I thought it odd that price wasn't mentioned in the Press Release on steam. I'd imagine that the Versus maps will be $5 on XBL. $5 for two maps (regardless of the "work" needed to make them Versus maps) is a good value on XBL. Versus is where the meat of the game is (for most people, i'd think) and If i'd have been DUMB enough to buy it on 360, I'd pay it. Being a valve release, PC is where its at.
This is why the database is so stupid. They claim it's to catch fake i.d.'s by minors, but honestly, what Moron minor makes an in-state fake ID? Everyone knows to make an out of state ID so the fake is harder to spot. So, "scanning" an out of state ID wouldn't be any more effective than a bouncer staring at it.
Liquor Laws require that any Restauraunt serve a higher percentage of food than Liquor. If you buy a drink from a restaurant, they often require you get an entree too for this reason. If they sell more drinks than food, their liquor license gets changed to a private club, and then they have to charge the private club fee.
Social gatherings in any place outside homes and bars (say, an art show) is limited to ONE glass of Wine per person, only 3x a year. We have something called the gallery stroll (through the downtown art galleries) and they cannot serve alcohol other than those 3x a year.
Bars and clubs also MUST buy liquor from the state, too. So bars cannot get a volume discount from say, jack daniels, and they pay the same price that any local pays for alcohol, with the high taxes and all.
Then, we have the limit on the amount of alcohol in a drink. you can only have 1 oz of hard liquor in a drink, mixed with 1.5 oz of non-alcoholic flavoring. As far as I know (I don't go out to drink here, it's too expensive/hard) you cannot mix alcohol types, so essentially, no Long Island Ice Teas or any other multiple spirit drinks.
The most frustrating thing about the database was reported in the news as "The Latter day saints church has no problem with changing the laws to make a database". That's not news! It's an incidental, not the reason, but it's well known that state legislators always meet with Church leaders before making changes like this.
It has nothing to do with "underpowered". You want to make your game "teh shiney" as possible (see Killzone 2 render videos), so you push the hardware as far as your development team can get it to go. Now, pushing any hardware as hard as possible, trying to do that 4x will always tax your console beyond it's limits, because you were pushing the limits in the first place.
So, do you dumb down your graphics so that multiplayer looks exactly like single player, or make single player as good looking as possible, and dumb down multiplayer, or take the Killzone approach, and rely on online play, without using that development time to make decreased rez bitmaps and all the processing tweaks to make co-op work smoothly.
With how prevalent online play is, any 3d shooter should be online only. this isn't 2002 anymore and we don't need to lug 4 xbox's over to someones house to play halo.
Ah slashdot, one of the places where restriction of certain types of space weapons can be compared to Neville Chamberlin and the Holocaust. You people do realize that we spend more on our Military than every other country combined, right? We spend 7x what China does. Lack of space-missiles is pretty tame. Here's a liberal point of view on how far our military spending is outpacing all other nations.
This is as good as an arguement as saying "Cylons show up and nuke earth". Also, why would you piss off your favorite customer who buys all of your cheap crap?
I've also heard that a new TV can pick up all of digital cable, except for goodies like online TV guide, convenient pay-per-view, and other interactive features. I don't believe it - some other trickery is going on.
For the first year I had comcast after i bought my new tv, I could get my neighbor's streams they were running, a LOT of pr-0n, some new release movies, and a couple people watching HBO on demand like Big Love and Bill Maher. Finally like 4 months ago, comcast got their wires straightened out and we no longer can see what our neighbors are watching. Too bad, it was fun to watch the 12 year old boy pausing his movies in certain... spots...
On top of that, Don't most EULA's state that you paid for a license to play the game, not the game itself? It's not illegal to sell licenses to unrated games, is it? Guess there is one upside to the whole "you don't own your software" for aussies.
This Link Seems to list all of the "liberties" you haven't been able to choose for yourself. From my side of the pond, this looks like a censorship black list, but that could just be me.
Infinite Jest, the David Foster Wallace novel goes through the scenario of "video-telephony".
It starts out as a novelty, everyone wants it, realizes they what they look like on the video, which leads to people wearing Telephone masks, so they don't look so awful and can use the telephone right out of the shower, etc.
Next, comes the realization that most people are doing other things while talking on the phone, and 100% attention to the conversation is only an illusion both parties have on both sides of the conversation, if you can only hear their voice. If you can see someone using a computer and talking on the phone at the same time, you begin to question their interest in you. Everybody does this now, but nobody thinks too much that the party on the other end of the line is only dedicating half their attention to the conversation, as you are.
This leads to cardboard cutouts of better looking versions of yourself being transmitted, and then eventually high quality celebrity Avatars are used instead of video, and then, people realize, they might as well just use a sound only phone.
Second, does the friggin' Telecom Immunity Bill ring a bell?
Yes, yes it does. I believe it was to allow the companies that allowed for International-Domestic wiretaps to occur without a warrant from the FISA courts to not be persecuted due to some sort of "duty to stop terrorism" or some other trumped up charge. Yes, it was stupid, yes I'm still mad that our Pres. didn't stand up like he said he would.
However, If you are inferring that telecom immunity was to allow ALL wiretaps on anyone anywhere in the name of stopping terra, I think it would have been a bigger story than it was. Now, could the immunity bill allow for such exclusions to persecution if what Tice is claiming is true? I'm sure they'll try that defense if it is ever looked into (HIGHLY doubt it), but I don't think it will hold up.
This information could have been useful to me BEFORE i used my transporter pod! Now, I live in my girlfriends lower intestine, a Hideous half-man/half-bacteria, and she's afraid that she might be giving birth to an amoeba sometime soon.
Make it freely available, usage will soar and the damage WILL be greater than tobacco.
Um, I'd love to see someone smoke a pack of MJ like they smoke cigs.
Unless, you mean the amount of added chemicals/nicotine/THC that the big-business cigarette companies would add to the MJ and the damage that would cause, but I don't think you were.
one problem right now is many DTV signals are not being transmitted at their final full power because they are being sent from temporary transmitters and in many cases on different frequencies
Oh, well, since they are no longer switching on Feb. 17, they totally should switch the analog to the low power transmitters and the digital to the permanent towers on the 17th. Kind of a step down to give people a good warning.
Persistant friends list, Cross game invites, single sign-on, singularity in online requirements/standards, *mostly* stable.
I'm sure there are others, but the only experience I have with PS3 is trying to get updates for the system for my family (30 minute download for every patch, regardless of size, over ethernet) And trying to play online with Rock Band 2 (spotty connection issues) and Little Big Planet (never been able to join someone else's game online, but have tried some downloaded levels). MGS4 had, what, 3 different logons/passwords? Resistance 2 has it's own friends list that isn't shared anywhere else? I know this is the developers making these bad decisions, but XBL at least says "No, don't be dumb... Why do you have 3 logins?"
Yeah, M$ is going to make a patch that will stop you from playing.mp3 files on the Zune... I can see it now. Oh, and the next xbox 360 firmware update will make it so you can only Play Xbox 1 games on your 360.
Yes. Any kid who gets there is looking for it. Or dumb enough to click some link in their email that they don't know where/who it came from. Then i'd argue that you'd be really failing as a parent to let your kid click anon links in their email... the real evil. The absolutely only way your kid would end up on a website they don't intend is by typing in an address in the address bar that they think will take them one place and they end up somewhere else. It's not like adult websites advertise on Cartoon Network's website or anything.
The end of the good mix for me seemed to be the Sub-Atmosphere Jump of Galactica (at the beginning of Season 2?) That was the end of the really good action scenes. There has been action since then, but it all seemed to be tangential to the story, rather than the driving force it was during the first season. Now i'm finishing up the series just to see how they wrap it all up. I think they've found a good time to end the show. A fifth season (or spinoff... you're kidding me, right?) would be too much and doomed to failure. It's gone off the rails at times (All along the watchtower sing-a-long? Really?) but considering how decent the show has been for the majority of it's run compared to most sci-fi series that run this long, it's forgivable.
With the current configuration (truce between the two sides) has been a bore and they really need something to happen to get stuff to happen outside the halls of the ship.
You'd think that Sony wouldn't want to align themselves with the corporation that released the T-virus and the G-virus and helped destroy Racoon City...
So, an elderly person who, when they were working, saved up and got a perfectly good working television, now on a fixed income of $500 is told, "well, on top of the fact that you barely have enough money to feed yourself and your mobility problems keep you from hiking up the mountain or visiting the outdoors, we're now going to take your sole source of companionship, Your TV. Tough luck that you don't have the money to buy the latest and greatest television. Too bad your children are too busy commenting on Slashdot to actually visit you so you wouldn't need that television. I think you have a priority problem and you should get back to work, you lazy slob."
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it odd that price wasn't mentioned in the Press Release on steam. I'd imagine that the Versus maps will be $5 on XBL. $5 for two maps (regardless of the "work" needed to make them Versus maps) is a good value on XBL. Versus is where the meat of the game is (for most people, i'd think) and If i'd have been DUMB enough to buy it on 360, I'd pay it. Being a valve release, PC is where its at.
This is why the database is so stupid. They claim it's to catch fake i.d.'s by minors, but honestly, what Moron minor makes an in-state fake ID? Everyone knows to make an out of state ID so the fake is harder to spot. So, "scanning" an out of state ID wouldn't be any more effective than a bouncer staring at it.
Liquor Laws require that any Restauraunt serve a higher percentage of food than Liquor. If you buy a drink from a restaurant, they often require you get an entree too for this reason. If they sell more drinks than food, their liquor license gets changed to a private club, and then they have to charge the private club fee.
Social gatherings in any place outside homes and bars (say, an art show) is limited to ONE glass of Wine per person, only 3x a year. We have something called the gallery stroll (through the downtown art galleries) and they cannot serve alcohol other than those 3x a year.
Bars and clubs also MUST buy liquor from the state, too. So bars cannot get a volume discount from say, jack daniels, and they pay the same price that any local pays for alcohol, with the high taxes and all.
Then, we have the limit on the amount of alcohol in a drink. you can only have 1 oz of hard liquor in a drink, mixed with 1.5 oz of non-alcoholic flavoring. As far as I know (I don't go out to drink here, it's too expensive/hard) you cannot mix alcohol types, so essentially, no Long Island Ice Teas or any other multiple spirit drinks.
The most frustrating thing about the database was reported in the news as "The Latter day saints church has no problem with changing the laws to make a database". That's not news! It's an incidental, not the reason, but it's well known that state legislators always meet with Church leaders before making changes like this.
It has nothing to do with "underpowered". You want to make your game "teh shiney" as possible (see Killzone 2 render videos), so you push the hardware as far as your development team can get it to go. Now, pushing any hardware as hard as possible, trying to do that 4x will always tax your console beyond it's limits, because you were pushing the limits in the first place.
So, do you dumb down your graphics so that multiplayer looks exactly like single player, or make single player as good looking as possible, and dumb down multiplayer, or take the Killzone approach, and rely on online play, without using that development time to make decreased rez bitmaps and all the processing tweaks to make co-op work smoothly.
With how prevalent online play is, any 3d shooter should be online only. this isn't 2002 anymore and we don't need to lug 4 xbox's over to someones house to play halo.
Ah slashdot, one of the places where restriction of certain types of space weapons can be compared to Neville Chamberlin and the Holocaust. You people do realize that we spend more on our Military than every other country combined, right? We spend 7x what China does. Lack of space-missiles is pretty tame. Here's a liberal point of view on how far our military spending is outpacing all other nations.
This is as good as an arguement as saying "Cylons show up and nuke earth". Also, why would you piss off your favorite customer who buys all of your cheap crap?
For the first year I had comcast after i bought my new tv, I could get my neighbor's streams they were running, a LOT of pr-0n, some new release movies, and a couple people watching HBO on demand like Big Love and Bill Maher. Finally like 4 months ago, comcast got their wires straightened out and we no longer can see what our neighbors are watching. Too bad, it was fun to watch the 12 year old boy pausing his movies in certain... spots...
On top of that, Don't most EULA's state that you paid for a license to play the game, not the game itself? It's not illegal to sell licenses to unrated games, is it? Guess there is one upside to the whole "you don't own your software" for aussies.
Yes. You cannot sell unrated items in Austrailia, or you could be fined for doing so.
How existential of you, but I don't get what this has to do with the story.
This Link Seems to list all of the "liberties" you haven't been able to choose for yourself. From my side of the pond, this looks like a censorship black list, but that could just be me.
Infinite Jest, the David Foster Wallace novel goes through the scenario of "video-telephony".
It starts out as a novelty, everyone wants it, realizes they what they look like on the video, which leads to people wearing Telephone masks, so they don't look so awful and can use the telephone right out of the shower, etc.
Next, comes the realization that most people are doing other things while talking on the phone, and 100% attention to the conversation is only an illusion both parties have on both sides of the conversation, if you can only hear their voice. If you can see someone using a computer and talking on the phone at the same time, you begin to question their interest in you. Everybody does this now, but nobody thinks too much that the party on the other end of the line is only dedicating half their attention to the conversation, as you are.
This leads to cardboard cutouts of better looking versions of yourself being transmitted, and then eventually high quality celebrity Avatars are used instead of video, and then, people realize, they might as well just use a sound only phone.
Now, that's funny.
Hold W.
Hold W.
Hold Mousebutton 2 while occasionally pressing mousebutton 1.
Heal.
Hold W. (etc.)
Yes, yes it does. I believe it was to allow the companies that allowed for International-Domestic wiretaps to occur without a warrant from the FISA courts to not be persecuted due to some sort of "duty to stop terrorism" or some other trumped up charge. Yes, it was stupid, yes I'm still mad that our Pres. didn't stand up like he said he would.
However, If you are inferring that telecom immunity was to allow ALL wiretaps on anyone anywhere in the name of stopping terra, I think it would have been a bigger story than it was. Now, could the immunity bill allow for such exclusions to persecution if what Tice is claiming is true? I'm sure they'll try that defense if it is ever looked into (HIGHLY doubt it), but I don't think it will hold up.
Two appearances with no evidence/verifiable information. One more, Tice, and you will be /ignored.
This information could have been useful to me BEFORE i used my transporter pod! Now, I live in my girlfriends lower intestine, a Hideous half-man/half-bacteria, and she's afraid that she might be giving birth to an amoeba sometime soon.
Um, I'd love to see someone smoke a pack of MJ like they smoke cigs.
Unless, you mean the amount of added chemicals/nicotine/THC that the big-business cigarette companies would add to the MJ and the damage that would cause, but I don't think you were.
Oh, well, since they are no longer switching on Feb. 17, they totally should switch the analog to the low power transmitters and the digital to the permanent towers on the 17th. Kind of a step down to give people a good warning.
Persistant friends list, Cross game invites, single sign-on, singularity in online requirements/standards, *mostly* stable.
I'm sure there are others, but the only experience I have with PS3 is trying to get updates for the system for my family (30 minute download for every patch, regardless of size, over ethernet) And trying to play online with Rock Band 2 (spotty connection issues) and Little Big Planet (never been able to join someone else's game online, but have tried some downloaded levels). MGS4 had, what, 3 different logons/passwords? Resistance 2 has it's own friends list that isn't shared anywhere else? I know this is the developers making these bad decisions, but XBL at least says "No, don't be dumb... Why do you have 3 logins?"
Yeah, M$ is going to make a patch that will stop you from playing .mp3 files on the Zune... I can see it now. Oh, and the next xbox 360 firmware update will make it so you can only Play Xbox 1 games on your 360.
Illegal search and seizure != Tiny Lobster transportation.
Yes. Any kid who gets there is looking for it. Or dumb enough to click some link in their email that they don't know where/who it came from. Then i'd argue that you'd be really failing as a parent to let your kid click anon links in their email... the real evil. The absolutely only way your kid would end up on a website they don't intend is by typing in an address in the address bar that they think will take them one place and they end up somewhere else. It's not like adult websites advertise on Cartoon Network's website or anything.
The end of the good mix for me seemed to be the Sub-Atmosphere Jump of Galactica (at the beginning of Season 2?) That was the end of the really good action scenes. There has been action since then, but it all seemed to be tangential to the story, rather than the driving force it was during the first season. Now i'm finishing up the series just to see how they wrap it all up. I think they've found a good time to end the show. A fifth season (or spinoff... you're kidding me, right?) would be too much and doomed to failure. It's gone off the rails at times (All along the watchtower sing-a-long? Really?) but considering how decent the show has been for the majority of it's run compared to most sci-fi series that run this long, it's forgivable.
With the current configuration (truce between the two sides) has been a bore and they really need something to happen to get stuff to happen outside the halls of the ship.
You'd think that Sony wouldn't want to align themselves with the corporation that released the T-virus and the G-virus and helped destroy Racoon City...
So, an elderly person who, when they were working, saved up and got a perfectly good working television, now on a fixed income of $500 is told, "well, on top of the fact that you barely have enough money to feed yourself and your mobility problems keep you from hiking up the mountain or visiting the outdoors, we're now going to take your sole source of companionship, Your TV. Tough luck that you don't have the money to buy the latest and greatest television. Too bad your children are too busy commenting on Slashdot to actually visit you so you wouldn't need that television. I think you have a priority problem and you should get back to work, you lazy slob."