it'.
yawn.
i liked the themes and atmosphere of d&d but found playing the game tedious.
in the early 80s d&d style computer games were very popular and i enjoyed playing those. i remember ultima II, and ultima III was simply mindblowing, and ultima IV was an opus. Wizardry was nice, but not nearly as fun or easy to play as ultima. then bard's tale came along and blew the doors off everything else. (sort of like how, a decade later, wolfenstein came along and blew the doors off the shooter genre)
then in the late 80s TSR realized that computer gaming was where it was at, and started licensing their properties. I remember the original trio of "gold box" AD&D computer games from SSI (starting with Pools of Radiance, a classic).
and with massively persistent online rpgs, we get back the social aspects (although i and my friends would play games like bard's tale together, taking turns at the keyboard, so i personally never felt like i lost the social aspects)
the key to computer based role-playing is that the computer not only took care of the tedious accounting and die-rolling, but it also lent a hand in visualizing the game. who can forget the first time they saw a beholder float up and whack them in ultima? in the same way, a live-action movie will give us a visual representation of role-playing that paper and dice never could. for those of us that grew up to be something other than accountants or screenwriters, seeing the game brought to life is actually an exciting and enjoyable thing.
(all of which is imho and just my $.02)
... usually is of a particular shape so that it will fit into a slot on the cell-wall of a cell (think key and keyhole if you need a metaphor). if the virus 'mutated' so that it had a differently shaped key the drug would be ineffective but so would the virus.
caveat: i'm no biologist, i'm just remembering what i learned in college biology
sooner or later the vast proportion of Gates' wealth will be given to charities. the more the better, imho.
wealth != power
so the civilizations of ancient Rome, China, Persia, Inca, etc. and modern civilizations like the British Empire were the size of small city states?
up until the 1900s all civilizations used the same form of waste disposal: dump it in the nearest river. that goes for the British in the 18th and 19th centuries as much as for the Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries.
that list had too many redundant items... the telegraph and telephone are both bi-directional communications widgets, pick one or the other. the radio and television are unidirectional broadcast communications widgets, pick one or the other. The vacuum tube and the transistor are both examples of solid state logic, pick one or the other.
:-)
and none of those (or the personal computer) are as fundamental to all modern electronics as the transistor. simply leaving the transistor on the list and dropping the others would have freed up 5 slots for more important inventions.
also, i think software might deserve a spot on the list. its not a physical, tangible thing, sure, but several large software projects are among the largest most complicated things engineered by man. and remember, the discipline or science or what have you of developing software is only ~60 years old. so its impact on humanity is mostly still in the future.
and the hand dryer? i won't bother commenting on that one