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Comment Re:False assumption (Score 1) 814

we could simply write software to be intelligent enough to automatically add a space between sentences when it detects a period-space-word starting with a capital letter.

This would wreak havoc on citations in legal documents.

The truth of the matter is that it's simple to remove the two spaces but difficult to add them. The best practice, therefore, is to type the two spaces by default.

Comment Re:Terrorism is rare (Score 1) 502

What about the bombing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1970?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing

If you're just working off the numbers, this was probably not as large a disaster as the World Trade Center disaster or the Oklahoma City bombing, but it has great historical significance nonetheless.

I just happen to know that one off the top of my head and I'm sure there are other people who could do the same, but I imagine that people who actually know what they're talking about could provide an extremely dismal list on this topic.

Comment Re:A big Slashdot-y example of this from my life (Score 2, Insightful) 121

That's a pretty good point. On the other hand, it's also true that public perception of this type of activity changed dramatically in the year that passed between those two events and the response by authorities had shifted considerably. 1989 was a pretty unique year.

For this reason, it's somewhat difficult to compare the two situations on the same grounds. It is unlikely that economic disparity is not the only influential factor.

Comment Re:Unfortunate (Score 4, Informative) 455

Here's fourteen titles off the top of my head: Half-Life, Neverwinter Nights, Quake, Doom, Unreal, The Sims, Spore, Elder Scrolls, Civilization, Fallout 3, Bard's Tale, Lode Runner, Boulder Dash and Raid on Bungling Bay.

Some of those titles can be broken down into additional individual games (for example, The Sims was a significantly different game from The Sims 2, especially from a modding perspective) so this list could be expanded quite a bit. Some of them make modding a necessary part of their structure (Spore) and others wouldn't have garnered any attention at all if not for their mod tools (Raid on Bungling Bay) and others have just been outright owned by the mod community (Doom). And it's worth noting that even this short list of games represents a substantial portion of the entire market for video games on personal computers. The Sims and Half-Life alone have sold more games than the rest of the top ten list put together, and that includes World of Warcraft.

So, yes, modding is a significant factor in the success of "a lot" of great games on the PC.

Comment Re:concerns of racism? (Score 1) 121

"The game makes no effort to distinguish from zombiefied africans from non-zombified africans, both are presented as "The Other". . . . The only identifiable black character is a ready-for-hollywood light skinned Anglo action chick, "one of the good ones"."

You didn't find any difference between the presentation of Josh Stone's "Delta Team" and the zombies? Or did you not play the game up to that point? Or did you not play the game at all?

Delta Team is presented as a mixed-race group of powerful, competent soldiers who save the main characters at the end of the first chapter of the game. After that event the game goes completely through the looking glass (as if it wasn't there already) and you'd be hard pressed to make a case for anything but the most distorted reflection of reality from there on out -- the remaining 85% of the game.

Sheva's unlockable outfits are hilariously ridiculous but before you go getting all offended, you might want to check Chris' second unlockable outfit. All of the material there is quite clearly done tounge-in-cheek, when taken as a whole.

Comment Re:don't forget.. (Score 1) 171

Theoretically, independent artists who produce high quality work will rise above the flood of mediocrity over time. Independent artists or groups of independent artists who expect to release one product and hit it big are fools and/or gamblers.

Instances we can point to where an independent artist did release one product and was immediately swept to stardom always have outstanding factors that explain their success, usually in the form of connections to industry establishment (which, arguably, makes them not independent artists).

This does mean that independent artists are fighting against the clock, assuming that everyone has a period of productivity. They're probably going to have to work harder and longer (whee!) for less near term material reward and only scant promise of eventual material reward. For this reason, we often find that independent artists who have been revealed over time to be producers of quality work also have a high degree of integrity with regard to their specialty.

Comment Re:Researchers (Score 1) 552

The situation has changed. Your description, updated to reflect the latest events, should now read like this:

By "Researchers" they mean "zombies" who were contacted by "zombies" who were contacted by "zombies" who had become sickened by "zombies" admitted to emergency rooms with strange "zombie skin" who had admitted to trying to sell a "brain" they found in the "dump".

Send more researchers.

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