Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends by Microsoft Game Studios and Big Huge Games
In Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends™ you lead vast fantasy armies into massive, strategic battles, raise your civilization from a tiny village to globe-spanning empire, and help guide a young inventor’s struggle to unravel his world’s ancient past and unite its people against an unimaginable threat!
Here’s what new and exciting aspects you can expect to see in Rise of Legends:
Genre-defining graphics and special effects.
RoL breaks the curve with industry-leading technology and mesmerizing art, creating a world unlike anything seen before. Exquisite lighting, intricately detailed buildings, and the sight of massive, unique armies clashing enormous battles make a feast for the eyes.
Innovations in the RTS genre.
All your favorite gameplay features from Rise of Nations are here in Rise of Legends, such as constantly shifting borders, attrition damage to units, creation and expansion of cities, and, of course, massive armies clashing on fantastical battlefields! However, each of these gets their own innovative twists.
Conquer the World Campaign. The immensely popular Conquer the World (CTW) Campaign returns to RoL with exciting updates. The award-winning CTW gameplay guides players through a new world of heroes, monsters, loyalty, and betrayal. Follow RoL’s heroic characters through gripping stories, multiple campaigns, and fascinating subplots. The three-dimensional world of Aio is constantly changing as you play—watch the terrain and city change as each civilization expands.
Streamlined and intuitive gameplay. For the player that wants to dive right into the action, Big Huge Games has streamlined both army and research interfaces, with a renewed focused on gameplay as opposed to micromanagement. Now you can Conquer the World in a 20-minute lunch break or play a traditional, involved game for that classic RTS experience.
New options for multiplayer and online play. Rise of Legends boasts a full, feature-rich, multiplayer gaming experience with a streamlined and intuitive interface that is readily familiar to any Windows® user. With powerful matchmaking capability and player statistics tracking, Rise of Legends presents both casual and hardcore players with a rewarding online experience.
Compelling, integrated story line. RoL transports you into the breathtaking world of Aio. Follow the adventures of Giacomo and his allies as they fight against tremendous odds in a sweeping narrative spanning three vast continents. Wage a war of survival as you encounter an engaging and unique cast of characters along the way—from the indomitable Doge of Venucci to the mysterious Yontash from the frozen Kahan wastes.
Into the Pirates Lair by DVD Insider
“Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly…stupid.” - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Sparrow was right !!! Honest people do/say stupid things.
Reviewers said the sequel - Dead Man's Chest - would be a bomb. It racked up record ticket sales in its first 10 days … $258.2 million.
MPAA said pirates stole more than $70 million from them in the same period.
Their solution -- put the biggest, baddest safe around their treasures imaginable with double, nay triple locks to keep the low-lifes out.
At the same time, honest people are telling us:
Capture the Ghost
Honest folks who tell you everything is going to be instantly available when, where you want it…live in a virtual fantasy world. Some of them also told you about the paperless office. A forecast right up there with the paperless toilet.
Raise your hand if you watch a show on HDTV at home, take your notebook and watch the show on the plane, switch to viewing it on your cellphone in the cab.
Right…only happens in the movies !!!
There are a few isolated tribes that have no concept of “owning” stuff or “having” things.
They don't live in our neighborhood. Our neighbors can't get their cars in their garages !!!!
Today's two-hour DVD movie occupies about 5.4GB of space. A two-hour HD movie consumes about 11GB.
And that assumes smooth seas and a fair wind at your back.
What's worse, not everyone has DSL, cable or satellite TV. Not everyone uses a computer. There are some (gasp!!!) that don't have cellphones !!!!
They want their entertainment in a physical form they can see…touch…own
Keep the Pirates at Bay
For the less digitally astute, the MPAA has convinced Congress that it is their responsibility to protect people from themselves. They have clear proof that pirates are stealing food out of their children's mouths.
So they shoehorned through a great idea called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) makes breaking copy protection illegal. Making copies for personal use, your fair use rights have been effectively abrogated. Or more simply…look at my stuff but you can't own it.
Want to buy/have a copy? Then they will protect you from yourself (accidentally copying the content) with something that sounds benevolent called DRM (Digital Rights Management).
That's what the content, computer and CE industries have been working on so diligently to develop for you…pirate-proof DRM.
And this stuff is ggggooodddd !!!
Since there are two different HighDef disc camps it is only natural there are two different approaches.
Both start with AACS (Advanced Access Content System) which is going to be tough for even the best pirate to crack (real pirates don't do it that way; they go right to the source but…). This sucker has an advanced encryption system and next generation media key blocks (something like a secret society handshake).
Probably take a rum-sodden pirate weeks to break.
But the BD group got more creative because they really want to protect … you !!!
They added ROM-Mark and BD+!
The ROM-Mark keeps real pirates from cookie cutting millions of unauthorized copies. BD+ is a little thing Tellywood can put on their discs that does all kinds of things in your player to determine whether or not you can play their disc. Working through all of the keys will probably take a 15 year-old at least a day or two to unlock the content and let it fly free.
Then BAM!!! to the virtual world…
Yo ho, yo ho a Pirate's Life for Me
Sure Johnny Depp made big bucks as Jack Sparrow but are you going to do as well after you go through all of that DRM and DCMA hassle?
Let's take the $70 million loss that Tellywood had from their HighDef Dead Man's Chest and put it out on blue media (notice they use “retail” numbers even only a percentage is actually “their” portion).
You've gotten into the treasure chest and knocked off 100 BD (or HD DVD we don't care) discs.
Media cost is let's say conservatively $20 a disc. So sell them for $30 and you've made $10 profit…cool !!!
But to who (or is it whom) ???
Obviously to HighDef player owners.
Well that market sucks right now !!!
It's a cruel fact of life. Technology takes time to be refined…understood…absorbed… broadly accepted.
It happened with B&W TV…color TV...VCR…PC…Internet...CD…DVD…
Producers and directors are only barely tipping their toes in the HighDef water because film gives them that extra margin of safety.
Post production work?
These ordinary seamen have all of the tools they need right now for producing conventional DVDs. The tools are solid. The features, capabilities, shortcuts and gee whiz stuff are now in common use.
In the studios' back rooms there is a growing set of HighDef professional tools that are fairly sound. It has been tough sailing because the software was being developed in parallel with the specifications and the specs have only recently been approved…sort of.
At the consumer/prosumer level there are products like InterVideo's WinDVD HD DVD and BD modules as well as Ulead's MovieFactory and VideoStudio authoring and burning upgrades. These are really only for the early adopters or the folks on the block who want bragging rights, not day-to-day tools.
The first movies that have been published are rudimentary HighDef content work done on modest hits (save the good stuff until you know what you're doing).
It's a lot like the DVDs of the first 24 series we bought…clumsy, awkward, rough (by today's standards) DVD post production. By the time we looked at the fourth series the menus, special effects work and interactive portions were professional and polished.
The early HD DVD and BD movies are just that…the early offerings. Basically DVDs with more content thrown in to fill the big bit buckets. As the content people become more comfortable with the tools and learn new skill sets, they will learn the strengths and weaknesses of the new formats, the quirks and undocumented features of the products they have to work with.
To help the professionals get up to speed there is the HDAA (High Definition Authoring Association) - HDAA_info@sonic.com
And if the hands who work the decks every day are learning a whole new skill set what is the rush to get one of the first players?
Format disagreements aren't hurting HighDef DVD sales.
Jack Valenti, former head of MPAA, taught Tellywood well…you've got to collect money from the audience but you don't have to really sell them anything…right away. When they are relatively certain the content will be well protected…it will be on discs and in the stores.
They learned a lot from their DVD CSS “problems.”
They learned even more watching the RIAA's problems with legal and illegal music downloads as well as “wide scale” ripping and selling.
While you may feel the best DRM is a product the consumer wants at a price the consumer is willing to pay.
Honest folks don't agree.
HighDef DVD hardware, software and content are here. The sales will increase over the next few years just as other consumer electronic technologies have in the past. Ultimately so will IPTV, video podcasts, broadband downloads as well as casual and serious pirates.
Tellywood is going to have to either sue everyone or say…”hang the pirate's code and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway.”
Of course we'll always have reviewers who will say movies are going to bomb and experts who say technologies are going to fail.
PSP Hacks : Tips & Tools for Your
Sure, it's just what you've been clamoring for: an ultra slick, portable version of the most popular console gaming system in the world. But Sony's new PlayStation Portable (PSP) isn't just a handheld gaming device. Beyond its killer graphics and spectacular widescreen LCD for unparalleled game play, it also sports wireless connectivity and a variety of multimedia features, including video, music, and digital photography. Your wildly versatile, endlessly powerful PSP practically begs you to hack and repurpose it to your liking.
My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood by Christine Rosen
A touching, funny memoir of growing up in
When Christine Rosen started kindergarten, her ABCs included the Apocalypse, the Bible, and Christ. At
At home,
My Fundamentalist Education is a brilliant, affectionate, child's-eye journey to Rosen's home, school and small town. Set in a time and place when the Living Bible outsold The Joy of Sex, during a girlhood lived as the Lord intended, among the tropical flora and fauna of Florida, its televangelists, irascible elderly, and itinerant preachers, Christine Rosen and her sister, Cathy, uncover the not always godly but surely divine secrets of a Hallelujah-ya sisterhood.
About the Author
Christine Rosen is the author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement and a fellow of the
If Only They Could Talk: The Miracles of Spring Farm: An Inspiring True Story About Listening to the Animals We Love by Bonnie Jones Reynolds and Dawn E. Hayman
Welcome to Spring Farm, where animals and people come together -- to explore their own natural ability to communicate with each other....
Something magical is happening on a small farm in upstate
This is what happened at Spring Farm when two very special women gave shelter to animals that were sick or abandoned. As trust and affection grew between them, so did their capacity to exchange feelings and thoughts. Today, the miracle of Spring Farm CARES is shared through communication workshops for visitors, students, and animal lovers. So come discover the magic of Spring Farm. Humans are more than welcome....
You'll meet Ricardo the duck, who explains that he won't leave his warm nest in a nearby chimney even if the house owners disapprove...Chubby the horse, who shares her feelings of despair when her barn catches fire...Elvis the kitten, who wiggles like a rock star...Sugar the Shetland pony, who dedicates a poem to her long-lost herd...and a whole menagerie of mouse-friendly cats, loving llamas, gregarious guinea pigs, delightful dogs, and other amazing critters.
True North: Peary, Cook, and the Race to the Pole by Bruce Henderson
In 1909, two men laid rival claims to this crown jewel of exploration. A century later, the battle rages still.
This book is about one of the most enduring and vitriolic feuds in the history of exploration. "What a consummate cur he is," said Robert Peary of Frederick Cook in 1911. Cook responded, "Peary has stooped to every crime from rape to murder."
They had started out as friends and shipmates, with Cook, a doctor, accompanying Peary, a civil engineer, on an expedition to northern
Bruce Henderson makes a wonderful narrative out of the claims and counterclaims, and he introduces fascinating scientific and psychological evidence to put the appalling details of polar travel in a new context. 16 pages of illustrations.
About the Author
Bruce Henderson is the author or co-author of many nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller And the Sea Will Tell. He lives in
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire
Ten years after the publication of Wicked, beloved novelist Gregory Maguire returns at last to the land of Oz. There he introduces us to Liir, an adolescent boy last seen hiding in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Bruised, comatose, and left for dead in a gully, Liir is shattered in spirit as well as in form. But he is tended at the Cloister of Saint Glinda by the silent novice called Candle, who wills him back to life with her musical gifts.
What dark force left Liir in this condition? Is he really Elphaba's son? He has her broom and her cape -- but what of her powers? Can he find his supposed half-sister, Nor, last seen in the forbidding prison, Southstairs? Can he fulfill the last wishes of a dying princess? In an Oz that, since the Wizard's departure, is under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enough to grow up?
For the countless fans who have been dazzled and entranced by Maguire's Oz, Son of a Witch is the rich reward they have awaited so long.
About the Author
Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, and Wicked, the basis for the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. Maguire has lectured on art and culture at the
Solidarity for Sale by Robert Fitch
A fascinating, definitive history and analysis of American labor union corruption-and an urgent call for social justice-that reads at times like a thriller
American labor unions have been, it turns out, shot through with corruption from their very inception. They never really had a Golden Age. From "Big Jim" Colosimo, the patron saint of Chicago's Mafia, to Brooklyn's Sammy "The Bull" Gravano a century later, organized crime has controlled huge swaths of the mainline labor movement. It still does.
Impassioned, revelatory, prodigiously researched and reported, and thoroughly convincing, Solidarity for Sale shows how the American labor movement's decent ends are continually undermined by its tawdry means-a diet of daily corruption longer than the menu at a Long Island diner. By telling the untold histories, uncovering the covered-up scandals, and even recommending a way forward, Robert Fitch builds a devastating indictment and goes beyond it to show that union corruption, stagnation, and decline are not our national destiny. Labor could regain its needed place in American life. But it would require a set of reforms deeper than anything now being proposed; nothing less than a revolutionary overthrow of its culture of corruption and its replacement by a civic culture of accountability and consent.
About the Author
Robert Fitch joined the Laborer's Union, Local 5 in Chicago Heights, Illinois when he was fifteen years old. He eventually traded his shovel for a briefcase and has since taught at Cornell and New York University, organized for the unions, and written for The Baffler, Newsday, Village Voice, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Nation. Still a union member, he lives in New York City.
Political Philosophy: A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians (Second Edition/Revised and Expanded) by Adam Swift
Politicians invoke grand ideas: social justice, democracy, liberty, equality,community. But what do these ideas really mean? How can politicians across the political spectrum appeal to the same values?This revised and expanded edition of Political Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide for Students and Politicians, answers these important questions. Accessible and lively, the book is an ideal student text, but it also brings the insights of the world's leading political philosophers to a wide general audience. Using plenty of examples, it equips readers to think for themselves about the ideas that shape political life.Democracy works best when both politicians and voters move beyond rhetoric to think clearly and carefully about the political principles that should govern their society. But clear thinking is difficult in an age when established orthodoxies have fallen by the wayside. Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with tools to cut through the complexities of modern politics. In so doing, it makes a valuable contribution to the democratic process.
Social Policy for the Twenty-First Century: New Perspectives, Big Issues: New Perspectives, Big Issues by Bill Jordan
In the new century, governments face three challenges for their social policies. Their efforts to improve their citizens' well-being must be consistent with the development of the world economy, and should if possible enhance the situation of the poorest populations. Their systems for redistribution and public services must be rooted in a convincing version of their own domestic order. And they should be sustainable over time, doing justice to the needs of future generations.This book shows how social policy can address these big issues, and how they relate to each other in an integrated world economy. Drawing on perspectives and analyses from political and social theory, economics, psychology, migration studies and international relations, Bill Jordan gives a new account of the links between global human development and individual well-being. He analyses the purposes and strategies of international organizations, business corporations and ordinary individuals, using case examples from all over the world.Essential reading for anyone interested in the future of social policy.
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