I'm a huge Ratchet & Clank fan, and I'm pretty disappointed with Future Tools of Destruction. It's still a good game, but it doesn't impress me nearly as much as Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal did on the PS2. Both those PS2 games had better levels, better stories, better weapons, and a better upgrade system. Collecting hidden platinum bolts to use at Slim Cognito's (the illegal black market weapons dealer in the PS2 games) was a lot more enjoyable than the current upgrade system in Future Tools of Destruction.
There are so many things that annoy me with the current Future Tools of Destruction that on several occasions I was actually upset while playing the game and it ruined the rest of the game for me. Luckily I still own Ratchet & Clank 1, Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal and I can go back and enjoy those games after I finish Future Tools of Destruction.
Grow ops aren't just "a plant", it's hundreds of them. A lot of the time they ruin the house, create mold due to high humidity levels, rewire everything increasing the risk of fire, etc..
I was a stoner for 10 years, and I have no problem with people smoking pot, but grow ops tend to be a fairly bad thing.
I thought about the exact same thing a few years ago, only I envisioned a system where everything was fully automated. You drive up to this robotic arm and it automatically opens a compartment at the side of your car and swaps batteries for you, and within a minute or two you are off driving again. I actually imagined a system where it was all done at a red light, a robot would pop out from below your car and swap out the battery while you waited for the light to change. I think I got the idea from watching one too many sci-fi movies...
Gas engine: Chemical Energy (gas) -> heat -> mechanical energy
Electric engine: Chemical energy (coal) -> heat -> mechanical energy -> electrical energy -> (step up transformer) -> (power line) -> (step down transformer) -> (charger) -> chemical energy (in the battery) -> electrical energy -> mechanical energy
That's hardly a fair comparison. If you're going to list the steps to produce and transport electricity, why leave out the steps to transport crude oil and convert it to gas and then transport that gas to gas stations?
The U.S should take a page from Canada and just ban corporate contributions altogether. Unfortunately, I don't see this idea going over too well with U.S politicians who make a large sum of money from contributions/donations.
You can make a political donation to registered political entities only if you are a citizen or permanent resident of Canada.
You can give no more than $1,100* in each calendar year to each registered political party.
Corporations, trade unions, associations and groups can no longer make political contributions. However, your employer can give you a paid leave of absence during an election period to allow you to be a nomination contestant or a candidate without that leave being considered a contribution.
If you are running as a nomination contestant or a candidate, you can make an additional contribution up to $1,000 in total per election from your own funds to your own campaign. You can divide this amount between your nomination and candidate campaigns as you wish.
All contributions over $20 must be receipted and reported.
Candidates cannot accept any gift that might influence them as eventual members of Parliament.
There's a bunch of other rules, but those ones seem to stand out the most. Aside from banning corporate and union donations, I particularly like the rule limiting the amount a candidate can donate to their own campaign using their own money. This should prevent wealthy candidates from having a financial advantage over less wealthy candidates and hopefully that will level the playing field.
Microsoft is selling the 120 GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 for $180. For the same price, you could get a 750 GB hard drive for your PC. Or, you could buy a 160 GB hard drive for $50.
Your numbers are a bit off, since the Xbox 360 (and the Playstation 3) uses a 2.5" notebook drive, not a 3.5" desktop drive. For $180, you could get a 250GB notebook drive (not a 750GB desktop drive). Other than that, you're still right about Microsoft overcharging people for a 120GB drive.
The thing that bothers me with Gehry is that all of his work looks exactly the same to me. Every building he designs is just a bunch of odd shapes and angles, and it stops being unique or creative after he's done several dozen buildings in that exact same style.
I still have my launch PS2 from November 2000 (7 years ago) and it still works flawlessly. I shelved it a few months ago when I bought a PS3, but it still worked right up until I made the switch.
More amazingly, I still have a Sega Master System from 17 years ago that still works.
I live in Markham. I guess I just have bad luck, because the local BestBuy never has any new releases in stock. The Seinfeld box set just came out today and I'm going to go to BestBuy tomorrow to see if they have any in stock. Otherwise, I'll probably have to order it through Amazon... I really want that box set, 9 seasons of my favourite show.
Getting all this information and more into one integrated hardware/software package is a feature I'd gladly pay more for.
Check out Everest Ultimate Edition. Here's a screenshot of the sensor page: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/4020/everestoe0.jpg. Everest also shows VERY detailed information on every aspect of your hardware, operating system and software. It's quite an impressive piece of software, the only downside is that it's Windows only.
GameStop/EB's days are numbered. I don't even go to them anymore. The local big box electronic retailers like Best Buy constantly have a massive stack of them in stock on release day
From my experience here in Canada, it's the exact opposite. I've giving up trying to find games at BestBuy on release day, because they never have them. I then go over to EB Games and they have lots of copies.
Personally, I hate EB Games, it used to be good 10 years ago, but it's absolutely horrible now. They have one guy working the till and there's always several people in the store waiting atleast 15 minutes at the counter. Also, I absolutely hate their policy of opening new games and keeping the discs and manuals in the backroom, I just don't trust them. I want a sealed product, there's no reason for them to open the games and mess with the innards.
This reminds me of my favourite game, A Link to the Past. From the wikipedia entry:
The English language localization included a number of changes to the original Japanese game. The most common change was the removal of religious references to conform with Nintendo of America's content guidelines. The most obvious change was made to the subtitle of the game, which was changed from Triforce of the Gods to A Link to the Past. The font used to represent an unreadable language, Hylian, originally had designs of a vulture and an ankh. These designs were based on Egyptian hieroglyphs which carry religious meanings, and were altered in the English version. The localization also made changes to plot included in the manual. The priest Agahnim became a wizard, and his background, which originally implied that he was sent by the gods, was altered to remove any celestial origin.
From my experience with Windows and Linux, move is always a copy operation when moving files/folders across partitions or drives. So in those cases, move is never a destructive operation since it's actually copying, not moving.
Let's say a $500 upgrade lasts me two years. If you break it down into monthly payments (since you seem to like comparing it to montly car and mortgage payments), that's roughly $21 per month.
I can still play Oblivion on my 5 year old Dell (2.66ghz Pentium4, 1GB ram, 533mhz FSB) with a Radeon 9600 XT, mind you it was running at 800x600 with medium to low settings, but it was still very playable. My high end gaming rig is too heavy to carry around, so I used to bring my old Dell over to my friends house for some lan games, and it could handle Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 quite well (did I mention it's a 5 year old PC?)
Once the article actually loads I'd love to see what they came up with for Crysis for less than the price of my video card (of course I'm secretly hoping that it's running at 800x600 on low with a bad framerate to justify my ridiculous purchases!)
The review site is using a $260 8800GT which is pretty much on par with the $500-600 8800GTX. See Anandtech's review. At 2560x1600, there's a 2-5 fps difference in most games (Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Oblivion, Half-Life 2) and a 5-10 fps difference in other games (UT3, ET Quake Wars)...and like I mentioned, that's at a ridiculous 2560x1600 resolution.
I know how you probably feel right now... it sucks when you waste a lot of money. I've probably wasted $2000 upgrading my system(s) over the last 1.5 years.
Also Windows (at least XP and below) doesn't highlight the foreground window real well, so if you have a bunch of windows opened and showing, it's really hard to tell which one is the front most window.
That's simply not true. Windows since atleast Windows 95 has made the titlebar of the window a different colour than the background window(s). It's quite easy to tell which window is in the foreground and which windows are the in the background.
Here's a comparison shot of the foreground and background windows in XP using the default fisher price theme: http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/1133/foregroundbackgrounddefav3.jpg. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that, the window that isn't greyed out is the one which has the keyboard and mouse focus. Ever since Windows 95, you can also customize the foreground/background window titlebar colours and make the foreground blue and the background grey (for instance), if you really have trouble distinguishing between the two. I've never seen or used OSX, so perhaps Apple does a better job of highlighting the differences between the two.
OS X also uses drag and drop a whole lot more than Windows, so that necessitates having windows next to each other rather than on top of each other. Someone in Windows will always go to the right-click first, and old Mac user will try drag and drop first; which also explains why a right-click wasn't very important to Macs for a long time.
Though I've never used OSX, I think you are correct. The only time I ever seem to drag and drop is when I'm copying files in Windows Explorer. For individual applications, I always use the file open/save dialog. I still have the option to drag and drop files in Windows, but I find it more time consuming and I prefer to have certain applications maximized, which makes dragging and dropping a pain.
There is a long standing history of disk manufacturers using base 10 counting numbers.
And there is an even longer standing history that computers use the binary system. Perhaps you should read about the binary system.
The average person only understands the decimal system from what they learned in school, so hard drive manufacturers decided to use the decimal system to market their drives. It was purely a marketing decision. Computers have always used the binary system and it's idiotic to say that OS developers are at fault for using the binary system when that's all computers understand and that's how computers have functioned for the past 50 years. If anything, blame the hard drive manufacturers for spreading misinformation and confusing the general public for over a decade.
Nothing beats getting your hands on a demo and actually playing the game. I won't even buy most games unless there's a playable demo (try before you buy). I only visit a couple game related websites, such as GameRankings, Metacritic and Yahtzee's reviews at The Escapist. Any other game info I need I will check out the Wikipedia entry (for release dates, etc).
I used to get game magazines 5-10 years ago mainly for the demo discs and articles about upcoming games, but with the internet, game magazines are pretty much dead. Review sites like IGN and Gamespot are also useless to me when I can just visit GameRankings and see all the scores compiled in one place.
Apple is also overcharging Canadians while our dollar is now worth more than the American dollar (see my other reply)
Anyway, I found this link (with tutorial video) on how to replace the memory on your MacBook Pro. Even the person that wrote that tutorial mentions how overpriced Apple ram is:
First of all, a quick glance at the economics: The bargain basement MacBook Pro from Apple will set you back $1,999.00 with 512MB of RAM (hardly enough for a system running OS X, in my opinion). To really boost the power, I grabbed 2 x 1GB sticks of RAM from Newegg, which cost around $170. Had I ordered the 2GB RAM upgrade from Apple, the price of my MBP would have jumped $500.
I failed to mention that I was redirected to the Canadian Apple Store. Even though our dollar is $1.05 to the US Dollar, perhaps Apple is still charging Canadians more.
Have you ever tried customizing a Mac Pro from the Apple Store?
From the Mac Pro (not to be confused with the MacBook Pro) configuration page:
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s [Add $395]
Any 500GB Western Digital or Seagate 7200rpm drive costs no more than $125, yet it'll cost you $395 if you want to add a 500GB drive to your Mac Pro. Why does a 500GB Mac Pro hard drive cost an extra $270? You could buy three 500GB hard drives off newegg for the price of one 500GB hard drive from Apple.
4GB (4 x 1GB) [Add $839]
4GB of 667mhz FB-DIMM ECC memory for $839? You can get 4GB (2x2GB) of 667mhz FB-DIMM ECC memory for ~$260 at newegg. I couldn't find 4x1GB to exactly match the Mac Pro, but 2x2GB should be more expensive than 4x1GB, and yet the 2x2GB from newegg is over $500 cheaper than the 4x1GB from the Apple Store. Why is Apple memory so much more expensive?
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The entire Ratchet & Clank series has always been a Sony exclusive.
PS2: Ratchet & Clank, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Ratchet: Deadlocked
PSP: Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters
PS3: Ratchet & Clank: Future Tools of Destruction
I highly doubt you'll ever see the series on anything other than Sony hardware.
I'm a huge Ratchet & Clank fan, and I'm pretty disappointed with Future Tools of Destruction. It's still a good game, but it doesn't impress me nearly as much as Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal did on the PS2. Both those PS2 games had better levels, better stories, better weapons, and a better upgrade system. Collecting hidden platinum bolts to use at Slim Cognito's (the illegal black market weapons dealer in the PS2 games) was a lot more enjoyable than the current upgrade system in Future Tools of Destruction.
There are so many things that annoy me with the current Future Tools of Destruction that on several occasions I was actually upset while playing the game and it ruined the rest of the game for me. Luckily I still own Ratchet & Clank 1, Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal and I can go back and enjoy those games after I finish Future Tools of Destruction.
Grow ops aren't just "a plant", it's hundreds of them. A lot of the time they ruin the house, create mold due to high humidity levels, rewire everything increasing the risk of fire, etc..
I was a stoner for 10 years, and I have no problem with people smoking pot, but grow ops tend to be a fairly bad thing.
I thought about the exact same thing a few years ago, only I envisioned a system where everything was fully automated. You drive up to this robotic arm and it automatically opens a compartment at the side of your car and swaps batteries for you, and within a minute or two you are off driving again. I actually imagined a system where it was all done at a red light, a robot would pop out from below your car and swap out the battery while you waited for the light to change. I think I got the idea from watching one too many sci-fi movies...
That's hardly a fair comparison. If you're going to list the steps to produce and transport electricity, why leave out the steps to transport crude oil and convert it to gas and then transport that gas to gas stations?
Here are some new rules from the Canadian Federal Accountability Act (emphasis mine):
There's a bunch of other rules, but those ones seem to stand out the most. Aside from banning corporate and union donations, I particularly like the rule limiting the amount a candidate can donate to their own campaign using their own money. This should prevent wealthy candidates from having a financial advantage over less wealthy candidates and hopefully that will level the playing field.
There's a lot more information here.
Your numbers are a bit off, since the Xbox 360 (and the Playstation 3) uses a 2.5" notebook drive, not a 3.5" desktop drive. For $180, you could get a 250GB notebook drive (not a 750GB desktop drive). Other than that, you're still right about Microsoft overcharging people for a 120GB drive.
From a quick look at newegg:
Western Digital 2.5" 120GB drive costs $84.99.
Fujitsu 2.5" 120GB drive costs $69.99.
The thing that bothers me with Gehry is that all of his work looks exactly the same to me. Every building he designs is just a bunch of odd shapes and angles, and it stops being unique or creative after he's done several dozen buildings in that exact same style.
It's a UNIX system! I know this!
I still have my launch PS2 from November 2000 (7 years ago) and it still works flawlessly. I shelved it a few months ago when I bought a PS3, but it still worked right up until I made the switch.
More amazingly, I still have a Sega Master System from 17 years ago that still works.
I live in Markham. I guess I just have bad luck, because the local BestBuy never has any new releases in stock. The Seinfeld box set just came out today and I'm going to go to BestBuy tomorrow to see if they have any in stock. Otherwise, I'll probably have to order it through Amazon... I really want that box set, 9 seasons of my favourite show.
Check out Everest Ultimate Edition. Here's a screenshot of the sensor page: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/4020/everestoe0.jpg. Everest also shows VERY detailed information on every aspect of your hardware, operating system and software. It's quite an impressive piece of software, the only downside is that it's Windows only.
From my experience here in Canada, it's the exact opposite. I've giving up trying to find games at BestBuy on release day, because they never have them. I then go over to EB Games and they have lots of copies.
Personally, I hate EB Games, it used to be good 10 years ago, but it's absolutely horrible now. They have one guy working the till and there's always several people in the store waiting atleast 15 minutes at the counter. Also, I absolutely hate their policy of opening new games and keeping the discs and manuals in the backroom, I just don't trust them. I want a sealed product, there's no reason for them to open the games and mess with the innards.
Oh really? $399 Canadian for a 40GB PS3 (with a bundled copy of Spiderman 3 on Blu-ray).
From my experience with Windows and Linux, move is always a copy operation when moving files/folders across partitions or drives. So in those cases, move is never a destructive operation since it's actually copying, not moving.
Let's say a $500 upgrade lasts me two years. If you break it down into monthly payments (since you seem to like comparing it to montly car and mortgage payments), that's roughly $21 per month.
I can still play Oblivion on my 5 year old Dell (2.66ghz Pentium4, 1GB ram, 533mhz FSB) with a Radeon 9600 XT, mind you it was running at 800x600 with medium to low settings, but it was still very playable. My high end gaming rig is too heavy to carry around, so I used to bring my old Dell over to my friends house for some lan games, and it could handle Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 quite well (did I mention it's a 5 year old PC?)
The review site is using a $260 8800GT which is pretty much on par with the $500-600 8800GTX. See Anandtech's review. At 2560x1600, there's a 2-5 fps difference in most games (Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Oblivion, Half-Life 2) and a 5-10 fps difference in other games (UT3, ET Quake Wars)...and like I mentioned, that's at a ridiculous 2560x1600 resolution.
I know how you probably feel right now... it sucks when you waste a lot of money. I've probably wasted $2000 upgrading my system(s) over the last 1.5 years.
That's simply not true. Windows since atleast Windows 95 has made the titlebar of the window a different colour than the background window(s). It's quite easy to tell which window is in the foreground and which windows are the in the background.
Here's a comparison shot of the foreground and background windows in XP using the default fisher price theme: http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/1133/foregroundbackgrounddefav3.jpg. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that, the window that isn't greyed out is the one which has the keyboard and mouse focus. Ever since Windows 95, you can also customize the foreground/background window titlebar colours and make the foreground blue and the background grey (for instance), if you really have trouble distinguishing between the two. I've never seen or used OSX, so perhaps Apple does a better job of highlighting the differences between the two.
Though I've never used OSX, I think you are correct. The only time I ever seem to drag and drop is when I'm copying files in Windows Explorer. For individual applications, I always use the file open/save dialog. I still have the option to drag and drop files in Windows, but I find it more time consuming and I prefer to have certain applications maximized, which makes dragging and dropping a pain.
And there is an even longer standing history that computers use the binary system. Perhaps you should read about the binary system.
The average person only understands the decimal system from what they learned in school, so hard drive manufacturers decided to use the decimal system to market their drives. It was purely a marketing decision. Computers have always used the binary system and it's idiotic to say that OS developers are at fault for using the binary system when that's all computers understand and that's how computers have functioned for the past 50 years. If anything, blame the hard drive manufacturers for spreading misinformation and confusing the general public for over a decade.
Nothing beats getting your hands on a demo and actually playing the game. I won't even buy most games unless there's a playable demo (try before you buy). I only visit a couple game related websites, such as GameRankings, Metacritic and Yahtzee's reviews at The Escapist. Any other game info I need I will check out the Wikipedia entry (for release dates, etc).
I used to get game magazines 5-10 years ago mainly for the demo discs and articles about upcoming games, but with the internet, game magazines are pretty much dead. Review sites like IGN and Gamespot are also useless to me when I can just visit GameRankings and see all the scores compiled in one place.
Anyway, I found this link (with tutorial video) on how to replace the memory on your MacBook Pro. Even the person that wrote that tutorial mentions how overpriced Apple ram is:
Quick follow up to my previous post. I just checked the Canadian Apple Store and the prices are what I originally listed. Here's a screenshot I took incase you don't believe me: http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9052/applerippingoffcanadianwj8.jpg
Here's the American Apple Store and the Canadian Apple Store for comparison.
American prices:
Mac Pro starting price: $2499
4GB of memory: $699
Extra 500GB hard drive: $329
Canadian prices:
Mac Pro starting price: $2799
4GB of memory: $839
Extra 500GB hard drive: $395
New question. Why is Apple charging Canadians more when our dollar is worth 5 cents more than the American dollar?
I failed to mention that I was redirected to the Canadian Apple Store. Even though our dollar is $1.05 to the US Dollar, perhaps Apple is still charging Canadians more.
From the Mac Pro (not to be confused with the MacBook Pro) configuration page:Any 500GB Western Digital or Seagate 7200rpm drive costs no more than $125, yet it'll cost you $395 if you want to add a 500GB drive to your Mac Pro. Why does a 500GB Mac Pro hard drive cost an extra $270? You could buy three 500GB hard drives off newegg for the price of one 500GB hard drive from Apple.4GB of 667mhz FB-DIMM ECC memory for $839? You can get 4GB (2x2GB) of 667mhz FB-DIMM ECC memory for ~$260 at newegg. I couldn't find 4x1GB to exactly match the Mac Pro, but 2x2GB should be more expensive than 4x1GB, and yet the 2x2GB from newegg is over $500 cheaper than the 4x1GB from the Apple Store. Why is Apple memory so much more expensive?