Yeh, bandwith is going to be a multi-headed problem affecting Apple, ISPs, and the users. That is going to be a major hurdle for them and is why I doubt the resolution will be that great and people aren't going to see "near-DVD" quality res/bit-rate like they're hoping.
iTunes is popular, super popular. If/when they start selling movies they're going to need a LOT more bandwith. Now, if they do what offer near-DVD then you're talking over a GB per movie (depending on codec, actual quality, etc). Between the huge files and number of customers their bandwith would go through the roof. They'd need a better infrastructure than what they're using for that. It's one thing to offer 3MB songs because people will finish downloading quickly opening up a spot for another customer. But with movies, the number of concurrent connections will explode!
To top that off, ISPs will be in for it. Especially once iTunes movies go live, a lot of people are going to start downloading. If they keep the file sizes high the ISPs networks are going to get hit hard. People are going to experience slowdowns and outages. If you think a lot of people use P2P, imagine adding iTunes on top of that. It's going to be a nightmare once their customers are legally allowed to download movies from such a popular service.
Lastly, the lowly users. ISPs have been enforicing their hidden "bandwith caps" for a while now and my guess is they will continue to do so. Again, if they have the movie sizes large, then users will find their connections cut or severly throttled because they went past some magic number.
That's assuming you find a popular one. If you want an episode of Lost the week it first aired, you'll get it really quick. Heck, even some episodes are seeded pretty well long after it airs.
But if you want something more obscure or old, you may be out of luck.
Usually that is the case. But there are some cheap movies in the bargain bins because they're old and/or unpopular. Maybe a 2-pack of similar movies that didn't do too well for the price of one, or an old movie that wasn't a major blockbuster hit is only a couple bucks.
The problem is, assuming iTunes would blanket these (normally) cheap movies with the same price as the popular ones. So you'd be stuck paying $10 for a movie you could pick up elsewhere for cheaper.
I pay for 3Mbps DSL from Verizon. I'm about 1/2 or 3/4 away from the Corporate Office to get the 3Mpbs service.
I have to say, it's been as close to as-advertised as I need. I regularly clock at around 2.7 or 2.8 when downloading.
Cable, sure I wouldn't mind the extra speed bump but Comcast cable is crap around here. Signal quality sucks, outages, etc. And the "technicians," please... they usually don't know anything. Their solution to every problem is "cut the ends of the cable, attach a new connector, and walk away" even though the problem didn't go away the LAST 4 times they were here doing the exact same thing.
Verizon, eh they may be evil but they're nowhere near as bad as the Comcast center near me.
Half your income at this factory, spent working rather more than 40 hours a week, gets you a bed in a massive dormatory. The money left over is arguably only acceptable because you're not exactly going to spend it on amassing belongings. Where the fuck would you put them? Be clear about this: we're talking about thousands of workers who have no privacy. Not "Their supervisor occasionally peeks at their emails", but seriously no privacy.
But this is in China, not the US. Obviously something like this owuld not fly in the US and such a company would be violating some laws, but in China perhaps it's the norm. I'm not saying that I agree with it, but if that's what is is there, you can't blame Apple for simply going there.
What do you suggest we do about it? Does the US pass a law that all US-based companies pull their production business out of China until things change? Then you're left with a lot of people of out work that obviously need the money because unless they are slaves, they're working there because they need the money and have little choice. Maybe China (or the factories) eventually cave in, but in the meantime people are starving.
Do we try to get the US to spearhead the UN to coerce China to change their worker's rights? Then we'd be thrusting our values on yet another county whose government would not be too happy with us. How has that been going in the middle east by the way? And I don't think we want to piss them off.
Like I said, an important issue is abuse. If they're beating workers not meeting quotas or otherwise mistreating them in an inhumane way, then maybe the US or the UN could step up. But if not, it becomes a value and culture thing: a sticky situation.
Yes, it's sad that it sucks to be a worker there but what do yo uexpect us to do about it? And solution have consequences.
The article should have more figures to put things in context. Yeh, people are shocked at how much we make here in the US but on the other hand expenses are high. By the time you pay rent/mortgage, buy food, and pay for basic utilities (water, electricity, hear) a large chunk of your pay is gone. Depending on your city/state and job it could easily be half-or-more of your pay. So we
The question is (and forgive my ignorance) is the 50EUR per week "the norm" over there for factory work? And are normal housing costs about 1/2 pay? Is the other half enough to get by? If so, how comfortably? And most importantly, are they abusing their workers?
I'm not defending Apple for the sake of defending them. If the pay is common/adequate and they aren't abusing their workers (and letting them quit whenever they want) then the story isn't as big as some are fearing.
They left out just enough details to make the story go one way or another.
In fact, Vista Beta 2 wouldn't even install -- I kept getting a "error copying Windows files" after 30% of the files had copied. This, on two different hard drives. Oy.
I had this problem with my rebuilt PC. My motherboard died so I replaced it (and only the mb) and tried to do a fresh install of windows. I kept getting that same error.
It turned out my memory went bad, running memtest86 revealed it failing some tests. I don't know if the memory died along with the motherboard or if I mishandled it when transferring it to the new motherboard but it was dead all the same.
In any case, it was the first time I'd seen that error message when installing an OS. Before I tried memtest86 I tried 2 different CD ROM drives, different copies of the disk, different cables, etc. It didn't even seem like it would be a memory error but an IO or disk error.
So, check the memory and let it go ALL the way through. It'll take a while, but this way you'll know for sure. I've known people that have only failed late tests.
There are several reasons why I wouldn't get it (price, look, etc).
I have to admit, I like the look and think it looks pretty slick. BUT it's one of those things that you'll get tired of really quick. Almost like a mistake you make when you're drunk; once reality hits (or you sober up) you think "What the F@#$ was I thinking."
However, if they went for something mild like a Green Lantern laptop I'd probably go for it if it wasn't too expensive. Keep the standard black, with some green trims, and the suit logo on top. It would be mild enough to not look like ass down the line.
I was told to never let that happen. Always leave a couple of rounds in the magazine when you're "done" firing off. I don't recall why, but it had to do with the legal aftermath.
Heh. I weened myself off Valve games for a good 5 months or so. I loaded it back up last monday, saw the new game... and I was compelled to buy. Seriously, I had no idea. I went in blind.
Ah, then you're forgiven:-)
I never really thought about it, but for someone completely in the dark I don't think they ever offer what the "episodic content" on Steam really means; like they don't flash "up to 6 hours of gameplay" or something.
Yes, but for gaming you probably want something in a non volatile format, or close to as possible. You don't want to have to worry about magnets, static, a disk/cartidge getting slightly wet, etc.
Compact Flash can store a lot, but can also get nailed easily if you're not careful. Discs are pretty much fine so long as they don't scratch or melt. Granted, there's the deterioration that all CDs and DVDs deal with but that's years down the line, and nothing lasts forever (my SNES cartridges can't keep my saves for very long).
I'm more than a little peeved that I paid $20 for this amount of content. I expected the game to take me at least a few nights to beat, but instead I was finished by early Thursday evening. The gameplay was a little tougher than the original HL2, but I'm still not convinced it makes up for the price.
Don't take this the wrong way, but where have you been? Since the beginning, everyone has known it would only be a few hours long, hence all of the complaints about episodic content in general. So long as you read the slightest preview or article or web post you'd know it was only a few hours long.
I beat it in a little over 4 and I was taking my time. But I knew that going in.
Their proprietary formats recently have probably met the first goal of proprietary formats: feeds revenue into the company. Unfortuantely, they just keep failing to be adopted as defacto standards (for good reasons).
Look at their memory stick. While they didn't succeed it making it the de facto standard for portable media, I'm sure it's worked great for them. Their cameras, PSP, etc all use it and between their manufacturing and licensing I'm sure it helps them out some.
The PSP's UMD bombed for movies, that's a given, but it was a worthwhile "attempt." Personally, I think it was the price that killed it, had they made it cheaper than it would have been worth it for travelling purposes (and only travelling).
Sure, technologically UMB is not the best for gaming because of the power/loading time associated with discs but I'm sure the licensing helps them, but it was a good effort. Storing a lot of data for personal gaming probably doesn't have too many options. Besides, if company X wants to print a game for the PSP they get a piece of the production fee one way or another.
I have a feeling Blu Ray is where it all hits the fan. Unlike it's other more recent proprietary formats which can supplement their own products, Blu Ray can only survive on its own in the wild. It must be adopted as the main video format or else there's just little point in it. Sure if it fails you can still sell Blu Ray burners for Desktops and such, and if PS3 goes Blu Ray then publishers will need to kick a few pennies to Sony.
But in the end, it needs to beat out HDDVD to win and the only way that could happen is if they beat it to market or offered it as a cheaper alternative. I guess we'll see what happens here.
But my comments on the "conspiracy theory" (while probably founded in jest) still hold merit based on the fact that it would be stupid of IBM to favor MS by giving Sony a bad product.
I don't know about online, but the people I knew (in real life) were in awe of the price of the PS2 when it came out. I knew a lot of people that decided not to get one right away, yet somehow my brother making minimum wage managed to pick one up on release day. Go figure.
I game enough and make enough money that I wouldn't mind spending a lot of cash for a system if: a) looked like it had some great games b) it was a major step up from what I had c) I felt that I would get some longevity out of it d) in all, looks like a quality product
Considering how long PS2 has been around, I'd say point "c" has some backing. However, it's too early to know know much about anything else. All early info is making the PS3 sound a little shadey, and Sony as a bunch of morons and liars.
It only makes sense to make the same type of chip and supply them to both companies. Sure, maybe one will have higher MHZ or more cache based on the customer's (MS or Sony) requirements, but the same design would be implemented. You make a point that they have good reason to keep in Microsoft's good graces, but favoring one big company over the other (by screwing one of them over) is just bad business sense, particularly in a case where both companies are such big players and their use of your product is so public.
There's no way in hell they'd "gimp" a version going to Sony for the sake of helping Microsoft, because they'd lose all of their appearance of integrity and lose a lot of business. After all, why chose a company to build your chips when in the past they've purposely screwed one of their customers.
you can just shut the DS. The DS will automatically pause when its closed and go into a always on sleep mode.
I know (I play some DS games quite often lately), but I'm not talking about the complexity to pause/unpause or turn on/off. Merely the act of doing it in a frenzied "puzzle" level (which can be even more tense than an arcade game).
If you made it to a high level of Lumines (DS) or Tetris (PSP), by the time you close the lid a shape may have come close to landing in its default position. The same with opening and/or unpausing. You'd be tempted to say "can you wait 5 seconds so I can clear these lines" though you probably wouldn't if it was something important like work. And in the end you be just as hesitant to stop and likely to "lose" as if you were playing against some hard boss in an arcade game.
It's not that clear cut though. Sure, something like siduko can be put down pretty easily, but what about Tetris or Lumines. Let's say you get pretty far and the objects are flying really fast. How easy can you just "turn it off."
Get far enough in either scenario and you're in the same place as that guy fighting a boss. Both require a little bit of playtime first, and stopping isn't easy because it's usually fast-paced and/or hard and stopping is difficult. Plus restarting would be tough because you'd probably lose 10ms after the game starts again.
Depending on how high you turn AA on or how beefy your system is, you're talkng about a much bigger hit than 2-4FPS out of 30. You'll only ever see a small hit if you turn a low-pass anti-aliasing on like SSx2, or if you're machine is so powerful that running the game as-is doesn't doesn't even make your system swet. And chances are, if you're running at a sustained 30 FPS, you're machine is struggling.
Look at some benchmarks and find some reviews for modern cards. Look for a game that taxes the systems: ie, for a 7800GT don't look at Q3 or benchmarks but Doom3 at 1280x1024. Usually they'll show a graph of the system running at a high enough resolution that it's no longer "cruising" through (struggling, but just barely). Then they'll show another graph (or a sub-graph) of the same resolution but at different Anti-Aliasing levels. You'll see that graph drop lickety-split.
So sure, I can play an Unreal 2004 based game at 1280x1024 with AA turned way up and not see a difference in FPS (and have a nicer image). But if I'm playing a taxing game like Doom 3 (or Half-Life 2 at a high resolution) then the AA drops the performance nicely. And as I mentioned , if I have a low-pass Anti Aliasing going then the difference won't be as great as if I put on AAx8
I work near home for people with physical problems (like paralyzed, bad backs, etc). Anyway, I see a lot of people from that building cruising around in their electric scooters. Sure, they pretty much all look big now but I doubt that's why they're on the scooters. It's the opposite: somethings happens preventing them from walking and such, and physical therapy isn't an option or hasn't worked b[yet]b.
So they drive these things around to go the 1-2 miles to the store and their shopping because it needs to get done, whenter or not they can walk the distance and carry the groceries. In the end, all of that sitting results in a lack of excercise and they gain weight pretty fast.
But then again, I'm sure there are people in the world that just use those things because of laziness.
It's available on iTunes. I forget the title and the artist but type SIN EMERGENCE into the search box and you'll find the sound track. The menu song appears 2 or 3 times: main song, remix, (and I think) instrumental.
Name some FPS games released within the last year or 2 that were 40 hours? And don't say "Oblivion" like every other critic of SiN says. Usually it's like 15 or 20 hours. I beat FEAR really quickly, and Half-Life 2 didn't take me long either. And I don't plow through games, I try to explore and check out the scenery and effects.
Sure, the price/time ratio is a little high but not that much. That is, unless you start getting into RPG's and such. Then yeh, the ratio looks horrible.
Episodes don't come every month, but every 6 months. Also, they've said they're toying with the idea to offer "bundles" at reduced prices. Like if you don't get on the wagon until episode 2 or 3 they'll knock some off the total price so it's easier to get.
So, if you don't want to pay $40-$60 USD per year (depending if they accelerate their schedule) then simply don't buy the game.
I forgot to mention. My brother was in middleschool, which shared the same building as the highschool. I was able to get my highschool brother out in less than a minute. Across the hall in the middleschool office I ran into the world biggest idiot that wouldn't let me get my youngest brother out (who was in 8th grade).
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Yeh, bandwith is going to be a multi-headed problem affecting Apple, ISPs, and the users. That is going to be a major hurdle for them and is why I doubt the resolution will be that great and people aren't going to see "near-DVD" quality res/bit-rate like they're hoping.
iTunes is popular, super popular. If/when they start selling movies they're going to need a LOT more bandwith. Now, if they do what offer near-DVD then you're talking over a GB per movie (depending on codec, actual quality, etc). Between the huge files and number of customers their bandwith would go through the roof. They'd need a better infrastructure than what they're using for that. It's one thing to offer 3MB songs because people will finish downloading quickly opening up a spot for another customer. But with movies, the number of concurrent connections will explode!
To top that off, ISPs will be in for it. Especially once iTunes movies go live, a lot of people are going to start downloading. If they keep the file sizes high the ISPs networks are going to get hit hard. People are going to experience slowdowns and outages. If you think a lot of people use P2P, imagine adding iTunes on top of that. It's going to be a nightmare once their customers are legally allowed to download movies from such a popular service.
Lastly, the lowly users. ISPs have been enforicing their hidden "bandwith caps" for a while now and my guess is they will continue to do so. Again, if they have the movie sizes large, then users will find their connections cut or severly throttled because they went past some magic number.
That's assuming you find a popular one. If you want an episode of Lost the week it first aired, you'll get it really quick. Heck, even some episodes are seeded pretty well long after it airs.
But if you want something more obscure or old, you may be out of luck.
Usually that is the case. But there are some cheap movies in the bargain bins because they're old and/or unpopular. Maybe a 2-pack of similar movies that didn't do too well for the price of one, or an old movie that wasn't a major blockbuster hit is only a couple bucks.
The problem is, assuming iTunes would blanket these (normally) cheap movies with the same price as the popular ones. So you'd be stuck paying $10 for a movie you could pick up elsewhere for cheaper.
I pay for 3Mbps DSL from Verizon. I'm about 1/2 or 3/4 away from the Corporate Office to get the 3Mpbs service.
I have to say, it's been as close to as-advertised as I need. I regularly clock at around 2.7 or 2.8 when downloading.
Cable, sure I wouldn't mind the extra speed bump but Comcast cable is crap around here. Signal quality sucks, outages, etc. And the "technicians," please... they usually don't know anything. Their solution to every problem is "cut the ends of the cable, attach a new connector, and walk away" even though the problem didn't go away the LAST 4 times they were here doing the exact same thing.
Verizon, eh they may be evil but they're nowhere near as bad as the Comcast center near me.
That's no moon. It's a space station!
But this is in China, not the US. Obviously something like this owuld not fly in the US and such a company would be violating some laws, but in China perhaps it's the norm. I'm not saying that I agree with it, but if that's what is is there, you can't blame Apple for simply going there.
What do you suggest we do about it? Does the US pass a law that all US-based companies pull their production business out of China until things change? Then you're left with a lot of people of out work that obviously need the money because unless they are slaves, they're working there because they need the money and have little choice. Maybe China (or the factories) eventually cave in, but in the meantime people are starving.
Do we try to get the US to spearhead the UN to coerce China to change their worker's rights? Then we'd be thrusting our values on yet another county whose government would not be too happy with us. How has that been going in the middle east by the way? And I don't think we want to piss them off.
Like I said, an important issue is abuse. If they're beating workers not meeting quotas or otherwise mistreating them in an inhumane way, then maybe the US or the UN could step up. But if not, it becomes a value and culture thing: a sticky situation.
Yes, it's sad that it sucks to be a worker there but what do yo uexpect us to do about it? And solution have consequences.
The article should have more figures to put things in context. Yeh, people are shocked at how much we make here in the US but on the other hand expenses are high. By the time you pay rent/mortgage, buy food, and pay for basic utilities (water, electricity, hear) a large chunk of your pay is gone. Depending on your city/state and job it could easily be half-or-more of your pay. So we
The question is (and forgive my ignorance) is the 50EUR per week "the norm" over there for factory work?
And are normal housing costs about 1/2 pay?
Is the other half enough to get by? If so, how comfortably?
And most importantly, are they abusing their workers?
I'm not defending Apple for the sake of defending them. If the pay is common/adequate and they aren't abusing their workers (and letting them quit whenever they want) then the story isn't as big as some are fearing.
They left out just enough details to make the story go one way or another.
I had this problem with my rebuilt PC. My motherboard died so I replaced it (and only the mb) and tried to do a fresh install of windows. I kept getting that same error.
It turned out my memory went bad, running memtest86 revealed it failing some tests. I don't know if the memory died along with the motherboard or if I mishandled it when transferring it to the new motherboard but it was dead all the same.
In any case, it was the first time I'd seen that error message when installing an OS. Before I tried memtest86 I tried 2 different CD ROM drives, different copies of the disk, different cables, etc. It didn't even seem like it would be a memory error but an IO or disk error.
So, check the memory and let it go ALL the way through. It'll take a while, but this way you'll know for sure. I've known people that have only failed late tests.
There are several reasons why I wouldn't get it (price, look, etc).
I have to admit, I like the look and think it looks pretty slick. BUT it's one of those things that you'll get tired of really quick. Almost like a mistake you make when you're drunk; once reality hits (or you sober up) you think "What the F@#$ was I thinking."
However, if they went for something mild like a Green Lantern laptop I'd probably go for it if it wasn't too expensive. Keep the standard black, with some green trims, and the suit logo on top. It would be mild enough to not look like ass down the line.
I never really thought about it, but for someone completely in the dark I don't think they ever offer what the "episodic content" on Steam really means; like they don't flash "up to 6 hours of gameplay" or something.
That lack of a banner might tick some people off.
Yes, but for gaming you probably want something in a non volatile format, or close to as possible. You don't want to have to worry about magnets, static, a disk/cartidge getting slightly wet, etc.
Compact Flash can store a lot, but can also get nailed easily if you're not careful. Discs are pretty much fine so long as they don't scratch or melt. Granted, there's the deterioration that all CDs and DVDs deal with but that's years down the line, and nothing lasts forever (my SNES cartridges can't keep my saves for very long).
Don't take this the wrong way, but where have you been? Since the beginning, everyone has known it would only be a few hours long, hence all of the complaints about episodic content in general. So long as you read the slightest preview or article or web post you'd know it was only a few hours long.
I beat it in a little over 4 and I was taking my time. But I knew that going in.
Their proprietary formats recently have probably met the first goal of proprietary formats: feeds revenue into the company. Unfortuantely, they just keep failing to be adopted as defacto standards (for good reasons).
Look at their memory stick. While they didn't succeed it making it the de facto standard for portable media, I'm sure it's worked great for them. Their cameras, PSP, etc all use it and between their manufacturing and licensing I'm sure it helps them out some.
The PSP's UMD bombed for movies, that's a given, but it was a worthwhile "attempt." Personally, I think it was the price that killed it, had they made it cheaper than it would have been worth it for travelling purposes (and only travelling).
Sure, technologically UMB is not the best for gaming because of the power/loading time associated with discs but I'm sure the licensing helps them, but it was a good effort. Storing a lot of data for personal gaming probably doesn't have too many options. Besides, if company X wants to print a game for the PSP they get a piece of the production fee one way or another.
I have a feeling Blu Ray is where it all hits the fan. Unlike it's other more recent proprietary formats which can supplement their own products, Blu Ray can only survive on its own in the wild. It must be adopted as the main video format or else there's just little point in it. Sure if it fails you can still sell Blu Ray burners for Desktops and such, and if PS3 goes Blu Ray then publishers will need to kick a few pennies to Sony.
But in the end, it needs to beat out HDDVD to win and the only way that could happen is if they beat it to market or offered it as a cheaper alternative. I guess we'll see what happens here.
Ok, I stand corrected on that point.
But my comments on the "conspiracy theory" (while probably founded in jest) still hold merit based on the fact that it would be stupid of IBM to favor MS by giving Sony a bad product.
I don't know about online, but the people I knew (in real life) were in awe of the price of the PS2 when it came out. I knew a lot of people that decided not to get one right away, yet somehow my brother making minimum wage managed to pick one up on release day. Go figure.
I game enough and make enough money that I wouldn't mind spending a lot of cash for a system if:
a) looked like it had some great games
b) it was a major step up from what I had
c) I felt that I would get some longevity out of it
d) in all, looks like a quality product
Considering how long PS2 has been around, I'd say point "c" has some backing. However, it's too early to know know much about anything else. All early info is making the PS3 sound a little shadey, and Sony as a bunch of morons and liars.
But I'll wait until it comes out to decide.
It only makes sense to make the same type of chip and supply them to both companies. Sure, maybe one will have higher MHZ or more cache based on the customer's (MS or Sony) requirements, but the same design would be implemented. You make a point that they have good reason to keep in Microsoft's good graces, but favoring one big company over the other (by screwing one of them over) is just bad business sense, particularly in a case where both companies are such big players and their use of your product is so public.
There's no way in hell they'd "gimp" a version going to Sony for the sake of helping Microsoft, because they'd lose all of their appearance of integrity and lose a lot of business. After all, why chose a company to build your chips when in the past they've purposely screwed one of their customers.
I know (I play some DS games quite often lately), but I'm not talking about the complexity to pause/unpause or turn on/off. Merely the act of doing it in a frenzied "puzzle" level (which can be even more tense than an arcade game).
If you made it to a high level of Lumines (DS) or Tetris (PSP), by the time you close the lid a shape may have come close to landing in its default position. The same with opening and/or unpausing. You'd be tempted to say "can you wait 5 seconds so I can clear these lines" though you probably wouldn't if it was something important like work. And in the end you be just as hesitant to stop and likely to "lose" as if you were playing against some hard boss in an arcade game.
It's not that clear cut though. Sure, something like siduko can be put down pretty easily, but what about Tetris or Lumines. Let's say you get pretty far and the objects are flying really fast. How easy can you just "turn it off."
Get far enough in either scenario and you're in the same place as that guy fighting a boss. Both require a little bit of playtime first, and stopping isn't easy because it's usually fast-paced and/or hard and stopping is difficult. Plus restarting would be tough because you'd probably lose 10ms after the game starts again.
Depending on how high you turn AA on or how beefy your system is, you're talkng about a much bigger hit than 2-4FPS out of 30. You'll only ever see a small hit if you turn a low-pass anti-aliasing on like SSx2, or if you're machine is so powerful that running the game as-is doesn't doesn't even make your system swet. And chances are, if you're running at a sustained 30 FPS, you're machine is struggling.
Look at some benchmarks and find some reviews for modern cards. Look for a game that taxes the systems: ie, for a 7800GT don't look at Q3 or benchmarks but Doom3 at 1280x1024. Usually they'll show a graph of the system running at a high enough resolution that it's no longer "cruising" through (struggling, but just barely). Then they'll show another graph (or a sub-graph) of the same resolution but at different Anti-Aliasing levels. You'll see that graph drop lickety-split.
So sure, I can play an Unreal 2004 based game at 1280x1024 with AA turned way up and not see a difference in FPS (and have a nicer image). But if I'm playing a taxing game like Doom 3 (or Half-Life 2 at a high resolution) then the AA drops the performance nicely. And as I mentioned , if I have a low-pass Anti Aliasing going then the difference won't be as great as if I put on AAx8
I work near home for people with physical problems (like paralyzed, bad backs, etc). Anyway, I see a lot of people from that building cruising around in their electric scooters. Sure, they pretty much all look big now but I doubt that's why they're on the scooters. It's the opposite: somethings happens preventing them from walking and such, and physical therapy isn't an option or hasn't worked b[yet]b.
So they drive these things around to go the 1-2 miles to the store and their shopping because it needs to get done, whenter or not they can walk the distance and carry the groceries. In the end, all of that sitting results in a lack of excercise and they gain weight pretty fast.
But then again, I'm sure there are people in the world that just use those things because of laziness.
It's available on iTunes. I forget the title and the artist but type SIN EMERGENCE into the search box and you'll find the sound track. The menu song appears 2 or 3 times: main song, remix, (and I think) instrumental.
It's not bad.
Name some FPS games released within the last year or 2 that were 40 hours? And don't say "Oblivion" like every other critic of SiN says. Usually it's like 15 or 20 hours. I beat FEAR really quickly, and Half-Life 2 didn't take me long either. And I don't plow through games, I try to explore and check out the scenery and effects.
Sure, the price/time ratio is a little high but not that much. That is, unless you start getting into RPG's and such. Then yeh, the ratio looks horrible.
Episodes don't come every month, but every 6 months. Also, they've said they're toying with the idea to offer "bundles" at reduced prices. Like if you don't get on the wagon until episode 2 or 3 they'll knock some off the total price so it's easier to get.
So, if you don't want to pay $40-$60 USD per year (depending if they accelerate their schedule) then simply don't buy the game.
I forgot to mention. My brother was in middleschool, which shared the same building as the highschool. I was able to get my highschool brother out in less than a minute. Across the hall in the middleschool office I ran into the world biggest idiot that wouldn't let me get my youngest brother out (who was in 8th grade).