I’m glad to see the AP isn’t letting this Iran thing fade away. Resisting repressive governments should always be encouraged.
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Hober Short
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Hober Short
The annual list of new words being added to Webster’s is up, the linked sampling of which has a bewildering lexicographic spread. I mean, vlog and webisode make sense (although I’d argue that webisode is redundant; generally speaking the show itself indicates the distribution medium) as new linguistic constructions, reggaeton and waterboarding are both old words that have just become popular, so that makes sense.
But, naproxen? And zip-line wasn’t already a dictionary word?
Of course, the obligatory news articles make the obligatory statement about how the dictionary and common usage are not the same. So, yeah. What they said.
Webster’s also says they have their eye on “prepone”, which seems a succinct and sensible semantic transformation. I’m just not sure I could ever not spell it “pre-pwn”.
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Pat
The incandescent light bulb may not be doomed after all.
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bxojr
It’s about time: thirty years after the release of the original game, a movie version of Asteroids is now in development.
I just hope they do it justice. The vivid imagery of the game, coupled with its intricate plotline and rich characterizations, are going to be hard to capture in a two-hour movie.
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Hober Short
A Life Well Wasted is a podcast I heard about a while ago, and I’m just now getting around to checking it out, which is okay because it has a relatively long interval between episodes.
But the attempt is to make a sort of podcast radio show that explores things that are related to gaming (primarily digital), however tangentially, or just interesting to gamers. The first episode was a series of interviews with the then-recently-defunct EGM (nee Electronic Gaming Monthly) staff about, well… partially about games journalism. A decent episode, but limited in scope.
But the second episode is all about viewing gaming historically: from video game collectors to a Stanford University project to try and preserve virtual worlds. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that I highly recommend you hear it for yourself.
I haven’t listened to the third episode yet, but I expect it’ll be just as good.
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Pat
I requested a book through PaperbackSwap.com, and today I received a message from the sender. He informs me that he’ll be a bit late sending the book, and apologizes for that. His reason: “I work in a prison and an inmate assaulted me. I have cuts and bruises and I’m sore. It’s better than broken and dead. As soon as I can I’ll get the book mailed out to you.”
Best. Excuse. Ever.
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bxojr
According to the Daily Express, NASA has found the missing original recordings of the lunar video from Apollo 11. Just in time for the 40th anniversary!
This is definitely good news, but I think the Daily Express may be expecting too much:
The tapes show in much more detail than almost anyone has previously seen the surface of the moon beneath the patriotic symbol of the US flag.
Crucially, they could once and for all dispel 40 years of wild conspiracy theories.
Not a chance.
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Hober Short
Some poking around in the draft of the current budget (I read State budgets on my lunch break, what has my life come to?) finds on Page 6, line 41, that North Carolina expects to tax $13.2M in Fiscal Year 2009-2010, and $17.8M in 2010-2011 from “Sales Tax on Digital/Click-Throughs”.
I’m guessing Amazon wasn’t even paying out $13 million bucks to NC residents (the margins for referrals can’t be all that large), so this would mean a huge increase in expense for no benefit. Makes a lot of sense from Amazon’s perspective.
New things getting taxed at the “General Rate” of 5%:
- Things that formerly were not taxed because they were “delivered or accessed electronically”:
- “audio work” (MP3 download)
- “audiovisual work” (movie download)
- “book”
- “service contract and from repair, maintenance, and installation services”
- “Admission to a live performance or other live event of any kind.” (Concerts)
- With specific exception for non-profits (they won’t be cutting in RLT’s bottom line, hopefully)
- With specific exception for “An event at an elementary or secondary school.” (lol)
- “Admission to a movie or other audiovisual work.” (Movies just got more expensive)
- “air, surface, or combined courier delivery services of parcels” (Amazon’s getting taxed twice, now)
There’s also what I call the Hoe-down exception for “A farm-related entertainment activity offered on land used for bona fide farm purposes as defined in G.S. 153A-340.”
- Things that formerly were not taxed because they were “delivered or accessed electronically”:
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Hober Short
Via Hacker News:
We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.
. . .
In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.
Source. This program is the one by which a blog can post a link to Amazon (or a specific product on Amazon), and the blogger would get a referral commission percentage of any purchases made through that link.
It’s the way that, as the linked article points out, a lot of mid-level bloggers keep their websites afloat.
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Hober Short
There’s a new version of Magic: The Gathering available from the XBOX Live Arcade store (and therefore playable exclusively on the 360) that is simplified, streamlined form of Magic that is meant as an introductory experience (although it’s crack to some veterans too).
Good.
One of the things they got right, in my opinion, is that the card pool for the game is relatively constricted. This is something that continually irked me about Magic: it always felt like the constant addition of cards induced power creep on a huge scale.
I see something similar happening with D&D: the constant tide of new books are hard-pressed to be equally balanced with the core books. For example, around the time PBH2 was being written, WOTC just flat out said “the Wizard’s at-will powers are just underpowered compared to the controllers that will be in PHB2″. Essentially, there wasn’t enough power to redistribute in interesting ways. So, the PBH2 controllers were slightly better, and then in Arcane Power, wizards got buffed to the same level so that controllers are, overall, more potent now.
Here’s the thing: that’s not bad. If you want to use the more powerful Wizard, you can. But you’re not at a penalty if you decide to just play core, the way you would be in, say, Magic.
I’ve heard Dominion cited as being a Magic-like game, but with a limited set of cards to draw on, which seems a step in the right direction. But, honestly, I’d just be interested in some kind of boxed Magic set with, say, the 1000 greatest Magic cards of all time to play as its own standalone game.
Hey, I can dream.
