I guess if you take the Glasgow Gael trendy-west-endie-hangs-around-in-the-Lismore dialect of Gaelic where if you don't find a word that suits you just make up a translation that fits your etymological theory, then you can get away with it. This part of the world was never Gaelic-speaking, and Gaelic only came here with the Highland Diaspora.
Let's not forget the ones in Deoch an Dorus.
HOWever, how the heck did the Facebook logo appear beside your post? I don't use FB, so am unfamiliar with its workings, but did you post your comment to Slashdot's FB "wall" and it appeared here?
I'm not the dude you asked the question of, but check out Slashdot's login page: https://slashdot.org/login.pl (you may need to be logged out or in a private window etc):
Sign in with:
As well as OpenID, which they've had for a while. I smell the 'corporate overlord' decreeing that alternative IDs must be available, but that's just a hunch. Makes sense too, since Slashdotters are so well-known for loving Facebook and Twitter.
*grin*
You seem to forget that in the UK the word "unlimited" does not actually mean unlimited when it comes to bandwidth in internet connections. It means "some arbitary amount that we're nto going to tell you about in advance".
Not so in one case. Three offer unlimited plans that are actually unlimited. When buying I asked specifically about fair use policies, hidden caps, soft caps and all came back negative. Granted, this was a sales rep, but he was quite earnest about their network backbone - they seem to take pride in building a network with the capacity to offer what is advertised.
I have no affiliation with Three other than being a happy customer - I even used my tethered phone for a couple months before I had a wired internet connection set up.
Like most analogies, this analogy is not exact. Say I find the woman while riding a bicycle to or from work. I wouldn't even think of assaulting her, but helping her would have a substantial cost to me.
(emphasis mine) That is what makes it noble. Cost-benefit analysis shouldn't figure too heavily into helping someone.
For example, how do you recommend that I transport her to the hospital? Likewise, how would someone who depends on public transit afford the bus fare and lost wages to carry a found purse with no ID to the police station?
Perhaps by phone, arranging transport that way. And if you can't get to a police station, would a police officer accept it insead? (don't know if they'd take it or tell you to get lost instead).
I think you mean Hogmanay. Much more important than that other holiday, what's it called... Christmas:
Christmas in Scotland was traditionally observed very quietly, because the Church of Scotland – a Presbyterian church – for various reasons never placed much emphasis on the Christmas festival.
Christmas Day only became a public holiday in 1958, and Boxing Day in 1974.
(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_in_Scotland)
Aye, you're damn right we've got our priorities straight: boozing > presents, every damn time. Now, why do I have this pain in my liver..?
MBE stands for Member of the British Empire. It's the lowest of 5 ranks in the Order of the British Empire.
(emphasis mine)
And also why the leader "England has awarded Raymond Roberts" is a trifle inaccurate. Never mind anthropomorphising a country; like computers, they hate that.
Gerry Anderson, creator of the Thunderbirds and Joe 90 puppet superhero TV shows, has died at the age of 83, his son has announced.
In my opinion, his greatest creation was Space: 1999, and ITV production with practically no budget, but still great shows in the first season. Unfortunately, like so many other Gerry & Sylvia Anderson projects, it ran out of gas in the 2nd season. They did some great stuff until their divorce in 1975.
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." (Juliet)
So what's in a game? The subject has been discussed by folks far more eloquent and persuasive than I; but hey, this is Slashdot so what the hell. In some ways trying to define what 'game' means is akin to defining art; grasping at the wind. I think you're pretty close to the mark with your latter definition, although as sibling posters suggest the win condition is not necessary, and the concept of winning itself has been toyed with as a mechanism (see UnwinnableByDesign). "Fun" is hardly a necessity either, witness RPG grinds, for example. And how 'fun' would Contra be without UUDDLRLRBA?
That leaves "simulated environment", which I think approaches the heart fo the matter. Games (not just video games here) are a simulacrum, an approximation of a scenario. Some are more complex than others - Snakes and Ladders versus Dwarf Fortress or MilSim-du-jour - but all distill a scenario/environment into a set of rules. Fun and winning are usually part of the arrangement, but not by necessity.
Sibling post hit the mark too in saying that a significant proportion of gaming is there as a vehicle for storytelling. It's easy to be cynical as there are some bad stories out there. But there is good storytelling too, if that's your thing. Planescape: Torment* has a particular focus on story; and there are times where the line between 'game' and 'interactive story' are pretty heavily blurred. Dear Esther is an example which PA Report recommends quite highly:
Dear Esther is a $10 PC [note: currently on sale on Steam for £1.74 for the next two hours at time of writing] experience that toys with the concepts that make, or don’t make, a game. You are a man exploring a deserted island, and every so often you’ll trigger a voice over that helps to explain what you’re doing there and describes other characters you never see. It’s a desolate, lonely game that funnels you into one specific ending that’s impossible to escape. It takes around 90 minutes to finish, depending on how much of the island you choose to explore.
At the end of a day if someone creates something that is a representation of something with at least some semblance of interaction, and calls it a game I'm quite happy to believe them until proven otherwise.
*Planescape was recently discussed on
Once entered, my E-mail and/or name is publicly available on the bug report for the next millenium. In plain text in the bug report, and sometimes in the publicly-accessible changelog - naked for the world to see (CPAN is especially fragrant).
Well, at least it smells nice.
Looks like Jimbo going to bat for him generated a bit of bad press.
Not being intimately familiar with the story, I wondered who the 'Jimbo' in the summary was. I should have guessed it was he of the 'please give Wikipedia money' banners, Jimmy Wales. In fairness, there have been a couple of stories on
Here ends the obligatory grousing about the article summary.
What I mean was... how is an ordinary developer meant to find out what the current state of play is?
Start with http://caniuse.com/
Don't run the edge of envelopes against your eyeballs either
Well, I just winced. Thanks for that.
So it wasn't just me..?
I say it's far more efficient to convert the coal to uranium, and then there would be zero carbon emissions!
You know the secret of the Philosopher's Stone!?
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
