AladinSane on "RE: Re-live your PC gaming past at Good Old Games"

GameTap has had a ton of classic PC games, including MDK, Earthworm Jim, and Decentfor a couple years now. They also have other classic computer and console games. Sorry, most of their games are free to play and a modest subscription fee allows you to play a ton of other games as well. I'll stick with my GameTap...
Publication date: 2008-09-11

More news from 2008-09-11

Never Buy a House from a Realtor

A couple weekends ago we embarked on a seemingly simple painting project at home. We wanted finally paint over the wall that was torn up when I had plumbing problems a few years ago (see: The Leak, Day #2, The Leak, Day #3: Leak Found, Pictures, Showering with a 90 Foot Hose, and other Fun Tidbits, The Leak, Day #7: Still Showering with a Hose, etc.). There were numerous cans of paint in the garage that the previous owners had left behind. And since the house had mostly white walls, it seemed like a pretty trivial task. We got out the paint, spread the plastic and sheets, stirred, poured, and started putting paint on the walls. After a bit of painting it became apparent that were we not using the right color. Apparently there was more than one white used in the house. This wouldn't normally be a problem. But as part of the painting we decided to touch up a few other walls in other rooms of the house. It looked fine while the paint was wet. But as the paint dried, we realized that there were actually three or more different flavors of "white" in use around the house. Grr. Realizing what pain in the ass this could turn into, we opted to chip a bit of paint off the affected walls, take them over to our neighborhood Orchard Supply Hardware, and get them to match the color. They did an excellent job. The touched up spots look fine. And the colored paint we got for the previously repaired wall looks great. (Oh, we decide to use a non-white color after we realized the "white" was all wrong.) So you're probably wondering what this has to do with realtors. Realtors know what it takes to sell a house. They know where they can cut corners and get away with it. After thinking about it a bit, I realized what the previous owners of our house must have done. I suspect that they hired some cheap painters and asked them to bring along any leftover white paint from previous jobs. They did. And they used one white for one room, a slightly different white for the next, and so on--thereby using up the extra paint and not having to spend a whopping $12/gallon to repaint the house before selling it. I can't think of any other reason why someone would paint different rooms using shades of white that are just different enough to be different. It just doesn't make sense. But to make matters worse, they didn't bother to label the spare cans so we'd know which room the colors applied to. At least the spare paint can I put away after we were done have things like "living room" or "bedroom" written on them in black marker. Damned cheap-ass realtors. Anyone need three or four cans of partially used off-white paint? (comments)
Publication date: 2008-09-11 more

Small Scottish enterprise set to launch free music downloads

The brainchild of singer Indiana Gregg and her record producer husband Ian Morrow, Glasgow based company Kerchoonz is about to launch it’s free and legal music download service.
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Netbooks versus notebooks – is the PC industry trying to cannibalise itself?

Laptop computers have been with us for over 20 years now and today they are the largest-selling segment of the personal computer (PC) industry.
Publication date: 2008-09-11 more