bhcompy wrote on Nov 10, 2011, 14:53:

They also note a motion by Interplay suggesting they are seeking to have their entire agreement with Interplay nullified

So Interplay is schizophrenic?

Conjoined twins.

PHJF wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 12:51:
All the J names? I can only think of Jaime, Jorah, Jon, and Jojen, and it'd be pretty difficult to confuse any of them... Then of course there's Jhogo and Jaqen, and technically The Old Bear is Jeor but he is only ever called that like once.

I confused Janos Slynt and Jaime (I didn't really pay attention to the difference between the Kingsguard and the city watch until about halfway through the first book) a lot early on, but that was a poorly phrased sentence on my part.

Shok wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 11:18:
The books are great but there are so many characters it can be hard keeping up with it all. They are still worth reading and great reads though. I still need to pick up the latest book but it's been about five years since I read the previous books so I'm debating re-reading a few first.

This is absolutely true. I spent large swaths of the first and second books confused by all the J names, which is one of the less-frequently-used letters (of course).

After the first book, I started referring to the house lists in the reference section at the end of the book. Even so, it takes quite a while to piece together the relationships between the major houses and figure out the history of the world he's created, although blue would be at some advantage in this regard, having seen the show.

DrEvil wrote on Sep 15, 2011, 12:44:

PropheT wrote on Sep 15, 2011, 11:33:

Verno wrote on Sep 15, 2011, 11:10:
Wishful thinking Sony, it's been tried unsuccessfully in several industries already.

The supreme court ruled in April that it was legal for companies to include provisions to their terms of service that served for consumers to waive their class action lawsuit rights.

Can read about it here.

Yes, but SCOTUS limited that to class action lawsuits right? I don't see how they could block normal lawsuits as well.

In situations like this, they reason that binding arbitration is an approximation of a day in court. Arbitration isn't rare, and it's not necessarily stacked against the consumer -- arbiters are typically former judges -- but it does prevent the news media from picking up on stories because the matter is usually considered private.

Honestly, I don't think it made any sense to limit class action lawsuits, but you can thank the conservative wing of the court for having that particular right revoked.

"Hello, I'd like 1,111,101,000 donuts, please."
"Here you go. That's one billion, 111 million, 101 thousand donuts."
"What?? I only wanted one thousand donuts! Don't you know binary when you see it?!"

Krovven wrote on Sep 9, 2011, 14:15:
I'm in the printing industry, it gets uses ALL the time, think I would know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_%28number%29

Roman numeral M

Roman Numeral for a Million is M with a - above it, which indicates it's multiplied a thousand times.

Even the lawyer gets to be wrong today.

This post slayed me. The rest of the known world uses these abbreviations, because the metric system uses these abbreviations, but god forbid we step on the toes of the Roman Empire!

They're going to send out their hoplites and triremes to destroy us all! FLEE IN TERROR!!

Edit:

Krovven wrote on Sep 9, 2011, 15:03:
M is NOT an abbreviation for Million. That would be "mil."

M is however the roman numeral for Thousand. k is also accepted as it is the abbreviation for kilo, which = thousand.

The only reason M is socially accepted is because there is no easy to for people to do M with a - above it. Socially Acceptable does not equal correct. So I really don't care how the Financial Times does it, it's technically wrong if they are using M as the abbreviation for Million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix

Those of us who tend to deal with computers and SI numbers tend to use SI prefixes, which uses the abbreviation of M for million.

Also, it's funny that you know that k (also an SI prefix) is an abbreviation for kilo, but don't know that M is an abbreviation for mega. Do you think that the old floppy drives came with 1.44 thousand bytes of storage space instead of 1.44 million?

This comment was edited on Sep 9, 2011, 15:09.

Krovven wrote on Sep 9, 2011, 13:25:
Blue, 2M = 2000 not 2 million. Minor thing, just saying.

That would be 2k, not 2M.

Prez wrote on Sep 8, 2011, 15:46:
There is no line. I hereby dub each and every one of you Feminist Whores. Now, whatcha gonna do - sue me? Meh, cry me a river pansy asses.

If all the black characters couldn't read skill books we should all get over it, it's a joke?

If you didn't, I'd call you a "Non-Reading, Feminist Whore Pansy Ass".

So if setting a zombie on fire gave you the "Did What We Should Do To All Homos" achievement we should all just get over it, it's a joke?

If you didn't, I'd call you a "Homo-loving, Non-Reading, Feminist Whore Pansy Ass".

Not everyone lives in the same Plastic Bubble of +10 Hypersensitivity that you do.

Eyeroll. Leave it up to the cadre of privileged, ignorant commenters on this website to not even understand feminism, and then think that somehow believing in equal rights makes a person a pansy.

It's a lot easier to be an ignorant, privileged, pissant bully than it is to stand up for what's right. Please, go back to the 19th century where your prejudice belongs.

Creston wrote on Aug 15, 2011, 11:55:
Firefox SEVEN?

We're still at 5...

Creston

http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/07/19/every-six-weeks/

It surprised me to read this, but they've moved quickly since 4.0's release.

I hadn't bought any of the New Vegas DLCs until the Steam summer camp sale, so I'm just now getting around to Dead Money...which is atrocious. Radio signals that can kill you? Toxic clouds that you can brush up against and lose significant amounts of life?

Lord. Extremely irritating. I'm perfectly fine with a particular gaming sequence being hard (I am one of those people who will wipe out a room and then try to figure out if I could do it using less ammo, and will reload and try again until I get it right), but the constant irritation of the poison clouds and radio signals has made the story in Dead Money totally superfluous.

I'm near the end -- thank god -- and can't wait to try the follow-up DLCs. I must say that I do appreciate Bethesda trying to pack a lot of content into each release, and I'll probably pick up all the DLCs off Steam as soon as they go through a sale.

Zadig wrote on Jul 5, 2011, 06:05:
Lots of good stuff today. Alpha Protocol, Bully, and Trine were all fun. Fire and Sword is something I've been waiting for and Singularity looks really good and got positive comments earlier. I'd probably be interested in New Vegas if I had Fallout 3. Hopefully there'll be a $10 sale for the 'ultimate edition'.

Honestly, New Vegas has nothing to do with 3. I actually disliked Fallout 3, and loved New Vegas. It's a lot closer in tone to the older Interplay-released Fallout games than Fallout 3 was.

Razumen wrote on Jun 30, 2011, 23:14:
Minecraft is nice and all, but it seems like every update adds very few notable features. It's kind of exasperating when you see just how much the mod community has managed to add to it on its own.

I enjoy Minecraft a lot, but I totally agree with this sentiment. Someone said in a Minecraft news post a few days ago that the game is really unpolished, and that's true. It's frustrating that the core gameplay mechanic is so simple, but there's a stunningly large lack of basic features.

I just recently started playing, and my friends told me that beds were a relatively new item, which means that out of every 17 minutes (thereabouts) that you play the game, you have to be indoors waiting for the sun to come back up so you don't get swarmed by undead. Seriously? Seriously.

I could go on ad nauseum, and yet I still play the game. Sadface.

Jensen wrote on Jul 1, 2011, 01:19:
I want a long spool of string that I unwind as I explore caves so I can find my way back out.

My friends and I use a torch system: torches on the right mean you're going away from the entrance, and torches on the left mean going towards the entrance.

It's still somewhat difficult to use, sadly, since caves can loop back on themselves.

My sentiments exactly. If Valve wanted a good will tie-in to the Potato Sack, they needed to be less obtuse about it. As it stands, this still feels like a marketing campaign designed to make Valve money by selling a group of games tied to a Valve game. While I can understand that the Ars folks are probably tired of hearing the outcry over this, the opposing extreme isn't really adding any meaningful discourse to this discussion.

I'd love to assume that Valve has a good reason for this. Someone on Valve, please come out and explain the thought process.

Third -- and I find the discussion on this point intriguing -- I simply don't enjoy NV as much as 3. I haven't been able to put my finger on it exactly, but it's just not as... engaging?... fun... to me. It's good, and I'm glad I got it, but I disagree pretty strongly that it's better than 3. I've played 3 through about 10 times. I'm already bored in the second playthrough on NV.

I'm surprised to hear someone who likes FO2 say this. I find the story in NV much more intriguing, and the moral ambiguity built into some conversation options much more like the first. The sense of humor is back, as is...for lack of a better term...the grittiness.

I absolutely despised the plot in 3, and disliked the ease with which I received a stronghold, as well as Megaton being an obvious dropping off point. I felt like Fallout 3 wanted to remove the need for you to know the lay of the land when trying to find particular items or knowing where to go for services. New Vegas brought both of those things back.

I can certainly understand enjoying 3 -- even though I disliked it as a Fallout RPG, I did play through the game twice. For me, Fallout 3 was a great game, but a lousy Fallout game. To each his (or her) own, though.

I am just curious, are there still Tribes 1 and Tribes 2 servers around with a number of people playing on them? I remember when T1 and T2 were made available for free...... I'd love to download them and try them out again if people are still playing them. Or has everyone moved on to newer games?

I tried to play a little while ago -- most of the T1 servers are down, but a few base servers are still up even after all this time. Honestly, I've always thought that the height of T1 existed on competition ladders shortly before T2's release. Pubs were good, almost always full, and people played their roles on teams. Pickups happened all the time, too.

I have to say that I never liked T2 as much as T1 because it forced players to cooperate. Yes, it was frustrating to play on a pub in T1 when nobody would coordinate, but I would rather deal with that than be forced to cooperate to get anything done at all. "True 3D" arguement aside, Tribes was the first game I know of to provide so many elements that future games have all but completely ignored: the tab menu (instead of god awful console controls), expansive outdoor levels, and the base/inventory system.

Just because some guy is trolling, doesnt justify supposed journalists taking the bait and decending into such shabby standards. Being critical of his arguments and methods of arguing them is not what McKenna is arguing against, he's merely pointing out that it should be done professionally, something which can be taken credibly by external parties.

Bear in mind the 'article' is really a blog or editorial, providing commentary on one specific issue, not a broad and in depth summary of the entire 'coffegate' situation. There's no insight into gamers "mental state and the fraught parents" because it's not relevant to the point of the article, though it's a shame he confuses the issue by bringing in the ratings system as an example of Thompson having some worthwhile points to consider.

I apologize for taking so long to respond; I never thought anyone would actually reply to what I wrote. I agree with what you're saying here, but my point (which wasn't all that clear) is that I believe an editorial which begs for parity in opinions should be forthcoming with these non-existent (I haven't deeply searched for objective opinions, so that's a guess) objective viewpoints. I don't think that saying Thompson has a few valid points, elaborating on those points, and then briefly stating that he doesn't always play by the rules quite cuts it. "Some rather questionable methods" is about as vague a description as you can muster.

You seen todays post? They won't post his phone number, but instead link to a web page on another site that lists his phone, address, etc...

I think it's far dumber of VG Cats to have not edited this information out. However, the way Thompson writes in some of those letters, I really do have to wonder about his mental state.

for missing the point about how a lawyer (or hell, an adult) ought to act and speak. I've never held issue with the idea that the gaming industry ratings are lunacy, nor that retailers should strongly enforce their policies. We can't stand Jack Thompson because everything penned by him ever since I first read his name is awful and ignorant -- not because you wrote that he has a few accurate opinions on the state of modern parenting and a cunning insight on the fallibility of a ratings board.

If you're going to play devil's advocate, then play the part on both sides. Telling gamers that he's right on a few counts does nothing for the arguement but create a greater schism between intelligent gamers who adamently believe that their entertainment choices play little-to-no role in any negative factors weighing on their mental state and the fraught parents who seem to be unable to do anything but wring their hands and "think of the children." For the love of god, if you're going to make an attempt at objectivity, don't focus your efforts on two valid points, and ignore the rest. You do us all a disservice.

Agreed with nin on Balancing Point. I wonder if it was digitally edited or actually filmed and then reversed (I ask because the link credits Aaron Knapp with motion graphics, a title I'm not familiar with at all).

Regardless, that's possibly the coolest video I've seen in a very long time.

I'd've thought, EVEN IN THE U.S. you'd have to have a clue before making ridiculous claims like this.

I wish. Not to start some religious/ethical debate here, but all it takes is someone spouting nonsense about the Bible or "moral decay." Yeah, moral decay exists because half of the idiots in this country are idiot parents who want everyone ELSE to raise their kids.

datastorm: you had a great list of comparisons going on him. Jack Thompson:video game industry::Joseph McCarthy:Hollywood. It speaks volumes about his complete immaturity, idiocy, and ignorance that he said those things to someone who's a republican AND a soldier. I hope that his decision to take on EA ends with his ass in prison. People like him give America a bad name.

On a side-note here, did anyone else see the CNN segment talking about the R* ratings debacle? I loved how ALL of the footage was from Tommy from Vice City killing hookers and cops with various weapons, and then beating them after they were dead to make sure blood spurted out. So much for an objective media.