Hard to blame them for thinking that at the time. CD-based consoles had a very rough start in that era, but the PS1 was probably the first actual hardware success that used the CD exclusively as it’s medium. Nintendo had pushed cartridges to their absolute limit with the technology they had, so it was only a matter of time before someone ended up succeeding where others failed.

A stopped clock is still correct twice a day.

Aw, but all my other bones are so low maintenance.

I’m not going to downvote you, but, I disagree. Nintendo might have had a leg to stand on if they tried to say Palworld infringed on their Pokemon intellectual property and/or copyright, especially after the mesh controversy, but they didn’t attack them on that. They’re going after Pocketpair for patent infringement on a so-far undisclosed patent. Probably a game mechanic of some sort. Pokemon did not invent the monster collecting and/or battling genre. Dragon Quest predates it by a good margin.

I’d like to see the patent they claim to have. In what way might Palworld be infringing upon their patent that another similar game, like say TemTem for instance, is not? I hate the idea that a fun game mechanic can be patented and locked down by one company for up to 20 years.

Palworld would not have caused the stir it did if not for the blatant “It’s Pokemon with guns!” angle.

This was 100% a fan reaction to the trailer, and not an official stance by the developers at all. That’s obviously what they were going for, but they stopped long before outright saying it out loud and let the consumer make their own inferences.

They have every right to go after them, but I really hope they lose this one. Nintendo doesn’t deserve to have a monopoly on fun creature collecting games.

Mine is Magic: The Gathering, except I fully realize that I am pulling away from it and why.

The game sparked an immense amount of joy when I picked it up in high school. Now I barely recognize the game anymore. It doesn’t truly have an identity of its own and exists in this permanent state of limbo where 3rd party IPs are taking over the demand for new product and the rules are becoming so bloated that they can’t fit them on cards anymore.

This is such an “old man yelling at clouds” moment for me, because I heard just about every reason under the sun for why people quit the game when I was playing from power creep to changing art styles to just getting priced out of the hobby in general. I realize now that those people were not wrong, they were just not the target audience anymore. I am no longer a profitable demographic to pander to. I never buy packs anymore, and I’ve even stopped buying singles and I don’t attend tournaments or collect anymore, so why would Hasbro/WotC make products for me? Especially when there are deep pocketed whales out there who will pay top dollar for their favorite crossover set, no matter how silly or out of place it might seem.

I wish I could enjoy the game the way I used to, but I just can’t be bothered to hop back in when it doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Okay, you’ve made some pretty salient points. I’m not too proud to admit that my understanding of the topic is limited. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me more on the subject.

Let me know how that interview goes, because if the rocket you developed and spent billions of dollars building explodes at launch, you’re going to be looking for a new line of work.

I’m sure the next aeronautics company will totally understand. Mondays, am I right?

but focusing on “blowing up launch pads” tells me you probably know very little about the Space industry or development.

That wasn’t the focus of my post, but are you suggesting that there is a nonzero number of rocket explosions that would be considered acceptable?

I don’t need to be Elon Musk, or even know much about the space industry or development to know that the target number should always be zero.

Fair point, I don’t want to fixate on that one aspect of the colossal technical challenge that is getting spacecraft into orbit, but I’m still of the opinion that a nationalized and fully government-funded space program will always yield better results than a privatized one because there is no profit-taking incentive.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we still had NASA doing the shuttle program, or some continuation of it, rather than outsourcing our spacecraft to the cutthroat lowest-bidder private sector. Is it really any surprise that SpaceX and Boeing are blowing up on the launchpads and having quality control issues when their sole objective is to make money? If we nationalized these initiatives again and cancelled the private contracts with these crooks, there would be no incentive for profiteering and corners would not get cut as often as they do now.

Sure, it would be a big cost to the taxpayer once again, but I think I’d rather have a reliable space program and like 2% less military budget to fund it, I think we’ll manage somehow without producing more tanks and planes that nobody is asking for.

Shocking that people are still using Shitter in 2024.

Oh look, he shaved his beard for Daddy Trump. Wouldn’t want Dear Leader to disapprove of your facial hair now would we, Jay Dee?

I 100% agree, I only brought up ambulances being exempt because you specifically mentioned them. I gather from your post that the value of ambulances in rural areas is probably less valuable than in urban areas simply because the main selling point of an ambulance is that it has right of way to overtake all traffic and ignore signals, but traffic is not the main issue, it’s long distances between hospitals or difficult terrain/winding roads that artificially limit speeds.

I am. It’s a real fuckin’ problemo. Ambulances are actually kinda rare to see these days because people around where I live call rideshares to take them to the hospital instead.

Presumably ambulances and other such emergency vehicles would be exempt from such devices? But I agree with you anyway since ambulances are expensive and having to choose between driving slow in your own car with a limiter and calling for an ambulance and going bankrupt should not be a choice someone has to make in a split second during an emergency.

You are correct. I retract my statement.

The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming.

What Biden needs to do, like right fucking now, is pack the courts. AOC trying with a token effort to get them impeached is cute, but will ultimately fail because Republicans won’t turn on their own. The Senate is tied (if you count Bernie as one of the dems) and Harris has the tiebreaker. The house is controlled by the Republicans, but only 7 individuals need to break from their party in order to get a simple majority to save the future of America.

Biden could expand the SCOTUS from 9 seats to 13 and immediately submit 4 liberal justices for confirmation to be seated. Expanding the court doesn’t require congressional approval, so Biden could do this unilaterally and as long as he is able to get butts in those seats, they’re there to stay even if Trump squeaks his way back in. They could then challenge and overturn the immunity ruling, as well as all the other dogshit rulings that have come out in the last couple of years like Dobbs.

He threatened to do it before. He needs to actually pull the trigger.

It doesn’t matter to anybody who has already made up their mind to vote/not vote for him.

It matters that justice is done and that the system holds him accountable.

I signed up to do the free IRS filing but got rejected unfortunately because I had entered into a domestic partnership which made me ineligible. Not really sure why since I was filing single anyway but oh well, this is good news and I can’t wait to try it next year.

Precisely. They never check that you are who you say that you are or that you are in fact still alive, so this “rule” is unenforceable. Case in point, many years ago I told Valve that my birthday was Jan 1st 1916, the earliest date it would let me select when I get prompts to input my age for mature-rated content. It still remembers that and autofills it for me on every age-restricted game page I land on in the discovery queue. If it were true, I’d be a 108 year old gamer right now, which isn’t impossible but would probably raise some eyebrows at Valve if they ever had the intention of enforcing the “no passing down your account to other people” rule as it would be highly likely that I would be dead and my successors are the ones actually spending 7 hours on the weekends binging TW: WH3 and Stellaris.