Cogito

No prob dude, I blame the fire alarm ;)

Wait, Austin likes anime...does this make him the Giant Bomb Official Anime Editor?

Fantastic article Patrick!

Pointing out an error in the article:
"While I'be basically railed on Uplay" is in the three-line paragraph just above the Steve Kim/Fobwashed tweet.

I thought I would drop my nugget of wisdom awhile ago, but this thread has irked me to the point of creating a response. Honestly, down with Activision (or at least Bobby Kotick, no I didn't make the pun), I've seen quite a few decisions that just bleed series for money, from an economic standpoint that's fine, at least  the shareholders are happy. From an artistic/consumer standpoint a lot of the decision made have seemed destructive in terms of bleeding people dry.
 
I am not buying Modern Warfare 2, I am not buying Diablo 3, I am not buying any of Starcraft II, I will not play World of Warcraft and stopped at the beginning of this year, I refuse to play any game that comes from Activision/Blizzard until they start making decisions that are less restrictive toward the consumer and fairer towards the developers.
 
What we're seeing is a trickling down of economic corruption in light of the world wide recession/depression, it has always been a standard that in bad economic times, greed and corruption tend to stand out more then usual, especially when the companies in question begin to "screw" the customer in order to save money/ reduce losses at the end of each financial quarter.
 
I know many of you will tell me I am an idiot for missing out on precious good games, but frankly, if you want change, you have to make sacrifices. If I am an idiot for having not bought those games, then fine, but at least I am an idiot who is true to my morals, sure you can say "but what if your electric company or water company, etc are using corrupt practices?" this isn't like that, I don't need video games as I do food and water.
 
I make this claim with a rational mind, I didn't "protest" Valve's decision to release Left 4 Dead 2 so soon, I understand why it had to be a new game, it makes sense to be it's own fully priced game, protesting against Valve only dilutes your opinion.
 
So I ask this of anyone who agrees with me, and wants to stand up against practices like this. Stop buying anything from Activision/Blizzard, it will be painful, but there are other games you can give more attention instead and other things you can do, buy more indie games, actually take high-quality flash games seriously, and maybe even buy a book if you want some good, old-fashioned, fun.
 
I won't be responding to anyone that quotes me on this, whether it be to praise me or condemn me, but I encourage you all to think about this, this is a slippery slope, if they can make just as much or more money then they normally do, then there will logically be no problem with trimming, clipping, limiting and monitoring other things, to draw a quick parallel, fascism is never implemented overnight, it is the result of slow processes and decisions that are enacted over a long period of time.
 
Those are my two cents.

 When they came for the servers, I remained silent, I did not play on unofficial servers
When they refused to publish a well known game, I remained silent, I did not want to buy that game
When they raised the price of the PC version to cover low demand, I remained silent, I bought the console version
When trophies were not integrated, I remained silent, my console did not use trophies
When they raised the price of my game by $20, there was no one left to speak out.
 
Now this won't necessarily happen, and I personally don't mind the removal of unofficial servers, but just some food for thought.

Hmm, good point Black Rose, maybe we pick a show and then the discussion begins on it the day after, The idea was to have everyone simultaneously commenting about a show or movie, but internationally that doesn't work, I'm just trying to get this idea moving, maybe we can all pick something to watch at a unified time, via an online source. Maybe some posts a starting post at a designated time when we all play a movie on our computer or dvd player?

So Sunday or friday in that case.

Yeah, the show sucked pretty bad, so any ideas for next Saturday, probably on a channel most people have.

So I had this idea while watching a horrible show called WCG, on Sci-fi channel, and ranting about it
"Mystery Science Theater 3000"-Style, with someone else on IRC.

So basically the idea is every week we find out what is playing on TV on fri/sat/sun and decide/vote on what to watch.
When it airs on TV that fri/sat/sun night we all talk about it either on IRC or a Thread for it made on General chat, where we can just talk about it, and if it's god-awful we mock it, and if by chance we chose a serious/good  show or movie, then we talk about it seriously, but that's less likely. So submit Ideas for this Saturday, and we'll decide.

I concur.

Hey guys, after the overwhelming response to my short last blog, which thankfully was not "TL;DR" by a lot of people, I've actually decided to do more blogging regardless of reaction,

Anyways, I'm going to just make a list of links of interesting crap I find on the web, and the first will ALWAYS, be the most important, well at least to me, and hopefully you guys, so let's get started .

TL;DR Version: A list of the links will be made in order at the end.

Ryan Higgins's house burnt down not too long ago, in case you didn't know he's a pod-caster on Geekbox Radio.
So, the link here is to the post about his house burning down and how, You can help!! Yes you, right there, eating snack food and/or reading this blog.
There is a paypal button on the site and for now all the proceeds go to the guy, I've donated a few bucks and every bit counts, so If you feel like donating,
yes even in this recession/depression we're in, It'd probably be a great help to the guy and the podcast.

Anyways, now on a lighter note, for you D&D Dm's out there like me that use 4.0 there are two nice java based sites that make creating characters easier, here and here they are both fantastic sites that I have used to make boatloads of characters, good links for any D&D DM or player.

Next, I found a pretty sweet form of external online, it's called the Drobo I won't go into to much detail, but basically you can easily customize how much memory you want inside of it, meaning you can buy more/bigger Hard drive discs to put inside and carry more memory.

Lastly, in good old Stamford, CT a Monkey, not the one that ate a womans face, it bit a womans hand off before being stabbed by it's owner and then gunned down by the police, very King-Kong-esque

Anyways, now my friends I am afraid this blog post is at an end, sorry about the lack of funny. There will be more fun next time.

 (Leave a comment if you have the time)

Now a list of the links
Donate to Ryan Higgins of Geekbox Radio whose house burned down.      http://www.geekbox.net/archives/2009/02/28/geekbox-listeners-we-need-you/
Dungeons & Dragons Character Builder        http://www.tinwatchman.com/chargen/      &       http://www.pathguy.com/cg4.htm
Awesome Expandable External     http://www.drobo.com/
Monkey Attack: Hand Edition    http://wcbstv.com/breakingnewsalerts/orangutan.attack.stamford.2.936381.html