"George Lucas says that he will make two more live-action films based in the "Star Wars" era. "But they won't have members of the Lucas family as writers, directors, or producers," he said."
Jr. finds the Wiimote & ends up watching porn on the TV. Jr. finds the cable/satellite remote and orders up some PPV porn on the TV. Jr. finds your stash of 80's Hairy Armpit fetish VCR tapes and watches porn on the TV. Jr. finds your stash of 90's midget orgy DVDs and watches porn on the TV. Jr. turns on PBS and watches An Inconvenient Truth on the TV.
Wouldn't fundies & right-wing-whackjobs would be much better off getting rid of our TV?
Looks like they are taking a page from Microsoft's development manual. BetaField 2/2142 players might say that Microsoft isn't the only one who likes to call this play on 4th down...
I just finished my MS in CS last summer at the ripe old age of 36. I had switched careers from biotech to programming, and felt I needed some kind of lambskin saying "this dude has a CS degree" before HR would pay attention to my resume - I had a few phone interviews that went really well until they saw my MS Biology.....:( Seemed to have worked; I got my current position after getting the degree.
I really enjoyed the classes involved, and it did a good job of exposing me to new (to me!) topics, such as AI. I recommend it if you can afford the pay cut. If you can't, well, it might not be worthwhile.
Wouldn't MS have to prove that you are actually using the unlicensed software first? Obviously it would be unpleasant to claim you have been using Linux for the past couple of years only to have MS unroll 1km of Windows Activation/WGA/Office Activation/Automatic Update/Media Player/Messenger logs from their servers. But it seems like they should have to prove their case that you are a dirty pirate before you should be required to prove your innocence.
I've never had problems with Valve hammering my Steam games. The Steam forums are good reading... lots of people posting about how Valve banned their acct and how they were gunna sue, but then a Valve guy shows up and explains that buying the game with a credit card then doing a chargeback doesn't sit well with Valve. Or trying with 19 different credit cards (with diff names) doesn't sound like they are legitimate customers, and BTW Valve forwarded their info to the police. Good stuff!
Not too long ago someone commented that they understood Valve had 'unlock' patches ready to go for their Steam games in case they ended up folding. Seems like a fair way to do it.
Volition stopped their PAX online service some time ago, which is too bad because I always found Freespace to be the best space shooter sim around. The made the Freespace 2 code available, but not the server:(
Its easy to bulldoze a consumer. But they might think twice when taking on a municipality who has its own staff of lawyers.
So the telcos will be competing against an opponent who isn't motivated by maximizing profit. This means the telcos will have to compete on features, and choking the internet chicken just isn't one of those features that will make consumers switch.
I read somewhere that they are planning on doing GH for the Wii. The sense I got form the interview was that they are a little less interested. Now the pessimistic side of me was sure thats because Red Octane was able to sell a premium game by packing in the guitar controller, and they are a little concerned that they might not score as much because they won't be able to sell a whole controller for the Wii. Or maybe they are concerned about redesigning the controller to let a Wiimote snap-in.
But yes, I would think the Wii crowd would love GH. Its the only reason I've used my PS2 since 12/17....
At first I was thrilled to hear about the high-capacity DVD-like media formats. Imagine being able to backup 50gb of data onto one disc! Awesome!
Oh, I knew they would try to fill it with movies & stuff, but really, DVD is pretty damn good. I just couldn't see them replacing DVDs.
Then I heard about all the mandatory, built-in DRM included with formats. Yay. I saw the HD vs DVD display at Best Buy last year. It had the split-screen, with old-fashioned DVD on the left and HD on the right. And for some reason I just didn't trust that the would really create a HD DVD with an accurate portrayal of DVD quality vs HD, on a disc made to advertise the quality of HD.
I have a very nice TV; it could display HD formated stuff, but its a few years old now; it may very well be too old to support those restrictions placed by the media companies. Not because it couldn't show the video, or play the pretty sounds, but because the stupid media companies are worried I'm a pirate.
Well, I've never ripped a DVD or downloaded a movie ISO. But being treated like a pirate makes me think the pirates might not have such a bad idea....
I loved these games this year. Not all were first released in 2006, tho...
Guitar Hero. I was a PC gamer until June 2006. I finished my MS project, turned it in, and went to Target and bought a PS2 and Guitar Hero. It seemed like a great idea, and I loved the track list, and all the reviews were great. Well, the reviews don't do it enough justice: this game is awesome! People laugh when I describe it, but once they play it they are hooked! My family got me Guitar Hero 2 for xmas, and while I love the coop mode, I haven't had the time to play it as much as the original.
FEAR. OMG this game was intense. The same linearity of Doom 3, but no monster closets, and a whole lot of new underwear. Little girls in red dresses scare me now.... and no shit, there is some device in my office thats makes that little whiney sound you hear in FEAR that warns you that something is going to happen soon... Sadly, I thought the sequel sucked balls. But the original.... oh sweet terrifying crack!
Wii Sports. My whole family plays, from my 4yo son who beats everyone in boxing to my non-gamer wife who beats me in bowling. Rayman Raving Rabids is great, too.
BF2142. Yes, it had (and still has! Titan mode lag sucks...) major problems. But its pretty, and it has several of the things I loved from Planetside. Yeah, it is just BF2 with some new graphics. But its pretty! And I have a soft spot in my heart for post-apocalyptic stories. I love the dogtag feature - the game records who you have knifed, so you can compare your self against them. Seems I've shivved a couple folks in the top 500 in the game:)
Midway Legends for PSP. It has Cyberball 2072, my fave arcade game of all time. I love taking adavantage of the Option-teams starting with magnesium powerbacks & tight-ends: I usually start the second half with them both upgraded to titanium. I always ignored the powreback in the arcade; now it my #1 offensive weapon!
I record shows on Tivo all the time, send them to my PC, strip out the DRM, and watch them on my PC.
Why?
My kids are asleep when I want to watch The Ultimate Fighter. I don't want them wandering out while I'm absorbed watching two guys beat the snot out of each other. Without stripping the DRM I'm forced ot use Windows Media Player, which for whatever reason is slower-than-shiite as I skip past commercials. WinAmp refuses to work right on my machine, and I don't care enough to fix it, because I discovered that the Nero Showtime app that came with Nero 6.6 is an excellent movie viewer. It even has skipahead when I don't wanna watch commercials. But it can't handle the DRM, so I use Direct Show Dump to take'em out.
Asia Carrera (sp?) used to play A LOT of Unreal Tournament. She hosted her own server, with her own custom models & maps. So yeah, it might have been a big draw to show up & see her run around in her self-made topless outfit. Lots of folks didn't last long cuz she WTFPWN3D most everybody. She was damn good. I seem to recall she was actually ranked in the top 10 (maybe 3?) players worldwide at one point. She bbq'd my ass more times than I can count.
Her ISP was @Home, and when it died the server died, and never came back.
I can't wait for the first Virtual JavaOne conference! I'm already designing my new "J# WTFPWNS your HotSpot" t-shirt. I think I'll hand it out free on the conference floor, as I dance around singing "I want to be a Cowboy". Without pants, of course.
Yeah, virtual conferences are definately the wave of the future....
I have the TAC wireless guitar controller, as well as the Red Octane GH game/controller and a single extra SG controller. The Red Octance boxes are black with red flame highlights and lots of gothic printing. The TAC box is red, with lots of red flames and lots of gothic printing. At first I did think it was an official red octane wireless guitar controller, just red instead of black to signify the new version.
I haven't played withthe wireless enough to say if its worth it yet, but it does feel significantly different than a SG controller. Different enought hat I will have to spend some time relearning how to play - no biggie, its a fun game \m/
PlanetSide has ads in a few places in the bases. They don't interfere wih the game, but frequently look out of place. If I was shooting signage I might be annoyed; but I try to shoot the peeps instead, so it all works out.
BF2 has wall posters featurign the box art for its arabic release.
BF2: Armored Fury has mild suggestion-type ads for BF2142 in a few places. These billboards would be very good atrgets to replace with rotating banner ads. Since BF2:AF takes place in the US, it would probably make the game better if the billboards had real ads from real companies.
BF2142 will incorporate ads. If they are current ads then this will probably suck (150 years in the future, why will we be seeing billboards that say "Vote for King Bush in 2008!"). Now what would be cool is if there are tv sets & radios around the maps that can be de/activated by players. I'd flip them on to mask my sounds as I sneak aroudn a base.
*IF* the ads can be marked by gunshot/explosion, and are designed to not look "new", then I'm ok with it. There are already several fake ads in the game; replacing them with these ads would be fine as long as it blends.
They already do this in Planetside, and for the most part its OK. The only really annoying ones are the mini-movies that come with sound, but they limited those to the sanctuaries so they don't annoy the fsck out of you when yer busy fighting.
Several peeps immediately went out & host-blocked the ad servers; I wasn't annoyed enough to do that.
Of course, that makes sense in games like Planetside that runs on a central server: the extra income helps keep the server alive. Not sure about it working well for games like BF2142 where it won't have a central server running the map.
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Kind of like an intergalactic Bela.
Last Post!
(from inside my IBM cubefarm)
Jr. finds the Wiimote & ends up watching porn on the TV.
Jr. finds the cable/satellite remote and orders up some PPV porn on the TV.
Jr. finds your stash of 80's Hairy Armpit fetish VCR tapes and watches porn on the TV.
Jr. finds your stash of 90's midget orgy DVDs and watches porn on the TV.
Jr. turns on PBS and watches An Inconvenient Truth on the TV.
Wouldn't fundies & right-wing-whackjobs would be much better off getting rid of our TV?
I just finished my MS in CS last summer at the ripe old age of 36. I had switched careers from biotech to programming, and felt I needed some kind of lambskin saying "this dude has a CS degree" before HR would pay attention to my resume - I had a few phone interviews that went really well until they saw my MS Biology..... :( Seemed to have worked; I got my current position after getting the degree.
I really enjoyed the classes involved, and it did a good job of exposing me to new (to me!) topics, such as AI. I recommend it if you can afford the pay cut. If you can't, well, it might not be worthwhile.
Wouldn't MS have to prove that you are actually using the unlicensed software first? Obviously it would be unpleasant to claim you have been using Linux for the past couple of years only to have MS unroll 1km of Windows Activation/WGA/Office Activation/Automatic Update/Media Player/Messenger logs from their servers. But it seems like they should have to prove their case that you are a dirty pirate before you should be required to prove your innocence.
Replace a d8 with 3d6, using the fact that 2^3 = 8:
die 0:
1-3: +0
4-6: +1
die 1:
1-3: +0
4-6: +2
die 2:
1-3: +0
4-6: +4
Add them up and you get a number from 0-7. Add +1 to make it 1-8. Or modify die one to evaluate to +1 | +2.
Yeah, my friends never got it either. Probably didn't help that I kept referring to 'die 0'.
I'm hoping for a Wii version.....
But if all else fails, keep it alive on PS2. After all, the PS2 was the #1 selling console in December...
I've never had problems with Valve hammering my Steam games. The Steam forums are good reading... lots of people posting about how Valve banned their acct and how they were gunna sue, but then a Valve guy shows up and explains that buying the game with a credit card then doing a chargeback doesn't sit well with Valve. Or trying with 19 different credit cards (with diff names) doesn't sound like they are legitimate customers, and BTW Valve forwarded their info to the police. Good stuff!
Not too long ago someone commented that they understood Valve had 'unlock' patches ready to go for their Steam games in case they ended up folding. Seems like a fair way to do it.
Volition stopped their PAX online service some time ago, which is too bad because I always found Freespace to be the best space shooter sim around. The made the Freespace 2 code available, but not the server :(
Its easy to bulldoze a consumer. But they might think twice when taking on a municipality who has its own staff of lawyers.
So the telcos will be competing against an opponent who isn't motivated by maximizing profit. This means the telcos will have to compete on features, and choking the internet chicken just isn't one of those features that will make consumers switch.
I read somewhere that they are planning on doing GH for the Wii. The sense I got form the interview was that they are a little less interested. Now the pessimistic side of me was sure thats because Red Octane was able to sell a premium game by packing in the guitar controller, and they are a little concerned that they might not score as much because they won't be able to sell a whole controller for the Wii. Or maybe they are concerned about redesigning the controller to let a Wiimote snap-in.
But yes, I would think the Wii crowd would love GH. Its the only reason I've used my PS2 since 12/17....
At first I was thrilled to hear about the high-capacity DVD-like media formats. Imagine being able to backup 50gb of data onto one disc! Awesome!
Oh, I knew they would try to fill it with movies & stuff, but really, DVD is pretty damn good. I just couldn't see them replacing DVDs.
Then I heard about all the mandatory, built-in DRM included with formats. Yay. I saw the HD vs DVD display at Best Buy last year. It had the split-screen, with old-fashioned DVD on the left and HD on the right. And for some reason I just didn't trust that the would really create a HD DVD with an accurate portrayal of DVD quality vs HD, on a disc made to advertise the quality of HD.
I have a very nice TV; it could display HD formated stuff, but its a few years old now; it may very well be too old to support those restrictions placed by the media companies. Not because it couldn't show the video, or play the pretty sounds, but because the stupid media companies are worried I'm a pirate.
Well, I've never ripped a DVD or downloaded a movie ISO. But being treated like a pirate makes me think the pirates might not have such a bad idea....
I loved these games this year. Not all were first released in 2006, tho...
:)
Guitar Hero. I was a PC gamer until June 2006. I finished my MS project, turned it in, and went to Target and bought a PS2 and Guitar Hero. It seemed like a great idea, and I loved the track list, and all the reviews were great. Well, the reviews don't do it enough justice: this game is awesome! People laugh when I describe it, but once they play it they are hooked! My family got me Guitar Hero 2 for xmas, and while I love the coop mode, I haven't had the time to play it as much as the original.
FEAR. OMG this game was intense. The same linearity of Doom 3, but no monster closets, and a whole lot of new underwear. Little girls in red dresses scare me now.... and no shit, there is some device in my office thats makes that little whiney sound you hear in FEAR that warns you that something is going to happen soon... Sadly, I thought the sequel sucked balls. But the original.... oh sweet terrifying crack!
Wii Sports. My whole family plays, from my 4yo son who beats everyone in boxing to my non-gamer wife who beats me in bowling. Rayman Raving Rabids is great, too.
BF2142. Yes, it had (and still has! Titan mode lag sucks...) major problems. But its pretty, and it has several of the things I loved from Planetside. Yeah, it is just BF2 with some new graphics. But its pretty! And I have a soft spot in my heart for post-apocalyptic stories. I love the dogtag feature - the game records who you have knifed, so you can compare your self against them. Seems I've shivved a couple folks in the top 500 in the game
Midway Legends for PSP. It has Cyberball 2072, my fave arcade game of all time. I love taking adavantage of the Option-teams starting with magnesium powerbacks & tight-ends: I usually start the second half with them both upgraded to titanium. I always ignored the powreback in the arcade; now it my #1 offensive weapon!
Dammit, I want an OSeX upgrade for my PC!
I record shows on Tivo all the time, send them to my PC, strip out the DRM, and watch them on my PC.
Why?
My kids are asleep when I want to watch The Ultimate Fighter. I don't want them wandering out while I'm absorbed watching two guys beat the snot out of each other. Without stripping the DRM I'm forced ot use Windows Media Player, which for whatever reason is slower-than-shiite as I skip past commercials. WinAmp refuses to work right on my machine, and I don't care enough to fix it, because I discovered that the Nero Showtime app that came with Nero 6.6 is an excellent movie viewer. It even has skipahead when I don't wanna watch commercials. But it can't handle the DRM, so I use Direct Show Dump to take'em out.
Works very well.
Asia Carrera (sp?) used to play A LOT of Unreal Tournament. She hosted her own server, with her own custom models & maps. So yeah, it might have been a big draw to show up & see her run around in her self-made topless outfit. Lots of folks didn't last long cuz she WTFPWN3D most everybody. She was damn good. I seem to recall she was actually ranked in the top 10 (maybe 3?) players worldwide at one point. She bbq'd my ass more times than I can count.
Her ISP was @Home, and when it died the server died, and never came back.
I can't wait for the first Virtual JavaOne conference! I'm already designing my new "J# WTFPWNS your HotSpot" t-shirt. I think I'll hand it out free on the conference floor, as I dance around singing "I want to be a Cowboy". Without pants, of course.
Yeah, virtual conferences are definately the wave of the future....
Gotcher twicthy MMOFPS right here ..... http://www.planetside.com/.....
I have the TAC wireless guitar controller, as well as the Red Octane GH game/controller and a single extra SG controller. The Red Octance boxes are black with red flame highlights and lots of gothic printing. The TAC box is red, with lots of red flames and lots of gothic printing. At first I did think it was an official red octane wireless guitar controller, just red instead of black to signify the new version.
I haven't played withthe wireless enough to say if its worth it yet, but it does feel significantly different than a SG controller. Different enought hat I will have to spend some time relearning how to play - no biggie, its a fun game \m/
PlanetSide has ads in a few places in the bases. They don't interfere wih the game, but frequently look out of place. If I was shooting signage I might be annoyed; but I try to shoot the peeps instead, so it all works out.
BF2 has wall posters featurign the box art for its arabic release.
BF2: Armored Fury has mild suggestion-type ads for BF2142 in a few places. These billboards would be very good atrgets to replace with rotating banner ads. Since BF2:AF takes place in the US, it would probably make the game better if the billboards had real ads from real companies.
BF2142 will incorporate ads. If they are current ads then this will probably suck (150 years in the future, why will we be seeing billboards that say "Vote for King Bush in 2008!"). Now what would be cool is if there are tv sets & radios around the maps that can be de/activated by players. I'd flip them on to mask my sounds as I sneak aroudn a base.
Does Star Wars Galaxies count as an ad?
*IF* the ads can be marked by gunshot/explosion, and are designed to not look "new", then I'm ok with it. There are already several fake ads in the game; replacing them with these ads would be fine as long as it blends.
They already do this in Planetside, and for the most part its OK. The only really annoying ones are the mini-movies that come with sound, but they limited those to the sanctuaries so they don't annoy the fsck out of you when yer busy fighting.
Several peeps immediately went out & host-blocked the ad servers; I wasn't annoyed enough to do that.
Of course, that makes sense in games like Planetside that runs on a central server: the extra income helps keep the server alive. Not sure about it working well for games like BF2142 where it won't have a central server running the map.