(1) The US economy is in the crapper for most, making purchase of a $300 video game console less appealing, as having food on the table and rent paid appeals more to the average base instinct... Similarly for the rest of the world economy, not many are going to find paying $300 to play a $60-$80 game appealing...
(2)No PC ports foreseen... Even though they kind of sucked as far as real support was concerned, those of us who picked a Geforce2 upgrade for the computer in lieu of a PS1 would prefer to play it on the PC, rather than attempt to run it on Bleem!... Despite in theory the modern PC's ability to run the games capably, it makes me wonder if Squaresoft signed a contract with Sony to prevent any possibility of parallel PC releases...
(3) Squaresoft, due to the usual ineptitude of sales analysts that exist within all game companies will assume that any reduced sales are a red light regarding a games success, and will assume the same regarding sales of FFX, thus delaying if not shelving future production on FFXI...
(4) As their ads claim, 'Millions have played FFX', while they fail to note, however, is that millions of Japanese players (or a hundred or so American players who can translate Japanese on the fly) played the original version over a year prior to the release of the US version, which was out while the world economy was in considerably stronger shape...
I'm not an expert on these things, but this seems a reasonable scenario... Any input?
Sci-Fi keeps running the same erroneously bleeped copy of Army of Darkness, where Ash first meets Bad Ash:
Good Ash: Why are you doing this?
Bad Ash: Why? Because I'm Bad *bleep*. You're Good *bleep*. You're a goody little two shoes!
You know the rest...
Of course the whole video game violence thing is ridiculous, I remember some idiots in the early 80's who claimed PAC MAN was too violent...
And violent deaths with teens in school haven't really changed at all, it's just taking place more often IN the school than it used to... But nobody has a copy of West Side Story or Blackboard Jungle that shows the kids flipping out after 48 hours of Q3 Tournement... Zip guns, shivs, rubber hoses loaded with buckshot, baseball bats, and blackjacks... Now THERE would be a deathmatch...
Re:Big announcement with be OS X for Intel
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I doubt it... Consider the fact that Apple and Microsoft have been odd bedfellows since the mid 80's, that Microsoft owns some Apple stock, and yet the most poetic of revenge... Apple LIKES Microsoft's monopoly basis, as long as it can get the company shut down...
So why would they release ANY mainstream OS when it could ensure MS being able to wriggle out of such claims? That's like fighting the war against Nazi Germany and handing them the A-bomb (godwin be damnned)...
In that case I would have a serious giggle, since there's ample 'remove' messages to various spammers in my sent items box... Now THAT would be blessed irony!
That's easily explained by the act that most people prior to 1995 were college educated, and at the very least above 18... Most folks around that time were, amongst other things, expected to have some semblance of a level of literacy... Consider too, that people who could afford a computer, as well as net access, were as most would call it by the economic standards at the time "rich"... Nobody thinks about how commonplace computers have become, or how much such has been taken for granted... Now anyone below average intelligence can easily obtain even the most basic of computing equipment...
And before anyone comments, I learned reading phonetically in the early 70's, and typing was self taught on a typewriter (you younguns wouldn't know of such, it used paper, and *you* were the printer, prone to jamming, often a clunky process with lots of whiteout and smudging)...;)
The Terminator with Two naked butts and nude Linda Hamilton body double: $300 million
Terminator 2 with two naked butts and computer animation: $500 million
Terminator 3 with naked old Ahhhhnold butt, but sexy naked terminatrix butt and skin tight leather outfit, computer animation + audience full of sex crazed geeks: Priceless...
Nope, you decided to insultingly demand proof, I demand you prove otherwise... I provided mine, and thusly you claimed a 'guilt by association' bent... Wrong... It isn't a matter of guilt by association, it's a matter of OWNERSHIP...
For example, how often do you see anti-Disney or anti-MPAA news on ABC News? None? Golly gee, wonder why? Because they're OWNED by Disney? Because *gasp* the once honorable news division of ABC is actualy having their reports respun by their corporate owners to satisfy their corporate owners? Golly gee willikers!
Fox News is owned by a corporation that's known for producing supermarket tabloids, and you thus expect that their business isn't bound under the same practices of sensationalism and oft times personal bias? Sorry kiddo, the real world doesn't work that way... Fox News learned to make their business by appealing to the lowest common denominator, which in American society is almost equal on either side of the political coin... If they cannot appeal to the liberals (CNN and MSNBC), they'll try to appeal to the conservatives, including by supporting every conceivable pie in the sky concept produced by the military industrial complex... Irregardless of the facts, with the very same level of sensationalism and inaccuracies their tabloids use...
So stop defending them, they aren't paying you enough, go back to reading up on Bat Boy or whatever... You've proven nothing other than your capacity to scream "You're wrong wrong wrong!" just as loudly as the evil liberals you're obviously so biased against...
Nope, that they are often open to massive gaffs when it comes to accuracy...
"However, CNN researches it's stories far more often than Fox...
And you have documented proof of this, I presume."
Ahhh, the old "Provide proof on paper" argument... Well, can you provide proof otherwise? And can you provide documented proof from a reputable source? There aren't any... Sorry, try again...
The truth is, that Turner built his news network up from a relatively meager start as an independant UHF station in Atlanta, and until the gulf war, they had very little in the way of real visual presence (except for those who HAD cause to watch it)...
Just because you don't study history or the actual information, or have an attention span that exceeds 5 minutes, doesn't mean it isn't true...
"I still trust a news agency that got it's "start" in covering the gulf war, far more than a news network that got it's start with 'Bigfoot could be your neighbor!!!', and 'Here's our big titted broad of the week!'
Uhh...WTF??? I suppose you "researched" that, too."
No need, go to the average supermarket and dig up a copy of the National Enquirer, and read the indicia, you'll note that it's owned by 'American News Corporation', a Rupert Murdoch company... Also owned by Murdoch is the Sun, a Brit publication, and here's your documented proof as well, take a look at their actual website if you don't believe me: http://www.thesun.co.uk/
The list of Rupert Murdoch owned publications can be found at http://www.newscorp.com/index2.html (warning, Flash heavy)
That could be said of ANY news agency... However, CNN researches it's stories far more often than Fox... They all screw up either way, so that's a moot point... I still trust a news agency that got it's "start" in covering the gulf war, far more than a news network that got it's start with 'Bigfoot could be your neighbor!!!', and 'Here's our big titted broad of the week!'...
Don't forget, the owner of Fox News is Rupert Murdoch... You know, the guy who owns The National Enquirer, and numerous other tabloids... Hardly worth calling a reputable source (ironically his tabloids are the sort that would have paid well for pictures taken of Princess Di by the freelance French papparazi that chased her to her death, and even more ironic, that shortly thereafter her brother gave them an interview on teevee)...
Mind you, this was common knowlege over 10 years ago when Murdoch took over Fox, the NY Post, et al...
Had to deal with the up again down again service from AT&T for quite some time now, best way to cope with it (90% of the problems have been in the WAN/Modem/AT&T's screwed up networking) is to hit that little reset button in back of the modem... This forces the modem to reestablish the link to their WAN and get a fresh IP... In the meanwhile, their DNS appears to have been restored, so no more relying on their DHCP (my roomy can now access webpages/non-IP addresses over Sygate), well, for however long they can keep it up... It's looking like the last time it went down here was due to their installing their DNS routing hard/software or whatever IT guys do... Pity it took them this long to get it done, considering they had as early as second quarter reports to figure out that @home was going tits up... Ohwell...
One could easily say the same about Xbox, uses a PIII 750 CPU, an Nvidia chipset, yatta yatta... Nintendo, however, has been engineering video game hardware (and optimizing same) long before MS even came out with Windows 1.0...
The N64 was purely a fluke in itself, between Silicon Graphics' shakey production schedule, and fighting against what was then expensive RAM/ROM considerations (remember that in the days the N64 came out, 64 Mb ram cost around $160+, and rom in the same size range was similarly expensive, hence why it was in the best interest for Sony to base everything around CD, sacrificing load speed), they were basically going on a wait and see schedule, and gaming fans rarely if ever follow suit...
It turns out that the "plans" for nuclear (read 'Nukular' in Bushspeek) weapons they discovered in Taliban hideouts may have been based on a scientific parody magazine (and subsequently distributed via the internet):
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Suddenly, Al Qaeda doesn't look so smart. Just
yesterday, a Times of London reporter found a cache of plans, left in
a Kabul home as the Taliban retreated, that included notes for making
a thermonuclear device. The papers sent a chill through the Western
world, since they appeared to indicate sophisticated designs for an
atom bomb.
Now the online Daily Rotten says at least part of those documents
photographed by the Times are taken verbatim from a "semi-famous"
pseudo-document that has been circulating on the Internet for years.
It's a reprint of a scientific parody called "How to Build an Atom
Bomb," from the geek-humor newsletter Annals of Improbable Research,
originally known as the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
In his report for the BBC, reporter Anthony Loyd held some of the
papers up for the camera, giving a glimpse of documents the Daily
Rotten now compares to the 1979 parody.
Even the language Loyd uses to paraphrase the abandoned material
sounds like that of the satirical document.
Describing the scene in a Times article, Loyd wrote: "The vernacular
quickly spun out of my comprehension but there were phrases through
the mass of chemical symbols and physics jargon that anyone could
understand, including notes on how the detonation of TNT compresses
plutonium into a critical mass producing a nuclear chain reaction and
eventually a thermo-nuclear reaction . . .."
The parody document reads: "The device basically works when the
detonated TNT compresses the Plutonium into a critical mass. The
critical mass then produces a nuclear chain reaction similar to the
domino chain reaction . . ..The chain reaction then promptly produces
a big thermonuclear reaction. And there you have it, a 10 megaton
explosion!"
To find these faux atomic-bomb plans, do a Web search for "The device
basically works" or "Let's Build an Atomic Bomb!" instructs the Daily
Rotten. "It gives us pause and joy to know the Taliban are wasting
their time downloading what amounts to joke mail and spending time
trying to discern the facts therein."
Homeland security secretary Tom Ridge acknowledged the plans had been
found, but downplayed their importance. With this Daily Rotten report,
the public may get a glimpse of why.
Reached at the Pentagon spokesperson Major Tim Blair said, "I can't
comment on that. You can find all kinds of reports, and you have to
look at which ones are credible. We issue briefings and press
releases, but we don't talk about anything dealing with intelligence.
I'm not throwing stones, but the media should check the credibility of
their sources. You all have to do your job."
The foreign editor who handled the story for the Times was not
immediately available for comment.
That's actually (insert snooty nerd voice) one of the earlier designs for the speeder bike proposed for Return of the Jedi (See: The Art of Star Wars, No. 6)... George seems to be recycling a bit in the way of previous designs, such as the Naboo runner from the original Ralph McQuarrie designs for episode 4...
So use a modified and rounded UDMA 66-100 cable, those are specially built for just that problem, just replace the connectors and remove the strands you don't need from the cable...
Sometimes you can get those as cheap as $20 if you find one at a thrift store/surplus PC store... Upon analysis of my existing laptop (when I was fixing the display), it wouldbe fairly simply to remove the panel completely, replace the connector (which is basically a bundle of wires in shrinkwrap) with slightly longer cabling, and flip the display over so it faces away from the laptop when closed, add a mounting point on the back for hanging, and you've got a digital picture frame for less than $30 total... Install Windows 3.11 or Linux and you're good to go...
"Buy a Gamecube 3 days later. The less money they have, the sooner there will be parity in the marketplace. The same goes for keyboards and mice, too."
Yeah, not to mention the US Gamecube can be modded with just a switch to allow it to play both US and Japanese GC titles, easiest mod ever, woot!
Well, if you consider that Krakatoa caused a global winter when it erupted, in a "similar" time frame to Oregon's Crater Lake (which, crater wise, is just 5 miles across), that wouldn't be outside the range of possibility... Consider too, that until around roughly 6,000 years ago, the middle east and Egypt were garden spots, and the sahara desert was relatively small to boot...
When you have widespread comparative darkness, plants that previously grew in regions due to the relative sunlight tend to die off... Less plant life=more topsoil erosion... More topsoil erosion=more desert growth... More desert growth=less shade and roots to conserve surface moisture, more heat absorbing sand and light reflection from sand... Less shade and topsoil similarly results in less plant growth, etc...
And in a year or two of reduced sunlight, or more since all the varieties of mythological references to similar situations, if there was a series of meteorites smacking into the earth simultaneously, that would conceivably have the same effect of one "planet killer" meteor/asteroid, just more scattered...
Slashdot Mirror
(1) The US economy is in the crapper for most, making purchase of a $300 video game console less appealing, as having food on the table and rent paid appeals more to the average base instinct... Similarly for the rest of the world economy, not many are going to find paying $300 to play a $60-$80 game appealing...
(2)No PC ports foreseen... Even though they kind of sucked as far as real support was concerned, those of us who picked a Geforce2 upgrade for the computer in lieu of a PS1 would prefer to play it on the PC, rather than attempt to run it on Bleem!... Despite in theory the modern PC's ability to run the games capably, it makes me wonder if Squaresoft signed a contract with Sony to prevent any possibility of parallel PC releases...
(3) Squaresoft, due to the usual ineptitude of sales analysts that exist within all game companies will assume that any reduced sales are a red light regarding a games success, and will assume the same regarding sales of FFX, thus delaying if not shelving future production on FFXI...
(4) As their ads claim, 'Millions have played FFX', while they fail to note, however, is that millions of Japanese players (or a hundred or so American players who can translate Japanese on the fly) played the original version over a year prior to the release of the US version, which was out while the world economy was in considerably stronger shape...
I'm not an expert on these things, but this seems a reasonable scenario... Any input?
Sci-Fi keeps running the same erroneously bleeped copy of Army of Darkness, where Ash first meets Bad Ash:
Good Ash: Why are you doing this?
Bad Ash: Why? Because I'm Bad *bleep*. You're Good *bleep*. You're a goody little two shoes!
You know the rest...
Of course the whole video game violence thing is ridiculous, I remember some idiots in the early 80's who claimed PAC MAN was too violent...
And violent deaths with teens in school haven't really changed at all, it's just taking place more often IN the school than it used to... But nobody has a copy of West Side Story or Blackboard Jungle that shows the kids flipping out after 48 hours of Q3 Tournement... Zip guns, shivs, rubber hoses loaded with buckshot, baseball bats, and blackjacks... Now THERE would be a deathmatch...
I doubt it... Consider the fact that Apple and Microsoft have been odd bedfellows since the mid 80's, that Microsoft owns some Apple stock, and yet the most poetic of revenge... Apple LIKES Microsoft's monopoly basis, as long as it can get the company shut down...
So why would they release ANY mainstream OS when it could ensure MS being able to wriggle out of such claims? That's like fighting the war against Nazi Germany and handing them the A-bomb (godwin be damnned)...
I can't help but think 'I have no nose and I must sneeze!' when I see this, but otherwise it's pretty nifty...
In that case I would have a serious giggle, since there's ample 'remove' messages to various spammers in my sent items box... Now THAT would be blessed irony!
Worst. Implementation. Ever.
That's easily explained by the act that most people prior to 1995 were college educated, and at the very least above 18... Most folks around that time were, amongst other things, expected to have some semblance of a level of literacy... Consider too, that people who could afford a computer, as well as net access, were as most would call it by the economic standards at the time "rich"... Nobody thinks about how commonplace computers have become, or how much such has been taken for granted... Now anyone below average intelligence can easily obtain even the most basic of computing equipment...
And before anyone comments, I learned reading phonetically in the early 70's, and typing was self taught on a typewriter (you younguns wouldn't know of such, it used paper, and *you* were the printer, prone to jamming, often a clunky process with lots of whiteout and smudging)...;)
Yes, why not post how rock, paper, scissors is the most sociopathic violent game around?
Paper: A sulking loner, with no other urge than to smother all it encounters to death...
Scissors: The psychopath, he lives to cut and slice, and enjoys his work, beware this evil individual!
Rock: The cruel bully, his purpose is to crush all hapless scissors in his path, but knuckles under the weakest of his opponants, the paper...
Hell, ban it, there's nothing good about it!
I'm surprised they don't post Pokemon time after time though, I mean hey, they promote overglorified cockfighting and cruelty to animals...
The Terminator with Two naked butts and nude Linda Hamilton body double: $300 million
Terminator 2 with two naked butts and computer animation: $500 million
Terminator 3 with naked old Ahhhhnold butt, but sexy naked terminatrix butt and skin tight leather outfit, computer animation + audience full of sex crazed geeks: Priceless...
(or at least another Tomb Raider)
Nope, you decided to insultingly demand proof, I demand you prove otherwise... I provided mine, and thusly you claimed a 'guilt by association' bent... Wrong... It isn't a matter of guilt by association, it's a matter of OWNERSHIP...
For example, how often do you see anti-Disney or anti-MPAA news on ABC News? None? Golly gee, wonder why? Because they're OWNED by Disney? Because *gasp* the once honorable news division of ABC is actualy having their reports respun by their corporate owners to satisfy their corporate owners? Golly gee willikers!
Fox News is owned by a corporation that's known for producing supermarket tabloids, and you thus expect that their business isn't bound under the same practices of sensationalism and oft times personal bias? Sorry kiddo, the real world doesn't work that way... Fox News learned to make their business by appealing to the lowest common denominator, which in American society is almost equal on either side of the political coin... If they cannot appeal to the liberals (CNN and MSNBC), they'll try to appeal to the conservatives, including by supporting every conceivable pie in the sky concept produced by the military industrial complex... Irregardless of the facts, with the very same level of sensationalism and inaccuracies their tabloids use...
So stop defending them, they aren't paying you enough, go back to reading up on Bat Boy or whatever... You've proven nothing other than your capacity to scream "You're wrong wrong wrong!" just as loudly as the evil liberals you're obviously so biased against...
"What, that they were started by Ted Turner?"
Nope, that they are often open to massive gaffs when it comes to accuracy...
"However, CNN researches it's stories far more often than Fox...
And you have documented proof of this, I presume."
Ahhh, the old "Provide proof on paper" argument... Well, can you provide proof otherwise? And can you provide documented proof from a reputable source? There aren't any... Sorry, try again...
The truth is, that Turner built his news network up from a relatively meager start as an independant UHF station in Atlanta, and until the gulf war, they had very little in the way of real visual presence (except for those who HAD cause to watch it)...
Just because you don't study history or the actual information, or have an attention span that exceeds 5 minutes, doesn't mean it isn't true...
"I still trust a news agency that got it's "start" in covering the gulf war, far more than a news network that got it's start with 'Bigfoot could be your neighbor!!!', and 'Here's our big titted broad of the week!'
Uhh...WTF??? I suppose you "researched" that, too."
No need, go to the average supermarket and dig up a copy of the National Enquirer, and read the indicia, you'll note that it's owned by 'American News Corporation', a Rupert Murdoch company... Also owned by Murdoch is the Sun, a Brit publication, and here's your documented proof as well, take a look at their actual website if you don't believe me: http://www.thesun.co.uk/
The list of Rupert Murdoch owned publications can be found at http://www.newscorp.com/index2.html (warning, Flash heavy)
I rest my case...
That could be said of ANY news agency... However, CNN researches it's stories far more often than Fox... They all screw up either way, so that's a moot point... I still trust a news agency that got it's "start" in covering the gulf war, far more than a news network that got it's start with 'Bigfoot could be your neighbor!!!', and 'Here's our big titted broad of the week!'...
And at FAR below the price (even the alleged 'Hologram' arcade game from Sega in 1991 or so was based on the same principle):
t ml
http://www.exploratoriumstore.com/miragemaker.h
Don't forget, the owner of Fox News is Rupert Murdoch... You know, the guy who owns The National Enquirer, and numerous other tabloids... Hardly worth calling a reputable source (ironically his tabloids are the sort that would have paid well for pictures taken of Princess Di by the freelance French papparazi that chased her to her death, and even more ironic, that shortly thereafter her brother gave them an interview on teevee)...
Mind you, this was common knowlege over 10 years ago when Murdoch took over Fox, the NY Post, et al...
Had to deal with the up again down again service from AT&T for quite some time now, best way to cope with it (90% of the problems have been in the WAN/Modem/AT&T's screwed up networking) is to hit that little reset button in back of the modem... This forces the modem to reestablish the link to their WAN and get a fresh IP... In the meanwhile, their DNS appears to have been restored, so no more relying on their DHCP (my roomy can now access webpages/non-IP addresses over Sygate), well, for however long they can keep it up... It's looking like the last time it went down here was due to their installing their DNS routing hard/software or whatever IT guys do... Pity it took them this long to get it done, considering they had as early as second quarter reports to figure out that @home was going tits up... Ohwell...
One could easily say the same about Xbox, uses a PIII 750 CPU, an Nvidia chipset, yatta yatta... Nintendo, however, has been engineering video game hardware (and optimizing same) long before MS even came out with Windows 1.0...
The N64 was purely a fluke in itself, between Silicon Graphics' shakey production schedule, and fighting against what was then expensive RAM/ROM considerations (remember that in the days the N64 came out, 64 Mb ram cost around $160+, and rom in the same size range was similarly expensive, hence why it was in the best interest for Sony to base everything around CD, sacrificing load speed), they were basically going on a wait and see schedule, and gaming fans rarely if ever follow suit...
Since they've been suing everyone and anyone who dared question their cult and all...
http://www.consumptionjunction.com/feat/cc/detail. asp?ID=6906
It turns out that the "plans" for nuclear (read 'Nukular' in Bushspeek) weapons they discovered in Taliban hideouts may have been based on a scientific parody magazine (and subsequently distributed via the internet):
y 2. php
."
.The chain reaction then promptly produces
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0147/ridgewa
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Suddenly, Al Qaeda doesn't look so smart. Just
yesterday, a Times of London reporter found a cache of plans, left in
a Kabul home as the Taliban retreated, that included notes for making
a thermonuclear device. The papers sent a chill through the Western
world, since they appeared to indicate sophisticated designs for an
atom bomb.
Now the online Daily Rotten says at least part of those documents
photographed by the Times are taken verbatim from a "semi-famous"
pseudo-document that has been circulating on the Internet for years.
It's a reprint of a scientific parody called "How to Build an Atom
Bomb," from the geek-humor newsletter Annals of Improbable Research,
originally known as the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
In his report for the BBC, reporter Anthony Loyd held some of the
papers up for the camera, giving a glimpse of documents the Daily
Rotten now compares to the 1979 parody.
Even the language Loyd uses to paraphrase the abandoned material
sounds like that of the satirical document.
Describing the scene in a Times article, Loyd wrote: "The vernacular
quickly spun out of my comprehension but there were phrases through
the mass of chemical symbols and physics jargon that anyone could
understand, including notes on how the detonation of TNT compresses
plutonium into a critical mass producing a nuclear chain reaction and
eventually a thermo-nuclear reaction . . .
The parody document reads: "The device basically works when the
detonated TNT compresses the Plutonium into a critical mass. The
critical mass then produces a nuclear chain reaction similar to the
domino chain reaction . . .
a big thermonuclear reaction. And there you have it, a 10 megaton
explosion!"
To find these faux atomic-bomb plans, do a Web search for "The device
basically works" or "Let's Build an Atomic Bomb!" instructs the Daily
Rotten. "It gives us pause and joy to know the Taliban are wasting
their time downloading what amounts to joke mail and spending time
trying to discern the facts therein."
Homeland security secretary Tom Ridge acknowledged the plans had been
found, but downplayed their importance. With this Daily Rotten report,
the public may get a glimpse of why.
Reached at the Pentagon spokesperson Major Tim Blair said, "I can't
comment on that. You can find all kinds of reports, and you have to
look at which ones are credible. We issue briefings and press
releases, but we don't talk about anything dealing with intelligence.
I'm not throwing stones, but the media should check the credibility of
their sources. You all have to do your job."
The foreign editor who handled the story for the Times was not
immediately available for comment.
--
That's actually (insert snooty nerd voice) one of the earlier designs for the speeder bike proposed for Return of the Jedi (See: The Art of Star Wars, No. 6)... George seems to be recycling a bit in the way of previous designs, such as the Naboo runner from the original Ralph McQuarrie designs for episode 4...
So use a modified and rounded UDMA 66-100 cable, those are specially built for just that problem, just replace the connectors and remove the strands you don't need from the cable...
Sometimes you can get those as cheap as $20 if you find one at a thrift store/surplus PC store... Upon analysis of my existing laptop (when I was fixing the display), it wouldbe fairly simply to remove the panel completely, replace the connector (which is basically a bundle of wires in shrinkwrap) with slightly longer cabling, and flip the display over so it faces away from the laptop when closed, add a mounting point on the back for hanging, and you've got a digital picture frame for less than $30 total... Install Windows 3.11 or Linux and you're good to go...
"Buy a Gamecube 3 days later. The less money they have, the sooner there will be parity in the marketplace. The same goes for keyboards and mice, too."
Yeah, not to mention the US Gamecube can be modded with just a switch to allow it to play both US and Japanese GC titles, easiest mod ever, woot!
Dilbert in Space... Now THAT'S a comic strip I'd read...;)
Well, if you consider that Krakatoa caused a global winter when it erupted, in a "similar" time frame to Oregon's Crater Lake (which, crater wise, is just 5 miles across), that wouldn't be outside the range of possibility... Consider too, that until around roughly 6,000 years ago, the middle east and Egypt were garden spots, and the sahara desert was relatively small to boot...
When you have widespread comparative darkness, plants that previously grew in regions due to the relative sunlight tend to die off... Less plant life=more topsoil erosion... More topsoil erosion=more desert growth... More desert growth=less shade and roots to conserve surface moisture, more heat absorbing sand and light reflection from sand... Less shade and topsoil similarly results in less plant growth, etc...
And in a year or two of reduced sunlight, or more since all the varieties of mythological references to similar situations, if there was a series of meteorites smacking into the earth simultaneously, that would conceivably have the same effect of one "planet killer" meteor/asteroid, just more scattered...