Part of our Patient, Physician, and Society course this fall is doing a few "special sessions" where we learn the particulars of a specific kind of physical exam. I was introduced to the male genital and rectal exam a few weeks ago (yikes!), and this week I did both my neonatal and pediatric sessions. The neonatal was the most fun, because we basically got to play with a newborn baby (about 12 hours old), while a neonatologist showed us what we should be doing. Babies can be cute (when they aren't crying), but this one promptly made a mess of himself, so we had to skip a few parts of the exam. In the pediatric exam, I had a good day. I was able to really see his optic nerve with my ophthalmoscope, which I think I've only done once before. Also, when I listened to his heart, I correctly discovered a systolic murmur without the doctor first telling me that it was there.
We are now studying endocrinology and genito-urinary + gynecology (GU/GYN). The lecturers so far have been pretty good, and the material is fairly interesting. One gyn lecturer has brought us warm Shipley's doughnuts every day!
Again, if you don't play games, skip the rest of this post.
So I had been thinking about COD4 MW2 as a game I might want, but I think I have decided not to get it now. I really enjoyed the single player campaign of the first one, but it was way too short. I did play the multiplayer a bit too, but now I don't know many people who will be playing it for PC. Also, they have decided to change the PC version's multiplayer so that it does a peer to peer match up system (instead of dedicated servers), similar to battlenet. This sounds like a terrible idea to me, and this chart on digg explains why. Besides the lag and smaller game size issues, the inability to add mods or custom maps is really a slap in the face to the PC gaming community (there won't even be developer's console access). It seems to me that this just gives them a way to control 3rd party development and possibly release map packs later on for money like they do for consols. The greatest strength of the PC was its devoted fans who generate extra content for games at no cost.
The sad thing is the game is already on track to sell tons of copies for the 360, so Infinity Ward probably will just ignore the PC crowd, since there are much fewer of them anyway. Now I don't really care about MW2 that much, but it sets a poor precedent for future games. The way Valve updated TF2 over time and released new map packs for it was great (some control over content is good), but it would stink if they started charging 15 or 20 dollars for each upgrade. And other companies will undoubtedly do a much worse job than Valve of taking care of their games. Plus, open development gave us games like TF2 and Counterstrike in the first place! What does everyone think... is this a good idea or bad idea?
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I was under the impression that it wasn't going to be P2P, but rather you're just stuck with using IW's dedicated servers, much like how Left 4 Dead does things if you don't choose to use a private server.
In theory, this is all a trade-off. In exchange for giving up the opportunity for a bunch of crazy custom options and maps, you know that you can join a random server and it won't have retarded settings. In addition, this is the only way for them to prevent cheating with regards to the 'perks' system. To some extent, that is a good thing. It sucks that 95% of the TF2 servers out there use settings that make the game terrible. And for Johnny Q. Casual, bad servers can ruin the experience completely.
However, L4D shows that you can use standard servers for the default matchmaking but still allow for a custom server option for those who would choose to use it.
IW in general seems to just be a bunch of jerks these days though. Did you hear about the Fight Against Grenade Spam video controversy?
Keith, I saw you on Steam the other day for the first time in like two years. Do you have enough time to play games these days? We should all play L4D (1 or the 2 demo) sometime.
I agree with you Bryan that there is no reason not to do both. In fact, it would be great if TF2 and CS (back in the day) had good servers that were always full and only ran the original game, no mods, no stupid junk.
Yeah... IW... not sure what they are thinking right now. But all the 360 people will buy their game anyway.
I did get on Steam recently! I just added the first COD4 to steam and I'm playing through the single player again. And the second time though, I am having many more "infinite troop spawn?? or not???" moments than I remember. It is still good though. But short. I'm almost done.
I would love to play the L4D 2 demo soon. Is it out yet?
It is out. It is marginally more fun than the L4D1 demo, which is to say, not $50 more fun.
Keith, you never did get the first L4D did you? You should keep an eye out for any sales. If you got it, I'm sure Jeremy and I would want to play some more of it with you.
I saw Braid went up on PSN today if you were still interested in that.
I am going to play Braid, Flower, and maybe Trine for PS3 at some point, but I am not sure when exactly. I only have 5 weeks of school left, but they are going to be busy...
I'm actually pretty excited about COD 4: MW2, which I'll be getting for the PC. COD 4 was the first COD I'd every played, so to me, the COD formula is still very fresh.
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