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I had 3 annoying Gilette ads about their Fusion razor. Full blown flash with sound. How is this relevant to a tech/geek site? Ars, I really don't care what razor a douchebag steroid abusing baseball player uses. No really, I don't.

Apparently it is more relevant than you realize. Seriously. It's real.

Could it really be as simple as that?

If you want that to work, include photocopies of recipts for games you did buy. Because otherwise everyone will assume you're the the guy on the right.

Right Here.

Developers and franchise holders need to learn not to sign with Activision. Or at the very least, avoid letting their franchise get locked in and their companies bought out.

Look at the list of franchises Activision has "run into the fucking ground" over the years.

Tony Hawk and the O2 Sports line? Check. And sadly, two of the best games in that line - Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarding, Mat Hoffman Pro BMX - weren't skateboarding, and were probably better for not surviving since they existed in the merits of the sport rather than the "yeah skateboarders are a bunch of vandals and criminals and you can be thieves and thugs just like them" crap message of the later games.

Spider-Man games? Oh good fucking grief. Just when we thought they had learned their lesson, since Spidey 2 for PS2/Xbox was stellar (exception made for the really crappy DS and PSP ports that still used the old Spidey-1 engine), out comes Spidey 3 and it's a completely retarded title with psychotic, seizure-looking "fighting" and "press X to not die" boss battles. Sigh. Then they went and tried to redeem the engine with "Prototype"... good concept, poor execution.

In fact, their games based on Marvel in general have been crappier and crappier. The "storyline" of Ultimate Alliance 2 was pure turdburger, and the gameplay is just so much recycled crap. We lost a great fighting game franchise when Marvel went "Activision exclusive" and Marvel vs Capcom died, but what did they replace it with? Stinker after stinker of X-men "fighting game" titles, Baldurs-Gate-Lite beat-em-up "RPG" titles, and more stinky steaming turdburger movie tie-in titles than you can think of.

Their James Bond "let's rip off the CoD engine and try to make a spy game" titles? Oh god. Especially the Quantum of Solace "Well we never finished the Casino Royale game so we'll just stick the levels in this one" crap.

Guitar Hero? Let's see. Guitar Hero 1-4, "World Tour", 5, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Metallica, "Smash Hits", Band Hero, DJ Hero, "Rocks the 80s", "Greatest Hits", Guitar Hero Mobile, Guitar Hero On Tour, Guitar Hero On Tour Decades, Guitar Hero "Backstage Pass", "Guitar Hero Game Trivia Quiz for iPhone", "Guitar Hero Carabiner" for mobile phones... Can we say franchise fatigue? Yes, I'm pretty sure we can.

It's no surprise why Harmonix picked up, said "fuck it" to their brand name, and just started over with Rock Band. Plus, Activision's online store for music is crap beyond crap, trying to force you to buy everything as album packs with no previews. With Rock Band, I mostly grab the tracks I want one at a time, unless I find a real reason to buy the "pack" or album set, and I listen to the preview first (got burned once by one of their really crap-ass David Bowie covers, never again will I purchase unlistened... but that was my own damn fault for not previewing). And as much as I hate supporting EA over anyone, in the case of Rock Band vs Guitar Hero, EA is the lesser of two evils by far.

Enough is enough... Activision needs to either kick Kotick out, preferably skidding on his face rather than just landing on his fat ass, or else die so the good companies they bought up (Blizzard?) can go back out and be independent and innovative once more.

A) Waste? 200k a week or so was easily bearable on a 56k modem and it hasn't gotten bigger.
B) Every file? I can choose to scan on access, on modify, on create, or never (i.e. only on systemwide scans). And I can blacklist/whitelist certain types of files to always or never be scanned.
C) Huh? I have no idea what this even purports to mean.
D) Uh.. http://itcweb.ecsu.edu/portal/images/symantec01.jpg looks like normal Windows theme to me..
E) Constantly? Thunderbird, my system clock/temp monitor, my IM client, etc all pop up to the top of my cpu for tiny moment and disappear again. My AV sits at 0% all the time unless it's actively scanning a file, and even then it uses typically less than 2% cpu time.
F) Lifetime subscription, never once saw a popup, lrn2powerpoint noob.
G) Wha? I can't ever recall a single time that my AV interfered with my gaming in any way. Windows firewall, punkbuster version mismatching, etc, but never my AV.
H) Right, because blaster et al that exploit such vulnerabilities aren't real, only something that has no payload whatsoever is a real threat. I'm honestly not even sure that if I had the heuristic protections on (that would increase, perhaps, the problems in a-g) that it wouldn't catch that.

How can you whine about network use for AV but dismiss the exact same thing (sending spam) when it's a virus? My AV generally works in the background. Have you ever tried to use a computer infected with Vundo?

Either you're an epic troll or you're just braindead. (Oblig PA: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/9/19/)

Is SONY going to make my PS3 explode?

No, but every twenty minutes a kitten will come out.

That'll be fixed in the next update though.

Is SONY going to make my PS3 explode?

No, but every twenty minutes a kitten will come out.

That'll be fixed in the next update though.

I like to think that my users would remember the error that caused them to get a swift kick in the balls. And if they forgot it anyhow, I could always help them reproduce it.

That is indeed a tempting thought. Maybe get one of these.

Yeah, total slashvertisement. It reads just like those "Acai Berry EXPOSED" ads that are just so awesome.

If using your product is painful, then the user will find an alternative.

Well, actually...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/

I think you meant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/

I heartily agree, it's the only way out of this http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/otherwise infinite loop. And it's not like somebody else is going to sit there and say, "No I don't want your money."

Here.

I guess I don't really help out with stopping the stereotype though. I often answer with "FM Principal" (F*cking Magic) when I fix something and don't know what exactly the fix was

Ah, the Proximity Of Genius effect ("hey it suddenly works now you're here") and it's dark-side equivalent the Gabriel Effect.

Well, studying meteorites that are here on earth is still a way of discovering elements potentially not from this earth. While you mull that over, I suggest some self reflection.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/

Penny Arcade has a point, there is a real reason studios are worried about piracy. What you are doing will in no way end the attempts by the studio to enforce stricter and stricter controls. If that were your goal, you would neither purchase their products, nor would you pirate them.

But ending the DRM is not really your goal, right? Your goal is to watch their movies in the way you want to, and you have more or less achieved that, at the same time as getting them free. Good job.

Featuring an easy to learn lift and turn interface, people can pick up a Book and just start reading! And Book has been specifically designed to interoperate with your existing Shelves(tm).

Ah, brings to mind the old Penny Arcade about the iPod from 2003. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/5/28/

There are a class of problems that can most easily be solved by fundamental changes in human behaviour. This will never happen, unfortunately.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/25/ See, you missed the user names, which are also funny

oblig PA

You're too old, grandpa. If you're not telling everybody the most minute detail of your day then you're just not hip anymore.

Go play with your 8bit console, pops!

Require each player to buy a copy of the game. The first StarCraft had spawn installations, and a $50 game quickly becomes a $200 game when mom and dad have to buy a copy for each PC.

And heck, you have to buy extra computers for your friends to play on, so that's even more money! Screw you Blizzard!

Reminds me of this comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/8/25/

"The internet is DOWN!!"

Which one?

Now my dog can be a twitter shitter too!

... a staggering 95% of User Generated Content is either malicious in nature or spam.

Considering 95% of internet users are malicious (see GIFT), it's hardly staggering that 95% of user generated content is malicious too. :p

Really now it can't be any worse than what his son has managed to accomplish.

Penny Arcade is spot on with this

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/15/

Obligatory Penny Arcade comic.

In my experience Win7 seems to require fewer resources than Vista - I can't ever imagine Vista on a netbook, but 7 does a nice enough job, and you might not consider all that graphical "bling" to be functionality but it has an overhead (and the Win7 implementation is much better than Vista's was).

I'll let Penny Arcade sum up my Win7 experience to date.

You've repressed the memory because it was too painful to re-live.

Here, let me share the pain

Heh... Yes, she will rue it. Rue it hard.

Not you!

I'm sorry, I felt strangely compelled to post that.

Tycho has a point.

My prediction: that the massive amount of hype built up for this will mean a spectacular write-up of the device regardless of the quality - or else there will be a lot of egg on various 'tech reporters' faces. Also I loved the penny-arcade comic on this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/22/

Mac users are bought

Where do I get one? Is there a code word I have to use at the Apple store? When I get it home, will it, like, you know, do "stuff" to me?

Actually, I think some of them probably would.

Almost as craptacualr as the reserachers from the front page, who unfortunately got fixed in the meantime :)

Reserachers?
I bet they are craptacualr...

Only if you call The Sims a game...

That they'll make a hojillion dollars more than they'll lose in setting up and maintaining their paywall, and in reduced advertising revenue from all the eyeballs that they'll lose?

Really? That's some serious hubris they're pitching there.

Too many cables?

Part 1
Part 2

Too many cables?

Part 1
Part 2

You can shove the gaming press around

That much has got to be pretty obvious to the whole industry already. Game journalism is corrupt and/or done by complete idiots.

Obligatory penny arcade reference. There's more unquestioning repeating of press releases than there is in political journalism. In that case, there seemed to be more controversy that reporters were doing more than advertising.

Look in any gaming magazine and you'll be hard pressed to find anything below 7/10, even for games that are terrible. The whole numbering scheme itself is absurd to begin with, there's not a universal set of criteria by which to judge how good a game is, and you can't quantify game quality. Some reviews even go down to decimal points. This game is a 9.25? Where did that 0.25 come from? Partial credit for something? It seems to me that the only reason for a number is that video game publishers have noticed a strong correlation between a number from a review and the number on their profits, and have also noticed that magically reviews don't actually go down even halfway down the scale when they pay for advertising on those game journalism websites or magazines.

And it's pretty obvious that the reviews are paid for. The reviewers got room and board paid for? Not as bad as Eidos, at least this doesn't appear to be firing reviewers who don't give the score you paid for.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/04/06/

They had to develop techniques to counter certain types of misuse...

You know that's just going to result in an ObPennyArcade [potentially NSFW], right?

No, it's not. This is the difference.

I think way too much is being made over a decision to hand-wave web shooters instead of wasting screen time and attention to the montage of Peter's attempts to create the advanced tech, both the nozzle and the web fluid, required for the mechanical version. These are action movies, and there is little to no science in action movies, only tech. When the tech is not pre-existing and is not hand-waved as "developed by a multinational corporation," it must be explained. When you already have one spider bite giving someone enhanced danger sense, crazy physical strength, and wall-climbing abilities, why not toss in web-slinging and free up a slow five minutes for more explosions?

Of course the villains (for the most part) have advanced tech of their own--they would otherwise fail to provide the entertainment value. Unless it's an X-men kind of universe where mutants are common, villains must have a way to use vast amounts of power for their evil deeds; otherwise the whole film is going to be a ho-hum series of thwarted muggings. The easiest way to give them superpowers is to make them technological superpowers and explain them by saying, "some company threw enough money at the idea to make it happen." This is of course also fantasy, but it's a staple that nobody takes issue with.

And, to be frank, tech DOES have negative social influences, though "evil" is too strong a word for them and there are positives too. The society we live in extends breadth at the cost of depth. Myspa--er, Facebook friends are more numerous and less satisfying as flesh-and-blood friends. The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory holds true. You probably do not know your neighbors. Despite the unquestionable increases in quality of life over the past hundred years, people are more stressed out than ever before. This is because we have gotten into the habit of modifying our behavior to better suit the needs of the tech we use, because the opposite is only lately becoming plausible. The Spider-Man villains were driven crazy by their tech: the Green Goblin had his serum and Doc Ock's harness hacked his mind. These are big-screen sized caricatures of the small sacrifices we make for techne all the time.

If there is some sort of message in these films about science and technology, which I really doubt, it is not "science is evil" but "ensure that technology serves you and not the other way around."

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/8/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/21/ applies too.

Obligatory