Actually, of the last three women I've known, including my wife and my ex-fiance, I "met them" online, and never saw them until I met them in person. I'll take personality any day. Shallow Americans may differ.
Graphics sell games, have done so since "shadow of the beast" on the Amiga. It was utter crap, but it looked like nothing else.
As for the PSP, let me be rightly understood, the games, with very little exception suck. I own a PSP and a DS, and sure, the PSPs is prettier in all ways, it's a gorgeous slab of gaming hardware, a fabulous portable media player, and of coure it has better graphics, but in all ways that matter the DS is just just better. The games are more fun, they work better for quick sessions when travelling, getting on and off trains, etc.
Last game I bought was Gal-Civ3, not the prettiest game in the world, but gameplay in spades. Before that It was Sims2, which is again very pretty, but I bought it because it was "the sims" Which again, has amazing gameplay.
Graphics are nice but Harry Potter is still Harry Potter, that's what sells games. Pretty is just the entry fee.
The fortune at the bottom said:
It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted. -- Yarnek of Excalbia, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5
So I couldn't not coment:)
I think that It needs to come to a head, there needs to be a war, otherwise more and more sites will go blank, due to the amount of SPAM. It's not just in email, but in web pages, and blogs, etc.
I'm all for going to war to be honest, sure it may make the 'net messy but it will force people to pick a side, and when they can't get to thier favourite site, people will complain, and ultimately something will get sorted out. It may be technical it may be political, but it's needs to brought to a head.
I'm a postmaster, 75% of our incomming mailfeed (50-70K per day) is SPAM, or more to the point, 75% is tagged, an unknown percentage still gets through.
Sadly the form wont let me post my sendmail 127.0.0.1 MX solution, ah well...
This is why when I wander out and about in the world, I fix thier computers for free, I install AV amd anti spyware, clean sweep, patch etc. Then I intall a firewall, firefox & thunderbird, and configure thier services to get rid of the shit, takes me 3-5 hours every time. But gives me enormous satisfaction.
I went home recently and updated the parents PC, I was amazed by how little work it needed.
You want to make a difference, do it one PC at a time.
Does anyone stillplay the sims? Yes, 10's of thousands of people. many of whom you'll find here:
http://thesimsresource.com/
Just becuase the game has moved on doesn't mean people have. Many of the people who play it cannot afford the rather steeo upagrade path required to make Sim2 run smoothly. not to mendtion the fact that you can't take your families with you.
I realise you were just being facetious, but in reality, many people play both. I still have both installed on my PC, and still flit from one to the other as is my want.
YMMV
My wife just doesn't understand "the office" she refuses to watch it as "the people are so crap" but then she's of the "endless improvement" mindset, I think it bothers her that people should find such crapness, funny:)
"the league of..." doesn't always work, some of it is just so grotesque and bizzare, but when it works it's a thing of beauty. Like the guy who wants the top shelf magazine about "dogs arses", the transexual taxi driver, and the monstrously unsympathetic unemployment officer:)
Sarcasm, irony & understatement are the meat and drink of daily life in the UK, which is why, "not bad" is the highest of compliments. But like I say, if ever you're wondering if the brits are joking, it safe to assume they are, unless they're about to hit you...:P
Toss pot! I've not been called that in years!:) Ah, the memories. [sigh]:)
The Brits have a deep respect for the Irish, not least for the fact that they setup "Irish pubs" all over the world, which the expat brits happily drink in. Because a pub is not a bar. This is something that is lost on most people, but not on the people of Great Britian and Ireland. But I digress... The Irish are the butt of many jokes, I imagine the Americans have a race who are the butt of such humour, just as the Germans take the piss out of the "ossies" (east Germans) and every other race I've ever met, does the same to somebody else.
If you want real brit humour, try "the office", the brit version, not the watered down US variant. Then there is "the league of gentlemen" Which is perverted, bizzare, sadistic, and outrageously funny. Though Father Ted "Girls! Arse! Feck!":) does indeed count.
As for the Danes, yes, I've known a few, and the xenophobes books are great, got those for my wife too, the one about Germans is a hoot:)
We are sarcastic, I'll give you that, but that's just part of the culture, sarcasm is humour, it's just part of daily life. We don't have the politeness thing in the UK. If somebody says "have a nice day" in the UK, we assume you're either trying to be ironic, which may or may not be funny. and/or you're "taking the piss" which again may or may not be funny depending on the mood and the day.
But malicious I think is the wrong word, larcenous, devious, even anarchistsic, yes. But we rarely do things to intentionly harm others. If we mean to hurt you we will acknowledge and revel in the fact that you feel agreived. Now admitedly most of the rest of the "English speaking" world dont understand the brits, becuase they're never sure when we're joking or not, most of the time we are, just as most people don't understand the joke.
I guess you would have to be a brit, or at least spend a few years in the UK, before you fully understood why we behave the way we do. We loathe (with a passion) people who try to be sincere, (whether real or not) people who try to speak from the moral high ground, (like our prime minister for example) public piety will be ridiculed. We know people are crap, so attempts to holier than thou, are frankly, "just asking for it"
The truth is, we don't like being mistaken for Americans, and we're very territorial about our language, it would be OK, if the rest of world understood that you speak American, which is not English. But by and large they don't. So much as with the hacker/cracker debate and the geek/nerd thing. We get annoyed and a little testy about it, especially in times of stress. Fellow brits will understand this. The correct way to deal with a pissed off brit is to be sarcastic. Because we can take it, just as well as we can dish it out. Most people however, are just not used to such robust banter. It's common in the UK, to address your best mates using the two worst swear words in the English language, (tw*t & c*nt) As in "hello you tw*t" This is not malicious, this is a fraternal greeting. I apprecite that you don't undertand this, but it is true.
I would urge you to try and get hold of some UK magazines, or even some UK books that deal with popular culture, this one is recent and a good place to start:
http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/
Having said that, my wife is "a foriegner" and having read the book, doesn't believe it, more I think because she doesn't understand it. But so it goes, you can lead a horse to water and all that.
Should you ever got bored of the Fiesta, try a VW Golf, they're good too.
Yup, as my T-shirt says, "British by birth, English by the grace of God" Just ask any Englishman what he thinks of the French, we've been at war for something like 900 years and at peace with the "entente cordiale" for the past 100 or so. It's not just either, Both the french and Italians, (with whom I work daily) both hate, or at least express a strenuous dislkie of, the French. The Governemnts may get on like a house on fire, not so the normal volk.
While you're at it you may want to check the fuel efficiency stats of the beefiest Ford Fiesta in the UK, it's a "hot hatch" beloved of boy racers, and even with a tricked out engine, it'll still give you 50-60Mpg.
30Mpg, is considered laughable in the UK these days, 10-20 years ago consumers may have bought one, but times have changed. So much so that almost everyone I know who dirives in the UK drives a Diesel, they're cheaper and you don't have so many problems with the electrics in cold weather.
Still, Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and all that. I don't drive, I walk everywhere or take public transport, since getting married I've been doing a lot of ride sharing with the wife, it's cheaper than the train for long distances generally. Got from Frankfurt to Budapest for 50 Euro's each last New Year.
I bought a 500 Euro DVD player, (a Yamaha) I bought it from an expensive HiFi shop, not Wal*Mart or some back alley dealer. I told them I wasn't buying it unless it played everything I had, they said it was no problem. Having got the thing home I discovered it wouldn't play RPC1 encoded DVD's took it back the next day and got a Marantz DV4300 that would play everything. So if reputable HiFi shops have no qualms about chipping a player, and ordinary people wont buy buy "normal" players if they're not multi region, I can't see the point in anyone worrying about whether or not MS are duplicitous or incompentent, in not allowing you to do the same on your "future" PC. DVD's look better on a TV anyway.
I won't be installing, (let alone buying) Vista for this and the myriad other reasons we will discover in the months leading up to it's launch. XP works fine, and I doubt games will demand Vista for a few years yet. That and I have faith that just as people will only buy hardware that's multi standard, they wont take any less from a PC, and with software enforcement being a thing of the past, it wont be long before somebody produces hardware that does give the peole what they want. Market forces will not be denied, no matter how broken your business model is, or what you try to do to shore it up.
Kind of besides the point since people just want to bitch, but install adblock, and filterset G updater, and you'll rarely see another "normal" ad.
As for the article, rojakpot always has a drop down menu at the top, as did this one, that you can scroll to the required page. Not to mention the fact that the "Nvidia" link was at the botom of the page, (at least the page I was looking at) It's not exactly rocket science.
Got both a DS & a PSP. (from Japan:) If you're an American mental midget, the PSP is definately for you. FPS's, race games, etc. My personal fave is Lumines, but hey... The DS however, has Mario Kart, which will kick your thumbs ass, as well as wierd stuff like "feel the magic" and "electroplankton" not to mention Nintendogs, Advance wars, Wario Ware, etc.
The PSP is a sleek, slick toy, the DS is a games machine. Decide what you want, then buy it.
I inherited the original game from somebody who bought it and didn't "get it". From a traditional perspective there wasn't much of a game here, killing people wasn't part of the plot, it wasn't a linear storyline, it had no fully rendered FMV sequences, special moves, or bonus levels. It wan't a "game" that gamers knew how to play. Which I guess accounts for the many comments above about various ways to kill sims, you have to have death in it, it's a video game! Which is not to say that people haven't found even more dubious ways to kill sims, or that death/killing sims wasn't part of the game, they did, and it was. But there reall was a great game in there for those that had the time, and the inclination to find it. I played "the game" for a bit, got bored, and got into the meta games, I liked bulding & decorating houses, I experimented, and occasionally told my sims to clean the place up, and get a shower.
But I digress, if EA do it, it's bad, if Nintendo do it, it's genius. A great game is a great game, and the sims, both on popularity and simple gameplay counts, is a great game. The fact that you don't like the gameplay, is you loss.
Allegedly they're going to rebuild it, it'll take two years, but yes I take your point. I think they're using old junk as it means the launch costs less, it's not so much a problem with the rocket so much as the incompetence of the flight engineers. Humans are much more precious cargo. Speaking of which I see the Chinese sent thier second manned mission into orbit:)
Personally I sub to the things I'm willing to support, usually sites that offer user created downloads, etc. and "leech" the content of sites I'm not willing to support, (by virtue of blocking ads, etc.) I don't bother with individal blocks these days I have reg exp to handle that for me. I figure it evens out that way. If you're not willing to support the things you want/use, then they will go by the wayside. Just because I'm not willing to view ads for X does not preclude you from doing so. Or are you saying that I have to view ads for X because you're not willing to pay to support X instead?
I don't give a rats ass about yahoo, the quicker they fail the faster google will grow into thier spot too, I'm voting with my feet in not chosing yahoo. If it came to a choice between watch/. fail or pay up, I'd pay up, you?
I pay my way, given a choice, but if you're not willing to cater to my choices then you're not getting my cash, simple as that. If I want what you've got, I'm there. But if I can get by without, I'll do without. I suspect I am not alone in this, "film at eleven" I operate in my own self interest, and I expect others to do the same. In places this self interest merges with other people's interests. In other places it interests me alone. This doesn't stop me from doing what I think of as right in any event. I've given 100's of $$$ to sites I've only visited once, because I think they have value. I've stumped up for causes that I believe in. I pay more than the required FSF fees, etc.
Oh I've given them feedback, especially the people who reckon we should just put up with this stuff, the ads, the tracking cookies, (and the hidden cookies in flash images they use to get around people who delete text cookies) I don't mind taking time out to explain to marketters just what I think of them. I doubt they want my input to tell you the truth, any more than they want anyone elses. They'd much prefer it if we were just sheep, did what we told them, and allowed them to keep making money out of our quantifyable and salabe habits, and interests. I do drive by installs of firefox for fun, (having to d a little tech support is a bareable cost) I install adblock and nuke everything with each one, as well as making sure cookies, etc. get cleaned regularly.
For those woried about flash cookies, visit my blog or google for the "objection extension" that'll take you where you need to go.
Go to extensionsmirror.nl and download adblock plus, then you can install the filterset G updater, it will auto install a continually updated blocklist, that will rid you of ads for good. Adblock plus will even block DIV ads. You'll find them all on the adblock page. just hit firefox extensions from the main page and you should find it there.
I would, and do pay for a few, they offer more junk too, but to be honest getting rid of the ads is the reason I sub.I also donate to pages I like. So if a few sites go to the wall for lack of ad-dollars, well that's just the market working as it should. If I really liked your site I would have visited it more often...
I quite like print ads, they're usually relevant to the content I'm reading about. They're usually full page, and you can skip past them easily. TV ads I ignore, (read a web page, get a drink, take a leak) unless they're particularly pretty, in which case I watch them wondering how they did it.
Web ads, unlike TV and print ads, are rarely pretty, and do disrupt the reading process. They aslo occupy screen real estate that could contain content, and they frequently slow the page load and display process down. I wouldn't buy a magazine formatted like a web page for the simple reason that I find them too disruptive. Especially the annoying flashing ones, and the flashy noisy ones.
Adblock is firefox's killer app, and with adblock plus and the filterset G auto-updater, I can just surf in peace. I realise this is a nightmare for marketters, but I'd rather pay for a website than be subjected to ads. I paid IGN, they didn't remove the ads, I simply avoid thier content now. I can get it elsewhere..
So yes, put me down in the "becuase I can" box,
Bombs never deterred anyone, never have, never will, that's what MAD was all about. Bombs have never lived up to thier billing. By the time you get around to bombing people you've been at war for a while already.
Personally I figure an enforced peace is no peace at all. That's just keeping a lid on, with appropriate consequences when the lid comes off. But that's just me:)
But yes, in two weeks we try/fly agin with a different old missile, and a different third stage. Which will all count for naught if they forget to switch of the second stage again, thus allowing the third to seperate. So it goes.
I played revenge first, which was fun for the 15 mins or so that I played it, I crashed into a lot of stuff, went fast, earned points and prizes, etc. But my initail thought 30 seconds into my first race was how much fun it would be to avoid the cars rather than hit them. I say I played revenge first, as at home I have takedown, which I bought cheap second hand. I played it, it's harder, I never completed the first race in the standings the twice I tried, You have to avoid the traffic, or get oh so close to it, and for that it's a better game, and one I'll return to. There is no challenge in hitting everything, and you feel that revenge is being nice to you so you don't feel like a loser first time out of the gate.
Revenge is nice and all, and I prefer the female DJ, vaguely reminiscent of the DJ in Warriors, "big news boppers..." but for all that I prefer the challenge of the third game. Number 4 is all flash and no substance, on first impressions at any rate.
IMO the poser gallery at renderosity has gone downhill, lots of new people rending much the same stuff, and the usual stuff of forum life. Seems like a fair few talented types have left too. I stopped using poser after my last drive crash, used to have a poser partiton, now I have none.
But such is tha nature of the hobby, the poser crowd are always being maligned as perverts, though I think this more becuase of the show and tell nature of the beast. Poser users are not 3d buffs, they're not interested in building thier own female figure, and they don't mind showing of thier rendered T&A pics. I've no doubt that a good many people who've built thier own female have rendered dubious pics, hell even Aki Ross has nude renders, but I doubt they ever get shown, lest people call them perverts...
My screensaver is over 750Mb of rendered "porn" my wife likes it, she's the only reason I still go to 'rosity as she keeps asking me to find new images.
But to each their own I guess, I may give studio a spin, dust off all my inexpensive content, and see how it flies, I suggest you do likewise and anjoy a little guilty pleasure;)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, of the last three women I've known, including my wife and my ex-fiance, I "met them" online, and never saw them until I met them in person. I'll take personality any day. Shallow Americans may differ.
Graphics sell games, have done so since "shadow of the beast" on the Amiga. It was utter crap, but it looked like nothing else.
As for the PSP, let me be rightly understood, the games, with very little exception suck. I own a PSP and a DS, and sure, the PSPs is prettier in all ways, it's a gorgeous slab of gaming hardware, a fabulous portable media player, and of coure it has better graphics, but in all ways that matter the DS is just just better. The games are more fun, they work better for quick sessions when travelling, getting on and off trains, etc.
Last game I bought was Gal-Civ3, not the prettiest game in the world, but gameplay in spades. Before that It was Sims2, which is again very pretty, but I bought it because it was "the sims" Which again, has amazing gameplay.
Graphics are nice but Harry Potter is still Harry Potter, that's what sells games. Pretty is just the entry fee.
The fortune at the bottom said: It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted. -- Yarnek of Excalbia, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5 So I couldn't not coment :)
I think that It needs to come to a head, there needs to be a war, otherwise more and more sites will go blank, due to the amount of SPAM. It's not just in email, but in web pages, and blogs, etc.
I'm all for going to war to be honest, sure it may make the 'net messy but it will force people to pick a side, and when they can't get to thier favourite site, people will complain, and ultimately something will get sorted out. It may be technical it may be political, but it's needs to brought to a head.
I'm a postmaster, 75% of our incomming mailfeed (50-70K per day) is SPAM, or more to the point, 75% is tagged, an unknown percentage still gets through.
Sadly the form wont let me post my sendmail 127.0.0.1 MX solution, ah well...
This is why when I wander out and about in the world, I fix thier computers for free, I install AV amd anti spyware, clean sweep, patch etc. Then I intall a firewall, firefox & thunderbird, and configure thier services to get rid of the shit, takes me 3-5 hours every time. But gives me enormous satisfaction. I went home recently and updated the parents PC, I was amazed by how little work it needed. You want to make a difference, do it one PC at a time.
Does anyone stillplay the sims? Yes, 10's of thousands of people. many of whom you'll find here: http://thesimsresource.com/ Just becuase the game has moved on doesn't mean people have. Many of the people who play it cannot afford the rather steeo upagrade path required to make Sim2 run smoothly. not to mendtion the fact that you can't take your families with you. I realise you were just being facetious, but in reality, many people play both. I still have both installed on my PC, and still flit from one to the other as is my want. YMMV
My wife just doesn't understand "the office" she refuses to watch it as "the people are so crap" but then she's of the "endless improvement" mindset, I think it bothers her that people should find such crapness, funny :)
:)
:P
:) Ah, the memories. [sigh] :)
"the league of..." doesn't always work, some of it is just so grotesque and bizzare, but when it works it's a thing of beauty. Like the guy who wants the top shelf magazine about "dogs arses", the transexual taxi driver, and the monstrously unsympathetic unemployment officer
Sarcasm, irony & understatement are the meat and drink of daily life in the UK, which is why, "not bad" is the highest of compliments. But like I say, if ever you're wondering if the brits are joking, it safe to assume they are, unless they're about to hit you...
Toss pot! I've not been called that in years!
Friends list?!? (oh the shame of it... :)
:) does indeed count.
:)
:P
The Brits have a deep respect for the Irish, not least for the fact that they setup "Irish pubs" all over the world, which the expat brits happily drink in. Because a pub is not a bar. This is something that is lost on most people, but not on the people of Great Britian and Ireland. But I digress... The Irish are the butt of many jokes, I imagine the Americans have a race who are the butt of such humour, just as the Germans take the piss out of the "ossies" (east Germans) and every other race I've ever met, does the same to somebody else.
If you want real brit humour, try "the office", the brit version, not the watered down US variant. Then there is "the league of gentlemen" Which is perverted, bizzare, sadistic, and outrageously funny. Though Father Ted "Girls! Arse! Feck!"
As for the Danes, yes, I've known a few, and the xenophobes books are great, got those for my wife too, the one about Germans is a hoot
W*nker, moi? Surely you jest
We are sarcastic, I'll give you that, but that's just part of the culture, sarcasm is humour, it's just part of daily life. We don't have the politeness thing in the UK. If somebody says "have a nice day" in the UK, we assume you're either trying to be ironic, which may or may not be funny. and/or you're "taking the piss" which again may or may not be funny depending on the mood and the day.
5 9
But malicious I think is the wrong word, larcenous, devious, even anarchistsic, yes. But we rarely do things to intentionly harm others. If we mean to hurt you we will acknowledge and revel in the fact that you feel agreived. Now admitedly most of the rest of the "English speaking" world dont understand the brits, becuase they're never sure when we're joking or not, most of the time we are, just as most people don't understand the joke.
I guess you would have to be a brit, or at least spend a few years in the UK, before you fully understood why we behave the way we do. We loathe (with a passion) people who try to be sincere, (whether real or not) people who try to speak from the moral high ground, (like our prime minister for example) public piety will be ridiculed. We know people are crap, so attempts to holier than thou, are frankly, "just asking for it"
The truth is, we don't like being mistaken for Americans, and we're very territorial about our language, it would be OK, if the rest of world understood that you speak American, which is not English. But by and large they don't. So much as with the hacker/cracker debate and the geek/nerd thing. We get annoyed and a little testy about it, especially in times of stress. Fellow brits will understand this. The correct way to deal with a pissed off brit is to be sarcastic. Because we can take it, just as well as we can dish it out. Most people however, are just not used to such robust banter. It's common in the UK, to address your best mates using the two worst swear words in the English language, (tw*t & c*nt) As in "hello you tw*t" This is not malicious, this is a fraternal greeting. I apprecite that you don't undertand this, but it is true.
I would urge you to try and get hold of some UK magazines, or even some UK books that deal with popular culture, this one is recent and a good place to start: http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/
Similarly, this one is also good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/03408188
Having said that, my wife is "a foriegner" and having read the book, doesn't believe it, more I think because she doesn't understand it. But so it goes, you can lead a horse to water and all that.
Should you ever got bored of the Fiesta, try a VW Golf, they're good too.
Yup, as my T-shirt says, "British by birth, English by the grace of God" Just ask any Englishman what he thinks of the French, we've been at war for something like 900 years and at peace with the "entente cordiale" for the past 100 or so. It's not just either, Both the french and Italians, (with whom I work daily) both hate, or at least express a strenuous dislkie of, the French. The Governemnts may get on like a house on fire, not so the normal volk. While you're at it you may want to check the fuel efficiency stats of the beefiest Ford Fiesta in the UK, it's a "hot hatch" beloved of boy racers, and even with a tricked out engine, it'll still give you 50-60Mpg. 30Mpg, is considered laughable in the UK these days, 10-20 years ago consumers may have bought one, but times have changed. So much so that almost everyone I know who dirives in the UK drives a Diesel, they're cheaper and you don't have so many problems with the electrics in cold weather. Still, Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and all that. I don't drive, I walk everywhere or take public transport, since getting married I've been doing a lot of ride sharing with the wife, it's cheaper than the train for long distances generally. Got from Frankfurt to Budapest for 50 Euro's each last New Year.
Highbury publishing, the only independant games magazine publisher in the UK is going bust, the CEO has left and they're som 30 Million in Debt. Say hello to the Future publishing Monoculture. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?ss sdmh=dm4.160958&story=7491
Bastards!
Just as well, I don't think they let you dog fight in real time, it's an MMORPG, I was gutted when I found out you couldn't dog fight...
I bought a 500 Euro DVD player, (a Yamaha) I bought it from an expensive HiFi shop, not Wal*Mart or some back alley dealer. I told them I wasn't buying it unless it played everything I had, they said it was no problem. Having got the thing home I discovered it wouldn't play RPC1 encoded DVD's took it back the next day and got a Marantz DV4300 that would play everything. So if reputable HiFi shops have no qualms about chipping a player, and ordinary people wont buy buy "normal" players if they're not multi region, I can't see the point in anyone worrying about whether or not MS are duplicitous or incompentent, in not allowing you to do the same on your "future" PC. DVD's look better on a TV anyway. I won't be installing, (let alone buying) Vista for this and the myriad other reasons we will discover in the months leading up to it's launch. XP works fine, and I doubt games will demand Vista for a few years yet. That and I have faith that just as people will only buy hardware that's multi standard, they wont take any less from a PC, and with software enforcement being a thing of the past, it wont be long before somebody produces hardware that does give the peole what they want. Market forces will not be denied, no matter how broken your business model is, or what you try to do to shore it up.
Kind of besides the point since people just want to bitch, but install adblock, and filterset G updater, and you'll rarely see another "normal" ad. As for the article, rojakpot always has a drop down menu at the top, as did this one, that you can scroll to the required page. Not to mention the fact that the "Nvidia" link was at the botom of the page, (at least the page I was looking at) It's not exactly rocket science.
Got both a DS & a PSP. (from Japan :) If you're an American mental midget, the PSP is definately for you. FPS's, race games, etc. My personal fave is Lumines, but hey... The DS however, has Mario Kart, which will kick your thumbs ass, as well as wierd stuff like "feel the magic" and "electroplankton" not to mention Nintendogs, Advance wars, Wario Ware, etc.
The PSP is a sleek, slick toy, the DS is a games machine. Decide what you want, then buy it.
I inherited the original game from somebody who bought it and didn't "get it". From a traditional perspective there wasn't much of a game here, killing people wasn't part of the plot, it wasn't a linear storyline, it had no fully rendered FMV sequences, special moves, or bonus levels. It wan't a "game" that gamers knew how to play. Which I guess accounts for the many comments above about various ways to kill sims, you have to have death in it, it's a video game! Which is not to say that people haven't found even more dubious ways to kill sims, or that death/killing sims wasn't part of the game, they did, and it was. But there reall was a great game in there for those that had the time, and the inclination to find it. I played "the game" for a bit, got bored, and got into the meta games, I liked bulding & decorating houses, I experimented, and occasionally told my sims to clean the place up, and get a shower. But I digress, if EA do it, it's bad, if Nintendo do it, it's genius. A great game is a great game, and the sims, both on popularity and simple gameplay counts, is a great game. The fact that you don't like the gameplay, is you loss.
Allegedly they're going to rebuild it, it'll take two years, but yes I take your point. I think they're using old junk as it means the launch costs less, it's not so much a problem with the rocket so much as the incompetence of the flight engineers. Humans are much more precious cargo. Speaking of which I see the Chinese sent thier second manned mission into orbit :)
Personally I sub to the things I'm willing to support, usually sites that offer user created downloads, etc. and "leech" the content of sites I'm not willing to support, (by virtue of blocking ads, etc.) I don't bother with individal blocks these days I have reg exp to handle that for me. I figure it evens out that way. If you're not willing to support the things you want/use, then they will go by the wayside. Just because I'm not willing to view ads for X does not preclude you from doing so. Or are you saying that I have to view ads for X because you're not willing to pay to support X instead?
/. fail or pay up, I'd pay up, you?
I don't give a rats ass about yahoo, the quicker they fail the faster google will grow into thier spot too, I'm voting with my feet in not chosing yahoo. If it came to a choice between watch
I pay my way, given a choice, but if you're not willing to cater to my choices then you're not getting my cash, simple as that. If I want what you've got, I'm there. But if I can get by without, I'll do without. I suspect I am not alone in this, "film at eleven" I operate in my own self interest, and I expect others to do the same. In places this self interest merges with other people's interests. In other places it interests me alone. This doesn't stop me from doing what I think of as right in any event. I've given 100's of $$$ to sites I've only visited once, because I think they have value. I've stumped up for causes that I believe in. I pay more than the required FSF fees, etc.
How about you? Or do you only preach?
http://www.eppo-ombouw.nl/xbox360/index.html
Oh I've given them feedback, especially the people who reckon we should just put up with this stuff, the ads, the tracking cookies, (and the hidden cookies in flash images they use to get around people who delete text cookies) I don't mind taking time out to explain to marketters just what I think of them. I doubt they want my input to tell you the truth, any more than they want anyone elses. They'd much prefer it if we were just sheep, did what we told them, and allowed them to keep making money out of our quantifyable and salabe habits, and interests. I do drive by installs of firefox for fun, (having to d a little tech support is a bareable cost) I install adblock and nuke everything with each one, as well as making sure cookies, etc. get cleaned regularly.
For those woried about flash cookies, visit my blog or google for the "objection extension" that'll take you where you need to go.
Go to extensionsmirror.nl and download adblock plus, then you can install the filterset G updater, it will auto install a continually updated blocklist, that will rid you of ads for good. Adblock plus will even block DIV ads. You'll find them all on the adblock page. just hit firefox extensions from the main page and you should find it there.
I would, and do pay for a few, they offer more junk too, but to be honest getting rid of the ads is the reason I sub.I also donate to pages I like. So if a few sites go to the wall for lack of ad-dollars, well that's just the market working as it should. If I really liked your site I would have visited it more often...
I quite like print ads, they're usually relevant to the content I'm reading about. They're usually full page, and you can skip past them easily. TV ads I ignore, (read a web page, get a drink, take a leak) unless they're particularly pretty, in which case I watch them wondering how they did it. Web ads, unlike TV and print ads, are rarely pretty, and do disrupt the reading process. They aslo occupy screen real estate that could contain content, and they frequently slow the page load and display process down. I wouldn't buy a magazine formatted like a web page for the simple reason that I find them too disruptive. Especially the annoying flashing ones, and the flashy noisy ones. Adblock is firefox's killer app, and with adblock plus and the filterset G auto-updater, I can just surf in peace. I realise this is a nightmare for marketters, but I'd rather pay for a website than be subjected to ads. I paid IGN, they didn't remove the ads, I simply avoid thier content now. I can get it elsewhere.. So yes, put me down in the "becuase I can" box,
Bombs never deterred anyone, never have, never will, that's what MAD was all about. Bombs have never lived up to thier billing. By the time you get around to bombing people you've been at war for a while already.
:)
Personally I figure an enforced peace is no peace at all. That's just keeping a lid on, with appropriate consequences when the lid comes off. But that's just me
But yes, in two weeks we try/fly agin with a different old missile, and a different third stage. Which will all count for naught if they forget to switch of the second stage again, thus allowing the third to seperate. So it goes.
I get to work on Monday there are going to be a lot of people with long faces. So it goes I guess, Nobody can build a rocket worth a damn these days.
I played revenge first, which was fun for the 15 mins or so that I played it, I crashed into a lot of stuff, went fast, earned points and prizes, etc. But my initail thought 30 seconds into my first race was how much fun it would be to avoid the cars rather than hit them. I say I played revenge first, as at home I have takedown, which I bought cheap second hand. I played it, it's harder, I never completed the first race in the standings the twice I tried, You have to avoid the traffic, or get oh so close to it, and for that it's a better game, and one I'll return to. There is no challenge in hitting everything, and you feel that revenge is being nice to you so you don't feel like a loser first time out of the gate.
Revenge is nice and all, and I prefer the female DJ, vaguely reminiscent of the DJ in Warriors, "big news boppers..." but for all that I prefer the challenge of the third game. Number 4 is all flash and no substance, on first impressions at any rate.
IMO the poser gallery at renderosity has gone downhill, lots of new people rending much the same stuff, and the usual stuff of forum life. Seems like a fair few talented types have left too. I stopped using poser after my last drive crash, used to have a poser partiton, now I have none.
;)
But such is tha nature of the hobby, the poser crowd are always being maligned as perverts, though I think this more becuase of the show and tell nature of the beast. Poser users are not 3d buffs, they're not interested in building thier own female figure, and they don't mind showing of thier rendered T&A pics. I've no doubt that a good many people who've built thier own female have rendered dubious pics, hell even Aki Ross has nude renders, but I doubt they ever get shown, lest people call them perverts...
My screensaver is over 750Mb of rendered "porn" my wife likes it, she's the only reason I still go to 'rosity as she keeps asking me to find new images.
But to each their own I guess, I may give studio a spin, dust off all my inexpensive content, and see how it flies, I suggest you do likewise and anjoy a little guilty pleasure