NumbersGirl

AFP site appears to be down. *unrealistically hoping it is because they are updating the site with tour dates*

Ah, one of my favorite childhood games. First of all, I was perplexed seeing the battleship. I do not remember that one at all. Maybe we lost it and hence I never saw it. If they are set on ditching one, I would prefer to see the iron go. I always thought it looked lame, and frankly I don't want to think about chores when I'm playing a game. KEEP THE BOOT! I always used that piece, mostly because it was an appropriate representation of me kicking all the other players off the board when I bankrupt them. *between Monopoly and Stratego, ruthless Carrie is ruthless* My original thought was that the diamond ring was both simple and rather appropriate, and therefore a good choice. It would fit well because it is even the logo on the "Luxury Tax" tile. But then again, none of the other current pieces are logos on the board, so my logic was a bit flawed. And on to the replacement... so, Hasbro says it wants the new piece to reflect "the interests of today's players". I hardly see how any of the proposed replacements reflect this (sorry, a Jetsons robot hardly qualifies), except for maybe the guitar; and as Reilly pointed out, it would probably look lame during gameplay. And what age demographic are "today's players" anyway? Different age demographics can have wildly different interests.

I'm bummed that Jonny Greenwood didn't get nominated for Original Score (for The Master). I wonder if it was due to an "ineligible technicality" (as was the case with his score for There Will Be Blood), or if he was eligible and they just didn't think it was worthy of nomination. And widespread release of Zero Dark Thirty doesn't happen until tomorrow. Only had a limited release (of 5 theaters?) last month. edit: Also I find it interesting that The Master wasn't nominated for Best Film (wtf, there's 9???), considering it has nominations for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

I don't doubt it. Sounds about right. :surprised: No... is it good?

I volunteer to be an extra Secret Santa.

Long ago, I resigned to the likelihood that this project was (unfortunately) abandoned. Oh well.

For a handheld console? That would hardly be competetive pricing at something in the range of $480-$650. Out of curiosity I checked with my husband (who is a rather avid gamer and originally pointed out this news to me); he seems to think the likely price point would be around $200 (£125). I'm going to guess $299 (£185) as the initial price though, to eventually be reduced to the seasonal/holiday price of his initial guess. He also said one of the key things that gives this the big edge over the other handheld consoles is, "... because Microsoft and Nintendo went with ATI graphics, not nvidia's product. All of the newer cell phones have nvidia's tegra processors. This uses their newest tegra 4 which has 72 cores..ps3 has 7 cores. Crazy."

Nvidia’s Surprise ‘Project Shield’ Handheld Games Console Shakes Up CES 2013 Everywhere you look these days, someone wants into your living room. Nintendo just launched it’s Wii-quel, the Wii U, developer Boxer8 is busy getting its Kickstarter-funded OUYA Android-based game console ready for an April 2013 launch and rumor has it Microsoft and Sony will unveil their next-gen boxes later this year. Enter GPU big shot Nvidia, firing a shot across everyone’s bow with something completely unexpected: an Nvidia-brand handheld game device with a dedicated 5-inch display that’ll also stream games wirelessly to your television. According to the Wall Street Journal, the device is codenamed “Project Shield,” runs on Android Jellybean, looks like a classic full-sized gamepad with an attached (detachable?) hinge-style 720p “retinal” multi-touch screen, runs off the newest version of the company’s Tegra-series “system on a chip” processors — specifically, a custom 72-core Nvidia GeForce GPU / quad-core A15 CPU – and doesn’t yet have a release date. Nvidia claims it employs “breakthrough” Wi-Fi technology (802.11n 2×2 MIMO) and “stunning” high-definition video and audio. Who knows how capable it’ll be of running, say, something on par with Crysis 3, what demographic Nvidia’s really targeting and whether the launch games will be platform-unique or just repeats of what you can play on any other Android device. Regardless, it is kind of a big deal from an industry standpoint. Chances are if you’ve played a game at any point during the past 20 years, you’ve played on Nvidia hardware. The company got into the chip biz on the PC side of things back in 1993, eventually snapping up rival 3dfx in 2000 and hopping into set-top consoles with the advent of Microsoft’s original Xbox in late 2001. Since then, Nvidia’s been a vanguard in game-hardware design. It’s GeForce series of PC processors still dominate the PC gaming landscape (Nvidia’s only rival is AMD/ATI and it’s well ahead in terms of discrete graphics market share) and it’s the GPU brain-center of Sony’s PlayStation 3 (the so-called “RSX Reality Synthesizer”). You’ll find Nvidia’s Tegra-series of mobile processors in smartphones ranging from the HTX One X to various Motorola and Samsung mobile devices, and Nvidia just so happens to be the GPU powering both my MacBook Pro Retina (a GeForce GT 650M) and the strictly-for-gaming PC sitting under my desk (a GeForce GTX 670). Why the move to “verticalize” and get into the end-platform game? Probably for the reasons the Journal mentions: Nvidia has, in recent years, given up ground to rival AMD in the set-top market. Nintendo’s consoles from the GameCube forward have all used AMD/ATI parts. The Xbox 360 uses an AMD/ATI graphics processor, and Microsoft’s next set-top, whatever it’s called, has been rumored for years to employ an AMD/ATI graphics core. As the Journal notes, Microsoft recently made a similar move from the opposite direction with its Microsoft-manufactured Surface tablet. And then there’s the whole history of Nvidia’s on-again, off-again relationships with companies like Apple. No doubt Nvidia wants end-to-end control of the process (as well as that hypothetically bigger slice of the revenue pie). “Project Shield” sounds like a toe in the water, then, a chance to see see how well it can design and market a consumer-ready product, while capitalizing on a long history of working with game developers to optimize game performance across all kinds of devices. But Nvidia isn’t itself a game designer, and it’s not entirely clear what sort of experience the company intends. The device as pictured looks like a traditional gamepad with d-pad, four face buttons and dual analog thumbsticks as well as stereo speakers (just above the d-pad and face buttons, respectively) and media pause/play buttons. Despite these core gaming trademarks, given its smallish size and Android pedigree, it’s probably not intended to compete directly with whatever’s next from Microsoft and Sony. And then there’s the wireless streaming tech to think about. Anyone who’s used an iOS device with Apple’s AirPlay Mirroring technology knows how flaky things can sometimes be, latency-wise (though Nintendo seems to have its arms around the latency issue with wireless streaming between its Wii U base station and Wii U GamePad). Can Nvidia offer essentially latency-free big-screen gaming for core gamers looking for a Call of Duty-caliber experience? On the other hand, Nvidia’s announcement has to be unsettling for do-it-yourself Android-based Kickstarter startups like OUYA and Gamestick. Nvidia has resources that utterly dwarf the latter two’s. While I’d hate to see promising fledgling indie efforts steamrolled by an industry heavyweight, I’d equally hate to be on the receiving end of an Android-based console war with a company like Nvidia. It’s arguably a David and Goliath thing, except in this case Goliath’s wearing full body armor. An inexpensive Android-based dedicated game console/portable hardly seems a shoo-in at this point, nor am I convinced, given the lack of enthusiasm for something like Sony’s PlayStation Vita (which I still love, incidentally), that a larger, kludgy-looking game “portable” — a gamepad with a tacked-on screen — is going to romance either casual or core players. Out of the gate, Nvidia’s touting titles available through Google Play and Nvidia’s own TegraZone, so games like Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Rochard, Real Boxing, Dead Trigger 2, Burn Zombie Burn and ARMA Tactics — stuff that straddles the line between casual and core, in other words. In any event, assuming Nvidia sells this thing at a competitive price point and releases it soon, and in case you thought the market for standalone Android-based game consoles looked a little shaky with first-timers like OUYA and Gamestick leading the charge, the playing field just got worlds more interesting. link

For once, Will isn't the one in a pic with the death stare.

qwerty

Procedure for nominations: http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94742 :wacko:

On first read, I thought she said, "I think they'd all fail." Ha.

^ Awesomeness. Unfortunately, we need a reason for the nomination. :tongue:

* threads merged *

July 19-21, 2013 Union Park - Chicago Artists TBA starting in mid-January. Tickets available for purchase now.

I wonder what the final price was? The link doesn't show the winning bid amount, it just shows the "estimated value".

I just took the + sign out of 2+2. *lame, I know*

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyReSMJw5MI]Fainting Goats to Benny Hill Theme - YouTube[/ame]

But see I don't get that though. Why would you want to be with a girl that would leave another guy just to be with you? Sure at first it would make you happy, but after awhile wouldn't you be thinking, "gosh, she did it to him, what makes me think she won't do that to me when she sees some other really nice guy?"

lols

Ah, so ALL of them have 3! Nice! But yes, I have noticed the whole 15 thing. When I play the (mega millions) lotto I have a set of "Radiohead" numbers: 2-4-5-15-22 & 15. Yup.

President Vladimir Putin signs bill banning American adoption of Russian children MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children, part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Although some top Russian officials including the foreign minister openly opposed the bill and Putin himself had been noncommittal about it last week, he signed it less than 24 hours after receiving it from Parliament, where both houses passed it overwhelmingly. The law also calls for closure of non-governmental organizations receiving American funding if their activities are classified as political — a broad definition many fear could be used to close any NGO that offends the Kremlin. It was not immediately clear when the law would take effect, but presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying "practically, adoption stops on Jan. 1." Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said 52 children who were in the pipeline for U.S. adoption would remain in Russia. The bill has angered Americans and Russians who argue it victimizes children to make a political point, cutting off a route out of frequently dismal orphanages for thousands. "Our unlucky children, our orphans are suffering because they became small change in a political game between two states. This is immoral, this is cannibalism," veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva was quoted as saying by the state news agency RIA Novosti. Vladimir Lukin, head of the Russian Human Rights Commission and a former ambassador to Washington, said he would challenge the law in the Constitutional Court. UNICEF estimates that there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. The U.S. is the biggest destination for adopted Russian children — more than 60,000 of them have been taken in by Americans over the past two decades. Russians historically have been less enthusiastic about adopting children than most Western cultures. Putin, along with signing the adoption ban, on Friday issued an order for the government to develop a program to provide more support for adopted children. Lev Ponomarev, one of Russia's most prominent human rights activists, hinted at that reluctance when he said Parliament members who voted for the bill should take custody of the children who were about to be adopted. "The moral responsibility lies on them," he told Interfax. "But I don't think that even one child will be taken to be brought up by deputies of the Duma." The law is in response to a measure signed into law by President Barack Obama this month that calls for sanctions against Russians assessed to be human rights violators. That stems from the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud. He was repeatedly denied medical treatment and died in jail in 2009. Russian rights groups claimed he was severely beaten and accused the Kremlin of failing to prosecute those responsible; a prison doctor who was the only official charged in the case was acquitted by a Moscow court on Friday. The U.S. law galvanized Russian resentment of the United States, which Putin has claimed funded and encouraged the wave of massive anti-government protests that arose last winter. The Parliament initially considered a relatively similar retaliatory measure, but amendments have expanded it far beyond a tit-for-tat response. Many Russians have been distressed for years by reports of Russian children dying or suffering abuse at the hands of their American adoptive parents. The new Russian law was dubbed the "Dima Yakovlev Bill" after a toddler who died in 2008 when his American adoptive father left him in a car in broiling heat for hours. Russians also bristled at how the widespread adoptions appeared to show them as hardhearted or too poor to take care of orphans. Astakhov, the children's ombudsman, charged that well-heeled Americans often got priority over Russians who wanted to adopt. A few lawmakers even claimed that some Russian children were adopted by Americans only to be used for organ transplants or become sex toys or cannon fodder for the U.S. Army. A spokesman with Russia's dominant Orthodox Church said that children adopted by foreigners and raised outside the church will not enter God's kingdom. link

It was definitely chaotic during that snowfall late December 2010. It was maybe 3 inches with a little ice, and Heathrow was virtually at a standstill for days. I'm glad I got out of there with only a 1-day delay. I can't imagine what 8 inches (like we had) would do over there. It just seems odd to me because the UK is much further north than where I am, so I would think they would be used to lots of snow. I guess having the Atlantic to the west has a bigger impact on the climate (milder) than it is having Lake Michigan to the west. Here's a brief video of traffic in London with only a few inches of snow; do people just freak out? I don't understand.

If what she is claiming is true... physical abuse is a bit of a problem.