I don't need to link any articles here, I know you've all heard about Obama firing Gen. McCrystal for the remarks he made to Rolling Stone. My beef is... we're at war... this guy is in charge of the war front... and Obama fires him because of a personal qualm that has nothing to do with the war, or how it is going, or the General's qualifications... is that wise? I mean, if he fired him because he was personally responsible for some failure, ya... but to fire our top man in the pivotal Afghan front, because he told a few mildly colorful anecdotes to a journalist... isn't that a little PETTY for the Commander in Chief? Isn't the General entitled to a little leeway there, for freedom of speech? Anyone else think so?
Posted by: Darunia - 23rd June 2010, 8:34 AM - Forum: Ramble City
- No Replies
Since you've time and time again proven your mastery with the digital art fare, could you make me a little logo for this Facebook group page I manage. It's my WoW guild (no need for nerdy jokes here, I know) and it's called the THREE BADGES PROGRAM. What I'd like is a small jpeg that would be suitably sized to serve as the icon/logo... color or style are up to your own whimiscal desires, but I'd like it to say in capitals "THREE BADGES PROGRAM", "EST. 2007" and "DUNEMAUL."
Again this is open to anyone with experience or extra time. I made a logo myself, but I only have Paint, so... ya... uber crappy. Just a request, if any of you have the time to throw into it.
This is a pretty big deal if it can be mass produced and has a very high number of recharges before it wears out. The only issue is the obvious safety concern, as dumping capacitor levels of energy out of a battery if it shorts could be bad. However some simple safeties can be put in place.
Interesting... At the very least, they are clearly aware they've been neglecting the platform (and considering how much work they've put into DX10 and the upcoming DX11, that's really lame). They are "committed" but that's not really an answer. ABF, you were right. E3's now over and there's been almost nothing announced for the PC. There's Fable 3's announcement of a PC port, sure, but that's a token gesture. In fact I've no reason to bother with it, as I really doubt it'll be designed with modding in mind anyway. In the end, there's still plenty of PC games coming along, it's just that Microsoft isn't being a part of that.
What I'd do in their shoes is design "The 360 Platform Experience". Aside from making "Games for Windows Live" (Just rename it, call it "Live Games"), I'd see what work it would take to make ALL 360 games playable on Windows 7. The 360's hardware seems to have a lot of stuff that the PC shares, so the emulation wouldn't need to do too much I'd think. If pulled off well, people with high quality PCs wouldn't need to shell out for a 360 and could instead simply buy 360 games. Microsoft alone is in a good position to do this, and it'd give them a big advantage.
This is neat. This is apparently a 90% energy efficient air conditioner. This sort of thing won't much affect people further north where AC is apparently an unneeded extravagance, but down here it should really significantly lower energy consumption during the summer... spring... fall... the occasional unseasonably hot winter day... pretty much year-round. Good for the environment, good for bank accounts, it'll be a VERY slow uptake due to how expensive replacing them will likely be. Most people have the same air conditioner originally installed in their house during construction. It may be a good choice for a government incentive to upgrade (with some recycling program so they can recoup some of the losses, though local power companies will see the greatest benefits).
I was willing to cut some slack to OnLive as a great option for people who love things like the Netflix service and would prefer not to pay for expensive computer upgrades.
Unfortunatly, as a small aside after talking about the connection, this guy outlines that the service is NOT Netflix. It's a ripoff.
First you pay $50 a year. This gets you... nothing. You have to "buy" or rent the games you want to play even AFTER the yearly fee. That is ridiculous. The service should simply be the fee. Yeah the fee would end up being higher, but if you're paying a fee at all, you should actually GET something out of it. All these users are initially paying for is the right to pay for more things. It would be like if Blockbuster had a yearly fee JUST to keep being a member of their store but you got nothing out of it, still needing to pay for each rental.
Secondly, the "buy" option isn't really "buy" at all. It's more like renting for the duration of your signup for the service. They don't send you a permanent copy, and if you ever leave, your "buy" is gone, needing to be bought again. The rentals are also ridiculously short periods of time. They're using outdated "rental store" models where you pay $5 to play a game for 3 days, or $7 for 5.
Whatever interest I had in this system I've lost. This is worse than Gametap's model. Yes you had to pay for each game there, but you didn't have to pay a yearly fee in addition to that. The account setup was at least free.
This service was originally promised as an alternative that might actually threaten the current model of everyone buying their own copy of the game's code and then buying their own hardware to run it on. This implementation will kill them before they even get off the ground. I think it'll end up going the way of the Gametap service.
If this sort of thing is going to have any chance whatsoever, they need to follow the Netflix model. Figure out a monthly fee that's both reasonable and covers whatever you need covered, and give permanent access to everything you have liscenses to for play for the duration of that user's account, until they cancel.
