I honestly think EP1 was the victim of too much playtesting. Listening to the commentary they keep talking about how many things were changed to teach players the skills they would need later (e.g. push the car in the hole) - and how they kept tweaking and refining the thing.

I'm sure that's a great way to remove all the quirky/interesting/unexpected things from the game. I imagine HL1 would have been crap if they'd done the same thing.

That Register article seems to be a re-hash of various things printed elsewhere - in particular the argument that seems to be going on between Ed Bott (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/) and Paul Therrot.

There seems to be various MS representatives giving interpretations of the meaning of the EULA that differ from how many people would interpret it (if they can make any sense of it at all). Lots of confusion when it comes to virtualisation and which versions allow you to do what.

I see that Newegg has started selling OEM copies of Windows XP that come with upgrade vouchers to Vista. There's a diagram showing how it works: http://promotions.newegg.com/microsoft/vista/TechGuarn.html

I'm not sure I understand how MCE qualifies for a "Free" (+s&h) upgrade to Vista Home Premium, but XP Home costs $49 to upgrade to Vista Home Basic or $79 to Vista Home Premium. It makes MCE the more attractive option at only $20 more than XP Home (this is for OEM) - perhaps that's the point, shift more copies of MCE now knowing that most people won't use the upgrade.

All a confusing and pointless mess.

In the future I doubt people will be worrying about whether they're connected or not - they'll find it very strange that people got so upset about this kind of thing, because they'll be connected all the time. Or perhaps I'm being a bit utopian about that. It is a pain in the arse now though.

I agree that the second hand thing sucks. Although it's getting harder to find stores selling second hand PC games around here anyway (and I don't attribute that to online distribution - I guess there's just not enough money in it).

http://reliccommunity.com/tracker/

I started noticing it when I changed from Firefox 1.0.x to one of the 1.5 pre-releases. I think it's to do with the ads loading after the rest of the page - it seems to initially put you in the right place and then when the ads get loaded/positioned it scrolls to the wrong place.

Seems to happen even if the ads are blocked through, so I could be wrong. It's pretty annoying - I tend to open most links in tabs because of it.

I guess it's easy to overlook that some of the better recent Intel technology (i.e. the Pentium M) were developed in Israel, and as the article says, Intel have operated there for 30 years.

There's a difference between simple outsourcing and relocating jobs to the cheapest place possible, and a multinational company company expanding worldwide. I doubt Israel is really the country of choice if your primary concern is the cheapest labour possible.

Of course I'm sure that Intel are getting very favourable breaks for building there, but that's the way the world works (hello free-trade, isn't that supposed to be the West's gift to the world?), whether it's one state vying against another by offering the biggest tax breaks, or countries coughing up millions/billions in order to create jobs locally.

Then again, who am I to distract you from your Jew-bashing.

p.s. as others have stated - they're not doing it for your benefit, unless you're a shareholder.

It's been a long time (15-20 years), but basically Aslan (the Lion) is a Christ figure and all the books are to some extent religious tales. The final book "The Last Battle" has similarities to Revalations.

I enjoyed them even though at that age I was starting to doubt all of that stuff - they're still good stories. I didn't feel like I was being indoctrinated.

As for magic, I'm not sure there was the same kind of spells, potions and wands stuff as described in Harry Potter, although there's certainly mystical/magical stuff (Narnia is in a perpetual winter at the start of Lion/Witch/Wardrobe).

Not that I think logic or common sense has much to do with the people branding Harry Potter satanic.

I also like this quote from the arstechnica article:

One person I spoke with told me that he had already sold a unit on eBay for a high price, but was just now trying to buy the unit to resell. No, he didn't seem all that bright.

I've got an iPod mini (6Gb) and my wife bought a Creative Zen Micro (5Gb) because she wanted the radio.

Boy do I wish she'd bought an iPod instead. I'm not really keen on the Micro's interface, which has a scroll thingy that you have to be careful not to tap when you want to scroll, but the main difference between the two is comparing iTunes to either the provided Creative software or Windows Media Player for ripping/synching. I hate having to do tech support for those crappy pieces of software.

Plus there was an issue with the Micro that it stayed in standby mode for 24hrs meaning that if you just used it a bit each day you got pretty bad battry life because it never fully shut down. The first firmware update to fix this from Creative actually made the battery drain overnight rather than over a few days, but they did finally get it right.

Not to say that the Zen micro doesn't have some pluses over the iPod - it's cheaper, has a radio, batteries are removable/replacable, better earbuds, and they include a charger rather than it being an extra.

But I still prefer my iPod - it performs it's basic function well.

64bit computing could make companies more productive, it could make all of our live much easier, and for the most part, better.

64bit computing could bring about world peace, end starvation...

64bit computing could streamline businesses allowing them to make more money, game companies, if they ever make 64bit games, could make a killing, the games would be amazing.

Can you imagine what a game would be like if it was created specifically for a 64bit processor? Some people are saying that consoles will be taking over for games, and PC gaming will fall by the wayside. Well if the gaming companies are so worried about it then do something about it, start supporting it! Are the designers and programmers just being lazy? Or is it that difficult for them to program for 64bit instruction sets?

Now we have dual core 64bit processors, why? Nothing supports it either. Yeah I own an Athlon X2 CPU, it does make multi-tasking easier, but nothing I have actually takes advantage of dual cores.

I could understand some of this if it was in a random blog, but on a site that claims to be "...all about computers" it's just sad/funny/pathetic.

Sounds like someone's feeling a bit bitter about buying into the hype about 64bit and multiple cores. I'd happily take his X2 processor off his hands!

Whilst I can in someway understand why he's pissed to see lots of used copies of Epic games, the number of used games available is affected by certain things under the developer's control:
* quality (can anyone be bothered to finish it, or do they just sell it once they're bored)
* length
* replayability

I see a lot of copies of games that have been overhyped or are disappointingly short. If your game has a Multi-player focus, then it better be well supported.

Also, if you're in the franchise business, which Epic are, then don't be surprised when you see lots of used copies of Unreal Tourney as soon as the next edition comes out.

Plus it's worth remembering that a lot of people will sell back a bunch of old games to that they can buy something new.

I would have throught that although there might be code that is risky to change (particularly at the last minute), there are probably assets (models, textures etc. unique to this mini-game) that would be easy to remove and make it impossible to properly activate (or at least it would look like shit).

To have ever gotten to the point where it's playable I can only imagine that this was a planned mini-game with probably a number of people working on it. At some point they decided to drop it, but spent very little effort in removing it.

My mind boggles that Rockstar ever spent so much time on something that would obviously cause them problems with a game that was going to be so closely scrutinised. At what point did someone actually realise "perhaps this isn't such a smart move"?

OK, I'd better get back to my code. Lets see, how can I add sex to an XML interface...

I was wondering (and this reminded me) whether Apple advents will have to include the annoying Intel Inside crap after they make the switch?

I think it says a hell of a lot about the power Intel have over their customers that they can force them to include logos on all their print adverts and that annoying jingle/animation on every TV advert (which is usually really jarring because it conflicts with the rest of the advert in a way that must give the the advertising execs fits - so I suppose it's not all bad!).

However, I hate to see AMD have to resort to this, as I don't think anyone looks good after these kind of cases.

Sorry, that didn't mean to come across as crowing about linux - I dual boot with XP, which I use for Games and Music stuff, and I use Linux for work. I just thought that the article was making a rather big deal out of a XP64 release candidate when it's taken a long time and it will probably be released without much 64bit software.

Plus, it sounds like it's not being targetted as a consumer edition, more like a replacement for XP Pro, so it will be a while before the average gamer has a copy, even if some of the companies do release 64 bit engines (I know that you can already run UT2k4, or at least a demo on Linux and possible XP64).

Big f'ing Wow. OK, I've only just taken the plunge and installed a 64bit linux distribution (FedoraCore 3) on my PC, but it also comes complete with a large number of applications compiled for 64bit, and 64bit distributions have been around for a while now.
It sounds like there will be hardly any 64bit programs for XP64 when it's launched - the first ones ready will probably be Open Source programs like Mozilla because they're already running in 64bit on other platforms.
Although I must note that I have the same problem with Firefox that they have with IE - if you're running a 64bit version you can't run 32bit plugins.

Getting anywhere from 110 up to 300+, I think it got noticably worse when there were more than about 5 people on Kasasu (fancy name for some of the worst texturing I've ever seen).

I wonder if I could host a server on my wife's laptop whilst I play on my desktop - I'm sure she wouldn't mind :0

Just spent about 1/2 hour on Elvis's server - good stuff, and I like that dm_substorage map. I'm getting a ping of perhaps 100-150 from Ohio, but it seems OK.

It's like a moister (and richer) fruitcake, served hot traditionally with Brandy butter and cream. I had an emergency care package from my parents in the UK containing one (strangely it's legal to ship home made ones to the US, but not store bought ones).

Either Blue had a nasty store bought one, or he's got the same unnatural dislike for fruitcake type things that everyone seems to have in the US - but then I had tried some of the fruitcake you can buy here and I kind of understand why people pass them around year after year.

Sadly it really is "Licky" - I double checked!

Licky Monster-Baubles

What can I say? I wasn't expecting anything like that from the BBC!