Vodafone

A lame wireless carrier that:

1) Sells phones that have all the cool features disabled, like Bluetooth file transfer (so that you will use their MMS service instead and pay), ability to load your own ringtones and java apps (so that you will buy the ones from their vodafone live portal) and WiFi tethering (so that you will buy a seperate contract for your laptop). Vodafone-hijacked phones look exactly like the non-hijacked ones available from other carriers, so be aware. The trend has also expanded to Android smartphones.

2) Sells contracts and prepaid that have the highest rates among the industry, but thanks to clever advertising and special packages with too many fine print they occasionally offer, guilible people think they are the cheapest carrier or just as cheap as the other carriers.

3) Has branches in practically every European country, but for some reason they charge you with roaming fees as if those branches were independent carriers. So, roaming isn't an excuse for choosing Vodafone.

Vodafone is the AT&T of Europe, 'nuff said.

15👍 5👎

Need for Speed Carbon

A sequel to the Need For Speed games. Most people hated it because it's was a rehash of the previous "Most Wanted" sequel. But if you are like me, aka one of the people that hated having to purposely crash onto police cars and police roadblocks to "level up" in Most Wanted, you probably loved Carbon. Because Carbon only requires you to interact with the police only when you accidentally bump onto them, and not be a mazohist and hit them on purpose.

Wtf... I need to purposely crash onto 10 roadblocks to level up? Why are you doing this to me, Most Wanted? Screw this. I 'll just launch Need For Speed Carbon.

36👍 9👎

MAME

Software that emulates (mimics the behavior of) many arcade systems, though with a massive overhead.

In plain English, if you have a copy of an arcade game, you can (theoretically) play it in your PC using MAME. Arcade games are usually stored in ROM chips, so such a copy is called a ROM image or simply "rom". New arcade systems use harddisks, so in that case you have a copy of the harddisk, usually called a "chd" file. Mimicing the behavior of an arcade system is done by translating the instructions from the "machine language" of the arcade system to the "machine language" your PC uses.

The only catch is that, as mentioned, MAME has huge overhead and thus is slow. Even if the original arcade system run at a measly 30Mhz, your 2-3GHz CPU may struggle to cope.

MAME developers claim that such overhead is neccessary to make the result as faithfull to the original as possible, but truth is, MAME could be faster without losing any accuracy, for example skipping step-by-step emulation when not neccessary.
But since the stated goal of the MAME project is to preserve the arcade legacy for future generations and not make arcade games playable right now, theoretically the project has achieved it's goal.

On a practical level, 2D games will run fine, but for 3D games (even early ones), you 'd better look elsewhere, such as Nebula, Kawaks, Calice, Zinc, FinalBurn Alpha, VivaNonno, Raine and other fast emulators.

One more detail: Use MAMEUI for Windows, and SDLMAME for OS X.

I just played the arcade version of Pacman in my PC using MAME

I can't believe MAME needs a 3GHz CPU to run Ridge Racer 1 in my PC. The original arcade system had a 24.5Mhz CPU!

6👍 7👎