Nobody cares about my story either AND no one will read it three days later, but here it is. We moved to a new school when I was in third grade, and they gave me a placement test to determine my English ability. It was Dick and Jane stuff, which I had never seen before (I read Watership Down when I was in Kindergarten. I had started reading at age 2). Needless to say, I scored perfectly, which the school could hardly believe. So they put me in the Advanced course, with the _other_ two gifted students in the school.

On the first day of Advanced, we went to the computer room where they had six PET computers. Our treat for being Advanced students was to get to type in a program in BASIC and run it. Since my family had had a Vic 20 for a couple years, and since the BASIC language is pretty much the same for both, I read the code and told the other two what would happen when we ran it.

Kicked. Out. And in record time, no doubt.

I was never allowed around the PET computers again.

*sigh*

In high school, they gave the IT duties to the volleyball coach (for real). I don't know how he ended up with the task, but he kept grabbing me out of sixth period (which was his free period, but I had Geology) so I could help him with computer problems. I flunked Geology. Good times. :-(

Prelude is nowhere near as fun/polished as TFV. There are bits of dialog that make me wonder if the creators were paying attention AT ALL when they played Portal themselves (so many things in Prelude don't make sense). I'm trying very hard not to come out and say that Prelude was intelligence-insultingly dumb, but there it is.

However, it was quite challenging, and if THAT is what you're looking for, Prelude has it in abundance.

But of the two, I highly HIGHLY recommend TFV, and I will outright DISrecommend Prelude. Prelude was way hyped when it came out and was a terrible disappointment. And, not that it has a bearing on quality, but TFV has a comparatively tiny download (as it mostly reuses the resources in Portal and HL2). 40 megs, vs the 20-times-larger 800+ meg Prelude.

(I may perhaps be a little bitter regarding Prelude, as I was really looking forward to its release. And I will say that it is maybe a bit better than a lot of the stand-alone fan maps. But Portal and TFV were so, SO much better.)

TL;DR
Prelude = a challenge; TFV = a fun game

While you're waiting for Portal 2, play the FV mappack if you haven't already. It introduces some new game mechanics, and would itself have been an OK sequel (or prequel), except it's a totally free mod instead.

THAT's the part that bothers you?

How about: Humans fly half way across the galaxy, and encounter aliens roughly the same shape that also have a cultural hangup about exposed boobs.

(It's not just that they are essentially humans in furry suits, they are AMERICANS in furry suits. Boobs=bad, violence=OK)

Also syncing is a problem. If you watch the video, it's plain that one of the cameras lags on motion. Instantly ruins the 3d effect.

My Mary isn't from anywhere. I guess it doesn't work if you have NoScript.

The question is, after the attempts to scale it back to a much more exclusive event has E3 managed to escape obscurity and defeat at the hands of up-and-comers like PAX?

E3 is about games.
PAX is about gamers.

They're fundamentally different, and not really in competition with each other. I'm not sure where the submitter even got this question; E3 battling obscurity isn't mentioned in the article, nor is PAX, nor other expos at all.

Text to speech isn't anywhere near 100% yet.

Did you mean speech to text? I dunno, here's an actual Google Voice transcription I got recently:

well google voice driver back man on the day he how you're doing at all so lee the four on friday i'm at in the review and anyway gimme a call back i'll talk to you later bye

Seems pretty clear to me. /s

because as we all know "violence never solves anything."

Drew: Violence never solved anything? World War I, World War II, "Star Wars," every Super Bowl...Who says violence never solved anything?

Multiple small warheads can be more efficient than one large one. And ironically, small warheads are "cleaner", making less fallout.

I thought the opposite was true: the more powerful the blast, the greater percentage of radioactive particles sent into the upper atmosphere where they decay out of harm's way. Am I the only one that read the high energy weapons FAQ that came with Fallout 1?