Thursday Next

Hearing lots of positive buzz about soundshapes. Hope there is a demo.

According to this wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics we did indeed receive a number of qualifications as host nation. But still did a lot of qualifying off our own back as well.

My point is that we don't know enough to know if it is a spurious claim by Metro AG, or if it has merit. MS obviously think that either (a) The claim has merit, or (b) They don't care anything like enough to even bother defending their use of the name (possibly because they already have another name lined up). It's not like MS is short a few quid or a few lawyers.

The 30 Day exclusive thing is because of Arkham Asylum(iirc it might have been a different game). With all the different retailer exclusive offers MS got so many complaints that they implemented a new policy that any exclusive pre-order DLC must be made available on XBL 30 days later. If it wasn't for that exclusives would be eternal not 30 day.

That's how the rumours go. I don't know if they let him go or not.

I must be missing something. Since when do we bypass qualification? I didn't see any British blokes in the 100m final. I saw two of them get knocked out for not having a fast enough Qualifying time.

To be fair, if MS were planning on having a "Metro Store" that would definitely cross into Metro AG space. Also, depends on what Metro AG are registered under and what MS Metro were thinking of registering under. Brands are a big deal. I can totally understand defending your brand in this way. Especially if Metro AG is Tesco's big in Germany. Coca-Cola may be a soft drink, but see how far you get releasing a Coca-Cola car before you get slapped with a trademark infringement suit.

The Puddle demo was ok. I'm assuming different liquids behave differently, otherwise I can see this getting a little stale. Might get A-Men as it is discounted from tomorrow.

Isn't that what verbal reprimands / written warnings are for? Make him do penance, visit a reservation or something if you really want to drag it out. Bit like the Tomasz Schafernaker thing: Totally unnecessary to fire the bloke for a mildly offensive gesture that he valiantly hilariously tried to cover up when engaging in a bit of banter with the anchor who was giving him some stick.

The retailer exclusives will all be available to buy at some point. The sony exclusive is not a problem for me as I mostly play PS3. It's still a tedious practice.

Agree with TFG. Around these parts general sentiment towards the royals is overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps because she is local? Also, love it when people use words they don't understand. My niece thought that "Benevolent" meant "Evil" because God was "benevolent" and he drowned everyone, turned them into pillars of salt and asked them to kill their own children. Of course she was about 6. And was not a news anchor. Personally, I am feeling that we have let ourselves down by not letting ourselves down enough in this years Olympics. It's tough to be the plucky underdog when you win so many things.

Jeremy Kyle Show = Mos Eisley Spaceport, with uglier guests.

Those are all good ideas. I for one was pretty vocal against the inclusion of SP in BF3 anyway and I have never even touched it, an MP only version would have been great for me and my friends. I'm also all for the minimum price humble bundle idea. I think that the industry at the moment is trying a lot of different things to see what sticks. You've got WoW going free to play up to level 20. SWtOR free up to level 50. Battlefield Heroes and Play 4 Free going the MTX route and CoD and BF3 going for the Retail + Premium service model. What is abundantly clear is that while a disc in a box is not going to completely disappear any time soon, that can now only be one part of your monetisation.Transferring 1's and 0's via different media is getting harder to do in a profitable way. Partly due to piracy. What is needed instead is a service model. Access to online servers, account entitlements for items be they vanity or performance based. Increased feature sets in peripheral services such as Battlelog (peripheral for the console version at least).

Brazil is really difficult to watch in my opinion. Just as I find Kafka difficult to read. Bladerunner however, is brilliant Rutger is amazing in it.

Glad to see more balance and some mention of the character's internal conflict. As for the engine, I thought the animation on things not Connor looked a little rough around the edges tbh, a good example being right at the start when the wolves change direction and just sort of pivot. Lo-res-ness of the video didn't exactly help.

"Piracy suggests villainy of some kind, when in truth all that punters are doing when taking something for free is "taking something for free". It's like lifting a leaflet, or taking one of those samples of cheese from Tesco's deli counter. It's what people do. There's no malice in it." Except that you are taking something without permission, which is villainy of a kind. The article seems to suggest that there should just be some sort of honesty box on the internet and that people should just pay whatever the hell they want. That's a nice idea for consumers, but it sucks for businesses and is not how the free market works. The price of an item should be a bi-lateral decision. The seller sets the price, the buyer chooses to buy or not. This continues until a price that the buyer and the seller are satisfied with is reached.

As Frankie Boyle said though: "It's just as difficult to lose a game of badminton if the other side is trying to lose as it is to win if they're trying to win."

They were throwing matches to get an easier draw in the next round. Didn't realise they got disqualified though.

As in he dies and then comes back to life? Or dies dies? (I've no interest in Potter, so feel free to spoil). Also, on topic. Loved this film. Thought Bane was pitched well as the mastermind + physical equal of Batman. Catwoman was portrayed well as the neutral / leaning towards good person. There were some really strong emotional moments, some lighter bits, some decent action a satisfying climax and a hopeful aftermath. The bit that was difficult to sit through with regard to the national anthem was that you had to sit through the whole thing. Would have preferred to get on with it: "Oh say can you *BOOM!*" would have been more than enough. Oh also...

Yeah, as Dean says, it's clear what the spirit of the law was, and what the legislative intent was. But the spirit and intent have been overridden by people who want guns sticking to the black letter law. All three methods, Literal, Purposive and Contextual are valid ways of interpreting the law in the UK. I'd argue that the older it gets the more that Purposive / Contextual interpretations should be used over literal. Language changes over time as do attitudes and morals. By way of a crude example, in the UK, Purposive interpretation is mostly used in EU law, if the EU legislation provides that each country must make a law abolishing the manufacture of cutlery, and the UK law is worded "2012 Cutlery Act: The manufacture of knives and forks is hereby banned." then the literal interpretation says that you can still make spoons. However, the purpose of the legislation was to make all cutlery banned, so the Judges will fill the gaps to ban spoons too, suggesting for example that the list "knives and forks" was not exhaustive and the title Cutlery Act makes the intent clear. Of course in this reading judges have to be careful not to cross over into legislating.

I am out of the country for the opening ceremony. Something I promised to myself when it was announced that we "won" the bid seven years ago. Humbug!

But a lot of them fail... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1597954152019000687 Please excuse the poor quality (and the bad picture).

But it doesn't need a re-write. You just need to read it properly*. Where there is a condition attached then it holds that the opposite is true when circumstances differ. In effect, the unwritten second half of this statement is "A well regulated militia no longer being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be infringed." "Tradition" or "Founding values" is a BS reason to continue with a broken rule. It was traditional to have a legal slave trade and the US was founded on the money that trade brought them. It is also ludicrous to have a constitutional right to rise up against an oppressive government. An oppressive government doesn't give a crap about your rights and any government that would allow you your constitutional right to take up arms against them clearly is not all that oppressive. If we're going to take Sporks idea about stricter regulation, then make the regulation in line with the constitution. You have to be in a "Well Regulated Militia" preferably one of the regulations being that you leave your gun(s) at the militia HQ when you go home. I, like Dean, don't buy the "he would've done it anyway" argument. If you don't have a gun your chances of injuring 50+ people are massively reduced. If he'd run in there with a bad attitude and a hammer he might have got a couple of people before being brought down. Hell, even if he had been restricted to a revolver he'd have struggled to kill anything like as many people. I also don't think that the people who carry out bomb attacks are of the same mindset as those who go on spree killings. With the gun you've got that element of 1:1 killing. You look at the individual, you pull the trigger and they die. It's more visceral for being narrowly targeted. Dumping a bomb and running, you get the end result, but not the first hand experience. *properly in this case meaning how I think it should be read

What makes it "bad" is that there's no sacrifice in this ending. You don't lose all AI life, you don't lose all organic sentient life, and you don't lose yourself. All three (four) solutions have negative aspects. This one doesn't.