I'm not arguing for us to go back to sticks and weeds for our food supply, but if you set up a farming environment where the only way to guarantee survival of your animals is continual, therapeutic antibiotics, you're doing it wrong.
First, I own an ebook. I bought an reb1200 from ebay once they opened their software and allowed me to load whatever i wanted to. I've bougth 5-10 books from baen (since their content is cheap, completely open format, and stuff I want to read).
The rest i've downloaded.
The problem with ebook readers isn't the hardware and whatnot. It's the content.
They're not content on fucking you on the price (A n ebook is NOT WORTH FULL BOOK PRICE).
They're not content fucking you with the limited selection.
They have to saddle the content with absolute bullshit DRM.
Give me cheap content (allofmp3.com for books!), solid hardware, and back the fuck off.
I'll buy your content if it's value added. Baen releases their books in ebook format months before they come out in stores. I'll buy your content if it's affordable. I will NOT buy your content if it self destructs or leeches onto some oddball piece of hardware.
At the end of the day, ebooks will become popular when they become usable pieces of electronics and not "content delivery systems".
Okay so it's fast.. no question.. Amazing feature set as well..
but it requires a 480 watt power supply
and 2 power connections... And it also has what looks to be a vacuum cleaner tied to it..
I currently use a shuttle skn41g2 for my main box.. I love the sff pc's. This won't work in that.. It would make the includied power supply very sad.
My HTPC box uses an antec sonata with a fanless radeon 9000, and ultra quiet everything else.. Forget using this in a quiet pc as well
I don't care for nvidia's trend towards hideously loud, bulky, power hungry video cards.. They might perform well, but for normal use, i'd prefer something smaller and quieter.. and for god's sake, give me an external power supply.. heh
Actually to be fairly morbid, a more effective bioweapon has a long gestation period, long communicability period, and very long debilitating death cycle.
If you have thousands of patients tying up the medical infrastructure, you inflict multiple casualties per infection.
Additionally, you increase the chance of the medical professionals contracting the disease.
So i've been running an htpc for a bit, and i love it.
In fact, even my wife loves it.. which is a feat
I used it for mp3 playback, streaming mp3's, dvd upsampling and playback and television watching. I use a 100 hour directtivo for pvr stuff.
It's an athlon 1800+, 512 megs of ram, radeon 9000, guillemot soundcard with hacked drivers running optical out to the receiver
It's in an antec sonata, and is using zalman cooling stuff for everything.. the vidcard has no fan.. That machine is quieter than the tivo.
It's all running vga straight back to an infocus x1 projector showing on a 92" vutec silverstar screen
I control it all with a gyration ultra mouse/kbd combo
Software wise, i use zoomplayer with the cinemaster video codecs going through ffdshow for dvd playback and dscaler for tv watching. It's all running xp professional because i'm not particluarly linux savvy.
That setup has replaced my television completely. dscaler does a wonderful job of managing the tv signal, and zoomplayer is just phenomenal.
When we did LOTR:TT extended cut, i ripped both discs to the hard drive, added in trailers on the front end, psa's from the 60's, and spliced in a 10 minute dancing candy intermission in the middle.
Just hit play, and it goes magically.
The only complaint i have is the lack of useful hdtv cards. You can receive ota signals, with minimal pvr support, but that's it. Nobody supports signal over cable lines, or anything fancy.
I assume i'll need some sort of gray market hardware in the future to do that..
Oh yeah.. the total cost of all of this was less than a decent lcd hdtv set.. and you get a whole lot more..
If you can't convince you're wife/significant other with the raw windows/linux interface, look at some of the frontends. I used myhtpc (myhtpc.net) for a bit, and it was first rate..
I abandoned it since my wife is savvy enough to figure it out herself..
For more info, go to avsforum.com and read their htpc forums.. or linux htpc forums as you desire..
So i researched these for my wifes birthday (today as a matter of fact, along with mine as well.. heh.. yeah same bday..)
Sirius has no commercials on the music feeds,and it has nothing to do with clearchannel. the hardware was a little more limited, but i still prefer them.
we tried to get the audiovox pnp2 unit (house/car portable bit), but the cigarette lighter in the car wasnt connected, so i went with a panasonic head unit.
after a bunch of wiring later, it all worked.. except for the antenna.. it had a bad wire.. but after replacing that it worked very well..
so i really like the overall sound quality.. arguably, this is in a jeep wrangler, so it's not perfect, but it's better than the crummy mp3 discs i usually listen too..
The feeds are good, wide variety, good talk channels, very very few dropouts in austin texas. Truly the way music was meant to be listened too..
Okay.. I know the segway is pretty useless for day to day life, but I was fortunate enough to actually use one in a few situations during my vacation in december...
Seadream Yacht Club (a cruise line), has 4 segways per ship for passenger use (the ships are very small, so that's actually an okay number).
We went on our cruise the week after they got them, so they were still experimenting with their itinerary. We learned how to use them in nassau, on the pier right off of the ship.
They work exactly as every test driver has stated.. Once you get comfortable on them, you just think about moving forward and you go forward. It's all based off of the weight distribution on your feet. There's a tendency to lean forward to try and make it go faster, but this goes away eventually.
Turning is a little weirder as it's geared off of your hand motion (sort of like a motorcycle throttle). If you are going full speed forward (depending on the key your using to control the max speed), and turn, you're going to fall off. That was something we had to learn to deal with..
Anyhow.. after we learned how to drive them, we got to use them in a heavy pedestrian traffic area.. Key West. We used them for a quick tour of the island, driving on the streets and sidewalks, weaving into and out of traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians flawlessly. They stop on a dime, turn on a dime, and will throw you to the ground on a dime if you're not careful.
For day to day use (for most people), they're completely useless. For people who need to interact with pedestrian traffic, they're great.
The place i'd like to see them used more is in the vacation industry. Seadream is planning on using them for tours of portofino, and other places in europe. This is where it would truly shine.
The last thing that I find a little weird is that Seadream had a decent amount of trouble actually getting segway to talk to them and sell them units. For a company thats having problems moving product, they should probably change their policy in dealin with outside vendors.
Sure they only wanted 8 or 10 of them, but given the clientele and quantity of people who will get to use/see them, it's free advertising.
If they could get them to be a little lighter (under the 86 pounds they're at now), and a little more collapsible (so you could carry it with you on vacation), and made them a little cheaper (1500 bux or so)..
I think they've got a chance.. Otherwise it's just a novelty
This is an article about Chuck Hagel who is a nebraska representative. He ran for office and won in a very close run off, and controls a large interest in the private company that counted the votes in his runoff election.
The majority of the information in the above blog came from http://blackboxvoting.com/, which is a book about the future of electronic voting.
Just some fairly creepy stuff that's turned me off towards any sort of private computerized voting.
Somewhere along the line food got bastardized.. People accept prepackaged, canned, frozen, freeze dried, shrink wrapped whozits whatsits and god knows what else as "food"
Even the recipes in this book, although geared towards geeks or bachelors, falls prey to the same problem..
People have become convinced that prepackaged food is quicker, and better than actually COOKING something..
I'd urge anyone who likes to eat.. (you don't have to like to cook.. I don't like cooking, but i like to eat, so its an ends to mean)
Next time you go shopping.. Skip the boxed meals.. Skip the frozen meals.. (You can buy frozen vegetables if you don't want to store produce)
Pick up steaks, burgers, fish, shrimp, ANYTHING other than boxed macaroni and cheeze..
Buy real butter.. not margarine, not ICBINB..
Spring for some olive oil (do some reading on the grades, or buy some of each)
Take it all home, and cook some real food..
You won't be sorry..
And to facilitate this new eating experience.. Here's a quick steak recipe (thanks to alton brown)
Take 1 steak. (I like ny strips, but i think ribeyes work a bit better)
Take a cast iron, or solid metal pan
Put pan in 500 degree oven for 10 minutes
Cover steak in seasoning (Salt and pepper work nicely)
Coat steak lightly in oil
REmove pan, put on highest temperature stovetop burner
Turn on vent fan or unplug smoke detectors (IMPORTANT.. THIS MAKES A LOT OF SMOKE.)
Sear steak for 30-45 seconds each side (just let it sit)
Put entire pan into oven for 2 minutes
Flip steak, cook for 1.5-2 more minutes (depending on doneness)
Remove steak from oven
Let sit for 3 minutes (otherwise the juices will leak out)
The article I read in Newseek talked about the moxie being a VERY tightly controlled box..
It has a full suite of drm for both the music and video you load/record onto it.
And at the risk of sounding sacrilegious, it read like a marketeers wet dream. They're concentrating on how they can sell more services and product with it..
Microsoft/media companies get hardware manufacturers to implement wma into most/all dvd/cd player hardware.
Wma is plainly readable on cdrom drives.
Combine this with encrypted redbook tracks and wma media players, and viola...
A set of audio/data cd's that can be played on portable machines, played on dvd/cd players, played on your computer, but can't be ripped into an "open" format..
And yeah i know the encryption would be broken.. But all in all it sounds like a straightforward controlling strategy.. The media corps get the control they want, and microsoft gets a bigger share of a new market..
Quick review and advice
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Uplink is a phenomenal game. I picked it up a month or 3 ago when i came across the demo..
I ordered the full version, received it about 3 weeks later, and played the crap out of it.
Take everything from the demo and amplify it by an order of magnitude.. Not only did they add all kidns of extremely advanced missions, there's a cool as all hell overriding plot line..
AND.. Its a plot line that you get to dynamically control.. Similiar to the branching fallout did (but a little more freeform)
All in all a great product.. IF you get it, make sure to dig up the "hidden" development journals..
And make SURE to get the patch. It fixed a big recurring crash i was having..
Great game from a teeny tiny developer..
The true potential for the XBOX
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
is the hardware itself..
The launch titles suck.. Rehashed fighting/racing/whatever games.. extreme sports, extreme driving, extreme first person shooters with a console controller..blech..
But what we've got is a pc.. Fast as hell nvidia chipset, hardrive, network card, dvd drive..
Tell me someone isn't going to turn that into some cool as hell hardware.. slap a bigger hardrive into, make an mp3 box.. slap an even bigger hardrive into it, turn it into a pvr..
Take it even further.. turn it into the convergence device people have been talking about for the past 10 years.. Except instead of paying 999.99 for it, buy it for 299 (or less when the price drops)..
I think as a piece of hardware its got great potential...
As a console.. well its motsos.. (More of the same old s..t)
lastly.. for your truly rabid anti-ms people..
The XBOX represents the only true way you can DIRECTLY damage microsoft through buying things.. Every unit they sell is sold at a loss.. Buy one.. Hack the hardware.. make it do stuff its not supposed to do.. And don't buy any software for it:)
Okay maybe the logic's a little spurious.. But it sounds good on paper:)
But this appears to be the last of the sir-tech games..
If i remember correctly, Sir-Tech's publishing arm went out of business around 15-18 months ago.. Their development house struggled for a while afterwards, finished wizardry 8 and one other title I don't remember..
Wizardry 8 languished, finished, for a while.. They didn't have a publisher.. I think somewhere during that period they shut down operations (Or at least laid off a LOT of people)
And now wizardry 8 is out.. An extremely depressing moment for computer gaming.. One of the longtime companies and founders of PC gaming is gone..
Sure sir-tech had some big stinkers.. Virus, Druid.. But they also did some of the truly great games. Jagged alliance, Wizardry..
With Interplay foundering, sir-tech gone, Origin DOA, SSI on its last breaths.. Well the old school rpg makers are gone.. Sorta depressing if you ask me..
BUT! Its not all lost.. We've got new blood on the horizon.. Mostly in the shape of those rascally canadians, Bioware.. And even the longtime scapegoat.. Bethesda..
So we've lost the old school.. Which is depressing from a historical standpoint.. But we've still got RPG developers building games that we couldn't have even dreamed of 15 years ago..
I picked this one up on wednesday, and sprung for the limited edition...
Its 10 bux more, but comes in a very nice tin box.. It also includes a foldout tech tree, and a making of video cd...
I'm not sure if the making of cd is any good, but the tech tree is nice.. And the box absolutely rules...
My impressions of it so far (after a VERY short play period)..
It feels like old school civ, but much nicer.. Very clean art, smooth animations, decent music.. The interface is updated quite nicely..
The inclusion of culture will take some getting used to, as well as the rest of the changes.. I think the tech tree is smaller than the older ones, or i've become spoiled with the gargantuan tech trees of Alpha Centauri/MOO2..
The only downside i've seen so far is that the mouse scrolling seems very choppy.. it scrolls using tiles, and the tiles are fairly large.. so its sorta chunks around when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.. (This is on an 800 with 512 megs of ram)..
There are a few known bugs, mostly relating to the game trying to set an incorrect refresh rate in windows xp (Solution is to put xp into 98/me mode)..
Hoepfully this weekend i'll be able to get a better idea of the changes.. But so far it looks great..
In the beginning, we had Dune 2... A fairly straightforward rts.. Not particularly strategic, and completely lacking in multiplay..
Then came warcraft 1.. Multiplayer was added, so the depth, or lack thereof of the game became evident.. It was still based around minimal strategy.. (Very little unit differentiation, fairly unbalanced)
Then came command and conquer.. Still unbalanced, but slightly more strategic.. The true precursor of rts victories involving overwhelming force as opposed to subterfuge or attrition..
Then came warcraft 2.. A good logical extension.. SLightly simpler game dynamic, but similiar concept.. Some slight skirmishes, some resource allocation and research, but still based around the idealogy of overwhelming force.. You either crush someone, or you lose.. No battle lines..
Then the big one.. Total Annihilation (From the now defunct Cavedog)
Based around a HUGE number of units, dramatically different resource harvesting model, and a more "warfare" like playstyle.
TA was one of the first games to truly represent the idea of defensive gameplay, and a war of attrition.. battle lines became drawn, conflict ocurred in that geographic area, and you had an ebb and flow of combat..
Winning a TA match didn't usually involve overwhelming force deployment and steamrolling over someone, but instead sneaky tactics and superior resource management.
The inclusion of battlefield recovery of destroyed hulks, and extreme range indirect artillery only added to this feel..
Development continued along the "clickfest" or faster paced route with Starcraft, the rest of the Command and COnquer series, and I assume Warcraft 3..
Development on the flipside continued with Earth 2150, Moon Project, and should be continued by Empire Earth (At least by my take on the beta)
We've seen a few "Crossover" types.. Age of Kings springs to mind.. and to a greater degree, Cossacks..
And then we've got the true extremes.. The introduction of turn based depth in a real time environment.. I'm not entirely clear what the root for these games were, but its developed from the simcity style Transport Tycoon, through Pax Imperia, Railroad Tycoon to games like Europa Universalis, Starships Unlimited, and even Monopoly Tycoon(I'd highly reccomend looking at Europa Universalis 2 when it releases.. Especially if you're a history buff)...
There are plenty of RTS games that require insane amounts of strategy.. and a lot of them even have the interfaces to support it..
Note the added vowels and exclamations for emphasis
:)
Re:I can't see these _not_ getting foxed.
on
Ultima Revived
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· Score: 3, Informative
Origin doesn't own the rights to anything... they aren't even a seperate company anymore.. (And really haven't been for 10 years or so)
All ip for all licenses/products/properties for any game produced by any company owned by EA is owned by EA directly..
Richard Garriott retains the rights to Lord British, but sold the rights to Ultima and everything else Origin had produced when the company was sold in the early 90's..
Which makes the quote from the article even more amusing :
""EA owns the rights to Ultima and all of its characters, and in this case, no permission was requested or granted," said Jeff Brown, an Electronic Arts spokesman. "As for Richard Garriott's approval, that's like getting permission from Toto to remake The Wizard of Oz.""
I'd love to see the rereleases(and maybe one for M.U.L.E. but I get the feeling EA will fox them pretty quickly.. (Fox is the term coined after the shutdown of Aliens Doom by the fox movie studio)
Slashdot Mirror
I saw this as a kid in Looker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odj86eBenWk&feature=related
This isn't genetically engineered, it's a side effect of bad farming practices.
In the same way we've managed to infect our pigs with MRSA http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15kristof.html I think we've managed to kick up yet another variant..
Signs are pointing to a Smithfields Farms hog-farm in Veracruz where the outbreak originated. http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/
I'm not arguing for us to go back to sticks and weeds for our food supply, but if you set up a farming environment where the only way to guarantee survival of your animals is continual, therapeutic antibiotics, you're doing it wrong.
So this issue pisses me off to no end.
First, I own an ebook. I bought an reb1200 from ebay once they opened their software and allowed me to load whatever i wanted to. I've bougth 5-10 books from baen (since their content is cheap, completely open format, and stuff I want to read).
The rest i've downloaded.
The problem with ebook readers isn't the hardware and whatnot. It's the content.
They're not content on fucking you on the price (A n ebook is NOT WORTH FULL BOOK PRICE).
They're not content fucking you with the limited selection.
They have to saddle the content with absolute bullshit DRM.
Give me cheap content (allofmp3.com for books!), solid hardware, and back the fuck off.
I'll buy your content if it's value added. Baen releases their books in ebook format months before they come out in stores. I'll buy your content if it's affordable. I will NOT buy your content if it self destructs or leeches onto some oddball piece of hardware.
At the end of the day, ebooks will become popular when they become usable pieces of electronics and not "content delivery systems".
Okay so it's fast.. no question.. Amazing feature set as well..
but it requires a 480 watt power supply
and 2 power connections... And it also has what looks to be a vacuum cleaner tied to it..
I currently use a shuttle skn41g2 for my main box.. I love the sff pc's. This won't work in that.. It would make the includied power supply very sad.
My HTPC box uses an antec sonata with a fanless radeon 9000, and ultra quiet everything else.. Forget using this in a quiet pc as well
I don't care for nvidia's trend towards hideously loud, bulky, power hungry video cards.. They might perform well, but for normal use, i'd prefer something smaller and quieter.. and for god's sake, give me an external power supply.. heh
That it not be absolutely terrifying looking.
Actually to be fairly morbid, a more effective bioweapon has a long gestation period, long communicability period, and very long debilitating death cycle.
If you have thousands of patients tying up the medical infrastructure, you inflict multiple casualties per infection.
Additionally, you increase the chance of the medical professionals contracting the disease.
A quick death doesn't consume as many resources..
Screen was 1000 dollars.. 6.0 gain vutec silverstar with an INSANE viewing angle..
I got it from the avsforum guys on a powerbuy.
I think it normally retails for 1600..
It's a silver screen, and is something i couldnt live without.
So i've been running an htpc for a bit, and i love it.
In fact, even my wife loves it.. which is a feat
I used it for mp3 playback, streaming mp3's, dvd upsampling and playback and television watching. I use a 100 hour directtivo for pvr stuff.
It's an athlon 1800+, 512 megs of ram, radeon 9000, guillemot soundcard with hacked drivers running optical out to the receiver
It's in an antec sonata, and is using zalman cooling stuff for everything.. the vidcard has no fan.. That machine is quieter than the tivo.
It's all running vga straight back to an infocus x1 projector showing on a 92" vutec silverstar screen
I control it all with a gyration ultra mouse/kbd combo
Software wise, i use zoomplayer with the cinemaster video codecs going through ffdshow for dvd playback and dscaler for tv watching. It's all running xp professional because i'm not particluarly linux savvy.
That setup has replaced my television completely. dscaler does a wonderful job of managing the tv signal, and zoomplayer is just phenomenal.
When we did LOTR:TT extended cut, i ripped both discs to the hard drive, added in trailers on the front end, psa's from the 60's, and spliced in a 10 minute dancing candy intermission in the middle.
Just hit play, and it goes magically.
The only complaint i have is the lack of useful hdtv cards. You can receive ota signals, with minimal pvr support, but that's it. Nobody supports signal over cable lines, or anything fancy.
I assume i'll need some sort of gray market hardware in the future to do that..
Oh yeah.. the total cost of all of this was less than a decent lcd hdtv set.. and you get a whole lot more..
If you can't convince you're wife/significant other with the raw windows/linux interface, look at some of the frontends. I used myhtpc (myhtpc.net) for a bit, and it was first rate..
I abandoned it since my wife is savvy enough to figure it out herself..
For more info, go to avsforum.com and read their htpc forums.. or linux htpc forums as you desire..
Highly recommended.
So i researched these for my wifes birthday (today as a matter of fact, along with mine as well.. heh.. yeah same bday..)
,and it has nothing to do with clearchannel. the hardware was a little more limited, but i still prefer them.
Sirius has no commercials on the music feeds
we tried to get the audiovox pnp2 unit (house/car portable bit), but the cigarette lighter in the car wasnt connected, so i went with a panasonic head unit.
after a bunch of wiring later, it all worked.. except for the antenna.. it had a bad wire.. but after replacing that it worked very well..
so i really like the overall sound quality.. arguably, this is in a jeep wrangler, so it's not perfect, but it's better than the crummy mp3 discs i usually listen too..
The feeds are good, wide variety, good talk channels, very very few dropouts in austin texas. Truly the way music was meant to be listened too..
Okay.. I know the segway is pretty useless for day to day life, but I was fortunate enough to actually use one in a few situations during my vacation in december...
Seadream Yacht Club (a cruise line), has 4 segways per ship for passenger use (the ships are very small, so that's actually an okay number).
We went on our cruise the week after they got them, so they were still experimenting with their itinerary. We learned how to use them in nassau, on the pier right off of the ship.
They work exactly as every test driver has stated.. Once you get comfortable on them, you just think about moving forward and you go forward. It's all based off of the weight distribution on your feet. There's a tendency to lean forward to try and make it go faster, but this goes away eventually.
Turning is a little weirder as it's geared off of your hand motion (sort of like a motorcycle throttle). If you are going full speed forward (depending on the key your using to control the max speed), and turn, you're going to fall off. That was something we had to learn to deal with..
Anyhow.. after we learned how to drive them, we got to use them in a heavy pedestrian traffic area.. Key West. We used them for a quick tour of the island, driving on the streets and sidewalks, weaving into and out of traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians flawlessly. They stop on a dime, turn on a dime, and will throw you to the ground on a dime if you're not careful.
For day to day use (for most people), they're completely useless. For people who need to interact with pedestrian traffic, they're great.
The place i'd like to see them used more is in the vacation industry. Seadream is planning on using them for tours of portofino, and other places in europe. This is where it would truly shine.
The last thing that I find a little weird is that Seadream had a decent amount of trouble actually getting segway to talk to them and sell them units. For a company thats having problems moving product, they should probably change their policy in dealin with outside vendors.
Sure they only wanted 8 or 10 of them, but given the clientele and quantity of people who will get to use/see them, it's free advertising.
If they could get them to be a little lighter (under the 86 pounds they're at now), and a little more collapsible (so you could carry it with you on vacation), and made them a little cheaper (1500 bux or so)..
I think they've got a chance.. Otherwise it's just a novelty
http://www.bestoftheblogs.com/2003_02_05_bestof.ht ml#90279110
This is an article about Chuck Hagel who is a nebraska representative. He ran for office and won in a very close run off, and controls a large interest in the private company that counted the votes in his runoff election.
The majority of the information in the above blog came from http://blackboxvoting.com/, which is a book about the future of electronic voting.
Just some fairly creepy stuff that's turned me off towards any sort of private computerized voting.
And if you overclock.. You get :
FRIED CHICKEN
HA HA HA
They went gold right as their public beta testers started to receive their cd's..
I'm wondering if they're planning on patching day of release to fix multiplayer problems..
Somewhere along the line food got bastardized.. People accept prepackaged, canned, frozen, freeze dried, shrink wrapped whozits whatsits and god knows what else as "food"
Even the recipes in this book, although geared towards geeks or bachelors, falls prey to the same problem..
People have become convinced that prepackaged food is quicker, and better than actually COOKING something..
I'd urge anyone who likes to eat.. (you don't have to like to cook.. I don't like cooking, but i like to eat, so its an ends to mean)
Next time you go shopping.. Skip the boxed meals.. Skip the frozen meals.. (You can buy frozen vegetables if you don't want to store produce)
Pick up steaks, burgers, fish, shrimp, ANYTHING other than boxed macaroni and cheeze..
Buy real butter.. not margarine, not ICBINB..
Spring for some olive oil (do some reading on the grades, or buy some of each)
Take it all home, and cook some real food..
You won't be sorry..
And to facilitate this new eating experience.. Here's a quick steak recipe (thanks to alton brown)
Take 1 steak. (I like ny strips, but i think ribeyes work a bit better)
Take a cast iron, or solid metal pan
Put pan in 500 degree oven for 10 minutes
Cover steak in seasoning (Salt and pepper work nicely)
Coat steak lightly in oil
REmove pan, put on highest temperature stovetop burner
Turn on vent fan or unplug smoke detectors (IMPORTANT.. THIS MAKES A LOT OF SMOKE.)
Sear steak for 30-45 seconds each side (just let it sit)
Put entire pan into oven for 2 minutes
Flip steak, cook for 1.5-2 more minutes (depending on doneness)
Remove steak from oven
Let sit for 3 minutes (otherwise the juices will leak out)
Eat with gusto.
Life is short.. eat well..
The article I read in Newseek talked about the moxie being a VERY tightly controlled box..
It has a full suite of drm for both the music and video you load/record onto it.
And at the risk of sounding sacrilegious, it read like a marketeers wet dream. They're concentrating on how they can sell more services and product with it..
You think they'll let me pay a little extra to make sure my sites go to the top of the list?
I could use the hits..
Okay.. Long term theory here..
Microsoft/media companies get hardware manufacturers to implement wma into most/all dvd/cd player hardware.
Wma is plainly readable on cdrom drives.
Combine this with encrypted redbook tracks and wma media players, and viola...
A set of audio/data cd's that can be played on portable machines, played on dvd/cd players, played on your computer, but can't be ripped into an "open" format..
And yeah i know the encryption would be broken.. But all in all it sounds like a straightforward controlling strategy.. The media corps get the control they want, and microsoft gets a bigger share of a new market..
Uplink is a phenomenal game. I picked it up a month or 3 ago when i came across the demo..
I ordered the full version, received it about 3 weeks later, and played the crap out of it.
Take everything from the demo and amplify it by an order of magnitude.. Not only did they add all kidns of extremely advanced missions, there's a cool as all hell overriding plot line..
AND.. Its a plot line that you get to dynamically control.. Similiar to the branching fallout did (but a little more freeform)
All in all a great product.. IF you get it, make sure to dig up the "hidden" development journals..
And make SURE to get the patch. It fixed a big recurring crash i was having..
Great game from a teeny tiny developer..
is the hardware itself..
:)
:)
The launch titles suck.. Rehashed fighting/racing/whatever games.. extreme sports, extreme driving, extreme first person shooters with a console controller..blech..
But what we've got is a pc.. Fast as hell nvidia chipset, hardrive, network card, dvd drive..
Tell me someone isn't going to turn that into some cool as hell hardware.. slap a bigger hardrive into, make an mp3 box.. slap an even bigger hardrive into it, turn it into a pvr..
Take it even further.. turn it into the convergence device people have been talking about for the past 10 years.. Except instead of paying 999.99 for it, buy it for 299 (or less when the price drops)..
I think as a piece of hardware its got great potential...
As a console.. well its motsos.. (More of the same old s..t)
lastly.. for your truly rabid anti-ms people..
The XBOX represents the only true way you can DIRECTLY damage microsoft through buying things.. Every unit they sell is sold at a loss.. Buy one.. Hack the hardware.. make it do stuff its not supposed to do.. And don't buy any software for it
Okay maybe the logic's a little spurious.. But it sounds good on paper
But this appears to be the last of the sir-tech games..
If i remember correctly, Sir-Tech's publishing arm went out of business around 15-18 months ago.. Their development house struggled for a while afterwards, finished wizardry 8 and one other title I don't remember..
Wizardry 8 languished, finished, for a while.. They didn't have a publisher.. I think somewhere during that period they shut down operations (Or at least laid off a LOT of people)
And now wizardry 8 is out.. An extremely depressing moment for computer gaming.. One of the longtime companies and founders of PC gaming is gone..
Sure sir-tech had some big stinkers.. Virus, Druid.. But they also did some of the truly great games. Jagged alliance, Wizardry..
With Interplay foundering, sir-tech gone, Origin DOA, SSI on its last breaths.. Well the old school rpg makers are gone.. Sorta depressing if you ask me..
BUT! Its not all lost.. We've got new blood on the horizon.. Mostly in the shape of those rascally canadians, Bioware.. And even the longtime scapegoat.. Bethesda..
So we've lost the old school.. Which is depressing from a historical standpoint.. But we've still got RPG developers building games that we couldn't have even dreamed of 15 years ago..
So i guess the Ipod/Itunes combo really IS a killer app.
I picked this one up on wednesday, and sprung for the limited edition...
Its 10 bux more, but comes in a very nice tin box.. It also includes a foldout tech tree, and a making of video cd...
I'm not sure if the making of cd is any good, but the tech tree is nice.. And the box absolutely rules...
My impressions of it so far (after a VERY short play period)..
It feels like old school civ, but much nicer.. Very clean art, smooth animations, decent music.. The interface is updated quite nicely..
The inclusion of culture will take some getting used to, as well as the rest of the changes.. I think the tech tree is smaller than the older ones, or i've become spoiled with the gargantuan tech trees of Alpha Centauri/MOO2..
The only downside i've seen so far is that the mouse scrolling seems very choppy.. it scrolls using tiles, and the tiles are fairly large.. so its sorta chunks around when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.. (This is on an 800 with 512 megs of ram)..
There are a few known bugs, mostly relating to the game trying to set an incorrect refresh rate in windows xp (Solution is to put xp into 98/me mode)..
Hoepfully this weekend i'll be able to get a better idea of the changes.. But so far it looks great..
In the beginning, we had Dune 2... A fairly straightforward rts.. Not particularly strategic, and completely lacking in multiplay..
Then came warcraft 1.. Multiplayer was added, so the depth, or lack thereof of the game became evident.. It was still based around minimal strategy.. (Very little unit differentiation, fairly unbalanced)
Then came command and conquer.. Still unbalanced, but slightly more strategic.. The true precursor of rts victories involving overwhelming force as opposed to subterfuge or attrition..
Then came warcraft 2.. A good logical extension.. SLightly simpler game dynamic, but similiar concept.. Some slight skirmishes, some resource allocation and research, but still based around the idealogy of overwhelming force.. You either crush someone, or you lose.. No battle lines..
Then the big one.. Total Annihilation (From the now defunct Cavedog)
Based around a HUGE number of units, dramatically different resource harvesting model, and a more "warfare" like playstyle.
TA was one of the first games to truly represent the idea of defensive gameplay, and a war of attrition.. battle lines became drawn, conflict ocurred in that geographic area, and you had an ebb and flow of combat..
Winning a TA match didn't usually involve overwhelming force deployment and steamrolling over someone, but instead sneaky tactics and superior resource management.
The inclusion of battlefield recovery of destroyed hulks, and extreme range indirect artillery only added to this feel..
Development continued along the "clickfest" or faster paced route with Starcraft, the rest of the Command and COnquer series, and I assume Warcraft 3..
Development on the flipside continued with Earth 2150, Moon Project, and should be continued by Empire Earth (At least by my take on the beta)
We've seen a few "Crossover" types.. Age of Kings springs to mind.. and to a greater degree, Cossacks..
And then we've got the true extremes.. The introduction of turn based depth in a real time environment.. I'm not entirely clear what the root for these games were, but its developed from the simcity style Transport Tycoon, through Pax Imperia, Railroad Tycoon to games like Europa Universalis, Starships Unlimited, and even Monopoly Tycoon(I'd highly reccomend looking at Europa Universalis 2 when it releases.. Especially if you're a history buff)...
There are plenty of RTS games that require insane amounts of strategy.. and a lot of them even have the interfaces to support it..
We're not doomed...
:)
We're DOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!
Note the added vowels and exclamations for emphasis
Origin doesn't own the rights to anything... they aren't even a seperate company anymore.. (And really haven't been for 10 years or so)
All ip for all licenses/products/properties for any game produced by any company owned by EA is owned by EA directly..
Richard Garriott retains the rights to Lord British, but sold the rights to Ultima and everything else Origin had produced when the company was sold in the early 90's..
Which makes the quote from the article even more amusing :
""EA owns the rights to Ultima and all of its characters, and in this case, no permission was requested or granted," said Jeff Brown, an Electronic Arts spokesman. "As for Richard Garriott's approval, that's like getting permission from Toto to remake The Wizard of Oz.""
I'd love to see the rereleases(and maybe one for M.U.L.E. but I get the feeling EA will fox them pretty quickly.. (Fox is the term coined after the shutdown of Aliens Doom by the fox movie studio)