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Comment One medium in various forms (Score 1) 350

The existence of mainstream casual and blockbuster video games is a fairly new development, but both types of games are part of the overall medium.

As was the case with other forms of media over the past 150 years or so, video games are going to start to become more diverse. Up until fairly recently it wasn't entirely nonsensical to simply say "I play video games." Today, though, that doesn't mean anything. One may as well say "I read books."

This is an exciting time for video games as a medium -- it's become a genuinely mainstream medium. That doesn't mean its less mainstream aspects will die. There's room for all types. People watch TV shows and feature-length films. People read short stories and epic trilogies. People play casual, simplistic or linear games, they play esoteric, deep or complex games, and they will do all of this on a wide variety of platforms in a wide variety of situations.

Comment Re:bullcrap (Score 1) 475

There's no reason a good quality stove shouldn't last you 50 years or more.

My parents happen to be stove enthusiasts (yes, I know that's pretty weird) and I helped them pull some clandestine intra-family action in order to secure my great-great-grandmother's stove. I have to admit that it's quite a prize, this is a machine that worked through the American Civil War. It currently bides its time until it heats a home again ...and, I suppose, cooks food -- it's just way over powered for such a simple task.

A stove that lasts 50 years? Get off my great-great-grandmother's lawn!

P.S. I love the subject line for this thread.

Comment Re:False assumption (Score 1) 814

Hey, neat. Thanks for checking it out!

I took a look at MS Word 2007 on the PC I'm sitting in front of when I wrote my previous comment and didn't find any difference in the space, but I didn't use anything more fancy than a ruler. I'm happy to accept your findings. Perhaps there's a difference between Word on a PC and Word on a Mac?

So I accept the concept you're presenting, but it doesn't seem like an actual solution to the problem. If there is always more space after a period, there will be spaces after sentences, sure, but there will be spaces within sentences as well, which defeats the whole point. Does that make sense?

In order to have additional space only after sentences, you must have a decision made by something that can parse actual grammar. Machines cannot do this consistently. People can. ...Err, people are more likely to be able to. ;)

Comment Re:False assumption (Score 1) 814

a word processor will space a document properly, such that the space between sentences IS wider than a space between words.

MS Word certainly doesn't do this. What you're describing is an extremely difficult problem, having software find the beginning and ending of sentences. I'm pretty confident that no standard word processing software even attempts to tackle this problem, but I'd be happy to be surprised -- what word processor do you think does this?

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.

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