WTF

Ah cool. It's annoying that I can't see that video on this computer. Stupid plugin WMP I'm guessing.

One of my favourite tracks to chill back to for a Sunday Night after work.

Ants mostly treat fungi as weed, when they come across fungi they swarm clear up the place and then dump them. Fungi attack ant gardens often killing them, hence when ants detect them they pretty much kill them asap. This is where sometimes bacteria come to play, certain ants have a white coating on them which isn't mucous but rather bacteria. In fact it's the same bacteria that's used to create most antibiotics - the actinobacteria type. The bacteria get food from the ants in exchange for killing the fungus. It's a long and complex relationship really and fungi vs ants keeps going on. Also there couldn't be videos of this particular incident going on for years. Most of these ants vs fungi discoveries are pretty recent to be honest.

Knob = Dick So pretty much similar usage to dick in informal slang

I always wish people were wrong whenever they say it but you're so right on this one. I guess it's just not a widely known fact. Since it can be used for both good and bad and of course we've had mishaps before.

What's actually interesting is the fungi and ants in some sort of warfare. But no it's not grown into it. but it grew out of the ant and then started to take control of it sort of making it like a zombie ant (albeit briefly). Fortunately for humans we don't have that issue, however for those who do consume certain meats raw there are several other issues. About 10% of the global 'recorded' seizure victims are usually victims of a tapeworm attack on their brains. Fungi aren't capable of making us go Body Snatchers yet . And they do control populations of some species as Battra pointed. However them not possessing a brain doesn't technically mean they do not possess self-consciousness or rather what animals feel. After all they are similar to animal cells except have a chitinous cell wall and if plants possess a semblance of proper consciousness then so can fungi. Here's another tangent though I'm sure many are aware of this. Some of our first nano-creations are technically cyborg bacteria. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=critters-on-a-chip

I think what will happen is that just like films, a lot of video games will lose their space/position in terms of visibility. I've already outline what a theatrical release does for a film in a post elsewhere, it's going to be similar except now it'll be what games everyone talks about the first two weeks of release or what's potently visible via sales charts. A good case study would be 'Why do games that are actually terrible continue to sell?'. Forget the AAA titles with heavy marketing, lets look at a different one. Case in point - Naughty Bear - in all honesty that game did not deserve the sales it got. But it managed to hit the charts and as a result became visible and thus people got curious and bought it. Not to mention the price drop in the UK helped it. Now that game has a sequel. It's not that the idea was terrible - they were trying to pull a James Thurber. But the execution was. For filmed content it's always a combined effort. The producer and director don't always have their way (unless it's an indie or grants/ country-financed/self-financed project). It always depends on the 'ego' of the person which is why some films are terribly executed despite the idea being excellent. A lot of the time people tend to work with people they can work in a harmonious way which usually happens after the first 2-3 successful films. For instance Jonah Hex actually had bad production sets. Sometimes the director is an absolute delight for the tech staff but terrible to the acting talent. e.g. Kubrick. While there are terrible tales about him from actors I've not met many tech staff who worked with him that actually have said he was terrible or his working methods were bad. He just asserted his creative direction which can come off as being a jerk. However he was excellent with the crew. You don't necessarily struggle to make a film alone. That's why we have new distribution models, newer outlets and well gonzo film-making. You'll struggle to make a doc because for a doc to be accepted on syndicated TV or the like it needs at least 3-4 researchers minimum. Any lower and it's not accepted as you can tell research has not been done right. It has been a little slack lately is why we have some terrible documentaries. But technically a documentary always needs research. Without research it's not a documentary. But that's OT. I don't think you can compare the film and gaming process entirely. There are things both industries could learn from the other. The issue is that gaming wants to take the studio model of vertical integration that films have but at the same time lack the creative endeavours that have driven film. It will happen but not right away. Totally agree with you Dean on the budget thing. The Middle Class games are defined by Budget. Sega spent 20 Million developing Golden Axe: Beast Rider. That's not a middle class game. Similarly Darksiders was several years in the making as are many titles. What we see at XBLA and PSN are mostly on the lower end of the budgetary scale. What games truly need to do is to not push hardware, which is why PC gaming is stalling. It needs to take a break so they don't spend money investing on studying a console and developing on it and instead focus on games. We want to push graphics because gaming is a hobby that is defined by visual aesthetics. However when new hardware comes up every 5 years companies are not ready because they need to spend more to do R&D. Yes console sales are declining but companies need to face that decline and convince customers that stagnation of hardware growth is beneficial to the consumer in giving them variety. Once that objective has been realised it'll probably see a short burst followed by stability till the next hardware cycle comes in. This should help stabilise the types of games that get released. Another thing is they need to stop hiring talent from Hollywood to write games. Often some of them write terrible stories when it comes to games (this is mostly because ideas, films and even shows that they can't get greenlit are their throwaway gift to games. Obviously they won't say that but it's something I've come across amongst a few screenwriters.) The reason why most games aren't pushing graphics on the PC is that gaming needs to take a break, recover the different models of games. Have a big budget model, an intermediary, a low budget and the indies (which are microbudget, low budget and in extremely rare cases intermediary). If we need to have the different models for the industry we need to let them take a break from having to do R&D for platform and PC development and instead focus on the games that fit each model. Once that is settled, they can move to the next platform. It's not that companies aren't developing hardware and in fact even the next biggest breakthrough in CPUs isn't really happening that fast because they've realised the need to slow down development on one side and focus on another. Money is finite both for companies and consumers and currently it's even more finite due to market scenarios. Once the dust has settled we should have an interesting scenario where we'll have games pushing hardware again but also different tiers of gaming. Of course consumers and PC gamers are not entirely happy with this but it's probably for the best for now. It won't be good however if it lasts over 7 years. One negative impact is that handheld gaming which relies on new/yet old hardware is on the rise and it'll match console and PC graphics of even 5 years ago (1) things that are smaller technically look better visually and 2) one sees growth and the other stagnates to help them catch up). But that would probably just bring a different experience to the table. We're yet to truly see the impact of micro-gaming on the bigger picture. It's not as if motion controls have taken over the world, they've just replaced board-games or rather introduced the board-game dynamic (bringing people together [in the same physical space] to join in a fun recreational activity) to video games.

http://www.newscient...rowing-out.html Basically it's a short article that sort of shows parasitic mind control as done by a fungi on a dead carpenter ant. Not to mention it's fossilised proof showing that this has been going on for millions of years. Just spoilered for the squeamish really. It's not that terrible an image. From the article It is the first time this sort of behavioural control has been discovered in the fossil record, and supports the idea that the ants and fungi have been locked in an evolutionary arms race for many millions of years.

I agree that while it seems impossible for a Necromorph to stay hidden for so long it could be a hallucination, one of them or even possibly the same thing as witnessed by Isaac at the end of DS1. As for Nate being the same age due to fighting in the same war, that while plausible is a bit less so. I mean they were comrades at arms, could mean that they were several years apart as you don't need to be the same age to serve in a war. Not to mention Gabe refers to Nate as kid a few times instead of a callsign or something else which shows that he had some seniority in rank or age to Nate. He's definitely older, not to mention the character model also looked older. Either male would have been older, but the plausibility of Nate ending up with Lexine was greater than that of Gabe ending up with Lexine given the circumstances of the two stories. Severed was like you said to extend the story. it was exposition really for DS3 rather than something else. P.S. a little off-topic but there's making of videos and other assets on the disc of DS2. As it stands, there was very little interaction between the two characters within the expansion, no interaction on a romantic level the previous time we come across them. As a standalone it's alright, but as a continuation of the story of those two characters it isn't quite plausible. Though if Nate does return with a bionic arm we'll obviously have a bionic commando pun - it doesn't seem like the DS team would waste a pun like that.

Since all of these are extraction spoilers:

I'll be honest if you've played Extraction and then played Severed then there'll be a lot of questions about what happened between Weller and Lexine and where the hell is Nate?

Dead Space 2 : Severed It was too bloody short. 2 hours to exposit for DS3 and that relationship made little sense post-extraction especially considering Weller's lines and dialogue in extraction. Not to say that it was bad, but there's so many things about that story that just rubbed me the wrong way. p.s. less than 2 hours on Zealot mode is pretty short in my opinion.

Honestly don't fall for the 3D hype, get it for the games . I've already tried the device on a few occasions. The 3D gimmick wears off after a few times. Not many games releasing in Palzone [at launch] effectively make use of 3D (with the exception of SSF4). Plus battery-life. Games though is another issue. The good games will probably come post June. Not to mention we aren't getting any SMT here, stupid region-lock. I hate the fact that it's going to be 50% adventure games PAL no US (lack of Cing titles in the US) and 50% RPGs US no PAL (lack of atlus titles in Palzone). Nintendo's global distribution system truly sucks, it's like taking a trip back to the ps1/ps2 era again. Get it if you'd like though since games are coming just not a launch. But not for the 3D, it impresses you for a shorter while. In other words get it for stuff like Kyojo vs Gyakuten (whatever they really plan to call it here..) but not the 3D. The eyestrain isn't a permanent issue, you can get used to it. However word of advice is that when we make 3D footage (I've filmed for 3D not too long ago) there are times when we know that a particular type of shot can pretty much mess up your eyes. However with films there's a wider visual range that's kept for optimising. It's harder with a portable device because it is meant to be kept at probably 10-15cm away from your face and it goes without mention that there are several myopic people for whom the distance would be shorter. It might not entirely work for everyone and it's not the same for everyone. TVs and larger screens are usually at a much greater distance so it does give a better range for 3D (though that too doesn't work for everyone). It's one of the reasons why the 3DS requires a more precise optimal spot when compared to watching 3D on a larger screen. There are also limitations to what kind of 3D depth can be done for a smaller screen. But yes, the first time you see it, it'll be amazing

I have plus, but everyone's getting it the week after Plus gets it. So you should be fine if you have a PS3.

supposedly its coming after Reynolds is done with the GL movie. I'm still worried it'll suck, but it supposed to be a legit Deadpool, not that Weapon XI crap from the Wolverine movie. It's in production hell actually. RR might not have time to do that movie. We could consider the movie to happen after Fox finishes Aronofsky's Wolverine. This is mostly because Green Lantern 2 has already been greenlit and is in preproduction. We should expect that movie by 2013 roughly unless of course GL 1 fails. RR wants to do the movie but Fox wants to get it done sooner. It's better if he walked away due to his lack of time. What's holding it back is his schedule and the fact that if GL1 is definitely a success it's more than likely that WB will press for a quicker timeframe for the sequel. edited for a few errors

Hawk's definitely insulting. The DCAU doesn't reallly acknowledge Steve Trevor. Going by Justice League animated show timelines, the Amazonians first contact with the outside world was when the aliens attacked and they all came together to fight off those invaders. The first two seasons definitely do not count for most of the stuff that went on in the comics. Yes what you're talking about is a huge deal and probably will be touched on the new TV series but the animated universe sort of ignores all that. Just like it ignores the timelines of the green lanterns. Bringing lore was harder for them. The Justice League universe is even slightly different canon from the DCAU Batman from the 90s, though it is in canon with Batman of the future/Batman Beyond. All of these are in different 'universe' from 'The Batman' show which is different from the batman B&B which is different from the new Young Justice show. Most lore for some reason just is ignored. Otherwise the whole cadmus arc should've gotten a lot more differently than it did. But at least they did incorporate the Suicide Squad for one episode . Steve Trevor was largely ignored during that period in the comics I think. Wasn't the show around the time of Identity Crisis? p.s. the new All-Star Superman movie is quite nice. Shame about Dwayne Mcduffie though...

Games as they are now will always exist but if people want games to be like other media the people involved in designing 'games as experience' need to mature. Therein lies the problem. One can only create as much as one matures. From a film-making perspective, we have plenty of filmed content. 75% of them aren't well crafted and this includes all filmed content (outside of youtube) and they are made for an X audience. Games likewise are made for an X audience as well. To make a specific film one must be of that mindset. When Richard Kelly wrote Donnie Darko he needed to be young, he himself has noted that he couldn't make that film had he been 10 years older since he wouldn't be able to convey his high school mentality. The video game industry hasn't completely matured because the people involved in video gaming are only now reaching an age when they themselves can break out of their younger mindsets. What drives a younger person and what drives an older person are different. This isn't to say that there aren't exceptions to the rule and this is definitely not saying that younger people won't appreciate it. But rather most of the creators of these games are quite young. How old were most of these people when they crafted experiences? Probably in their 20s and 30s. What's their life experience when it comes to the whole world? A bit limited. Most people involved in the industry need to get this life experience before they decide to write stories, to craft experiences and make that sort of game. There are also the older well-known creators, but they're from a different era entirely and still astounded by how fast tech has grown, I know many 40+ year olds who still are amazed at how young certain people on the internet are and of videos made by the youth. Of course they have accepted it and are used to it but it's a big change from when they were kids. (offbeat example: Winona Ryder is still a hippie with the 60s mindset and doesn't use the internet. The 60s vibe probably explained by the fact that her parents were friends of PK Dick and several beat writers). It's like that star trek episode where advanced calculus was part of third grade syllabus. Another thing that most of us know is that video gaming is a software oriented machine and not much of a 'craft-oriented' machine. People generally are expected to hone their technical skills. not their life skills. Some of them have experience but most do not. I'll be honest, Cage himself is pretty bad at stories, he has a decent narrative voice but his stories are tripe. However what we find amusing about the game i.e. the thing that was parodied as 'the press x to jason' was based on his own emotional response of the prospect of losing his children (although it wasn't applied in the best way). Most people involved in the industry do not translate life experience to meaningful narrative. That's why games rarely become 'emotional art'. It is artistic like both visual medium and orchestrated sound (not music mind you) are artistic but not so much in conveying emotions. People writing these stories do not sit around and ask why does the character feel or do something? Motivation and story-telling isn't a major focus because gameplay is the focus (saying this doesn't mean that it isn't structured like a story just that it isn't the primary focus). If you don't feel something, it is difficult for you to express it. Truth is both gameplay and emotion need to be the focus for newer experiences. You need to put a piece of yourself, your experience into the game and at the same time make it a game with mechanics. A lot of people find it hard because of the way they are trained. It's not that better training can improve it instantly, but it can open doors. Film-makers are always asked to find a voice, game developers are usually asked to find a style but not a voice (based on conversations and discussions with those studying game design academically and their lecturers). AI, Discrete Math, programming, graphic design, etc. are more important right now. Game development right now is like how graphic artists were back in the 80s and 90s. Most people involved were from a technical background as opposed to an arts background. Later people from the arts background got involved as well and then they combined the two and we ended up with CVA and CGA courses. Similarly game design will (and in fact steps are being taken in that direction) move away from the technical perspective. Writers, musicians, film-makers and others want to be involved in it now and people want to call it art. It will take a little longer than people expect today, since right now we're at a stage of transition. Most of these new wannabe game creators were not always avid gamers. They were more gamers in their youth of perhaps the platforming variety. Games do not need to be a visceral experience to be enjoyed but it would be nice if they could make you feel something. For instance Kirby's Epic yarn and LBP (particularly Kirby) are bright and cheerful games in spirit. It expresses positivity perfectly, doesn't get preachy, doesn't try to tell a story like a mature film or anything. However it conveys the message of happiness, just like if you watched things like Mr Ben, Mr Men show, Clangers, etc. Stacking works on the side of your mind that would enjoy the original Thunderbirds, Costume quest on the Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang cartoons and so on. None of these games are meant to be 'visceral' but meant to take you to your happy place. But you can tell that the people who made these games definitely were influenced by the things they saw as children and what they felt was transferred into the games they make. If more people make games based on what they feel we'll have a variety of experience. It truly depends on the creative forces behind the game. If a game is purpose built like in a factory, you will be thrilled and excited for a while but after a few years it's rare that the game itself will leave an impact on you. Yes you can argue that the game had an impact but it's more likely that the community and people you played with impacted you rather than the game. You know when the focus is MP, the focus is not on their individual voice or experience but rather on the pick up and play daily gamer. What the industry lacks is not good games, talent, skills, visceral experiences, inclusive experiences or anything like that. What it truly lacks is, in a broad sense, game developers willing to exercise their voice, their experiences and their maturity into games. There are games that do that, they leave a lasting impression on the audience too. Most games do not though. When the developer expresses a creative voice in the game it will shine through - be it platformer, action, fps, rpg, sports, puzzle. It seems that people in the industry make a sacrifice of their creative voice in order to appeal to the pick up and play daily gamer. Not every game needs to be a 'daily pick and play' type. A part of the blame rests on consumers as well, but the devs and designers need to take risks and hopefully one day these risks will be rewarded. Lets see how well titles like Journey, TLG and the like that are so highly touted by every gaming hippie and generalist actually fare when it comes to sales. I can already imagine that while some fanboys will blindly hate it, several others will blindly highlight the one major flaw in these games and say that's the one reason I will not buy or play these games. What is truly preventing growth in games is tacked on multiplayer and in my opinion it is as bad as when films are made into 3D in post-production. Our gaming habits, purchasing habits are largely to blame. But the good thing is games are getting so diverse that multiple types can exist. Can they continue to exist though? The truth is games are competing for our time, when we have limited time and a lot of stress, majority of people go for the easy pick and play games regardless of their age. Developers note this and aim for that market forgetting the others. UT, Quake 3 Arena and Blizzard games showed developers that what keeps people playing and buying their games is continued ease of pick up and play. Most game devs adopted that and it's pretty much how we got here. Nintendo brought in a casual market but no one was able to translate that into a continued audience unlike the earlier examples. Facebook and mobile gaming are now doing the same thing that the first group mentioned did and sustaining a regular audience. At least 'most' people realise that those games are workplace and travel games. But the distinction is fading slowly. The next phase will be incorporating social and mobile elements to games (some of which we already have on a console-basis such as friends-lists, autolog and micro-communities to name a few). It'll evolve gaming to the point that more games will have a b-spec browser mode similar to GT5 till the next thing comes along of course. On a final note, CliffyB said today, Middle-Class games are dead (as much as I'm indifferent to the guy, he has a valid point). It's only a matter of time before major viewshare goes to just the major titles and the runaway indie hits in this oversaturated market. P.S. apologies for the long post. I'm currently editing two videos for a client and watching a movie and typing this. It's taken me probably an hour to type all this

Virgin. Not to mention she's made of clay and an Amazonian. They're as good as sexless in DC Mythology. DC has it fair share of LGBT heroes including Batwoman and the current Question who oddly enough was introduced through the DCAU Batman DC's Amazonians can be considered to be asexual aromantics in a matriarchal society with a few exceptions.

Unfortunately it's not. Bioware creates a bioware folder which contains all their games on your user profile's documents folder. Thing is it overwrites the config file so I know that it is accessing the same folder just refuses to access my files... I've even oddly got my pre-release character (from when they released the character creator but that too can't be accessed. Oh well can't be fussed. 60hrs (2/3rds of it) when I was bored while waiting for clearer conditions to film was time well spent.

I'm iffy about fruit juice these days. Bloody acid erosion. If they tell you it's not a real thing - they're wrong. wrong wrong! I had to have a root canal for one tooth since I didn't even notice that I'd lost a tiny portion of it. Thing is I've no cavities, no yellowness nothing and my diet is a lot of juice and tea and the like that really doesn't help your teeth. The reason why many people gain weight is because of metabolism (this is where the eating right and not eating at night part comes in). If you have a fast metabolism you pretty much can lose weight a lot faster than those with a slower metabolism (one way of knowing this is well how fast you'll need to go after you've had a healthy meal). Fibre always needs to be matched with liquid. But you know what eat bananas and plaintainous bananas. They're a good source of roughage and also have plenty of water content in them. They can help you feel full a lot faster than most fruits. It's actually one of the healthiest and most filling fruits of them all. Apples are too much water content that leave you wanting something substantial, the roughage in apples is mostly in its skin. Oranges (Mousambi) and mandarins are nice but don't over do them for the love of your teeth! p.s. While I do not recommend this, there is one way that some people lose weight faster. When you work out and work a sweat, you are generally advised not to drink cold water. That's because what usually happens is cold water contracts your stomach (in some people it causes cramps but most are unaffected) this effectively 'shrinks' your stomach which kind of kills your appetite to an extent. I'm not aware how many people actually know this because a lot of people do drink cold fluids in between workouts and while technically it isn't good for you (according to most of my trainers and my dietician friends) it can help for a faster weight loss (though it's not a long term solution). Also drink water, lots of water especially in winter. One of the last things you'd want is to have a kidney stone. And the only thing to combat it is water. Tea, Soda, coffee, do not count for the amount of water you need to consume in a day. In fact despite them containing water it accelerates you having a kidney stone. Speaking from personal experience. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn't make you immune to some problems . Do try and get fish in your diet though particularly the smaller fish (cooked is safer) and spinach they help in far too many ways than one and cut down on potatoes .

I don't think I can be bothered to actually play DA:O again to see the status of my world. After I'd reformatted and did a fresh install of Win 7, despite there being a DA save game folder in my docs from the previous game, DA:O refused to acknowledge those saves. I'm not about to revisit 60 hours or so just to see how the hell my world played out. It's really annoying that the game didn't detect its own saves (although granted it was a win7 32 bit install and then i switched to a 64 bit Win 7 ultimate). If DA2 doesn't accept those saves then I just cba. Never had that problem with Mass Effect 1 or 2 which reads the save files fine (and no the files aren't corrupted, the game just doesn't acknowledge them).

Hope you noticed it but basically if you click on Alex Co on the article is when it takes you to the staff page and for some reason on the staff page your name links to Alex Co which you can see is to your profile. The show all posts link next to it links to show all posts of course. But yeah no probs. I guess since they don't have an official profile for you, they linked it to your comments profile?

I think I'm probably not expressing my point about the servers shutting down aspect clearly. But EA does close down certain titles faster than others just to get people moving onto their latest iteration. I don't think we can definitively say £10 from each sale is for server upkeep really. It's probably just a lump-sum amount allocated for server upkeep. I do agree that this measure is done to reduce the used games sales market during the maximum visibility of the title. First three months. This prevents the stores from selling more used copies while the game is in healthy circulation or if people buy them have to pay to go online. However during the mid-late cycle I do believe that used game sales are likely to be higher or on par with fresh game sales since stores tend to keep them priced competitively. It's in that phase when there should be a burst in playtime for the title where they'll probably bring in the fact that you need to pay to play online. At that point if hypothetically the sales went into 5 figures though the active online userbase is under 10k wouldn't that not really cover it. What I mean to say is that they can't use the system to keep the system running the servers profitable. Or rather that people who believe that this would prevent server closures for some games are mistaken. Also wouldn't it sort of clash with when titles go into the greatest hits/platinum/best sellers section? For instance and this is odd but sometimes titles are only put on the best-sellers list 2 years post-release. The online code would obviously have to be included in that. That period usually does see a small increment of sales but is that enough to keep server costs? I'm just saying that system makes sense only when you look at it to combat used game sales in the initial period but outside of that it's a bit uncertain. One of the justifications I'd heard for this (including an interview) was that this would help keep the servers up for a longer time and support it into the later periods of the game's life - which did not make sense to me.