Mass Effect 2 vs Dragon Age: Origins

Mass Effect 2 vs Dragon Age: Origins

Posted on 19th Dec 2010 at 11:28 by Clive Webster with 30 comments

It?s curious that two similar games from the same games studio differ so much in how enjoyable they both are. While Mass Effect 2 feels fresh and vivid, Dragon Age feels dull, clichéd and derivative. That?s quite an achievement, considering that both games are set in unique worlds and both have essentially the same plot. What?s so wrong with Dragon Age to provoke such a reaction?

To me, almost everything that could be wrong with Dragon Age is, barring catastrophic failure. The graphics look poor, with basic and blocky geometry, low-res textures and too much shininess. While ME2 shares some of these characteristics, it?s less noticeable ? sci-fi clothing is meant to be shiny and robots and machinery are meant to be blocky in shape.

The gameplay of Dragon Age falls into the tired format of slogging through lengthy dungeons. I found myself wondering what on Earth I was actually doing at numerous points in each mission, and the only answer I could come up with was ?it?s a dungeon, crawl through it till you get to the boss at the end.? This meant the game comprised of slogging across the world, fighting irritating bandits along the way, and then slogging through a dungeon full of the same kind of enemy. Thrilling...

Meanwhile, the missions of ME2 felt more fun and were more varied ? the siege of Archangel had different sections that encourage different ways of playing, while Jack?s rescue was a full-on firefight, while Tali?s loyalty mission had a great sense of dread about it. All these missions had a tight focus and felt compelling to play. It?s no coincidence that ME2 is the only game I?ve ever started replaying as soon as I?d finished it (in fact, it?s one of the games I had any interest in re-playing at all).

Even the tone of Dragon Age left me underwhelmed ? the buckets of blood that was thrown over everything in sight, and the supposedly tough moral choices. I felt no remorse at killing a demon-infested child, but felt the need to think much more about decisions I made ME2 as I actually cared whether or not I closed off missions or friendships with the characters (even if this is fairly hard, in reality).

It?s baffling that Ferelden felt so tired when the galaxy of ME2 feels so fresh and interesting, but if you?re going to use the same old stereotypes (Dwarves are miners, Elves are fey and aloof and so on) and only mix in some generic ideas of world cataclysm, that?s the inevitable result. A hodgepodge of the blandest parts of Robert Jordan and Tolkien is hardly the way to go for a brand new game world; I?d like to recommend that the next time Bioware looks to do a fantasy game it puts Steven Erikson, George R.R. Martin and Glen Cook on the required reading list before writing a word.

Powered by WizardRSS | Work At Home Jobs

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/anmfSkwNrX4/

robin williams panama city shooting wsmv weather news channel 5 weather

What is on that screen?

What is on that screen?

Posted on 18th Dec 2010 at 12:30 by James Gorbold with 88 comments

One of the first things I do when proof reading an article that is about to be published on bit-tech or Custom PC is check whether the URL at the top of the review does correctly link to the product manufacturer's homepage.

So while proofing the review of the MSI X58A-GD65 motherboard I came across this image which I just had to share with you. It's an advert admitedly, but the artwork is so bizarre that I thought it worth a caption competition.

What is on that screen? *What is on that screen?

To get things started, this is what some of the bit-tech/CPC editorial's team suggestions:

1. MSI has installed fans in the screen.

2. He's just seen a video of his parents having sex.

3. He's just seen the first benchmarks of a LGA2011 CPU.

Over to you...

Powered by WizardRSS | Work At Home Jobs

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/LPDShzRvIU0/

whnt 19 weather robin williams panama city shooting

New Voters May Sway Fed Actions

One is an economist who fears that the Fed?s easy-money policies could lead to manias like the housing bubble that burst in 2007. Another is a Texas Democrat who served in the Clinton White House, but is wary of the Fed?s aggressive efforts to combat unemployment.

A third is a precocious economist who graduated from Princeton at 19. And the fourth is the only one who agreed wholeheartedly with the Fed?s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, that the economy was at risk of falling into a dangerous cycle of deflation last summer and that an additional monetary boost was needed.

The four men are presidents of regional Fed banks, and under an arcane system that dates to the Depression, they will become voting members in 2011 on the Federal Open Market Committee, which gathers eight times a year around a 27-foot mahogany table to influence the supply of credit in the economy.

While Mr. Bernanke remains the dominant voice on which route the Fed takes, the change in voting composition is likely to give the committee a somewhat more hawkish cast. This could amplify anxieties about unforeseen effects of Mr. Bernanke?s policies and potentially contribute to the increasingly politicized atmosphere surrounding the Fed.

Since the Fed embarked last month on a second round of quantitative easing ? a strategy of buying government securities to hold down mortgage and other long-term interest rates ? it has faced an outpouring of criticism from foreign central banks and conservative Republicans.

One of them, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who is in line to become chairman of the House Budget Committee, said he thought that dissenters within the Fed would influence whether Mr. Bernanke ?throttles back, or keeps going,? with the bond-buying plan.

?We?re playing with fire, flirting with disaster,? Mr. Ryan said of the plan, which he believes could jeopardize the dollar?s status as the world?s reserve currency and touch off future inflation.

Most economists think the Fed is unlikely to drastically alter its policy direction, though some of the new members could nudge policy toward more restraint and less activism. Two of the four new voters are viewed as hawkish on inflation, meaning that they tend to be more worried about unleashing future inflation than they are about reducing unemployment in the short run.

The committee will be ?a little more hawkish, on net, although I don?t think it?s a sea change,? said Jan Hatzius, the chief United States economist at Goldman Sachs.

Of the four new voting members, the one drawing the most attention is Charles I. Plosser, 62, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia since 2006.

Mr. Plosser, who formerly taught at the University of Rochester, argued in a speech at the libertarian Cato Institute last month that monetary policy ?went off track? a few years ago, an acknowledgment of the criticism that the Fed kept interest rates too low from 2003 to 2005, contributing to the housing bubble.

?I?d like the recovery to be faster, but I?m not sure monetary policy can do much about that,? he said in an interview.

Mr. Plosser said that he has thought all along that the economic slowdown over the summer was temporary and that he ?wasn?t a big fan? of Mr. Bernanke?s asset-purchase plan. He wants the Fed to move back toward normal policy.

?If we wait too long, and the economy really begins to pick up and we are too late in reacting, we could end up behind the curve and we could end up with more instability,? he said.

Most economists expect Mr. Plosser to dissent, possibly repeatedly, in 2011, inheriting a role played by Thomas M. Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Fed, who was the lone dissenter eight times this year but does not have a vote next year.

Richard W. Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed since 2005, is another potential dissenter. A former investment banker, he was the Democratic nominee for the Senate in 1994, but lost to Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican. He was a deputy United States trade representative during President Bill Clinton?s second term.

Compared with most Democratic politicians, Mr. Fisher, 61, is wary of the Fed?s latest moves. ?The remedy for what ails the economy is, in my view, in the hands of the fiscal and regulatory authorities, not the Fed,? he said in a speech last month.

His views are also in line with those of fiscal conservatives, like Mr. Ryan, who think the Fed is abetting huge government deficits by ?monetizing the federal debt.?

Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 47, the Princeton graduate, who became president of the Minneapolis Fed last year, will be voting for the first time. He has been more measured about quantitative easing. In a speech last month, he called it ?a move in the right direction? but said the ultimate effects were ?likely to be relatively modest.?

Powered by WizardRSS | Work At Home Jobs

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d07538b5ff53029ba520033beea36d10

panama city shooting wsmv weather news channel 5 weather weather richmond va

Medicaid Bonuses to Reward States for Insuring More Children

The payments, which were established when Congress and President Obama reauthorized the Children?s Health Insurance Program in 2009, are aimed at one of the most persistent frustrations in government health care: the inability to enroll an estimated 4.7 million children who would be eligible for subsidized coverage if their families could be found and alerted. Two of every three uninsured children are thought to meet the income criteria for government insurance programs.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has called the matter ?a moral obligation? and has challenged health care providers, state and local governments and community groups to seek out eligible children.

The stubbornness of the problem is one reason the government expects millions of people to remain uninsured even after 2014, when the new health care law requires most Americans to have coverage and vastly expands government programs to make it affordable.

The bonus grants are distributed according to a formula. To qualify, states must have adopted at least five of eight measures aimed at streamlining enrollment for children in public insurance programs and have recorded Medicaid caseload increases that could not be attributed solely to a worsening economy. Thirty-two states did not even apply for the grants. Three of the 18 that did apply did not qualify for payments.

Alabama will receive a $55 million bonus, more than twice as much as any other state, for having 133,000 more children on its Medicaid rolls than projected by a formulated base line, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The 15 states that will receive bonuses reported a total of 874,347 children above the baseline, which factors in population growth and, to some degree, demand driven by the economy.

To make enrollment easier, Alabama has eliminated asset tests for children, ended requirements for an in-person interview and allowed children to remain eligible for a year without renewal. It also sends out renewal forms with blanks filled in when data is known, and allows applicants to verify their forms with an electronic signature. The state has adopted ?express lane eligibility? so that Medicaid application processors can use income findings from other safety net programs to validate eligibility.

?We are absolutely ecstatic about the $55 million,? said Lee A. Rawlinson, Alabama?s deputy Medicaid commissioner. ?It just could not have come at a better time for the state. And had we not had all these streamlining efforts we would never have been able to get to these applications and get all these children awarded.?

Oregon, which will receive a $15 million bonus, made many of the same refinements, while also extending coverage to more children. ?Without these efforts to make enrollment simplified, the resources we put into outreach and marketing would be wasted,? said Cathy H. Kaufmann, administrator of Oregon Healthy Kids, which encompasses both Medicaid and the Children?s Health Insurance Program. ?We?d have driven thousands of people to the front door but many of them wouldn?t be able to get in.?

Because of the formula?s requirements, none of the money will go to California, Texas or Florida, which account for nearly 40 percent of all uninsured children. Nor will any go to the four states that do the best job of signing up eligible children ? Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii.

A study published in the journal Health Affairs estimated the national participation rate among children eligible for Medicaid and the Children?s Health Insurance Program at 82 percent in 2008. Thirteen states had rates below 80 percent, with Nevada at only 55 percent. Ms. Sebelius said in an interview that it would be ?a huge win for kids? if the rate could be pushed to 90 percent.

A third of all children are now insured by two programs, compared with 10 percent of nonelderly adults, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicaid covers 24 million children, most of them living below the poverty line, and the Children?s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, picks up nearly eight million in families with slightly higher incomes.

The programs? costs are shared by the federal government and the states. Washington sets income-based eligibility thresholds, which states can exceed.

Powered by WizardRSS | Work At Home Jobs

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=643b6bec90d0f72355b9323ba7aab6a7

nicole richie wedding dress weather nashville tn rock and roll hall of fame whnt 19 weather

When Predictions Go Only So Far

Dell learned a tough lesson a year ago. In the quarter that included the 2009 holiday season, its revenue jumped 11 percent, which sounds like good news: the company sold more computers than it had in the same quarter the year before. But its net income dropped 5 percent during the same period. Dell was making less money on each machine it sold. Perhaps most distressing for Dell and its stockholders, one of the biggest reasons for the shortfall was that the company had been caught off guard. Prices for key computer components, especially memory chips, had risen more than Dell had expected.

The fact that Dell, which sells $60 billion worth of products annually, was insufficiently prepared for a price spike in its supply chain is a reminder that even some of the world's most complex businesses have struggled to master predictive modeling, the technology at the heart of this month's Business Impact report. Since that bad holiday quarter, the company has tried to get more sophisticated in its modeling efforts, but it's not clear it's had much of an effect.

To understand Dell's situation, you have to go back to the start. After being founded in Michael Dell's dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, the company mastered the science of supply-chain efficiency. It was a model that made Dell the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 during the 1990s. Because it curtailed its retail store business early on and sold directly to consumers and businesses, Dell could build computers "just in time," which meant that it didn't have to assemble a machine and then let it sit in a warehouse or a retail location until someone bought it. Instead, it generally put together PCs only after customers had already ordered them. That meant Dell could order certain parts for its computers just days before they were needed?and often not pay for them until after the assembled computers were shipped off to customers.

But in the past few years, Dell has tried to expand its market by selling in stores. That has forced Dell to deal with several new challenges, among them that big chains such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart stock their shelves with a fixed lineup of PCs rather than customizing machines for each buyer. "We've had to change the entire supply chain to build fixed configurations," the company's chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, recently told Technology Review. And retailers order these machines months in advance, not days or weeks.

As a result, Dell must try to figure out over the summer what to charge for PCs that will actually be made and sold during the holiday season. If the price of a major component such as memory chips jumps between July and December, Dell's profits can get squeezed. That's what happened in 2009. Even a plunge in prices can be damaging, because the company hedges many of its component purchases to lock in prices within a certain range. If prices fall way below the expected level, it has overspent for the parts.

Online Business Consulting | Internet Business Consulting

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=e6d4e383269ac13201616f5a4b9968a7

weather richmond va bellagio robbery nicole richie wedding dress weather nashville tn

When Predictions Go Only So Far

Dell learned a tough lesson a year ago. In the quarter that included the 2009 holiday season, its revenue jumped 11 percent, which sounds like good news: the company sold more computers than it had in the same quarter the year before. But its net income dropped 5 percent during the same period. Dell was making less money on each machine it sold. Perhaps most distressing for Dell and its stockholders, one of the biggest reasons for the shortfall was that the company had been caught off guard. Prices for key computer components, especially memory chips, had risen more than Dell had expected.

The fact that Dell, which sells $60 billion worth of products annually, was insufficiently prepared for a price spike in its supply chain is a reminder that even some of the world's most complex businesses have struggled to master predictive modeling, the technology at the heart of this month's Business Impact report. Since that bad holiday quarter, the company has tried to get more sophisticated in its modeling efforts, but it's not clear it's had much of an effect.

To understand Dell's situation, you have to go back to the start. After being founded in Michael Dell's dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, the company mastered the science of supply-chain efficiency. It was a model that made Dell the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 during the 1990s. Because it curtailed its retail store business early on and sold directly to consumers and businesses, Dell could build computers "just in time," which meant that it didn't have to assemble a machine and then let it sit in a warehouse or a retail location until someone bought it. Instead, it generally put together PCs only after customers had already ordered them. That meant Dell could order certain parts for its computers just days before they were needed?and often not pay for them until after the assembled computers were shipped off to customers.

But in the past few years, Dell has tried to expand its market by selling in stores. That has forced Dell to deal with several new challenges, among them that big chains such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart stock their shelves with a fixed lineup of PCs rather than customizing machines for each buyer. "We've had to change the entire supply chain to build fixed configurations," the company's chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, recently told Technology Review. And retailers order these machines months in advance, not days or weeks.

As a result, Dell must try to figure out over the summer what to charge for PCs that will actually be made and sold during the holiday season. If the price of a major component such as memory chips jumps between July and December, Dell's profits can get squeezed. That's what happened in 2009. Even a plunge in prices can be damaging, because the company hedges many of its component purchases to lock in prices within a certain range. If prices fall way below the expected level, it has overspent for the parts.

Online Business Consulting | Internet Business Consulting

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=e6d4e383269ac13201616f5a4b9968a7

bellagio robbery nicole richie wedding dress weather nashville tn rock and roll hall of fame

Android Market Unofficially Surpasses 200,000 Apps [TNW Google]

According to statistics collated by third-party Android Market tracking service AndroLib, the Android Market has unofficially surpassed 200,000 applications, doubling the number of apps on the marketplace in just two months.

In October, we reported on Google?s official tweet stating that the Android Market had 100,000 apps ? it seems the continued growth of the platform has brought with it keen developer interest with an incredible number of apps available for the platform.

Compared to Apple?s App Store, the Android Market is still some way off ? the App Store is thought to have over 300,000 applications available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The App Store is somewhat older than the Android Market but there are a huge number of Android devices accessing Google?s app marketplace, AndroLib puts the number of Android apps downloaded at 2.5 billion.

Microsoft?s marketplace, on the other hand, has just passed 5,000 apps in under two months.

Google has not confirmed the figures so we must reserve judgement as to whether the Android Market currently holds 200,000 applications, we expect Google would want to publicise the fact that its marketplace has surpassed that figure, hopefully it won?t be too long until it does.

Online Business Consulting | Internet Business Consulting

Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/12/28/android-market-unofficially-surpasses-200000-apps/

whnt 19 weather robin williams panama city shooting wsmv weather

4Chan goes down, ?temporarily unavailable due to DDoS? [TNW Media]

Pandora?s box of the Internet, 4chan.org is currently down. 4chan is the largest online community in the English-speaking world, essentially an imageboard website where people post and discuss pictures. An announcement on 4Chan?s status page says it went down due to DDoS. ?We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al.?an exclusive club!?

As of posting, downforeveryoneorjustme.com confirms that the site is down. 4chan?s Twitter account confirms the attack.

As reported by Geekosystem, yesterday, Internet vigilante group Anonymous launched a DDoS attack against Bank of America?s website, in retaliation to Bank of America?s refusal to process payments or donations to WikiLeaks. Geekosystem speculates that either the banks of the past month may behind the attack (doubtful) or there may be a war with Tumblr brewing (seriously?).

While the front page is up, the boards and static files are down. On average, 4chan receives over 800,000 posts a day. The site?s founder Christopher ?moot? Poole has been described by The Observer as ?the most influential web entrepreneur you?ve never heard of.? To date, 4Chan, now 7 years old, hosts 642,022,167 posts and has a user base just shy of 60,000.

Online Business Consulting | Internet Business Consulting

Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2010/12/28/4chan-down-temporarily-unavailable-due-to-ddos/

robin williams panama city shooting wsmv weather news channel 5 weather

Onkyo unveils 10.1" TA117 tablet with Tegra 2

Most tablet manufacturers are reserving their product launches for CES next week, but Onkyo wants to beat its competition to the punch. The company has unveiled its TA117 tablet, which will ship in two versions: the TA117C1 and TA117C3. Both models run Android 2.2 Froyo, sport a 10.1-inch touchscreen with a 1024x600 resolution, and are powered by Nvidia's 1GHz Tegra 250 system-on-a-chip.

Each measures 267 x 173 x 14.8mm and features built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI-out, a front-mounted 1.3-megapixel camera, and a connector for an optional dock. Both iterations are practically identical, except the TA117C1 carries 512MB of DDR2 RAM with 8GB of internal storage, whereas the C3 raises that to 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage.


The TA117 is reportedly set to ship in Japan on December 31 for an undisclosed price, and there's no word on global availability. For what it's worth, Akihabara reports that preorders might open tomorrow at GeekStuff4U.com, which ships internationally and accepts both euros and US dollars.

Online Business Consulting | Internet Business Consulting

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41743-onkyo-unveils-101-ta117-tablet-with-tegra-2.html

weather richmond va bellagio robbery nicole richie wedding dress weather nashville tn