Last night my Cisco router met an untimely death at the hands of a firmware update. This router has served TovenSolutions well and will be sorely missed.
Brief history of router...
Lived in five different server rooms at five different locations.
Been updated with new version of OS 4 times. Including 2 major updates that added new features.
Used on three different TovenSolutions owned networks.
Processed over 20 million packets of data over 10 different websites.
Events that happened during it's owner ship.
Moved three times
Got car stolen at gun point
Survived 3 different jobs
And finally killed by my own hand at the behest of a minor security update.
The new router is up and running however, and is new with all the latest bells and whistles, bringing faster and more accurate Qos (Quality of Service) packets to TovenNet as well as Voip to me and my customers.
BTW I wish to thank Ryan for his financial support.
I know that trying to get any of you interested in this game is like talking to a brick wall, but I can't help but keep trying can I (I'm over 900 hours in the last two and three-quarters years since the first beta... and that's nowhere near as much as I could have played it...)...
Eye of the North: expansion, requires Prophecies, Factions, or Nightfall (might require Prophecies, I'm not sure). Late 2007 release date. Lots of awesome stuff.
Guild Wars 2: Betas to start in mid to late 2008 - a while off. New game. Set several hundred years later. Connections to GW achievements through an added feature of EotN, but you can't carry over characters. Persistent world, not all instanced (though there will be instanced missions of some kind). Still no monthly fee. High level cap? Some nice-sounding stuff about quests in the overworld and stuff is available in some of the previews.
Eyes of the North looks fantastic. Just what I wanted: a resolution to the Ascalon plotline, the Charr, a true expansion with all level-20 content, etc, etc... :) :)
As for GW2, though, I'm a bit less certain about this one. Oh, I'm sure I'll buy it, definitely, but... high level cap? That doesn't sound good... one of the best things about GW is that the low level cap forces you to think about your strategy and skillset, not your character level. What next, being able to take as many skills with you as you want and not just eight? That would be horrible, just as bad as a high level cap would be... :( I strongly disagree with anything that gives GW a level cap that takes longer to max out. Having a design which DOES NOT require ridiculous amounts of grind to reach the top level of is extremely, extremely important part of the game, and I really hope that they misspoke somehow in that statement.
Making it truly open-world is also an interesting decision that I'm not sure I agree with. While open-world MMOs can be quite good, GW has a unique style that emphasizes your importance. If all you have to do to get from point to point is wait for someone to clear the group in front of you instead of clearing them yourself you'd get so much less out of actually playing the game... while it does make it feel like a single-player game a lot, I definitely really like the instanced design, and don't want GW2 to become a normal MMO on this matter. Keeping it all or mostly instanced would be best, but if it must go open... we'll see. Hopefully they can make it work, but it just seems like it won't quite be GW with those two huge changes, and that would be bad... Guild Wars is a truly amazing game.
I thought about making the thread title "Microsoft tries to lose the console war", but didn't... still though, what in the world are they thinking? RAISING the price of their system, now?
I know this has been rumored for some time now, but still...
Quote:Following months of speculation, Microsoft has officially unveiled a new version of the Xbox 360. Called the Xbox 360 Elite (pictured), the console will go on sale in North America April 29, with European and Japanese launches later in the year. In the US, the console will retail for $479.
As previously hinted at on many forums and blogs, the new console will feature a variety of different features than the traditional Xbox 360. It will indeed feature a 120GB hard drive to better accommodate game downloads from Xbox Live Arcade and video content from Xbox Live Marketplace. The news coincides with the announcement of a new batch of television and movie partners who will offer content on the service.
The Xbox 360 Elite has a "premium black finish" which matches the wireless controller it comes with. (Controllers and rechargeable battery kits with the same hue will be sold separately.) The console will also sport a matching black wired headset and, as widely rumored, an HDMI output port. The console will come bundled with an HDMI cable as well as a component video cable.
One thing the console will not come with is a data transfer cable, as had been rumored. However, a standalone, $179 120GB drive for the console will be released alongside the Xbox 360 Elite bundled with a data-transfer cable. The cable will allow for the transfer of all Marketplace downloads and game saves from an existing 360 hard drive to the new hard drive.
According to Albert Penello, Microsoft's director of global platform marketing, the old hard drive will be blanked following the data transfer and can then be attached to any other 360. "The standalone drive is the main solution we're suggesting to existing Xbox 360 owners," he told GameSpot.
So what about HDMI-craving HDTV owners who want to get an Xbox 360 Elite and transfer their current XBLM content to it? In one word: wait. Penello said that Microsoft is "working on a solution" for transferring data from current 360s to Elites, but would not elaborate.
Hardware-wise, Penello said the Xbox 360 Elite has the same disc drive and processors as "current models." He also confirmed it would not have an internal HD-DVD drive, as some had suspected. "We don't want to segment the user base," he told GameSpot. He also confirmed that the external Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive would not be available in the Elite's black finish for the foreseeable future.
Another thing the new console won't have is Internet Protocol TV functionality, which Microsoft announced it was bringing to the 360 platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. "[IPTV] Trials will start this summer," said Penello, who didn't have a start date for the service.
As for the fate of the current hard drive-less $299 Core Xbox 360 and 360-equipped Pro Xbox 360 models, Pennello said they would continue to be offered. He also confirmed the new model will be a permanent addition to the 360 product line, and not a limited edition.
The fact the Elite is only $20 less than the 20GB PlayStation 3 and does not have next-generation video format playback did not go unnoticed by Sony. “We think every PlayStation 3 owner should have an 'elite' experience, which is why we include an internal hard drive and HDMI output in every PS3 we sell, along with the 50 GB of storage capacity on a high definition Blu-ray disc," said Peter Dille, Sony Computer Entertainment's senior vice president of marketing. Sony also issued a series of talking points asserting that the release of the 360 Elite " further validates the PS3 business model, which [Microsoft] criticized at launch."
For more details on the Xbox 360 Elite, check out GameSpot Hardware's complete examination of the console.
Sony PR's reply...
Quote:We think every PlayStation 3 owner should have an “elite” experience, which is why we include an internal hard drive and HDMI output in every PS3 we sell, along with the 50 GB of storage capacity on a high definition Blu-ray disc. Sony has been the strongest advocate of high definition as the future of next-generation gaming. This requires high-definition components, including HDMI output, and large storage devices to deliver and store all that rich and vivid HD content. Microsoft’s announcement today not only legitimizes Sony’s PS3 strategy, it moves us closer to adopting universal standards in the area of high definition gaming that will benefit game developers and ultimately the end user.
Here's a thread for riddles, I guess, because maybe this game might last a while.
So I'll start things off with a classic. I'll just quote it.
Quote:A group of people with assorted eye colors live on an island. They are all perfect logicians -- if a conclusion can be logically deduced, they will do it instantly. No one knows the color of their eyes. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. If anyone has figured out the color of their own eyes, they [must] leave the island that midnight. Everyone can see everyone else at all times and keeps a count of the number of people they see with each eye color (excluding themselves), but they cannot otherwise communicate. Everyone on the island knows all the rules in this paragraph.
On this island there are 100 blue-eyed people, 100 brown-eyed people, and the Guru (she happens to have green eyes). So any given blue-eyed person can see 100 people with brown eyes and 99 people with blue eyes (and one with green), but that does not tell him his own eye color; as far as he knows the totlas could be 101 brown and 99 blue. Or 100 brown, 99 blue, and he could have red eyes.
The Guru is allowed to speak once (let's say at noon), on one day in all their endless years on the island. Standing before the islanders, she says the following:
"I can see someone who has blue eyes."
Who leaves the island, and on what night?
There are no mirrors or reflecting surfaces, nothing dumb, It is not a trick question, and the answer is logical. It doesn't depend on tricky wording or anyone lying or guessing, and it doesn't involve people doing something silly like creating a sign language or doing genetics. The Guru is not making eye contact with anyone in particular; she's simply saying "I count at least one blue-eyed person on this island who isn't me."
And lastly, the answer is not "no one leaves."
I've done my best to make the wording as precise and unambiguious as possible (after working through the explanation with many people), but if you're confused about anything, please let me know. A word of warning: The answer is not simple. This is an exercise in serious logic, not a lateral thinking riddle.
Let me add one detail to avoid any possibility of this being a lateral thinking puzzle. Nothing in there says anything about when they have to answer it. In other words, it could take days.
Okay you should have a breakdown of this. Basically a "martial artist" with a whole dojo full of students he trains in mystical "chi" energy said he could beat any normally trained (as in, they defeat you using punches and kicks and stuff instead of chi) martial arts expert. Someone took him up on it, and well, the results speak for themselves. Note that beforehand you'll need to endure some painful pretend martial arts where all his students get flung around by his magic. Ah the power of delusion... Sure would have been nice if he could perhaps levitate someone or have done anything to them that isn't adequately explained by them just willingly dancing themselves.
Stuff like this is funny to me, but the sad fact is he'll make up excuses just like everyone who has to face such brutal reality about their super powers.
So IGN has this list up of hardest games. I'll give them most of the titles on that list as I've played the majority of them.
Then they go and put Megaman on there. Now, if they put any entry from the Zero series in there, or the later X games (like 5 on), I'd have their back. They put the FIRST one in there though.
Yes, it didn't have save points, but hard? Perhaps, but nothing nearly approaching the level of those other games. Megaman actually got EASIER from there for a while. The first X game was noted as being almost offensively easy in fact. Megaman is an interesting series mainly because in the current era, they seem to have substituted ridiculous difficulty for innovation. The current Megaman games are way harder than the old ones.
What should they have put in there? Well, I for one submit that Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels (Japan's SMB2) would be a great contender. That game was HARD.
Jeux-France as translated by Google Wrote:Sony Computer Entertainment organized as envisaged a launching at midnight of PlayStation 3 on a boat which accosted with the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, with a thousand of machines available to the sale. The event unfortunately attracted only one score of people on the quay, and 4 to 5 people maximum on the other event organized simultaneously with Fnac of the Élysées Fields in Paris. One will note the unexpected presence and rather amusing of Microsoft come him also with his boat Xbox 360!
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