http://veepers.hanes.com/service/Retriev...801D9ED7CE

Don't tell me to find a FAQ. Just answer this simple question:

In Super Mario Bros., level 7-4 is a castle that never ends. It just keeps repeating until you run out of time and die. Nothing changes; it just...repeats into infinity. Surely one of us knows how to break the cycle; what to do to beat it...

Or the French, for that matter.

I hope America never gets so liberalized that we're faced with this situation, though it does seem like we're getting close sometimes.

Quote:<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"><td width="99%">French Fume Over Proposed Ban on Beards
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</td> <td width="60%" nowrap="nowrap" align="right"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="1%"> <tbody><tr><td width="1%"></td><td width="99%" nowrap="nowrap"> Add World - AP to My Yahoo!</td></tr></tbody></table> </td></tr></tbody> </table> <!-- TextStart --> By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Writer

PARIS - France's fight to keep religion out of schools has entered new — and some say absurd — territory. Teachers and some religious leaders fumed Wednesday over a government minister's call to ban beards and bandannas from classrooms along with Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and Christian crosses.

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Muslim leaders were divided, with some denouncing a curb on facial hair as "total delirium." Others said street protests against the planned law had rattled the government and provoked a crackdown.



Le Monde newspaper devoted its front-page cartoon to the subject, showing a teacher inspecting a student's beard with a magnifying glass, as veiled women with big smiles looked on.



The latest twist in France's controversial plan to ban religious symbols from classrooms came Tuesday, when Education Minister Luc Ferry said the planned ban on religious symbols could also cover facial hair and bandannas, sometimes worn as a discreet alternative to the traditional Muslim head scarf.



Ferry made the comments during a parliamentary debate, where lawmakers questioned whether the wording of the bill was tough enough. They asked if the ban should cover "visible" religious symbols, rather than "conspicuous" symbols, as the draft law states.



Ferry said the existing wording would allow for a broader interpretation of the law.



And so, "if a beard is transformed into a religious sign it will fall under the law," Ferry said. Likewise, a bandanna "will be banned, if young girls present it as a religious sign."



This came as a shock to many in France, particularly to teachers who will be at the front line of policing the new law, expected to be in place for the next school year in September. Lawmakers begin debating the bill Feb. 3.



"Beards? Bandannas?" asked Daniel Robin, national secretary of France's largest union for high school teachers. "What next?"



"This exercise has become absurd. Totally absurd," he said in a telephone interview.



How will teachers identify religious facial hair? Would they reprimand a "religious" bandanna but allow it as a fashion statement?



"I don't know how to respond to these questions," said Robin, who added that boys too lazy to shave never were punished in the past. "Beards were never a problem before. Let's not create new problems."



The Education Ministry did not respond to calls asking for clarification of Ferry's remarks.



Ferry declined to speak to reporters as he left a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope spoke on his behalf, saying only that the new law would be applied "with discretion."



President Jacques Chirac says the law's goal is to protect France's secular underpinnings. However, it also is seen as a way to hold back Islamic fundamentalism in the nation's Muslim community, at an estimated 5 million the largest in Western Europe.



Last weekend, up to 10,000 people — mostly Muslim women in head scarves — marched in Paris to protest the planned law.



The march was organized by the Party of Muslims of France, a small group known for its radical views. The group's president, Mohamed Latreche, called banning of facial hair "total delirium."

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"This law has become a farce," he said by telephone. "It's not up to the government to tell us if we can grow beards.

"It proves what we've been saying all along — that this law is anti-Muslim," Latreche said.

Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French council of the Muslim religion, had discouraged Muslims from attending the protest, saying the rally would exacerbate the anti-Muslim climate.

"Now, you see the repercussions," Boubakeur said, adding that a ban on bandannas or beards showed "the government was toughening its position."

"I told people not to demonstrate. I told them they'd scare French people — and this fear would result in France closing the door."

Cause I've been looking for someone to play with late at night. I doubt any of you do, but if so let me know.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/473/473784p1.html

So am I the only one thinking "Messiah"?

... well it's a worst case scenario anyway...

I made this comic (to put in my signature) when everyone on the board was going through their "post unsightly, obscenely-huge comics in their sig" fad. When I get more ideas, I'll begin posting more comics. :)



BTW- the background scenery is from a real abandoned mental institution that me and my friends sometimes sneak into. You can actually see them if you look at the far right side of the last panel.

I'm sure most of you saw the IGNCube story about the developers who are working on getting a Linux distro running on a GameCube. So far all they have is an image of Tux, so it's hard to say if the rest will be successful.

However, I also learned that there is a lot of work on creating an open source software development kit for GameCube, something Nintendo normally chargers thousands of dollars for and only gives to "real" developers. They are working on reverse engineering the hardware and developing C libraires that will allow you to develop Cube games. The best part is that it is completely legal. There has already been some progress, and you can download some demos and games from places like gcdev.com. The trick is, at this point the only way they can get stuff to run on a GameCube is through PSO. Apparently, Sega wrote PSO to automatically check for new patches, and if it finds any it automatically installs them onto the memory card and runs them. They created a program that tricks PSO into think there is a new patch, which is really the program they wrote to run on the GameCube. I'm gonna check out the SDK as soon as I can and see what else I can learn, but I am really excited.

This is the personal favorite comic of mine thus far. It has a sort of comedic timing or something special that just makes it funny.

I spent too much time creating that trailer you see at the end, and it still looks like crap! Oh well. As long as you can tell it's a trailer...

<i>Comic originally posted 2003-08-09</i>

Wow, I didn't think we'd get to find out so soon! From IGN:

Quote:January 20, 2004 - For months Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has been offering Japanese newspapers vague comments about a new mystery hardware that the company would launch in 2004. Nintendo of America today pulled back the curtains on the top-secret device and it looks to be good news for Nintendo fans worldwide.

The company's mystery machine is in fact a dual-screened portable game device that is entirely separate from both the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. It will be marketed completely free of its sister hardware. It's called Nintendo DS for Nintendo Dual-Screen.

Nintendo DS features two connected 3-inch TFT LCD display panels, separate processors, and semiconductor memory of up to 1 Gigabit, according to the manufacturer.

Nintendo explains the importance of the dual-screen setup: "Players can look forward to being able to manage their game progress from two different perspectives, enhancing both the speed and strategy of the challenge. For example in a soccer game, users can view the whole game on one screen while simultaneously focusing on an individual soccer player's tackle or goal on the other screen.

"Players will no longer be forced to interrupt game play to shift perspective, such as moving from a wide shot to a close up, or alternating between a character's ongoing battle and a map of the environment. Nintendo DS makes it possible to perform the tasks in real time by simply glancing from one screen to the other."

Today's revelation is just the beginning, according to the company. The bulk of information on the machine will be unveiled at May's Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

"We have developed Nintendo DS based upon a completely different concept from existing game devices in order to provide players with a unique entertainment experience for the 21st century," explained Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president.

Look for much more on the Nintendo DS soon.

My first comic went over fairly well. Some laughed, others turned their heads and asked 'why?'. At this moment I began brainstorming for ideas and ultimately realized the potential for a creative series.

<i>Comic originally posted 2003-08-07</i>