Posts by Iamfanboy

"We've gone crazy at Obama's factory-second helicopters!"

You, sirrah, owe me a new laptop keyboard. Hilarious.

on the other hand...

...it's not so much hardware that draws gaming dollars; it's software. The PS3 is technically superior to the 360 and the Wii (Yes, controller revolutionary, I know - the hardware is barely more powerful than a PS2, if that). HOWEVER, the PS3 has very little software to drive sales - what was the last 'must-have' game for the PS3 that was exclusive? Metal Gear Solid 4, last year? And that game was CRAP. The 360 is managing to promote some decent exclusive properties, as well as sharing PS3 titles with slight reduction in graphics, but it's Nintendo that has powerful IPs which kept it afloat during their Gamecube days, and will surely drive profitability for the near future.

What Nintendo should REALLY be worried about is the low bar of entry into programming games for the iPhone versus programming for Wiiware or the DSi Store - innovators are oftentimes those without much cash, and with a few killer games the iPhone could grow in popularity...

Hm. Almost makes me want to convince my friend to start programming our games for the iPhone platform instead.

the real question is...

how many of these 'julies' seriously didn't know what they were getting into? I mean, honestly?

"yeah, sure! I'd love to meet u irl! <3"

Were any of them actual, actual children? As opposed to being dumb kids whose bodies had grown before their minds? I doubt it.

Is Australia the test-bed for a worldwide version of internet censorship?

Now, me, if I were in charge of some nebulous worldwide attempt to destroy 'net neutrality' - that is to say, remove the freedoms that the Internet has so widely spread and accustomed us all to - I would look for some English-speaking, fairly conservative country to test it out in first.

Well, England was the first test-bed of a non-governmental censorship body, but it seems that Australia is the first to actually implement the technology as such to control it more specifically.

Still, this will hit home where other threats to freedom won't - there are plenty of people who are agin child porn but WILL play the games they want to.

I wonder...

If I submitted a patent for "Rapid removal and insertion of a penis into a vagina until ejaculation occurs, thus allowing the male sperm to move into the uterus and fertilize the female egg," would it get rejected?

If it didn't, could I sue everyone who's ever had a child for infringement?

I mean, what the hell. The idea of a patent is to protect the rights of an invention's creator - fine. How does vaguely-worded descriptions of a POSSIBLE invention that doesn't exist yet except in some squatter's demented fantasy serve that purpose?

as a ratha popular person once said,

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Ghandi.

'Nuff said.

bet they were wishing...

Bet they were wishing that Redstone had decided to use a Friendship. Too bad Midway made them too fucking hard to do!

I would say that my friends and I wasted many afternoons playing MK, but we were Street Fighter fans. Sorry Midway.

hey, I laughed

and laughed hard at the progress bar. Don't know WHAT you fuddy-duddies are complaining about.

@ KH...

As great a fan I am of Linux (I got into trouble at work for passing out a free Kubuntu install CD with every Windows Vista computer I sold), the sad truth is that if Linux were as well-used as Windows, it would be as popular of a target; and while it's a lot more open (pun not intended) as far as allowing independent researchers to look for holes that need closing, there's no guarantee that Linux computers wouldn't suffer from a PBCAK for lack of updating.

MY problem with Vista is simple...

I go to look at the system requirements on new games. "1 GB RAM minimum on XP - 2 recommended. 3GB RAM mimum on Vista."

What. The. Hell.

When the SAME GAME needs THREE TIMES AS MUCH resources to run on one OS versus another OS, there can be only one pointer as to the problem - you're using the wrong OS.

Even discounting legacy apps (What do you mean I can't play Masters of Orion II on Vista if I get the urge? Or more serious apps...), the fact that it uses up so much more system resources is insane.

Even aside from RAM and CPU, did you know that you need (at least) more than a 20 gig hard drive in order to even install Vista? SERIOUSLY. I have an acquaintance who is a hardware fanatic but never updated his 20 gig HDD because he didn't need to - until he tried to install Vista.

Yesterday...

I work in retail.

We got 20 Wiis in at 1 PM yesterday.

They were gone by 5:30 PM.

Meantime, the 'special edition' PS3's we got in for Thanksgiving are STILL there.

I can well believe the 2 million mark on Wiis, if you spread out my little store's situation all across the country....

@ pete... moron.

Uh, Pete?

Your scenario might hold a bit more weight if there was any way for bird flu to be passed via airborne means.

It has the same communicability as the AIDS virus, blood or other vital fluids necessary - that's why the only sufferers are those who work VERY closely with the infected birds, such as butchering them. Coughing won't do it. That's why all us serious types long ago discounted 'bird flu' as a serious threat, along with shoe bombing and dirty bombs.

Communicability, incubation period, and lethality are the three factors of any virus 'weapon', and bird flu lacks all three to be a serious weapon.

good graphics do not make...

Wal-Mart and all its subsidaries have decided that the Wii wins this generation of consoles, with soon to be double the space allotted to either PS3 or 360 games, and when a retailer with Wal-Mart's strength decides something, that's a pretty damned big weight to have in your corner. Since the local Wal-Mart sold something in the range of 70 Wiis this weekend until they ran out, compared to about 30 360's and 6 (!!) PS3s, I can't imagine why Wal-Mart would decide THAT.......

Consider this: Game-makers look for the largest audience to program games for, and 35 million consoles is a HUGE audience. Witness that Call of Duty 4 was PS3/360, but CoD: World at War was available for all three systems.

Plus, I think that the online aspect of the Wii is quite interesting, with the ability to download classic games from the past.

One thing I learned a long time ago is that good graphics do not make good games. Example: Age of Conan is practically unplayable, but quite pretty; give me Diablo II any day of the week over it.

re: best buy...

We salesmen were lied about it just as much as you were - we were told that it WAS perfectly capable of running Vista, that the system requirements for Vista were roughly equivalent to a decent (not top-end) PC of the time but no actual hard numbers regarding the system requirements were given to us, and if I recollect correctly the information came directly from Microsoft, NOT the computer manufacturers and not Best Buy itself.

Though had I known then what I know now, I would've advised 'em to keep with XP instead of Fista.

How long til we see "Obama assassinated" used?

I get the feeling THAT title would have brought in a shitton more punters than merely showing his acceptance speech.....

according to my calculations...

you're wrong; it's how many shitloads there are in a fuck-ton. As near as I can figure, there are 37.3341 shitloads in the average fuck-ton.

That is, unless we're talking metric.

@webby-schwibby

you're more likely to die on the toilet than to die in a terrorist attack.

So, should be ban toilets?

Or, more realistically, thousands of people die in car crashes every year, and more are crippled for life. So, sensibly, we should ban cars, including the big truck you bought as a surrogate penis Webster.

@ ratfox

Yes, they do.

I mind me of a case (well, in California at least) where a guy turned 18, knocked up his 17 year old girlfriend that he'd been dating for two years, the police got involved, now he's on the registered sex offenders list for life.

I'm becoming more and more in favor of the idea of lowering the limit on child abuse charges to 14 or 13 - any older than that, it can be rape if it's forced, but not statutory rape.

The problem is, I've known some pretty oversexed 13 year olds.... where can one draw the line?

Feh.

kami no kyonpuuta

C'mon. Who the hell in IT HASN'T thought, at one time or another, that computers are possessed of malicious spirits who want only to destroy your will and send you gibbering out of the computer room?

Of course, then you find that the fault is only because a hapless IT Manager came in and pressed the wrong button, requiring a cattleprod correction, but until that moment, you sincerely believe that the damned thing HATES you and WANTS you to fail.

@ Chris Long

Oh man, you burned poor Lewis good.

I gotta admit, I enjoy his articles even if I have to take them with enough salt to be only 5% short of a lethal dose, but I must recognize your skill in turning his toes in the flames. Bravo, good sir!

Plus, you made the point PERFECTLY. Sometimes, there are useless things that governments waste money on in a futile pursuit of a temporary advantage over a neighbor, but very often the military is THE driving force behind technical achievement - and many of those achievements were viewed as useless boondoggles by everyone except the person who believed in them.

Lewis, sometimes you do have a spot of trouble telling the difference between the two categories. Pray, do lighten up a bit.

I can't have my nuke?

Well, sheet, I'll just sell t'durned t'ing ta Affieganiestanese t'en...

Jefferson meant every word he said - too bad he found out when HE was the man in power that the shoe pinches when it's on the other foot...

I was in the United States Navy - and still got searched

When I was in the Navy (and had ID to prove it, and had my travel bag filled with spare uniforms just in case) I STILL got pulled aside for 'random searches' every damned time I flew, even when I was on transfer orders and the Navy itself was paying for my damned tickets.

If they're profiling, there's also an age component too - apparently 18-26 year olds are to be suspected of everything in the book.

Kind of lends some credence to the above "The information they're looking for" post....

white list?

Why not let the USER decide what goes on the whitelist - something like how firewalls work, along with current antivirus programs too. "Passwordstealer.exe has just tried to run on your computer. Would you like to allow it? This is what we know about it..."

I'd MUCH rather have something like that were it possible - though admittedly, I'm not much of a computer expert so I don't know if it is possible.

@Monkey

Exactly what I was gonna say!

Sheesh, give these geeks a chance to waggle their epenis in each other's faces and they never fail to take it!

And the thing that makes me laugh the hardest is that you only get hit by these 'attacks' on Sony's website if you're USING MICROSOFT WINDOWS?

Should supporters of either system really be talking right now? This is a case of double-pwnage of both Sony and Microsoft.

For the record, though, if it came down to owning either system, I'd ruther get a 360. Bloodbowl won't be on the PS3 after all...

*goes back to playing Advance Wars on his Nintendo DS*

Re: No Surprise

Yeah, at the Best Buy I used to work at there were a half-dozen former Circuit City employees who got fired under that rather idiotic policy. Needless to say, they were quite bitter about the whole thing.

How a company can expect to survive by firing their BEST employees is beyond me. It makes no sense whatsoever. But then again, I'm not the one who thought of it...

And I hope that Circuit City fails and serves as a business example in the future.

What's the point?

I never understood why anyone would even think this Google Street View was even vaguely interesting. It makes absolutely no sense to me. It's nifty tech, no doubt about that, but about as useful as .jpgs to Helen Keller.

I remember my Jim...

Ninja naturally, or was it vampire? He never could tell the difference. Oh, and a crack shot with any gun you'd care to name.

He went paintballing with a group of us, and we got our revenge. He was about our only target - on both sides.

At one point, he tried hiding behind a tree that was only 1 foot wide - unfortunately for him, he was about FOUR feet wide. Cue hilarious Benny Hill blooper theme.

He ended the day dripping with paintballs, with a scar on his cheek because he disdained face masks "Goggles are enough for me; heck, I'd just wear my glasses most of the time because I don't get hit anyway" and lo and behold, he was actually quiet for a month afterwards.

The only thing he was good at was playing the didgeridoo, and he was actually GOOD at it. Maybe if he'd've plied that dedication to his ninjutsu...

As for MST3k

www.rifftrax.com.

Worth it - worth more than the original movie, in most cases, and they do some movies that were all right but deserved a rifftrax too!

I will admit, though, nothing beats the original MST3k. *sigh* Damned network executives never know when they've got something wonderful you know?

Muslims aren't barbarians, eh?

Could have fooled me, with this story... "Islam the religion of peace and tolerance" seems to be more and more like saying "Bush is the hero of the world" you know?

I know at least ONE of their standards...

They don't like dirty Japanese comic books. I kid you not.

One of my loose acquaintances almost got his laptop confiscated because he had a Japanese hentai manga he'd been translating on it - he does translations for cash and just happened to be doing one while traveling on vacation.

He meets the border patrol and thirty hours later, he gets released with his laptop because they grudgingly admitted he hadn't really broken any laws. We think their main problem with it might not have been that it was a dirty comic book, but that it had some, ah, incestuous overtones - a not uncommon thing in that sort of book from Japan.

Eternal War?

*gently bangs head on keyboard* The main female character's job was editing and revising old newspapers and publications to remove unwanted people, in much the same way Kerensky and Trotsky and dozens of others were removed from Soviet history.

That was the key of 1984; the Party controlled the past. What it said was history, WAS history. It constantly changed the past to be more favorable to it. However, while a government might be able to BLOCK unwanted websites it wouldn't be able to revise them (except Wikipedia of course :D) so one of the keystones of Party control wouldn't exist. Besides, that's what proxies are for...

1984 depends on a very Russian premise - that the worse things get for the common man, the more beaten down he becomes. However, 'nichevo' is not a usual attitude either among the US or the Brits; the worse things get the more likely that people are to look to create change in their own way.

In order to create a 1984-style society, you'd need all of these:

1) A single political party in control of all aspects of the government, including military and intelligence assets. THAT is nearly impossible, especially in the US. If Dubya were to declare himself King For Life he'd be out of power in a week and probably dead in a month; too many top people in the military dislike him.

2) A united proletariat who sincerely believes that the single political party is going to help them. Even a Christian President For Life would find this difficult to manage; there are too many religions flying every which way to please anyone, and even the ones who matched the PFL's would be hotbeds of 'treason'.

3) A clear, visible enemy that would convince every prole that the single political party is doing its job and let them become accustomed to a life of personal deprivation in order to fight the enemy, just as people went through in WWII. Terrorism won't serve in this regard; the enemies are too shadowy and I'm actually starting to doubt that Osama's going to attack the US again. His last attack was a PR disaster and removed a huge base of power from his control; why would he repeat a failure?

Truthfully, the US hasn't lost any civil liberties that we hadn't already lost long before - aside from a serious one allowing the President to send the militia of say Michigan to quell a disturbance in California. Most of the REAL bad shit was signed by Clinton, like the one allowing the Pres to declare martial law for as long as he wants to, over as wide an area as he wants to. FEMA is not our friend. The Patriot Act was mostly about letting the intelligence agencies do the same stuff they could do before 9/11, but do it a LOT faster. I'm worried, there's no doubt about that, but I'm hardly worried about the grey, colorless world of 1984. If there's one thing that being an insurgent against a militant religious government would be, it's not dull.

Best movie of 2007 was Fido

Fido is a HYSTERICAL movie, and an even better meta-movie; it's Lassie meets Dawn of the Dead. A little boy and his only friend in the world - a rotting, animated corpse, set in a 1950's era where the living dead have overrun the earth and it's only the benevolent corporation ZomCo that has saved us all with their zombie enslavement collars. It's going right next to Shaun of the Dead.

OK, No Country for Old Men was GREAT, but it's the COHEN BROTHERS. What was the last bad movie they've actually done? Fido is a movie that I could recommend over and over.