thebruce44

Scored some Sat and Sun Lolla tickets. Pretty excited to see The Postal Service and The Cure.

Truf.

To be fair, did anything really happen in the premier of Thrones?

Sorry, but this is really misguided. Apple collects as much information about you as possible, just like Facebook and Google. Most of the recent moves they have made have the end goal of collecting more information. If anything, Facebook is the one thats the most dangerous, Google is just trying to create algorithms that tailor the information stream of the internet to fit you. Its actually really awesome to have it streamlined before you even turn on your screen. And Chrome offers similar do not track features as Firefox. Android's mailware is very overblown by Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft in particular has tried to vilify Android over maleware issues. Thats terrific if you own Apple stock. At least they are starting to bring manufacturing back to the US. If you really want to be proud of owning a tech company, you should go with Motorola...owned by Google. The Google business model of ripping off their competition and offering it for free...seriously? Have you looked at the big tech company's R&D budgets? Apple's is non-existant compared to Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, Intel, Nvidea...I could go on. These companies, lots of them American, are progressing technology and coming up with revolutionary ideas (cloud computing, augmented reality, self driving cars, artificial intelligence, quantum computers, biological science and engineering, even low cost space access). Apple meanwhile buys a second rate AI to get more information on their customers, copies Android's pull down notification center, copies Braun's/Dieter Rams' minimalist product design, and buys a mapping system to copy Google. Look, I have no problem with people buying Apple products, I'm steering my mom towards an iPhone5 as we speak for her first smart phone. Its a beautiful design, its easy to use, and it fits with her future eco-system as I'm getting her an iMac this sumer. But in terms of them as a business vs the other tech companies, don't buy into their marketing crap.

While Miami played poorly, I think they were very overrated. Talent wise, I thought MU was the better team, so it wasn't shocking to see them win. I'm ecstatic to see them play so well in their transition year and I hope the people who thought I was crazy to suggest that they could be a #1 or #2 seed next year now see what I'm talking about. Buzz is building a fantastic program.

As a Brewerfan living in Chicago, at least 1 of these games is a must for me.

I'm an Android user, but give Flipboard a try if you aren't already.

I finally caught up before this last season. Its a really great show with great acting and lots of action. It also appeals to viewers on deeper levels with a lot of Hamlet references.

You're right on Raw Biz. I guess given the content, I just want more. I do think there are plenty of network tv series with more properly fleshed out characters. A lot more actually.

NO!!!!!! That's precisely why people don't care for the show. They keep comparing it to the comic. It's not the comic. It's TV. I never read the comic so I have no basis of comparison and I'm enjoying myself just fine. It's not Mad Men or Lost or Breaking Bad but it's entertaining. I criticize the show for its pacing, poor character development, and sloppy writing. I read the comics a while back and don't care if they stray, though I would prefer they follow it when their new ideas aren't well fleshed out.

As of today, its already been modded to run offline, but you still have to use the servers to save. Its also been modded to build highways outside of your zone, showing that the in between area of your region contains a grid (in my mind this indicates citysize increases are just part of EA's plan to sell me additional stuff). I'd imagine EA will disable all of this in their next patch. At the rate the upset and very motivated fanbase is going, I would guess they have an offline version that increases citysize to pirate in a month or two. Hopefully by then Maxis will have fixed some of the traffic bugs to make it playable. I got a refund from Amazon. I'm not sure if I will buy it again when things are better. I'd rather give my money to the modders who will actually fix the game and not to the company that went out of its way to lie about the need for servers and citysize.

Ok, now that I actually was able to play the game, I'm sad to say its actually incredibly shallow. I've played for probably a total of 8 hours and more or less am done at this point. I've built several maxed out cities with huge incomes and I've also discovered the AI is simplistic and bugged. The traffic makes no sense, cars just follow the shortest path regardless of gridlock or street size (avenue vs dirt road). People commute to a different house each night and a new job every morning, so the entire city moves like a pack, clogging any intersection and blocking utility vehicles. If you have 6 fire trucks and 2 fires, all 6 trucks go to put out the first fire while the second one spreads...if they can even get through the gridlock of the daily commute. Mass transit (busses and railcars) don't work properly. The RCI system doesn't work either. You can zone an entire city as Residential and if you provide enough parks the city will fill up. In short, the game itself beyond the DRM and server issues, isn't just one of the most disappointing games I've ever come across, its one of the worst games I have ever purchased. I can't believe this was released. It makes me wonder if they didn't put up enough servers knowing people would only play for a week or so...seems like EA just wanted a cash grab off of the SimCity name. I feel duped and plan to seek a refund.

Its that smirk. I can just tell he's thinking he's better than me through the TV.

The pacing has been pretty bad. I think I need to go back and reread the comics now. I remember the Govn. doing something really bad to Rick (no spoilers) right away, so I know they have veered off that path.

Three-way shared title, correct? Were you asking because you didn't actually know or because you wanted to diminish their accomplishment? Not that sharing the title does. It would have been nice to see them win that last game outright, but you have to be impressed with what they have done this year.

And Marquette wins the Big East in their rebuilding year. Nice.

Well, SimCity is unplayable at this point. There is nothing else to say besides the game is a massive failure. It also appears EA is not offering returns. I strongly suggest not purchasing if you haven't already. A patch went out yesterday or the day before that removed the fastest speed setting. Its also become apparent that saves are located on the server you played on. I don't remember which server I played on first, and it takes a lot of time to actually get on a server, if you can at all. So you more or less can't save your games. And switching servers makes you replay the tutorial... every time. Amazon actually stopped selling for a while. Its up again, but with a warning about the server issues. Still, its on pace to be the worst reviewed Amazon product of all time. Polygon.com initially reviewed their review copy at 9.5. Its been dropped to 4.0 and they don't recommend a purchase. This has probably been the worst video game launch ever, and everyone saw it coming. If it had just been a single player offline game, it would have been incredible.

No hope. You basically have to pay for a subscription to EA's game instead of owning it. The plats are small. It's interesting, the idea of working with other cities can still work if you think of your plats like neighborhoods. You have your suburbs, industrial areas, and a downtown, its just that you don't have all of them together on one map. It works from a gameplay point of view if you just go with it, but I'm a Transportation Engineer so its a big letdown for me. The public transit options are also a step back from previous games.

Ok, full disclosure since I started the topic. My plans got cancelled last night and there was a snow storm here in Chicago, so I just had to see what all the fuss was about. The game downloaded from EA's servers pretty quickly. I had some initial hickups getting on a server, but I tried one that said busy instead of the ones that said open and for whatever reason that worked. Long story short, I was up until 2am playing. Its SimCity again, just with the constant threat of losing your work when your router or their servers hickup.

For whatever reason, games seem to always be released on Tuesdays. Must have something to do with distribution. Anyway, thats all about to change. More and more people download their games now, and this will be the norm for the next generation of console games.

Here are the metacritic reviews coming in so far. Critics who reviewed the game itself on EA's testing servers seemed generally positive on everything except the smaller city plots (its speculated that future expansions will increase the size). Regular people who have purchased the game seem pretty negative, though the vocal minority can often seem to be the majority. In a sense though, if even a single person who purchased this game can't play it because the servers are overloaded its a problem. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/simcity/user-reviews

I thought this deserved its own thread since this latest release has a ton of additional issues associated with it beyond just being excited about a new game. That being said, the SimCity series was, and always will be, my favorite line of games and represent everything I want an interactive media to be. Its hard to believe its been a decade since the last release and a lot has changed for Maxis since their early days. The company was initially founded by Will Wright as an independent game company. They were purchased by EA right before the release of SimCity 3000, but their success with that title and then with The Sims allowed them to operate somewhat independently from their parent company. As expansion after expansion for The Sims came out, it was becoming more apparent that the company was moving away from being creative and taking risks to making money. And this brings us to SimCity (2013). It was released today with reviews just starting to trickle out. Most sites have held off on their reviews because this seemingly single player game relies on DRM (digital rights management) to work. I have to admit, I wasn't very familiar with DRM until now, since this is the first game I've wanted to play that is effected by it. Here is an analogy that hit the front page of reddit today explaining DRM as if it is soup: The reviews and comments I have read so far amount to a ton of people unable to log onto the server, people losing their cities when the saves become corrupted on EAs servers (you can't save on your own HD), and people with spotty internet routers running out to the store to upgrade since a blip of internet coverage ruins the game. I was planning to purchase this tonight, but now I'm not going to hold off. I was so excited for this game, and I'm sure its fantastic, but it sounds as though EA has all but ruined it. Maybe the problems will be fixed, but all I know is right now I'm not going to pay $60 for a game that may or may not work out of the box for me. Has anyone else purchased it or planning on it?

A properly collected urine sample is still sterile. If Braun's or anyone's sample has bacteria or yeast in it, it means either they have an infection, or it was contaminated. That does not mean analytes in the sterile sample won't break down over time and temperature (it depends on the analyte) to yield errant results. Its my understanding that the word "sterile" in a scientific sense means free from living germs or microorganisms. Urine is a sterile liquid as it exits the bladder. One simple Google search will inform anyone, with a scientific background or not, that urine collected outside of the human body is no longer sterile. There is simply no way to do it. Urine as it enters the urethra becomes un sterile, and it picks up additional bacteria as it exits the body. Once in a cup, sitting at room temperature, it further breaks down into additional compounds. From some quick Google searches, urine contains urea, creatine, sodium, ammonia, enzymes, and many other compounds. A sample would also contain whatever was introduced in the air and whatever was already in the cup. I have a hard time believing that a test that looks for the concentration of individual compounds couldn't be effected at all by allowing these compounds to stew together for a weekend in unregulated temperatures. Especially since we were told the results of a failed test were repeatable. Hypothetically, lets just say a 3 panel jury was given all of the relevant information, much more than has been provided to any of us, and they decided the results did not prove Braun had PEDs in his body. Would this far out fantasy be some type of vindication?

No its not. People who already thought he was guilty will use this as further "proof." People who thought he is completely clean will shrug it off. People who think that nothing has been proven against him so he is innocent (me) will continue to wait for real proof or just roll their eyes when lazy people throw him under the bus.

Urine is sterile, and a properly collected urine sample will be sterile (unless you have a UTI). In a properly sealed sample, there won't be any evaporation. And yes, I'm an actual scientist. I'm an actual scientist too. Doesn't mean I know how urine works.