What do you think core is? It's still a freaking Pentium Pro. It's a Pentium Pro that's had a lot shit tacked on, and now (finally) gotten a slimdown redesign, but it's still a Pentium Pro deep down.
The most practical proposal of this kind was written up by physcist and hard science fiction author Gregory Benford, who proposed putting such a reflector at the L1 Lagrange point. The risks associated with this are minimal. L1 is sufficiently far from earth that there is no danger to us from the physical reflector itself, and note what the reflector does, it REDUCES the amount of solar energy reaching earth. This artificially increases the earth's apparent albedo (which has been dropping since the the '70s, It's changed by a factor of about 10%) Albedo is a measure of reflectivity, an albedo of 1.00 is equal to a perfect mirror, while 0.00 is a black hole. The earth's albedo was 0.39 around 1970. Currently it is measured to be 0.36
There would be no sudden catatrophic changes from this mild reduction in solar radiation, remember we'd be reducing sea-level brightness to levels from the 50's. There are no "many ways in which this could go either wrong or right" Either it works, and average global temperatures start readjusting slowly (changes would take several years to be felt, the minor changes simply aren't capable of causing a global ice age overnight, it just isn't possible and I mean that in as absolute a sense as when I say that the sun will rise in the morning), or we undershoot, and the changes aren't significant enough. It would be almost impossible to significantly overshoot our goal, and even if we worst case screwed up in that direction, it would just mean a fairly cold winter that year while took down the old shield and replaced it.
RE4 is nothing like the other RE games in terms of gameplay. It's much more of a shooter, and an incredibly good one too. By the way, they're supposedly still working on the PC port for release sometime later this year, so that might be a good option for you. I highly recommend it, even if you specificly dislike the other games in the series.
Oh Please! because the british "subjects" throughout the rest of the world are REALLY so much worse off now than we citizens of the USA. The American Revolutionary War was a propagandized crock of shit. Could the Brittish government have handled things better? No doubt, but the problems were really more fundamental and related and gold reserve banking and trade issues of the day, which continued to plague the brittish empire until its collapse in the 1950's, and the United States until we moved to fiat money in the '30's. Although arguably that just shuffled things around, and contemporary politics is still grinding out the consequences gold banking in the 17th and 18th centuries. But back to my point, none of this is strictly the Brittish's fault, and certainly talk of "regaining freedom" and "fixing the tax system" through the revolutionary war is a load of baloney.
Unified Germany, particularly east germany is certainly much better off than under the USSR, pretty much everything else about the collapse of the soviet union has been a disaster. I'm still holding out hope for a new communist revolution, maybe this one will work, and maybe this time, Europe won't back the wrong the horse in this race.
Flat 20 years. Also, I would argue that corporations shouldn't be allowed to own IP in the first place, only material goods, land and money. They ought to HAVE to liscense it, even that means having to negotiate with engineers and scientists in(or formerly in) their employ in order to secure access to the rights. Although I think it would be reasonable to allow, by law, that employment contracts may specify that corporations may be allowed the exclusive right to liscense said IP, for some reasonable time, say 7 years, after which full control reverts to the owner. Note that I think it would be wise if it is specifically FORBIDDEN for employment contracts to specify a priori what liscensing rates will be, that should be solely determined in negotiations after any discovery is made.
Re:Total Revolution - flame on
on
Wii-mote In Action
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· Score: 0, Troll
Well, I worship Nintendo/Apple, although more Nintendo lately, I'm still upset about the intel transition (There are products apple could release that could alleviate that however, a headless mac with non-shit graphics that isn't $2000 would be one those). I think Nintendo has done reasonably well at building up towards this launch, and I'm happy about that, because honestly, the Gamecube launch blew chunks.
On the other hand, I HATE the name, I still want to know what genius is responible, and what names were rejected in its favor. The system is always going to be "The Revolution" to me. It's been weeks now and saying "Wii" in conversation still makes me physically cringe.
Nintendo is the only company with a console I will buy. Microsoft is an evil company, that makes lousy products, and has been Convicted multiple times of abusing their monopoly status. Sony is likewise very malignant, and meddlesome in legislation. The Rootkit fiasco and their obsession with crippled, proprietary, expensive formats round out reasons not to like them. Nintendo on the other hand, doesn't really do anything at all I don't like. They've historically made their games difficult to copy, but I don't really have a problem with that.
The big problem is games. I switched to a Mac cold turkey last year, but dammit I wanted to play Baldur's Gate, and Planescape: Torment. It's a pain in the ass. I love my PowerMac, I love that at 1.5GB of RAM I'm not even close to maxing out the ram either (An annoyed punch at the intel switch, 2GB is not a high enough ram ceiling. Even with the Xeon style hacked 36-bit addressing, you're still limited to 2GB per application, which is going to be VERY limiting in a few years). Games don't run well non-natively. Although my favorites probably could in a Virtual Machine environment where most things can run natively as they are all stictly 2D. You can't just "find an alternative" to a favorite game. It doesn't work like that. This is probably the biggest issue holding people back on Windows. Just like the Penny-Arcade guys, bought themselves each a new Intel Imac, they love the machines, they Like OS X, and think it's dog's bollocks compared to Windows, but they're addicted to games and therefore can't let go.
Now if someone could write an incredibly accurate, incredibly efficent DirectX to SDL translation layer.... that might help.
Exactly what about "A giant WAR machine driven by corporate interests. Cannon fodder recruited from the poorest classes, easily satisfied by a few handouts and a promise of pensions. Social structure that is falling appart: growing taxes, inflation, growing oil prices, more and more expensive healthcare. The widenning of the gap between the rich and the poor.
What happens next in an environment, in which those in power don't believe they have any obligations to the nation, but only have obligations to the highest bidder - corporations? The country's economy will start to fail, the millitary will be used for corporation profit regardless of the concern for the country, because corporations are international and have no loyalty to any nation at the same time. The country will become one giant prison with a very powerful war machine."
HAS NOT been true for the last 30 years or so? That's exactly how it is RIGHT NOW. Of course the USA has always had these tendencies. It's important to note how many the wars in our history are driven by either: corporate business interests, or impending bank failure; and that's going all the way back to 1800.
That second part is really kind of silly, better would be if all legislation had to have a Constitutionally mandated and specified sunset clause. Then all legislation would be like the federal budget, having to be periodically checked over. If it was 6 years or something similar (same as senatorial terms). Also it would help to remove cruft from the law books. On the other hand, it does make certain things rather volatile, but that might actually be a good thing.
What you aren't noticing is that they ARE puzzles. And in reality it is more that it's an adventure game played on a timer, because if you don't solve the puzzles in time, then you die; maybe not right then, but over time you condemn yourself to reload/start over.
Linear YES. You are generally allowed to solve puzzles in a scene in any order, but this is often no different than old school adventures where you could run around and solve the minor puzzles in any order, before tackling the main one. Again though, the engine IS very well implemented, I would love to see more games using it; just written by someone who has seen more than: the matrix trilogy, and a Discovery Special on Central american religion.
Unfortunately, Choice is the real feature adventure fans have been screaming for for over 2 decades. I want complex branching plots dammit, real Multiple Endings!
Indigo Prophecy has the most ghastly writing I've ever seen in a Video Game. David Cage managed to out-do the Wachowski brothers (and I'm talking Matrix 2 & 3 here), largely by copying them blatantly, superimposing a secret mayan council on the works (Yes, really, Native American Indians in Mexico run the WHOLE world - the entire contemporary geopolitical situation is all them; RIIIIGHHT), and then shoehorning in the most forced "OMGZ, I've been hunting you as a serial killer suspect for the last couple of weeks, and even though we've only ever spoken TWICE I now want to jump your cold, dead, zombie bones so we can have a zombie love-child convenient to the hackneyed plot!" And then theres the fantastic scene where we get incarnation of 1980's military research turned into the mind of the matrix that looks like a rip-off earth elemental from World of Warcraft (for no apparent reason I can tell, why would it look like that? Psionic powers making the rocks go round? Why does it have those?) who reveals the astonishing, "No really, protaganist, I AM YOUR FATHER! It's been me all along!"
Now admittedly Indigo Prophecy isn't all bad, the engine is work of pure genius. It's what adventure game developers have been trying to create since Adventures went 3D with Grim Fandango and its ilk. It's great, even the action sequences are VERY well implemented. As a result of this I wanted to like the game. It's like the SCUMM engine for 3D, except instead of being used to support a good title its trapped under I don't what, some kind of horrid dark twisted parody of a plot. I wanted to like the game so much because of the engine, which makes it a joy to play, except for the constant assault on your willful suspension of disbelief that is the plot. At the start I was thoroughly loving it, "This Game Rocks! Its the Adventure I've been waiting for!" And then it all starts to go downhill, as ok, secret mayan clan council runs the world, "Hmm, ok I can accept that; this engine fucking rocks! It's all indiana jones prophecy style shit, I can dig that." Then it just keeps getting worse, as we have the matrix waking up, taking control from the mayans and killing all the humans and, "OH MY GOD! WTF is that (living!!)cop doing with that shambling travesty of undeath(Not kidding, he's a zombie!) that is the main character?"
Maybe if this was the plot of Stubbs the Zombie or something, but no, Cage seems to want us to take this work seriously as a work of fiction. And note that, despite all his talk of revolutionizing things, a "new way to make games" and all that, it's a very stock adventure game, quite linear really, with a lot of Resident Evil style action sequences. It doesn't do anything that, for example, "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" didn't do in 1992, except be in 3D, which was done at least as far back as "Grim Fandango" in 1998. It's also actually quite linear, and very short, especially in comparison to titles like "The Longest Journey" or "Curse of Monkey Island". It's not like he implemented a complex branching plot system in game (as has been done in many text adventures) The emotion system is just taking the sanity system from the "Call of Cthulhu" and applying so that there are puzzles/action sequences that you don't HAVE to solve to advance, but if you fail too many of them you lose because one of the main characters kills himself/herself. This is interesting, but not earth shattering, and it sure doesn't make up for bad writing.
Please, Nintendo is nowhere near that bad off now. let's see:
1. they're a mostly privately held company, making them nigh immune to hostile take-over.
2. They have billions in cash and liquid assets, and no debt, and turn a profit every quarter (how exactly do you go under like this?).
3. Despite the PSP (and all the dozen or so previous challengers), they still OWN the handheld market, and are selling DS Lites faster than they can make them, and despite being "obsolete" the GBA in its various forms ain't doing shabby either.
4. They seemed VERY well received at E3 this year, and have a number hotly awaited titles aimed at launch for the Revolution, a marked improvement over the Gamecube launch (which admittedly they botched, largely by launching the console and then not having must have titles come out for another 18 or so months.) Name them? Let's see: Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy, Red Steel, and a New Dragon Quest Game. Plus more titles that look really promising.
Of course, Sony hasn't really been doing much to ingratiate itself with the public lately, and there's always a possiblity for some backlash, especially if they don't get their backwards compatibility problems sorted out before launch. Of course, I really don't expect a backlash to happen unfortunately, but there's always hope. I suspect the cattle will line up and fork over their $600 like good little consumers. I'm also disappointed at Capcom buddying up with Microsoft on Live Arcade. I want "Legend of the Mystical Ninja" on virtual console dammit.
Because GOOD movies are so old, that DVD has more than enough bitrate to hold all of the data that still remains on the mistreated film reels. I'm guess they're probably trying to find stuff in good enough condition to actually get something like HD from the transfer. Think about it. Star Wars Episode IV, is there even 480 lines of resolution left? How about Casablanca? Citizen Kane? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
yes, but they were Wargamers, what do you expect?:) But seriously, apparently in its original naval simulation context it actually had some degree of logic behind it, AC corresponded at least somewhat to physical size, therefore big ships had high AC.
Basically, yes AD&D was cludgy. (Let's see, it had: 1. A stat system. 2. A class system. 3. A proficiency system. 4. A SKILL system, just for Thieves and Bards, and 5. A magic system completely unrelated to all the others) On the plus side however, all of this has allowed for all of the evolution of game design we've seen for the last 25 years.
Well, DCCs aren't by Wizards, and neither is the WLD (AEG) and WLD has enough problems of it's own. Listening to the Podcast has been extremely entertaining, but it definatly informed me that the book is exceptionaly badly edited, although i'll probably buy a copy eventually.
Unfortunately, probably not. White meat reptiles, Chickens, Frog, Crocodiles, etc, taste like chicken, this however, was a water bird, and was therefore probably dark meat and gamey, like a duck.
In general I have found that these debates stem from a number of misunderstandings:
1. First, a defense, or at least a justification of thac0, it helps immensly if you understand where it comes from. The majority of the combat rules from 1st and 2nd Ed. AD&D come from Chainmail, which in turn, are derived from the naval wargamming simulations Gargax and Arneson were into before creating Chainmail. They didn't create the rules out of whole cloth. For those that say that it's stupid and akward applied to personal combat, I agree, which is why clever GMs the world over had been creating base attack bonus and inverting the AC table on their own. (on the other hand, the suggested rules, which converted to base attack bonus said that a fighter should never have an attack bonus > +20 are a good idea, because it means that certain monster are always going to be horrifyingly scary.)
2. The thing those of us (myself included) who pine over TSR and 1st and 2nd ed. isn't so much Thac0 and profiencies, it's the content and campaign settings. Sure there are some cheesy ones (Mystara), but the good ones are solid gold. Planescape, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun. And the Modules! Tons and Tons of Modules! Undermountain (which is a fantastic dungeon crawl BTW) Dragon Mountain, The Spider Queen Series. Now modules are almost nonexistant. It's all Splat books with Prestige classes.
To be honest, I'd be perfectly fine with 3rd Ed, except it's actually easier to go out and collect classic mods and play 2nd than it is to find quality adventures for 3rd.
As others have have stated religion doesn't explain it ASSERTS. They claim to know that there is a who, and that "he" had a why. Of course the ultimate threat to religion comes later, as it is certainly conceivable that if a why existed (a rather large presumption in the first place.) science would be the only definitive means of figuring out what it was, and conceivable working from this assumption, there would be a certain level of scientfic understanding at which point we would be able to actually learn it. Of course, the opposite is also true, a level of understanding might be reached that one could show that there in fact is no who and no why. I would argue this is the point we have already reached.
Publically traded is kinda relative. Let's take DuckTales as an example. We have McDuck Industies Ltd. They may be "publically traded," but the fact that scrooge has 80% of the shares locked up in his money bin kinda makes shareholder meetings pointless.
The same applies to Nintendo, given that the historical owners probably own more than 50% of the company anyway.
Given the Billions DAT made as a professional studio medium, that wouldn't be a bad thing.
To all the DAT bashers out there, get a clue, DAT was basically the DLT or LTO or of the Pro audio world for over a decade. Just because you weren't jamming to it in paren't basement, doesn't mean it was a failure anymore than "Tape is Dead," get it?
Back on topic however, I predict exactly 0 demand for higher definition radio. FM is fine by 90+% of the population. In fact I think a more apt quip might be, I predict adoption rates possibly greater than XM and Sirius, COMBINED!
When did this happen? Because I really can't conceive of it always having been that way. My memory, and historical reading of the '80's tells me that the magazine market in the 'states in the '80's looked much more like you're describing in Britain.
Additionally it's very interesting that you should talk about Scientific American. I was a long time subscriber to SA. However, around 2000 or so I noticed a very disturbing trend. The content was noticibly dumbed down (equations were almost totally removed from the magazine) and many long running columns vanished utterly. I suspect this was part of a move to "broaden their base" and "encourage newstand sales," but in my case it made me drop my subscription in disgust.
Problem is, there's a word for those once they get about as close to the sun as Jupiter, they're called COMETS. That Presents Something of a difficulty, particularly with maneuverability.
I would suggest fuel might be more likely to come from either: the moon, or a rocky asteroid, by chemically breaking down rock matrices. Of course, to do that efficiently might require something a bit more energetic than sunlight, one might want to go whole hog for nuclear fission (fusion) reactors.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you think core is? It's still a freaking Pentium Pro. It's a Pentium Pro that's had a lot shit tacked on, and now (finally) gotten a slimdown redesign, but it's still a Pentium Pro deep down.
There would be no sudden catatrophic changes from this mild reduction in solar radiation, remember we'd be reducing sea-level brightness to levels from the 50's. There are no "many ways in which this could go either wrong or right" Either it works, and average global temperatures start readjusting slowly (changes would take several years to be felt, the minor changes simply aren't capable of causing a global ice age overnight, it just isn't possible and I mean that in as absolute a sense as when I say that the sun will rise in the morning), or we undershoot, and the changes aren't significant enough. It would be almost impossible to significantly overshoot our goal, and even if we worst case screwed up in that direction, it would just mean a fairly cold winter that year while took down the old shield and replaced it.
RE4 is nothing like the other RE games in terms of gameplay. It's much more of a shooter, and an incredibly good one too. By the way, they're supposedly still working on the PC port for release sometime later this year, so that might be a good option for you. I highly recommend it, even if you specificly dislike the other games in the series.
Ah yes thousands of items, except, if you translated them into D&D terms they'd all be of the form Long Sword +0.001*K where K is and integer.
Unified Germany, particularly east germany is certainly much better off than under the USSR, pretty much everything else about the collapse of the soviet union has been a disaster. I'm still holding out hope for a new communist revolution, maybe this one will work, and maybe this time, Europe won't back the wrong the horse in this race.
Flat 20 years. Also, I would argue that corporations shouldn't be allowed to own IP in the first place, only material goods, land and money. They ought to HAVE to liscense it, even that means having to negotiate with engineers and scientists in(or formerly in) their employ in order to secure access to the rights. Although I think it would be reasonable to allow, by law, that employment contracts may specify that corporations may be allowed the exclusive right to liscense said IP, for some reasonable time, say 7 years, after which full control reverts to the owner. Note that I think it would be wise if it is specifically FORBIDDEN for employment contracts to specify a priori what liscensing rates will be, that should be solely determined in negotiations after any discovery is made.
On the other hand, I HATE the name, I still want to know what genius is responible, and what names were rejected in its favor. The system is always going to be "The Revolution" to me. It's been weeks now and saying "Wii" in conversation still makes me physically cringe.
Nintendo is the only company with a console I will buy. Microsoft is an evil company, that makes lousy products, and has been Convicted multiple times of abusing their monopoly status. Sony is likewise very malignant, and meddlesome in legislation. The Rootkit fiasco and their obsession with crippled, proprietary, expensive formats round out reasons not to like them. Nintendo on the other hand, doesn't really do anything at all I don't like. They've historically made their games difficult to copy, but I don't really have a problem with that.
The big problem is games. I switched to a Mac cold turkey last year, but dammit I wanted to play Baldur's Gate, and Planescape: Torment. It's a pain in the ass. I love my PowerMac, I love that at 1.5GB of RAM I'm not even close to maxing out the ram either (An annoyed punch at the intel switch, 2GB is not a high enough ram ceiling. Even with the Xeon style hacked 36-bit addressing, you're still limited to 2GB per application, which is going to be VERY limiting in a few years). Games don't run well non-natively. Although my favorites probably could in a Virtual Machine environment where most things can run natively as they are all stictly 2D. You can't just "find an alternative" to a favorite game. It doesn't work like that. This is probably the biggest issue holding people back on Windows. Just like the Penny-Arcade guys, bought themselves each a new Intel Imac, they love the machines, they Like OS X, and think it's dog's bollocks compared to Windows, but they're addicted to games and therefore can't let go. Now if someone could write an incredibly accurate, incredibly efficent DirectX to SDL translation layer.... that might help.
What happens next in an environment, in which those in power don't believe they have any obligations to the nation, but only have obligations to the highest bidder - corporations? The country's economy will start to fail, the millitary will be used for corporation profit regardless of the concern for the country, because corporations are international and have no loyalty to any nation at the same time. The country will become one giant prison with a very powerful war machine."
HAS NOT been true for the last 30 years or so? That's exactly how it is RIGHT NOW. Of course the USA has always had these tendencies. It's important to note how many the wars in our history are driven by either: corporate business interests, or impending bank failure; and that's going all the way back to 1800.
That's new though, only been that way since 2000.
That second part is really kind of silly, better would be if all legislation had to have a Constitutionally mandated and specified sunset clause. Then all legislation would be like the federal budget, having to be periodically checked over. If it was 6 years or something similar (same as senatorial terms). Also it would help to remove cruft from the law books. On the other hand, it does make certain things rather volatile, but that might actually be a good thing.
Linear YES. You are generally allowed to solve puzzles in a scene in any order, but this is often no different than old school adventures where you could run around and solve the minor puzzles in any order, before tackling the main one. Again though, the engine IS very well implemented, I would love to see more games using it; just written by someone who has seen more than: the matrix trilogy, and a Discovery Special on Central american religion.
Unfortunately, Choice is the real feature adventure fans have been screaming for for over 2 decades. I want complex branching plots dammit, real Multiple Endings!
Now admittedly Indigo Prophecy isn't all bad, the engine is work of pure genius. It's what adventure game developers have been trying to create since Adventures went 3D with Grim Fandango and its ilk. It's great, even the action sequences are VERY well implemented. As a result of this I wanted to like the game. It's like the SCUMM engine for 3D, except instead of being used to support a good title its trapped under I don't what, some kind of horrid dark twisted parody of a plot. I wanted to like the game so much because of the engine, which makes it a joy to play, except for the constant assault on your willful suspension of disbelief that is the plot. At the start I was thoroughly loving it, "This Game Rocks! Its the Adventure I've been waiting for!" And then it all starts to go downhill, as ok, secret mayan clan council runs the world, "Hmm, ok I can accept that; this engine fucking rocks! It's all indiana jones prophecy style shit, I can dig that." Then it just keeps getting worse, as we have the matrix waking up, taking control from the mayans and killing all the humans and, "OH MY GOD! WTF is that (living!!)cop doing with that shambling travesty of undeath(Not kidding, he's a zombie!) that is the main character?"
Maybe if this was the plot of Stubbs the Zombie or something, but no, Cage seems to want us to take this work seriously as a work of fiction. And note that, despite all his talk of revolutionizing things, a "new way to make games" and all that, it's a very stock adventure game, quite linear really, with a lot of Resident Evil style action sequences. It doesn't do anything that, for example, "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" didn't do in 1992, except be in 3D, which was done at least as far back as "Grim Fandango" in 1998. It's also actually quite linear, and very short, especially in comparison to titles like "The Longest Journey" or "Curse of Monkey Island". It's not like he implemented a complex branching plot system in game (as has been done in many text adventures) The emotion system is just taking the sanity system from the "Call of Cthulhu" and applying so that there are puzzles/action sequences that you don't HAVE to solve to advance, but if you fail too many of them you lose because one of the main characters kills himself/herself. This is interesting, but not earth shattering, and it sure doesn't make up for bad writing.
Mod parent up, this is quite Insightful. Although also humorous.
1. they're a mostly privately held company, making them nigh immune to hostile take-over.
2. They have billions in cash and liquid assets, and no debt, and turn a profit every quarter (how exactly do you go under like this?).
3. Despite the PSP (and all the dozen or so previous challengers), they still OWN the handheld market, and are selling DS Lites faster than they can make them, and despite being "obsolete" the GBA in its various forms ain't doing shabby either.
4. They seemed VERY well received at E3 this year, and have a number hotly awaited titles aimed at launch for the Revolution, a marked improvement over the Gamecube launch (which admittedly they botched, largely by launching the console and then not having must have titles come out for another 18 or so months.) Name them? Let's see: Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy, Red Steel, and a New Dragon Quest Game. Plus more titles that look really promising.
Of course, Sony hasn't really been doing much to ingratiate itself with the public lately, and there's always a possiblity for some backlash, especially if they don't get their backwards compatibility problems sorted out before launch. Of course, I really don't expect a backlash to happen unfortunately, but there's always hope. I suspect the cattle will line up and fork over their $600 like good little consumers. I'm also disappointed at Capcom buddying up with Microsoft on Live Arcade. I want "Legend of the Mystical Ninja" on virtual console dammit.
Because GOOD movies are so old, that DVD has more than enough bitrate to hold all of the data that still remains on the mistreated film reels. I'm guess they're probably trying to find stuff in good enough condition to actually get something like HD from the transfer. Think about it. Star Wars Episode IV, is there even 480 lines of resolution left? How about Casablanca? Citizen Kane? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
Basically, yes AD&D was cludgy. (Let's see, it had: 1. A stat system. 2. A class system. 3. A proficiency system. 4. A SKILL system, just for Thieves and Bards, and 5. A magic system completely unrelated to all the others) On the plus side however, all of this has allowed for all of the evolution of game design we've seen for the last 25 years.
Well, DCCs aren't by Wizards, and neither is the WLD (AEG) and WLD has enough problems of it's own. Listening to the Podcast has been extremely entertaining, but it definatly informed me that the book is exceptionaly badly edited, although i'll probably buy a copy eventually.
Unfortunately, probably not. White meat reptiles, Chickens, Frog, Crocodiles, etc, taste like chicken, this however, was a water bird, and was therefore probably dark meat and gamey, like a duck.
1. First, a defense, or at least a justification of thac0, it helps immensly if you understand where it comes from. The majority of the combat rules from 1st and 2nd Ed. AD&D come from Chainmail, which in turn, are derived from the naval wargamming simulations Gargax and Arneson were into before creating Chainmail. They didn't create the rules out of whole cloth. For those that say that it's stupid and akward applied to personal combat, I agree, which is why clever GMs the world over had been creating base attack bonus and inverting the AC table on their own. (on the other hand, the suggested rules, which converted to base attack bonus said that a fighter should never have an attack bonus > +20 are a good idea, because it means that certain monster are always going to be horrifyingly scary.)
2. The thing those of us (myself included) who pine over TSR and 1st and 2nd ed. isn't so much Thac0 and profiencies, it's the content and campaign settings. Sure there are some cheesy ones (Mystara), but the good ones are solid gold. Planescape, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun. And the Modules! Tons and Tons of Modules! Undermountain (which is a fantastic dungeon crawl BTW) Dragon Mountain, The Spider Queen Series. Now modules are almost nonexistant. It's all Splat books with Prestige classes.
To be honest, I'd be perfectly fine with 3rd Ed, except it's actually easier to go out and collect classic mods and play 2nd than it is to find quality adventures for 3rd.
ummm, 2nd Ed. was still called AD&D. I have a quite large collection of 2nd ed. books right next to me to prove it.
As others have have stated religion doesn't explain it ASSERTS. They claim to know that there is a who, and that "he" had a why. Of course the ultimate threat to religion comes later, as it is certainly conceivable that if a why existed (a rather large presumption in the first place.) science would be the only definitive means of figuring out what it was, and conceivable working from this assumption, there would be a certain level of scientfic understanding at which point we would be able to actually learn it. Of course, the opposite is also true, a level of understanding might be reached that one could show that there in fact is no who and no why. I would argue this is the point we have already reached.
The same applies to Nintendo, given that the historical owners probably own more than 50% of the company anyway.
To all the DAT bashers out there, get a clue, DAT was basically the DLT or LTO or of the Pro audio world for over a decade. Just because you weren't jamming to it in paren't basement, doesn't mean it was a failure anymore than "Tape is Dead," get it? Back on topic however, I predict exactly 0 demand for higher definition radio. FM is fine by 90+% of the population. In fact I think a more apt quip might be, I predict adoption rates possibly greater than XM and Sirius, COMBINED!
Additionally it's very interesting that you should talk about Scientific American. I was a long time subscriber to SA. However, around 2000 or so I noticed a very disturbing trend. The content was noticibly dumbed down (equations were almost totally removed from the magazine) and many long running columns vanished utterly. I suspect this was part of a move to "broaden their base" and "encourage newstand sales," but in my case it made me drop my subscription in disgust.
I would suggest fuel might be more likely to come from either: the moon, or a rocky asteroid, by chemically breaking down rock matrices. Of course, to do that efficiently might require something a bit more energetic than sunlight, one might want to go whole hog for nuclear fission (fusion) reactors.