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SchizophrenicMC

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  1. SchizophrenicMC
    The whole point of this ban originated from Hasbro not wanting to compete with other manufacturers' figures, and spread from there. So, all Japanese-made Star Wars merch is blocked from international sale.
  2. SchizophrenicMC
    This all goes back to Kenner's 1976 license to make Star Wars figures and toys. This license was, apparently, exclusive to Kenner for US sales. Of course, Kenner folded to Tonka in 1987 and Tonka was bought by Hasbro in 1991, who have manufactured Star Wars toys for the US market ever since. (Often using the same designs from the original Kenner license) Over time, Hasbro also picked up many of the international Star Wars merchandise licenses. Primarily, Bandai's figures were subject to sales restrictions due to licensing, but that has since been extended to their entire lineup as Revell and AMT have put pressure on the Japanese toymaker in addition to Hasbro's impossibly large legal threat. Disney has decided to enforce this tradition, rather than open the market with renegotiated licensing. Which sucks for us, but was completely to be expected given that it's Disney. It's just too bad. I will say this has put me off of official Star Wars merchandise for a long time to come though. I'm not gonna support Disney's decision to continue the licensing in this way.
  3. SchizophrenicMC
    I've always been torn on the Block 60 conformal tanks. Sometimes they look good and sometimes they make the ballerina look chunky.
  4. SchizophrenicMC
    Progress has been painfully slow, because I just can't get motivated to work on this piece of junk. It's gonna need so much finishing work I don't even know if I want to attempt it.
  5. SchizophrenicMC
    Strike still has a lot of inner frame gimmick, but even with that kit, a lot had to be sacrificed for the Strike's slim proportions. GP01 is, in my opinion, in a sweet spot between the overly chunky early kits and the too-svelte new kits.
  6. SchizophrenicMC
    First thing: consoles aren't profitable on their own. Even at bulk discount prices, the stock hardware alone is worth more than the console, and even then the manufacturers are using custom versions of the hardware that fit their custom form factors, so the prices are way higher. Figure $600-800 a unit COST for those components. Every time Sony or MS sell a console, they're losing a LOT of money. They can't even pay for the hardware on a console sale, let alone the countless hours of engineering and development that went into it, let alone the continued support of the platform. In actual fact, they make all their money from the licensing fees on the games they sell. Overhead on a copy of a game is next to nothing at scale, and development budgets get paid off quickly at scale. Beyond that, a large portion of every game's sale is taken as a licensing fee, which pays for the console development and production, and is exchanged for a signature that makes the console treat the copy of the game like a legit copy. Every disc has a unique signature that's traded for a unique license, and the fee is paid for it. Do this hundreds of millions of times and it starts to pay off. And they have to do it that way because, they do provide the servers. All of the thousands upon thousands of servers hosting online games and all the other junk they put up (much of which is free) are either owned or leased the console manufacturer (at, believe me, extraordinarily high prices). If you play 4 hours of a video game every day during a given month, the bandwidth you've used alone will eat up your monthly subscription fee, based on the prices of bandwidth we sell, and the annual subscription fee for both PS+ and XBL Gold. To say nothing of the intensive and expensive processing the servers were doing to your game session that forced other players' sessions onto other expensive servers. Just to put a picture on how much money is involved here, a large customer had a large order recently, and our procurement department inadvertently ordered 768 of the wrong model processor to fill the order. It cost the company $1.7 million, and the person responsible was told not to do it again, but wasn't otherwise punished because out of our bottom line, it's a scratch in the paint. That will buff. And 768 CPUs is a fraction of a server room's capacity, and a tiny, tiny fraction of PSN and XBL's overall capacity. We're talking hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in raw infrastructure just to let you get haxx0r'd by 12 year olds in Call of Dinklage. The bandwidth costs, for that matter, are immense. So is the cost of power, not only for the servers, but for the massive amount of air conditioning needed to keep them from melting. And the buildings to house them and the fire suppression systems and the maintenance. This is mindbogglingly expensive. And you get it all for $5 a month. Honestly, I can't imagine their data services are profitable. And even then, PS4 doesn't charge for games that aren't hosted by PS+ servers. If you want to play Elder Scrolls: Online, you pay a subscription to the company running those servers, but PS+ is not required. XBL still is, I believe, but XBL is frankly a better service that has obviously cost Microsoft a much prettier penny. tl;dr: stop whining, it costs Microsoft and Sony more per hour to run their games services than Macross World has cost cumulatively since day one, and you haven't even paid toward that.
  7. SchizophrenicMC
    PG RX-78GP01 Gundam Zephyranthes. Next question.
  8. SchizophrenicMC
    Like Duke said, PS Plus and Xbox Live Gold are only necessary for playing their respective titles in online multiplayer, and the fee is sensible. Servers are expensive, and bandwidth is just as bad. Online gaming taxes both of them. I'd know: I build and maintain servers and their infrastructure for a living. It's actually a bit surprising they're able to keep it profitable, considering how much server capacity they use on free stuff like firmware updates, and the fact that they'll sell a year of unlimited computing and bandwidth for your games for $60. If you wanted that from the company I work for, you'd pay hundreds on a cloud instance to do the same thing.
  9. SchizophrenicMC
    Well let's be honest: it never stood a chance.
  10. SchizophrenicMC
    Well, I mean, for starters your PS3 support is going to wane, and there's no chance Destiny 2 is going to be available for PS3, so you will eventually have to bow if you want to find out firsthand the next meager morsel of story. Still I just can't see paying for Taken King and supporting this assery. Especially now that you can buy Taken King, the base game, and the first 2 DLC for the original price of the game, which is the biggest screw-you I can think to give the early adopters. Just everything about this whole debacle pisses me off. This really could have been a great game. It was made by a company legendary for great things in all areas, and for keeping control of its games even under the publishing of hands-on giants like Microsoft. But somebody sold out. And then everything got mis-handled. Activision being Activision I guess. frakk Deej though. That guy is not only an a-hole; he's also an idiot with no clue how to handle public relations. I swear two thirds of the stuff he's said has caused more community anger.
  11. SchizophrenicMC
    And that's it. I finally put a finger on what I like about Freedom: it's F91 with wings. Though, the remastered anime does use the Perfect Strike, which I'd heard was always an idea that got tossed around, but never implemented due to budget and plot constraints the first go. (Which is why they all mounted to different locations on the Strike in the first place) Of course, there are a bunch of striker packs in the MSV. The Noir Striker and IWSP Striker come to mind. Also, Astrays are stated to have the same mounting points as striker packs, so anything developed for the nifty Astrays is theoretically compatible with the Strike. There was also the Gunbarrel Striker on a custom Strike Dagger. (Basically a Moebius Zero folded in half) We just never see it in the animu. I think part of the fun of Strike is playing around with striker pack ideas. Coming up with new equipment to add specialized functionality to a basic mobile suit is pretty nifty. It's always been my favorite thing about the GM, and it was basically the plot of Build Fighters. It always did feel a bit Liger Zero to me though. It's even all the same colors. In other news, my cousin returns from Japan tomorrow. He says he has some gunpla in hand. Can't wait to see his haul.
  12. SchizophrenicMC
    I loved the gameplay for the first few hours, but then the lack of a story and the fact that the gameplay just repeated over and over with no variations killed it for me. I also think what they're charging for expansions is a bit ridiculous considering they're pretty much just chunks of the original game, if the documents released are to be believed. I'm only upset about this because Destiny had the potential to be game of the decade, but Activision got even a little more heavy-handed with it than I'd initially feared.
  13. SchizophrenicMC
    COFFIN for real
  14. SchizophrenicMC
    Necro for new information about the game's strange lack of story, and events that took place just prior to launch: Court documents released, pertaining to Martin O'Donnel's lawsuit against Bungie, confirm Destiny's story was gutted and reworked for sequel purposes toward the end of development I mean, I don't think anyone believed otherwise at this point, but the confirmation still sours me on Actibungie.
  15. SchizophrenicMC
    Oh my boner.
  16. SchizophrenicMC
    The Aile Striker's wings should be able to rotate almost 90 degrees down, but not quite straight up and down. For recreating launch scenes and stuff. I also prefer the regular Freedom. It's just a bit less shark-jumpy and I like it. Wish we had a PG of that. I have no interest in Strike Freedom at all.
  17. SchizophrenicMC
    I've lived here 10 years and I've seen plenty of afterburning military in that time. Between Ft Worth NAS JRB and Dallas NAS (Carswell and Mountain Creek Lake NAS) there's a ton of military traffic around here. Not to mention Fort Hood isn't far. I'm just a bit surprised you haven't seen any, considering. Oh well. Now you know. AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE
  18. SchizophrenicMC
    His looks overstyled, yours looks Phase Shift Down, which is frankly a better look in my opinion.
  19. SchizophrenicMC
    Ft Worth is big, but pretty much all of Tarrant County is under flight paths out of Carswell Ft Worth NAS JRB. Not to mention all the Lockheedery going on there. And all the opportunities to drive up the road to the Alliance Airshow every year. I live in Arlington, mind you.
  20. SchizophrenicMC
    Yeah I remember that. How could you live in Ft Worth and never see an F-18 afterburning out of Carswell?
  21. SchizophrenicMC
    Didn't you live in Ft Worth up until recently, Frothy?
  22. SchizophrenicMC
    My research suggests this kit is a Revell original dating back to 1983. If you told me the mold was 32 years old I'd believe you. The amount of flash, scarring, and warpage is ridiculous. There are sizable bubbles in the plastic and the fit for most of the parts is dubious at best. It's even a Revell Germany kit, and the quality is this bad. But I do love me some Concorde and nobody else has made a kit for Concorde. Local hobby store had this lying around so I figured "why not". Suffice to say, I remember why I stopped buying Revell kits. When I'm finished with this thing, I'm tucking it in a corner where no one can see how much extra work I'm gonna have to put into it to make it look halfway decent.
  23. SchizophrenicMC
    A painful reminder of why I stopped buying Revell kits. I should have just saved the money towards a down payment on a motorcycle.
  24. SchizophrenicMC
    I've got the project pretty well laid out at this point, with the main points broken down into 5 stages: Stage 1 will basically consist of a number of minor upgrades found in the replacement of worn out components. New brakes, new tires, adjustable shocks, stiffer sway bars. As it sits, it needs all of those pretty badly, as the shocks are original, the sway bars were never really sufficient for the car's roll control needs, and the tires are 6 years old cheap tires installed by the original owner. And for as long as it's spent sitting, the brake rotors are all pitted and the pads were cheap, dusty, low-performers anyway. Stage 2 is going to be the engine build. That's the biggest segment of this build, touching on nearly every part of the car, and is going to account for roughly half the cost of the whole project. I'm going to be rebuilding my spare KA24DE and turbocharging it. The goal is 350whp, and I'll be spending close to $8,000 turn-key to make that happen. It took 2 years of waffling to decide on this route. Stage 3 will see the car migrate to 300ZX brakes, 16" wheels, high-performance tires, and stiffer springs. Where Stage 1 will bring the car back up to snuff and Stage 2 will give it modern power, Stage 3 is really where the car will come into its own, in terms of making the power it's generating turn into speed. Stage 4, then, is less fun to talk about, but it's going to be the restoration of the car's interior and little things like replacing the broken windshield washer bottle and worn out weather seals. (And sourcing a new stock front lip) Stage 5, finally, will be to strip the car's paint down, fix the body work again (but professionally this time, and not by the lazy hands of a guy I was introduced to by a former classmate), and paint it Nissan #732 Black Pearl Metallic. I bought this car in early 2013 for $1200. After $800 in installing the engine it has currently, and around another $500 here and there since, I'm less than $3000 into this 240SX, which is still one of the cleanest I've seen. Uncracked dashboard no less. But all in all, I'm projecting around $18,000 that I'm going to have to spend on this. I'm calling it
  25. SchizophrenicMC
    New? I've owned this old girl for a few years now. It's even still stock. Funding has prohibited me from doing much to it. But now that I've got a real job, work can progress.
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