firehose
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magical-flying-moron: "There is gay Star Trek fanfiction that is older than us." My sister, putting...
"There is gay Star Trek fanfiction that is older than us."
My sister, putting fandoms into perspective.
UK Government Pays Microsoft £5.5M For Extended Support of Windows XP
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Star Wars AU: Everything is the same, except R2-D2 doesn’t make beeps and whistles, and is...
Star Wars AU: Everything is the same, except R2-D2 doesn’t make beeps and whistles, and is instead voiced by Kayne West, who is given no script but is just reacting to all the crazy space shit going on around his little robot homie.
hardknockstrokes: The guys hooked me up with a good looking...
The guys hooked me up with a good looking pineapple for prom. I “sedjuiced” him later
I regret nothing
And that’s how I ended my senior year
Lesson: Never be ashamed to go alone
This Is How The Private Sector Will Put A Lander On The Moon
In Escape Plan, 50 Cent hacks into the CIA using a PPPoE setup...
Batman villain Bane returns as a cat to torment his owner
It starts with a guy who just wants to take his dog to the veterinarian, but BaneCat won’t stand for it and proceeds to challenge his owner’s authority…
"Benkiman" - Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix 2 (Aki - PS2 -...
"Benkiman" - Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix 2 (Aki - PS2 - 2007)
He’s part man and part squat toilet. And yes, that is a turd on his head.
HL2-Based GoldenEye: Source Gets Open-Sourced
Make nut milk - plant based and, oh, so easy
Nuts. And water. That’s really all there is to nut milk.
For those interested…
Oakland Hoping To Shed Shady Image With Portland Tourism Campaign -- Who wants to go to Oakland?
submitted by salomoncascade [link] [6 comments] |
Google submits 1,928 pages arguing for a trademark of the word “Glass”
Google's attempt to trademark the word "Glass" is being met with opposition at the US Patent and Trademark Office, reported The Wall Street Journal Thursday. The term's generic nature and the potential for customer confusion about other products that involve the word "Glass" are two of the office's biggest concerns, but Google continues to push back. The company has already successfully trademarked "Google Glass."
Google originally submitted the application in July 2013 for the word "Glass" styled in a particular font as branding for its Google Glass smart glasses. The USPTO responded in the fall, saying there are two problems with trademarking "Glass."
The first is that the word is "merely descriptive" and that the product does not actually contain any glass (it's made of titanium and plastic). Second, the word is too similar to pre-existing trademarks, making confusion "as to the source of the goods" likely, the USPTO said.
popculturebrain: Leading Men Age, Leading Women Don’t |...
sailorflip: enjolrasactual: in-love-with-my-bed: the-wincheste...
Imagine stabbing someone with this knife.
It would instantly cauterize the would, so the person wouldn’t bleed, so it’s not very useful.
if you want information it is
and above, in order, we see a gryffindor, a ravenclaw, and a slytherin
The Hufflepuff is just excited about toast
Byakuya Monogatari: Winchester Ke no Matsuei (East Cube - Sharp...
Byakuya Monogatari: Winchester Ke no Matsuei
(East Cube - Sharp X68000 - 1989)
Deadspin FSU Investigates Jameis Winston, Charges 2 Teammates In Rape Case | Gizmodo Hackers Have Fi
firehosehttp://deadspin.com/fsu-investigates-jameis-winston-charges-2-teammates-in-1557216579
TW: protection of accused rapist
Map shows every state and country that is within a Texas-length distance of Texas
firehose#nevergo?
Texas is 790 miles long. The red on this map represents the area that is within 790 miles of Texas. That is to say, if you are within this red zone, you are closer to somewhere in Texas than other parts of Texas are…
(via Reddit)
Derek Jeter gives ball to innocent child instead of horrible person
firehoseoh god not houston beats stupid fucking new york for most obnoxious #nevergo every time
Thanks, Captain, for thinking of the children.
Derek Jeter wanted to give a ball to a young fan in the crowd who was 1) in a Jeter shirt and 2) holding a sign. This Astros fan was having none of it, though:
It was never intended for the Astros fan, as Jeter made sure to reach up and above her, but that didn't stop her from trying to pluck it from his hand repeatedly. Let's not pick on Ms. Astros too much, though: she's at a baseball game, it's Derek Jeter, and it's a foul ball. Who knows what we'd all do in that moment?
Maybe we'd be like this guy to the left of our Astros fan, who steals a high five from Jeter when the Captain's hand is on the way down. Or, maybe we'd sit quietly in the back with a tallboy Bud Light in a pink beer koozie.
Okay, you're right, we probably wouldn't, but someone had to bring attention to that beer koozie.
How pinball and boardwalk amusements gave rise to video games
firehoseI mean, I hope it's not a stretch considering the first mainstream success was a game with two paddles and a ricocheting ball
The generally accepted history of video games is that they sprang into existence in the 1970s, the brainchild of ambitious entrepreneurs taking advantage of quasi-military technology developed in the previous decades.
But this story fails to take into account a huge history of boardwalk and pinball games that exerted immense cultural influence on the early days of video games, most especially in arcades, which is still being felt today.
This summer a new exhibit at The Strong's National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, will seek to connect today's games with the mechanical amusements of the past, stretching back to the early years of the 20th Century.
The exhibit, called The Boardwalk Arcade and Pinball Playfields, will feature a disparate selection of machines including some of the earliest boardwalk games and seminal pinball machines such as Ballyhoo (1932), Humpty Dumpty (1947) and Triple Action (1948). Last year, the museum held a smaller exhibit of arcane arcade machines that organizers say was so successful, it has been significantly expanded.
"To most people the arcade is this thing that happened at a very specific time, featuring games like Defender and Pac-man," said Jeremy Saucier, assistant director of electronic games at the museum. "They think there was no arcade before that and there was no arcade after that. But we want to put things in its proper context."
Penny arcades first appeared around 1905, often situated in vacation locales like seaside resorts. They offered amusements like fortune telling, peep shows, games of chance and crude devices showing moving images. In time, the machines became more sophisticated and more identifiably games, often rooted in real world sports like horse racing and boxing. Later, pinball machines came along, growing in complexity from their own roots as 'bagatelles' or games played with balls and pins.
Games of the time often included some form of prize as a lure, either hard cash, gifts or simply a chance to continue playing. This continues today with redemption games that allow players to pick up fluffy toys and such, for their efforts.
"The whole roots of games is back in pinball and the penny arcades, back to the late 1800s and the fortune telling games," said Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender and now head of a coin-op company Raw Thrills. "You just have to look at pinball and its influence on basic video game structures like having three lives and earning an extra life."
Jarvis worked as a programmer on pinball games before making his move into video games. He said that pinball deserves more credit for its influence on what came later.
"If you look at the games in the very early '70s they were played to a certain score or they were timed but things really took off when the idea emerged of potential infinite lives, of man versus machine," he said.
In the early years of video games in arcades, they were viewed as a technological innovation based on the games that had come before. Pong and Breakout involved hitting a virtual pall with a paddle, much like pinball. Space Invaders is really little more than a shooting gallery. Pac-man is a maze, like those games in which tables are mechanically maneuvered to guide metal balls past obstacles.
"One of the nice things about our museum is that we're able to show that these things aren't just revolutionary," said Saucier. "There's an evolution of earlier forms of play, and much of what they're drawing on is these earlier forms of play. There's a context there that I think gets lost."
There is a cultural link too. Early video games also suffered from some of the reputation hangovers that had become attached to mechanical machines. Arcades themselves were viewed with suspicion by the authorities who saw them as dens of iniquity, exploiting children for financial gain. The authorities believed, with good reason, that organized criminals were benefiting from such pastimes.
Many of the arguments that have dogged video gaming, that they corrupt the minds of young people and rob them of ambition, were also leveled at pinball, which was banned for decades in many U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It was only in the 1970s that courts finally agreed to lift bans, based on demonstrations that pinball is a game of skill, rather than merely mindless gambling.
For most of their history, video games have been viewed as a waste of time. Amusement arcades and pinball carried this negative reputation decades ago. "There's a blue-collar kind of thing to pinball," said Saucier. "It had been associated with gambling and working class forms of entertainment. When Nolan Bushnell came along with Pong, his machines were initially located in bars."
Roger Sharpe is the author of Pinball!, which includes a history of early arcade games. He is a former senior exec of pinball manufacturers like Williams and Midway. Famously, he helped overturn the ban on pinball machines in a much-publicized court-case in the mid-1970s, by demonstrating with a pinball shot that they are games of skill.
"I see the family lines from the Bagatelle pin games of the 1870s through the novelty games of the 1940s and then pinball," he told Polygon. "There is a correlation and a relationship. A lot of the same companies were involved. You look at things like chasing high scores, putting in your initials, getting extra lives. There are interrelationships between what video games and pinball represents culturally."
The legalization of pinball tables in big cities opened up businesses to pinball tables which, a few years later, were joined by video games, which eventually drove out pinball. "Without the emergence of pinball you would not have had these businesses with their doors open to place Pacman or Donkey Kong in these locations," he said.
According to Sharpe, there is a convergence now between game design and the way pinball playfields were made. "Take a look at mobile games and what they are doing," he said. "The boundaries are based on the interface. They keep things simple. Some of the great games are basically slide and shoots. I take nothing away from Angry Birds, but it's all been done before. The fundamental building blocks were all there in the arcades before. They are intuitive, more than the deeper video games that take a long time to play and to develop."
Some redemption games today, like Temple Run, are based on mobile hits. The most simple video games are feeding arcade hits.
Ultimately, the museum is seeking to recognize the deeper roots that video games have within entertainment and cultural history. "It's always nice to know where things emanate from, where it all started," said Sharpe. "To not recognize what pinball has represented to our culture and some of the incredible talent that formed that industry, would be a shame."