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Thank you, Disk Protector. Even though your eyes are scary and you look like a fucking weasel in an MC Hammer uniform.

And it's not dry heat either, but the wet heat that makes you sweat by the bucket load and you get all sticky and uncomfortable when you go outside. That having been said, it hasn't rained here any significant amount in MONTHS.

Current temperature = 104º F

Ryan: We're in Georgia for a week. I figure that on the way back via Virginia along 95 North, if you can meet us somewhere JUST OFF the highway, we can meet up for... 15 minutes, or get dinner or something. Lemme know.


--Barry

Being fully aware that IQ scores mean very little, what is your IQ score?

http://www.IQtest.com

Quote:Dear TheBiggah,

Thank you for your interest in the test at IQTest.com.

Your general IQ score is: 134

Quote:Intelligence Interval Cognitive Designation
40 - 54 Severely challenged (Less than 1% of test takers)
55 - 69 Challenged (2.3% of test takers)
70 - 84 Below average
85 - 114 Average (68% of test takers)
115 - 129 Above average
130 - 144 Gifted (2.3% of test takers)
145 - 159 Genius (Less than 1% of test takers)
160 - 175 Extraordinary genius

Find the most obscure entry Wikipedia has to offer. The idea here is hilarity. There's no good way to determine a winner.

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

Oh wait, they're just CPUs. Every CPU on the planet, that is... made pretty much irrelevant by the new Intel Core 2 line. They're finally here...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sho...spx?i=2795

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJodVm3bZy4

Artwork for 3d games is always deceptive, though... like how 8/16-bit artwork was deceptive because of how much nicer it looked than the games, 3d artwork is deceptive because when you change something from an image to a 3d character or scene things change... still, this is Zelda. Such concerns no not apply to this game. :)























http://www.landofthelegend.net/?get=news...316&lan=en

Quote:Update
The two clownesk characters are called Raka (long and thin) and Tobi (short and tubby).
The wolf-god like entity remains as of yet unnamed.

In short, because Sega of Japan and Sega of America were at odds and couldn't agree on anything... and when your two main branches are fighting eachother, you don't win.

http://www.sega-16.com/Interview-%20Tom%20Kalinske.htm

Quote:Sega-16: It's good that you mention that, as it must have been very difficult for Japanese game executives to see the American arm of their company leading the way, considering how poorly the Mega Drive was doing in Japan . Do you think that there was some resentment on their part over the Genesis' success? Could this have been what caused them to exert more authority over how things were run?

Tom Kalinske: In hindsight, I think there probably was. I don't believe there was from 1991-1993. I think somewhere in the mid ‘90s – '94 or '95 – they built up a great deal of resentment, and I didn't realize it at the time, until probably the latter part of 1995, when one of my colleagues in Japan, who I knew well and had a good relationship with, said to me something to the effect of “you don't understand how browbeat and annoyed the Japanese executives here are because of your success. Every meeting we go into, Nakayama asks us why can't you do things the way the Americans and Europeans did? Why aren't you guys as successful as they are? We've been around longer." I think the local executives didn't appreciate that he'd take that tone with them. Apparently, he also beat them up over Sonic, which was never as successful in Japan as it was in the U.S. and Europe (to this day, that's the case), and I think he was always throwing that in their faces too. So clearly, by late '95 there was great resentment built up: jealously, resentment, and kind of a desire to get back at those Americans that Nakayama kept throwing in their faces.
Sega-16: So could that have perhaps caused them to exert more authority over how things were done? The inner rivalry that existed between the American and Japanese branches of Sega is legendary, and most believe that this, rather than any hardware decision, is what caused the company to lose its focus. Would you agree? How much do you think SOJ's treatment of its U.S. branch hurt business?

Tom Kalinske: I think so. I don't know how many different instances you know about, but what basically occurred (and I'm probably going to be a little fuzzy on the timing. Joe Miller could probably help you on that one) was that we all knew that there would come a day when the Genesis would no longer have a life, and we'd have to move on to the next technology. There was of course, a big debate as how best to go about that. When we started the CD-ROM efforts, clearly those were the early days of using optical discs for video games, and it was very rudimentary (a lot of it was even done in black & white back in those days), and the combination of live-action and real program software was very difficult.

I remember Joe Miller and I were talking about this, and we had been contacted by Jim Clark, the founder of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), who called us up one day and said that he had just bought a company called MIPS Inc. which had been working on some things with some great R&D people, and it just so happened that they came up with a chip that they thought would be great for a video game console. We told them that in the U.S., we don't really design consoles; we do the software, but it sounded interesting and we would come over and take a look at it. We were quite impressed, and we called up Japan and told them to send over the hardware team because these guys really had something cool. So the team arrived, and the senior VP of hardware design arrived, and when they reviewed what SGI had developed, they gave no reaction whatsoever. At the end of the meeting, they basically said that it was kind of interesting, but the chip was too big (in manufacturing terms), the throw-off rate would be too high, and they had lots of little technical things that they didn't like: the audio wasn't good enough; the frame rate wasn't quite good enough, as well as some other issues.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I'm not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn't good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren't the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

So that's an example of how, partly due to our success in America, Japan just didn't want to do the things that we suggested.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3152081

Okay, it seems the way this tech would work if Sony actually tried to DO it is also a bad idea.

You know how you take your brand new game over to your friend's house, possibly minutes after you bought it, so everyone can look at the new game? You know how you may not have thought to bring your ENTIRE GAME CONSOLE with you and intend on playing it on their machine? You know how there's a reason for memory card holders in game cases, and that reason is ease in bringing your game to a friend's house? You know how MULTIPLAYER GAMES are awesome but aren't always played at the same location every single time?

If none of that applies to you, then you won't have to worry about the system locking being an issue.

Does Sony intend on making sure ALL their games are ALWAYS easily available for purchase at all times? Will they never be sold out, always available brand new? If that's the case, then people like me who try to obtain games "mint condition" even if the used game is completely void of any apparent defects, won't be affected.

Does Sony have a problem with free market enterprise? It seems they do. I can understand that a developer might actually be upset that as a result of selling used games, people aren't buying new games, and that results in a profit cut. However, I have to point something out. First of all, and this should be obvious, they will still sell PLENTY of new games for some very simple reasons. People need to get ahold of these games to begin with, and also, they aren't buying one copy and selling two copies of it, they are physically forced to buy one copy, sell one copy, so if they ever want to play it again, they need to either buy a used copy or a new copy themselves. Conservation of matter/energy alone is all they really need to promise plenty of game sales so long as people actually want the game in question. If the game is very good, very few people are going to bother selling it.

Now here's another point, we are in a FREE MARKET. There are consequences of that, but "hurting the big business peoples" isn't one most people are that concerned with. Once I have BOUGHT that game of yours, I OWN it, I can do whatever I want with it, including selling it and not giving the company that made it a dime. We already made our deal, I no longer have anything to do with you.

That said, this isn't the first time companies have done things like this. It's just that every time previous people have not liked it, seen the downsides, and eventually this limitation just completely failed and no longer sold.

Sony better not do this.