I hope everyone had a nice Christmas, I know I had a good one.
Also Happy New Year incase I am not here that day to post it
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Video game hit “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” is coming to the Xbox (news – web sites) and personal computer platforms next June, publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.(Nasdaq:TTWO – news) said on Thursday.
San Andreas, initially released for Sony Corp (news – web sites)’s(6758.T) PlayStation 2 (news – web sites) console in October, is estimated to have sold more than 5 million units.
It will be released for Microsoft Corp’s (Nasdaq:MSFT – news) Xbox platform and PCs on June 7, 2005, in North America and June 10 in Europe.
Source: Yahoo
Finally, command and conquer 3 has been announced, I am glad to hear this, I love the C&C series, always have, enjoyed them all, hated when they were bought by EA but nothing I can do about that.
Here is the email I got…
quote:
Hi everyone,I hope everyone is enjoying one of the best years ever for PC gaming.
On the eve of one of our own major releases, The Lord of the Ringsâ„¢, The Battle for Middle-earthâ„¢, the one thing we’ve grown to understand is how important the community – our most loyal supporters – is for industry. This started back in our days at Westwood where the community for our games has always been a big priority. We understand that you are the most important and influential group for us and we are constantly amazed at the amount of talent used to create quality assets and mods.
Having said that, we have a MAJOR announcement to make and we are making it exclusively to our long time C&C fans. This announcement is not going out to the press and it won’t appear on the EA website or anywhere else online. We are very proud to announce that the team that brought you Command & Conquerâ„¢ Red Alert 2â„¢, Command & Conquerâ„¢ Yuri’s Revengeâ„¢, and Command & Conquerâ„¢ Generals has officially started work on our next project set in the Red Alert universe!
As I mentioned, we’re very proud to ship what we feel is one of the best RTS games ever released. Most of you have probably heard of The Lord of the Ringsâ„¢, The Battle for Middle-earthâ„¢ which hits stores this week. We’ve introduced some really innovative features and gameplay mechanics, which you should definitely check out when you get a chance. You will also see a major enhancement to the Sage graphics engine we originally created for Command & Conquer Generals. Expect us to leverage and continue to evolve this powerful engine as we start work on our new Command & Conquer game.
Thanks again for all your support over the years. This entire team is incredibly excited to work on the next Command & Conquer chapter. Look for an official announcement soon and have a wonderful holiday.
Mark Skaggs
VP and Executive Producer
Electronic Arts
Download: here
v1.1.090 [2004-12-09]
+ Add ‘Search’, ‘HighLight’ function to browser context menu.
+ Skin style browser context menu.
+ GoogleBar style search bar.
+ New external function: max_showConfig(security_id, plug_name)
+ Config.html file for script plugins.
* Fixed group items does not appear in command list problem.
* Fixed ‘ViewSource’ on local file would open the cached copy.
* Better support for plugin toolbar.
* Better download manager support.
MSN Messenger 7 Public Beta is not out.
You can download it here: http://messenger.msn.com/Beta/Default.aspx
Pretty good job, nothing I can complain about yet :) Get MSN Plus as well, msnplus
I don’t plan on playing this game at all… but thought I would like to share this piece of news I found..
Grabbed this from Half Life 2 Files
quote:
Hey HL2 Gamers!Recently, one of the HL2Files.com members here, alerted me of a pirated warez version of Half-Life 2, apparently released via the Bittorent network. I immediately, forwarded this to Gabe Newell of VALVe Software. [The great man, we should all be thanking for Half-Life 2 ].
A couple of hours later, Gabe replied with the following:
——————————————————————————–
We’re running a bit of an experiment. We’re keeping track of the accounts that do this and will be shutting them off.
——————————————————————————–So, as you can see, VALVe Software have released a test “warez” version aimed at catching people out. These people will have their accounts deleted and will be banned from Steam.
Therefore, I strongly suggest that you DO NOT participate in these illegal activities as it would only lead to your own harm.
VALVe Software spent over $40 Million to develop Half-Life 2. Show them you appreciate their work. Buy the game!
As the saying goes: BURN YOU WAREZ MONKEYS!
Spread the word!
Happy Gaming,
~azzkiker
So a week ago Halo 2 came out, I got it the same day… I did not wait in line, rather I went at 6pm CST to go get the game, was able to, very easy.
So we got it, later that night, I started to play it, as I wanted to play the game on co-op with my brother, so we did.
Thursday night, we beat the game, total of between 6 to 7 hours. We did not play constantly of course, as we have other things to do, school, work, etc.
So what did we think of it? We both were disappointed, and we were wishing that GTA:SA disc did not get damaged, as my brother accidently did, and have not had time to pick up another copy.
So what was wrong with the game? Not enough ammo, to point out first, a lot harder to hold your favorite gun in this game, if it is the SMG, Battle Rifle or maybe Sniper. Which sucks, big time.
You are not just Master Chief in this game, you are also the Elite/Convenent, which I did not enjoy much what so ever.
Legendary is like near impossible, as we found out, we are doing co-op on it, and why is it so near impossible? Because we do not have enough ammo, and the Elite soldiers seem to never EVER miss, which is cool but not 100% accuracy… ALL the time, but it is beatable, we have beat a few levels, and it will take time to beat it all on lengendary… the challenge is great just ammo sucks once again.
Many more things, but, oh well… GTA:SA is the choice to get in my opinion for this christmas if you are not able to get it yet, over Halo 2.
I’ve 60% complete with the game, what a great game.
Ignore all the problems with the game, such as graphic problems, random freezes, not being able to do some stuff because it will crash the game (like the club freezing problem when you dance) and such other stuff. or just stuff that should of been fixed like flying sucks…the controls/etc.
Put all that aside, and you have a great game here… soooo much stuff to do in the game, that you never could before.
You even have a great 2 player mode, where you can roam with whomever, great if you like to go around killing whomever/cops, getting lots of stars on you, etc. The problem with it though is it does not give you all the weapons you have and what not… such as the rocket (sucks, but you can still lock on helis easily and shoot them down, nice).
Ahh… and in a few days, Halo 2! So I will start playing that… and getting that beat, which I am at least trying to beat San Andreas now… and do all the other stuff to get 100% complete after Halo 2.
So what should you do? Go buy GTA:SA, and a PS2, if you do not have one 
Finally beat Ninja Gaiden for XBOX earlier yesterday… only took forever too, lol. Started to play on the newly added difficultly Very Hard… gave up after while, rather not go through the long days (hours) of killing bats over and over… for money, lol.
Now to play San Andreas then over to Halo 2 when that is released in alil over a week.
I’m definiately not going in a plane with this!
quote:
A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain†that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.The “brain†— a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.
As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments.
“We’re interested in studying how brains compute,†said Thomas DeMarse, the UF professor of biomedical engineering who designed the study. “If you think about your brain, and learning and the memory process, I can ask you questions about when you were 5 years old and you can retrieve information. That’s a tremendous capacity for memory. In fact, you perform fairly simple tasks that you would think a computer would easily be able to accomplish, but in fact it can’t.â€
While computers are very fast at processing some kinds of information, they can’t approach the flexibility of the human brain, DeMarse said. In particular, brains can easily make certain kinds of computations ? such as recognizing an unfamiliar piece of furniture as a table or a lamp ? that are very difficult to program into today’s computers.
“If we can extract the rules of how these neural networks are doing computations like pattern recognition, we can apply that to create novel computing systems,†he said.