What's the best way to pass time until shrub is out of office?

[0rganism]

You know how it is. All the news is disastrous. The job market sucks. Investment sucks. All the talking heads are forced to pretend that bush is smart and courageous. Your conservative friends are gloating and blissful, your liberal friends are glum and pissed. You just found out your kid sister registered republican. Your coworkers are screwing each other over so they aren't the next ones to lose their jobs. AOL is still sending you CDs. The republicans are beating on the Democrats. The Democrats are backstabbing the Democrats. Life is dismal. You need a distraction, a hobby, something.

What is your favorite means of solace?

[JCMach1]

1. Already left the country

:)

We need to kick him out so I can come back and visit!

[0rganism]

3. Well, what do you do in the UAE to pass time? (you are in UAE, right?)

Is anything legal there? Do you have to wear burqas on the beach?

From political candidate to ex-patriot in one swell foop!

[Fight_n_back]

2. Myst is not a "vidoe game"

it is an interactive screen saver.

Halo is a video game.

[0rganism]

4. Different Strokes, right?

I'd get Halo too, but AFAIK it's only available on the X-Box. Surely, it's not too hard for the producers to push a button and cross-compile for the PC? Oh well. You know what I mean.

[Fight_n_back]

5. "Surely, it's not too hard for the producers to push a button and cross-co

yes it is hard.

The XBox has specific libraries that its games draw from. Plus the XBox is better than any PC as far as games are concerned so a lot pf porting would have to be done to get it into memory.

Beside the fact that it adds an icredibly expensive test cycle for which only about 150,000 units will result.

If it was easy it would be done.

[Paul1574]

6. imho ~ its easy.....BUT

it wouldnt sell x-boxes now would it ?

[0rganism]

8. Good point! Is Halo a Microsoft production?

No reason to cross-compile if it's a direct threat to a promoting a product line.

[0rganism]

7. It's not that hard, bwana

"Specific libraries" have code that can, itself, be cross-compiled. Those parts that cannot be, sure you gotta hand-write some of it. And some of that's in assembly language, but so what? If you're the game company, it's icing on the cake. People write platform emulators for consoles for fun, with zero source code to start with, and your saying a game company wouldn't do it to cash in?

150000 x $30 = $4.5 Million

At the very least you break even, and get to put some groovy ads on the disc. A game like Halo would be quite popular, especially with network multiplayer and the inevitable mod communities.

And testing? Expensive test cycles are so '90s. Nowadays you just run a limited free beta session and have the gamers test it for you. Sure, you can't do this with consoles, but PC gamers will download patches until the cows come home. We're used to it, and even if this year's PCs aren't as good at pushing bits to the screen as this year's X-Box, maybe next year's PC will be.

It's (relatively) easy but it isn't done.

I've seen the guts of the X-Box, I worked with the guys who layed out the motherboard. It's a good game console, but it's not black magic.

[ET Awful]

9. Ummm Halo IS available for PC as of a couple of months ago

And first person shooters MUST be played with a mouse and keyboard, anything else is just plain wrong :) :) :)


n/t

[grannylib]

10. All good choices but activism is best IMHO eom

[Deja Q]

11. Political activism!

Leaflets on cars, posting signs, getting the people aware of the truth.