Did said works get uploaded by others? Yes - but does this somehow absolve Google of wrong-doing?
Yes. Viacom needs to go after those doing the uploading. Of course, that costs money. So Viacom is trying to shift the work (and costs) onto Google.
Google has a machine that shows videos. It can show good ones or bad ones. It is a tool, and nothing else. Others are abusing it for infringement purposes. They should be the ones Viacom pursues.
I think that last question is what's going to need to be answered legislatively and judicially over the next decade.
No. It was already answered in the previous decade. Check out the CDA.
For what it's worth, a group of us on Web Hosting Talk were chatting about the Godaddy problems, and someone from Dynadot came by to support Godaddy and state that they do the same. You can see the start of that here:
In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artist that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.
Well of course there is no warning that a song might be unsharable! If they warned you, you might not buy it.
I reviewed the 6 free single-player modules that developers have uploaded to the NW Vault. There are technically 8 so far, but 2 are unplayable. You can read that whole forum thread to get the in-depth reviews, but I'll give you a quick summary here.
A Dark And Stormy Knight You begin the game on a trail. There is a door in a hillside. You enter. You battle some critters in a crypt, and get some prizes. The end.
Avendale You come across a town, find a tavern, and recruit two NPCs to join your party. There is the standard rats-in-the-cellar quest, along with a few more difficult quests. This is probably tied for the best module so far. The quests are good, there is an evil plot to discover and defeat, etc. But it's buggy.
The Flight from Death Good, linear, escape-from-jail story. You're falsely imprisoned, of course. There is one NPC who will join your party. The dialogues are anemic.
Shadow Keep This one is good, because it has no pretensions. No fancy scripting, only 3 lines of dialogue for the entire module. The basic story is that you're on the road and come across a path to the Shadow Keep. You've heard stories of undead and treasure, so you go for it. It turns out there are undead, and there is treasure. That's it. The game ends when you clear the 3 or 4 levels of the keep. Still, it's real fun for trying out character builds and doing some hack & slash.
From Within - An Unknown Enemy (Prologue) The story: you've been summoned to help some towns suffering from an unknown attack, but there's something odd about how the leaders rush you off without disclosing all the details. Poor dialogues railroad you along the plot. The scripting is ambitious, with cut-scenes and triggered events, but the developer bit off more than he could chew. So it's buggy. You'll get 1 NPC companion on this module.
Most of the modules have a length of 15 minutes to 2 hours, with the exception of Avendale. Shadow Keep & Avendale are fun, if you can accept their shortcomings. From Within will be good with more bug-fixing and enhanced dialogues. Anyway, have fun playing NWN 2, everyone.
No, I wanted just what I said. I wanted the system that would give me 4+ years of fun. I wanted the system that wouldn't go under or be abandoned a year or two in. In my opinion, that's not the PS3. They are NOT all 3 winners. They will not all 3 be successes in my opinion. Good job deliberately misreading in the hopes that you could defend your silly "all consoles are fine" sentiment.
So this generation, I think all consoles win. They each are attempting to break into a different part of the market, and they all have succeeded tremendously.
I hate this kind of thinking. It ignores reality. It attempts to be politically correct and magnanimous over electronic devices. As if a PS3 can have a hurt ego.
Look, if there is anything we've learned from recent gaming history, it's that there are losers. The Dreamcast should have had a bigger chunk of market share. In my opinion, it didn't deserve an early death. And the GameCube should have had more games. However good Nintendo's first-party games may be, they didn't have a Guitar Hero or EyeToy equivalent. People wanting that stuff had to look elsewhere.
The bottom line is, some consoles falter, and when they do, sometimes developers kick 'em while they're down. And when that happens, customers get the shaft. So it is not only legitimate for customers to try to figure out the least shafty deal, but it's realistic, too. Right now, Sony is down. What's more, some customers (or ex-customers) want to kick Sony while they're down. It would be stupid to pretend that such thinking has no effect. Similarly, the Wii does have weaker graphics. It may be foolish to ignore that, especially if you consider what the console landscape may look like 2 or 3 years from now -- lots of very good looking and fun games on the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii isn't going to corner the market on fun. So the question may be, do you want fun & good looks, or just fun? Are you willing to pay through the teeth?
The second we start to engage our critical faculties, we can see that there are already some clear indications of who is headed for loserville. And when you're about to put down $500 or so, you may want to be sure you're not investing in the losing team. If you do make that mistake, you may end up having to invest another $500 in a year or two. I'm not suggesting that the PS3 will die like the DreamCast, as Sony is too big and egotistical to let that happen. But we can already see a dearth of games for that system, and many of the games that do exist are already available (with better multiplayer) on the XBox 360. A year from now, will PS3 fanboys be asking Santa for an XBox 360, just to get a better selection of fun games? Why not avoid that mess, and pick intelligently from the start?
As for me, I've picked the Wii, because I believe three things. First, graphics have reached "good enough" level for enough people that sales won't be hurt. Second, the Wii controller isn't a gimmick, and will ensure good gaming for quite some time. Third, Nintendo has patched up relationships with third parties, and will see more games than the PS3 will. I could be wrong on all counts. But I want to put my money down on a system that will last me 4+ years, and so I did my best to determine who the losers would be, and steered clear.
Is he pointing his remote like a gun and holding it to his eye as if it had crosshairs? Cuz otherwise, I don't get how you could miss anything; it has been pretty much effortless for me to aim and shoot in Rayman Raving Rabbids' gun games, for example. Anybody else having accuracy problems out there?
Yes. I have to aim high to hit things. It turns out there is an obvious explanation -- the Wii remote's signal is captured in relation to the sensor bar, not the TV. Of course the sensor bar is very close to the TV, and most people stand a ways back from the TV. That mitigates the problem. But everyone with a Wii does have this problem, more or less. Stand close to the TV, perhaps 3 feet away or so. Try aiming at buttons, then look at your hand. Notice anything? You're aiming too high. You shouldn't be hitting the mark. Turns out you're really just aiming at the sensor bar.
Having said that, I actually did have to stand close to the TV and then look down at my own hand to see what I was doing. In other words, adjusting to aim high was so natural that my body did it automatically. My point? If adjusting is that natural, then even if the reviewer is correct that the Wii has accuracy problems, it's still overblown.
But I... uh... wouldn't mind the ability to recalibrate the thing.
My big complaint is the glacially slow internet connection. I have never owned a Genesis, and so wanted to snag Sonic for some cheap laughs. Purchasing Wii points took about half an hour, and I never actually managed to download the game (despite having paid for it).
For what it's worth, my probably busted Wii was able to go from entering the store to playing F-Zero in about 4 minutes. That's buying points (or whatever they're called), viewing the store, downloading the ROM (or whatever it does) and then hitting the play button. So just for your own information, maybe your wireless is screwed up.
Second, the Wii appears to be having huge numbers of problems. Not the insane failure rate/dead consoles fiasco Microsoft had with the 360s, but huge numbers of minor to medium problems. Dead/flakey controllers seem to be very common, networking problems, disc read errors, problems updating the Wii software, and a fair number of DOA Wiis.
Link?
Would a first-hand account help? I bought my Wii on opening day, and it works. However, every disk I insert comes up with a disk read error after a short while of playing. I can eject the disk and reinsert it, and usually after 3 or 4 inserts, it reads enough to continue. Because of this, the Wii is somewhat playable. However, having to reinsert the disk perhaps 25 times over the course of 3 or 4 hours of play yesterday is crazy-making.
Statistics catches bad treatment of kids?
on
More A's, More Pay
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Any fears that teachers might cook the books to score a typical $5,000 payoff? Not to worry, says Chicago's school chief, there are statistical analyses in place that spot testing irregularities, presumably better at catching Cheaters than those used in the past.
<sarcasm> Yes, I'm sure their system will catch this stuff, too. How? Magic, maybe. </sarcasm>
<script language="JavaScript"> var n = 'paul'; var d = 'poop.com'; document.write('<a href="mailto:' + n + '@' + d + '">' + n + '@' + d + '</a>'); </script>
No spam from that kind of system yet. However, all that really means is that the email harvesting programs don't parse JavaScript yet. I'm sure if they were smart, they'd use IE to render the page and run their harvesting program on the post-rendered page. So far they don't in my experience. But I'm surprised about that. So consider JavaScript a temporary measure.
Aw, now that's just plain mean to put this right after an article about babies' brain stems. The opportunity for misinterpretation is just too high. Sickos.
In what industry isn't there a high rate of divorce?
Weird logic. Sure, there's no perfect job. Sure, people get divorced in all industries. But I'm not sure how that rebuts the notion that some industries (IT) may be worse than others. Some companies have nearly inhuman expectations and the spouses are affected.
There are jobs that cater to more family-minded people. Maybe it's the industry. Maybe it's the location. I know that when I worked in Sonoma County (wine country), everyone left work right at 5 PM, maybe had a nice drink together, and that was it. Work was dropped, regardless. If deadlines passed, they passed. When I moved to San Jose (Silicon Valley), the garage startup mentality was HUGE. The idea that you might slave away for 4 or 5 years in order to make a killing in stock options or to leverage a buyout was prevalent just about everywhere. And still is, thanks to YouTube and others like them. One of my bosses was very proud of working 16 hour days for 2 years straight. You might imagine that working for such a person involves similar workaholism.
Some industries do have bad trends. Maybe they come & go in waves. I don't know. But I know that work environments do differ, and some are very marriage-hostile. If a married person gets stuck in such a job and is living paycheck to paycheck, it may not be so easy to get out. If the OP does his study on a scientific basis -- control groups, the works -- and comes to the conclusion that IT has a 60% divorce rate while the paper industry has a 45% divorce rate, there might be something to it.
Not the job's fault? Uh, maybe?
on
IT and Divorce?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Well, this topic is about to fall off the Slashdot homepage, so I guess my comment is destined to languish in obscurity. However, let's do this for posterity.
There are many posts here making the point that it's ridiculous to blame your job for your divorce. They make the distinction that human beings make these choices, and the blame should fall there. It's a good point, although maybe some could have said it more kindly. But it doesn't change the fact that some work environments are extremely hostile to marriages.
I worked at software reporting tools company for a couple of years. At one point, there was a Web site redesign scheduled. As the sole Web person at the time, I worked 2 90+ hour weeks back to back. It was something like 16 days on, each day up at dawn, home at nearly midnight. I was a (relatively) new father. I didn't once speak to my daughter during that time -- I only saw her sleeping at night. I was OK with this because it was a very short-term crunch. But I was a little sad. I launched the redesign Sunday night, got a few hours of sleep, and arrived at work Monday morning at 7:30 AM. I wasn't expecting much, but some acknowledgement of my hard work would have been nice. My boss was there, livid. I don't even recall what the problem was, but it was minor. She ripped into me. I defended myself with the truth -- "I've worked 16 days in a row, I haven't seen my family, there aren't any more hours in the day!"
Her response? "You'll just have to find a way to do more!"
You can say that the people in the marriage are always the problem. You can say that it's a cop-out to blame external pressures. And I agree to a certain point. I was at a crossroads, and I could have chosen my job over my family at that moment. It would have been my choice, my consequences. But I also know that certain types of people can and will take advantage. Certain people do NOT care about anything other than their own goals, and if they can manipulate a young, inexperienced worker bee into slaving away, so be it. If the worker bee crashes & burns, "maybe that worker bee wasn't cut out for the job." It is a fairly heartless way to interact with people, and to some degree, I think such people are not blameless for the pain that follows.
Oh, and I'm still married. I work freelance, my own schedule. We have income that is nowhere near what I used to make, but I'm way the hell happier.
Baldur's Gate is great. I hope readers understand it's not the Playstation/console games he's referring to. I've still never done some things, such as taking the pontaloons all the way through the series. It took 4 playthroughs before I ever saw the whole Trademeet area. Now it's my favorite area. Great series, although to be honest, I've never finished. I have 1 more game in me, I think, and I intend to install the romance & banter mods, create a very good character, and try to convert Viconia from evil to neutral. Never done it before.
Anyway, I'd key off of that and say that Planescape: Torment is my favorite "comfort" game (I'm "keying off" of it because they use the same engine, although different revs). I've played it 5 or 6 times through to the end, and I've tried all kind of variations in play.
Also, I'd have to put Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (PS2) down as both a guilty pleasure and a comfort game. My daughter and I have been playing that game for about 4 years. It was the first non-kiddie game she ever played with me, she started playing at age 4. We had almost finished it a couple of years ago when the Sony holiday disk came out -- the one that erases your saved games. We lost all our progress. But I'd actually thank Sony, because my son is now almost 5, and he's been helping us to start over.
It's a guilty pleasure because the game is so ridiculously easy that nearly zero skill is needed. It's mindless. However, that is also what makes it ideal for a 4 year-old trying to learn how to use a game controller. They just hold X and follow me.:)
The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.
Yet again showing that those of us who care about this stuff are in an extreme minority. We delude ourselves every time we believe that our concerns are going to be taken up by the general populace. It makes me wonder. Will the Wii actually be successful, or is that just a small group of vocal fanboys? Will HP actually get anything other than a slap on the wrist? What about Net Neutrality? Oops.
I guess the question is, is it better to be in the minority that sees it coming, or in the majority that is blissfully unaware?
all newspapers are strong entities in Belgium, nobody searches them in Google, everyone just types the newspaper name, followed by.be
Well, so then everything worked out for the best. The newspapers are no longer indexed in Google at all, and won't get a whiff of traffic sent their way by Google. But since nobody searches the newspapers using Google, it shouldn't have any impact to the newspapers, right? They're happy with the results? I assume they get all the traffic they need from methods other than Google and are just thrilled to be out of Google's index.
Sigh. I'd pay good money to have Google index my sites even more. I envy some of these businesses who can tussle with Google, get de-indexed, and say, "fine with us, we still won in court, so the traffic loss is irrelevant."
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Viacom needs to go after those doing the uploading. Of course, that costs money. So Viacom is trying to shift the work (and costs) onto Google.
Google has a machine that shows videos. It can show good ones or bad ones. It is a tool, and nothing else. Others are abusing it for infringement purposes. They should be the ones Viacom pursues.
No. It was already answered in the previous decade. Check out the CDA.
Wow. That's just awful.
For what it's worth, a group of us on Web Hosting Talk were chatting about the Godaddy problems, and someone from Dynadot came by to support Godaddy and state that they do the same. You can see the start of that here:
9 379#post4265087
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=56
So if you're leaving Godaddy for their interference with domain names, then you surely want to also avoid Dynadot.
Well of course there is no warning that a song might be unsharable! If they warned you, you might not buy it.
...or at least, new games in that setting:
http://www.roguedao.com/
Your review served to better flesh out and enhance Zonk's review. Thanks so much! Great job.
I reviewed the 6 free single-player modules that developers have uploaded to the NW Vault. There are technically 8 so far, but 2 are unplayable. You can read that whole forum thread to get the in-depth reviews, but I'll give you a quick summary here.
A Dark And Stormy Knight
You begin the game on a trail. There is a door in a hillside. You enter. You battle some critters in a crypt, and get some prizes. The end.
Avendale
You come across a town, find a tavern, and recruit two NPCs to join your party. There is the standard rats-in-the-cellar quest, along with a few more difficult quests. This is probably tied for the best module so far. The quests are good, there is an evil plot to discover and defeat, etc. But it's buggy.
The Flight from Death
Good, linear, escape-from-jail story. You're falsely imprisoned, of course. There is one NPC who will join your party. The dialogues are anemic.
Shadow Keep
This one is good, because it has no pretensions. No fancy scripting, only 3 lines of dialogue for the entire module. The basic story is that you're on the road and come across a path to the Shadow Keep. You've heard stories of undead and treasure, so you go for it. It turns out there are undead, and there is treasure. That's it. The game ends when you clear the 3 or 4 levels of the keep. Still, it's real fun for trying out character builds and doing some hack & slash.
From Within - An Unknown Enemy (Prologue)
The story: you've been summoned to help some towns suffering from an unknown attack, but there's something odd about how the leaders rush you off without disclosing all the details. Poor dialogues railroad you along the plot. The scripting is ambitious, with cut-scenes and triggered events, but the developer bit off more than he could chew. So it's buggy. You'll get 1 NPC companion on this module.
Most of the modules have a length of 15 minutes to 2 hours, with the exception of Avendale. Shadow Keep & Avendale are fun, if you can accept their shortcomings. From Within will be good with more bug-fixing and enhanced dialogues. Anyway, have fun playing NWN 2, everyone.
You lose.
No, I wanted just what I said. I wanted the system that would give me 4+ years of fun. I wanted the system that wouldn't go under or be abandoned a year or two in. In my opinion, that's not the PS3. They are NOT all 3 winners. They will not all 3 be successes in my opinion. Good job deliberately misreading in the hopes that you could defend your silly "all consoles are fine" sentiment.
I hate this kind of thinking. It ignores reality. It attempts to be politically correct and magnanimous over electronic devices. As if a PS3 can have a hurt ego.
Look, if there is anything we've learned from recent gaming history, it's that there are losers. The Dreamcast should have had a bigger chunk of market share. In my opinion, it didn't deserve an early death. And the GameCube should have had more games. However good Nintendo's first-party games may be, they didn't have a Guitar Hero or EyeToy equivalent. People wanting that stuff had to look elsewhere.
The bottom line is, some consoles falter, and when they do, sometimes developers kick 'em while they're down. And when that happens, customers get the shaft. So it is not only legitimate for customers to try to figure out the least shafty deal, but it's realistic, too. Right now, Sony is down. What's more, some customers (or ex-customers) want to kick Sony while they're down. It would be stupid to pretend that such thinking has no effect. Similarly, the Wii does have weaker graphics. It may be foolish to ignore that, especially if you consider what the console landscape may look like 2 or 3 years from now -- lots of very good looking and fun games on the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii isn't going to corner the market on fun. So the question may be, do you want fun & good looks, or just fun? Are you willing to pay through the teeth?
The second we start to engage our critical faculties, we can see that there are already some clear indications of who is headed for loserville. And when you're about to put down $500 or so, you may want to be sure you're not investing in the losing team. If you do make that mistake, you may end up having to invest another $500 in a year or two. I'm not suggesting that the PS3 will die like the DreamCast, as Sony is too big and egotistical to let that happen. But we can already see a dearth of games for that system, and many of the games that do exist are already available (with better multiplayer) on the XBox 360. A year from now, will PS3 fanboys be asking Santa for an XBox 360, just to get a better selection of fun games? Why not avoid that mess, and pick intelligently from the start?
As for me, I've picked the Wii, because I believe three things. First, graphics have reached "good enough" level for enough people that sales won't be hurt. Second, the Wii controller isn't a gimmick, and will ensure good gaming for quite some time. Third, Nintendo has patched up relationships with third parties, and will see more games than the PS3 will. I could be wrong on all counts. But I want to put my money down on a system that will last me 4+ years, and so I did my best to determine who the losers would be, and steered clear.
Yes. I have to aim high to hit things. It turns out there is an obvious explanation -- the Wii remote's signal is captured in relation to the sensor bar, not the TV. Of course the sensor bar is very close to the TV, and most people stand a ways back from the TV. That mitigates the problem. But everyone with a Wii does have this problem, more or less. Stand close to the TV, perhaps 3 feet away or so. Try aiming at buttons, then look at your hand. Notice anything? You're aiming too high. You shouldn't be hitting the mark. Turns out you're really just aiming at the sensor bar.
Having said that, I actually did have to stand close to the TV and then look down at my own hand to see what I was doing. In other words, adjusting to aim high was so natural that my body did it automatically. My point? If adjusting is that natural, then even if the reviewer is correct that the Wii has accuracy problems, it's still overblown.
But I... uh... wouldn't mind the ability to recalibrate the thing.
For what it's worth, my probably busted Wii was able to go from entering the store to playing F-Zero in about 4 minutes. That's buying points (or whatever they're called), viewing the store, downloading the ROM (or whatever it does) and then hitting the play button. So just for your own information, maybe your wireless is screwed up.
Would a first-hand account help? I bought my Wii on opening day, and it works. However, every disk I insert comes up with a disk read error after a short while of playing. I can eject the disk and reinsert it, and usually after 3 or 4 inserts, it reads enough to continue. Because of this, the Wii is somewhat playable. However, having to reinsert the disk perhaps 25 times over the course of 3 or 4 hours of play yesterday is crazy-making.
<sarcasm>
Yes, I'm sure their system will catch this stuff, too. How? Magic, maybe.
</sarcasm>
This code has been OK for me:
No spam from that kind of system yet. However, all that really means is that the email harvesting programs don't parse JavaScript yet. I'm sure if they were smart, they'd use IE to render the page and run their harvesting program on the post-rendered page. So far they don't in my experience. But I'm surprised about that. So consider JavaScript a temporary measure.
Aw, now that's just plain mean to put this right after an article about babies' brain stems. The opportunity for misinterpretation is just too high. Sickos.
That is disgusting. If true, I feel that IE Domain Registry is revealing their own sickness by enforcing such as bizarre standard.
Weird logic. Sure, there's no perfect job. Sure, people get divorced in all industries. But I'm not sure how that rebuts the notion that some industries (IT) may be worse than others. Some companies have nearly inhuman expectations and the spouses are affected.
There are jobs that cater to more family-minded people. Maybe it's the industry. Maybe it's the location. I know that when I worked in Sonoma County (wine country), everyone left work right at 5 PM, maybe had a nice drink together, and that was it. Work was dropped, regardless. If deadlines passed, they passed. When I moved to San Jose (Silicon Valley), the garage startup mentality was HUGE. The idea that you might slave away for 4 or 5 years in order to make a killing in stock options or to leverage a buyout was prevalent just about everywhere. And still is, thanks to YouTube and others like them. One of my bosses was very proud of working 16 hour days for 2 years straight. You might imagine that working for such a person involves similar workaholism.
Some industries do have bad trends. Maybe they come & go in waves. I don't know. But I know that work environments do differ, and some are very marriage-hostile. If a married person gets stuck in such a job and is living paycheck to paycheck, it may not be so easy to get out. If the OP does his study on a scientific basis -- control groups, the works -- and comes to the conclusion that IT has a 60% divorce rate while the paper industry has a 45% divorce rate, there might be something to it.
Well, this topic is about to fall off the Slashdot homepage, so I guess my comment is destined to languish in obscurity. However, let's do this for posterity.
There are many posts here making the point that it's ridiculous to blame your job for your divorce. They make the distinction that human beings make these choices, and the blame should fall there. It's a good point, although maybe some could have said it more kindly. But it doesn't change the fact that some work environments are extremely hostile to marriages.
I worked at software reporting tools company for a couple of years. At one point, there was a Web site redesign scheduled. As the sole Web person at the time, I worked 2 90+ hour weeks back to back. It was something like 16 days on, each day up at dawn, home at nearly midnight. I was a (relatively) new father. I didn't once speak to my daughter during that time -- I only saw her sleeping at night. I was OK with this because it was a very short-term crunch. But I was a little sad. I launched the redesign Sunday night, got a few hours of sleep, and arrived at work Monday morning at 7:30 AM. I wasn't expecting much, but some acknowledgement of my hard work would have been nice. My boss was there, livid. I don't even recall what the problem was, but it was minor. She ripped into me. I defended myself with the truth -- "I've worked 16 days in a row, I haven't seen my family, there aren't any more hours in the day!"
Her response? "You'll just have to find a way to do more!"
You can say that the people in the marriage are always the problem. You can say that it's a cop-out to blame external pressures. And I agree to a certain point. I was at a crossroads, and I could have chosen my job over my family at that moment. It would have been my choice, my consequences. But I also know that certain types of people can and will take advantage. Certain people do NOT care about anything other than their own goals, and if they can manipulate a young, inexperienced worker bee into slaving away, so be it. If the worker bee crashes & burns, "maybe that worker bee wasn't cut out for the job." It is a fairly heartless way to interact with people, and to some degree, I think such people are not blameless for the pain that follows.
Oh, and I'm still married. I work freelance, my own schedule. We have income that is nowhere near what I used to make, but I'm way the hell happier.
Baldur's Gate is great. I hope readers understand it's not the Playstation/console games he's referring to. I've still never done some things, such as taking the pontaloons all the way through the series. It took 4 playthroughs before I ever saw the whole Trademeet area. Now it's my favorite area. Great series, although to be honest, I've never finished. I have 1 more game in me, I think, and I intend to install the romance & banter mods, create a very good character, and try to convert Viconia from evil to neutral. Never done it before.
:)
Anyway, I'd key off of that and say that Planescape: Torment is my favorite "comfort" game (I'm "keying off" of it because they use the same engine, although different revs). I've played it 5 or 6 times through to the end, and I've tried all kind of variations in play.
Also, I'd have to put Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (PS2) down as both a guilty pleasure and a comfort game. My daughter and I have been playing that game for about 4 years. It was the first non-kiddie game she ever played with me, she started playing at age 4. We had almost finished it a couple of years ago when the Sony holiday disk came out -- the one that erases your saved games. We lost all our progress. But I'd actually thank Sony, because my son is now almost 5, and he's been helping us to start over.
It's a guilty pleasure because the game is so ridiculously easy that nearly zero skill is needed. It's mindless. However, that is also what makes it ideal for a 4 year-old trying to learn how to use a game controller. They just hold X and follow me.
-Tony
Yet again showing that those of us who care about this stuff are in an extreme minority. We delude ourselves every time we believe that our concerns are going to be taken up by the general populace. It makes me wonder. Will the Wii actually be successful, or is that just a small group of vocal fanboys? Will HP actually get anything other than a slap on the wrist? What about Net Neutrality? Oops.
I guess the question is, is it better to be in the minority that sees it coming, or in the majority that is blissfully unaware?
Well, so then everything worked out for the best. The newspapers are no longer indexed in Google at all, and won't get a whiff of traffic sent their way by Google. But since nobody searches the newspapers using Google, it shouldn't have any impact to the newspapers, right? They're happy with the results? I assume they get all the traffic they need from methods other than Google and are just thrilled to be out of Google's index.
Sigh. I'd pay good money to have Google index my sites even more. I envy some of these businesses who can tussle with Google, get de-indexed, and say, "fine with us, we still won in court, so the traffic loss is irrelevant."
According to this press release, no game is included.
-Tony
I like this new video too. Looks fun. -Tony
I wish I had mod points for you.