i named my 1st born son "Seven"

You really dropped the ball on that one. You should have named him "Se7en".

My love for you is ticking clock, BESIEGER!!

Ah, didn't get any video, just "music" and swirly light patterns.

Consider yourself lucky.

Again, I'm not ruling out a demolition of the towers. But so far all I've seen is bad journalism and really bad science. So I think I'll stay skeptical until some real proof is brought forth.

Oh, come on. You're leaving yourself an opening just in case the crackpot conspiracy theorist is right? Just in case "Geronimo Jones" has brought us the most valuable information we've ever heard? (actually google search and you'll find that controlled demolition isn't an original idea by this guy)

Let me get this straight, now. The owner of the towers is motivated by a huge insurance payout to destroy the towers, so he rigs up explosives. It all works out perfectly, and nobody suspects a thing! But then in a PBS interview he ADMITS that he "pulled" the building, where "pull" clearly must only mean he destroyed the building? Surely I'm not the only one who sees something wrong with this.

Further, the firefighters who provide their anecdote in the .mpg video about how it looked like there were demolition charges (let's assume they weren't just providing an analogy as to what it looked like) clearly show in the video using their hand movements that the charges were going off from the top floor to the bottom. Go ahead, watch the video and come back, I'll wait. So that means that the entire building was wired with explosives, not just the basement! And nobody noticed the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of man hours necessary to wire every floor of a building of that size????? Gee, the firefighters just couldn't have been providing an analogy to describe what the building collapsing in on itself looked like.

The Bill Biggart photograph showing a "clearly explosive event" must be conclusive evidence. Except that this explosion has not affected the side of the building that Biggart is looking at. So "they" must have wired up the building to collapse it, but only the explosives on one side of the building went off? Further, that's a horrible controlled explosion--look at that debris fly everywhere. Also, that photo is copyright. Did the author really get permission to use it?

I could go on and on, but I can't sit here all day. The sad part is that if you search for scientific 911 analysis or something similar on Google, all the top hits are a bunch of conspiracy-theory sites. Probably the most rediculous thing about the site though is that the author appeals to common sense a lot. HOWEVER, unless you're some sort of scientist in a field related to the article or someone with massive experience in the field, you can't use common sense because you have no scientific intuition on which common sense is formed. What the hell makes you think that your common sense about the tensile strength of steel at some temperature and the behavior of a collapsing building is correct? "Oh, because it's common sense!" WELL IT'S NOT COMMON SENSE. Yeesh.

i brought up "morality", what the author of the article is asking for is "reason" - a reason for doing what you are doing in the game. if you are killing, why?

What if the "reason" is just because you're a psychopath? What if the reason you're killing stroggs on their home planet is because you're attempting to enslave their race, or because the people think cruelty to stroggs makes good TV? Something tells me the author of the article wouldn't be satisfied by these "reasons" because they don't morally coincide with his viewpoints. Actually, I'd say that the author isn't just asking for a "reason", as demonstrated by this quote:

There’s also Gangland, a game that isn’t quite as explicit as these other examples, but is certainly no slouch when it comes to glorifying bad guys. Extortion, murder and racketeering, oh my!

I've never played Gangland, but I'd imagine that the whole point of the game is to build your mafia empire, where the whole "reason" behind extortion, murder, and racketeering is simply to build your own power. The author has a problem with "glorifying bad guys", which indicates that he doesn't like games where the bad guys win, but instead wants to inject some sort of moral fiber where even the bad guys end up having some sort of good side.

The author has taken great pains to attempt to portray himself as a reasonable person who just wants games with more substance, but I don't believe that.

I don’t want you to pull back on the gibs, I don’t want anything more than a stronger sense of ethics and perhaps a small dose of moral fiber. Take into account the fact that kids are playing, no matter that they shouldn’t be.

The author is clearly saying that he does not want games where the bad guys win and are motivated, for example, simply by the lust for power. If you feel that this "reason" doesn't have enough depth, it's certainly got enough depth to fuel much of the history of humanity...

But back to the main point, the author does not ask for censorship or restrictions or whatever. However, I do (mostly) agree with Blue's comment next to the story, where the author is clearly making a plea for developers to make games kid friendly even when the games clearly are not meant to be kid friendly (i.e., have ethical standards contrary to what you'd want your child to have).

It will create a new market for cushioned seats - or a reclining toilet even! I don't know about you, but I'm buying stock in Infinium Labs RIGHT NOW!

Come on, don't be foolish. Buy stock in the toilet industry.

HEY!! Wait a minute.. that's not the bananaphone banana. That looks more like the peanut-butter-jelly-time banana! What are you trying to pull here, Blue?

Looks bad ass. The grappling hook definitely seems like it'll be difficult to master (wonder if you can grapple flying vehicles...). As for making it faster, I doubt it can be faster gameplay than the first game since I think that's about the fastest-paced, most hectic game I've played, but I can see them ramping up the overall speed from the second one.

"I'm here, I'm armed, I want to hurt someone!"

If the judge wants to ensure they don't have kids, why didn't he order her to have tubes tied? Oh wait. That would cost money. Silly me.

From the article:

The judge is not forcing contraception on the couple nor is she requiring the mother to get an abortion should she become pregnant. The couple may choose to be sterilized at no cost to them, O'Connor ruled.

Because I had to put away all the teacher handbooks, little boy.

Aww, how sweet. I'm sure the teacher really appreciated you being a good little helper.

Just when you thought it was safe to venture back onto the web.....

That is really creepy.

Infinium Labs is supposedly lined up to demo the Phantom at E3 2004 also ... coincidence?

It didn't cause me any difficulty bar one incident and I'm mediocre to good at these games.

What difficulty level were you at? I'm pretty good at these games but I ran into quite a few occasions where I wanted a quick save even on the 2nd hardest difficulty (with AI balancing off). There's a tremendous difference between the medium and hard difficulties...

Unlike yourself, at least the 3rd graders know that correcting spelling (TYPOS?) errors on internet posts is for the real noobs.

And unlike yourself, at least the 3rd graders know that pointing out that the 3rd graders know that ...

nevermind.

Nobody's dissing Tillman, nor accusing him of flag-waving.

Well, nobody except the people who are dissing him and accusing him of "flag waving".

Wow, now's my chance to own the Doom comic without the horrendous dialog and ugly colors! I bet the top bidder is either from Doomworld or Something Awful.

Around April 1st google announced GMail, which is the 1 GB e-mail service, and it seemed pretty amazing that they'd offer 1 GB space for everyone. Yesterday, however, I was informed of Spymac, a mac-oriented site that already offers 1 GB space for e-mail, along with a bunch for pictures and web space. Anyone heard of this site before, and know if there's a catch or if any privacy concerns have been raised? Their privacy policy seems all right, whereas I recall reading that GMail will (possibly) keep your e-mail around even if you delete it.

Anyway, thought it was pretty interesting to start seeing 1 GB e-mail services popping up. The url is http://www.spymac.com/ if you want to check it out.

Hopefully they'll fix the AI so it doesn't rubberband.

Easily the worst thing about Underground. Yes, the races on the hardest difficulty were hard, but only because the AI cheated. Grrr...

"Another angry white hippie girl,
on her way to save the whales,
said I'll see you at the picket lines,
just as soon as I get done with my abortion."

Rorschach Test - "Blow Up America"

I don't see too many people complaining about how Xbox Halo makes you use a joypad, why shouldn't you be able to in FarCry?

You don't hear too many people complaining about having to use gamepad controllers instead of the keyboard/mouse combo on consoles? Uhhhh hello? McFly?