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A 10 vs 10 multiplayer football game?  Couldn't you just... y'know...  go outside and Play Football?

Surely the fun of footie-based videogames is that you're controlling an entire team, rather than just doing a deeply lazy and sun-fearing version of what anyone with 10 mates and a ball can do for free?

Yeah, you've got it.  The continued survival or death of the cat is just a visible symptom of the quantum event having happened or not happened.

It's more of a thought excercise/paradox than anything else: a flashy way to demonstrate how bizarre quantum theory is compared to "standard" physics.  It seems ridiculous to most of us that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, but nonetheless, because of the experiment's reliance on a quantum event, the simultaneous state of life *and* death is the only rational way of describing the cat.

Stranger still, you're simply not allowed to make excuses like "ahhh, but it's definitely one or the other -- you just can't tell until the box is open."  Because the act of observation is what defines the way we measure the quantum event, and therefore negates the entire thing.

Weird, but true.

Interesting one, this...

Is there someone ("they") who decides what should be in libraries, and what isn't appropriate?  

Have to say, I'm a bit confused by some of the reactions here...   What we're basically getting is people threatening to leave, and claiming that they're Too Afraid To Say Anything, simply because the board as a whole has been asked to behave with a little more civility.  

Which is sort of crazy...

Even crazier, by and large the people complaining and threatening to leave *aren't* the ones who are uncivil in the first place.  So why the histrionics and self imposed exiles?It all smells a bit of overreaction.  

Floyd - we need more of you, not less.  

Gloriously silly steampunk-stylee installation, with a Mad Scientist backstory.  

More Of This Sort Of Thing, please.

Link: http://gizmodo.com/392838/massive-steampunk+y-telectroscope-lets-you-see-from-new-york-to-london" target="_blank">BEHOLD!  THE TELECTROSCOPE

(Here he comes...)

There was a time, a year or three ago, when I was guilty of some pretty incandescent reactions to Bad Reviews myself.  What can I say?  I was younger, dumber, and much more easily insulted.  Even now I still get good and gloomy if I spot a particularly vitriolic bit of criticism, but â?? this is important â?? *thatâ??s not your problem*.  It doesnâ??t mean you (as fans) shouldnâ??t be allowed to criticise, and it doesnâ??t mean you should feel remotely guilty for having a less-than-positive opinion.  I mention it here simply in the spirit of long-overdue conciliation with Certain Of Your Number, and because this here brainfart which follows is all about Honesty:

Everyone has the right to be honest.  Everyone has the right to criticise a product which theyâ??re loyally paying for, and this messageboard â?? failing a nice big pub conveniently located between all of us â?? is probably the best place to do so on All Matters Tooth.

Buuuut this *is* an â??officialâ? board.  Never forget that.  Itâ??s part of 2000ADâ??s Public Relations presence, and so we users have to be a little bit realistic.  Not necessarily about the things we say, but certainly about the way we express them.

I donâ??t believe anyone â?? least of all Tharg â?? is actually suggesting a moratorium on all negative comments.  And I absolutely agree with several of you â?? whoâ??ve given an enthusiastic thumbs-up to the spirit of anarchy and impropriety that defines this place â?? that we donâ??t want it turning it to some dreary Toe The Company Line toilet where the slightest hint of cheek is grounds for an instant ban.

But nobody with the slightest sense is going to sit-by and allow their Public Face â?? and thatâ??s what this place is, for 2000AD â?? to get snarled-up with deleterious attitudes or a culture of negativity.

You might think your companyâ??s CEO is A Big Festering Arsegike, but you probably wouldnâ??t say so in a shareholderâ??s meeting.   Equally, saying â??Meh, this is shitâ? might indeed be a perfectly valid gut reaction to something, but you canâ??t expect to get away with it in on an Official Website.  

Happily, this neednâ??t be a problem, because you *can* get away with it if you express the same sentiments in a smarter way â??- which has the added benefits of making the Board look better, making *you* look better, and (just for the record) making all of us thin-skinned creators a little less inclined to cry.  

My point is simply this:  It should be completely possible to be Honest without also being a Nipple.

My second point â?? at the risk of sounding like a big hippy â?? is that we should try and remember that weâ??re ardent fans of 2000AD first, and critics of underwhelming strips second.  Letâ??s feel the love and soothe the pain, not the other way round.

Sorry. I know.  I just did a little bit of sick in my own mouth too.

(A side-point: Iâ??m a little out of touch with names and whatnot at the mo, so I canâ??t say this with absolute certaintyâ?¦  But it occurs to me that almost all the people in this thread who are protesting any change in the culture of the messageboard are the ones who I *already* associate with erudite, well-considered, well-explained or at the very least non-dismissive and non-bombastic posts, even when being negative.  Which â?? unless I misread Thargâ??s glorious intentions completely â?? are exactly the sort of people we donâ??t want to change at all.)

Missed point: One of weetips's pals offering to buy "for" him, not "from" him.

No outrage required, I think.  It *is* pretty funny that the silly sod sent it to his mate's dad by mistake.  :)

Tips - out of interest, how old is Teen Tips?

Not sure if you're in the market for advice and whatnot, so please take what follows with a pinch of salt, but--

Smoking weed aged 15/16/17 is a loooooooot more of a worry than smoking weed aged 18 or 19.  

Not because it causes any more (or less) damage per se, but because it's jimmying-about with a brain which hasn't finished its natural process of development and chemical formation.  

I've seen it happen a *lot*: kids who smoke (a lot of) dope in their mid-teens are putting the brakes on the natural development of their psyches.  It might have no harmful effect at all, but in a whole bunch of the cases I've seen people are not only changed through prolonged use, but those changes are carried-through into their adult lives.  

Kids who do the same a couple of years later may well be damaging themselves in the same ways, but at least they've given their brains the chance to finish forming and settle down before bombarding them.

(I know you could argue that brains never *truly* stop developing, and that it's daft to draw some abitrary distinction between a 17 year old and an 18 year old.  Fine.  But I think there's a loooot of truth in the idea that mental changes occurring to someone aged 15 or 16 are going to have a far, far more profound and lasting effect than the same changes occurring to someone aged 18.)

The best analogy I can think of is that you don't start drilling holes in a wall until it's finished being built - whether you're intending to put up some shelves or spy on the neighbours.

...anyway, that all sounds terribly pompous and patronising -- particularly coming from someone who continues to enjoy the Herb in "I've-learnt-my-lesson" moderation.  But, y'know...  IMHO and all that.

Larf:   WIN.

Lies.  I once saw her eat a puppy.  She sucked out its little eyes like Cadbury's creme eggs.  The yelping, the yelping...

All Part Of God's Great Plan...http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF055-Dinosaur_Meteors.jpg">

Ush - you're quite right.  I used the phrase "spontaneous generation" to describe the process by which primordial life went from Not Existing to Existing, rather than the more commonplace use of the phrase as a pre-Pasteur notion that tiny wee beasties popped-up from decaying matter.  Mea culpa.

But I do think the Lottery analogy is a little disingenuous.  The odds of winning the lottery, when set against the number of people playing, creates a favourable condition for at least one person to win.

With life, well...  

We're looking at about a million different types of protein, all appearing together.  We're looking at each protein being assembled with its amino acids (lots!) in a very specific sequence, and arranged in a particular shape.  Plus you've got the paradox of DNA: proteins can't replicate themselves, but DNA can.  So in order for life as we know it to have at some stage "started", these extraordinarily complex and mind-bogglingly specific protein chains had to arise *simultaneously* with - but completely seperate from - the DNA it would need to replicate.

I recall reading somewhere that the odds of all this stuff happening at the same time in the same place is so low that the attendant sun of any given planet would've crashed and burned through several messy heatdeaths before a single lumpy protein-strand ever formed.  

So yes: as you say, given the numbers, it's only natural that people look for simple answers like "God".

(For the record: I'm playing devil's advocate here, because I don't believe in "God" and I *do* believe in evolution and the "natural" genesis of life.  I suspect the low odds aren't really as low as science imagines, and there's some sort of naturally-occurring tendency towards life which we simply haven't identified yet.  BUT.  I just don't think it's sensible or fair to belittle people who think there might've been some external influence, when their explanation is no less wacky than the one that those of us with faith in science all happilly swallow.)

I dunno... I think I'd quite enjoy seeing that movie.  It looks okay.

But then I have a certain amount of sympathy for rational people who are scorned for simply expressing their views.  We don't want this thread to turn into a "who believes what" shouting match, but the notion of "interventionist intelligence" is no harder to swallow than the concept of spontaneous generation.  In fact, when you learn the extraordinarily - ridiculously - impossibly! - low odds of all the proteins and whatnot simply deciding all at once to form primitive life, the notion that "something" external kick-started it all begins to look attractive.

I'm uncomfortable with suggesting we're talking about "god", in the Bearded Bloke On A Cloud sense, but the impression I get from this trailer is that these guys aren't of the usual "Everything in the bible is true!" nutcap brigade, but rational people who concede that science - as it currently stands - can't answer certain questions.

(For what it's worth, I *don't* believe in interventionist/creationist theories, but until someone can prove unshakeably that life was created thanks to the random fluctuations of several billion chemical criteria - which all decided to cooperate at once - we have no right to pour scorn.)

Genesis Theory advocates and Evolution Deniers, on the other hand...

These responses are very interesting...

I'm a big fan of Del Toro myself, but I was expecting much more of an outcry about the "original story based on the 60 intervening years" bit.  

I would've thought that'd have the JRRT fans gnashing and wailing?  Unless (showing my ignorance here) Tolkien included some sort of coherent story to cover those intervening years in all his various other scribblings?

"According to studio New Line, the first will be an adaptation of The Hobbit, the novel Tolkien published before his Lord of the Rings cycle.

The second will be an original story focusing on the 60 years between the book and the beginning of the Rings trilogy."

Uh-oh...  Brace-brace-brace for the waves of Fanger.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7366375.stm" target="_blank">Del Toro to direct Hobbit Movies...