Henroid

Thanks to this episode for getting me to do the bird noise again. Also for ruining that phrase forever. Yes this is what I'm coming away from this episode with.

As far as region-based asshattery goes, South Americans have been the most likely to call me or anyone else on our team the f-word when they get mad at the game. Also the most likely to stream their radio or household sounds over the mic.

It really just seems like the Ferguson PD is trying to run a smear campaign against their murder victim. A $40 box of cigars is not worth killing someone over. Edit - The KKK are trying to raise money to reward the police officer that murdered Brown. Pro tip: If the KKK is trying to reward you for something you're probably a racist douchebag.

I hate that it took the president to get the governor to realize he could do that. Or if he knew, be willing to. BUT if it remains calm this way then good.

Well the inherent problem with stock / shareholders, big or small, is that their concern is profit and payout, not sustainability or integrity. Which is fine, they're investing. It's like a deal with the devil though.

I dunno if anyone saw it but after the president spoke on the situation, the chief of police in Ferguson had his own press conference. It was more or less a disaster that wasn't helping him or his department. On the issue of arresting and tear gassing the press, he said he "Didn't know" and also that they "weren't targets." On the violence, he didn't talk about the police's actions, just that things were thrown at them. He also said they can't just walk into a crowd and arrest the specific individuals who do throw things and it's up to the non-violent people to get away from them. Because that's where the cops' bullets fly. On freedom of speech being disrupted, he said the police were going to "facilitate" the protest from here on out. On the murder, he refused to answer questions and walked away. He also said nobody has been hurt or killed. Meanwhile, a black teen was killed by one of his officers. Also the cops turning on protesters. Asshat. Edit - Oh I forgot the best part. During the questioning he was asked about the militarization of police and his response was, "That's SWAT out there, not military." And went on to say it was guys in blue and not camouflage. Wooooosh. Also those cops are totally in camouflage.

Jesus jumped up Christ, I just watched one of the videos of the crowd getting fired on. How is any of this happening without state or federal agencies flying in going, "NOPE STOP THIS NOW."

I'm seeing some things via my Twitter feed about Facebook apparently deleting content regarding Ferguson, even if just text. But I dunno how true it is or isn't.

If the police are going to militarize, I would say that misuse of their authority / enforcement privilege should come with way steeper consequences. Which is to say, something more than a couple week's of suspension with pay, which is kind of the norm for police who do shitty things and the public reacts to it. All this, of course, not even close to everything there is to discuss about this. But I'm pretty sure the entire police department there should be disbanded and replaced. It's like we need to set Federal guidelines for screening people who want to be cops. "Are you a racist fuck? Are you trigger happy?"

I suppose I can see it from that angle when you include the amount of trouble they went through to "protect" the "brand." They must've been so sure of it living forever like WoW or Angry Birds.

You guys remember that ridiculous company called "King"? The one that tried to get copyright on basic words like "candy"? Their stock nosedived 20%. They came out with their quarterly report, and while their profits are up still, their first quarter performance was down 5% compared to last year. Which apparently made investors flip the fuck out. So they announced that they're going to pay special dividends to keep shareholders on board. $150 million dollars to be exact. Oh, unfortunately, 80% of that is going to executives only, leaving about $30 million to be split among all other shareholders. I like pointing out this sorta thing, even if it's regarding greedy mobile companies, because as I've been saying for the last few years, "shareholders ruin everything." Especially the video game industry.

Well even a broken clock is right two times a day; Ben Kuchera says MS' message for Gamescon is, "Kinect is dead, long live exclusives." I agree with the overall sentiment, I didn't click the article itself. But it makes sense. Kinect was abandoned at E3 as well. I'm sure MS will still talk about it if questioned about it. But at this point the Kinect for MS is like the Vita for Sony: They still want it to sell, but do nothing to support it. BTW I totally didn't catch that Tomb Raider's announced "exclusivity" is for the Christmas after next. That is a long, long time to tie yourself down to one platform. I dunno what the publisher is thinking. I mean yeah, Tomb Raider is a brand big enough to maintain the must-have status when it launches on other platforms later. But they've married themselves to the XB1, which has been losing momentum. And they did it so far in advanced. I'm guessing that the devs are going to make the release for other platforms contain 'additional content' or some other kind of bonus features. To give it some sales heft. Last thing to note, I just saw that apparently the PS4 has sold 10 million units world-wide. Anyone know where / how to figure out how that tracks for other consoles in a 10 month period?

I could only express my disappointment in Microsoft's continued misuse of "exclusive" by changing the thread title.

God. That he doesn't get why people would be upset is what gets me. The line about working with different banks almost sounds like a subtle suggestion that he felt his employees should've tried to do the same financial juggling bullshit that, say, my mother would do (it's a long story but it's not smart at all and super harmful). I'm not a fan of this guy in the slightest. He's right up there with Derek Smart now. Or down there, whatever.

Crytek is in some serious shit lately. And yeah fuck that guy.

Retweets communicate to your followers more than they do your followees.

Yep, this is pretty much what I've been using the favorite function for. It's an easily expressed kudos or congratulation.

My only criticism of the archiving change is that they don't allow for indefinite storage for their partners / people that pay. I'm sure that 80% of unwatched archived content is from free users. The people paying into Twitch probably have the most worthwhile content to watch from an archive. But I guess the answer I'm asking for would've been discriminatory in some fashion. And speaking of non-discriminatory actions, back to the discussion about the auto-mute content ID system! So, 30 minute lockout of audio. What's the average length of music that's copyrighted again? I forget. It sure as hell isn't a half hour per song.

Yeah I have no idea what that Twitch shit was all about today. None of it makes any sense to me, it really does feel like they don't understand what made them popular. Oh sweet, heya Cloud. I definitely agree about the cost. It's something I've argued with people about in the past regarding XBL. People are furious that Gold is a subscription but still gets ads. They think it's absolutes of one or the other, without taking into consideration the substantially low yearly-cost of subscription. It at best minimizes ad appearance. If XBL went all-ad for revenue or at least operational cost, well, people would be standing up constantly saying, "McDonald's!" As for Sony though, I think this is greed. They're on the road to recovery with the PS4 and it feels like they're impatient about rebuilding their brand name.

To be fair, when did PSN start trying to monetize? It ran for years without any of that.

Hey uh. I must be missing something. I haven't played in a while but I can't find any options for setting garrisons on stars. What the hell is going on?

Jake just retweeted this, but they're testing a 64 player sized map. A link to the match is in the Tweet. https://twitter.com/ironhelmetgames/status/495507567477407745

And in a surprising move, it turns out Sony is just as crap as EA. The Playstation Now thing is terribly overpriced. To play games for 90 days you pretty much pay Gamestop used prices (which are shy of new prices), ranging from $25 to $45. Because people were bothered by this they introduced a $1.99 per day option. Which is STILL too much. I'd considered Sony to be making the right moves over the course of the PS4's life (and with the unit itself) but this is their first huge blunder.

We're gonna get an entire episode one day of Chris and Jake each doing their robot voices and Danielle just letting her accent fly.

I'm late to this but I just saw the "no legs" stuff. That was brilliant.