Flaight

I had done that till around when New SMB came out, but it's tedious. I don't know if there's a way around it, but you know the new games require updates or even forces it and I got really annoyed by having to fiddle with config every so often. That and horror stories about bricking. Wii is much cheaper now so I'm thinking having 2 is less of a hassle. I just need a good reason to force me make the move and this collection is making me think very hard.

I hope it will too, but soonest 2012 is what I'm guessing I'm honestly considering getting Japanese Wii alongside this. I can't put into words what these mean to me

Uhh so I reckon that means Dragon Quest Collection will turn up a year late in 2012 Keep DQX very straight like the old ones and I'll be a very happy bunny, as sleepless as a bunny could be.

A bit off topic maybe, but these were the TV ads in Japan and I would've never guessed that cool looking rig and the chick are the same person...! Apparently they are. Before and after transformation.

I'll update the story since my last rumblings on the circumstance surrounding 6 nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Some 4 days ago the spanner in the works came in the form of a nuclear fuel (so-called fuel rods) in the storage pool. The urgent one is in Unit 3 as the water has boiled off completely, then Unit 4 which still has some water left. Usually, on maintenance, the fuel rods are taken out of the reactor and placed in a pool because the fuel rods continue to build up heat after use. Water cooling is provided to counter this heat, but power for the cooling got knocked out. Both pools supposedly passed the initial test, but something caused the water to reduce thereafter, probably hydrogen explosions and fires they had earlier in the week (they don't know this for sure). These rods built up heat and added to the existing radiation, which explains the leap of radiation to 400mSv some days ago. Ironically, the earlier hydrogen explosion had ruptured the outer concrete building, and they can use that hole to feed water into the pool. Otherwise they'd have to send a man into the building to put a hose by the pool (and get fried). The first line up was the helicopters, then they gathered an army of fire trucks which can accurately shoot from far away. It worked, so they will continue to do so on Saturday. In the meantime, they managed to get power from the nearest working grid 6 km away using what is apparently the world's longest extension cable. They have now hooked it up to Unit 2, but they plan on yet another 1.5 km extension from Unit 2, going through 2 transformers, to power all 6 units. All this has been completely out of the whack, but it's working. Unit 1 and 3 have "leveled out" for now, so are Unit 5 and 6 with a mobile generator. Unit 1 had low enough pressure to even close the overflow valve (i.e. stop the deliberate release of radiation). Unit 4 would be stable enough if they could finish filling the pool with water. Unit 2 is the dodgy one. Some of its gauges don't work and they think the suppression chamber has some issues, but they have enough intermittent data to know that they are stable for now. Unit 2 is the priority - the reason why they connected the power line to it first. There are still challenges ahead. On-site radiation apparently reads around 20mSv, which means about 5 hours of work per man (in a rotation). More watering from the fire brigade might improve that, and the safety officers have raised the allowed radiation limit so technically the engineers are allowed to work for about 7 hours in that radiation. The company doesn't like that so they've so far stuck to the usual limit. Restoring power is no easy task especially after the earthquake, tsunami and explosion, so they'll be tempted to zap their 180 engineers longer in the radiation. Once that's done they need to bring the coolant system back up and stabilize all units for real, because they're still being pumped with sea water. Fail any of these steps and the reactors in Unit 1, 2 and 3 can build up pressure again, although it won't be anywhere near as bad as it was in the first few days as after this week the decay heat becomes considerably lower. So the question is whether they can start working on the reactors in timely fashion. The funny thing about all this - except for the fuel rod pool problems they've got, they're almost there. In other words, this hasn't really been about nuclear reactors, but more about the spent fuel rods and the way they're stored while off duty. If they could stabilize the reactor in Unit 1 and 3 (and maybe 2) sufficiently enough to buy this much time to deal with the fuel rods, without the fuel rod problems I can't see why they couldn't stabilize the whole plant by now. I think they would have done. Make no mistake though, these used fuel rods are dangerous because there's a big hole in the containment building, so if they don't get to grips with the pooling issues, they'll have more headaches dealing with the radionuclides. That'd be harder to deal with than the radiation. Radiation alone has been hard enough; they couldn't even come near it to hook up the power cable till recently. Incidentally, in light of detailed briefing from the government and company yesterday, the World Health Organization has made a public statement that the exclusion zone of 20km as set by the government is correct and there is at least no scientific reason why the health hazard would extend further. Interestingly some of the media has considerably toned down the "nuclear Armageddon" hyperbole and focussed more on the heroic workers and tsunami victims. Oh a coincidence To be continued.

Haha, good one Tokyo based, currently in the UK. I've been moving around a lot in recent years. I have mixed feelings about looking on on all this from outside. Instinctively I wish I was there on the ground, but then I guess I'll just add to the burden given the scale of the problem. No casualties so far at personal level so far. They've been having a rotation of planned black outs even in Tokyo to ration power, and some radiation has been detected around Tokyo as well, but really, the level is still low outside the exclusion zone to worry. It's a sensitive subject though so I think the psychological burden of radiation exposure is more burdening than the actual physical problem. We generally freak out just by hearing "radiation". We don't then ask "How much radiation?". It keeps changing so quick, I don't know what to think. EDIT: And yes, that's one hell of a groovy penguin!

Ahh damn, somebody remembered me :wink: I'm not around enough to keep up with the flow of conversation so I don't use forums in general. I tried to at one point, but I came to the conclusion that I may be more proficient with a rotary dial telephone.

I wouldn't, based on 2 points. One, you wouldn't be swing trading from here. Two, from the way you asked the question, I get the feeling you may not be aware of different sectors' behaviour in Japan. Targeted investment over short period would work, but I wouldn't recommend it outside Japan unless you have domestic source of info. The construction has already gone up, so the market is moving. The automobile will be down for a while, I reckon. It's happening fast so you can easily get caught out by the market. If you meant a long term investment into the likes of Toyota and Sony, again, provided that you're an outside trader I would wait till we know where we're headed. I bet most of them are figuring out what on earth is going on on the ground as we speak, it's 10 in Japan. At the moment most production is down while they try to figure out exactly what capacity they can operate at. If you intend to ride a short term movement at this point you'd have to be more savvy than Japanese traders on the ground. Anyway. About reactors. Daini reactor is having trouble this time and they reported over 8000 microsieverts. That's like 3 times the average annual intake. They say it's dropped now to 2000, but I have to wonder why the initial reading was so high. Maybe because of the control rods decay (which was reported about 5 hours ago) or, as I feared, maybe the containment vessel may have a minor fracture. We'll see.

lol thanks for the video. But are you guys SURE this isn't just a wind up merchant who's been doing it for years? Those do exist, you know. I wouldn't be surprised at all if she was giggling at all those comments she's been getting at 5 messages per second.

Yeah the media is business driven so they are always exuberant. So long as we're aware of that they are helpful. It's when we take them at face value that they begin to engineer our views and opinions, all the while we THINK it's our own opinion. As likable as BBC is to me (normally), I have seen enough over the years to know that BBC is a social-engineering machine. They definitely skew your view, for better or worse. Anyway. In events like this, you see both the best and worst of people. In a way, it is a good self-diagnosis; you take a step back and take a good look at how you're reacting, to understand what sort of person you've become. You don't have to tell anybody, you just do-it-yourself. Individually as well as nationally you get to see our true colours in these times. Travelling around the world I think the "hate" is often the biggest problem. Our human nature is such that we spot other people's flaws and preach them all sorts of things - we see it day in day out commenting on human rights abuse of some countries, even treatment of animals, child abuse, corruption of politics and bankers, etc. Yet in events like this, if you have that "hate" against those who are suffering, we often let that take over us and all of a sudden we start to become the very thing we were critical of. The bottom line is that there is a very thin line between us and those we criticize. The problem is that we often don't realize we're doing it. Nevertheless, I think it's hard for an average Joe to wrap his head around an event like this because on TV it's just another event alongside all sorts of misery being broadcast. So externally, I would hesitate to be too judgemental of those who are supposedly misbehaving. Rather, I'd prefer to focus on the aforementioned self-diagnosis. If each and every one of us looked into ourselves to saw how we honestly feel, we can find flaws in ourselves and become self-aware of our own flaw. It leads to self-betterment and prepare ourselves for when we or our nation are in trouble of this scale. In that sense, it's more about what's happening to us, not what's happening to others. Talking of betterment, as ironic as it is every accident of this sort makes nuclear power plant much safer as a viable solution to the national power issue. I just hope the engineers at Fukuoka is ok. The worst case scenario is actually not that bad in perspective, but the implication for those right next to the reactor is serious.

While we're on that subject. Just to add a few notes to the situation regarding the power plants. The main problem is in cooling the core unit. The backup cooling unit has failed, probably due to the tsunami if you look at the timing of the events (they coincide). Most reactors have a functioning backup, but they run out of power after a while so you need to direct power to it, but a lot of their power is down at once due to exceptional set of events (as if you need to be told). So far most of them are stable, but they've had more problems with daiichi and daisan reactors at Fukushima. There is a lot of information coming out on the Japan side. I noticed that the BBC in the UK was rather misleading yesterday. They got better since, but they're still not informative enough on this, even scaremongering as a result. These are the key points: (1) Radiation levels (so called 'contamination') has been so low like CAT scans. Nevertheless, the term 'contamination' is technically correct - probably the reason why the BBC loves to repeat it so many times without providing the context. Small amount of radiation can travel with the wind. The removal of the residents is more of a precautionary measure and to cut out the fuss of having to give them counter-measures. The exclusion radius officially given is not supposed to indicate the max distance the radiation can travel. Any minor radiation can theoretically fly to Russia. Makes no difference to the danger level. (2) Explosions, which our media likes to focus on, have taken the shield off, but they don't affect the cooling so it isn't directly related to the actual problem they have. What matters is the reactor remains intact which they have. If not the core would literally be shining out and radiation would be detectable from far, far away. On the contrary, International Atomic Energy Agency (acting as the international observer) reports that the radiation levels have dropped following each event. (3) The authorities and government officials seem to have been going straight to the residents who need to get out or be informed, and carrying on with their work, and if they still have time left, they then go to the media, so the delay in information is quite natural given the workload. BBC seems to portray this delay as a proof of a cover up ("it's worse than they claim"), but there is no reason to suspect that given the information on the radiation, which shows quite the opposite. (4) On a side note, I also noticed that they like to repeatedly playback clips of some line up of campaigners who are critical of the situation, while smudging out the qualified source like one from the Imperial College who say the danger level is very low. Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you lot. I would've gotten a completely different picture had I gotten all my information from BBC News. The danger still exists, no doubt. The cooling is crucial to de-pressurize the reactor. For every reactor which stops receiving enough cooling for a period, they would have to release the valve to relieve pressure (a minor emission), let the consequential hydrogen explosion take place while keeping their staff safe from debris (a very hard part), then use anything around (they chose sea water for daiichi reactor) to continue the cooling. This will repeat as long as they need to depress the reactor to a dud, so I would not rule out another similar incident happening, but this is becoming almost like a routine by the looks of it. One that I'm worrying about is a direct damage to the reactor. The walls around the reactor is usually designed to fall outward to avoid hitting the reactor, but those hydrogen blasts can go wrong if they get unlucky. Also the staff at the reactor must be terrified... I worry for them and their health as they're permanently close to it. I'm not sure about this, but generally does the BBC tend to lean more towards anti nuclear energy side of the debate, by any chance? I wouldn't be surprised if they do given the way they're covering it. It's almost as though they're exploiting this event in Japan to propagate a certain sentiment.

I tend to agree with that. It was one of those nice "welcome to Wii!" games for me, like Luigi's Mansion on GameCube. At the moment with my mates we're really into Boom Blox. It felt a bit short lived at first, but it became really deep once we got used to it. We keep coming up with clever/ugly tactics to force an error on others :awesome: Although... we're gradually shifting more towards Wii Music now. Infectious stuff.

It IS fun for me, so mission accomplished for the makers really. This really challenges the concept of having fun through gaming. Traditionally game's fun came from a challenge in dexterity and object-driven goals. For me, Wii Music once again proves to me, personally, that there are other ways to induce this "fun" in my head while gaming. I wish there were more options and modes, though. But I'm sure they will build on this and make Wii Music 2. To an extent this is a birth of a new genre, possibly a dawn of a new era. How romantic I don't understand why those who don't like it complain so much really... just let it be. Every game has its demography just like food. Nothing wrong with that.

But if I go through PayPal with credit card, wouldn't that count as "Paying into PayPal" as far as the credit company goes? As much as I understand, if you are a PayPal account holder, you are "funding" the PayPal account by taking money out of whatever source (in this case, a credit card). Then from that fund in PayPal, you pay the ebayer?

So, what if I pay by credit card via PayPal system? Will I still be covered? Or would I have to pay directly by credit card and not through PayPal system to get the cover? BTW I've had PayPal for years and I'm verified. The only time I've had a prob was when this idiot sent me a pirated copy (it was so obvious as well, with generic blank CDs) of a game and I started a dispute. After much proving and faxing documents etc, PayPal agreed that it was a fraud. I got about £14 or so back, and 4 years on I'm still waiting for the rest. Yeah I know, I won't get the rest back. probably... That payment was made through PayPal, by bank account funding. Had I funded it thru credit card (within PayPal), would I have got my money back?

Looking ahead, I think the profit will fall sharply, not necessarily because of less sales (probably that too tho), but mainly because of the strength of Japanese yen. It's on a 13 year high and went up a big time against all major currencies in the last several weeks. I think the biggest was vs Australian dollars, at 45% or something. That's ridiculous, but this sort of price hike happens with Japanese yen, especially when the times are bad outside Japan. It's a brickhouse currency. Obviously it won't stay that way forever, but I generally think yen will be generally higher in the foreseeable future, resulting in less profit for all Japanese exporters including Nintendo. That is, unless the G7 intervenes to stop yen from rising. I think that's likely if this trend continues.

While back when I was about 8 or something. I went to a kiosk and nicked a few sweets. I was talking about it in a class the following day and somehow the story got to a teacher eventually. She got so angry and told me to tell my mother when I got back home before she calls her about it. But I didn't. Eventually the phone rang and my mother found out about it from the teacher. She cried and all, I got a load of bollocking from both her and the teacher, my mother then dragged me to the kiosk and we both apologized and paid the owner... Never stole anything since. Come to think of it, it's a funny story now. It wasn't funny back then

You probably prefer a story driven RPG then, as they tend to restrict you but carry you through a nice flow of plots. It's an age long problem on whether an RPG with smoother flow is better than an RPG with more arduous involvement. I'm still divided on this one myself. If you finish FF3, try DQ4. Same sort of thing, in some ways better story wise. But as darksnowman said, "FF III is a true test of your old skool mettle", which is beautifully put. In fact I should make that my sig one of these days

I will happen (on a console or two), but just a question of immediacy. SE knows FFVII is HUGE and it's like the final nuke in their arsenal just in case the whole universe collapses around them on a apocalyptic scale. The Red Button they have their finger on, if you like. :awesome:

That's an excellent point mate. It may very well be MS/Sony who end up having to change their ways, which will in turn give Wii2 a leverage without Nintendo going off-course. If MS/Sony spend more on a console than its price tag, though, surely that would mean that their hardware would ultimately be "better and faster" (yeah I know that's abstract) than Wii2...? So my point was, it's likely that Wii2 will still be technically inferior, if Nintendo were to stick to their profit strategy. I know that's got nothing to do with the competition though! What do you think about my 2nd point? That a difference in hardware would result in less noticeable visual advantage? I know if a hardware is pushed to its limit, there will be differences and there will always be big titles which achieve that. But in 2012, perhaps the gap between high end and mid end hardware would be somewhat less in visual impact? Or maybe I'm underestimating the power of computing :awesome: Not every Dev studio can carry on expanding forever either. It'd be hard and expensive to marshal a team of 1000+ people.

That is a generalization and an opinion based on your perception and environmental experience. And based on that, it is black&white, I accept that. What I am saying is that there are many people out there with varying experiences which don't fit into your one-size-fits-all model. Therefore, forcing one model in all cases for all children and parent-to-child relationship is unreasonable and unfair. We aren't debating on whether smacking works or doesn't, we're debating on whether a ban should be in place. While I accept that your version of events is possible - in various cases smacking may be the wrong decision - that doesn't warrant an exclusive ban based on the particular model of upbringing that you believe in. We should educate the society and parents as a whole, so that we may make a more informed judgment on case by case basis. Individuals must be entrusted with their wisdom on when to apply smacking. In many cases, it might so turn out that it's not necessary at all. At this point in time, saying that smacking is entirely unnecessary is a premature assumption as many of us have been effectively raised with an occasional smacking. I don't think one can write a definitive guide on what the "right upbringing" is, which will result in a perfect human being. That's why I think an education for greater ability to judge a particular circumstance and context of smacking, combined with the art of discretion, is the way forward. Your concern on smacking is a fair one, and I agree to an extent, but that's just one side of the story.

It scares me how black and white the world is for some people. There is a trend to make everything into a rule and the beauty of discretion is something of a lost art. Our decision making is becoming like that of machines and computers. Physical contact is, technically, an assault. But come on. This is all semantics. There is a difference between a parent who lightly smacks a child out of genuine love and a stranger who beats up a kid with a stick. There is a difference of opinion here, but why should your opinion be forced down other people's throats? A ban is a law, which forces a certain opinion of SOME people on all of the population. Banning or making smacking compulsory by law isn't the answer here. Education is. The rest is an individual's informed choice; it is YOUR choice too, as well as for the others. I'm scared by the misconceived perception of human rights these days. It leads to a bizarre over-protectionism at face value, discounting any depth or wisdom of social dynamics, like the sense of discipline that used to exist. At this rate, the future will be ridiculous: the compulsory education will become illegal as forcing a child to go to school is a human rights abuse. Also if a parent doesn't buy a toy for a child when he's crying, the parent will be taken to court and have his income checked, and if he could afford one, he'll be prosecuted for not buying a toy and for an emotional abuse of the child. It's all a black&white, technically correct bollox if you ask me. Talk about political correctness gone mad.

Yeah alright... that's a fair point, I must say. I think that is realistic given how fast computers have been developing. In a way though, that kinda makes this story not-very-news-worthy. It's like saying every PC will have a blu-ray drive by 2011, which is (hopefully!!) a no-brainer. The original story reads as if Nintendo is doing something remarkable, certainly remarkable enough to be "hard to believe" and so it became news-worthy. Maybe, just maybe, next gen console gaming will have a little difference between high-end and mid-end tech. 360 and PS3 are different, but in some ways the difference in performance is hard to notice. If this trend continues, maybe, what Nintendo spends on Wii HD will be close enough to whatever MS/Sony comes up with at a much higher cost. Just a random thought...

Yeah I do. Push comes to shove, I love both. They're just... very different to me. One is a flashy west end theatre, the other is like reading a good book. It is sad though that the beauty of DQ is generally less known in the west.

Yeah, maybe. At least Nintendo has enough money to safely make the first move. What I'm not too sure about is whether Nintendo will be prepared to make a loss for every console they manufacture. Their strategy has always been to make money for every sale of a console/handheld. Obviously HD support will be cheap enough in the near future, but how far would they back it with high end processors? MS/Sony spend so much on the hardware, so if Nintendo were to "catch up" in that department, Nintendo's current business model is not sustainable. They would have to alter it, either to take a loss for every unit they sell, or to abandon the "affordable gaming for everybody" principle. Somehow either of those seems unlikely... or is it just me?