It looks like everyone's un-favorite asshat lawyer has just gotten another nail for the coffin of his legal career.
Correction, make that twenty-seven nails... or four really big nails depending on how you look at it.
As a refresher, Mr. Thompson is the jackass who sprung up in front of the media blaming violent video games every time some unstable kid with parents who don't watch them closely enough does something stupid and dangerous with a gun. Some highlights of his career would include repeatedly harassing Rock Star Games with downright silly lawsuits, up to and including trying to have Bully declared a public nuisance.
We are now just waiting for the Florida Supreme Court to rule on the matter and have Jack completely disbarred.
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One
Topic: Video Games
8:44 pm EDT, May 21, 2008
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is an episodic RPG-adventure game series set in a deranged comic-book meets-pulp-horror 1920s universe. Armed with unconventional weaponry and witty repartee, you join forces with the Gabe and Tycho, the crime-solving team of the Startling Developments Detective Agency to make war on bizarre enemies and solve the mysteries hidden deep in the sinister heart of New Arcadia. From the hilarious and twisted minds of Penny Arcade creators Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, legendary game designer Ron Gilbert and veteran producers at Hothead Games comes a 100% authentic and hilarious Penny Arcade experience.
From what I've seen of it so far, that last bit is dead on. The video game is truly effing Penny Arcade. (Either you get that, or you don't.) I'd really like to write something eloquent and insightful about it, but basically, it is the embodiment of the web comic, which also happens to be a video game filled with win.
At ~200 megabytes or so, it is deceptively tiny. ...but since the entire thing is either (and alternatingly) cel-shaded or vector-driven, it can be expected to compress well. (It also looks seriously pimp at 1680x1050)
Download the demo. You will see. (Oh yes, did I mention it runs on everything? Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBox360. ...and the system requirements are miniscule.)
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One
Topic: Video Games
8:44 pm EDT, May 21, 2008
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is an episodic RPG-adventure game series set in a deranged comic-book meets-pulp-horror 1920s universe. Armed with unconventional weaponry and witty repartee, you join forces with the Gabe and Tycho, the crime-solving team of the Startling Developments Detective Agency to make war on bizarre enemies and solve the mysteries hidden deep in the sinister heart of New Arcadia. From the hilarious and twisted minds of Penny Arcade creators Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, legendary game designer Ron Gilbert and veteran producers at Hothead Games comes a 100% authentic and hilarious Penny Arcade experience.
From what I've seen of it so far, that last bit is dead on. The video game is truly effing Penny Arcade. (Either you get that, or you don't.) I'd really like to write something eloquent and insightful about it, but basically, it is the embodiment of the web comic, which also happens to be a video game filled with win.
At ~200 megabytes or so, it is deceptively tiny. ...but since the entire thing is either (and alternatingly) cel-shaded or vector-driven, it can be expected to compress well. (It also looks seriously pimp at 1680x1050)
Download the demo. You will see. (Oh yes, did I mention it runs on everything? Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBox360. ...and the system requirements are miniscule.)
OK, maybe you do, but we don't particularly want you to try it because we don't want to deal with you whining when you find that absolutely nothing works. Exherbo isn't in a fit state for users. We might get there one day, but it's not a priority. Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers.
In the tradition of such financial windfalls as VideoCD and EPSN Baseball, EA and Bioware are now using "copy protection" as a means to ensure that at some future point, every game they make will be able to be forcibly obsolesced in order to manage their own "classics" channel, much like Sony and Nintendo are now selling all their old titles again, which also ensures that their copyrights on these titles never really expire. Ever.
Basically, the deal is this: For both Spore and Mass Effect, which both are primarily single-player games, you will now be required to do an online authorization for the machine you install it on. It's a near certainty that at some point in the future, they're simply going to declare it not worth their time to continue authorizing installs of these games. It probably won't even be a terribly long time before this happens, as EA has a particularly miserable track record for this... How long exactly was it that SSX3 actually retained it's online multiplayer ability?
Me, I'm probably buying them both (didn't have time to finish Mass Effect on the XBox 360 before I realized I should have gotten a PS3) but I'm going to crack the holy thunderfsck out of them. So much for being sure your grandkids might be able to play a game you enjoyed if you hang onto it long enough.
Note, I say "probably" not because I'm hinting at some other method of obtaining them. I say this because depending on how things turn out, I might just skip dealing with either of them at all just because of this online authentication bullshit. If it isn't worth me paying money to support the people who wrote the game, then screw playing it.
Update: Also, let's not forget what this does to the ability of resellers (or, god forbid, game rental companies) to handle these titles. That's right, you can forget about renting these from Gamefly or picking them up used anywhere.
Thickets three metres (10ft) high readily absorb heat, making them hard to penetrate with thermal devices, said Gen Rick Hillier in a speech in Ottawa.
Only the BBC could carry a news article about the problems wild marijuana are causing in the war against whoever-looks-hostile in such a deadpan way.
This is very cool. From way back in 1971 a professor Leon Chua at the University of California (Berkeley) wrote a paper describing four basic passive electrical components: resistors, capacitors, inductors, and memristors. Until this year, the last one of these was only theoretical in nature, but some bright folks have finally cracked it.
This is likely to crack open a whole boatload of new types of circuits and electronic applications. Very, very cool.
Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102 - New York Times
Topic: Recreation
1:28 pm EDT, Apr 30, 2008
PARIS — Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.
A thorough review of Thompson’s filings lead to one conclusion. He has abused the processes of the Court… Accordingly… the Clerk of this Court is hereby instructed to reject for filing any future pleadings, petitions, motions, documents, or other filings submitted by John Bruce Thompson, unless signed by a member in good standing of The Florida Bar other than himself.
