Rat kings
Ξ November 18th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Odd |
I came across the term recently, and I honestly never imagined what it actually meant. Kinda freaky.
Reflections on the Election
Ξ November 5th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Politics |
The more things change, the more they stay the same. If this is the first election you’ve really paid attention to, it can feel like something big has just happened – that things have fundamentally changed. Certainly that was the message that Obama was trying to get across – that he represented some visceral shift in our culture. History, however, has a sobering effect on enthusiasm, as perspective is a double-edge sword. Nothing is ever as good as it seems, but then again, nothing is as bad. That means that Obama can’t heal all our nations wounds – but then again the nation isn’t all that bad off. (more…)
Presidential Revenge
Ξ November 3rd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Humor, Politics |
From a columnist at The Spectator endorsing Obama:
Finally, my Republican friends have been gushing about Tony Blair for years now – they didn’t have to live with his policies. I won’t have to live with Obama’s. So it’s time for some light revenge.
BD+ Broken
Ξ November 2nd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
BD+, the encryption scheme used for the most heavily protected Bluray discs, has been publicly broken by the guys on the Doom9 forums. It had been previously broken by the guys at SlySoft, makers of AnyDVD, but they had kept the method secret, as they were trying to make a commercial product of it. Now, however, we should see open-source Bluray decrypting software along the lines of DVDDecrypter begin to appear.
Fallout 3
Ξ November 2nd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Games |
I started playing at eight in the morning, and when I came up for air it was 2pm and I had forgotten to eat. Last time that happened it was with KOTOR, another great game.
I thought that the switch from the isometric style of the original Fallout games to the Oblivion game engine just couldn’t work, especially considering some of the shortfalls of Oblivion, such as it’s sluggish nature, generic voice acting and impossible face generator.
The good news is, none of those problems show up in Fallout 3. Instead of reusing voice actors for generic characters, you simply can’t talk to them. The game is solid and responsive – I could drop back to the desktop and then jump back into the game with almost no lag time, and I’m able to run it at 1600×1200 with no noticeable jitter. The faces are diverse and solid – no more of the translucent style of Oblivion. The characters in this game look *good*.
And the gameplay is great. Once you leave the vault (which is an hour long plot designed to get you familiar with the game mechanics), you are really alone in the world. You have no map and you need to wander around are harsh and hostile wasteland attempting to find some remnant of civilization before the wretched abominations that qualify as wildlife slowly grind you down. Ammo is a constant worry, as is keeping your weapons well-maintained. The game really manages to pull you into the sense you’re always teetering on the edge – you’re always worried about your survival. And just when you think, “I’m doing OK, I’ve got a hundred round of 10mm and a few stimpaks”, you stumble across a super-mutant armed with a chain gun, looking to bag a human. In a straight up fight, you’d be toast, but you manage to lure him into a craggy area with plenty of cover. You manage to take him down, but all you’re left with are the twelve rounds in your gun, a stimpak and a messed up arm. And you’re in the middle of nowhere, with only the weak pirate radio broadcast from Three Dog to keep you company. $*!@
This is a really, really good game. I’d say you don’t even need a PC to play it. It helps, being that you can play it as a FPS, but with the VATS system, which let’s you pick your shots, it’s not nearly as important. I was expecting a decent but somewhat disappointing game for Fallout 3, but, amazingly, I think this is the best Fallout I’ve played.
