Artlover

Well, you're smart and did things right. Yes, most DNS servers honor TTL settings, but not everyone running sites understand this stuff and don't do anything with it.

Hey, this is pretty kool! I love some of the comments for that vid... Hahahahaha, yeah.

Tho I would like to mention that emailing them won't really help much. In theory, DNS's can propagate (for lack of a better term) instantly. The issue is caching, which is a standard part of most DNS servers to prevent excessive load since they don't want to be hit each and every time someone visits a site somewhere. So until their cache clears, they won't have the new information. So it all comes down to the TTL values that were set. Which can be any value between no caching at all upto 68 years. Typicaly tho, most DNS servers cache for 48 hours, so that's the average typical time it takes for changes to update everywhere. All that said, questioning anyone about anything within their cache time will accomplish pretty much nothing besides a generic auto reply to just wait.

Yup. A large part of the reason (and also why the Natal is going to be a long term failure) is that most people play video games to relax. Not jump around their living room flailiing their arms around like a moron. Sure, that might be fun and intutitive for a handfull of games that you might only play for 45 minutes (till you get exhausted and need to sit down). But it sure don't work on most games where the intention is for you to be playing it non stop for hours. It's for exactly this reason only a hand full of games like WiiSports and CarnivalGames work, because they are collections of short games that can each be completed in a short time frame without wearing you out. And for the most part, they exist for no purpose other then to justify the controller. Now imagine something like Fallout 3 with a fully interactive motion sensing interface ........ Who here is going to spend 12+ hours straight standing/flailing around their living room? I bet no one. There is no "P" in Thomson. Anywho, I dunno why people claim the Thomson was defective. It was a crappy drive, but defective? Maladjusted maybe. All 5 of mine had Thomson's, and the only one that had problems and broke was one I f--ked up myself accidently. As for the PSU's. The cords were AFI, not GFCI, and they are effectively useless at preventing anything. They shorten the time the PSU will arc which lessens the chance that there could be a fire, but it will still arc briefly, which is all you need for a fire to start under the right conditions. The replacement cords program was never about resolving a problem or protecting anyone. It was a BS measure MS pulled to cover up and wash their hands of the real problem which would have been too costly for them to deal with since it would have required a full blown recall because of the public saftey nature of the defect. Sadly, they got away with it, and the public at large is all too willing to go along with it and ignore the truth. See above regarding Wii attach rates. In summery, in fantasy land maybe.

No numbers or markings or anything on the bottom side?

There are people who use the difficulty switches so much that this actually makes even the slightest bit of difference???

That's sweet. Love those cart shelves. That said: For the love of god, fix the Cabbage Patch cart and stand it up right!

That's why an Action Replay is handy. Except that the memory cards included with Action Replay can cause corruption when used for transferring softmod files. Only the official MS memory cards are recommended for performing softmods (well by the community of course... MS would recommend the death penalty for modded X-Boxes.) It can be a disaster if your softmod installer is corrupted. True, if the AR save isn't configured correctly, it will be problematic. But it's not that hard to find a good AR save ready to download and use as-is. Heck, even on the official AR website you'll always find a few of them. It was the method I used when I first TSOP'ed mine. Worked just fine. Just saying, it's a workable solution if you have no other easy options and don't want to hot swap the HDD.

That's why an Action Replay is handy.

So, I dug TDU out again. I wouldn't call them simmilar. TDU is a lot smaller then Fuel. If I was going to guestimate, lets say 1/4 the size. Yes, Fuel is that huge. Also, while you can go off-road in TDU, it doesn't seem like your really ment to do so. Soon as you go off the road the game starts rambling on about "if you have an accident or go off road, hit <back> to return to the road quickly". It seems like the off-road porition is really geared around being actively involved in an off-road race. Further, you can't seem to nagivate to every part of the map. There are fences and barriers here and there, and they are not breakable. In Fuel, if there is a fence or something, you can plow right through it. So there were many areas in TDU that I couldn't get to, such as the airport. I spent over half an hour trying to get my car out onto the runways of the airport, no go, it's all fenced in. Telephone poles and stuff don't break either, no matter what you are driving or how fast you are going. Hell, even a street sign will just about brings your car to a stop if you hit one. Controls in TDU aren't all that great. This is one of those games (like Mass Effect) where you need to keep the manual handy or else it takes you 10 minutes to figure out how to access everything. Especially the map. Confusing and down right annoying. Left & Right triggers zoom in and out, except when you're all the way out, and it goes to the credits. Sorry game, I was trying to see if the mp zoomed out anymore, not see the f'in credits. Also, speaking of the map. You try to pull the map up, and the game takes controll away from you, bringing your car to a sudden stop no matter where you are, pretty much leaves the game running in the gackground while you're in the map, then when you exit the map leaves you to deal with whatever accident/mess happened. I was on the highway headed for the airport, went into the map, then just as I exited the map got rear-ended which launched me several stories into the air and sent me flying into the swimming pool area of a group of apartments that was totally surrounded by little concrete poles so I couldn't just drive out and had to hit <back>. So it's like you want to pull up the map, you'de better pull off on the side of the road and stop first. Realistic maybe, but not fun. Driving physics seems off too. Racing is a little bit more serious too. Which is fine for all the experts, but makes lesser experienced drivers fustrated and unable to fully accomplish everything. I mean, look, TDU isn't really a bad game. For it's time a few years ago, I'm sure it stood up better. Even now it tries to be fun and largely is, but some of the issues I mentioned above kinda ruin it, for me anyways. I think I would say more like N4S:Underground 2 or N4S:Most Wanted in that sense. But it's not exactly without purpose. While the entire map is open to explore, the races/challenges/vista points/vehicular upgrade points and all are not accessable in areas where it isn't unlocked. So you need to compete in the races and challenges to earn tokens to unlock the events in new areas. Well, in that case, this is not your kind of game and you won't like it. It's an open world driving exploration game with racing elements, not a straight up racer. For you, I'd like to suggest GRID. That's a pretty awesome looking/playing straight up racer. That said, even if it was your kind of game, it's still not worth $60 IMO. Then again, most games aren't to me. Tho I think $30 would be fair. On the same token, there are worse ways to spend $60 (like Alone in the Dark ).

Not I. I paid $10 for Anchorage and it wasn't worth it. The Pitt came out...I passed. I waited for the reviews and decided it also wasn't worth it. When Steel came out. I bought it. Raised level cap. Kick ass weapons. That DLC was worth the $10. Then I heard a Game of the Year edition of Fallout 3 will be released before Xmas with all the DLC included!!?? Ok I'm done with the DLC. I'll just wait. Why pay $59.99 for a game, then pay an extra $50 (We're up to $109.99 now fellas) to get all the DLC, when in less than 6 month you can just pick up the GotY edition for a flat rate?? In fact, I'll just wait for the GotY edition to show up on Amazon for < $30 used. My guess is, I wont have to wait long after it's release to get it at that price, so no biggie. I know Fallout 3 kicks ass, but I have PLENTY of other games to keep me busy until that time. I agree mostly except with Broken Steel being worth the $10. I didn't think so. I didn't think it any different then the other two DLC's that I stupidly paid for. Missions and side quests were super short and easy and the whole extending the game past the end was really pretty thin, and it starts to fall apart a bit if you're playing for evil karma. All the addons play as if to say "why wasn't this included in the game to begin with?". Yeah, I paid $60 for the game and have gottens hundreds of hours of fun out of it. These damned DLC's however are more like, well shit, I just completed everything and all the side quests in an hour. Yeah, that was fun, I guess, or something. I mean for $30 freaking bucks, I might as well try and like something about some of it. So far the best thing I've found is the Puppies perk . That's pretty f'in messed up right there. To that end, I'm holding off on Point Lookout too. It honestly hasn't been worth the cost so far. And I don't see this one doing anything different with regards to that. I'll wait for a friend to get the GOTY edition whenever that comes out, then borrow their disc 2. That will surely happen before I shell out another $10 for these expansions. Cuz it's like: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you again. Fool me a 3rd time, well now, wait a minute. And that's where we are now. I was a fool 2 more times then I should have been I guess but I was desperately trying to give them a fair chance because I love the game so freaking much. If anything tho, I'm glad it happened with this game. This is one of the better games ever made, period, and I can sorta stomach wasting the money on it. So I'm not much upset. But yeah, it did remind me what I forgot. DLC is evil, don't buy it ever. It will be the end of gaming and likely cause the next VG crash because everyone will finally get tired of paying full price for half a game then having to pay more to download the rest of it in small overpriced chunks.

Preface: Forgive me if I start to ramble. Fuel. Anyone playing this yet. All in all I'd say this is quite a nice huge largely off road open world arcade racer. And huge it is. 5,000 square miles. Lets put this into perspective. The map is broken into 20 assorted size jigsaw puzzle piece type areas. The smallest of these areas is larger then the entire GTA:SA map. It takes over two hours of REAL TIME sitting there holding the stick forward and pressing the trigger all the way down to travel from one side of the map to the other. What, Oblibion, Fallout 3 you say. <humph> Take those pansy little maps home. Seriously. HUGE! It's got a few small issues that I'd like to get out of the way first before I go on to the good. The Bad: GFX: While most of the GFX is terrific, some is crap. Mostly vehicular models are crap. MadMaxish looking junk. Semi's, dump trucks, log trucks - boxy crap. Contact zones are also very squared off. You can back yourself up to something till you hit, and fiddle the camera around to the side to see a huge gap between you and them. Not much assortment of road traffic either. Vehicular shadows seem to render to a differenent relative lightsource then everything else in the game. AI: Race AI is mostly good and will be covered below. But general background traffic AI, it's horrible. They make no effort to avoid you, and when you do hit, they make no effort to get unstuck and move on. So long as you stay contacted in front of them, they don't move at all, ever. You have to move before they do anything. - You win or you don't. There is no 2nd or 3rd place. I'll lets this part slide being that it's an arcade racer geared towards a slightly less proficant racer demographic. Engine: Occasional glitches, mostly with the background traffic. Sometimes they just vanish then appear down the road a ways. - Can't get out of the car and explore. Ok, maybe this isn't fair as this is true in mostly all racers. But it would be nice for once, and this would have been a good one to do it with. Like when you come across obervation towers in the forests and water towers and windmills and stuff. Ah, dreams.... Sound: Little weak, it gets the job done. But it's not steller. The Good: GFX: Other then vehicular models, most of the GFX are fairly well done and realistic. Nice sunrise & sunsets effects. AI: This game has an AI that is almost the reverse of most arcade racers. In this game, the AI will tend to lead the race, but towards the end of the last lap, if you've been running a good strong race will start backing the AI off a bit and give you a win. This doesn't sound as bad as you might think, you still have to work for it. You can't be sloppy and assume the AI will dumb itself down or you will loose, even in the begininer class. It's perfect for people like me, like racers, but aren't that good at them and can never finish because you're not a geeky expert who plays 16 hours a day. Not give aways, but something that we are capable of winning with practice to give a sense of accomplishment. Where getting better and running a strong race will reward you with something. It's probably not for hardcore racers because it's not a hardcore racer, but I don't see a problem with that. The market is big enough to cater to variants of the same thing for different skill levels. It's fun challenging, not fustrating controller breaking challenging. Map: What is nice is that you can travel across the entire map, including areas you haven't unlocled not. The only thing is that you won't have access to any races, challenges, vista points or anything in those areas. One thing you will find out of zone however is fuel drums. Fuel is money in this game. What you win, what you spend, etc.. But you can also just find it spread out all across the map. And this is where the game really starts to get huge. You have to go off road, you have to cut across farms, through forests, across beaches to find alot of stuff. Fuel drums, secrets, etc.. And sneaky. Drums behind trees and in bushes. On top of roofs of farm houses with a nearby and handy ramp. You can do tricks and stuff when jumping for extra stuff, but it's not really part of the game in any way persay. There pretty much are no boundries on the interiour of the map. It's all huge and solid, and if it's physically possible to get somewhere, you can get there. You can go under fallen trees, across small creeks, up mountain sides, through fences and farm land. Or if you want to miss everything, just drive around on the streets. Alot to see and alot to do. Again, seriously, Epic. You could spends months driving around and not see everything to be seen and driven across. Given the scope and scale of the map and how seemless it all is plus with being open world and fully explorable and profitable from the getgo, it really does outway the problems it has. It is what it is: a dumb simple easy to pick up arcade style off road racer who's challenge remains within the limits of fun for everyone with an insanely crazy amount of fully explorable playground. It is one of those games where every couple of hours I'll be saying to myself I need to go to bed, then a couple of hours later still be playing it. Turing it on that afternoon then finally going to bed at 7am the next morning. Done that more then once. Cuz like ya know, I gotta check out that little spot of a lake in that valley that's 3000 miles away before I do. Yeah. This was unexpectedly a good game all in all. It's gotten good reviews all around except at gamespot. In reading their review it seems the editor really kinda missed out on the points of it all and bashed it for not being a player hating cheating clone of all the other racers out there. But whatever. It's a good game and worth having.

Nope, and it's taking a thousand years for it to load, so I guess I'll never know what it is. Ya know... I did try it as a matter of fact for a couple of months and noticed not much change for the better at all. A few sites here and there seemed to take longer to resolve then when using my ISP's (Comcast) own DNS to be honest. I ended up switching back to the ISP DNS servers. Comcast's DNS servers seem to be just fine & dandy & up to date. I could say the same about Cox too when I was using them for a few years. That said, I don't get what's supposed to be so great about it. Besides, even on their home page they boldly proclaim "Industry-leading Web content filtering, "...... Content Filtering, eh! Yeah, no thanks to that I think. I know the ISP's probably filter too (tho I've never encountered any such thing, and I've peeked/slinked around many a dark and seedy corner 'round that there internet). So yeah, I dunno. I'm quite happy with the DNS as provided by my ISP here in this region. Granted, I'm sure maybe a lot of others don't share the same experience however.

Given the assorted issues over the past few years, maybe you should consider switching server hosts altogether?

Still happening, and I've managed to run a full tracert during a couple of outtages, and they complete just fine. So it doesn't even seem to be an issue of broken connections anywhere but rather that the server simply isn't serving at the time.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=2102527

Ya know after finally getting around to picking up Oblivion GOTY edition and actually playing it, I have to say this... I understand all the critisim. In particular ZP's review of it. The game has it's issues, not the least being the horrible HORRBILE god awful voice acting. Like seriously, how in the heck did this pass play testing? Honestly, I stopped playing it after a few hours and dunno if I'll bother to finish it. If you want to play a good RPG using this engine, just play Fallout 3 instead which mostly got everything right.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm not aware of any tools for changing the region on DC disc iso's. True. But, if you have a DC, then you have a GD Rom drive. All you need is either a DC with a LAN ataptor or a Coders Cable and you can make your own backups. It's easier in the sense that it's semi permenent. You change it with the region disc once, and it stays changed till you change it again. If you have alot of imports that you are going to be playing, this would be much easier and a big time saver over dealing with Utopia for every game.

Tempest, who I was replying to, was talking about the 360 version.

I wonder how much EA is secretly paying them to protest. I mean, I had no interest in Dante's Inferno till now. If for no other reason then to piss off the protesters. Seriously, haven't any of these different groups figured out yet is that all they are doing is giving away free publicity and creating interest.

I'm going to take back what I said. Ever since I installed the update patch and Broken Steel, it's become a huge lock-up fest. Once at the main menu. A couple of times, it was several back to back no more then an hour apart while playing. After installing the first two expansions, it got even worse, locking up at the load gamesave menu screen twice. Admittedly, it seems to be gaining some stability as I play. No lock-ups for a few days now. Odd. Still saving my game like every 10-15 minutes tho to be safe. Already lost 6+ hr's of gameplay because of that crap.

Well, I've been using this crap for 10 days now. About the best thing I can say a about it is that it's not THAT horrible looking. It's bad, but not gouge your own eyes out bad. That and the download queue was expanded. That's the extent of the good things. Lets talk about the bad. Interface. They need to pick a style and stick with it. When you start playing around with things like exploring and trying to download demos or DLC, you discover that the new dash has 3 different styles of menus, not including the pesudo blades one, some of which (like the download confirmation) are the same as from the original blades dash, flip/flopping around back and fourth depending on how deep in submenus you are. If you want me to like the dash, atleast consistantly use the f'in thing. Don't go mixing it up and dot go reusing some of the old menus from the original. Game installs to HDD. It sucks. First let me qualify this by saying I don't give a crap about DVD noise or wear. For me it's about convienence and speed, and it fails on both. --- First convienence - I don't want to have to get up. If I have to get up to change the bloody disc anyways, I might as well just play it off the disc to begin with. And I don't want to hear any it's about anti-piracy BS about it either, as the feature works with copies & backups anyways. The nitch is too damned small to justify the inconvience to consumers. --- Second speed. I've tried several games and did not notice any signifigant change, nothing that made the copy time and used HDD space worth it. As a matter of fact, in many cases, it caused various aspects to be slower. In Fallout 3 for example, playing from the HDD made accessing the game saves much MUCH slower, and in my cases with over 500 saves across 3 profiles, it was talking over 3 seconds to flip between each one where as it was less then half a second off DVD. They seemed to have removed features. At the very least the automaticly download new XBMA trial games. Which is something I used to use. Speed. Did anyone at MS actually use NXE online before releasing it. I've read the complaints about it Games menu being slow, but holy crap, is it SLOW. I've got 100's of XBLA trial games and Community demos installed, so maybe that is a factor, but it can take well over a minute just for the Games menu to load if I'm on-line. If I'm off-line it takes maybe about half that, but still agonizingly slow. - Another very slow aspect is the Game Market Place. Every freaking thing you select wants to load custom backgrounds and screenshots and this and that and the other thing. The Featured Downloads window always takes atleast 8-10 seconds alone. And it's not my connection speed because downloads are fast. Even if you know exactly what you want, you're still going to be fighting BS wait times to get it. It's absolutly ridiculous to the point of where you just want to give up out of fustration. This is NXE's biggest deal breaker. The slowness makes it's unpleasent and tedious to use, which is not what an interface should be. Terrible, absolutely terrible.

Yeah. It don't take 12 years to work on a game and STILL not be finished. It only took 11 years to develop a space program out of nothing and land on a moon for f's sake.

There are so many variables invovled, I don't think there can be any definitive answer. First 3 or 4 play throughs I had no problems at all, even when exporting outside the map boundry. Then on my next go around when I was taking advantage of secrets and focusing on picking up crap, it was a total bug fest. No lock-ups, but graphics glitches up the ying-yang and a few side quest breaking bugs.

Wouldn't make a difference. NXE is stored in two places. The core of it is stored on the 360's internal flash bios, it's only the extras that are stored in external memory like mem cards or the HDD. If you got it, you got it, and you're stuck with it.