Getting Out Of Debt

The Doom game franchise has proven its popularity.

A movie titled after its namesake has proven its box office might.

Sarge and his crew have raked in $15.5 million-- not a bad haul.

Yet, noted critic Phil Villarreal said it most succintly in his review of this movie, asking why we don't just simply tape someone's first-person shooter games instead of watching this heaping pile of Doom game franchise filth.

Only a rotten 19% of Doom game movie franchise reviews were favourable on the rottentomatoes.com site at the time of this article.

While the non-gamer film critic looks on with apathy, the gaming community would flock to see the Rock struggle to convey emotion on the big screen while enthusiastically fragging demons.

Gamers are proliferating, and we've seen awkward attempts at game to movie transitions in the past like Mortal Kombat - Annihilation in 1997.

Yet, Doom seems quite pervasive. It's the granddaddy of our contemporary first person shooter genre.

It earned a #1 Game of All Time award from noted PC Gamer. This is admittedly one of my favourite genres.

Just not on my iPAQ, that's all.

This stretches to the PDA realm with free releases like the Pocket Doom game beta available for the Cassiopeia E-100 series, posted in 2000.

It required the doddering MS Windows CE 2.11 operating system, initially released in Feb. 1999.

Unfortunately, porting this game to a movie was significantly more successful than Pocket Doom PDA development attempts.

It's a form factor thing.

Most PDAs aren't structured well enough to handle the first person shooter genre, unless you'd like to give up your keyboard and mouselook for a D-Pad and hardware buttons.

There were quite a few forum posts about the awkward nature of Pocket Doom.

The Pocket PC developers performed their Doom game conversion, but in their eagerness they neglected to think about fragging clumsiness with a D-Pad and hardware buttons.

A select few Pocket PC games, like the Anthelion PDA space shooter seem to make the first person shooter perspective a decent experience, at least from a space fighter Wing Commander-like cockpit.

If it weren't for the leagues of space separating you from other ships during a dogfight, blasting enemy ships may have proven more difficult.

The complexity lies in restricted D-Pad movement. This is par for the course for PDA-based first person shooters.

I analyzed Pocket Quake benchmarks in an XCPUScalar overclocking article.

Fragging monsters was a blast, but strafing with a D-Pad can prove difficult.

Even without the Pocket Doom game there's plenty of gaming gold in those PDA hills yet.

Damian Julien is a Pocket PC gaming authority and long time general gaming hobbyist and reviewer.

He is an IT specialist by trade and has posted numerous articles on Pocket PC emulators, gaming and trends in the industry.

http://www.pdagameguide.com/

AP - Same-sex couples exchanged vows Wednesday for the first time in Connecticut amid cheers and tears of joy, while gay activists planned protests across the country over the vote that took away their right to marry in California.

What is a problem? What is an error? For many people problems and errors are obstacles which are in their way and which prevent them from being able to complete certain task. Those people who play computer gamers however tend to look at problems and errors not so much as obstacles as opportunities. Computer games by their very nature regularly put obstacles and traps in the way of the player and players accept that they will regularly face problems which they will need to overcome in order to progress through the rest of the game.

It is this alternative way of looking at problems as opportunities rather than as obstacles which has led many people to believe that playing such computer games actually provides valuable opportunities for computer gamers and video gamers to develop their life skills for the real world, and become people better adapted at dealing with the inevitable flood of obstacles and issues in their way. The argument is that someone who plays a computer game is more likely to look at a problem in their own life, or a mistake that they may have made, as an opportunity to develop, learn, and get it right next time, whereas non gamers are, perhaps, on the whole more likely to simply see an obstacle, and ignore it, or just stop whatever project they're on, or enlist extra help.

This is, naturally, a gross exaggeration, and there are many people in the world today who are highly successful, and very well suited to the real world and all its problems and obstacles, but who have never touched a computer game. Of course, real life is the best practice one could possibly get for real life, and no matter how realistic and well programmed a computer game is, it is still a mere echo of the world it represents, and the life skills taught and the lessons learnt within that world will, themselves, be an echo of the skills real life will teach you.

However, the essential point to this is that, rather than simply being a leisure activity which wastes time, or is no good except for its own purpose, there is some merit in playing games, and in some cases they may have more to teach us than we currently realise. There are very much two distinct camps discussing this issue - those who are deeply in to playing video games and computer games, and those either opposed to them, or with little interest in them. Many gamers argue the benefits of games, and many non gamers argue that games are a complete waste of time. As with most arguments, both sides have valid truths in their cases, but at the same time, both sides are exaggerating their own case whilst belittling that of the opposing party.

Once we are able to put aside the essential differences and prejudices, we may find that not only do some interesting studies and understandings develop, but that the future of gaming may be influenced in such a way that valuable lessons for life and specifically introduced or developed further.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and used video games at these sites for kids toys, educational, dolls.

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney, getting ready to hand off the job as the nation's second-in-command, will sit down with Vice President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday at the Naval Observatory.

It sounds like a group of people fighting for freedom...or maybe a new rock band. It's neither. If you are getting into the Search Engine Optimization game in order to increase the rank of your web site, you will see this term many times. This term is one of the more important terms in the promotion industry and, quite possibly, the most important term to you.

SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Pages and the term refers to the page that is returned to you when you search for a web site based on a keyword, set of keywords, phrase, etc. The important thing on a SERP is to rank as close to the top as possible. For example, if you search for the phrase "Small Business" in Google today, you will get a bunch of sites, with www.sba.gov being the first one. This means the SBA site ranks #1 in the SERPs.

Think about how you use search engines. When you do a search, how far do you go down the list of results before you either give up or you try different search criteria? If you are like most people, you only go through 10-15 results before moving on. Now let's say your company sells widgets and when you do a search, your company typically shows up between 25th and 40th position. The typical user will never get to the results for your company.

In order to make sure you show up near the top, you need to select specific keywords that you want your site to rank for and optimize your site to that effect. This includes things like having lots of content on your site that contains the keywords, having people link to you that have the keywords on their site, putting the keywords in your META tags, ALT parameters, file names, ... the list goes on.

By the way, if you search and you put quotes around the words, it become a phrase. A search for words without quotes around them is called a keyword search.

Now you know what SERPs are. Go forth and use the word in a sentence and sound smart.

Currently, John A. Simpson is a Senior IT Professional, owner of Simpson Properties, LLC, a real estate investment company, and an avid blogger. He has 22 years of IT experience and plans to continue his career in Internet-related IT.

AP - Maurice Greene won't be running around the "Dancing with the Stars" ballroom anymore.

Bully is another classic from rockstar games. Known for such games as the grand thief auto series, Bully follows many of the same missions but is set within a school yard. As such there is no firearms, no killing and some new interesting side lines.

Of unique interest is the best way to get your health increased to twice its normal leve .... You kiss - snog is probably a better description.

You can also increase your health in bully by drinking sodas.

Along with the boarding school theme you can get a number of weapons of a juvenile nature - including stink bombs, sling shots, spud guns, bottle rocket gun, itching powder, fire crackers, bags of marbles, eggs, paint cans and of course your own fists. This is where the Nintendo Wii takes bully to a new level over and above what other consoles can offer. You want to box on with someone - you box on, trust me you can get quite a workout. Especially when you fight in the preppies boxing ring for 16 rounds!!!.

You can learn a number of moves to increase your fighting abilities, including leg sweeps, head butts and the classic knee to the groin (having suffered this particular move in real life I am intimately acquainted with the damage and pain this can cause), so much better to leave this type of behavior in the virtual world.

Their are 87 missions that I've completed, most follow a central story line between you the main character - James (Jimmy) Hopkins and Gary Smith - a deeply disturbed young man and Pete your wimpy side kick!

Other characters in Bully include the Preps (yuppies), Jocks (large sporting types), the bullies (white shirt and jeans), the greasers (50's rejects), Nerds (if you don't know what a nerd is, its likely you are one), along with little kids, the bigger girls (the large chested ones ;), as well as the prefects (the ones who bust you and slam you to the ground and drag you off to the principals office), and the teachers. In town are police, adults, students and assorted losers.

As with most rock star games, bully has a number of maps that slowly open up to you as the game progresses. The main town, the upper class suburbs, the slums, and more industrial slums. Running all around this huge town would take ages, thankfully there are a number of other transport options including your always handy skateboard (and the back to the future ride hitch), bicycles, scooters, and the go kart. Once you have the go kart - this will be the only way you well choose to get around town as it is lighting fast. Get this by winning all the go kart races - it waits for you outside the front of the shop near you personal garage.

Bully has a number of 'collectibles', including destroying gnomes, collecting cards, rubber bands (which gets you a new rubber band ball weapon when you have them all). There is one difficult rubber band on top of a roof in town with no ladder to get there - you can't jump the gap from the neighboring roof top - you need to jump while on your skate board - a tricky maneuver, but I got it on the third go. Also 6 radios are collectible and you can trade them to a vagrant to teach you fighting moves.

The only annoying thing with the Wii version of the game is the camera control in some missions, which can be very tricky - you need to push the Wii remote hard at the screen and then aim it carefully - the designers could have used more sensible options to direct your camera - the camera is needed to complete some missions and take year book photos - or just happy snaps of your game.

Bully is set in a boarding school so of course you have CLASSES - with a variety of teachers you probably met some time during your school career - if somewhat over dramatized. The classes include art, english, chemistry, maths, shop, music, gym, photography, biology and geography.

English is the hardest and Maths is no knock over either - calculate fast or miss out.

Gym is great to learn new fighting moves.

Music, art and photography are about as pointless as they are in 'real' school. Photography at least gets you a camera.

Shop gets you a varying progression of better and better BMX bicycles.

Chemistry enables you to cook up itching powder, stink bombs and fire crackers in your dorm room.

The main buildings in the school are the boys and girls dorms, the main school building - classrooms, cafeteria and principals office; the gym, the shop, the library, Harington house, the stadium and sports field and the observatory. Its easy to get around on skateboard - though jumping both sets of stairs to the main building requires pin point timing - but is possible.

Some interesting school asides - playing dodgeball, pulling the fire alarms, kicking the soccer ball again the wall and just making a nuisance of yourselves. You can hide from authority figures in bins, lockers and porta-loos until your heat level cools down - it you can't find one - just run, skate or drive away. Don't try to take on the prefects - I've managed to knock one out, so I tried the spud gun - I got two but the other two prefects nailed me.

Bully is a great game - all the rock star brilliance without the blood.

Other areas of interest - the carnival - lots of fun games, rides and ability to earn tickets. The seaside and wharf - to get that last gnome on the barge don't forget to use your super slingshot. The mental asylum, the clothing shops, tattoo 'van', barber shops, theater and comic shops, BMX track.

You can even pick up odd jobs and earn money making food deliveries, paper round and mowing lawns. You will need the cash to buy all the clothes to get 100% completion.

My only complaint about the game is the main story finishes long before you complete 100% and the world it so huge it takes ages to 'collect' everything. Occasionally the Wii controls - particularly in chemistry and shop are hard to "copy" exactly - you will see what I mean.

The best part of bully - boxing on, causing mayhem and kissing the girls. Funnest part - watching your girlfriends pull each others hairs, least funny part - being kneed in the groin by an upset girlfriend - both can occur when your caught out playing the field.

I recommend Bully as a must have game for your Wii collection.

Read the original article at - http://nintendo-wii-fanatic.blogspot.com - also get more great advice on Wii games, Wii console and Wii accessories.

This article is the property of Alastair HARRIS and his immediate family. It may be freely republished over the internet but must include original links.

AP - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants Congress to support a financial bailout for the troubled U.S. auto industry, which is suffering under the weight of poor sales, tight credit and a sputtering economy.