Capitol? Those in glass houses, as they say. And being "stoned" causes your grammar to slip away? An idiot AND ignorant. I bet your parents are very proud.

It's about time this begins! :D

I don't have any mod points, but I just want you to know that this comment made me laugh. :D

One has to wonder, after the mass bannings last year, pirates and modders (be they the same or otherwise) have smartened up because nobody knew exactly what criteria and flags Microsoft were using to catch the modders. Most modding forums now have a general agreement that dashboard updates were used to catch the mods. Be this the case, the modders have mostly stopped downloading dashboard updates. This would be a great way for Microsoft to catch modders. The only way to run the ISO, cracked to bypass unique keys, would be to have a modded box. Most anticipated game of the year for the 360, of course a LOT of people are going to jump all over this. Not hard for MS to look at a list of gamertags that have played the game prior to launch and compare that with authorised gamertags that received keys. Any heavy-hitting game like this that MS is publishing, especially a flagship like a Halo title, will certainly earn their attention to protect their income.

Not entirely true. LED backlights are controllable and switch off in banks. This is significant because the backlighting can turn off in areas where there is very dark "black", increasing the contrast ratio quite a bit. With a CCFL backlight it is always on, so you have a backlight bleeding through the dark areas on-screen.

It'll be moderately funny to edit that file to report an installation being, let's pick arbitrarily: 1253 years.

I've always been a supporter of defining units of weight/mass with a quantifiable number(# of C-12 atoms for example). A number of people thought themselves so intelligent that they bash the idea of a Kilogram down, yet none have presented a better measurement. It is plain and it is simple, for the time being: You are on Earth. At room temperature, in liquid state and under "typical" atmospheric pressure a litre of water will weigh(fairly accurately) 1 Kilogram. It doesn't matter if you can't tell. It also doesn't matter if you want to know or not. Even if we established a 100% accurate measurement of mass to compare, you still wouldn't use it. Do you have the equipment to count Carbon atoms(example) to see water's mass? No, you'd still be filling a 1 litre bucket of water to set your comparison weight. Or more realistically, you'd be here posting troll comments on /. instead of performing any manner of learning that would require you to know the weight of any particular object. The current kilogram is established as a measurement for everyone to use. Having a SI kilogram based on constituent atoms does nothing for a great deal of average people (read: Slashdot posters). If we keep it as it is, I'll bet you make it through life no differently.

I wouldn't call the Kilogram "arbitrary". You are correct that it isn't defined by any "universal constant" but it is defined as being very near exactly the weight of 1 litre of water.

No, it was never officially stated that Halo was a precursor to Marathon and even if it was, no, you can't say it came out for the Macintosh first. It simply did not. Quantumplacet was right. It was being developed for Macintosh. Microsoft saw promise, offered them a load of cash and voila! Xbox1 title.

I'd be willing to bet that this has more to do with increasing profit per unit rather than being "green". With the cost of printing those manuals(which, aside from the cardboard cover insert, is the most environmentally friendly portion of a complete game package) reduced, they also substantially reduce shipping weight.

Those savings will not be passed on to the consumer in any way and games will still be $50+

When companies go "green", they don't mean enviro-friendly, they mean money.

They import Canadian 1 dollar coins?

Bleszinski doesn't matter. None of these so called "rock star" devs are important. They are marketing figures putting a "cool" face on game development. Mr. Bleszinski may be an excellent coder or digital artist, but even if he is hauling his fair share of the labour, he's still just one guy in a list. His "personality" when making public appearances and the like, well...again, he's a talking head for the studio's marketing department. I almost wonder sometimes, do the parties responsible for "images" like Mr. Bleszinski, walk through the office and pick out the most "easy to clean up" or arguably attractive person working on the game and offer them this kind of job; "You can keep pounding out lines of code this week ORRRR you could faux hawk your hair, get some 'hip' clothes on our dollar, take a pay increase of no less than 25%(just for the sake of example) and be our new 'The Guy!!!1!'(again, as example)." I will say this for certain, when you play a Gears of War game on a large screen, with some large audio, it starts smashing your face as soon as you load up the game. If often feels worth it to have had to listen to guys like him even talk in the first place.