Site Updates Will Be Sparse Until September (Also: Open Thread)
I have a bunch of research and article preparation to do over the next few days, and I am going to be devoting as much of my time as I possibly can to that. What that means, in practical terms, is that I won’t be updating the site as much — if at all — over the weekend and into next week. What I will be doing, however, is frantically scouring every dark corner of Google, YouTube, Flickr, and every other major content aggregation site I can think of looking for material related to certain Ultima games.
Because, yes, I want to have a dozen different things to post about the first four Ultima games ready to go for next Tuesday.
To be honest, I could certainly use any help, both in terms of researching content and drafting articles. If you’d like to assist, drop me a line and I’ll see if I can come up with an assignment for you.
In the mean time, I’m going to leave this up as an open thread, with a few hastily-researched-but-hopefully-interesting articles for you to mull over and discuss.
How do you like the new open thread graphic, by the way?
Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system
He laments what he views as the UK’s failure to “capitalise on its record of innovation in science and engineering” in favour of “a drift to the humanities”; he encourages them to “look back to glory days of Victorian era”.
By 2016, all smartphones will feature touchscreens.
Or, well, nearly all of them. At least that’s what a broup of analysts thinks.
Full Disk Image of Earth Captured August 26, 2011.
Hurricane Irene is fully visible in the image, and is bloody massive.
..there is a particular bird who may have survived flying through Irene.
First, they flubbed their launch of Deus Ex: Human Revolution by pre-opening new copies of the game to remove the included OnLive coupons. Then, they opted to simply pull all copies of the game from their shelves, ostensibly to return them all to Square Enix.
Now, in a (rather lame) effort to soothe the (perfectly legitimate) butthurt they have caused, they are offering a “$50 GameStop gift card and a Buy 2 Get 1 Free pre-owned purchase” offer to those who bought the game from them.
I believe the appropriate response here is: “golf clap”.
Coordinated, global ATM heist nets millions for its perpetrators.
Stolen pre-paid debit cards, it seems, were the catalyst here; the attackers obtained a couple dozen cards and managed to increase or remove the withdrawal limits on them before using them at ATMs around the world.
Anyone else curious about the Amazon tablet?
I know I am.
Razer’s “future of PC gaming”: the Blade laptop!
This 17″, $2800 powerhouse does boast some impressive specs, a keen design, and a fantastic UI.
But does the gaming PC need saving, as Razer’s marketing campaign boasted. Gizmodo, at least, argues “yes, and then some!”
PC gamers will have to wait for Skyrim DLC.
As if to prove Gizmodo’s point…
BioWare’s “Dr. Ray” on The Old Republic and Dragon Age 3.
Essentially, BioWare is testing the living crap out of their upcoming MMORPG.
Torchlight 2 will cost just $20!
If it’s anywhere near as enjoyable as the last one…it’ll be money well spent.
Apple has hired — as an intern — another iPhone jailbreaker.
This time, it’s Nicholas “Comex” Allerga.
The article about PC gaming is stupid. Just because the Razer is a “standardized platform” does not mean that it is possible to make games that look better for it. That would require, for starters, a stripping down of the underlying operating system.
The reason that PC games don’t look much better than consoles is:
1) Those PC games are console ports.
2) The ones that aren’t are ports are made by companies that also want to sell to players with older PCs.
Eric Schmidt’s concerns are laughable. I have friends, family and colleagues in engineering and science, and many of those have artistic talents also. No doubt there are those in the media and artistic industries that have had scientific educations or suchlike. The education system in this country needs improving, but by all accounts it is better than most of the others in the world.
The Victorian comment I will ignore, since he appears to have used certain examples without considering the full history of the situation.
As for the Razer laptop, the most obvious flaw is the price. It cannot compete in the market, so it will never be in the position to be considered “standard”, and therefore no games will be made specifically for it in the same way they are for consoles. PC hardware, software and peripheral makers need to embrace the strengths of the PC, rather than try to change it into something else.
I somehow fail to see how a 2800$ laptop could save PC gaming. I know very few people who’d be willing to spend that much for a PC.
If that many people ever crowd into the same cell in my game there will be a serious problem. Holy Shit.