given that the regionalisation for the PS2 version was done in lots of time for Christmas does make it odd that it's still not out for Xbox and PS2.
Maybe they botched their approval by Nint or Microsoft, then you have to go through the whole final testing and submission process all over again. Though Ubi is a big place full of professional people who should know better than that.
In short, I have absolutly no real clue as to why exactly it isn't out, but I feel that conspiracy theories involving Sony are less likely than the wide range of technical details that can result in delays like that. Though it is strange that both the cube and the box suffer from the same delay. Perhaps they are holding one back while waiting for the third to be ready so they don't look like they are playing faverourite.
The mouse must then be constantly producing a thin gelatinous ooze of reproductive material, which is attempting to burrow into anything and everything nearby.
I'm having a hard time visualising this...
Fortunatly, the hentai version will be out shortly to serve as an educational visual aid. I mean, with all those schoolgirls in there, its gotta be for educational purposes, right?
Dunno how much Sony paid them to hold those games back, but I'm not convinced it was worth it...
I'm certain Sony had noting at all to do with it.
First of all, from talking with a ubisoft programmer, I know they have a hard-on for the Xbox. Secondly, from working in the industry, I can tell you that there can be a million reasons that a multi-platform game release can go "not smoothly".
What is most likelly, is that they had to make choices at the QA stage: There were bugs that needed fixing, and they were on a time table (games that are relesased on xMas must be finished, I mean finished, by octobber at the ver latest if they are to be printing in any large numbers of copies). Since Ubisoft has a finite numbers of programmers, they had to make a choice as for wich console would get finished first, they choose the one that has the largest number of potential customers. A release in europe is more complicated than in america because there are more languages to be localised. And no, Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft will not let you butch the languages that are not english. Every menu entry has to be done right in every language, etc.
I'm sure Ubi tried to get all 3 console versions released all before the big holiday shopping frenzy, but sometimes the real world gets in the way of the best laid plans.
I can't personally vouch for Prince of Persia, as I haven't gotten around to picking that one up yet
I have, based on the demo I played last summer, and on the word of a current and former Ubisoft employees swearing that it was awsome.
It has good points. The movements are good and fluid, the acrobatics can be performed in a very satisfying and spectacular way. But its been sitting idle on my couch unfinished for a few weeks because I hate the interface.
Everytime you finish a fight with a group of enemies, the camera goes in close to the prince as he sheathes his blades in a "I look so cool" way. I can't stand this! If I wanted my blades sheated, I would do it myself! And I had just spent about a minute getting the camera where I wanted it, thank you ever so much for making me fiddle with it again. Not to mention all the times you have to take your blades out again right-away because you have some sand to collect! It is a HUGE waste of time.
It is near impossible to align the camera at a right angle to ledges you have to jump off, forcing you to run at a weird angle, wich is fine for the ultra-l33t ubergamers who have nothing better to do than to master their akward-angle jumping skillz, but I would like it if it would *let* me run at it straight.
When there is a save point, you have to be very carefull no to get to close to it, because if you do the prince turns to it and runs into it, forcing you to suffer through the entire "no I don't want to save, yes I'm sure I don't want to save, let me play allready, man this is taking forever, get on with it!" sequence, wich is needlessly long. It looked cool the first time I saw the whole thing, its really annoyingly time-consuming evertime after that.
etc.
However the voice acting is good, the graphics are nice, the level are interresting, even though its somtimes hard to see where you are meant to go on account of the camera flat-out refusing to get where you would need it to be to see that. I don't really like the cut-scene animations, the characters move in a way that isn't all that natural, though the in-game animations are top-notch.
So, if you are better able to tolerate the interface issues, you,ll love it. I personally regret buying it though.
Advertising comes from the realm of the publisher, not the developer.
UbiSoft are developers, producers, and publishers. However marketing and advertising isn't done by the same folls who do the art or the coding of course.
Ideally, games would sell entirely on their merit
Advertising is mostly deceptive hype, but it is a necessity because you won't buy something you don't know exists.
I heard on the radio yesterday morning that one of the rovers took a picture of a rock that "clearly" had...
"Stephen King dead at age 55" written on it? What does that mean to evolutioninst? Imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE MARS LANDERS! On red mars, rocks examine YOU! I, for one, welcome our new rover overlords.
Pfft, I've been using custom soundtracks since the 8bit NES. I just turned off the TV sound and put on a tape instead. And since the Playstation era, games have had the option to turn off music and keep the SFX, so I put a CD in (well, my computer is my jukebox now), crank up the volume and play games with the music I choose that way.
Ah! HD stored custom soundtracks...kids these days!
The lab coats aren't important, but the other people are. What you described is not a "double blind" test in any meaningful sense of the word. For that you'd need:
A statistically significant number of people to test on
Well no, that's for a study, not a test...but I get your meaning even if you phrased it in a way that made it wrong:)
Someone to prepare the test materials in such a way that the only difference is what is being tested such that one set has the substance being tested the other set does not...but there is no way to tell which is which.
Check. My friend's mom knows I love ice tea. She gives me a glass whenever I visit. Some time ago her doc put her on a low-carb diet, she switched to sugarless ice tea. Man that was a painfull night. The next day I'm there again driking an ice tea, she tells me about her new diet. I stop drinking, get up, look in the cuppard. Sure enough, aspartame. I got a migraine, but less than the night before because I didn't finish the glass that time.
it sounds as if you only look for the cause of the migranes when you actually have them. Thus you might consume aspertame many times with no ill effects and never realize it.
Oh no, I almost always check. Except when people switch their ice-tea brand on me, sneaky devils.
I used to have migraines all the freaking time before I knew to look at what I eat and drink for the cause, now not so much.
The sort of report you give provides sufficent reason to investigate with a double blind study, but is not in and of iteslf a double blind study, no mater how often it happens.
I know, but I also know for a fact that aspartame is one of the things that give me migraines (also, grapes. That made sense, I threw up a hell of a lot of grape juice when I was a kid). So I won't play guinea pig for an aspartame study anymore than you would for a "baseball-bat to the forehead at full force for 3 to 72 hours long" study, because that's pretty much what it feels like.
It may not be so much a matter of pleasure as of learning. Becoming addicted is a kind of learning process--an association is made between an action and an outcome (pleasure).
Good point, except that you can verify the "pleasure" with a simple experiment: Try some food with and without MSG, see wich one has a more pleasing taste (Irecommend soup, or soy sauce. You can find sauce with or without MSG if you look hard enough). Make sure there is not only no MSG, but also none of the tricky names MSG hides under: Soy proteins and hydrogenated soy proteins (soy need not be mentioned).
Just because your allergic to aspartame doesn't mean it's harmfull to the population at large. By your logic we should be banning milk and egg's as certain people have equally bad reactions to them.
No, because my logic is that artificial and patented chemicals are pushed by corporations who want to maximise their profits and are willing to ignore the safety risks associated with their products.
Milk and eggs are food. They offer nutrients to many people, except those that are allergic to them.
Aspartame and MSG are fodd additives, they offer revenue to the corporations producing them, they induce adverse reaction in those who are sensitive to them, and they offer nutrition to no one.
Poisons in small dosage don't do immediate harm, but if you keep ingesting it over and over again, you might find that when the adverse effect do show up you won't know what caused it, since for you the reaction wasn't immediate.
Go get the book The Disaster Lobby. It was written in the 1970's. Long before the TV program you are referring to.
If your a big fan of Ralph Nater or Dr. Needleman, you might want to skip this title.
I don't know who these people are...though I've heard the names before. Who are these people, and why would being a fan of them mean you don't need to read that book?
Anyway, I'll read the book if I find it at the library...
I am very sensitive to aspartame, if I absentmindedly accept a sugarless mint or gum from someone, I'll suffer a severe migraine wich renders me totally incapable of doing anything for hours. Safe my ass...
Wow, how convincing. You know, I have exactly the same reaction to chocolate. Seriously. If I eat so much as one Hershey's Kiss I'm sure to get a pounding headache within an hour. Chocolate is clearly a dangerous toxic substance and should be banned immediately.
I was given a list of common substances that can give migraines, chocolate was on the list, but its not one of mine.
Food allergies to various natural and artificial substances are pretty common, you know.
I know, but allergies to natural substances are one thing (I can live with my reaction to cheese, I avoid eating delicious yummy cheese is all), but patented additives that are added to products by greedy corporations with no regards for the adverse reactions their poisons might induce are another.
Did you notice that artificial sweetners are labelled with "only use on the advice of a doctor"? Or in the case of eviler corporative meddling, labelled with "for use in a reduced sugar diet" (I forget the actual wording).
Think of the children.
Did you know that it is recommended for pregnant or nursing women and for small children to avoid aspartame because it might cause a brain development anomaly?
Say, have you ever heard of thalidomide? It was widely prescribed for a short time to pregnant women in the 50's...until thousands and thousands of malformed babies were born (tip of the iceberg, miscarriage was more common). THAT is what it takes for a corporation to admit its product is unsafe: Thousands and thousands of malformed babies. If the side effects are more subtle than that, they will keep on making a profit as long as they can. Tobacco companies hid the harm they were doing, food companies are doing it now. If their products are addictive, people will keep buying even after they learn its harmfull.
Glutamate is a lot of things. It is an amino acid, found in essentially all protein. Injected into the nervous system at high concentrations, it can be toxic, but it is also a neurotransmitter that is critical for learning.
It is also a neurotransmitter of pleasure wich is linked to addiction. In studies of cocaine addiction, it was found that after repeated intake (it takes more than one shot to become and addict, it was found that the production of glutamate showed a sudden spike right before the signs of physical addiction developped.
but it was recently discovered that the tongue also carries specific glutamate taste receptors.
There are also glutamate receptors in the retina...
I do not wish to belittle your migranes (they are not pleasent, I know) but simply to point out that it is exceedingly unlikely that aspertame per se is the cause, or if it is the mechanism is not what is popularly claimed. If you are willing to make temporary sacrafice to help resolve the matter, you may want to see if there are any double blind studies being conducted on aspertame in which you could participate.
I don't need people in lab coats to do a double blind experiment.
Many times I've had sudden and incredibly painfull migraines of inexplicable origin until it receeded and I was able to go and read the ingredients off of everything I had eaten or drank that day to discover it had aspartame in it (I knew to look for aspartame as it was on huge list of things that might cause migraines, it includes many artificial additives like aspartame, monosodium glutamate, preservatives, and oddly enough, grapes and cheese). I didn't know the product had aspartame, and I can usually feel migraines creeping up on me, but in these cases it came suddenly and violently, and only afterwards did I learn that there was aspartame involved (it could have been grapes, or anything, but after carefull consideration, aspartame was (in these cases) the only culprit).
So, double blind? Check. Indescribable pain? Check. Aspartame ingested? Check.
You can't take the sky from me... I can too, if your ratings don't improve
Funny guy...
Speaking of wich, I just bought the DVDs, had to go to 3 different stores before I found it. The first 2 were sold out and waiting for their next shipment.
The problem with DDT was the frickin' amount being used. Obviously you haven't seen the film of happy people being voluntarily gassed with insane amounts of the stuff.
That "gimme a break" guy was saying "none of these people got sick from DDT" while showing that footage.
I think he has shares in a DDT manufacturing company and is using his TV spot to make the stock rise a bit...
Some people get sick/headaches/whatever if they eat msg, but to 99% of the population, it's just like salt with an evil name.... it simply makes your food taste a little better.
For MSG, its basically a matter of dosage. It doesn't take much to make me sick, it takes more to make most other people sick, and it doesn't make most asians sick.
The thing is, the MSG and aspartame producing companies invest a lot of effort and money in preventing their drugs from being regulated.
Because that is what MSG is, a drug. It induces pleasure, its addictive (it makes me sick and I can't stop myself from eating it, I'm definatly addicted to that shit). I think MSG manufacturers should be caged like crack dealers. Because on top of MSG's own fault (the sickness depending on dosage), it makes its addicts eat MUCH more of the crap they put it in. And that crap is making a lot of people sick (obese) from overeating chips and fried chicken etc.
As for aspartame, it makes people who are sensitive to it immediatly sick...for others, the effect will happen in the long-term and will not necesserilly be identified with the substance. If you get sick in 10 years time from eating aspartame-tainted products all these years, how will you know what made you sick? Especially if you don't pay attention to the ingredients of what you eat and you don't even know you've been ingesting it all these years.
Not to mention DDT which could stop millions of deaths due to malaria. Which was killed by enviromental groups to increase their political power despite being no danger to anything but insects.
So you watch nightline, or 20/20, or whatever show that "give me a break" shill is on.
DDT accumulates in the food chain. The beluga population is severly affected by DDT poisoning to this day even though it has been banned for a very long time.
I watched that part of the programm because I wanted to hear why he claimed that aspartame was totally safe. He didn't, he just talked about DDT after having named aspartame as one of the products that are "falsely" considered harmfull. I am very sensitive to aspartame, if I absentmindedly accept a sugarless mint or gum from someone, I'll suffer a severe migraine wich renders me totally incapable of doing anything for hours. Safe my ass...
Give ME a break.
Re:What I think will be interesting is...
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 1
The reaction of people like those found on Slashdot if Microsoft actually crafts a search engine that is demonstrably better than Google. Will people ignore that in favor of simple Microsoft bashing, or will they use it and acknowledge its superiority?
Neither, we'll be too busy dodging flying-pig crap...
IE defaults to msn search, and if you mistype a url it sends you to their search engine as well. Because of this the popularity of msn search is massively overstated as a lot of the hits are due to typos.
And BTW, that function is not only an annoyance when typing URLs, but its also an incredible waste of time, since it takes you to a search for something you mistyped in the first place, and therefore the chances that the results it gives you will be interresting are basically nill.
What about the health nuts like me that don't take in any caffeine/carbonated drinks? Where do I win in this situation? *sulk*
If you're not going to become addicted to their sugar loaded stilmulant drinks, they have no reason to entice you with free (minus the small DRM) music.
Slashdot Mirror
given that the regionalisation for the PS2 version was done in lots of time for Christmas does make it odd that it's still not out for Xbox and PS2.
Maybe they botched their approval by Nint or Microsoft, then you have to go through the whole final testing and submission process all over again. Though Ubi is a big place full of professional people who should know better than that.
In short, I have absolutly no real clue as to why exactly it isn't out, but I feel that conspiracy theories involving Sony are less likely than the wide range of technical details that can result in delays like that. Though it is strange that both the cube and the box suffer from the same delay. Perhaps they are holding one back while waiting for the third to be ready so they don't look like they are playing faverourite.
The mouse must then be constantly producing a thin gelatinous ooze of reproductive material, which is attempting to burrow into anything and everything nearby.
I'm having a hard time visualising this...
Fortunatly, the hentai version will be out shortly to serve as an educational visual aid. I mean, with all those schoolgirls in there, its gotta be for educational purposes, right?
Dunno how much Sony paid them to hold those games back, but I'm not convinced it was worth it...
I'm certain Sony had noting at all to do with it.
First of all, from talking with a ubisoft programmer, I know they have a hard-on for the Xbox.
Secondly, from working in the industry, I can tell you that there can be a million reasons that a multi-platform game release can go "not smoothly".
What is most likelly, is that they had to make choices at the QA stage: There were bugs that needed fixing, and they were on a time table (games that are relesased on xMas must be finished, I mean finished, by octobber at the ver latest if they are to be printing in any large numbers of copies). Since Ubisoft has a finite numbers of programmers, they had to make a choice as for wich console would get finished first, they choose the one that has the largest number of potential customers. A release in europe is more complicated than in america because there are more languages to be localised. And no, Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft will not let you butch the languages that are not english. Every menu entry has to be done right in every language, etc.
I'm sure Ubi tried to get all 3 console versions released all before the big holiday shopping frenzy, but sometimes the real world gets in the way of the best laid plans.
I have, based on the demo I played last summer, and on the word of a current and former Ubisoft employees swearing that it was awsome.
It has good points. The movements are good and fluid, the acrobatics can be performed in a very satisfying and spectacular way. But its been sitting idle on my couch unfinished for a few weeks because I hate the interface.
However the voice acting is good, the graphics are nice, the level are interresting, even though its somtimes hard to see where you are meant to go on account of the camera flat-out refusing to get where you would need it to be to see that.
I don't really like the cut-scene animations, the characters move in a way that isn't all that natural, though the in-game animations are top-notch.
So, if you are better able to tolerate the interface issues, you,ll love it. I personally regret buying it though.
Advertising comes from the realm of the publisher, not the developer.
UbiSoft are developers, producers, and publishers.
However marketing and advertising isn't done by the same folls who do the art or the coding of course.
Ideally, games would sell entirely on their merit
Advertising is mostly deceptive hype, but it is a necessity because you won't buy something you don't know exists.
You're talking about the nation that invented the telephone, radio...
We were talking about Canada? Thought this was about mars...meh, temperature is about the same though...
I heard on the radio yesterday morning that one of the rovers took a picture of a rock that "clearly" had...
"Stephen King dead at age 55" written on it?
What does that mean to evolutioninst?
Imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE MARS LANDERS!
On red mars, rocks examine YOU!
I, for one, welcome our new rover overlords.
"Power PPC"? A little redundant don't you think?
;-)
Aren't those the chip they use over at DC Comics?
Storing ripped music for use as a soundtrack.
Pfft, I've been using custom soundtracks since the 8bit NES. I just turned off the TV sound and put on a tape instead.
And since the Playstation era, games have had the option to turn off music and keep the SFX, so I put a CD in (well, my computer is my jukebox now), crank up the volume and play games with the music I choose that way.
Ah! HD stored custom soundtracks...kids these days!
The lab coats aren't important, but the other people are. What you described is not a "double blind" test in any meaningful sense of the word. For that you'd need:
:)
...but there is no way to tell which is which.
A statistically significant number of people to test on
Well no, that's for a study, not a test...but I get your meaning even if you phrased it in a way that made it wrong
Someone to prepare the test materials in such a way that the only difference is what is being tested such that
one set has the substance being tested
the other set does not
Check.
My friend's mom knows I love ice tea. She gives me a glass whenever I visit. Some time ago her doc put her on a low-carb diet, she switched to sugarless ice tea. Man that was a painfull night. The next day I'm there again driking an ice tea, she tells me about her new diet. I stop drinking, get up, look in the cuppard. Sure enough, aspartame. I got a migraine, but less than the night before because I didn't finish the glass that time.
it sounds as if you only look for the cause of the migranes when you actually have them. Thus you might consume aspertame many times with no ill effects and never realize it.
Oh no, I almost always check. Except when people switch their ice-tea brand on me, sneaky devils.
I used to have migraines all the freaking time before I knew to look at what I eat and drink for the cause, now not so much.
The sort of report you give provides sufficent reason to investigate with a double blind study, but is not in and of iteslf a double blind study, no mater how often it happens.
I know, but I also know for a fact that aspartame is one of the things that give me migraines (also, grapes. That made sense, I threw up a hell of a lot of grape juice when I was a kid). So I won't play guinea pig for an aspartame study anymore than you would for a "baseball-bat to the forehead at full force for 3 to 72 hours long" study, because that's pretty much what it feels like.
MSG is tasteless.
Add to my experiment "taste a crystal of MSG to verify that it has no taste of its own".
It may not be so much a matter of pleasure as of learning. Becoming addicted is a kind of learning process--an association is made between an action and an outcome (pleasure).
Good point, except that you can verify the "pleasure" with a simple experiment: Try some food with and without MSG, see wich one has a more pleasing taste (Irecommend soup, or soy sauce. You can find sauce with or without MSG if you look hard enough). Make sure there is not only no MSG, but also none of the tricky names MSG hides under: Soy proteins and hydrogenated soy proteins (soy need not be mentioned).
Just because your allergic to aspartame doesn't mean it's harmfull to the population at large. By your logic we should be banning milk and egg's as certain people have equally bad reactions to them.
No, because my logic is that artificial and patented chemicals are pushed by corporations who want to maximise their profits and are willing to ignore the safety risks associated with their products.
Milk and eggs are food. They offer nutrients to many people, except those that are allergic to them.
Aspartame and MSG are fodd additives, they offer revenue to the corporations producing them, they induce adverse reaction in those who are sensitive to them, and they offer nutrition to no one.
Poisons in small dosage don't do immediate harm, but if you keep ingesting it over and over again, you might find that when the adverse effect do show up you won't know what caused it, since for you the reaction wasn't immediate.
Go get the book The Disaster Lobby. It was written in the 1970's. Long before the TV program you are referring to.
If your a big fan of Ralph Nater or Dr. Needleman, you might want to skip this title.
I don't know who these people are...though I've heard the names before. Who are these people, and why would being a fan of them mean you don't need to read that book?
Anyway, I'll read the book if I find it at the library...
Wow, how convincing. You know, I have exactly the same reaction to chocolate. Seriously. If I eat so much as one Hershey's Kiss I'm sure to get a pounding headache within an hour. Chocolate is clearly a dangerous toxic substance and should be banned immediately.
I was given a list of common substances that can give migraines, chocolate was on the list, but its not one of mine.
Food allergies to various natural and artificial substances are pretty common, you know.
I know, but allergies to natural substances are one thing (I can live with my reaction to cheese, I avoid eating delicious yummy cheese is all), but patented additives that are added to products by greedy corporations with no regards for the adverse reactions their poisons might induce are another.
Did you notice that artificial sweetners are labelled with "only use on the advice of a doctor"? Or in the case of eviler corporative meddling, labelled with "for use in a reduced sugar diet" (I forget the actual wording).
Think of the children.
Did you know that it is recommended for pregnant or nursing women and for small children to avoid aspartame because it might cause a brain development anomaly?
Say, have you ever heard of thalidomide? It was widely prescribed for a short time to pregnant women in the 50's...until thousands and thousands of malformed babies were born (tip of the iceberg, miscarriage was more common).
THAT is what it takes for a corporation to admit its product is unsafe: Thousands and thousands of malformed babies. If the side effects are more subtle than that, they will keep on making a profit as long as they can. Tobacco companies hid the harm they were doing, food companies are doing it now. If their products are addictive, people will keep buying even after they learn its harmfull.
Glutamate is a lot of things. It is an amino acid, found in essentially all protein. Injected into the nervous system at high concentrations, it can be toxic, but it is also a neurotransmitter that is critical for learning.
It is also a neurotransmitter of pleasure wich is linked to addiction. In studies of cocaine addiction, it was found that after repeated intake (it takes more than one shot to become and addict, it was found that the production of glutamate showed a sudden spike right before the signs of physical addiction developped.
but it was recently discovered that the tongue also carries specific glutamate taste receptors.
There are also glutamate receptors in the retina...
Hey, something poisons me, I do research.
I do not wish to belittle your migranes (they are not pleasent, I know) but simply to point out that it is exceedingly unlikely that aspertame per se is the cause, or if it is the mechanism is not what is popularly claimed. If you are willing to make temporary sacrafice to help resolve the matter, you may want to see if there are any double blind studies being conducted on aspertame in which you could participate.
I don't need people in lab coats to do a double blind experiment.
Many times I've had sudden and incredibly painfull migraines of inexplicable origin until it receeded and I was able to go and read the ingredients off of everything I had eaten or drank that day to discover it had aspartame in it (I knew to look for aspartame as it was on huge list of things that might cause migraines, it includes many artificial additives like aspartame, monosodium glutamate, preservatives, and oddly enough, grapes and cheese).
I didn't know the product had aspartame, and I can usually feel migraines creeping up on me, but in these cases it came suddenly and violently, and only afterwards did I learn that there was aspartame involved (it could have been grapes, or anything, but after carefull consideration, aspartame was (in these cases) the only culprit).
So, double blind? Check.
Indescribable pain? Check.
Aspartame ingested? Check.
You can't take the sky from me...
I can too, if your ratings don't improve
Funny guy...
Speaking of wich, I just bought the DVDs, had to go to 3 different stores before I found it. The first 2 were sold out and waiting for their next shipment.
Fox execs are retards.
Japan is big on nukes, also.
Well, how else are you gonna get giant radioactive dinosaures?
I mean, when all their robots are up and running, they're gonna need something to fight...
The problem with DDT was the frickin' amount being used. Obviously you haven't seen the film of happy people being voluntarily gassed with insane amounts of the stuff.
That "gimme a break" guy was saying "none of these people got sick from DDT" while showing that footage.
I think he has shares in a DDT manufacturing company and is using his TV spot to make the stock rise a bit...
Some people get sick/headaches/whatever if they eat msg, but to 99% of the population, it's just like salt with an evil name.... it simply makes your food taste a little better.
For MSG, its basically a matter of dosage. It doesn't take much to make me sick, it takes more to make most other people sick, and it doesn't make most asians sick.
The thing is, the MSG and aspartame producing companies invest a lot of effort and money in preventing their drugs from being regulated.
Because that is what MSG is, a drug. It induces pleasure, its addictive (it makes me sick and I can't stop myself from eating it, I'm definatly addicted to that shit). I think MSG manufacturers should be caged like crack dealers. Because on top of MSG's own fault (the sickness depending on dosage), it makes its addicts eat MUCH more of the crap they put it in. And that crap is making a lot of people sick (obese) from overeating chips and fried chicken etc.
As for aspartame, it makes people who are sensitive to it immediatly sick...for others, the effect will happen in the long-term and will not necesserilly be identified with the substance. If you get sick in 10 years time from eating aspartame-tainted products all these years, how will you know what made you sick? Especially if you don't pay attention to the ingredients of what you eat and you don't even know you've been ingesting it all these years.
Not to mention DDT which could stop millions of deaths due to malaria.
Which was killed by enviromental groups to increase their political power despite being no danger to anything but insects.
So you watch nightline, or 20/20, or whatever show that "give me a break" shill is on.
DDT accumulates in the food chain. The beluga population is severly affected by DDT poisoning to this day even though it has been banned for a very long time.
I watched that part of the programm because I wanted to hear why he claimed that aspartame was totally safe. He didn't, he just talked about DDT after having named aspartame as one of the products that are "falsely" considered harmfull.
I am very sensitive to aspartame, if I absentmindedly accept a sugarless mint or gum from someone, I'll suffer a severe migraine wich renders me totally incapable of doing anything for hours. Safe my ass...
Give ME a break.
The reaction of people like those found on Slashdot if Microsoft actually crafts a search engine that is demonstrably better than Google. Will people ignore that in favor of simple Microsoft bashing, or will they use it and acknowledge its superiority?
Neither, we'll be too busy dodging flying-pig crap...
IE defaults to msn search, and if you mistype a url it sends you to their search engine as well. Because of this the popularity of msn search is massively overstated as a lot of the hits are due to typos.
And BTW, that function is not only an annoyance when typing URLs, but its also an incredible waste of time, since it takes you to a search for something you mistyped in the first place, and therefore the chances that the results it gives you will be interresting are basically nill.
What about the health nuts like me that don't take in any caffeine/carbonated drinks? Where do I win in this situation? *sulk*
If you're not going to become addicted to their sugar loaded stilmulant drinks, they have no reason to entice you with free (minus the small DRM) music.