Only Microsoft would charge you $5 shipping for a promotional demo.

The DS needs more games like Polarium. It's not just completely original, it's only possible on this hardware. It uses both screens effectively and the touch aspects are nearly a requirement. It's also the best puzzle game for the console.

A blatant waste of food? Sure. But hey, it's got a lightsaber fight between a cucumber and a potato. What else do you want?

Already glutted with sports games, the last thing the PSP needs is another one, especially when it's as under whelming as World Tour Soccer. It doesn't particularly do anything wrong, it just do anything different from soccer games five years ago. It already feels aged, and that's not getting any help from the graphical or audio package, either.

In case you forgot, this is still my site (Matt is a pretty good fill in, though). I have not gone on vacation. No, I have been working on two projects right now: Photochemical Sciences Outreach and BG News Alumni Society web sites. Then of course there is the usual Student Publications work.

Oh, and I picked up Forza Motorsport for Xbox. I am going to have to stop playing it long enough to write a review.

I will try and post things this weekend, but no promises. Life has gotten too busy to blog lately. And I don't get paid to write.

Ape Escape is not what you would think of when it comes to a proper PSP game. When it was released on the PS One back in 1998, it served as both a tech demo and a training piece for the Dual Shock controller. It could not be played unless you paid the cash to purchase the updated version of the standard pad. Missing the second analog stick, this remake seems wasted on the PSP, defeating the purpose of the original game, though still providing some basic platform entertainment.

Airwolf is one of those 80's shows that simply wouldn't work today. It has nothing to do with the quality, and everything to do with the way it was filmed. There's no model work, no CG, and everything was done the way it should be: live. That's not to say corners were not cut to save on the budget (said to be around $1 million per episode), it's just refreshing to go back 20 years and see stunts like this pulled off without the assistance of computers.

Sports movies are almost a waste of time. Unless they're based off a true story (at least one that deserves to be told), there's little point in making them. The good team wins, the bad team loses, and you follow a basic formula. A little bit of originality is usually enough to get through, and that's something the The Longest Yard has.

The rumors are true. Hell has frozen over. Jobs just showed OS 10.4.1 running on an Intel Pentium 4 @ 3.6 Ghz. What we all suspected is true, "Marklar" has indeed been in development for five years now.

I only wonder about porting the software to the Intel architecture. My guess is that Apple has not been happy at all with the PowerPC not being able to hit the 3.0 Ghz threshold, and this is Apple's way of saying the sh** has hit the fan. Lower prices for Apple hardware are soon to come, I would guess. And finally a faster processor in which to run OS X on.

MacCentral is updating their site live from the keynote right now.

If there's something the vast majority of Americans don't understand, it's Godzilla. If you're reading this, chances are the usual "It's a guy in a rubber suit knocking down cardboard buildings while people talk via bad dubbing" thought process is going through your mind. Animal Planet knew this, but they also understand there's a very large, dedicated fan base out there, and showcased that perfectly on Animal Icons.

Imagine "Rocky" if it were true.

Imagine a movie that tugs your heartstrings, inspires you to beat your chest and do your Tarzan yell, brings you to the point of tears and makes two hours and 45 minutes fly by.

"The Cinderella Man" is that movie.

Continue reading "Cinderella Man Review"

Godzilla already had a sequel. Rodan had ripped apart Japan. Toho needed a fresh monster, and with backing from an American TV company, Varan was born. Varan also died quickly and mercifully, making a fleeting appearance in Destroy All Monsters before fading into obscurity. It's not hard to see why.

Really amazing stuff, even if you've never played the game. For whatever reason, I couldn't get the video to play (WMV) in Firefox. I had to use IE. It's worth the trouble.

So in case you were sleeping today, Apple announced that, over the next two years, it will swap the chips inside the Mac.

Since I really do not have the time to elaborate on this subject a lot, I figured I would point you to Rob Griffiths's (who just made Senior Editor, congratulations) column over at Macworld.

He and I talked a bit this afternoon, and we have very similar thoughts.

First off I think everyone who is now holding there breath about Apple just needs to exhale and take a chill. And all those people who just love to say that Apple is going under (for the 9,864th time) - just keep on saying it.

Sure the list of things that Rosetta will not do is substantial, (sorry, I am not going to sugar coat it) but if you are running, today, carbon and cocoa software I think you will be OK in two years or so when you decide to upgrade to an Intel-based Mac.

Being able to run Windows natively, or near native like WINE does it, is very appealing to me. And I bet I am not the only one. If Apple develops a WINE like environment for Windows software, I would not have to reboot to use Windows. Even if I did, it would be so much better then using Virtual PC or Guest PC today.

I don't think the price of Apple hardware will drop drastically. Apple still needs to either make, or partner with a motherboard manufacturer (which could be Intel) so that it can protect is ROM, and 'clone wars' do not erupt again.

Apple has a peticular loathing for cheap PC parts - and who can blame them - so don't think you are going to build your own Mac. What will happen, however, is that Apple now has by default access to a whole slew of better technology: graphics cards, controller cards, hard drives, etc, etc. This is the big win for Apple loyalists.

I can't wait for the Macworld when we can do a Photoshop speed test with OS X and Windows on Intel chips. Will it matter? Not one bit. But we will finally be able to compare Apples to "apples."

Don't buy this game. Don't even rent it. Run. Run away as fast as you can.

Yes. It sucked. Bad.

Not exactly A Tale of Two Cities, but close. How close are we to this? If so, scary stuff. A very slick SWF.

If WWE DVD's are anything, they're consistent. Not in the realm of special features mind you, but in video and audio quality, with the video seemingly ignored every time. Wrestlemania is usually the only big PPV DVD set of year, and they usually go all out. While not entirely the case this year, the inclusion of one feature is worth the asking price, especially considering they charged you separately for it last year.

Twisted Metal has become a mainstay of the industry since launching in November of 1995. The series lost its original developer after the first sequel, and things quickly spiraled downward until Incog (War of the Monsters, Downhill Domination) stepped up for Twisted Metal Black. Online play was the best thing that could have happened to the series, and that stays true for the PSP version. It's the single player experience that has been completely ignored.

In just a few short years, Bioware made a name for themselves simply for producing a critically acclaimed Star Wars game that was far better than anything to come out of Lucasarts in years. Ditching the license, Bioware has crafted Jade Empire, an involving character building action-RPG that may not be as deep as their previous efforts, but it's far more accessible, and arguably, more fun. It's also too easy (and occasionally frustrating for reasons other than difficulty), and you can breeze through it on anything other than the hardest setting.

I posted about this back in February.

Lexmark had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review its DMCA claim after being rebuffed by lower courts, but the high court rejected the claim without comment because it was filed late, according to Lexmark. The decision means the high court will now not hear the case anytime soon.

It serves them right. The way they make their printers, as well as the Dell branded printers, all but impossible to replace the ink on unless you buy Lexmark ink/buy a new printer is just absurd. That and the DMCA needs to die. Companies like Lexmark try to use it as a crutch.

I can't stand Lexmark printers. None I have had the displeasure to use have printed anything worthwhile.

The ATV racer is a new genre, seemingly spawned one day and then overcrowded the next. Sony's own ATV series made a name because of its online play on the Playstation 2, and the developers were wise to incorporate that into the PSP version. Unfortunately, that's one of the few reasons to bother with Blazin' Trails, which has little to offer outside of that, and there's sure to be a flood of these games soon anyway.

Mac OS X 10.4.2 will include several enhancements that will make Dashboard widget management simpler and safer, according to Mac rumor site AppleInsider.

“The forthcoming Mac OS X 10.4.2 Update will let users delete widgets from the Dashboard dock by hovering over the widget’s name and selecting a small deletion icon. Upon selecting the icon - a red circular image with a dash through it - a confirmation dialog will appear, asking the user to confirm that they want to move that widget to the trash.”

Widget Manager is a Preference Pane for OSX 10.4 that allows you to inspect, remove, and disable Dashboard Widgets. Widget Manager is a convenient way to manage all the Widgets on your system, including the standard Apple Widgets. Since it handles removing the .wdgt file as well as restarting Dashboard, Widget Manager eliminates Dashboard display issues when you remove a Widget by hand, and is also a great defense against potentially harmful Widgets.

The mainstream media takes a shot at pop culture every chance it gets. Politicians join crusades to ban video games. Reality TV is brain-dead entertainment. Steven Johnson says it all makes us smarter, a gutsy cry for people to use common sense when dealing with these things, and he pulls it off.

Racing games always need a hook, something special or different to actually make them worth playing. Need for Speed Underground found it's niche by keeping the racing accessible, but allowing deep customization before heading out onto the streets. It's a strange mix that doesn't seem to mesh very well and with the ridiculous DS-exclusive mini-games, it only gets worse.

Every couple years the University's IT department (ITS) has a Desktop Replacement Program. We give up old computers and get new ones. Its a sweet deal. As we put a little more then $10,000 into new computers two years ago, its nice to get seven brand new iMac G5s and not have to pay for them. This is the second time we have received new, free computers.

We recieved three free computers in the ITS Replacement Program in July of 2004. At that time my boss only thought we would get one. I asked for three, and got them. Yep, I was happy.

In February The BG News picked up a wire story about KnightCite, and I found it to be such a great site I had to post it here.

The author just sent me an email which outlines some new, great, features.

From the email:

My name is Juice Searls, and I'm the developer of KnightCite. I had noticed you picked up the KRT wire story for use in BG's newspaper along with a link from your homepage and wanted to thank you for that by giving you the exclusive first look at KnightCite's first major upgrade.

I really do mean exclusive. Normally I'd start getting the word out about this project through my school's PR department, but because we want off campus users to be the ones to really start testing it over the summer, I decided to contact someone on the outside to make the announcement. The site just went live onto our production server about an hour ago, at 4pm EST.

Here's what you can do in the new version:

-Create a user account
-Save virtual papers and citations
-Fully featured with Organize/Manage/Edit/Delete functions
-The ability to export entire bibliographies into *.rtf and *.doc files already formatted and ready to print (e.g. already bolded, underlined, italicized, and with the hanging indent in there).

KnightCite has generated nearly a quarter of a million citations to date and with this project we're hoping to open the floodgates and win some converts from the professional crowd who use procite/endnote. I'm also beginning planning for KnightCite's next upgrade, which will work to create a single streamlined database of every useful citation created by its users and fully accessible to everyone through a unique approach to search.

And in one note that I hope you will appreciate, this project is what converted me to the Macintosh. I got started on it last summer and realized that I was getting a lot more done in a smaller amount of time when I was working on my studio's Mac as opposed to its PC. I picked up an iBook and a copy of BBEdit and I'm proud to say that the entire project was coded on a Mac and primarily tested in Safari.

Thank you so much "Juice" for helping so many people out of migraine headaches. I wish I had such a tool earlier. I have had a couple papers to write for school, and I now use and recommend this tool all the time.

Be sure to register at the KnightCite site to be able to check out these new features.

Game characters are probably under-valued due to the glut of character-based platformers in the 16-bit era. Remember Rocky Rodent? There's a reason you don't. Now we have fully realized 3-D worlds and of course, characters need to populate them. The Art of Game Characters tries to make sense of it all, explaining the basic process, interviewing those who have created them, and showcasing both rendered and hand drawn art to show off the process.

ECW was special. People can cheer the Rock all they want, but ECW was a lineup of the craziest, most dedicated wresters in the world. These guys (and women) performed solely because they loved what they did. This Sunday, Vince McMahon is taking the reigns for a one night reunion, letting his now grown superstars go back in time, yet it won't be the same. The home grown, low budget production values will be eclipsed, and the personal experiences simply can't be duplicated.

Here's the gist of this story in case you're too lazy to click on it. Basically, this family owned two pit bulls, a male and a female. The male was agitated and in heat. The woman was scared that the pit bull might harm her son while she went to perform errands. What's this genius do? She locks the 12-year old in the basement, also putting a shovel on the door to keep him in there. So, the kid gets out and pit bull mauls and kills him.

I just posted about Widget Manager, which is great for managing Widgets.

One word of warning. Do not disable the Apple supplied widgets. If you restart your computer, they reapear. so now you have a duplicate. One disabled and one not. Deleting the wrong version will render that Widget unusable. Using Widget Manager to fix this problem does not fix the problem, and also renders that Widget unusable as well.

If you did this, here is what to do. In this example we will use "World Clock.wdgt"

1. Delete World Clock.wdgt
2. Rename World Clock.wdgt.disabled to World Clock.wdgt
3. Restart the Dock

Did you see Into the West this weekend on TNT? Yea, neither did I. I am boycotting it. Matt and I implore you to do the same.

Since TNT has been running both the marquee overlays during the NBA Finals games, and long commercials for Into the West and Closer, I am fed up, and refuse to watch.

Its such a shame that Game 2 of the NBA Finals was on ABC tonight when Into the West was on TNT. Darn.

Let me tell you how nice it was to watch Game 2 without the annoying-as-hell TNT marketing tactics.

Dashboard Widgets in Tiger are really easy to create. Especially when there are so many examples (400+ according to Steve Jobs) you can take apart. If you install the Tiger Developer Tools, you get a blank Widget, as well as a folder full of examples.

Making an RSS reading Widget is pretty simple. Just rip apart another RSS widget. I will make one for Breaking Windows soon enough. First here is one for The BG News. I will post it on bgnews.com soon enough.

BG News.wdgt.zip

Use a spam e-mail address. They require you to check the box to recieve promotional material.

That's right, yours truly had a review picked as one of the best of the Blogcritics video lot this week. If you just want to read the the award winning review that all of three people probably read, you can do that here.

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, better chose their words carefully -- the censors are watching.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

"Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says.

Aren't you glad you live in (insert country here) where you can voice your own opinion?

Worth the price of a ticket? Yes
Going to see it a second time? Yes

I need to get some sleep. But Batman Begins was absolutely amazing. The best movie I have seen in months. I have a review 3/4 written (in analog form no less). I will post it tomorrow once I have polished it a bit.

I was surprised how good a Batman movie could really be. Batman Begins surpasses even Tim Burton's 1989 Batman.

Go see this movie.

Of the few details leaked about the Nintendo Revolution, one of them seems to drawing harsh, strong, and brutal criticism: The lack of Hi-definition TV support. Some of you are thinking it doesn't matter. It does, and more so than you would think.

Much like Sony's other sports franchises, the NHL Face-Off series got off to a great start, wowing gamers with unmatched graphical quality and a new gameplay experience. Also just the other games, the series quickly disintegrated in the shadow of increasing competition. Resurrected as Gretzky NHL, this PSP entry has everything right, except for a tolerable frame rate.

False advertising laws prevent companies from stating something that is a blatant lie while trying to sell you something. It's an excellent law, one that needs to be in place. Somehow, Capcom has managed to find a way around this. Capcom Fighting Evolution is the furthest thing from an evolution you'll ever see in the video game world. It's actually a product that de-evolves all the right moves they made with Capcom vs. SNK 2.

Dan Nied wonders if Michael Jackson walked away from court a free man simply because he is Michael Jackson.

Continue reading "The ultimate defense"

I hate music. I always have. I never owned a stand-alone CD player. I haven't owned a tape player since I was ten. I have zero use for an I-Pod or other assorted MP3 player. I own about 20 CDs at the most, split across video game soundtracks, Godzilla soundtracks, Weird Al and... Hootie. And movie soundtracks... with Hootie on them. Bootlegs... with Hootie on them. Singles... with Hootie on them. Imports... with Hootie on them. DVDs... with Hootie on them.

Now Hootie is back again, and their new single off their first non-studio album seems to be getting more airplay than ANY of the songs on their previous few albums (which is partially a crime). I don't know what it is about Hootie and his oddball band of Blowfish, but they're the only band I've ever enjoyed just listening too.

They're new single, One Love, confirms they still have it, and I've only heard half of it. The brief teaser clip on their site is really starting to tick me off. It's not fair. August 9th is the day, and I'll be outside Best Buy before they open (though some local smaller shops put it out earlier...). You should be too (or in Ken's case, be online at some MP3 site with one of his 29,000,549,068 music gadgets ready to download).

I am not ashamed to say that "Jagged Little Pill" was one of my favorite albums of my teen years. It was that time when I was really starting to discover music. I listened to a lot of different music back then. My musical tastes had a broader scope at that time. But more then anything, I still love the music of those years of my life.

This acoustic album is much better then what was planned - a re-mastering of the original 1995 "Jagged Little Pill." On first thought, this acoustic album seems like MTV Unplugged, rehashed. After listening through the entire album a couple times, this is much more then "Unplugged," and it is anything but rehashed. You sing along to every song on "Acoustic" and you do a double take. Did she change the lyrics? Are you serious? Morissette actually put effort into this album? Indeed she did. In a time when artists are becoming lax with their music - with "Best Of" albums that are merely re-mastered - Morissette delivers a new "Jagged Little Pill" that seems to have even more kinetic energy then the original some 10 years ago.

At the very least, this is a movie involving a shark, and it's not a Great White. Then again, it's not exactly a Hammerhead either. This is a stem cell born beastie with the features of a Hammerhead and a human. It seems that DNA experiments gone wrong aren't "in" anymore; it's time to enter the era of stem cell experiments gone wrong.

Much like NBA Live did for basketball, EA's FIFA changed the way we played soccer games back in 1993. It was a radical departure from the arcade-style experiences that preceded it. While some of those roots still haunt the series, the latest editions have made some impressive strides towards realism. The PSP port keeps everything, whether it's for better or worse.

Ah, the genius of politicians. This New York senator feels the upcoming 25 to Life is the worst video game, morally wise, ever released because you can shoot cops, take human hostages, and shoot gang members. What this guy fails to realize is that you can play either a cop or drug dealer (player's choice), multiple games (dating back to the NES era) featured human hostages, and GTA lets you do far worse. He also probably didn't epect the game to jump over 400% in Amazon in Amazon's movers and shakers (as found by a cheapassgamer member) after his statement. Yes, you just made every kid in America want it even more, not the game maker. Brilliant.

There can't be stupid people there, right? What? There are no people? Even better.

These parents complained that a team in their league was "too good." You know what? Deal with it. Teach your kids about being a good loser, teach your kids about sportsmanship. Teach your kids, for gods sake, that it's SUPPOSED TO BE FUN. *Sigh*

Call it what you want, but Shining Tears is gorgeous. It's a flawless example of how beautiful 2-D graphics can be on such powerful hardware, and it doesn't look outdated in the least. While it may look like something fans of the series would find enjoyable, the gameplay is a complete turn around, and that takes the game in a direction that may not be what you're looking for.

This is some big news for online auction sellers:

06/06/05 Changes to Yahoo! Auctions: Yahoo! Auctions has changed its pricing to create a model that is free for all consumers listing items on our Auctions platform. We have eliminated all fees associated with Auctions listings, including listing fees and final value fees.

Back in 1986, Hoosiers became the sole basketball film that every fan needs to see at least once. Everything after it seems so unnecessary. That's also the case of Coach Carter. It's hard not to like it admittedly, it's just no different then the list of movies that Coach Carter lands on which try to feed off everything Hoosiers did right.

There is no entertainer whose career spanned the 20th century and who can elicit so many different feelings than Frank Sinatra.

His first recording came 60 years before his last, Duets, in the late 1990s.

He saw Las Vegas through its infancy as a party town, and came back when odds were stacked against him (no voice, no job, and a wife who got more attention than he did).

Continue reading "Sinatra: The Life Book Review"

So I was wondering just where exactly that $100 million in marketing went for "Batman Begins"... I mean, sure I keep seeing ads for it on the internet, but not in any volume that seems to outweigh other films and click-here-now enterprises... then I learned about a
Batman-sponsored NASCAR race...

Contois Music Technology last week asked a Federal Court to stop the iPod maker from distributing its iTunes jukebox software and is seeking damages over an alleged patent violation by the iTunes software.

The suit, filed on June 13th in Vermont District Court, alleges that Apple's iTunes software design infringes on Contois' six-year old design patent (US Patent No. 5,864,868) entitled "Computer Control System and User Interface for Media Playing Devices."

The mock-up that Apple Insider posted is very similar to what iTunes looks like. It seems like a genuine case of patent infringement. I cannot remember, nor can I find screenshots of SoundJam MP - the predecessor to iTunes - to see if it had a three column layout for displaying genre -> artist -> album.

With two such evenly-matched teams playing at such a high-level, anything but an all-or-nothing Game 7 would have been profoundly disappointing.

And you all thought that Detroit would crumble in Game 6. Too bad. Unfortunately this did not become a series until Game 5, as the first four games were huge blow outs, but Games 5 and 6 have been really great basketball. With the first Game 7 in NBA Finals history in 11 years, this is sure to be an electric final game between two very physical teams.

I just have two words to say:

Go Pistons!

It's amazing that some people have jobs. Not just normal jobs, high profile jobs that can im