Today licensed weapons are commonplace in video games, but the deals between game makers and gun-manufacturer are shrouded. Not one of the publishers contacted for this article was willing to discuss the practice. (EA: "I'm afraid we can't progress this." Activision: "Not something we can assist with at present... My hands are tied." Codemasters: "We're focused on our racing titles these days." Crytek: "We can't help you with that request." Sega: "[This] doesn't sit comfortably." Sony: "I can't help with this I'm afraid.")
However, the gun makers are more forthcoming. "[It's] absolutely the same as with cars in games," says Barrett's Vaughn. "We must be paid a royalty fee - either a one-time payment or a percentage of sales, all negotiable. Typically, a licensee pays between 5 per cent to 10 per cent retail price for the agreement. But we could negotiate on that."
"We want to know explicitly how the rifle is to be used, ensuring that we are shown in a positive light... Such as the 'good guys' using the rifle," says Vaughn. His company insists that its gun isn't "used by individuals, organisations, countries or companies that would be shown as enemies of the United States or its citizens." Ideally, Vaughn says, Barrett's gun will only be used "by US law enforcement or US military".
Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers
DNA Lounge: Wherein your dazzles are well and truly razzled.
Hey, some photo galleries! Actually a few of these aren't really photo galleries but links to Youtube clips, but that kinda counts.
"Just spit on your hand and see what's gurgling around in there."
She's a Flight Risk
"She's a Flight Risk" is a blog that was active between March 2003 and March 2006. It's a diary of a woman on the run from her family: "memoirs of a post-adolescent, international fugitive."I discovered it in early 2004 and was immediately hooked. I mentioned it to a friend recently, leading me to discover that nearly all traces of it have disappeared from the web, including from archive.org.*
Fortunately, I saved a copy. So I've put it back up. Enjoy!
SOMA Nature Walk: Death from the Skies Edition
Plane's banner falls off, lands on SF power linesA plane flying a banner advertising "$8.99 haircuts" over San Francisco Saturday afternoon lost the ad, which landed on high voltage power lines next to the San Francisco Tennis Club in the city's SoMa district.
The banner's landing was first reported around noon near the intersection of 5th and Brannan streets.
Upon contact with the power lines, the banner reportedly burned up and caused a power outage for an estimated 250 residents in the surrounding area, according to PG&E.
The intersection of 5th and Brannan streets was closed off by emergency crews while they attempted to remove the banner from the power lines.
Monotreme hardcore.
The echidna penis is an oddity. Like some birds and reptiles, the penis is used ONLY for the passage of semen, all urine and stuff goes through the cloaca. And, like some reptiles, the penis of the echidna is bifurcated. That is, there are two "heads". Each of those heads is ALSO bifurcated, resulting in a total of four little heads (called, charmingly, "rosettes"). Not only that, the opening for the semen on each of those isn't a hole. No, it's more like a showerhead.
Mosaic
Someone has patched NCSA Mosaic to run on modern Linux systems (if that's not an oxymoron).I couldn't get it to build on OSX because of Motif (and port install openmotif didn't help). I dug in a bit but then the smell of gasoline and burning flesh drove me away.
It's not entirely clear to me why this "port" was necessary, since the last time I checked (which was five years ago) it was still possible to run the old NCSA and NSCP binaries on modern Linux systems just by installing the a.out kernel module and a couple other files.
