jason

Sorry but I disagree with the sarcasm of this article.

As hinted, the country is very much well aware of the banking crisis, the fact that Walmart is the devil (I do my part and haven't shopped there since I quit about 6 years ago), and that cable companies have the worst customer service of any industry.

What most average consumers don't know, or sometimes overlook, is what the consumerist pointed out. Video games are the most expensive form of home entertainment, and there's no good reason for it. EA doesn't "make" award winning games (except on sites like this who clearly have EA's hands in their collective arse kissing pockets), they publish most of them. Hardworking smaller studios make them, and are either forced to work with EA, or are simply bought up by them. EA then takes their great product and slashes it apart, selling it to we gamers in pieces.

That's on top of the fact that I've believed someone should intervene on EA for their licensing deals in the sports genre, which has allowed them to monopolize, and thus cease to innovate, there.

I won't go as far as to say EA is the big voice in collusion of keeping game prices so high, but they are, and EA does buy up any company they can get their hands on, and EA does screw consumers by delivering an unfinished product (I think in one of the articles they pointed out that, in order to get every single possible variation of ME3, and all of its various exclusive content options, you'd need to spend well over $600).

If the Golden Poo were at all serious, Walmart would win every year in my eyes, but I think the fact EA won was immense, because so few people in this country realize just how heinous they are. If this gets it just a little exposure, there's already news about the banking crisis, good on the Golden Poo and their voters.

@Oddgirl well as long as we can safely assume that people won't consider WiiU sales as a Wii sale, we can also safely assume that as that rolls out, and sony and microsoft sitting on profits and no new console release in sight, that they might have been pretty smart going the 10 year route. after all of it's ridiculous sales numbers, the wii never did beat out the HD twins, and the games that would be coming out for the wiiu would simply be what's out now on the ps3 and 360. that's a tough sell for consumers who already lost faith in nintendo with the 3ds release. i could be wrong, and believe me i don't want to start a flame war, but i agree with alexisonfire, every company this generation can come out and say they had a win. 360 maybe more so than ps3 because of the success of the kinect for the near future, and their fairly significant lead in software to hardware purchases ratio (which amusingly stands at 1.49 for the 3ds).

@maveric101 that's pretty dumb assessment of this. considering what geohotz was claiming he wanted, and what the settlement actually is, i think this is exactly what sony wanted. they never said we want hotz to pay millions and to live his life in poverty, whereas hotz's stance was always that he believed he was in the right, a cocky and arrogant attitude the whole way.

in the end he backed down, sony got a minimally visible (compared to say having the case go to court and have the potential of "ruining one poor souls life just to make money") case settlement, they got a legal promise out of hotz to never do what he did again, allowing them to do whatever they want legally if he or anyone else tries that jailbreak technique again, and again, hotz backed down.

i won't argue about the rights as consumers we should have with the products we buy, that's a far more complicated issue than people like hotz would like it to be (or big businesses who want to microcharge you for everything), but in terms of this case, i'm pretty sure sony won.

i think i had the perfect christmas, space invaders ice cube tray, the bro code by barry stinson, Z.H.P (from my beautiful girlfriend), the most adorable pox plushie ever, tron in 3d with my baby, and several steam games from myself. i believe between all my friends we had about 30 boxes delivered to us from thinkgeek and/or woot!....like i said, the perfect christmas all around.

i'm going to have to go with my microwave (just over my scale, which causes blind rage by anyone who uses it, and my bookshelves, which suck at staying vertical). my bet is the thing, which has gone from idly humming, to churning, to actually rumbling/vibrating, will blow in the next week if i forget that i was going to through it away in the next week.

this article makes me laugh. it starts off by using the word photography, and then just delves into talking about crap the author clearly knows nothing about. macro, not a focal length. macro is simply the ability to focus on an object closer than the normal foot or so most SLR lenses are able to handle (ie true 1:1 reproduction....well closer to it).

keeping everything visible in focus at once? this is what we call total utter shit. DoF is one of the most useful tools available to real photographers. not just the depth, but the actual angle and points of focus, too. SLRs are decent when it comes to DoF, but got nothing on a large format camera with extensible and movable bellows. having everything in frame in focus is the equivalent to the worst shot possible in most cases.

it also doesn't seem to eliminate any of the work. instead of spending an hour setting up your scene and grabbing an incredible shot, you're sitting at a computer for hours pouring through hours of video looking for a single frame. unless it promises every single frame will be ultra crisp (movie studio cameras can't even do this by the way, there are in between shots which are just motion and blur), that seems just as much work. in fact, more tedious if you think about it, and far less satisfying.

@jpmacor bones3d, no joke, that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard, and i really hope you were just being sarcastic. first off, the woman looked able enough to handle a keyboard, and if she couldn't, i'm imagining a capacitive touchscreen would be a whole new beast for her.

as for the toy comment, let's go over what the ipad can and can't do. it can read email, surf the web, play videos, serve as an ereader, play music, umm do things that a laptop can do, but not as well, much slower, and thus far only apple apps can run simultaneously. it's a toy, hell laptops are technically a luxury to have. do guys really have such a sense of entitlement that you think that $500 dollar tertiary device isn't just a toy for everyone who buys one? it's small, sexy, and has a bazillion uses....for things that aren't essential. not for someone on a fixed income complaining about not being able to pay cold hard cash. i'm a college student, not only am i on a fixed income, i've got debt in student loans to look forward to. i want a tablet PC (the compal naz-10 piques my interest a bit more), but i know i'll not be able to buy one, cause $500 is a damn lot of money to spend on what it could possibly be used for. i could save up $500 but i could think of a million better ways to spend it. i say again, that lady knew what she was doing.

@SskyNnet the ipad is kind of three steps above a luxury. if she was buying a macbook, or imac, you know something with more than a niche purpose, maybe i'd follow your argument. plus like one of the first comments said, she has to have a credit card or else that's a $500 coaster cause you sure as hell can't buy apps with cash. she has a credit card, and knows damn well what she was doing.

can i ask a silly question (though it's probably already been asked)? what's a disabled woman on a fixed income doing buying a $500 niche item that even many apple cultists wish they could afford to pick up? i'm not much for credit cards, but if you can carry around $500+ in cash, i think you can figure out how to get yourself a debit card if you really wanted to purchase an ipad that dang bad. clearly whatever her income is fixed at, it's nothing we should be shedding a tear over if she could even think about going out to drop cash on a $500 toy.

as long as it's not like the puzzle fighter "hd remix." don't get me wrong, most of it looked pretty good, but the fact that the chars weren't upgraded to a new resolution sucked, they were like a hazy overly pixelated version of their former selves, hurt my soul to see super deformed fuzziness like that.