So Mom and I were in town today... and I witnessed a self-operated photo kiosk in Walmart crash and need restarted. Guess what those things run? Windows XP... no surprise. It was hilarious! I always thought they were a special OS designed for allowing customers to print photos themselves, but nope! It's software that runs off of Windows, heheh.

As seen here on Slashdot, Gamecloud reports the announcement of a Stargate MMORPG! Awesome... I knew Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was up to something suspicious!! Seems a few folks from Cyanworlds have also migrated over to help with it.

I'm afraid to get majorly excited about this........... last time I was so off-the-walls about an MMO, the publisher decided to kill it for still undisclosed reasons. But, let me at least say this...

THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME!!

I would not hesitate to drop World of Warcraft for this!

Edge Online: Blizzard Responds to Gay Guild Debate

You know what the second user comment was? "I don't see any news about Christian guilds getting official warnings for their Jesus talk and recruitment in general chat channels." Brilliant. Of course I should have seen this coming. Out of everything they could have written as an example, they had to pick Christianity.

I think there's a trend.

Well you know what? My "Jesus-talk" tells me that homosexuality and any derivitive of such is purely evil. So, yes, I support what Blizzard did here. They are within their rights to do whatever they want, and if you don't like it, you can either deal with it or you could leave. There's nothing that binds Blizzard to do what everyone else wants, or what everyone thinks is fair... it's all up to them. If you don't like giving money to someone who does this, then shut up and stop playing. There are plenty of us out there who will enjoy the game all the more without you mucking everything up for us.

So theeeeeere you have it!

Revolution Advanced: Evolution of Controllers

Finally a decent article showing everyone the history of videogame controllers. (Though there've been comments that a couple are missing, but all the major ones are covered.) I made a note to see what they said about the Playstation controllers... and I noticed they kept saying things like: "just like the first controller" or "still no different from the others" and stuff like that. Same with the XBox... same controller layout, different package.

Nintendo's the only one on the list (of the console makers still alive) that changed their controller on each and every new console. It's sweeeeet. The true next generation is Nintendo, people. Not the silly repackaged consoles of these dillusional bandwagon companies who joined just to make a quick buck in the market. Nintendo's in it for the technology!

Here's an ad banner I made years ago. I found the pieces buried on my harddrive and decided to give it a nicer appearance! The phrase I used is courtesy of the brilliant Mister Richard Pratt.

Also on Slashdot: Cingluar Patents the Emoticon.

Technically for emoticons on portable phones... still STUUUUUPID.
Know what I have to say to that?

:angry:

(Darn, my emoticon code doesn't really work... gonna have to fix that.)

As seen on Slashdot, Need for Speed Connected to Fatal Car Crash.

Now before you start accusing me of/congratulating me on saying violent videogames cause real-world violence, let me make myself clear that I say games do NOT cause violence. It is solely the fault of the parents and/or the kids involved. They show an extreme and stupid lack of judgement in an attempt to look cool. If you take games out of the equation, they'll still do stuff like this... the only thing that'll change is that parents won't be able to sue game companies.

The article basically says that two teens were racing each other on the streets of Toronto (if you've ever been there, let me tell you that the way that city's streets are layed out, this is beyond stupid to do) in their parents' Mercedes cars. One crashed, the other fled... and they found a copy of the game "Need for Speed" in the crashed car. "Oh noez!! It's the game's fault everyone!!"

Like one Slashdot comment said, what if they found the movie "Fast and Furious" in the car? Would that be automatically blamed for forcing these poor helpless children to see how long it takes for them to survive speeding in a metropolis? The comment goes on to say that it probably wouldn't, but I would hazard to say that, yes, it probably would be.

Another comment says that since the car seats were made of leather, that cows are also at fault, since they were also found at the scene of the crime. (The cow's skin, rather, not the cow itself. )

Nobody wants to face the reality that they've failed as parents, so they'll blame the games. Anyone with a real head on their shoulders will realize that if these moronic kids were actually raised properly (that, or had a couple things I like to call Common Sense and Cause and Effect) that they wouldn't be going haywire in the real world.

I'm an avid fan of horrible, nasty, super-violent shoot 'em up games. Nothing gives quite the thrill of sneaking around the dark corners of an abandoned city, sniping the enemies off the rooftops. But I also have the smarts to realize that doing such a thing in real-life is just... well... is there any word that's more severe than stupid or daft or moronic or idiotic?