Posted 08/27/2009 at 09:46:28pm

This is a great article for several reasons:

1) It motivated me to post a comment on MPC for the first time in many, many , many months.

2)  There has been a great deal of commentary from the readers of this article so far. And its not all fundamentalist crazy talk in those comments. Some of it is really interesting and important to consider.

3) Probably the most important reason this is a great article is the main reason that you actually wrote it: it spells out a compelling reason to really treat games as culturally relevant and important. Bringing Ebert's short-sighted commentary into the mix was brilliant and really brought the point home for me. Up to that point I was saying to myself, "It's just a game."

I think the reason that it was so easy for gamers to speak up against Ebert was that we ALL felt slighted (or worse) in some way. Mr. Card's rhetoric is considerably more divisive and we (gamers) are therefore not as united in our response to it. I'm also in personal mental anguish since I have loved Card's work for decades and was totally unaware of his stance on homosexuality. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, meaning that gamers are further fractured and unsure how to respond to his voracious intolerance.

Nathan, for once you have actually made me think about the issues you brought up in your article. Oh, I've enjoyed some of your work in the past, but this made me think. I would categorize this article as social analysis, not social commentary, as you've already stated, but looking at games, gamers, and their place in society. Keep up the great work!

Posted 07/18/2009 at 12:32:04am

Thanks for the article. I've been using Ubuntu for almost a year now and didn't realize that I could actually play windows media files at all. Then again, I never really had an interest... In any case, it is a useful article and I have updated some of my libraries because of it. Thanks!

I want to add that I like Songbird as a music player. It's still rough around the edges but it gets the job done. It works with Last.fm and ShoutCast. And it integrates web content very nicely by pulling up album info, news, photos, lyrics, and purchase opportunites from the web automatically for you. It's a young application that will definitely grow into a great media player someday. 

BTW, it is available for Windows, Linux (32 & 64 bit), and (GASP!!) OS X.

http://getsongbird.com/

For  Debian install package that works on Ubuntu go here:

http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird

Posted 07/16/2009 at 12:19:09am

On second thought...

That ad from AMD that is cleverly disguised as the 'Resource Center' should really be made to look like what it is, an ad. I expect a little bit more from MPC than that underhandedness.

Posted 07/16/2009 at 12:14:48am

Nice upgrade. Definitely loads faster than before. It is a little busy along the screen edges when the ads are running. (I don't see any ads there right this second, but there is one on the main page for Prince of Persia.)

All in all, nice job!

Posted 01/18/2009 at 03:25:23pm

Why do all the links in the article preceding the list point to the same post? I was hoping to see the list on Tom's Hardware...

My NVIDIA 8400M is OK. A bit pokey, but not a flop. Are they on the list because of the overheating/substrate problem?

Posted 01/04/2009 at 03:03:29am

HOLY FREAKIN' THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! I think I'm experiencing nostalgia overload. I remember playing Wing Commander 1 on my dad's sweet ass 486DX2/66. I think it had 8MB of RAM and a swanky 8bit SoudBlaster Card. Those were the days...

Well, the games were pretty damn sweet anyway.

Thanks again for the link.

Posted 12/23/2008 at 11:04:10am

I hope they spend more money on redeveloping the power distribution infrastructure in order to power all of our digital tools and toys reliably and cleanly.

Posted 12/23/2008 at 11:00:16am

I smell a sweet cool and quiet VIA HTPC in my future.

Posted 12/22/2008 at 08:30:09am

In the introduction to this article you led me to believe that you would be discussing how much protection is enough. Do we need web shields and link scanners (and what's the real difference)? Do we need e-mail scanners? How about anti-spyware or anti-rootkit protection? What about firewalls; are they better if they're integrated with AV software or is my ZoneAlarm free good enough? Some of these questions have obvious answers, but there coud be unexpected surprises. What exactly is enough and what is fluff?

And how about some decent freakin data for the results? Which apps detected which types of threats? Even more importantly, which apps missed which threats? The individual reviews are totally vague, inconsistently reporting this information from one to the next. Piss poor...

As for the actual verdicts...

Maybe Norton is new, sleek and improved, but you still have to pay for it.

In the AVG review you mention that you wouldn't want to play a FPS while running a system scan. Does ANYBODY EVER do that with ANY AV software? You're just asking for dropped frames... Unless you're playing games 24/7, you can use this thing called the system scheduler to schedule a scan for when you are away from your PC. I know... the things geniuses come up with...

Posted 09/26/2008 at 07:21:24am

I'm not a photographer. Can somebody explain what they mean when they say "Full Frame?" Are they talking about the number of pixels being the same as the number of grains(?) in traditional photos??