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A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log eBay's purloined prize for sale -- on eBay - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Has your mind ever been changed by something you read on the Internet? Discuss the culture of online debate in Table Talk's Digital Culture area   Search for technology books, software and more at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y First Amendment wins another round online By Janelle Brown Court rules against Net censorship bill (02/02/99) The resurrection of Golgotha By Howard Wen Volunteer programmers rescue a defunct company's software -- and produce a do-it-yourself tool for building 3-D games (02/01/99) The Web's identity crisis By Scott Rosenberg Intel's processor-I.D. gaffe shows how badly tech companies want to know who you are and where you live (01/29/99) The 21st Challenge No. 18: Microsoft antitrust haiku By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau What if lawyers argued in haiku form? (01/29/99) Glory among the geeks By Peter Wayner For serious programmers, contributing code to Linux pays off not in dollars but in respect (01/28/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST REVIEWS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

-------------------SIMCITY IS BACK -- AND MANAGING MUNICIPAL i------------UTILITIES HAS NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN.   BY ANDREW LEONARD I knew I was hooked when I didn't think twice about sending in the cops to kick some hippie ass. How dare those freaks set fire to my toxic waste plant! Suddenly, I knew exactly how Rudy Giuliani feels when some namby-pamby bleeding heart starts whining about the barricades in front of City Hall. It's not as if I didn't care about the risks involved in converting nerve gas into extra creamy peanut butter; sure I did. But that factory was generating precious capital for my budding city -- the kind of dollars that pay for schools and hospitals and homeless shelters. And now it was on fire! I listened to the sound of the police sirens I had summoned with grim satisfaction. I was pissed. And, if I may zoom out a meta-level or two, I was also relieved. As a game reviewer, I had committed the unprofessional, partisan sin of badly wanting SimCity 3000 -- the latest installment in Maxis' hugely popular city-building simulation franchise -- to succeed. But before even popping the CD-ROM into my computer, I feared the game was bound to fail. The original SimCity and its sequel, SimCity 2000, had been just too much fun. How many hours had I joyously squandered way back in 1993, showering my beloved citizens with marinas and museums and a subway system that beggared description, watching with glee as intricately detailed airports and skyscrapers blossomed on my computer screen? SimCity occupies a special place in my heart. Even as I waited for SimCity 3000 to load, nostalgia overwhelmed me. In 1993, the possibilities offered by this brilliantly realized simulation game -- in its then-latest incarnation as SimCity 2000 -- seemed to symbolize a particular kind of excitement inherent in the personal computer. For me, it was all happening at once. When I wasn't building seaports and cold fusion plants, I was discovering the joys of e-mail and alarming my wife and sister with grandiose blather about the revolutionary potential of my brand new 486 IBM clone. And heck -- in late 1993, the World Wide Web was beginning to take off with all the exuberance and breakneck acceleration of a thriving SimCity! So great was my fanhood that I wangled a freelance assignment to profile the company Maxis -- headquartered just over the Berkeley Hills in beautiful Orinda. I remember being charmed when Maxis co-founder and CEO Jeff Braun told me he had chosen the company's Orinda location precisely because it adjoined a subway station. The incentives to public transit in SimCity weren't an accident -- they represented the fundamental beliefs of the company's founders. SimCity, at heart, was more than a game, it was a lesson in the inter-relatedness of things. Sure, some of the underlying assumptions seemed based on Reaganesque supply-side theories: If you raise taxes, industry flees. But it wasn't quite that simple. Pollution control, traffic relief, education -- there were good reasons for taxes, as well. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Things are different in 1999 -- but the SimCitizens won me over all over again