James

You know, it's funny, I expected the Snickers jokes to come up during the week prior, not on launch day. You know... sitting in line 4 days early, camping out in your little tent... "Gonna be here for a while?"

To those who suggest Wii RTS: play with the wiimote at a Gamestop, etc., then come talk to me. I'm going to buy one Sunday, don't get me wrong, but at least in the kiosk the pointer did not work fantastically well for me, "Mr. Coffeehands". I was able to click (large) buttons pretty well, but could not hold the pointer in, say, a 2-inch square (on the ~26" LCD TV) if my life depended on it. Maybe tweaking the sensitivity would help, I guess, but I think if you're looking for a one-to-one mouse equivalent, you'll be disappointed.


Also, some points
* agree with those who want a DS RTS (RA2 FTW!!!)
* voice commands will remain a gimick for the foreseeable future -- you WILL look like that retarded kid on the Nerf commercial pointing his gun and yelling "FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!"
* it's tragic that Westwood fell to EA, but I liked Generals and still hold out *some* hope that CnC3 won't be total crap
* ESPECIALLY now that they have XNA to play with, there is NO EXCUSE to keep the 360 ver from playing online with PC users. I would *love* that, since my wife could play on the PC with the mouse she likes, and I could play on the 360 -- not because I like the controller or anything (PLEASE support USB mice/keyboards!), but because I'm too cheap to buy another PC high-spec enough to play CnC3

I think it's awesome that the Sony fanboys always come into the Wii threads trolling about how the Wii is just a GC with a powerglove, but now it turns out that what similarity exists is actually an asset, since developers who understood the GC can still use their old tools, reducing development costs.

IMHO, the deciding factor is going to be if Nintendo provides A-1 support for the Wiimote to 3rd parties -- if you have to get a guy with a doctorate in human physiology to write your input routines, development will not do well. If, as I hear on the grapevine, the big N is going to provide a well-designed controller API (along with some design docs to help establish paradigms of use), I could see this going very well indeed.

Ahh, John Edwards. He was a cockmonger as a lawyer, he was a cockmonger in Congress, he was a cockmonger as a VP candidate, and now we see he's just a flat-out cockmonger generally. The scuttlebutt is that he first found out about this story during a conference call with the unions that're financing this whole anti-Walmart thing in the first place. HAR!

Gyah! WTF? Was the guy doing something illegal, or even immoral? At least he had the decency to hire people at a legal wage, who even have a shot at benefits (thru their agency), instead of that guy who went out bribing homeless guys, and at least he had them work reasonable shifts, etc. What was the problem with it? It did an excellent job of showing how badly broken the current system is.

@#1: remember, their corporate charter is "Don't be evil." If you look at their FAQ page for the new feature, they promise to delete it from their servers once the call is placed. And rather than worried, you should be excited -- the CEO said he "doesn't see any reason people should have to pay for phone calls", period, and wants to give you a free cell phone where you make (adwords sponsored) free phone calls whenever, wherever. I'll put up with an ad or two to save 60+ bucks a month!


...That said, this really invites massive misuse. Think it was funny prank calling people and asking if their fridge is running? Try searching for "live nude girls", picking a business, and putting your preacher's home # into the "call now" box.

I think before this leaves beta (which would make it, what, the 3rd or 4th Google product ever to do so?), it needs some kind of a "check" system, like where you enter your number, it calls you, and the computer voice speaks a word you have to type back to validate your ownership of the number (or something like that). As it stands, you can make Google connect anybody to anybody else with no apparent consequences.


Wait... don't all the congressional offices have a comment line # floating around on the Internet somewhere?

I can't believe Session Manager didn't make the cut either time -- I know FF 2.0 has a way to unclose tabs, kind of, but it's weak and doesn't work on closed windows. SM lets you basically undo any action without consequence -- closing a tab, closing a window, exiting FF, crashing your machine, whatever... it just works. Now, if they could just add FF 2.0 support.

I keep wondering when big companies like Sony will figure out Econ 101 and get the laws of supply and demand down. You might take some flack from the media if you launch the PS3 at, say, $1200 per console, but that seems to be about where Ebay has settled on the actual *value* of one, at least for the first few months.

If they charged that much, a) you wouldn't have retards freezing their asses off in front of Best Buy for a week; b) Ebay wouldn't be in the position of trying to keep its customers from spending two grand on somebody's preorder that *might* get them a PS3 before Christmas; c) the whole damn blogosphere wouldn't waste 6 out of every 10 articles on "Will they? Won't they?" horseshit. They could price each succesive shipment $100 lower until it reaches the break-even point, turn a profit, and still sell them as fast as they can make them for at least 6 months. The current system is pretty much the same as playing the lottery -- I wonder if Amazon's web servers actually caught fire during the 2.5 minutes they had PS3s in stock? -- but it doesn't have to be.

More high praise for Kriek from me -- I can still find it at one or two local specialty shops, but at least here in MD I'd have to shell out about 10 bucks per (larger-than-average) bottle. It's good for special occasions, but I wish somebody domestic would start making a cheaper brew with the same recipie.

Awesome! I just used it to post this message!