I hate businesses that assume that you will buy certain services from them because they deem them 'essential', and when all of a sudden you don't, they jack up the price of the services you still do buy from them......How about my damned cable company (or phone company) that charges me an extra $10 a month because I just want a highspeed internet connection but don't want their cable offerings or long distance plan?
How can they get away with this BS?
Aren't there laws against this sorta crap?
Well, there WERE laws against this sort of crap, but then deregulation came around. The FCC doesn't get into consumer issues anymore, it is more concerned about showing tough to Johnny Sixpack about their supposed outrage with nipples and man-ass that they show on NYPD Blue. The FCC is not concerned with the a la carte offerings bill, because they (and by they, I mean the corporate cronies that get placed in the FCC by the system) have shot that thing down a bazillion times... all in the name of deregulation. "Why should companies be beholden to the government?!? If they regulate our prices, we'll go bankrupt!"
Deregulation of the basically five giant corporate entities that control all of the telephone, cable, and broadband access out there is not a good thing, even though idiots everywhere that haven't taken a basic econ class say it is. Then they did it. Simply put, all deregulation does in that situation is to break the contract of fairness between the public and the giganto-corporations. Let's all deregulate water! Hey, how about electricity?!? Imagine that!
Lower prices!
(for a short while until you forget the old times)
Better services!
(unless you get a dispute and you have no fair use contract with the city, and they won't run service to your area and business)
Corporations can do it better than the government!
(until the corporations slash maintenance to give money to another part of the corporation, leaving you with jacked up prices on basic services and shitty service)
Remember kids. Deregulation is a good thing. Especially with essential services such as power, light, phone, and water. I'm sure you'll love the way that you used to call the city council about infrastructure and get a response, and now you get to call INDIA. I'm sure the call representative in INDIA will really care about your cable problem.
This scam is about as good as having a political party that slashes the basic military infrastructure budget for infrastructure and not stealth bombers, forcing the military to subcontract basic services, and then forcing in a two party system an administration that owns said military subcontractors so they can engage in a no-end, non-specific war overseas, and then have no accountability for cost overruns, thus making tens, if not hundreds, of billions in cost overruns that are unaccounted for, and checked by their stockholders.
Orwell wrote the book as an observation of the world around him.
The society really hasn't changed the rules since he wrote the book.
However, with rights suspension and other things going on, it is looking more like we are heading back to a monrarchical state again... just with big overhead costs.
This poster just sat through four hours of talks about medicine percentages...
Trust me, the government is run by brain sucking aliens.
Immature? How about astute.
I am the parent of this and I will respond...
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China Bans 50 Games
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· Score: 1
The difference, eloquently summed up by another as in "we have more freedom", is that you are free to become one of those few rich, and in your cynical view, exploit the many poor. While not everyone is poor out of choice, some of the poor are there due to laziness. When was the last time you did something to change your situation, or the situation of those around you for the better? Even if you believe your post, and are firmly convinced that the polo-pony riding elite power structure will never change, you can still make every effort to go out and get yourself a pony and fake your way into the country club.
Later, you ask what I did to change it.
I try to change it all the time. I am a journalist, and I work hard. The truth is to be told, and there are literally millions of people in this country, who are poor, who have great intelligence, and who could do a better job than our current elected man-king.
Ignore all the facts about Bush but one: When did a son of a powerful man ever do a good job in history? What? We have had maybe a handful that have ever been worth a crap.
Since when did hiring the loser son of anyone in power make any situation ever better? Usually that is the last person your civilization ever gets as a leader, if you count up all of the implosions of societies. How can anyone ever think that it was a good idea? The son of a powerful man is always a punk. ALWAYS. Why are we surprised when Dubya acts all snotty to anyone that disagrees with him? That is "Rich Kid 101."
"Dude, my dad owns a dealership and knows the Sherriff, so we're cool, alright? So do it, man."
Back to America.
How can you explain that the system is not a feudalistic sham when only once in a blue moon someone of ignoble birth gets to be President or a Senator, and instead we have a parade a line of nepotistic skull 'n bones brat-children who can't add two and two together as the leaders of this system?
Freedom? Freedom involves choices. If the freedom that you speak of is the freedom to climb to the top of the pile to kick the other dogs off of your hill, then that isn't freedom at all, it is feudalism, exactly as I stated, where families push their bratty, maid humping progeny off on us generation after generation, and the differences are moot.
The truly smart, and the truly good hard working intelligent underclass of this world have always been beat down. How else do you hold them, they got nothing to lose. That is the only way to hold your power. There are a freakin' billion on this planet that are smarter than your high-class idiot spawn even without a Ivy League education. When your cocaine-sniffing son can't intellectually compete in an advanced society, what do you do? YOU BUY THE ELECTION, KOWTOW TO THE POWERS THAT BE, OR CHEAT.
Surprise surprise where we are right now. We have a boy-king. And he wages the sport of kings, WAR, at his discretion. I am shocked. "My GOD, WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE! This is a totally new global dynamic going on!"
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
There are a lot of smart people buried in phone answering jobs out there because of the misfortune of birth. I think we can all attest to the caring, fantastic morals, honesty, appeals to higher thinking, and absolute brilliance of the current President of the United States... and how it all seals my argument against your flag waving.
Just don't try to shove that one word (freedom) down my throat to explain a complicated universe that no one can comprehend. This kind of talk is for the big boys with big ideas.
Don't come peddling that intellectual marketing that we call the political process around here these days.
The poor get screwed. Don't sell me otherwise.
Oh, and indeed, no matter what I say about America, China is a freaking hellhole. So stop that counterargument right there. They aren't connected.
Governments are not concerned...
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China Bans 50 Games
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm more concerned about my kids getting run over by a tank because they disagree with the government, or contracting some fatal disease because the country runs around like nothing is wrong, than with textbooks, publications or journals.
My friend, it is time to learn that all types of governments have one thing in common, and that is that they don't care about you in the slightest. They organize to use you for power. You don't even have a choice. There is only one thing that they do care about, and that is maintaining the special position that they have on top of you. This is the same the world over throughout history. I dare say it is inescapable.
Whether it be a cultural dictatorship that seeks to keep you in line by giving you no options to think for yourself, or a "no real choice" representative democracy that has two parties that look the same, it doesn't matter what you think. Pull the lever, bucko. No matter what you do, no matter what they say about thinking about "your ethnic identity" or "your freedoms" they still will give most favored nation status to ethnic cleansing butchers and corporations that make plastic crap, because that's where the friends are (and by friends, I mean pieces of paper with other famously successful a-holes on it), and honestly, who could turn down that much oil and cheap labor? I mean, cmon! Remember, life is a video game where the objective is to rack up a bank account score with as many zeros as a galaga champion on a three day meth binge.
Let me put it this way, your money (stamped with the very face of the kings that made the rules your life) has always been taken out of your hardworking hands and given to some bastard at the top to buy polo ponies. It's a graft... a fleecing of the many for the excess of the few, and their friends. Whether they are in charge of China, or getting seven hundred dollars for a special bolt for that aircraft carrier, or in charge of Citibank, in short, we play by their rules, and so they screw us, like they always have throughout history.
Best to find a way make as much freedom, time, happiness, and peace on your own. If you look to those guys for it, you really will get run over by a tank, for their profit margins.
How about this. Why don't a bunch of IT companies set up shop in Costa Rica and pay their employees to move there? The advantages are enormous. Cheap cost of business, you're close to America, exotic location for the young employees (and exotic women for the young geek men;) ) and if everyone goes expatriate, the tax benefits are totally worth it.
No thank you.
It's that whole rule of law thing.
Go to another country, even a US protectorate. You will see what happens if someone has a criminal issue anywhere near you.
Good luck with this paradise you call Puerto Rico.
We need more blinky lights(functional or not). That way we can retro-ize our computers to look like big glitzy units shown on 1980s Tv shows and movies.
Who was paying attention to the lights?
What we really need is Erin Grey from Buck Rogers standing next to our computers in her skintight, shiny blue flightsuit.
Screw the lights! I want a space disco with slave girls.
The group known as TCNiSO has released a very interesting hardware modification for RCA / Thomson cable modems. The modification is done by grounding the bus clock on the serial EEPROM which throws the device into a diagnostic panic mode. Then by using the debug tools from the embedded console to reprogram the EEPROM, a user can permanently enable a developers menu which gives complete control of the modem, such as modifying the hardware addresses or flashing new firmware. Now if only these guys can figure out how to enable the Bluetooth features on my v710 phone..."
Whoa, slow down.
Corky here can't handle frontpage paragraphs like that first thing in the morning.
The only people with the right to take pride in being Americans are immigrants. For the majority of the rest of us Americans, the ones who are citizens by birth, the most we can lay claim to is that we are glad to be (not proud to be) Americans.
Yes, we should all be glad only. Only with your revisionist history. Honestly, have you thought about being a lawyer? Your semantic lies are incredible. Your amazing ability to shame people with specific word use is astounding.
More importantly, your nerve is inexcuseable.
My ancestors came over on about the fifth boat, at a time when they were running from religious oppression. They didn't kill the natives, they lived along side them. They had no interest in conquest, like the other English that came later.
Just like the people that come today, they were looking for a better life.
Personally, I can't stand punks like you that say people now don't contribute to society like the immigrants do. Like all of the advances in science, medicine, engineering, and all of the other advances that people in the US have been working on in earnest for generations around us all were just all about the immigrants.
On behalf of all of the American people, and some of my ancestors that crawled out of the company mines, slept in tents in Alaska, and worked hard to cut a civilization out here one farmhouse school to community college education at a time, may I humbly say this, GO SCREW YOURSELF.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
4-5 hours for Video watching through UMD. 4-6 hours average for gameplay through UMD. 4 hours with headphones and 50% volume, no WIFI and highest screen brightness (180 cd/m2). 6 hours with headphones and 50% volume, no WIFI and lowest screen brightness (80 cd/m2).
It has been my history that manufacturers usually exaggerate and say that the battery life of anything is double what it really is. This is true for gameboys to flashlights. With that little piece of knowledge, this battery life is not as good as everyone thinks it is.
I would say that I would be taking a book along with me as well, just in case.
Ideas to think about in the new "Portables War"
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PSP Opened up and Exposed
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· Score: 4, Interesting
-Sony has won the adult part of the portables market with its sleek styling and functionality... question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
-Do we need yet another proprietary media format? When can we burn on it? When can we buy it?
-Are audiences really going to want to buy their media on a proprietary format when a portable DVD player is so cheap these days, and works with your home disks? Saying that smaller is better was important in the 80s... I don't think that holds today. Matter of fact, is anyone going to buy a movie on this thing? Will they be offering anything besides FF:The Spirits Within and Akira for the otaku?
-The interactivity of the DS is well known, the interactivity of the PSP not so much, why?
-It's obvious that Nintendo knows where it is going, but I am not so sure about this. Their primary point is that it is "sleek." I am not sure that being sleek is my main desire to having a portable.
-I am not really excited about a disk drive anything in my carry around equipment. It may be an unfounded fear these days, but still, it is there.
From what I have seen from both Nintendo and Sony, they are trying to make a quantam leap in the portables market, and right now, my money is on Nintendo. Still, they need to do something before I buy either one. They both have side features, but shiny and features is a seriously Japanese thing, and Nintendo has held its own with their focus. So I go with 'Tendo.
After all, who uses their Xbox to play movies? Anyone? Who will use their PSP to play the ten songs that their memory stick can hold or look at digital pictures when the camera already has a screen, and shows them without running it through a PC? Picto-chat? Honestly Nintendo, if you are close enough to picto chat you are close enough to chat for real. That is more fun.
Some of these things on both machines make no sense. Maybe they make sense if you are Japanese. I don't know what some of these things are for.
Sure it is an action movie, but Indiana Jones is one of those characters that can be funny......an old rumor, years ago was that Spielberg wasn't going to do another Indiana Jones movie, then he got a spec script featuring a lot of old man jokes and humor in it as well as the action. A mature Jones, with mature problems, and still trying to be the adventurer that he remembers in his mind.
I personally won't want to see an Indiana Jones movie with Ford in it unless it does make fun in some way his inability to get around anymore. If it doesn't, it will be a joke, and no one will believe it. It is part of where Harrison Ford is now. Better to surf the staples of adventure and humor in this one than do the opposite and try to make a stab at seriousness.
It appears to me the one that got the grace and speed armor thing right was Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, when it showed the Tachkomas (sp?), little one man spider tanks with wheels on the bottoms of the legs. They can hop and dodge, lean, spin out, and hit the highways like a car if they need to.
It's like Tony Hawk was driving the thing.
I would however, like to add that the one thing that people are missing with the abilities of an armored "waldo" suit would be the way that a man could change battle tactics entirely. A regular infantry squad with one armored man alone could wreck havok, considering he could make breaches where there was no door, rescue the wounded, and run point in dangerous situations.
Ask yourself this... how useful would a tank be that could walk up stairs to clean out an apartment building, or throw heavy ammo on top of a roof to a quick gun emplacement?
I agree with most here, the smaller the better. The real reasons our tanks are so large is to fit the large guns. That is all.
I think SOMEONE is exaggerating. America, especially when it comes to corporate responsibilty, is a paradise. A paradise where everything is cheap, easy to manufacture, and made with 100% American pride. The rest of the world is ENVIOUS of the way employees are treated here, why else do you think we keep giving all these illegals jobs here? The want a slic of the American prosperity. America is a great place to work, you get all the benefits, all the respect, and the sure knowledge that things are getting better for the working man every day around here.
This multiplayer and movable objects is really what HL2 is all about. The build options are really very striking.
I played deathmatch, but it really isn't what it is all about. Deathmatch is a taste to show the community what it is really all about. Imagine a capture game with breachable walls and doorways, and people slapping up chickenwire and "nailing" wall objects to keep the windows from getting naded, things like that. The piles of junk to keep the attacker options down, and the attackers blowing debris to get to it. rfare, they are urban-like warfare on a map that only looks like urban warfare on the outside. When you can use a couch for cover and move it to hide, then we will be happier. Much happier. Deathmatch is too fast. Counter Strike is aggavatingly fast. It gives you no time to give an option about outplaying your opponent. With objects and physics, you will soon be able to do it.
Look, most of you are crabbing this one... but if it was team deathmatch with liftable steel plate barriers, and sticky mines, you would be screaming like a monkey at the top of your lungs with joy. Don't worry. It's coming. Either by Valve in a week or two or by some modders. Some things are just downright obvious. Movable barriers, wall covers, breachable areas, and everything like that is coming, it is just a matter of who is going to do it.
But why stop there?
The good news is it isn't going to stop there. With an independent physics based system, imagine the "space marine" fantasies that we always had as a kid. You and some buddies online blowing out an airlock and gravity catapulting your way through a chain of asteroids to infiltrate a stranded mothership.
Right now we are playing with standard physics settings, what is going to happen when they start messing with those settings? "Woot, I say, my good fellow, woot indeed."
IMHO, Valve solved the largest problem and my biggest gripe with 3D video games when they made a physics engine that wasn't so wonky it made me laugh. It is simply a matter of time before the next killer multiplayer comes out, and it isn't going to look like CS. I personally can't wait to flip someone's minitank with my little Somali street trash barrier. But hey, keep griping, you'll shut up soon enough when you throw someone through a building in a superhero mod.
How about having a camcorder with several differently coloured light sources? By analyzing the correspondingly differently coloured shadows one could create depth information in real time.
HL2 was not as good as FarCry? You're kidding, right? HL2 is one of the most immersive games I have ever played. You can't honestly tell me that opening up full throttle on an alien bug gut-splattered buggy and living out your Dukes of Hazzard fantasies, all the while an alien gunship is chasing you from the sky wasn't just the coolest.
Apparently people like you don't like high action, or graphics, or story, or anything like that was new and creative, because someone seriously put some fun ideas in HL2. The physics were freakin' awesome. They singlehandedly solved one of the largest problems I had getting into a game, which is, "Why can't I do X? Well, because that object is not an object at all, it is a part of the map."
So let me ask everyone this:
Exactly what made FarCry the best game ever? Was it the shrubbery? Because the whole freaking game was shrubbery. Yeah, they got the shrubs right. Shrubbery and the same six character models you killed a thousand times over. WHAT A GAME! Let's see here I'm in a quandry here... what should I do? Should I sneak up in the shrubs and shoot the enemies or shoot them here in the distant shrubs. Hmmmm... Damn this is one fine game. Look at the foliage. Damn fine plants. DAAAAMN FINE SHRUBBERY.
By the way, was there ever any doubt that there would be mutant monsters on a deserted island with armed thugs? I mean, really, any doubts about monsters whatsoever? Hell, the mutant monster is so common that they come standard with the island purchase plan. Think about that played out monster part was in FarCry before you start slagging HL2.
Yeah, FarCry was good, but please, "shrubbery sneak attack" does not make game of the year.
It's an install time activation. If I have to reinstall for any reason, I'll need to reactivate. Are Valve going to be providing authentication 10 years from now?
I understand what you are saying, but I would assume in a few years that Valve will still be here, that if they aren't they'll issue a patch to take out the authentication, or you'll say, "Half-Life 2? Meh, whatever."
We're always told how America is the Land of the Free Market and Government Regulation is a Bad Thing. Yet the instant someone tries practising free-market economics for real over there, they're suddenly evil. What the hell difference is there between this type of counterfeiting, and what every supermarket is doing with its "own brand" copies of bestselling goods anyway? Isn't Tesco Rich Blend Instant Coffee just counterfeit Nescafé? Aren't Sainsbury's Rice Pops just counterfeit Kellogg's Rice Krispies? What's the freakin' difference already?
There is a differene between competition, and outright theft. These people are selling software. Someone else's software. They are not selling a controller insomuch as it gets you the software.
The difference is, if you make your own coffee that tastes like another, it actually requires effort to do it. Getting beans. Comparing styles. You can even say, "Tastes like our competitor!" on the outside.
They are not selling knock offs, they are selling stolen originals in a new casing.
There is no effort other than buying the crap device to put the ROMs in. They are not selling the crap device, they are selling someone else's product. If you could instantly copy a Coca-Cola for free infinite times, and then put it in a can that is cheaper, then you could have a comparison. But you cannot. There is no way to compare software (which is what they are selling, not the controller) with food items. Coffee is coffee. Video games require ingenuity to make them. If you think that the beans and software are comparable in any way, may I humbly suggest you stay out of the business world.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate businesses that assume that you will buy certain services from them because they deem them 'essential', and when all of a sudden you don't, they jack up the price of the services you still do buy from them...
How can they get away with this BS?
Aren't there laws against this sorta crap?
Well, there WERE laws against this sort of crap, but then deregulation came around. The FCC doesn't get into consumer issues anymore, it is more concerned about showing tough to Johnny Sixpack about their supposed outrage with nipples and man-ass that they show on NYPD Blue. The FCC is not concerned with the a la carte offerings bill, because they (and by they, I mean the corporate cronies that get placed in the FCC by the system) have shot that thing down a bazillion times... all in the name of deregulation. "Why should companies be beholden to the government?!? If they regulate our prices, we'll go bankrupt!"
Deregulation of the basically five giant corporate entities that control all of the telephone, cable, and broadband access out there is not a good thing, even though idiots everywhere that haven't taken a basic econ class say it is. Then they did it. Simply put, all deregulation does in that situation is to break the contract of fairness between the public and the giganto-corporations. Let's all deregulate water! Hey, how about electricity?!? Imagine that!
Lower prices!
(for a short while until you forget the old times)
Better services!
(unless you get a dispute and you have no fair use contract with the city, and they won't run service to your area and business)
Corporations can do it better than the government!
(until the corporations slash maintenance to give money to another part of the corporation, leaving you with jacked up prices on basic services and shitty service)
Remember kids. Deregulation is a good thing. Especially with essential services such as power, light, phone, and water. I'm sure you'll love the way that you used to call the city council about infrastructure and get a response, and now you get to call INDIA. I'm sure the call representative in INDIA will really care about your cable problem.
This scam is about as good as having a political party that slashes the basic military infrastructure budget for infrastructure and not stealth bombers, forcing the military to subcontract basic services, and then forcing in a two party system an administration that owns said military subcontractors so they can engage in a no-end, non-specific war overseas, and then have no accountability for cost overruns, thus making tens, if not hundreds, of billions in cost overruns that are unaccounted for, and checked by their stockholders.
Ooops. Did I say that outloud?
I've met Steve Wolf. He is an interesting man, and also, he's completely hilarious.
Orwell wrote the book as an observation of the world around him.
The society really hasn't changed the rules since he wrote the book.
However, with rights suspension and other things going on, it is looking more like we are heading back to a monrarchical state again... just with big overhead costs.
Boo hoo. I can't make a cogent argument so I have to attack the poster.
This poster just sat through four hours of talks about medicine percentages...
Trust me, the government is run by brain sucking aliens.
Immature? How about astute.
The difference, eloquently summed up by another as in "we have more freedom", is that you are free to become one of those few rich, and in your cynical view, exploit the many poor. While not everyone is poor out of choice, some of the poor are there due to laziness. When was the last time you did something to change your situation, or the situation of those around you for the better? Even if you believe your post, and are firmly convinced that the polo-pony riding elite power structure will never change, you can still make every effort to go out and get yourself a pony and fake your way into the country club.
Later, you ask what I did to change it.
I try to change it all the time. I am a journalist, and I work hard. The truth is to be told, and there are literally millions of people in this country, who are poor, who have great intelligence, and who could do a better job than our current elected man-king.
Ignore all the facts about Bush but one: When did a son of a powerful man ever do a good job in history? What? We have had maybe a handful that have ever been worth a crap.
Since when did hiring the loser son of anyone in power make any situation ever better? Usually that is the last person your civilization ever gets as a leader, if you count up all of the implosions of societies. How can anyone ever think that it was a good idea? The son of a powerful man is always a punk. ALWAYS. Why are we surprised when Dubya acts all snotty to anyone that disagrees with him? That is "Rich Kid 101."
"Dude, my dad owns a dealership and knows the Sherriff, so we're cool, alright? So do it, man."
Back to America.
How can you explain that the system is not a feudalistic sham when only once in a blue moon someone of ignoble birth gets to be President or a Senator, and instead we have a parade a line of nepotistic skull 'n bones brat-children who can't add two and two together as the leaders of this system?
Freedom? Freedom involves choices. If the freedom that you speak of is the freedom to climb to the top of the pile to kick the other dogs off of your hill, then that isn't freedom at all, it is feudalism, exactly as I stated, where families push their bratty, maid humping progeny off on us generation after generation, and the differences are moot.
The truly smart, and the truly good hard working intelligent underclass of this world have always been beat down. How else do you hold them, they got nothing to lose. That is the only way to hold your power. There are a freakin' billion on this planet that are smarter than your high-class idiot spawn even without a Ivy League education. When your cocaine-sniffing son can't intellectually compete in an advanced society, what do you do? YOU BUY THE ELECTION, KOWTOW TO THE POWERS THAT BE, OR CHEAT.
Surprise surprise where we are right now. We have a boy-king. And he wages the sport of kings, WAR, at his discretion. I am shocked. "My GOD, WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE! This is a totally new global dynamic going on!"
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
There are a lot of smart people buried in phone answering jobs out there because of the misfortune of birth. I think we can all attest to the caring, fantastic morals, honesty, appeals to higher thinking, and absolute brilliance of the current President of the United States... and how it all seals my argument against your flag waving.
Just don't try to shove that one word (freedom) down my throat to explain a complicated universe that no one can comprehend. This kind of talk is for the big boys with big ideas.
Don't come peddling that intellectual marketing that we call the political process around here these days.
The poor get screwed. Don't sell me otherwise.
Oh, and indeed, no matter what I say about America, China is a freaking hellhole. So stop that counterargument right there. They aren't connected.
I'm more concerned about my kids getting run over by a tank because they disagree with the government, or contracting some fatal disease because the country runs around like nothing is wrong, than with textbooks, publications or journals.
My friend, it is time to learn that all types of governments have one thing in common, and that is that they don't care about you in the slightest. They organize to use you for power. You don't even have a choice. There is only one thing that they do care about, and that is maintaining the special position that they have on top of you. This is the same the world over throughout history. I dare say it is inescapable.
Whether it be a cultural dictatorship that seeks to keep you in line by giving you no options to think for yourself, or a "no real choice" representative democracy that has two parties that look the same, it doesn't matter what you think. Pull the lever, bucko. No matter what you do, no matter what they say about thinking about "your ethnic identity" or "your freedoms" they still will give most favored nation status to ethnic cleansing butchers and corporations that make plastic crap, because that's where the friends are (and by friends, I mean pieces of paper with other famously successful a-holes on it), and honestly, who could turn down that much oil and cheap labor? I mean, cmon! Remember, life is a video game where the objective is to rack up a bank account score with as many zeros as a galaga champion on a three day meth binge.
Let me put it this way, your money (stamped with the very face of the kings that made the rules your life) has always been taken out of your hardworking hands and given to some bastard at the top to buy polo ponies. It's a graft... a fleecing of the many for the excess of the few, and their friends. Whether they are in charge of China, or getting seven hundred dollars for a special bolt for that aircraft carrier, or in charge of Citibank, in short, we play by their rules, and so they screw us, like they always have throughout history.
Best to find a way make as much freedom, time, happiness, and peace on your own. If you look to those guys for it, you really will get run over by a tank, for their profit margins.
How about this. Why don't a bunch of IT companies set up shop in Costa Rica and pay their employees to move there? The advantages are enormous. Cheap cost of business, you're close to America, exotic location for the young employees (and exotic women for the young geek men
No thank you.
It's that whole rule of law thing.
Go to another country, even a US protectorate. You will see what happens if someone has a criminal issue anywhere near you.
Good luck with this paradise you call Puerto Rico.
We need more blinky lights(functional or not). That way we can retro-ize our computers to look like big glitzy units shown on 1980s Tv shows and movies.
Who was paying attention to the lights?
What we really need is Erin Grey from Buck Rogers standing next to our computers in her skintight, shiny blue flightsuit.
Screw the lights! I want a space disco with slave girls.
Pirates of the Carribean DVD... $18.
Pirates of the Carribean Soundtrack... $18.
That is why few purchase CDs anymore.
The group known as TCNiSO has released a very interesting hardware modification for RCA / Thomson cable modems. The modification is done by grounding the bus clock on the serial EEPROM which throws the device into a diagnostic panic mode. Then by using the debug tools from the embedded console to reprogram the EEPROM, a user can permanently enable a developers menu which gives complete control of the modem, such as modifying the hardware addresses or flashing new firmware. Now if only these guys can figure out how to enable the Bluetooth features on my v710 phone..."
Whoa, slow down.
Corky here can't handle frontpage paragraphs like that first thing in the morning.
The only people with the right to take pride in being Americans are immigrants. For the majority of the rest of us Americans, the ones who are citizens by birth, the most we can lay claim to is that we are glad to be (not proud to be) Americans.
Yes, we should all be glad only. Only with your revisionist history. Honestly, have you thought about being a lawyer? Your semantic lies are incredible. Your amazing ability to shame people with specific word use is astounding.
More importantly, your nerve is inexcuseable.
My ancestors came over on about the fifth boat, at a time when they were running from religious oppression. They didn't kill the natives, they lived along side them. They had no interest in conquest, like the other English that came later.
Just like the people that come today, they were looking for a better life.
Personally, I can't stand punks like you that say people now don't contribute to society like the immigrants do. Like all of the advances in science, medicine, engineering, and all of the other advances that people in the US have been working on in earnest for generations around us all were just all about the immigrants.
On behalf of all of the American people, and some of my ancestors that crawled out of the company mines, slept in tents in Alaska, and worked hard to cut a civilization out here one farmhouse school to community college education at a time, may I humbly say this, GO SCREW YOURSELF.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
4-5 hours for Video watching through UMD.
4-6 hours average for gameplay through UMD.
4 hours with headphones and 50% volume, no WIFI and highest screen brightness (180 cd/m2).
6 hours with headphones and 50% volume, no WIFI and lowest screen brightness (80 cd/m2).
It has been my history that manufacturers usually exaggerate and say that the battery life of anything is double what it really is. This is true for gameboys to flashlights. With that little piece of knowledge, this battery life is not as good as everyone thinks it is.
I would say that I would be taking a book along with me as well, just in case.
-Sony has won the adult part of the portables market with its sleek styling and functionality... question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
-Do we need yet another proprietary media format? When can we burn on it? When can we buy it?
-Are audiences really going to want to buy their media on a proprietary format when a portable DVD player is so cheap these days, and works with your home disks? Saying that smaller is better was important in the 80s... I don't think that holds today. Matter of fact, is anyone going to buy a movie on this thing? Will they be offering anything besides FF:The Spirits Within and Akira for the otaku?
-The interactivity of the DS is well known, the interactivity of the PSP not so much, why?
-It's obvious that Nintendo knows where it is going, but I am not so sure about this. Their primary point is that it is "sleek." I am not sure that being sleek is my main desire to having a portable.
-I am not really excited about a disk drive anything in my carry around equipment. It may be an unfounded fear these days, but still, it is there.
From what I have seen from both Nintendo and Sony, they are trying to make a quantam leap in the portables market, and right now, my money is on Nintendo. Still, they need to do something before I buy either one. They both have side features, but shiny and features is a seriously Japanese thing, and Nintendo has held its own with their focus. So I go with 'Tendo.
After all, who uses their Xbox to play movies? Anyone? Who will use their PSP to play the ten songs that their memory stick can hold or look at digital pictures when the camera already has a screen, and shows them without running it through a PC? Picto-chat? Honestly Nintendo, if you are close enough to picto chat you are close enough to chat for real. That is more fun.
Some of these things on both machines make no sense. Maybe they make sense if you are Japanese. I don't know what some of these things are for.
Sure it is an action movie, but Indiana Jones is one of those characters that can be funny...
I personally won't want to see an Indiana Jones movie with Ford in it unless it does make fun in some way his inability to get around anymore. If it doesn't, it will be a joke, and no one will believe it. It is part of where Harrison Ford is now. Better to surf the staples of adventure and humor in this one than do the opposite and try to make a stab at seriousness.
It appears to me the one that got the grace and speed armor thing right was Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, when it showed the Tachkomas (sp?), little one man spider tanks with wheels on the bottoms of the legs. They can hop and dodge, lean, spin out, and hit the highways like a car if they need to.
It's like Tony Hawk was driving the thing.
I would however, like to add that the one thing that people are missing with the abilities of an armored "waldo" suit would be the way that a man could change battle tactics entirely. A regular infantry squad with one armored man alone could wreck havok, considering he could make breaches where there was no door, rescue the wounded, and run point in dangerous situations.
Ask yourself this... how useful would a tank be that could walk up stairs to clean out an apartment building, or throw heavy ammo on top of a roof to a quick gun emplacement?
I agree with most here, the smaller the better. The real reasons our tanks are so large is to fit the large guns. That is all.
I think SOMEONE is exaggerating. America, especially when it comes to corporate responsibilty, is a paradise. A paradise where everything is cheap, easy to manufacture, and made with 100% American pride. The rest of the world is ENVIOUS of the way employees are treated here, why else do you think we keep giving all these illegals jobs here? The want a slic of the American prosperity. America is a great place to work, you get all the benefits, all the respect, and the sure knowledge that things are getting better for the working man every day around here.
(SHUDDUP AND GET BACK TO WORK)
Alright, you're right.
Havok definitely deserves some props for this one.
Biggie 'em up!
This multiplayer and movable objects is really what HL2 is all about. The build options are really very striking.
I played deathmatch, but it really isn't what it is all about. Deathmatch is a taste to show the community what it is really all about. Imagine a capture game with breachable walls and doorways, and people slapping up chickenwire and "nailing" wall objects to keep the windows from getting naded, things like that. The piles of junk to keep the attacker options down, and the attackers blowing debris to get to it. rfare, they are urban-like warfare on a map that only looks like urban warfare on the outside. When you can use a couch for cover and move it to hide, then we will be happier. Much happier. Deathmatch is too fast. Counter Strike is aggavatingly fast. It gives you no time to give an option about outplaying your opponent. With objects and physics, you will soon be able to do it.
Look, most of you are crabbing this one... but if it was team deathmatch with liftable steel plate barriers, and sticky mines, you would be screaming like a monkey at the top of your lungs with joy. Don't worry. It's coming. Either by Valve in a week or two or by some modders. Some things are just downright obvious. Movable barriers, wall covers, breachable areas, and everything like that is coming, it is just a matter of who is going to do it.
But why stop there?
The good news is it isn't going to stop there. With an independent physics based system, imagine the "space marine" fantasies that we always had as a kid. You and some buddies online blowing out an airlock and gravity catapulting your way through a chain of asteroids to infiltrate a stranded mothership.
Right now we are playing with standard physics settings, what is going to happen when they start messing with those settings? "Woot, I say, my good fellow, woot indeed."
IMHO, Valve solved the largest problem and my biggest gripe with 3D video games when they made a physics engine that wasn't so wonky it made me laugh. It is simply a matter of time before the next killer multiplayer comes out, and it isn't going to look like CS. I personally can't wait to flip someone's minitank with my little Somali street trash barrier. But hey, keep griping, you'll shut up soon enough when you throw someone through a building in a superhero mod.
How about having a camcorder with several differently coloured light sources? By analyzing the correspondingly differently coloured shadows one could create depth information in real time.
Frickin' brilliant.
I can hear a thousand wives screaming out in agony....
"Get to the mountain you little bastards! ARrrgh! You picked this? Alright, I get THREE picks for this one!"
HL2 was not as good as FarCry? You're kidding, right? HL2 is one of the most immersive games I have ever played. You can't honestly tell me that opening up full throttle on an alien bug gut-splattered buggy and living out your Dukes of Hazzard fantasies, all the while an alien gunship is chasing you from the sky wasn't just the coolest.
Apparently people like you don't like high action, or graphics, or story, or anything like that was new and creative, because someone seriously put some fun ideas in HL2. The physics were freakin' awesome. They singlehandedly solved one of the largest problems I had getting into a game, which is, "Why can't I do X? Well, because that object is not an object at all, it is a part of the map."
So let me ask everyone this:
Exactly what made FarCry the best game ever? Was it the shrubbery? Because the whole freaking game was shrubbery. Yeah, they got the shrubs right. Shrubbery and the same six character models you killed a thousand times over. WHAT A GAME! Let's see here I'm in a quandry here... what should I do? Should I sneak up in the shrubs and shoot the enemies or shoot them here in the distant shrubs. Hmmmm... Damn this is one fine game. Look at the foliage. Damn fine plants. DAAAAMN FINE SHRUBBERY.
By the way, was there ever any doubt that there would be mutant monsters on a deserted island with armed thugs? I mean, really, any doubts about monsters whatsoever? Hell, the mutant monster is so common that they come standard with the island purchase plan. Think about that played out monster part was in FarCry before you start slagging HL2.
Yeah, FarCry was good, but please, "shrubbery sneak attack" does not make game of the year.
It's an install time activation. If I have to reinstall for any reason, I'll need to reactivate. Are Valve going to be providing authentication 10 years from now?
I understand what you are saying, but I would assume in a few years that Valve will still be here, that if they aren't they'll issue a patch to take out the authentication, or you'll say, "Half-Life 2? Meh, whatever."
It's a game people.
If they are so worried about copy protection for such a game, they wouldn't allow such daring developer tools.
We're always told how America is the Land of the Free Market and Government Regulation is a Bad Thing. Yet the instant someone tries practising free-market economics for real over there, they're suddenly evil. What the hell difference is there between this type of counterfeiting, and what every supermarket is doing with its "own brand" copies of bestselling goods anyway? Isn't Tesco Rich Blend Instant Coffee just counterfeit Nescafé? Aren't Sainsbury's Rice Pops just counterfeit Kellogg's Rice Krispies? What's the freakin' difference already?
There is a differene between competition, and outright theft. These people are selling software. Someone else's software. They are not selling a controller insomuch as it gets you the software.
The difference is, if you make your own coffee that tastes like another, it actually requires effort to do it. Getting beans. Comparing styles. You can even say, "Tastes like our competitor!" on the outside.
They are not selling knock offs, they are selling stolen originals in a new casing.
There is no effort other than buying the crap device to put the ROMs in. They are not selling the crap device, they are selling someone else's product. If you could instantly copy a Coca-Cola for free infinite times, and then put it in a can that is cheaper, then you could have a comparison. But you cannot. There is no way to compare software (which is what they are selling, not the controller) with food items. Coffee is coffee. Video games require ingenuity to make them. If you think that the beans and software are comparable in any way, may I humbly suggest you stay out of the business world.
Your argument is specious at best.