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Third Time's the Charm |
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Googleshng - June 17 '03- 2:00 Eastern Standard Time
OK, a lot of people were actually curious about the story behind yesterday's
column title was, so here we go. There is an excessively obscure and backwater island nation off the coast
of New Zealand called Tokelau. They lack things like roads, an actual economy, etc., but like
all countries, they have their own domain extention. Upon realizing that they really weren't going to
do much with it, they decided to launch a zany scheme wherein they give people domains for free in exchange
for hopefully gaining enough recognition as an actual country to aquire an actual economy (followed by
roads, computers, etc. etc.)
Or to phrase that in a manner where you might actually care, if you go to www.dot.tk
you can get a couple domain names for free, and if you fling in 35570 as the referal number, I will
evidently be rewarded with "Virtual Fish."
Like I said, this here is a pretty darn zany scheme.
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Differing tastes
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Castlevania type spoiler
Have you ever noticed that every other generation of Belmonts has the WORST f-in' fashion sense? Look at the remake of Simon Belmont - he's a panty-waist. Then there's Juste (JOOST!) who's a little bit better what with his nice red coat and GLOWING BLUE AURA, and as we get to the future, we arrive at Julius Belmont who's a... pimp!? It's the 21st century and he thinks it's okay to wear a brown suit with a leopard print collar?! What the hell!?
Someone needs to get that man a gift certificate to Lord and Tailor or somethin'. O.o;
-Kev
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Googleshng:
OK, so let me get this straight. You consider having a brown trenchcoat to be worse than wearing a leather
mini-skirt?
The only article of clothing that honestly makes sense when fighting vampires would be a big fat steel
neckbrace, but you never see that one.
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Inflamitory remarks and dungeon crawls.
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Hey there, g,
More questions, I reckon.
First off, can you tell me what exactly the deal is
with Evolution Worlds? From what I can gather, it's
simply the two DC games stuck together into one. If
this is definitely the case, is there a noticeable
break between the two, or have they been combined into
a seamless story?
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Googleshng:
Yes, as I understand it, Evolution Worlds is just the two Evolution games thrown into one case.
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Second, I thought I should bring up Andrew's comments
regarding school shooting. Of course, I can
understand his points. Like many an RPG fan, I was
the victim of cruel bullies and apathetic authority in
high school. The claim that "the people being gunned
down usually deserve it," however, is a hard one to
justify. Were it the case that the school shootings
generally involved "some outcast who was tortured
everyday of his life at school (coming) in and calmly
(gunning) down the leader of a gang of thugs," as Duff
implies, perhaps I could see his point.
Unfortunately, these incidents and their ultimate
victims have generally been a bit more arbitrary than
that.
I'm sorry to be complaining to you about this, but
seeing as how you are the head of Q&A (and hand picked
this man for the job), I feel you are somewhat
responsible for what is printed in the column, and I
would like to see how you feel about the comments.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Duff's writing. I just
wanted to offer an alternative view and get your
reaction.
Thanks a lot for your time, g.
-ben
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Googleshng:
I'm actually slightly disturbed by how few people's eyes bugged out at that there. I mean, yeah, there
is some logic in the ends-justify-the-means statement that the occassional killing spree brought on by
years of bullying makes a nice deterent to such behavior. However, such incidents generally involve a
kid snapping and gunning down an entire playground full of innocent bystanders. Then of course there's
the fact that being punched in the stomach for 6 years doesn't quite equate to being shot in the head,
even if it is just once.
Anyway though, now that this particular can of worms has been openned, I suppose I'll throw in my two
cents on the subject. Whenever there's a horrible violent tragedy like this, I always find it strange
how people go about pointing the blame. Ultimately, the blame for such things should be placed squarely
on whoever is holding the gun. If you insist on widening your scope there though, when someone is bubbling
towards a murderous rage over the course of a few years, there tend to be a large number of fairly obvious
warning signs, so you can blame the people who failed to notice those, or better yet, the people who were
doing the enraging.
Rather than doing that though, people tend to arbitrarily blame the hobbies of the perpetrator. Now, if
said hobbies include things like ritual murders, you have a case there, but whenever it makes the news,
people always go "they must have gotten the idea that people can be killed by playing RPGs and videogames!
Or watching Mel Gibson movies!" Aside from the obvious hole in this logic that everyone in the world is
familiar with the concept of murder, if you insist on focusing on such things, I figure it'd make a lot
more sense to blame the news for doing a detailed report of another school shooting the week before.
You could also blame whereever the kid got the gun from I suppose, since otherwise he'd have to resort
to a stabbing rampage, and those tend to have significantly lower body counts.
One final note: It was quite the awkward moment when during my last year of highschool I was sitting
around talking quitely with my friend about videogames, each of us wearing long dark coats (due to it
being winter mind you, not in the "goth" sense), when a public announcement was made that quiet kids
who tend to wear dark clothing and enjoy video games are the most likely to snap and go on killing sprees.
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This letter really made my head hurt.
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Hey,
I saw the Japanese ending for FFX recently and I thought Yuna said "arigato"
to Tidus after she ran through him. Did they change it for the English
version, is she saying something else, or does that mean anything beyond the
DeYoung thing?
Thanks!
ZY
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Googleshng:
Arigato is Japanese for thank you. A fact which, if I recall, is actually covered in the lyrics to the
song Mr. Roboto which you evidently thought was being referenced here.
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