Build Date: Sat Feb 22 15:10:41 2025 UTC
I am Leonard Nimoy
-- Spock
Fight board-game hegemony!
2001-11-04 16:47:48
52 cards and a copy of Hoyle can keep a handful of sex-starved shipmates docile for days on end before they degenerate to strip poker. With that in mind, the intellectual freedom posse give you the "piecepack" in the hopes that it will do for board games what the standard 52-card deck does for card games.
But it is not without some struggle! The current reigning champion in this arena is Looney Labs with their incredibly popular Icehouse Martian Chess Set These sixty colored pyramids (four colors, three sizes, five pieces per color/size combination) have been combined to make countless new games.
But the original game these pieces were designed for was granted a patent, threatening freely redistributable implementations of the game!
Fortunately for right-thinking individuals the world over, one stalwart Icehouse game developer has rebelled, and is designing his own freely redistributable and modifiable game set specification. As one fellow Icegamer explained:
...I have extensive notes from playtesting that I intend to incorporate into the next version of the IceGammon rules, but may not get around to it for a while, as I have been focusing less on Icehouse games and more on piecepack games <http://www.piecepack.org/>, as the Icehouse specification is patented, whereas the piecepack specification is in the public domain, and I am more interested in working with a free game system (free as in free speech, not free beer; see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/>). Despite the currently small number of piecepack games, as opposed to the relatively large number of Icehouse games, more and more piecepack games are being released (one guy is writing a book of 100 piecepack games), and my belief is that the piecepack is at the cutting edge of game system development.
The good news on both fronts is that the Icehouse patent was never renewed after its initial 8-year period, so the piecepack may in future include Icehouse pyramids. Beaujolais to free software embracing and encorporating formerly proprietary technology! Our pointy-pyramid technology will bring pointy pyramids to those who could not otherwise participate in novel game development, and produce a community of like-minded game h@x0rz who will one day become the most sought-after personnel at board-game startups in the great boom years of 201x! THE IPOS WILL BE INCONCIEVABLE!
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Three Days and 25 Spocktails: A Cautionary Tale
Johnnie Royale picked me up from the dental surgery. I felt warm, safe, cradled in the anathesia's loving embrace. The pharmacy downstairs gave me a bottle of Vicodin and a few instructions: take it with food, don't mix with alcohol, don't operate heavy machinery. I put it in my pocket and we left. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to a bar?" asked Johnnie. (More...)
It’s election night. My wife and I are holed-up in this hotel that my political party has rented out for the evening. Outside, people are being violently beaten for whom they voted for. Is this South Africa? Perhaps we’re in Haiti or some Southern state during the 60’s. Of all the places where this sort of thing happens, it’s mind-boggling that we are in Portland, Maine. (More...)
It's winter in Idaho, and Boise personality "Lego-Man" reports on how he celebrated Thanksgiving. "I fed my wife, mother and sister wine slurpies!" (More...)
Poor Metallica. All they want is to continue to put out the same weak "Heavy Metal" they've been churning out since the "And Justice For All" days? and make gooey wads of cash in the process. The problem is, people aren't buying their bound for the heavy metal scrap heap, over-produced, uninspired, tired crap. And let's face it, their various commercial endorsements won't pay for the lifestyle they've become comfortably accustomed to. Resorting to lawsuits makes perfect sense, when you need spending money. But just one lawsuit isn't going to pay their bills. So, to aid Metallica, I've composed an open letter to the boys in the band, with suggestions as to whom else they might sic their lapdog lawyers on... (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
Johnnie Royale's Guide to Wakes
Wakes can present problems for Bad People of the Future. (If you don't know what a BPotF is, you need to read more of the PDJ.) Sure, your friend is gone and you miss him and that really sucks; it does, I know. But all Bad People of the Future are gonna die, and they have all accepted that fact. They do deserve, however, to have one final kickass party to celebrate all the bad things they've done in the past, present and future. And you, as a friend, have to make sure that their desire for a final send off is well executed (sorry for the pun). That's just the way of BPotFdom. (More...)
