Goldeneye had, primarily, a 2D gamespace. The graphics were 3D, but altitude rarely factored into things (unless you played Oddjob).

Any game with a real 3D gamespace was brutal on the N64. Daikatana, for instance, although that one had more problems than just control issues.

Consider games as part of an information system. Data flows from the game to the user (display, sound, rumble) and from the user to the game (controller). The more data that can flow, the more complex the game can be without overwhelming the user. On the output side, that's why game designers push for higher resolution and framerates. On the input side, that's why we go for the maximum number of analog inputs (two sticks plus analog triggers, plus sometimes a touchpad or touchscreen), and cram as many buttons as possible onto the pad.

From the tone of the articles, it seems more like "they couldn't justify continued funding with current levels of success". In other words, they're having a budget crunch (not unreasonable given the current economy), and the space program vanity-project was one of the first things on the chopping block.

Not necessarily - keyboard+mouse gives you one (really good) analog input, a gamepad gives you two analog inputs. The way it's normally mapped, it's WSAD for movement and mouse for camera, which is fine as long as you don't need precise movement. RTS, FPS, those kinds of things. Once you need analog movement as well as camera, a gamepad starts to be better - platformers, twin-stick shooters (obviously). Action games (like Assassin's Creed or Arkham) tend to be close to the crossover point, where a gamepad is better but keyboard+mouse is almost always sufficient.

Because the Republican offering is still going to be worse.

Tiny? Compared to what, an Atari joystick?

I have every generation of Nintendo controller out for testing and measuring. Every single analog stick is bigger, and has more range, than the D-pad on the SNES pad (which is slightly larger than on other controllers). So if your problem is that your thumbs are too big to finely use an analog stick, your thumbs are too big for a D-pad as well.

There's a reason analog sticks dominate the landscape these days. A D-pad simply doesn't have the sensitivity or the freedom of movement needed for a 3D gameplay environment. Even PC games know this - a mouse is used for any 3D game, rather than having two hands on keyboard.

Was the SNES controller good for SNES games? Of course. Nintendo actually experimented with analog sticks during the SNES's development, but couldn't find a good use for it with the predominantly 2D games the console was capable of. But look at the N64 controller - they still weren't sure, at launch, how best to control 3D games, so they made that weird controller you could hold three different ways. And then the analog stick proved to be so essential, later consoles had two of them.

The fact that this had to be explained to you makes me think you haven't actually played any games since the Super Nintendo.

I'm getting it from, of all places, the bible. Specifically, the Latin Vulgate - I learned more than enough Latin in two decades of Catholicism to be able to read it, with regular glances at a dictionary. There's some debate as to the quality of the translation, but a) it was the "standard" bible for far longer than any preceding *or* succeeding version, b) it was the basis for most other translations (only recently have English translations been done directly from the greek and hebrew), and c) the translators were far closer to the authors than we are, and so are less likely to distort it to a *modern* worldview.

The Exodus bit is a bit of a stretch - it pretty specifically says "if fighting men hit a woman who is pregnant" as a qualifier ("si rixati fuerint viri et percusserit quis mulierem praegnantem"). I would interpret that as a prohibition on forced abortions, which I don't think many people would argue with, but interpreting it as a blanket ban on abortion is extending things further than the literal text can support.

The Corinthians is a mistranslation on somebody's part. The Vulgate reads "neque fornicarii neque idolis servientes neque adulteri neque molles neque masculorum concubitores neque fures neque avari neque ebriosi neque maledici neque rapaces". I would translate that list as "fornicators, servers of idols, adulterers, the soft, the male concubines, thieves, misers, drunkards, slanderers and the greedy". The New International, and some others, seems to translate "molles" as "homosexuals", which is blatantly wrong (the same word is used as an adjective when Matthew speaks of "soft raiment"). King James translates that as "the effeminate", which most other translations agree with. So that at least relies on God speaking very indirectly to get to the point (if there's one thing Latin has no lack of, it's words for homosexuality - paedico, paedicator, pathicus, irrumator, et cetera). Honestly, given the phrasing, it almost seems like a later addition to the verse.

So yeah, even if I *did* still accept the bible as infallible, I would not be convinced by your citations.

There's nothing in the Bible about abortion or gun laws, and barely anything about homosexuality, yet those are like the three biggest religious-right political issues. And hell, Jesus was basically more pro-communist than Lenin, but during the Cold War, no siree, it's us good Christian capitalists versus those damned heathen commies. So obviously "it wasn't in scripture" isn't going to stop religious nuts.

Why? Without solar panels, it would quickly run out of power, so you'd get barely anything done even if the antenna did deploy. Having the antenna underneath the panels probably helped protect it during atmospheric entry and landing as well.

the "Google now knows exactly what my eyes are tracking in any given image" kind of creepy. I'm not a millenial, so I probably sound like an old coot, but Google already knows enough about us - phones, search, Gmail, etc.

And that creepy stuff is why I'm not going to buy an eyepiece computer from Google. Or from Apple, or from Facebook (even Oculus), or from Microsoft. I'm already concerned with how much Google knows about me. I'm not giving them any more.

That said, I would gladly buy an eyepiece computer, but it would have to be from a company that does not do data-mining at all. I'd actually be fine with one that doesn't even have mobile internet, and works as a self-contained computer.

I tried to look up what age group this dictionary targets. It took a while to find, because this particular dictionary seems to exist in a sort of quasi-online, quasi-physical state, where the book's website tells you to go buy it, and the official OUP site doesn't recognize it.

Anyways, it's apparently aimed at ages 7 and up, and defines 13,000 words over 288 pages. You might be able to justify it, if these words are no longer in the top 13k words by usage. Then again, the common words aren't the ones you need a definition for.

Let's see here:
Albert Einstein - Nobel-winning physicist
Richard Feynman - Nobel-winning physicist, later used his celebrity power to popularize physics through his books
Carl Sagan - Astrophysicist (PhD thesis was "Physical Study of Planets", much of his work involved determining environmental conditions on other planets and moons), simultaneously was a television host and science celebrity
Stephen Hawking - Physicist (PhD thesis was on singularities in spacetime), author, and occasionally played himself on TV.
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Astrophysicist (PhD thesis was on star distribution in the galactic bulge), author, television host and science celebrity.

Well, Einstein's the only one who (AFAIK) was not a major pop writer. Tyson's the only one with a Twitter feed. Hawking's the only one with a physical disability, and Feynman was the only one to do engineering as well as science. So I'm actually not sure who you think is different from all the others.

Perhaps I should have been clearer.

Attacking, with extreme precision, those who committed or are responsible for the attacks, is completely justified. I was speaking against larger-scale retaliation against muslims as a whole, which a surprising number of people seem to feel justified.

Our strongest weapon in the fight against extremist religious groups is continued freedom.

If they attack us over free speech, let us speak ten times as freely.

If they attack us over free religion, let us start ten new churches of ten different faiths.

If they attack us for treating people equally, let us treat them equally as well.

We should not attack them in retaliation - that just makes us both wrong. Violence will not solve this problem. This is a war of ideas - and freedom of speech will carry our ideas further and louder than theirs ever will. It will take generations, but it's already in progress. They are resorting to violence now because they can already see that they cannot win by words.

The sea platform isn't the end-goal. This is just to prove that they can safely land it, so they can be approved for it to return to US airspace for a ground landing.

It only has to work a few times, then it'll get mothballed. Or maybe shelved, to use whenever they need an emergency landing platform for some reason.