"For those of us who remember "motion sickness" in the original Doom..." I never experienced any sort of motion sickness with Doom. Descent, however, really made me dizzy. Guess I needed the third dimension to trigger any response.
As for "making players' bodies lean as they corner" in the article, I already do this whenever I'm playing a mario kart or F-zero. I even occasionally duck my head when I'm playing a shooter.
the last gaming site i really frequented was gamecenter. ever since they were sold (and completely dismantled) by gamespot, i've been fed up with the major gaming sites... as i recall, this was about the time companies realized they couldn't give this stuff away for free, and all the advertisements and premium content stuff was introduced.
these days, i visit a game site maybe once a month to check what's highly rated on the gamecube or gba and then maybe read the review.
"First of all, if companies don't start getting money for this kind of stuff, we'll start to see a situation where a game will get a few update (like MechAssault has) but eventually they'll stop adding anything"
I suppose it all depends on the developer. Look at Valve and Blizzard. Blizzard goes and releases a patch for Diablo 2 that practically makes it a new game (revamped skill system, items, etc.). Didn't charge a lick for it. Starcraft comes out and Blizzard releases a new map every week for like half a year (or longer?). They're planning on releasing 2 custom maps campaigns sometime real soon. All this without charging the players a cent. Heck, their online service is free.
Also Valve. They release Steam, and anyone who owns HL now has access to Counter-strike, Opposing Force, Day of Defeat, and a couple other mods. Some were free, some were retail (but still free if you wanted to download). Point is, Valve was freely donating their time/energy (and SDK) to the modmakers with no direct financial gain. And now they're just giving it all away.
I'd contend that they developers who make an effort to foster a community and give back to the community (through high quality games that they actively support), are the ones who succeed. There's a reason Blizzard only has #1 hits, and Valve still has the #1 game played online... and it has nothing to do with charging players for extra content.
check this week's Newsweek here and here. Read the articles + links at the bottom. The studio is trying to push the movie as an actor's film (i.e., something to give an Oscar to), so clearly they have faith in the acting job + special effects + everything if they are hoping for Oscars...
if we're going to slam XP, we might as well do it correctly. What I think you are referring to is the refresh rate lock, which effectively limits your FPS to 60, which is a tad bit higher than the 9-15 you mention...
gamers have known about this for quite some time now, and most of us have gotten around it with little effort.
Yes the time saved does matter. Because it isn't really the time that matters, but the pacing. Sticking a somewhat lengthy sequence at the beginning of the movie, setting up the fate of a character who disappears after the scene, doesn't work. The audience will wonder what the point was.
For example, I recently re-watched Matrix Reloaded on DVD and found it to be much better than I recalled it in the theater, simply because I fastforwarded through that horrible rave in the cave scene. Sure it was only 4 minutes, but those four minutes dragged and had NO bearing on the movie as a whole. Granted, Reloaded still wasn't great, but that simple change in pacing did make me see it in a slightly better light.
Return of the King is about Frodo destroying a ring and Aragorn taking his place as king. Saruman getting deported is quite far down on the list of important things (particularly since the Scouring isn't being included). How they deal with the Palantir is an issue, but beyond that, there's no need for Saruman.
However, in regards to it being an unfinished product, the page linked in the story goes to the prototype page, which indeed is unfinished. However, going to the rotating control panels page, shows what looks like a fully operational rotating control panel mame cabinet. He's done with it, in terms of getting it to work. It just looks like he wants to tweak it and add a set of removable controls to one of the sides so he can play Terminaotr 2.
This guy has serious skill. There's even a section where he describes how to destroy current game controllers (like a sidewinder) and reincarnate them as 80s classic controllers.
that can be drawn is that game players are harsher than the professional critics. no duh. visit any official or psuedo official forum for a game, and chances are you'll encounter a rather vocal group complaining about problem X. never mind that 95% of the players don't encounter problem X, but the 5% that do, really want to shout about it. I imagine the same thing would happen with reviews. One is much more likely to bitch about a game that was less than satisfying than praise one that was enjoyable (as you get satisfaction from the game in the latter case, and are satisfied by bitching about it in the former). So the scores are biased in the downward direction. that isn't too surprising.
i wouldn't be so certain that there aren't spoilers in the game.
If someone had told you that in the Two Towers, Aragorn would fall of a cliff and practically die, or that the elves would show up and contribute at the battle of Helm's Deep of that Frodo would end up at Osgilith facing a Nazgul, that certainly would spoil certain elements of the film that weren't in the book.
So, while no major elements should be spoiled by the game, it is likely that Jackson has made minor (and maybe not so minor) changes to the overall structure/plot that could be reflected in the game, and ultimately *spoil* the movie (in both senses.. frodo going to osgilith was just wrong)
altough not an MMORPG by any means, I could sit down and fish for hours in Zelda 64. The fishing had very little to do with completing the actual game, but it was done in such a way that it was quite addicting and rewarding. wasn't just a "push button to cast, push button to reel in", but the camera followed the lure as it sank into the water, giving a nice visual of the size of fish nearby. Catching was just as fun, as you had to wiggle the lure just enough to draw the fish attention, but not so much to scare him.
Whenever i got stuck in the game, or was slightly bored, fishing always was a good way to pass some time in a very enjoyable manner. the inclusion of little things like this could potentially get me interested in a mmorpg. weekly bass fishing tournaments; with the trolls doing a little spearfishing.
This sort of mass update doesn't really impress me since I know that the next update won't be released for a LONG time now.
Diablo 2 was released when? 2000 says the copyright on the disc. Expansion 6 mo to 1 year later. So, we're talking about a game 2 years old. And you're unimpressed cause they won't update it anymore? Exactly how many games do you have that the developers are still updating 2 years after release?
all of that is available now to steam users, which is anyone who owns HL. (and seeing as how one could probably find a copy of HL in the $20 or less range, I fail to see how spending $400 on a video card makes this a good deal...)
granted, ATI is kinda stuck, but they made the deal, soo...
the idea presented by these researchers that the release of massive underwater methane deposits would result in a lowering of the density of seawater under a ship causeing it to sink reminds me of my undergraduate days.
As a civil engineering student, I visited a wastewater treatment plant. one of the unit processes involves bubbling massive amounts of air through the wastewater (to stimulate bacteria into eat the organic matter) in large open-air tanks. As a result of the aeration, the density of water is much lower than the density of the human body. Therefore, anyone falling into one of these aeration tanks would immediately sink to the bottom. My first thought (and that of many others I've spoken with) is that the aeration tanks are perfect places to murder / dispose of bodies in. You're guaranteed they'll drown; plus you've got the bacteria already there in a nice chomping mood. I have no idea how long this would take to completely dispose of a body (or at least down to bones), but it sure is an underutilized method...
the initial story when these guys left was that it was only a few employees, Roper and 3 original Condor guys. This release mentions that 9 people left B.North, including art directors and senior programmers. That's a bit more drastic that first reported... (or at least than I recalled). I'm sure this gives Blizzard an opportunity to encourage new talent at B. North, but I really doubt losing all the top guys there is going to help any release dates (for any of their unnanounced projects.)
Best quote in the interview with Roper, "Basically, it all comes down to spending less time managing teams and more time making games." And then of course, you go to the flagship homepage and see that of the 9, they've got a CVO (??), CEO, CCO, COO, CFO, 2 art director, and 2 technology directors. Seems odd that all 9 of their employees are managers...
probably because Nazis are the ultimate bad guy. FF was really a live action cominc book. And while I know next to nothing about the history of comic books, I do know that characters like Captain America had great runs during WW2 because they had story lines where the heros would go after the Nazis.
and I must second the Freedom Force being an underrated game comment. One can still find it in bargain bins and at non-game retailers (Walmart, Target, etc.) for around $15 US. Definitely worth your money at that price.
they're the leading online gaming presence (in the non MMORPG category), and routinely have massive downloadable content / updates. (going from an original HL to one of the current mods requires a 300+ MB update).
the recent steam downloading debacle is a perfect example of why this should be done. Valve releases a small steam client and expects people to download the content they need. Each download is in the range of the hundreds of megabytes. So what happens? Steam servers get hammered by the 100,000 fans downloading it all, and it takes people several days to actually get any content. Then enough people complain that the small client isn't working properly (by not getting new content), so Valve releases a steam+content file (350 MB or so) and expects people to wait in line to download it at a pay site (or find the obscure European site that actually has it available). (or in my case, actually install Bittorrent for to get the file).
So, why not have some sort of bittorrent client inside steam that monitors server performance and dynamically adjusts whether to download directly from the server or share it p2p.
Valve already encourages you to leave Steam running 24/7, so its almost natural to set it up to distribute patches this way with minimal cost to Valve. If everyone indeed leaves it on 24/7, I imagine everytime a major patch is released, Valve is going to get hammered... just seems logical that they distribute the patch to the big pipes, and from there have everyone p2p it.
(of course, this could similar to what they are doing, but one clearly can't tell that from the various in-steam monitors)
except these are anything but genetically engineered bacteria. these are native species, as the first sentence in the article points out.
bacteria tend to do some seriously amazing things. apparently, all the scientists in this paper did was supply enough food to stimulate the present (but not so populous) geobacter species to fluorish. presumably with different nutrients available, the metabolic pathways of the bacteria were altered such that they mineralized uranium.
Microsoft has the license to distribute at least half of these games (or at least they did.) Dig Dug, Ms Pacman, Pacman and several other were released several years ago in a "Classic Arcade Game" compilation (there was also a revenge of arcade compilation). Apparently official website is here.
I recently (6 months ago?) purchased for my wife a MS compliation that has Dig Dug, Pole Position, Ms and regular Pacman, Galaxian (i think), and maybe a couple other games in it.
So I assume other companies won't be selling the roms unless MS's license expires...
It's odd that an article, discussing how MMORPGs haven't penetrated the mainstream, fails to mention the single most popular MMORPG ever, Lineage. Granted, it's not western mainstream, but a game with over 4 million active subscribers is no longer a fringe game. That's a subscriber base that clearly qualifies as a success. As mentioned in the previous link, in Korea the game commands 47% of the market share. I doubt (m)any books, movies, or TV shows can claim that.
What's really odd is that they even mention NC Soft and their billing methods for an upcoming game. But no mention of the game that has a subscriber base an order of magnitude larger than Everquest... guess that would go against the hypothesis and require an actual analysis of how and why the Korean market is different than the western/American market.
What evidence is there that HL2 would have been focused on multiplayer? None. They won't even divulge what MP modes or features they are including.
HL was all about the single player experience (at least when first released). There's a reason HL won almost every single gaming award it was nominated for: the compelling and revolutionary (!) storyline. Honestly, it wasn't Hemmingway or Faulkner, but HL propelled the character forward with a purpose no FPS had done previously. HL really crystallized the idea that story does matter.
The whole MP dominated phase of HL came a much later beginning with the release of TFC (and the SDK).
Valve has even gone so far as to propose to release multiple versions of HL2, one of which contains only the single player content (as they realize that the silent majority of players who buy the game at Walmart don't ever go online to play). So I think Valve is very much aware of what propelled HL to the top and will attempt to repeat as close as possible the conditions that lead to that.
I saw this on CNN and immediately read the actual article published in the Journal of Measurement Science Technology. (probably need an institutional subscription to access the article.) One of the co-authors works for Campden & Chorleywood Food Research Association, which is presumbly where the funding came from (the sample preparation section mentions that the cookies were baked there).
Obviously companies that are in the business of selling cookies will do research into problems associated with their product. Broken cookies are a big deal. I open my Chips Ahoy and find a bunch of them broken, I'm a bit annoyed. I might even switch to Keebler cookies if there's don't break as much.
Basic experimental method (at least from what I can gather looking at the article). Take cookie, put it in environment with a given humidity and allow to equilibrate. Then transfer to new chamber with different humidity and watch how the cookie swells over time with speckle interferometry measurements to measure displacement and strain (I don't really understand how that part works). From this, determine a hygroscopic expansion coefficient and publish your work in a random journal.
Unfortunately, they really didn't test a variety of cookies and really didn't go into much detail on the type of cookie they did test. Would have been interesting if they did comparitive work between chocolate chip vs. snickerdoodles...
in which case almost all of the top selling games are by a japanese developer (namely Nintendo themselves). Here's an interesting chart listing the gamecube's best selling games.
a PS2 is not a computer in the same way that fertilizer is not classified as a class 5 explosive. The PS2 is intended as a game machine. Sony does not advertise the PS2 as a computer, in the same way that Bandini does not advertise how their product can be "modded" for terrorist purposes. Sure, they may have a linux kit, but have you ever seen a commercial advertisement, where they make the claim that you can do any of the conventional tasks associated with computers, other than playing games?
no, it is no where near the chronology of the books. as i recall, in the text, Aragorn took the re-forged Narsil with him when he left Rivendell. The elves then don't show up until after the final battle when Aragorn and Liv Tyler get married. I think Jackson wanted to keep the love story at the forefront so the eowin (sp) storyline would be more bittersweet, and so shifted this aspect of the story.
Slashdot Mirror
"For those of us who remember "motion sickness" in the original Doom..." I never experienced any sort of motion sickness with Doom. Descent, however, really made me dizzy. Guess I needed the third dimension to trigger any response.
As for "making players' bodies lean as they corner" in the article, I already do this whenever I'm playing a mario kart or F-zero. I even occasionally duck my head when I'm playing a shooter.
the last gaming site i really frequented was gamecenter. ever since they were sold (and completely dismantled) by gamespot, i've been fed up with the major gaming sites... as i recall, this was about the time companies realized they couldn't give this stuff away for free, and all the advertisements and premium content stuff was introduced.
these days, i visit a game site maybe once a month to check what's highly rated on the gamecube or gba and then maybe read the review.
"First of all, if companies don't start getting money for this kind of stuff, we'll start to see a situation where a game will get a few update (like MechAssault has) but eventually they'll stop adding anything"
I suppose it all depends on the developer. Look at Valve and Blizzard. Blizzard goes and releases a patch for Diablo 2 that practically makes it a new game (revamped skill system, items, etc.). Didn't charge a lick for it. Starcraft comes out and Blizzard releases a new map every week for like half a year (or longer?). They're planning on releasing 2 custom maps campaigns sometime real soon. All this without charging the players a cent. Heck, their online service is free.
Also Valve. They release Steam, and anyone who owns HL now has access to Counter-strike, Opposing Force, Day of Defeat, and a couple other mods. Some were free, some were retail (but still free if you wanted to download). Point is, Valve was freely donating their time/energy (and SDK) to the modmakers with no direct financial gain. And now they're just giving it all away.
I'd contend that they developers who make an effort to foster a community and give back to the community (through high quality games that they actively support), are the ones who succeed. There's a reason Blizzard only has #1 hits, and Valve still has the #1 game played online... and it has nothing to do with charging players for extra content.
check this week's Newsweek here and here. Read the articles + links at the bottom. The studio is trying to push the movie as an actor's film (i.e., something to give an Oscar to), so clearly they have faith in the acting job + special effects + everything if they are hoping for Oscars...
if we're going to slam XP, we might as well do it correctly. What I think you are referring to is the refresh rate lock, which effectively limits your FPS to 60, which is a tad bit higher than the 9-15 you mention...
gamers have known about this for quite some time now, and most of us have gotten around it with little effort.
They're currently selling Link to the Past for the GBA. Giving it away free as a bonus might not be in their best interest.
Yes the time saved does matter. Because it isn't really the time that matters, but the pacing. Sticking a somewhat lengthy sequence at the beginning of the movie, setting up the fate of a character who disappears after the scene, doesn't work. The audience will wonder what the point was.
For example, I recently re-watched Matrix Reloaded on DVD and found it to be much better than I recalled it in the theater, simply because I fastforwarded through that horrible rave in the cave scene. Sure it was only 4 minutes, but those four minutes dragged and had NO bearing on the movie as a whole. Granted, Reloaded still wasn't great, but that simple change in pacing did make me see it in a slightly better light.
Return of the King is about Frodo destroying a ring and Aragorn taking his place as king. Saruman getting deported is quite far down on the list of important things (particularly since the Scouring isn't being included). How they deal with the Palantir is an issue, but beyond that, there's no need for Saruman.
this site has been mentioned before (it was even slashdotted previously.)
However, in regards to it being an unfinished product, the page linked in the story goes to the prototype page, which indeed is unfinished. However, going to the rotating control panels page, shows what looks like a fully operational rotating control panel mame cabinet. He's done with it, in terms of getting it to work. It just looks like he wants to tweak it and add a set of removable controls to one of the sides so he can play Terminaotr 2.
This guy has serious skill. There's even a section where he describes how to destroy current game controllers (like a sidewinder) and reincarnate them as 80s classic controllers.
that can be drawn is that game players are harsher than the professional critics. no duh. visit any official or psuedo official forum for a game, and chances are you'll encounter a rather vocal group complaining about problem X. never mind that 95% of the players don't encounter problem X, but the 5% that do, really want to shout about it. I imagine the same thing would happen with reviews. One is much more likely to bitch about a game that was less than satisfying than praise one that was enjoyable (as you get satisfaction from the game in the latter case, and are satisfied by bitching about it in the former). So the scores are biased in the downward direction. that isn't too surprising.
i wouldn't be so certain that there aren't spoilers in the game.
If someone had told you that in the Two Towers, Aragorn would fall of a cliff and practically die, or that the elves would show up and contribute at the battle of Helm's Deep of that Frodo would end up at Osgilith facing a Nazgul, that certainly would spoil certain elements of the film that weren't in the book.
So, while no major elements should be spoiled by the game, it is likely that Jackson has made minor (and maybe not so minor) changes to the overall structure/plot that could be reflected in the game, and ultimately *spoil* the movie (in both senses.. frodo going to osgilith was just wrong)
altough not an MMORPG by any means, I could sit down and fish for hours in Zelda 64. The fishing had very little to do with completing the actual game, but it was done in such a way that it was quite addicting and rewarding. wasn't just a "push button to cast, push button to reel in", but the camera followed the lure as it sank into the water, giving a nice visual of the size of fish nearby. Catching was just as fun, as you had to wiggle the lure just enough to draw the fish attention, but not so much to scare him.
Whenever i got stuck in the game, or was slightly bored, fishing always was a good way to pass some time in a very enjoyable manner. the inclusion of little things like this could potentially get me interested in a mmorpg. weekly bass fishing tournaments; with the trolls doing a little spearfishing.
This sort of mass update doesn't really impress me since I know that the next update won't be released for a LONG time now.
Diablo 2 was released when? 2000 says the copyright on the disc. Expansion 6 mo to 1 year later. So, we're talking about a game 2 years old. And you're unimpressed cause they won't update it anymore? Exactly how many games do you have that the developers are still updating 2 years after release?
all of that is available now to steam users, which is anyone who owns HL. (and seeing as how one could probably find a copy of HL in the $20 or less range, I fail to see how spending $400 on a video card makes this a good deal...)
granted, ATI is kinda stuck, but they made the deal, soo...
the idea presented by these researchers that the release of massive underwater methane deposits would result in a lowering of the density of seawater under a ship causeing it to sink reminds me of my undergraduate days.
As a civil engineering student, I visited a wastewater treatment plant. one of the unit processes involves bubbling massive amounts of air through the wastewater (to stimulate bacteria into eat the organic matter) in large open-air tanks. As a result of the aeration, the density of water is much lower than the density of the human body. Therefore, anyone falling into one of these aeration tanks would immediately sink to the bottom. My first thought (and that of many others I've spoken with) is that the aeration tanks are perfect places to murder / dispose of bodies in. You're guaranteed they'll drown; plus you've got the bacteria already there in a nice chomping mood. I have no idea how long this would take to completely dispose of a body (or at least down to bones), but it sure is an underutilized method...
the initial story when these guys left was that it was only a few employees, Roper and 3 original Condor guys. This release mentions that 9 people left B.North, including art directors and senior programmers. That's a bit more drastic that first reported... (or at least than I recalled). I'm sure this gives Blizzard an opportunity to encourage new talent at B. North, but I really doubt losing all the top guys there is going to help any release dates (for any of their unnanounced projects.)
Best quote in the interview with Roper, "Basically, it all comes down to spending less time managing teams and more time making games." And then of course, you go to the flagship homepage and see that of the 9, they've got a CVO (??), CEO, CCO, COO, CFO, 2 art director, and 2 technology directors. Seems odd that all 9 of their employees are managers...
probably because Nazis are the ultimate bad guy. FF was really a live action cominc book. And while I know next to nothing about the history of comic books, I do know that characters like Captain America had great runs during WW2 because they had story lines where the heros would go after the Nazis.
and I must second the Freedom Force being an underrated game comment. One can still find it in bargain bins and at non-game retailers (Walmart, Target, etc.) for around $15 US. Definitely worth your money at that price.
they're the leading online gaming presence (in the non MMORPG category), and routinely have massive downloadable content / updates. (going from an original HL to one of the current mods requires a 300+ MB update).
the recent steam downloading debacle is a perfect example of why this should be done. Valve releases a small steam client and expects people to download the content they need. Each download is in the range of the hundreds of megabytes. So what happens? Steam servers get hammered by the 100,000 fans downloading it all, and it takes people several days to actually get any content. Then enough people complain that the small client isn't working properly (by not getting new content), so Valve releases a steam+content file (350 MB or so) and expects people to wait in line to download it at a pay site (or find the obscure European site that actually has it available). (or in my case, actually install Bittorrent for to get the file).
So, why not have some sort of bittorrent client inside steam that monitors server performance and dynamically adjusts whether to download directly from the server or share it p2p.
Valve already encourages you to leave Steam running 24/7, so its almost natural to set it up to distribute patches this way with minimal cost to Valve. If everyone indeed leaves it on 24/7, I imagine everytime a major patch is released, Valve is going to get hammered... just seems logical that they distribute the patch to the big pipes, and from there have everyone p2p it.
(of course, this could similar to what they are doing, but one clearly can't tell that from the various in-steam monitors)
except these are anything but genetically engineered bacteria. these are native species, as the first sentence in the article points out.
bacteria tend to do some seriously amazing things. apparently, all the scientists in this paper did was supply enough food to stimulate the present (but not so populous) geobacter species to fluorish. presumably with different nutrients available, the metabolic pathways of the bacteria were altered such that they mineralized uranium.
Microsoft has the license to distribute at least half of these games (or at least they did.) Dig Dug, Ms Pacman, Pacman and several other were released several years ago in a "Classic Arcade Game" compilation (there was also a revenge of arcade compilation). Apparently official website is here.
I recently (6 months ago?) purchased for my wife a MS compliation that has Dig Dug, Pole Position, Ms and regular Pacman, Galaxian (i think), and maybe a couple other games in it.
So I assume other companies won't be selling the roms unless MS's license expires...
It's odd that an article, discussing how MMORPGs haven't penetrated the mainstream, fails to mention the single most popular MMORPG ever, Lineage. Granted, it's not western mainstream, but a game with over 4 million active subscribers is no longer a fringe game. That's a subscriber base that clearly qualifies as a success. As mentioned in the previous link, in Korea the game commands 47% of the market share. I doubt (m)any books, movies, or TV shows can claim that.
What's really odd is that they even mention NC Soft and their billing methods for an upcoming game. But no mention of the game that has a subscriber base an order of magnitude larger than Everquest... guess that would go against the hypothesis and require an actual analysis of how and why the Korean market is different than the western/American market.
What evidence is there that HL2 would have been focused on multiplayer? None. They won't even divulge what MP modes or features they are including.
HL was all about the single player experience (at least when first released). There's a reason HL won almost every single gaming award it was nominated for: the compelling and revolutionary (!) storyline. Honestly, it wasn't Hemmingway or Faulkner, but HL propelled the character forward with a purpose no FPS had done previously. HL really crystallized the idea that story does matter.
The whole MP dominated phase of HL came a much later beginning with the release of TFC (and the SDK).
Valve has even gone so far as to propose to release multiple versions of HL2, one of which contains only the single player content (as they realize that the silent majority of players who buy the game at Walmart don't ever go online to play). So I think Valve is very much aware of what propelled HL to the top and will attempt to repeat as close as possible the conditions that lead to that.
I saw this on CNN and immediately read the actual article published in the Journal of Measurement Science Technology. (probably need an institutional subscription to access the article.) One of the co-authors works for Campden & Chorleywood Food Research Association, which is presumbly where the funding came from (the sample preparation section mentions that the cookies were baked there).
Obviously companies that are in the business of selling cookies will do research into problems associated with their product. Broken cookies are a big deal. I open my Chips Ahoy and find a bunch of them broken, I'm a bit annoyed. I might even switch to Keebler cookies if there's don't break as much.
Basic experimental method (at least from what I can gather looking at the article). Take cookie, put it in environment with a given humidity and allow to equilibrate. Then transfer to new chamber with different humidity and watch how the cookie swells over time with speckle interferometry measurements to measure displacement and strain (I don't really understand how that part works). From this, determine a hygroscopic expansion coefficient and publish your work in a random journal.
Unfortunately, they really didn't test a variety of cookies and really didn't go into much detail on the type of cookie they did test. Would have been interesting if they did comparitive work between chocolate chip vs. snickerdoodles...
in which case almost all of the top selling games are by a japanese developer (namely Nintendo themselves). Here's an interesting chart listing the gamecube's best selling games.
a PS2 is not a computer in the same way that fertilizer is not classified as a class 5 explosive. The PS2 is intended as a game machine. Sony does not advertise the PS2 as a computer, in the same way that Bandini does not advertise how their product can be "modded" for terrorist purposes. Sure, they may have a linux kit, but have you ever seen a commercial advertisement, where they make the claim that you can do any of the conventional tasks associated with computers, other than playing games?
no, it is no where near the chronology of the books. as i recall, in the text, Aragorn took the re-forged Narsil with him when he left Rivendell. The elves then don't show up until after the final battle when Aragorn and Liv Tyler get married. I think Jackson wanted to keep the love story at the forefront so the eowin (sp) storyline would be more bittersweet, and so shifted this aspect of the story.