FS

$14.99 at Best Buy right now. Saw this in the theater and was thoroughly impressed. Bought the bluray the day it came out, and it looks AMAZING. Just not a movie I can watch while I'm eating, lol

I'm a firm believer in strictly enforcing the ratings for online play. Not because I think 12 year olds can't handle the content, but because I'm sick to death of hearing some whiny little punk bark orders at their team like they're the only one who knows how to play. It's also incredibly annoying when you kill one of the little punks and are instantly assaulted with animalistic screeching of "CHEATER FAGGOT MOTHERFUCKER!!!!" or whatever other new word they learned on the playground that day. Then there's the constant avalance of things they do to be annoying because they think it's "cool." Teamkilling, taking vehicles that they then crash (due to malice or sheer ineptitude), killing teammates who take "their" vehicles, crowding hallways, crying that anyone better than them is "cheating", etc. Basically people like the infamous Bishop (seen in video below), only now they have microphones...

Not my favorite genre of music, but DAMN good stuff. Keep up the good work!

Yes, some games do look better than others with the scaling turned on. Shinobi III actually looks better with it turned off. Side note, is my memory of the originals faulty, or is there an ever so slight input lag in the Sonic 1/2/3 (at least in the PS3 version)?

When you figure that you're getting all of this for roughly $0.80USD, there's no reason not to get it. Hell, even if you only like half the games, you're looking at $1.60/game. Not a bad deal at all. Do I wish there was more than just a pixel scaler thrown on top of things? Sure. But for that price I can live with it. Now if they were to do some of these games SF2HD style, then I would happily pay $10/game for some of them. Sonic 1/2/3, Revenge of Shinobi, E-SWAT, or any of those others hand-drawn in 1080p? YES PLZ!

Half an hour from first boot to working desktop. For installing on a VM, that's not too shabby at all. As for the DirectX, seems that Windows 7 comes with DX11

It's not letting me connect for some reason. =(

Odd, the one time I've tried this with my PS3, it did precisely what you griped about. Took my Devil May Cry 4 save over to a friend's place, copied it over, and it flat out told me that my progress would be transferred, but that's it.

Mirror's Edge is good for a rental, at least. Not really a shooter, but it seems to have trouble deciding WHAT it is. Devil May Cry 4 is loads of fun after you get past the insanely long install process. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is flat out one of the best (and most frustrating) racing games I have ever played. I'm just hoping when the final version of GT5 comes out, they cut Prologue owners a break on the price. Little Big Planet....get it. That's all that needs to be said White Knight Chronicles...they need to hurry up and release the damned thing already PAIN. Mindless fun, cheap, entertaining. Sure, DMC and ME are both on 360 as well, but they're still worth playing. Overall, I bought mine for bluray. Found out later that it also makes a fantastic media center (TVersity, FTW). First thing to do (unless you got the 160gb model) is upgrade the HDD. As cheap as notebook drives are these days, there's no reason not to cram as much storage in there as you can (especially if you're going to use it as a media center and download lots of demos/movies).

The story is decent and, visually, its a beautiful game. However, it's somewhat of a let-down compared to what the demo seemed to promise. There's less time for exploration due to the sheer volume of blues that come out of the woodwork to fill you full of lead. A few here and there I can understand, but having an entire SWAT team confronting you at every turn - all armed with automatic weapons - gets old FAST. Here's hoping the sequels (yes, it's planned as a trilogy) focus more on the originality the game showed with the demo.

It is. The 64mbit refers to the amount of space the game takes up. 8 bits to a byte, so 64mbit = 8 megabytes, which is rather sizeable for a Genesis game.

I figured this relates quite well to the discussion at hand.

Ok, either I'm WAY out of practice on platformers (quite possible), or this game is just hard as all hell. I've never died so many times in such a short period of time. That said, I'm having an insane amount of fun with it. Never thought I would enjoy the thorough stomping I'm getting at the hands of this game, but it's the best $10 I've spent on software in a LONG time.

Probably because it's the only thing open at 0100.

Not really. The college level math courses are usually a step above the similarly named HS ones. Math is one area where the teacher can make all the difference in the world, however. I took Calculus one semester and failed it miserably. This was because the teacher didn't really teach the concepts or anything. His idea of doing derivatives was freehand drawing the new graph based upon the slope of the original. Fast forward to the re-take a semester later with a new professor. He would start class out by telling us what our assignment was before next time, and would spend about 10 minutes with a few examples. Basically the examples were to show us the shortcut so we could solve all of our assigned problems in a half hour or so. The professor then spent the rest of the class period explaining (in great detail) WHY the shortcuts he gave us worked the way they do. Because of this, we all learned the course material in such a way that, even if we forgot every little shortcut and trick we learned along the way, we could still figure the problems out because we knew the why and the how of the inner workings and could solve it ourselves without any help. I kid you not when I say it was like a completely different course. Another prime example was my upper level english course. I tested past the entry level and breezed through 200, and 300 was basically a writing/literature course. I was fairly decent at it to begin with, but this professor had such a passion for the material and was so dedicated to teaching it, that even the best writers in the class became even better. And finally, you can learn a lot even from classes that you don't do so well in. I took Western Civilization my first semester, thinking it would be a breeze (aced it in HS w/o a problem). I was in for the shock of my life. The professor taught ALL his courses (100 level included) like they were 400 level or even graduate courses. Fell on my ass, but I still went every day because of the sheer volume of information this guy could conjure up was astounding. I just wasn't prepared for the workload. A couple years later I took a class w/ that same professor over the Korean and Vietnam wars. Undergrads COULD take it, but it was geared more towards the graduate level students. Knowing what to expect now, I came away with a solid B in the course.

Almost any school worth their tuition will have some sort of program geared towards acclimating freshmen to the campus and college life in general. Check with yours and find out what they have available. In a lot of 4-year institutions, they have an entire week before classes start dedicated solely to this task. During such a program, you will only get out of it what you put into it. If anything, it gives you a week before most of the other people arrive to acclimate yourself to the campus. As far as what classes to take, this is where it helps to setup an appointment with your advisor. I've had advisors who were basically there to authorize any exceptions and sign-off on my degree program (these are the ones to avoid, but you have to learn as you go, sadly), but I've had a couple of advisors who were absolutely above and beyond awesome. They took an interest in my course of study, what I wanted to eventually do, and were able to suggest classes that fit me as a person, not just what I needed to get <insert degree here>. Finally, you should find and join as many different student organizations as your schedule will permit. People like to say that high school is the "best four years of your life", but they are horribly wrong. I still keep in contact with a grand total of TWO people that I went to HS with (I graduated in 2000). College is an ENTIRELY different ballgame. Once you get past the 100 and 200 level courses, you end up in classes with people who actually WANT to be there, vs HAVE to be there. Between this and joining whatever student group interests you, the opportunity will be there to make a LOT of connections both social and professional. Even though we have all gone on to different things in the past few years, I still keep in contact with a great many of the people I met, and will most likely continue to do so from here to eternity. A friend I met my first semester in college and I are also currently working on getting a consulting business to take off. Bottom line is, the transition away from HS can be a daunting thing, but it is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I don't mean to sound like some overused self-help book on the subject, but really all you have to do is make sure you avail yourself of ALL available opportunities and sources of information/involvement, and you will do just fine. If you stick to yourself for 4 years and do nothing but study and go to class, you will be miserable. It's not just about books. It's about learning who you are and what you really want to do with your life. The degree is, in all honesty, secondary to that. You can graduate with honors in your field and still be a miserable person if you don't explore your own life in addition to your field of study.

Just a head's up, they have a show in Nashville on Monday night @ Mercy Lounge, and another on the 11th at Exit/In. 21+ on Monday, 18+ for the one on the 11th.

Listened a couple of times today. Definitely a bit of a departure from Act I, but it's growing on me.

If you don't mind hellish learning curves, there's some great stuff out there. Cinelerra is great for video editing, and Ardour is great for audio stuffs. Both have a VERY steep learning curve, but can do a LOT of nice things.

Just make sure your wireless card doesn't use one of the craptacular Broadcom AirForce chipsets (i.e. almost anything sold under the Dynex name). You CAN get it working with ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers, but it's a pain in the ass to do. Although my experience w/ it did provide a frustrating laugh. Was running Ubuntu on a system w/ a borked ethernet port, so wireless was the only option (via the PCMCIA slot). Issued the proper commands to bind ndiswrapper to the windows drivers only to get "ndiswrapper not installed. Use 'apt-get install ndiswrapper' to install." All fine and good, except w/ no network connection, apt is useless, lol.

It's an acquired musical taste, but I absolutely love the current album. They played an all-day music festival that my station put on back in the spring, and were the only band I was really stoked about. I'm happy to say they're every bit as awesome live. Sadly, I couldn't make it to the show they did recently in Louisville. By all accounts, it was epic.

Am I doing it rite? =P

Soon as it hits PSN, it's mine...

Definitely going to continue seeding this tonight. I would right now, but my roomate gets rather....irritable...when anything interferes w/ the WoW playing =\