Apparently someone's translated and rebalanced the bootleg Chinese NES remake of FF7.

Oh and also the fan retranslation of FF7PC is done, though from skimming the thread it looks like you might want to wait until release 2 for the initial issues to get worked out.

That's actually pretty close to the plot of (spoilertagging the name of the book because this is kinda the whodunnit, though it's pretty unsurprising by the time it gets there) [spoiler]Rule 34 by Charles Stross[/spoiler].  Though that's exactly the book I was thinking of when I said I'd read stories with similar premises but they still hinged on the question of computer becoming sentient.

I don't remember the exact details, but -- spoilers for the same book -- [spoiler]a complex data-gathering tool is repurposed as a spam filter, and ultimately it starts orchestrating elaborate murders of people involved in the spam supply chain, by analyzing their browser and purchasing history.  Household appliance malfunctions and when they go to 3D print a replacement part, the filter changes the schematic so that the part will be faulty and cause a lethal malfunction, that sort of thing.[/spoiler]

Actually, you know what I'd really like to see?

The "killer AI" trope's been done to death but I can't say I've seen anyone do it effectively based on current, second-decade-of-the-twenty-first-century technology.  Something like a killer Watson.  (The IBM one, not the Martin Freeman one.)

I've seen stories that came close, but they tended to hinge around the usual idea of a machine becoming conscious.  That's not what I'm talking about.  I'd like to see one where the machine is quite clearly not conscious, can't pass a Turing test, can respond accurately to simple English questions but will get confused by complex ones and start spouting nonsensical gibberish.  Something that's highly sophisticated but not actually any more sophisticated than actual technology we have right here on Earth right now.

I think there's a lot you could do with an antagonist like that.  It would be capable of extremely complex strategies and attacks but also have huge, exploitable weaknesses; it would presumably not initially occur to the heroes that they were fighting a computer instead of a person; and it could leave a trail of false clues and misdirection not because it's smart and covering its tracks but simply because computers do weird shit and the more complex the computer the more complex its math and the greater potential for it to do something and humans not to be able to figure out why it just did that.

I don't know if Sherlock's the right show to do something like that or not.  It's hit-or-miss in its treatment of modern technology, and its more science-fictional episodes tend to be problematic.

On the other hand, it's usually proven pretty good about demonstrating the limitations of technology (Irene Adler's melting phone notwithstanding), and I think it would be appropriate to follow up an episode where [spoiler]the villain turns out not to be using an advanced custom version of Google Glass but rather just to have a photographic memory[/spoiler] with one where [spoiler]Moriarty leaves a supercomputer behind to fuck with people[/spoiler].

Gaiman's been trying to get the rights to finish his arc for 20 years now, yeah.  Started a company with the explicit purpose of acquiring the rights; eventually sold it to Marvel.  The long-running legal dispute with McFarlane was actually kind of a side effect of the whole thing.

Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gilligan's Island.

That seems like a pretty good idea given the complaints about using the trackpad on games designed for digital controls.  Plus it'll be cheaper.

Can't say I'm sorry to see the touchscreen go.  I've got plenty of touchscreen games on my phone and DS.

"I'm really good at killing,", says President who keeps a kill list.

For what it's worth, saying "doesn't consider the war to be his" is pretty facetious. Obama is the president and expanded the US forces in Afghanistan in 2009. He maintains the drone program and has expanded it into other countries. And the NSA has been growing under leaps and bounds under his command.

Well, there's an argument to be made that he's really just continuing what the last guy did.

Which is small fucking comfort but absolutely the most important lesson everybody on either partisan side needs to learn here: if it's not okay when the other guy does it, then it's not okay when your guy does it, and vice-versa; and even if you trust the guy in charge now, the other party could be back in control in a couple of years.

(Maybe.  Demographics at this point strongly suggest that the President will continue to be a Democrat, the House will continue to be Republican, and the Senate will continue to be split, probably for quite some time.  But I think the larger point that you can't trust any of 'em is probably a good one for people to learn.  Course, there's the argument to be made that that leads to voter apathy and makes things even worse, so hey, whole new set of problems.)

There's also a tool called Vanilla Porter (mmmm, vanilla porter) which can do an export/import from an existing forum into Vanilla.  It says it supports SMF.  In which case there might be a third option besides the two in the poll up top.

Obviously there are a lot of moving parts and plenty of potential for breakage in an export/import operation, but it might be worth at least trying it and seeing if it works satisfactorily.  And then if it doesn't we can always fall back to the "keep the old boards on a subdomain and start fresh" option.

Is there anybody not using the Bronto theme here? Raise your hand*

I used to work jobs where I had a lot of downtime (mostly waiting for laptops to image).  It's bad enough to be reading this thing at work WITHOUT it being bright pink.

*And be banned for life

Basically I just hate infinite scroll and consider it the worst thing that ever happened to the internet and would like to avoid it as much as possible.

Karma is like, a huge drama magnet.

I'd like to keep the old threads archived somewhere but I'm perfectly okay with starting over.  Can't add much in the way of recommendations because I haven't really kept tabs on new software.

My usual complaints still apply: I think Guild Hall was and is a bad idea, and we've got too many subforums and megathreads.  BUT each serves its purpose in some way too.  It's nice to have a good, easy way of organizing things.

And I favor something with a robust means of keeping spammers and, say, eloH out.

Something with better phone support might be a good idea.  And the search function here's pretty hit-or-miss.  And if we do end up with something similar to our current boards/threads categorization, it'd be nice if splitmerging were a quicker process (which I suppose is also implicit in "better phone support").

I DO like our library of emoticons and the ease of spoilertagging and posting YouTube videos.