Comment Re:texting (Score 1) 215
Or possibly, Gem Plumbing
Comment Re:PC! (Score 3, Insightful) 133
http://www.vpforums.org/ is the site you seek.
Comment Re:What is your favorite pinball machine? (Score 1) 110
The original Black Knight was IMHO better. It was far more challenging and was around the time when
Williams used some cool-ass sounds. Of course that was back in the heyday where the arcade operators
were pinball fans and kept the tables in top shape.
The first High Speed ranks up at the top as well. Other Williams honorable mentions: PinBot, Adams Family,
Twighlight Zone. F14 was cool (I wonder how many flippers operators went thru with those extra strong kickbacks)
but way too easy in most arcades.
Bally favorites: 8Ball Deluxe, Silverball Mania, Space Invaders. Old-school Capn Fantastic and 8ball were a challenge too.
Gotleib: Hauted House was probably my fav. The 70's style mechanicals based on card games etc. were always fun.
Anyone remember Atari's oversized Hercules and Superman tables with the balls that must have weighed 10lbs each?
Ahh.. its a shame Bally and Williams moved on to the slot machine biz. But you can't blame them because there's
huge money in slots nowdays. They certainly seem to pour the creativity into them.
Submission + - John Glenn: Keep space shuttles flying
mcgrew writes: The AP is reporting (via Yahoo) that Mercury astronaut John Glenn has some very logical reasons to keep the shuttle flying until a replacement is built.
Glenn doesn't believe the general public realizes what's happening on the space front. "Going to Russia and being, in effect, under control of Russia for our space program just doesn't sit right with me and I don't think it sits well with the American people, or won't, either," said Glenn, a former U.S. senator who rode the shuttle into orbit in 1998 at age 77. He turns 89 next month. Glenn said little if any money will be saved by canceling the shuttle program, considering all the millions of dollars going to Russia for rocket rides. At least two shuttle flights a year could keep the station going and the work force employed, until something new comes along, he said. The former astronaut wonders what will happen if there's an accident and Soyuz rockets are grounded. He supposes the space station — a $100 billion investment — would have to be abandoned. He also worries scientific research at the station will take a hit if experiments have to be launched from Russia and have no way of getting back to Earth in bulk.
How Do You Measure a Game's Worth? 188
RamblingJosh writes "Video games can be very expensive these days, especially with so many great games on the horizon. So I wonder: how exactly do you get the most gaming entertainment for your dollar? '... the first thing I personally thought about when approaching this was money spent versus time played. Using Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions as an example: I bought the game for about $30 Canadian, and played it for roughly 85 hours. That comes out to 2.83 hours per dollar spent, a pretty good number. In this case, the game was a lot of fun and it was cheap, and so the system works fairly well. There are so many other things to think about, though. What if the game wasn't so good? What about the fact that it's portable? ... What about the new content? Multiplayer?'"
Genre Wars — the Downside of the RPG Takeover 248
Phaethon360 writes "From Bioshock and Modern Warfare 2 to even Team Fortress 2, RPG elements are creeping into game genres that we never imagined they would. This change for the most part has managed to subtly improve upon genres that needed new life, but there's a cost that hasn't been tallied by the majority of game developers. 'The simple act of removing mod tools, along with the much discussed dedicated server issue, has made [MW2] a bit of a joke among competitive players. Gone are the days of "promod," and the only option you have is to play it their way. If Infinity Ward are so insistent on improving the variety of our experiences, they don’t have to do it at the expense of the experience that many of us already love. It really is that simple. If they don’t want to provide a good "back to basics experience," they could at least continue to provide the tools that allow us to do that for ourselves.'"
Looking Back At Dungeons & Dragons 189
An anonymous reader sends in a nostalgic piece about Dungeons & Dragons and the influence it's had on games and gamers for the past 36 years. Quoting:
"Maybe there was something in the air during the early '70s. Maybe it was historically inevitable. But it seems way more than convenient coincidence that Gygax and Arneson got their first packet of rules for D&D out the door in 1974, the same year Nolan Bushnell managed to cobble together a little arcade machine called Pong. We've never had fun quite the same way since. Looking back, these two events set today's world of gaming into motion — the Romulus and Remus of modern game civilization. For the rest of forever, we would sit around and argue whether games should let us do more or tell us better stories."
Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
Comment Think of this however ... (Score 1) 837
I tend to think that if management is pushing this down, then there's probably been an issue with the IT team dressing appropriately.
I've been in large companies over the years and some of the IT people really pushed the bottom end of "business casual".
You have to think about this though:
The outsourced company they could hire to replace your department will almost definately wear some sort of team shirt when they are in the office.
In fact, I bet they'd be happy to.
In my current job, the entire network engineering team was given a full set of various style company logo shirts. We are to wear these
when visiting customer and vendor sites, or perhaps on days when there are meetings with various in-house departments.
I don't have a problem with it. It isn't a hard rule to follow. There's nothing wrong with projecting a consistent professional company image
when interfacing with the public or other companies.
The shirts are also good to wear on days when visiting head-end buildings working on racks or running wiring or fibers along the rails where
all the nasty dust bunnies are. No sense in dirtying up personal clothes
ASCAP Seeks Licensing Fees For Guitar Hero Arcade 146
Self Bias Resistor writes "According to a post on the Arcade-Museum forums, ASCAP is demanding an annual $800 licensing fee from at least one operator of a Guitar Hero Arcade machine, citing ASCAP licensing regulations regarding jukeboxes. An ASCAP representative allegedly told the operator that she viewed the Guitar Hero machine as a jukebox of sorts. The operator told ASCAP to contact Raw Thrills, the company that sells the arcade units. The case is ongoing and GamePolitics is currently seeking clarification of the story from ASCAP."
Comment Re:lowest account number? (Score 1) 443
Oh and congrats taco and
Comment Re:lowest account number? (Score 3, Funny) 443
``Pl'ngooi hglw'grtz Natalie Portman
/. wgah'nagl b00bies petran''
(In a pool of hot grits at Slashdot, Natalie Portman lies naked and petrified.)Thanks for 100,000, Taco and Company.
*blinks* Did someone say something? I thought I felt a "disturbance" in my "force"
Submission + - C64 Emulator finally approved from App Store (manomio.com)
Gi0 writes: "After a couple of months from its rejection,the C64 Emulator is finally approved in Appstore.To quote its creators"BASIC has been removed for this release; however, we hope that working with Apple further will allow us to re-enable it.Despite it's absence, BASIC is not our focus, ultimately fans of the C64 want games"
It comes with 5 bundled games and will certainly give you an old times taste in your iPhone.
Link to app:http://c64.manomio.com/index.php/commodore64ituneslink/"
It comes with 5 bundled games and will certainly give you an old times taste in your iPhone.
Link to app:http://c64.manomio.com/index.php/commodore64ituneslink/"
Comment Re:Slow news day (Score 1) 127
.. Eve has a long history of trying to be as realistic as possible, meaning that their solution to this problem will be interesting as well. Will they diddle the database? Probably not, if history is any indication.
If by Eve, you mean CCP, no they won't do anything. This was an entirely player-run
operation, it is the players issue to resolve.
Unless rules were broken (player accounts were hacked, real money traded hands, etc.), CCP will sit
back and analyze it and perhaps post some numbers to the community if they find anything interesting.
CCP has someone with a PHD in economy/finance on their staff. I'm sure he's watched the numbers closely
since the EBank events.
Submission + - Making Babies in Space May Not Be Easy 2
Hugh Pickens writes: "Studies of reproduction in space have previously been carried out with sea urchins, fish, amphibians and birds but Brandom Keim writes in Wired that Japanese biologists have discovered that although mammalian fertilization may take place normally in space, as mouse embryos develop in microgravity their cells have trouble dividing and maturing. The researchers artificially fertilized mouse eggs with sperm that had been stored inside a three-dimensional clinostat, a machine that mimics weightlessness by rotating objects in such a way that the effects of gravity are spread in every direction. Some embryos were ultimately implanted in female mice and survived to a healthy birth, but at lower numbers than a regular-gravity control group. Part of the difference could be the result of performing tricky procedures on sensitive cells, but the researchers suspect they also reflect the effect of a low-gravity environment on cellular processes that evolved for Earth-specific physics. "These results suggest for the first time that fertilization can occur normally under G environment in a mammal, but normal preimplantation embryo development might require 1G," concludes the report. "Sustaining life beyond Earth either on space stations or on other planets will require a clear understanding of how the space environment affects key phases of mammalian reproduction.""
