Messages

Meh.
Democracy is nothing more than a popularity contest these days.

It's not about who's best for the job, it's about whose name is accompanied by the best campaign slogan, photo opportunities and use of carefully chosen and over-repeated buzzwords and stock phrases.

"Hey, Obama goes bowling! That must mean he's the most capable of running the country!"

"And what makes you sufficient at negotiating with the IRA?"
"Well, leading up to the election, I made a series of short videos showing my family hanging around the house acting normal for the cameras, and I put them up on the web."

Whoop-de-bastarding-doo.

I mean, sure there are some people who do the research and vote for the candidate that supports their views, but they're swamped by the masses of plebians that vote for someone purely because they like his smile.

If I were registered to vote, I'd send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown.

I think there have been roughly the same amount of unofficial Discworld 'companion' books published as there are that were co-written by Terry Pratchett himself. I dunno if the argument of "it will harm sales of the official version" is valid at all, but it doesn't seem to be seen as much of an issue in Pratchett's camp.

Also, I'm pretty sure J.K. Rowling has made more cash from her seven books than Pratchett has from his fifty-odd.

I guess this is on me...

Yeah, in either of the links Mr C posted you should find a working link.
But I have to ask - where did you see the screens if not within the "completed games" thread?

I just checked, and MediaFire is telling me that the demo is still there and available to download.
However, MF can be a bitch at times, so if you're having trouble getting hold of it just try again later and it should have sorted itself out.

Let me know if... anything.

I thought it might be a fun little game to play.

Prepare to be disappointed.

Also...
Yay! It finally got the 5 votes required for them to show up on the game's page.
And after only 145 downloads. :

Also also...
That's 145 through the actual page, not counting those that used the direct link in the forum.

Also also also...
That's a lot bigger audience than I ever expected.
Maybe I should hurry up and finish the game.

P.S.
Emoticons, woo!

P.P.S.
Sorry, I'll shut up now.

I just got an email today saying this movie has been done by RiffTrax.

That is all.

I meant to post this a while back.
There are a few new GiP threads I have not yet perused.

Anyway, my list thus far is as follows...

Forgotten Element
Resonance
Quest to End All Quests
Robots of Dawn
Dragonfall
The Darksiders
NES Quest
And Jack Hurt looks like it could be really good, too.

Colourwise looks interesting. I'll be playing that out of curiosity if nothing else.

I wasn't really looking forward to Hitchhiker's Guide until I played the demo, but I was impressed by the humour in it. It possibly reminded me of what I maybe think I seem to remember the TV and radio series' were somewhat similar to. If it gets cleaned up a bit, I think I might really like it.

[WARNING: Poorly thought-out metaphor approaching!]

They way I understand it, it's not about us (as consumers/punters/surfers/whatevers) hardly at all.

WARNING: Poorly thought-out metaphor approaching!

It's like Virgin are standing you at a crossroads and saying "you can be driven down this road to get an apple from this place that's paid us, or you can wade through this knee-deep treacle to get an orange from those that haven't."
Most people would just go for the easy option.

Even if they really wanted an orange, an apple will do considering the effort saved.
As a result, hardly anyone is buying oranges, so the orange merchant goes out of business.

Okay, ignore that metaphor for this next bit...

While it's true that "normal" sites like this one (that only transfer a few K at a time) will hardly be affected, as Nik and MrC have said, sites that transfer/stream large files (whether it be mp3s, swfs or more) will potentially be crippled unless they pay the protection money.


It's not about censorship, or making the most of resources, or anything like that.
It's just about money. Nothing more.
If some sites will pay the ISPs for tipping the balance in their favour, the ISPs will gladly accept it.


If this thing happens smoothly for Virgin, I can see it going one of two ways.
1) Every other ISP on the planet will think "hey, that seemed easy enough, we'll do it too". This is bad.
2) A couple of ISPs (such as BT are claiming to do at the moment) will not follow suit, and therefore get a lot more business for providing their service the way it is now. Nothing will really change.

And a possible 3)
Those ISPs that didn't follow suit will wait until they've got all the business, and then do it anyway. This is just cheeky.

I personally think that #2 (possibly #3, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it) is the more likely, but this is uninformed, uneducated guesswork.


And yes, Virgin was initially a British company, but I think they've gotten so huge and global now that it's kind of a moot point.

Just found out about this, thought some of you might be interested.
If not, you should be.

http://stopvirgin.movielol.org

The new CEO of Virgin Media, Neil Berkett, has openly stated in an interview that they think net neutrality is “a load of bollocks” and claimed they're already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others. They would then put websites and services that don't pay Virgin in the "slow lane", meaning those sites would load slowly and cause most users to give up using them, feeling forced to use whatever Virgin wants to push through their network.

This is not the first time an internet provider infringes upon net neutrality, but it is the first time that an ISP so brutally states that they simply plan to limit internet access to a television-like system in which the access provider completely regulates the content you have access to.

Virgin Media has over 3.5 million customers in the UK and the real danger is that when they start applying this system to their network, all major internet providers around the globe will soon follow the trend. Because this is exactly what major ISP's have been wanting to do for years.

It's in Revelations, people!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1gLAj-BFec

This made me laugh a lot more than it probably should have done.

...
I don't know why I did that...

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

SSH picked up on it in his blog, somewhat.

Step 1 - Being that I'm a G1 TransFormers fan, when signing up to a LazyTown forum I went with the name Ultra Magnus (being a rather lame pun on Magnús Scheving's name) and created the following to serve as my avatar.



Step 2 - Seeing as that is the name by which I am known within the LT community, I figured I should use it when referring to myself within the LazyTown game (demo) I made, for simplicity's sake.

Step 3 - Seeing as that is the name by which I refer to myself in the game, I figured I should also use it around this place, for simplicity's sake.

True story.

Ya.

The game's actual page is http://telltalegames.com/strongbad, and apparently the first ep is set for release in June.

Should be awesome.

When I started driving a pink car, people at work used to make jokes but I just said "Does the pink car threaten you, somehow?" and that usually stopped them.

A pink car? That is so gay!

I'm kidding! Jeeze, chill out!

Anyway, my standard comeback has always been...

Them: "You're gay."
Me: "Yeah, you wish."

It gets the job done. 8)

The thing about real actors and some of the better puppeteers (like the Henson guys, for example), is that they almost subconsciously put subtle little movements and twitches into their performance, but because it's being filmed in real-time these are very much a spur-of-the-moment thing and they're usually gone in half a second or less.

With CG, every half-second takes (total guesswork here, but let's say...) 15 minutes to put together, plus there's always the opportunity to backtrack and revisit/redo that half-second countless times.
Usually, what seems to happen, is that the CG guys think that they need to cram in as much movement as possible to over-compensate the innate stiffness of CG models, and it just ends up looking rubbery and OTT*, as many people in this thread have already said.



And while it may be true that Legolas is an elf that doesn't conform to the conventional laws of gravity, he still has muscles and bones, right? You can instantly spot a digi-elf because they act like they have neither.

It's the same with Spider-Man and (at least) the first couple of Harry Potters.
They had huge budgets for their films yet still look like complete weightless, boneless, muscle-less rag dolls at times.

TransFormers kinda worked, but that's because they were a bunch of moving plates.
They looked stiff, but the were supposed to look stiff, you dig?



Also, I agree that the problem is maybe with the film-makers' pride/ego.
They seem to want to thrust the CG into the spotlight to show-off all the good parts, but inevitably draw as much attention to the bad parts in doing so.

Going back to Alien (and Jaws) - the reason they worked so well because you couldn't see them.
If they were made today with CG, Mr Scott and (especially) Mr. Spielberg would probably want to get as many long, lingering shots of their beautiful monster as they could fit into 2 hours.
I mean, just look at the recent versions of the original Star Wars trilogy. 'Nuff said.


* No, this does not stand for "Of The Tentacle".

I think LimpingFish is closer to the mark than he (?) has been given credit for.

Every living thing on the planet has a deeply fundamental, primal urge to carry on its species, and humans are no different.
Sex is like the vanishing point that everything else in life is leading towards.

To this effect, in the eyes of some, gay = failure to mate = failure to further the species = failure at the most basic level of existence, stuck at square one being overtaken by amoebas.

But, you know, people understand gay. They may not like it, but they understand it because it's still about having sex.
You try telling someone you're asexual, that you're just not interested in sex regardless of who it'd be with.
They really can't get their head around that.

Just finished it, and it was a very cool game.
Very nice graphics, music and dialogue throughout.

Congrats, and I look forward to seeing what you do in the future. 8)

Oy vey! :

Right, I've completed the game now, and the wallet was exactly where I thought it would be from the start.
I must've tried every combination of... those places and verbs except the one that actually worked.

So it just goes to show, an extra ten seconds of experimenting could've saved me a lot of time and confusion.
Thanks for the help, anyway.

?? I should read better.

No, I'm a guy. It was probably my use of the word silly (in the second post of this thread) that gave him that idea. Or my unmanly complaint.

Only women are silly? I don't think so 

Nah, it's just that complaining is synonymous with femality.

Right. That did it.
I am officially confused.

Spoiler

1. I asked for help finding the wallet.
2. TwinMoon implied that I need to find the bully guy to do that.
3. I asked for help finding the guy.
4. You implied that I need to find the wallet to do that.

[close]

And no, I didn't find the wallet.

great entries so far !
for any last minute entries, you have exactly 1 more day from the time of this post

But you posted that after midnight on the fourst, so 24 hours on would make it the... fist.

Jun the Bully.

I've not even met that guy.
I guess that'd be the big clue I was talking about. :

And thanks for the tips, TM.
I missed that particular item because it blended so well with its surroundings.

Edit: Okay, I'm still stuck.
Where/how do I find this guy?