Spudd

The 9/11 conspiracies grow old. The government has nothing to gain from the destruction of a landmark and the loss of 3,000 innocent lives. Some of the "facts" in your post aren't even true, which makes the whole thing look poorly thought through and bogus. Random statistics and details that don't support the main point are also present here. Then there's garbage in there like this: It's nothing but outlandish speculations and wild accusations. Point A has no reason to be there, B is a statement of conjecture presented as fact with no backing whatsoever, C is also an over the top accusation without backing. Where's the proof? Where is the evidence? There is none. You are creating a conspiracy where there is none. While it may be cool to think about some big underlying conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, if you have no proof you shouldn't go around spreading it. Your article is a statement of a theory, and a theory full of holes at that.

It would depend on the console. Personally, I just don't think Sega has the funds to produce their own console anymore. Since the Playstation, they haven't been a huge competitor, and they were never the leading game company. The Genesis was their only console that was really great, they tend to be one step behind the competition. The Dreamcast Sega's answer to the N64 and Playstation, was released when Nintendo and Sony were already working on the Gamecube and the Playstation 2. Sadly, the Dreamcast didn't sell real well, and there weren't a lot of games for it. I think that was Sega's last desperate attempt to stay a console competitor, and it failed. That's not to say there was anything wrong with the Dreamcast, just that it was too little and too late. I seriously doubt Sega will ever come back, and if they do, I doubt whatever they create will be able to compete. Sorry, that's just my take on it.

Yes, there is a language so hard that even the native speakers have trouble with it, and it's one we all know: English. Seriously, English is the most butchered language on the planet. There are so many confusing rules in spelling that we actually have spelling contests to see who can just spell the words right. Then there's this new age of chat speaking, where people intentionally use a variation of English, one that is totally wrong, all for the sake of saving a few seconds. You know what I'm talking about, that cell phone lingo where every other "word" is actually an abbreviation, and vowels don't exist unless used alone. (E.g. I, U (You), O (Oh), Y (Why), etc.)

I found this funny; sorry, I had to reply to it, I know it's a five year old post. Buying three games a week is a bad policy; don't keep buying games if you aren't going to play them. There's really no reason to even own a game you don't intend to play. Sometimes they increase in value after several years, but most of the time that's not the case. There isn't really anything you can do with an unplayed game. I guess you could use the disc as a Frisbee if you're desperate for some one on one time with your dog. The case might make a decent mousepad, too. And if you have an aversion to long books, the manuals may be a way to expose yourself to some "literature." Other than that, no. Soon you will run out of money? Three games a week at $40-60 will run you $150 per week, that's around $700 a month. If you aren't exaggerating, then this is really sad; what kind of parents would give an allowance of suck a sick amount to a kid who clearly has no concept of money management whatsoever. If you saved your money for a year, you'd be on your way to a college education right there. You could buy a really nice car, after a year or two. Heck, if you never spent a penny, with that allowance, you may be able to buy a house with it. But no, you buy countless games you DON'T PLAY. You don't have a game addiction, you have a spending addiction, and that's bad. That's just my two cents. Anyway, five years have passed, so this poor bloke is probably living on the side of the street in a small house made of game cases, eating game manuals and discs to stay alive.

@ FouGilang: Actually, no, I've never used a Mac. I had an iPod Nano, which broke, and my second one in covered in dead spots though. My only experience with Macs is second hand. I've done some research though, and I've yet to come up with a better reason for getting a Mac than: "They're shiny." Seriously, PCs do everything Macs can do, and most of the time, they do it better, so I don't plan to pay twice as much for half the computer. As far as consoles go, I can't imagine it'll be much different in the gaming industry than it is in the computer industry. @ Forte: Agreed.

I hope not. If they do, this is what it will be like:A small, white, shiny, rectangle, with a big apple shaped dent in the top that's probably supposed to be the logo. Apple's reoccurring ideology, "smaller is better", seems to apply once again to the rectangle only 3in x 2in x 5cm. Okay, so it'll look nice on the outside, but plug it into your TV and-... ACK! A bunch of nasty interface windows with anti-stylish, uncool gray gradient textures. You won't go to the store to buy games with Apple, rather you can sit in your living room and wait for hours for them to download via iGames Store. They take forever because Apple doesn't know how to format files in an efficient way, and thus the files are ten times bigger than their competitor's games. Three days later...It's done downloading! Oh goody, I can't wait to play my first game on my new iRectangle! (Yes, that's what I decided to call it.) We start it up, and in case you forgot you were playing on an Apple product, there's a nice ten minute intro screen of the Apple logo having paint spilled on it while some catchy teen pop music plays in the background. Alright, we're finally loaded up. Now, we don't know what kind of games will be on the system, but here's what we know about them: They'll either be 2D, or run at 15 FPS tops, because Apple seems to have sacrificed any sort of processing power for maintaining a sleek exterior. Also, most of them won't be games, about 2% of them will be music creation tools, 30% video/picture editing, and another 20% just plain useless apps people recompiled from the iPhone.Another important factor: How will we control them? Well, Apple wouldn't want to bog us down with wires, or a whole lot of buttons, so they've abandoned all of that for... Another rectangle, about the size of the system itself. Situated on it is one button, but that's enough, as they've ripped off the Wiimote functionality, yay! Sadly, the gimmick will ruin 75% of the remaining 30% of games that are actually games, turning them into over-casual junk no one wants to play. To turn your controller on, you shake it really hard, as if dancing, it'll even play music for you. The downside to this, is that the controllers look identical to the system, and it's really easy to pick up the system by mistake and... Well... Apple isn't know for producing the most durable stuff.Yes, that was a horribly exaggerated review of what it would be like. 80% of that would probably never happen, but meh, it was fun to write, and I hate Apple, so I'm satisfied.

Cell phones? Yes, they're inconceivably dangerous, they may kill us all. First off, they have a lot of potential as weapons. Smartphones are the new hot thing, and these smart phones can have all sorts of apps... Increasingly powerful apps... It won't be long before we see knife apps, concealed handgun apps, and even grenade apps! Sure, it has great military applications, but other than that it's scary. Plus, they do have a bit of weight, if thrown hard enough at someone's head, they can cause serious trauma.Then there's the radiation. The radiation is toxic to all human beings, and it can turn them into zombies. You may have a sibling or friend already succumbing to the intense rays. Showing mild symptoms, such as being unable to stay too far from the phone at a given time, over-chattiness, and lack of an in-person social life. Soon, phone users will turn green, acquire a taste for human flesh/brains, and smell like sour Mentos. And of course, they emit powerful waves of human carelessness into the atmosphere that create giant red footprints on the surface of the ozone, which make the earth hot and create water that floods the cities and stuff.Cell Phones: They'll kill us all.

Pretty nice, I like this first one, "ma's shipping." XDI don't have a phone that takes very nice pictures, they're 640x480 resolution, and fairly compressed. It's nice to have one that takes pictures at all though, so I won't complain.

That apartment is amazing, I totally want to live there! Where is it, and how much is it to rent a place there? In all seriousness, it looks sort of like my bedroom. (My bedroom is a little better than that.) I can be tidy elsewhere, I don't know what it is about my bedroom. I can't stand to see filthy messy rooms elsewhere in the house, but my room is... Different somehow. I almost like it to be like this. (Almost. ) EDIT: Actually, after closer inspection of the pictures, that apartment is in a whole other league than me. I just can't compete with that kind of filth.

Eh, too bad I don't make flash games. Really, the flash dev tool is so expensive. A lot of indie flash developers get it illegally with key generators and the like, but I refuse to stoop that low. Is there an equivalent for downloadable games you happen to know of? I might be interested in something of that nature. But I only might. Personally, I just like making games, it's a hobby for me. I'm definitely planning on doing it commercially in the future, but I don't think the future is today.

Ugh, I know that post is old, but it really does bug me when people talk as if Final Fantasy is the standard for which all other RPGs should follow. It also annoys me when people call Final Fantasy VII the best game of all time, as it isn't. The Final Fantasy series isn't bad, but it's not the best either. If you want to play a REAL good RPG, check out the Tales series. A good one to start on is Tales of Symphonia, it's easy to find copies of, and it has a really nice storyline, great voice actors, and is a lot of fun. Tales of the Abyss is also fun, but you'll have a hard time finding a copy. Tales of Vesperia is also awesome if you don't have a Gamecube (or Wii) or a PS2. One thing that initially made me like the Tales games is the real time battle system. It beats the heck out of waiting for your bar to load and selecting your attack from a list, like in Final Fantasy. They're also typically pretty long, (60 hours of gameplay on average) and have great replay value. (Unlockables, higher difficulties, etc.) The characters in them are really likable, far more so that the washed out, typical personalities seen in Final Fantasy. The Tales games are also multiplayer, four players can participate in the battles, which is really cool. All in all, the Tales games are more epic and more fun than Final Fantasy, I recommend you look into them.

This is a pretty nice guide, I suppose. I love playing as Scout, but it is a hard class to play. I would have liked to see some more tips and tricks for different situations and maybe more detailed class to class match-ups and more on what to do when you encounter certain classes. Other than that, it's good. I have TF2 on the 360 unfortunately, so I don't have the luxury of using the alternate weapons that are in the PC version, so it is reassuring to hear that I'm not missing out too much.

Haha, too bad you didn't post this while I was considering using MyBB, I went with phpBB3 instead. Seems like a fairly useful list, what do you mean by yearly subscription, though? As in you have to pay for membership? Or you just have to register to see the mods and themes?

For starters, as other posters have said, advertising is a major issue. Opera, while a top notch browser, has not had quite the publicity that Firefox has. Also, Opera doesn't sound as cool as Firefox. I know that sounds trivial and stupid, but it's true; having a cool name and logo has certainly been an asset to Firefox. Opera also, while currently free, hasn't always been that way, and so when Opera was in its early stages, it didn't pick up that critical dedicated userbase that it needed. Because of all this, despite the fact that Opera is comparable in terms of quality to Firefox, it just doesn't have the same momentum. Chrome is already passing Opera in terms of usage, because they've done a good job of advertising and started off free. They had a video contest, and even got advertised on Youtube's front page.

I don't have a Facebook account (or a MySpace, for that matter) and I don't want one. Some people find it odd that I avoid social networking sites the way I do, but seriously, I have no use for them. Everyone ELSE in my family has one, and they're constantly messing with those Facebook apps, and frankly I don't see what is so great about them. There are better games elsewhere, why you would spend so much time on one of those lousy flash games or on those PHP based RPGs isn't something I understand. Maybe I'm just a stick in the mud, but I'm not a fan.

I have no problems with IPB 2.x,but I have used IPB 3.x before and I am partial to it. If the Xisto administrators had a way to transfer the features we have here over to a 3.x board, that would be great. Too bad it sounds like that won't be possible, but we can still dream, right? :PYou would think it wouldn't bee too hard to convert the credit mod to IPB 3.x though.

I've never played Spore, so I can't say for certain. The gameplay looks alright, but to be honest it's not much. The cool thing about Spore is the creature creator, but after that it looks like the experience isn't as good as it could have been. While I can see myself creating loads of funny creatures, I don't imagine the rest if quite so full of replay value. What's more, it installs a nasty irremovable program on your computer called SecuROM, which I've heard many bad things about. Again, I don't have a huge opinion on Spore, as I've never actually played it, that's just my take on it from what I have seen.

Nice four and a half year bump, DirtyHacker. No, no one plays online multiplayer games, that's why games like Counter Strike and World of Warcraft's servers are always empty, and companies like NCSoft and Nexon are going out of business. :PIn all seriousness, yeah, I've played quite a few. The only non-free MMORPG I've played is Guild Wars, which is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. I've played countless free ones though.

GMail is fine as it is, I don't see any need for it to upgrade or downgrade. I mean, I wouldn't complain if they DID upgrade, but it works just great as it is. The layout is clean, which is the way it should be since it's an e-mail service, but not so sparse that it feels empty. It's nice and convenient too, makes a great place to get a secondary email address, for when you have to sign up for a site you know is going to spam your inbox. I love GMail. The instant messenger is, granted, a little sparse, but that's because it doesn't have to be fancy. GMail is primarily an email service, the messenger is just something extra if you ask me.

They are annoying, I've never liked them. Yes, banner adds and pop-ups are worse, but at least you can block those, or can just scroll down so you don't have to look at them. These, on the other hand, are embedded right into the article, post, or whatever else you're reading, so you see them no matter what. I actually had a Firefox addon that made some of those appear on different webpages. The extension was very useful for its main function, but because it came with that, and there was no way to disable it, I had to disable it. I don't think web developers and software developers should use these, they're ugly, no one clicks them, and they make a whole page look tacky.

If I did, it would most likely be because I worked hard and earned it, and not because I won the lottery. If that were the case, I would try to maintain my wealth, and not go spending it on crazy extravagant things like most people who dream of being a billionaire would. I'd rather use what I don't need, and that won't be used, to donate to charities, and to leave behind to my family when I'm gone... And... Maybe buy a bouncy room, just for laughs... Or a public size swimming pool filled with butterscotch pudding... That isn't THAT crazy, is it?

I imagine it depends on a lot of things. Like how well hydrated you were before you started going without. Or if your body is used to running off of very little water. How hot the place where you are is. (After all, if you sweat, you'll deplete your water supply faster.) Working hard vs. conserving energy would also come into play. You can't put an exact number of days on how long a person would live without water, it varies from person to person, and depending on the situation.

Saving anywhere is a nice feature, but it can make things far easier in some games. For example, you have a lengthy, difficult mission in game, and it lets you save anywhere. If you do really well on the first part, and save it, you'll have done really well on the first part every time you attempt the mission. Now there's a difficult part where you have to defeat many enemies. You try many times, and finally beat them, save it, and you can now restart from that point whenever you like. You can do this for the whole mission. Now you see what happened, right? You just took your best runs of those particular points, and put them together. You would not have succeeded so soon if you had to beat the mission all at once. Being able to save anywhere works for some games, but I don't think all games should have this feature, as you suggested in your title. There's one other major problem with it: You can get stuck. If you happen to expect a difficult part coming up, of course you'll save. But what happens if you go in there and realize, "whoops, I got no ammo/weapon/potions/etc." You die, of course, but when you return to your last save, you can't go back, as the door has shut and locked behind you. Looks like you may need to start a new game.

Camwalter's links are broken. :(I really like your cars, though, Liga. I also see a couple of my personal favorite car, the Audi TT. Nice job on those, makes me kinda want to get Need for Speed. Sadly, I'm broke right now though, and my list of games I want to buy is already so large... *Sigh* Oh well... Anyhow, yeah, they look great.

If you are already an intermediate programmer, Game Maker will be a cinch. I started Game Maker after using Visual Basic and HTML for a few years. The latest version is Game Maker 7.0, which is now Vista compatible, (Game Maker 6.0 and 6.1 were not.) and sports extensions. The are currently developing Game Maker 8.0, which will be Mac compatible, have smaller game files, and have some fancy new editors. Game Maker has been around for a while, but it is still being actively worked on, so it is not outdated.