edmarkcore

Piracy is bad, I'm not going to deny that......but it's a "buisiness" that conforms to all of those who want "supply in demand". Yes, it is illegal, and yes, the companies are losing "big money" from all the hackers around the world.....but if you look at the bigger picture, there's not enough of them to really do any huge damage to the video game / music / movie industry. Sony, Nintendo, and M$ are all still coming out with brand new shiney objects for all of us to blow hundreds of dollars on, and people are still buying those systems, correct? No piracy group of people has been able to deal the video game industry such a large blow that Bill Gates has had to say "Well, looks like my profits are down.....gonna have to sell one of the talking gold toilets in my mansion". They're not going to go bankrupt from hackers and piracy. They still make money off of the video game sales as well as the rentals. The video stores pay the specific movie / video game company XX amount of dollars to rent out that game (it's a lot more than the actual price of the game). Then once that rental store makes enough money off of that certain title to break even, they sell it used, and make money off of that. So even if you have your hackers just renting games, copying them, and taking them back to the store, they're still helping the game industry out, whether they want to believe it or not. It's called inflation. Over time, the cost of living goes up, the cost of technology to build the latest and greatest system goes up, and in return, the price of games and accessories go up as well. Even if M$ had more $$ coming there way because everyone decided to become good little boys and girls and do the right thing, they would have still come out with the same 360 that you see flying off the shelves today I will admit, I have a modded Xbox...but before you start jumping down my throat and run after me with pitchforks, let me tell you what I use mine for: To prolong the life of my games, music, and movies. Rather than putting a disk in everytime I want to watch something / play a certain game, it's stored on my hard drive already....saves me from having to go buy disk cleaners...even new games or movies if they ever got that badly damaged. I modded because I wanted to protect my investment because, just like almost everyone here has said, games aren't cheap. Nothing is cheap anymore. Not everybody here was waiting around for the midnight opening of the 360, ready to drop 300-400 on just the system alone, followed by games that are $49-$59....let's not forget about the wireless controlers that you can buy, the Xbox Live subscriptions....oh hey....did you get the HDD add-on? I'm sure I stand with a lot of people when I say "Screw that, I'll wait for the price to go down". Piracy isn't the end of the world, people. There's that one phrase "To Each His Own". If you know someone who's pirating games, let em do it.....it's really not your place to tell them to stop. Sooner or later, they'll get caught, and if they don't, well they've done one heck of a good job doing what they do. There are a lot more serious things to be frustrated over in life than prices on video games. Here's an easy fix: You don't like the prices on video games? Stop buying them. The companies keep making games and selling them at prices that they do because.....guess what?? People buy them. Until everyone in the world decides "hey, these things suck, let's go do something else", there will be more and more systems coming out, with higher and higher prices, and the number of people who hack all of it will only get greater. Get used to it, because that's the way it's gonna be

Until M$ fixes the problems that they're having with some of the 360s, it shouldn't be considred "Next Gen". They pushed the Xbox too quickly, and it came out with problems through the first versions of it.....so they took their time to fix what they should have to begin with, and everyone was happy. Fast forward to present, and they were in a big rush to get the 360 out before the competetors got theirs out, and now look what's happening.....a lot of systems are just flat out freezing up on games, it's not backwards compatible with all the old Xbox games.....this hurried fashion that M$ has been showing with their gaming systems has once again shown it's ugly face. The only thing about the 360 that really wows me right now is it's processor power.....the Hi-def aspect of it is pretty cool, too....but they still havn't won me over with their whole "Next Gen" pitch. Maybe sometime early next year we'll all see a game that will totally blow our freakin minds.....until then, the whole "Next Gen" slogan, or whatever you want to call it, needs to go. I'm not a Playstation gamer myself, but I have a strong feeling the PS3 is gonna wipe the 360 out when it's released, and we'll really get a glimpse of "Next Gen"

I'm in the same boat you are Jesse.....I've tried those stupid patches before.....they stuck for a good amount of time, but if a small little corner of the things gets dirty / wet, etc., it's like a plague that spreads through the rest of the patch, and it falls right off. I must say, they did their job quite well while they were on.....but they cost way too much for my liking. Not to try and be rude by any means here, but all of the non-smokers have no idea how it feels, and how hard it is to truly quit for good. I've "quit" many times before, and everytime, started back up (I think my longest non-smoking period was 1 month). I origionally started due to stress....kind of a calm-me-down type of thing. My body has just become accustomed to smoking when there is a stressful situation. In a way, a non-smoker giving a smoker suggestions as to how to stop is like those stupid math problems you had in high school. For example, Johnny is 60 miles away from Chicago.....he's driving at an average speed of 37 MPH.....how long will it take him to get there? Everyone always had an answer for it, but no one ever put into consideration delays he may have while driving to his destination ie A car wreck somewhere along the way, or a line of old people drivers that stopped to look at the squirrels. The non-smokers can give you adivce (and good advice at that), but when it comes to everything that comes inbetween you and stoping smoking, only someone that has succesfully made the trip will be able to help you

I kind of sit in the middle of this whole thing. I can see why Bush decided to go in there...Saddam was an A-hole....no one wanted him around. Understandable. The goal that we were told was to get him out of there (actually,the original goal was Osama, but I think we gave on looking for one guy riding a camel somewhere). So now, we're still there, making sure they can have a good start with their new government. They have their new president, or whatever political title he has, they have their new government in place.....now what? What are we still doing there?? We're taking care of the ones that still cause problems??? WHY???? We've got people in our own country here that don't follow the law, that are killing off people.....do you see other countries sending support over to us? Nope. We've lost 2000 of our troops so far over there. That's not a high casualty number? I just think we need to get the heck out of there. We're trying to make their country perfect....aka make them work just the way our government does....but yet we don't have perfection over here......why dosn't Bush pay this much attention to the problems and violence on his own home turf before trying to mow someone elses lawn

I know EXACTLY what you mean about horrible college professors....I had this one lady for one of my Psych classes.....she did nothing but read from PowerPoint presentations for each and every one of her lectures. And to top that off, she would read them extremely fast, and if anyone asked her to go back, she would sit and lecture the class about "how this is college, and that we all should be able to keep up". After mid-terms, no one had higher than a B- in that class (I wish I was making this up because it sounds pathetic, but it's true!!). Lucky for us, she got fired for some reason that we were not informed about, and we got a new prof for the remaining 4 weeks of the semester. He was a total 360 from our old prof.....he gave us all copies of the notes that he read from each class.....each of the remaining quizes were made directly from the notes, and the final....you guessed it......exactly from the notes he gave us!! Easiest A I have ever recieved in my life!

Coming from a guy's point of view, I've learned just to zone those commercials out. We get it: Women wear bras. You never see commercials flaunting off jock straps......not that I would really want to see that in the first place....I just find them pointless....

I enjoyed Serious Sam II.....it's a little different than 1, but it's still a lot of fun. There are vehicles to drive around now, more weapons, bigger enemies.....it's quite enjoyable. One of the big differences that I found (and anyone who's played both, correct me if I'm wrong), was that it was a whole lot easier to earn lives in the first one than it was in the second one. But putting that aside, I really liked serious sam 2. If you're debating as to whether or not you want to buy the game, I would suggest renting it first....get a feel for the game, and then make your decision. I've have too many times myself where I would buy a game that I heard was supposed to rock, and it ended up sucking bigtime.

I totally agree with you. I've got everything and more in my Xbox right now that I could ever want out of a video game system. I've had some fun in the way of modifications, and I really couldn't ask for more. Sure, the new 360 is gonna have amazing graphics, but I'm still pleased with what I'm playing now. I havn't had a real good chance to sit down and try out the 360 and see it's full potentials, so in my mind, what I've got is still the best. But I give it a couple years for some of my friends to have one, me trying it out, and the price to drop before I even think about buying a new one

The only bad thing about all of the new technology that comes out is the starting price of each of them. Look at the 360 that's coming out in a few days......$299 for the core package, and $399 for the upgraded one. Maybe it's just me, but I even think paying 200 something for a PSP is outragous! With me, I wait until the price goes down a little to jump on the new-tech bandwagon....but always with my luck, I get about 2 years of being on the new bandwagon before something comes out to crush it

They just came out with a 2nd edition of GTA:San Andreas...they took out the notorious sex scene that got it pulled off shelves to begin with and some of the other stuff that got the game changed from an "M" rating to an "Adult Only" rating. I think a lot of this could be solved if parents took control over what there kid was renting. I work at a video rental chain, and there are a lot of parents that are totally oblivious to what it is that's in the games their kids rent. We have a policy where if a kid is trying to rent a mature rated title, they have to have their parents permission. If the kid is by themself, then they cannot rent the title. You would be amazed at how many dropped-jaw parents I see when I tell them why the game their children want to rent is mature rated. A lot of the kids beat around the bush, telling their parents "Well, there's just a little bit of shooting, but it's not that bad" when they're trying to rent something like Resident Evil 4. It's become a popularity contest with kids.....like they aren't cool to all of their friends unless they can rent the newest zombie-splattering, head-bashing game on the market. I had an 10-year old come up a while back, wanting to rent GTA:SA...and this was the origional version, not the newer one that just got put onto the market. When I told him that he had to have a parent here so that I could get their permission, he told me "Oh, it's ok, my mom already said I could rent this game". Going back on topic, yes, violent personalities and violent video games won't make a good combination, but for those that are under the age of 17 who aren't, by law, allowed to purchase these games, the parents need to be more in control over what their kids play. Not to bring up a sore subject for anyone, and I apologize if I do, but do you really think the parents of the kids that commited the Columbine incodent had any idea as to what their kids were doing? And the blame for that whole thing was put on video games.

PC gamers have things called LAN parties, where everyone brings their PCs over to one house and plays games until the crack of dawn Now that that's out of the way, I agree....consoles are a lot better than PC gaming...a lot easier to tote around, a larger gaming selection, and the ease of being able to sit anywhere and play your games on a console, rather than having to sit all cramped at a desk. Go Xbox.

Not that I'm aware of.....it's making the laser do the same thing that it does normally, which is read the data from the disk. The only difference is that it's copying that data now, rather than ust reading it and spewing it onto the screen. And like you said, it took six months to ruin your disks....if you have a mod chip, you're not really going to be using the disks on a daily basis for 6 months..... And as far as the whole "official" thing goes, some of us mod our systems to preserve our disks. Not having to use the disks means not having to worry about scratches / smudges on disks, or in your case, the huge circular marks.

If you're wanting to use a modified Xbox to play against people on Xbox Live, there is an alternative.....go to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. Even people who don't have mod chips in their boxes can go there. Instead of hooking the ethernet cable directly to your box, you route your box to your PC....I guess in a way making your Xbox think you're in a system link game. Best of all, it's free! And you don't have to worry about "Did I turn my chip off or not?"

I'm pretty sure that there is no way to turn off a softmod, since you are changing around the system files to run as a modded xbox. Only way to turn that off would be to totally reverse everything you did.

I have so many mixed feelings on the military right now. Don't get me wrong, I support our troops and all....but do you think any of them have wonder "what the *bleep* are we still doing here?". Defending our country is one thing, but being used as a puppet by the US government because they want to throw their views and ways of living into a completly different country really gets to me. Our government is on such a power-trip, that they're willing to keep troops over there (mind you, the U.S. body-count is 2000+ now) until they have "peace" over there. Wasn't the origional job to take out Sadaam, have a few beers, and leave? Correct me if I'm wrong there..... Remember back in the day where they had the draft? Since they can't force people to join anymore, they push as hard as they can in every way, shape, and form. I can't even listen to Godsmack anymore without thinking "Gee, it kinda sounds nice....I wanna be stuck over there!"