deanb

I've seen the suggestion of not supporting E3 thrown about before but it's kinda like asking all the sites to just not fund themselves for this year. E3 is a massive event, lots of money, lots of traffic, etc etc. It's a bit like the Xmas bonus at work, or asking retailers to not do Black Friday. Yes it gives a big F-U to ESA, but 1. IGN n co are still going to cover it (and take your traffic with it), 2. It's a bigger F-U to the sites income than ESAs. Also it's a bit dodgy that it's Extra Credits, running on Penny Arcade site, that run the bi-annual Penny Arcade Expo that are suggesting to not attend and/or cover the Electronic Entrainment Expo. I see no conflict of interest at all. No siree. edit: Also IGN is fucking owned by News Corp. Course they're not going to protest SOPA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vmg9e785lo

Got tickets for this guy the other day. May 19th, bit before my B'day.

Funny thing about this "beneath them" talk is most of the jobs going at the moment at "above me". I'm not a manager, which writes off well over half the jobs right away. Nor do I have any care worker NVQs n such which knocks off another fifth or so(seriously, care work seems to have a major deficit in the workforce from where I'm standing), 10% disappear with the lack of a drivers license, leaving about 1/5th of jobs for probably about 80%+ of the unemployed. Not helped when the gov't are actively subsidising most employers with free labour. Asda are the only big supermarket employing locally and I can't apply with them again until March due to some crazy fucked up scheme. I'm currently signed up with a bunch of "market research" type sites just to potentially scrape in a few extra pence, but I don't see it going anywhere atm. Was actually checking out one of those medical science type stuff the other day but never bothered due to the two fold of needing someone healthy and it seemed a bit like a scam. I've got on my little "Looking for work" slip Adecco, office admin, xmas temp work, royal mail, telesales, IT apprenticeship (not heard anything back on :/), customer assistant, even got an application in months ago with one of the local steel mill places. I may not be the biggest fan of the company you work for, but I do like you Thursday. Please do not tar all unemployed with the same brush. As you've said yourself you've not been through the benefits system, dealing the uselessness that is the Job Centre. You were able to get work. This is the only scheme I've heard of them running and it's fucking pants on head retarded. If they're able to work with these big companies why not work with them to get long-term unemployed actual paying positions instead of just giving then subsidies labour and making it even harder for those looking for work?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-goes-public-with-plans-for-its-new-windows-8-file-system/11666 New File System in Windows 8 to replace NTFS (with time I'd assume, doubt they'll ditch NTFS right away)

Many of what the internet can do/facilitate does fall under a few current human rights such as education and freedom of speech/conscience/protest.

Ethan you've installed Windows before? I assume you guys have the same discs as us. It basically starts out saying if you want the US or UK english (and many other options like Dvorak, simple Chinese etc etc). You just go change this anytime in the control panel. I can change my keyboard right now to Dvorak, even though it's physically a UK English Qwerty. It'll make typing a pain of course since I won't have a clue what I'm typing. If you took a US keyboard n just plugged it into a UK PC, it'll assume it's a UK keyboard still. And there's many times where the PC stupidly forgets which it's meant to use and you go to email someone at dean"pxod.com n go @oh..well this is going to be fun for five minutes isn't it?@

http://www.guardian....eople-need-jobs This has been doing the rounds lately. I'm of the "schemes a somewhat good idea, but really really badly implemented" camp. If the gov't is wanting to put people into work (which technically this isn't..let's go with work experience at best), then surely there's better companies than Tesco and Poundland? As folks have suggested what about council work? charities? start-ups? Provide relevant training and putting work power in places that need it. Tesco and the like are multi-billion pound companies, they shouldn't be getting subsidised work force from the gov't. All it does it make less employment positions available for those looking for work while bolstering company profits at the tax payer expense. It's bollocks. The better alternative would be to actually get these companies to provide actual paying positions. If I was to get Job Centre on the line saying "Dean you want to work at poundland for minimum wage" I will be there like a shot. As it stands the Job Centre do nothing of the sort, just file paper work and make you sign a scrap of paper every fortnight. Stupid and pointless organisation. edit: saw this gem:

I wouldn't mind a rowing machine like that Battra, but alas not the funds (well I do have the funds to a degree, but I also have to spend that on things like the place I live)

So a Freedom of Information request was used on Homeland Security. http://epic.org/foia/epic-v-dhs-media-monitoring/ Surprise surprise, DHS are monitoring social media. in SOPA news: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/14/obama-administration-responds-we-people-petitions-sopa-and-online-piracy Whitehouse is not liking SOPA. In other SOPA news: we'll be up on the 18th (barring technical issues)

(Engadget don't use youtube so they just get boring links) http://www.engadget....hands-on-video/ http://www.engadget....hands-on-video/ There's plenty more btw.

So turns out Americans pronounce a popular phone brand a bit differently to everyone else. I'm watching a CES video (Link in technology thread later with a few others) and this particular tech was developed in partnership with See over here it's Knock-ear (Nok-ia). It's a company name too which is a bit odd to have a pronunciation change across the sea.

The fun thing is with games, cos folks will say to hit the tide key, the ~ key. UK keyboards hit the ¬ key, and I don't think it has a name. ¬_¬

UK n US, open in new tabs n switch through to easily see the differences.

So finally got round to this the other day. Only seen episode 1, but will most likely continue. I'll be honest, not 100% sure what's going on and who is who but I guess over time I'll learn, not the best first impressions mind. Does just kind of throw tons of families n people at you and leave you to figure it out. But the ending made sure I'd continue on. Oh and: For the none whovians, "Son/Brother of Mine" of The Family of Blood. He's a baddy in case the name and look didn't give it away.

The requirement was supposedly added the time when they added the F2P section too. I doubt it was an act against EA (who afaik is still their publishing partner on console) since there's many other games with external DLC stores. I do want to see what this change in TOS was cos other Bioware games are still sold, and their DLC is gotten through the Bioware site, but DA2 was taken down. So I'd assume it's not a TOS purely against external DLC services but some new addition to how EA titles deal with DLC. But I've no experience with DA2 or Crysis 2(at least in legit forms) to know what was changed in the sequels.