Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:30 pm

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Maybe it's that I never really got into the Zero series (and therefore do think of it as an alternate continuity)

Whether you think it's a separate reality or not is irrelevant; canonically it is a direct continuation, and I expect the endings of a Capcom game to go off of established canon, not fan theory. Also, fuck Wesker/Frank West/Marvel Zombies, because that concerns two different franchises, whereas the Zero series is the same exact franchise as the X and original Mega Man series.

DR wrote:Isn't Zero in a different body in the Zero series? To the point where his old body becomes a separate character in one of the games? It doesn't seem unreasonable that the old Zero wouldn't recognize the new one. Anyways, it's moot because Zero doesn't meet his future/alternate self in the ending, and he only claims that there's no one called Megaman Zero (which actually is agreeing with complaints #4 and #5 of yours.)

Different body; yes. Different character; no. His original body is simply a puppet controlled by the Dr. Weil via the Maverick Virus; it's not a new character. The fact that a Megaman Zero is mentioned, and then said to not exist just makes the ending more confusing.

This point I'll give you, but it doesn't break kayfabe any more than Wesker being able to somehow contact the Marvel universe when he's a chemist. They probably used Neo Arcadia because it's the only named city in either series.

First, fuck Wesker, again (see above). If they wanted to go for the whole "all of these different worlds are confusing" angle, then they should've chosen a location from something like the Battle Network or Legends series.

Silver Surfer himself doesn't explicitly bring anyone else back, but a lot of people are seen back in their old worlds with no explanation. Also, Zero just says "Something isn't right," and then Silver Surfer points out it's the wrong world. Zero is just acting on a hunch; it's the dimension/time hopper who realizes that he hopped to the wrong dimension/time/whatever.

Okay, I forgot it was SS who said it was the wrong world. But there's still, the problem that it shouldn't be the wrong world. It would work if he said it was the wrong time.

These are basically the same complaint, and also the same complaint as the first one. Also, Zero points out that there's no one called Megaman Zero (in fact, that's the only time he comes close to saying that anyone isn't Zero, see my rebuttal to your first point), at least that he knows of, (which is actually agreeing with you). Finally, Silver Surfer may be breaking the fourth wall here, because the ending is literally a joke.

Okay, yeah, four and five were redundant. And even though the ending was a joke, it could've been much better. It was really forced.

See points #1-5, and the whole ending's a parody of how fucking convoluted the X and Zero series get, and the Marvel continuity even more so. Silver Surfer even says "I cannot tell the difference between any of these worlds" and hopes that trying another dimension will get Zero to the point where he came from. He clearly doesn't know what he's doing.

Seriously, it's by no means super well though out but I thought it was pretty funny.

I still think it was somewhat forced. The fact that it was written poorly probably didn't help.

Overall, I think they could've done a much better job with Zero's ending, especially considering that a lot of the other endings were really good.

On another note... TD, I read the book that started the whole Empy Sue shit storm. Long story short: Basically what you said: It shits over the games.

Reven remembers everything that happened to him prior to KOTOR, and goes to find Empy Sue and destroy him. Reven teams up with the Exile (whose named Meena or something), together with T3 and some Sith dude who wants to overthrow the Emp. They attack him; the Sith dude gets a vision of some unknown dude killing the Emp, and turns of Reven and Mina; T3 gets blown up for shock factor, Miena is stabbed and becomes a ghost, and Reven is put into a tube and becomes some experiment of the Emperor or something, but Maina's ghost is with him so that's okay. Oh, and the Sith dude becomes immortal via the same process as the Emp, and becomes his right hand Sith, due to his treachery against Reven and Meenar. Oh, and Bastila gets old. HK isn't in it so boo, but neither is Mission so that's good. Jolee is just Mandeville

It wasn't good, but it got me through a long flight from Boston to Florida.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:47 pm

For the most part, I think we can agree to disagree on this, but I have a rant to go off of here:

Shrapnel wrote:I expect the endings of a Capcom game to go off of established canon, not fan theory.

You're aware that the reason Megaman X6 was a shitpile is because Capcom did exactly that, right?

EDIT: back to Lago's post earlier, the 4th and onwards Harry Potter books all had craptacular endings.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Tue Aug 20, 2013 12:33 am

Be that as maybe, but if franchises started basing their canon on what fans think, then you'd get more "One More Day" type deals, or, worse, you get this.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:10 am

The thing is that both of those were produced by the franchises!

In your second example Hasbro actually did the thing I suggested here: to ignore material they sanctioned if it was stupid.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:25 am

Good lord is the Beast horrible...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 7:47 pm

So Google Chrome has just changed their theme, and now every time you open a new tab, it prominently displays your favorite porn site along side your favorite newsfeeds and message boards. There doesn't seem to be any way to turn off this "feature". Holy crap, what would possibly make anyone think that was a good idea?

People have nested favorites folders for a fucking reason.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 8:32 pm

Actually Frank, it isn't your favorites that Google is showing, it is your most visited sites.

So Frank, visit porn sites less often and it will fade off the top six. Or you know, find some way to change that, because it is stupid.

Also there are obviously some glitches in how it determines what you visit most often, like, it counts every time you correctly type the url, but it doesn't count when you google search and then click the link.

So I guess search for your porn?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 8:44 pm

You can delete those most visited icons (upper right corner of each, an 'X' appears to remove it), and they should stay off, to my knowledge.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 9:36 pm

virgil wrote:You can delete those most visited icons (upper right corner of each, an 'X' appears to remove it), and they should stay off, to my knowledge.

Yeah, that works. I didn't notice that because the little Xs only "appear" when you hover over the boxes, and since it shows mini-screen caps of the page, the X was in any case essentially invisible on most pages.

The thing is, I don't really want my most visited web comics showing up there. I don't want fucking anything showing up there. It's a new fucking tab, I want it to be fucking blank or possibly have a search bar in it. I cannot conceive of why I would want little images of pages I've been to in the recent past to appear unbidden when I hit CTRL-T. It's a jaw droppingly terrible "feature".

It forces everyone who looks at your computer to automatically snoop on what you've been doing online. They don't even have the option of not looking through your favorites or rooting through your downloads directory. It just pops up with eight seemingly random accusations every single time you open a window. This "feature" is seriously going to get people fired. Not at Google, in the real fucking world.

It is incomprehensible to me how such a blatant assault on even the titular recognition of privacy could be automatically patched in with a random update. That's really fucked.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 9:49 pm

By fucking around my settings I somehow managed to get it so nothing shows up there but 8 blank tabs.

I cannot possibly tell you what did it, and I had to do a bunch of other stuff that changed my cookies and history saving. So I can't be sure what did it or what other consequences come from that.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 11:29 pm

Firefox did the same by default, but at least had the option to turn it off.

And if you look down the bottom of the new tab, there may be text saying 'Most Visited' and 'Apps'. If you click on Apps then it swaps over to a couple of icons like youtube, gmail, drive etc. This appears to stay on that page when you open a new tab rather than the 8 most visited.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 11:45 pm

I removed all of the original ones and every one that showed up to replace it, and it eventually got the hint.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 1:38 am

You can reset/erase your entire browsing history (or painstakingly micromanage it) and that'd give a clean slate.

Since incognito doesn't generate browsing history that'd prevent unwanted generation of new crap on the history. But that has its own issues. Alternatively I saw one option offered online that seems devious in its simplicity for windoze users.

go to C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\

find the file named History and make it read only

I'd be sad if I lost my history since I like my history for the most part. I've been able to re-find things from like a year ago by typing in relevant words. It has helped me find faintly remembered articles, songs, videos and such. I mostly use Firefox though.

[edit]Oh and https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... mcblmmpfch#

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 4:34 am

I have the same problem with the browser in my android tablet, except it doesn't even allow deleting things and doesn't appear to make a distinction between a landing page and every other page on the site. So four of the eight thumbnails are TGD and the other four are a cycling community. How helpful.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 4:37 am

Frank wrote:Yeah, that works. I didn't notice that because the little Xs only "appear" when you hover over the boxes, and since it shows mini-screen caps of the page, the X was in any case essentially invisible on most pages.

That is obviously not a longterm solution. Eventually you'll visit something else you don't want people to see, and it will make its way onto the "here's what Frank Trollman's looked at this week!" page. The "correct" solution is to use your browser's private mode so it just doesn't save the info, but that's retarded. There are lots of things I do that I would not think to deliberately hide from people, but would not want random snapshots taken of and shown to everyone in the room. The very notion of privacy as a binary toggle between "I want no one to know anything about this," and "everyone can know anything about this" that you're able to reliably predict in advance is mind-boggingly retarded. So the real correct solution is to make it so your browser stops broadcasting random snapshots of your browsing habits to the people around you. It would be nice if Google would do that for you, but clearly they are fucking idiots. So your options are to tell your browser to stop saving history entirely (inconvenient) or to google up a few of the hacky solutions and hope google doesn't break them too often with their updates.

Firefox does basically the same thing (with a shitty one-click button to hide and unhide), but you can customize the new tab behavior to be a true blank page or an arbitrary site or whatever. You can also drag bookmarks over top of the entries on the page and pin them there, and if you fill them all with junk it can't use your recent history anymore. Can you do something similar in Chrome? Worth trying.

Aside: why do people use Chrome? How do people use Chrome? I don't get it. Chrome handles your bookmarks like a start menu. Interacting with any item closes and resets the menu. Every single other major browser has a persistent sidebar, which doesn't fucking close when you do things in it, allowing you to accomplish simple tasks like "open two adjacent bookmarks in under half a second." Am I just missing something? Do you use an extension? Do you use the bookmarks window as a work-around? Is this just not a deal-breaker for people? Google seems to think "minimal UI" means "unplug your mouse so you have less to interact with," and I genuinely cannot figure out how to use their product to do simple tasks like "opening today's bookmarks for reading" in a reasonable timeframe. I would seriously burn Chrome to the ground and piss its ashes into the sea given the opportunity. It's awful, and cannot justify its existence except as a lesson on how not to make useful software.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 5:10 am

It's annoying that you have to use an extension for this, but the New Tab Redirect! (*sigh* yes, with exclamation point) extension will let you set an arbitrary new tab page (including about:blank).

I've never used chrome as my primary browser. But it's nice to use for web games and such because of the walled garden flash extension. That way I don't lose my Firefox tabs if flash chokes.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 5:58 am

Firefox has gotten miles better at keeping flash in a separate thread in the last ... while, I dunno. Little black box saying flash has crashed and you need to reload the page being the usual display of any problems.

But also, NoScript is genius, a whitelist for flash- and java-using sites, because no you fucking can't run your programs on my computer by default just because I clicked some link.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:50 pm

I believe the new tab page thing in Chrome and Firefox is because most people already use speed dial extensions which do this exact thing - populate new tab with a few big bookmarks and a search bar. The logic fail is where those things default to "most visited sites" rather then blank and waiting for the user to fill in.

DSMatticus wrote:Aside: why do people use Chrome? How do people use Chrome? I don't get it. Chrome handles your bookmarks like a start menu. Interacting with any item closes and resets the menu. Every single other major browser has a persistent sidebar, which doesn't fucking close when you do things in it, allowing you to accomplish simple tasks like "open two adjacent bookmarks in under half a second." Am I just missing something? Do you use an extension? Do you use the bookmarks window as a work-around? Is this just not a deal-breaker for people?

I use Chrome because Firefox opens new sites slowly and lags while doing so and Opera lacks extensions that provide functionality I'm used to. Also, I don't need so many bookmarks that I need to put stuff I might need to launch more than one at a time into folders, with the exception of saving/restoring entire windows which I use a session manager extension for.

The part I don't like is how now there is an irremovable "Apps" bookmark on the bookmarks bar.

tussock wrote:But also, NoScript is genius, a whitelist for flash- and java-using sites, because no you fucking can't run your programs on my computer by default just because I clicked some link.

Firefox NoScript and Chrome Noscripts for the win.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:20 pm

You can remove the apps bookmark pretty easily, actually. Right click on bookmarks, uncheck "show apps".

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:27 pm

I don't use book marks. I just start typing the first 2 letters of where I want to go and the rest of the website pops up.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:35 pm

Opera switched from being proprietary software to being Chromium-based. Sadly, I fail to see the point of using the new version of Opera - the things I love about it have almost entirely been stripped out (mail client, RSS, bit torrent). So I'm running an older version as long as I can. It does allow me to customize speed dial - which is a damn good thing because not everything I spend my life doing on my computer is something I want my kid to participate in.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:44 pm

I solve that issue Maj, by having a seperate login on my computer for the kids. It's a non-admin account, that i log in for them. My account is password protected, and theirs is not.

It works pretty well so far.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:58 pm

Giovanni has his own computer because when he was only a year old, he could fuck up a machine faster than I did in engineering school. The problem I've noticed lately is that Google saves [some] information based on [external] IP address, not machine, so stuff that my husband searches for on his computer ends up on both my computer and my son's. And it's really annoying to be looking for stuff only to have Team Umizoomi pop up on my computer during the day. The last straw was a Gangnam Style parody that was Condom Style - which popped up on Giovanni's computer despite safe search.

We all have our own accounts and our own machines, but it's still kind of creepy.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Oct 27, 2013 3:05 am

I was reading the harry potter cracked.com article linked in the IMHO thread...

http://www.cracked.com/article_19667_6- ... verse.html

And at the bottom of page 1 I was lost because I didn't immediately realize the last image was an advertisement.

I scratched my head for a bit before coming around.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Oct 27, 2013 7:34 pm

Season 4 of both Buffy and Angel. By which I don't mean season 4 of Buffy and season 1 of Angel, which happened concurrently. It's just that, by bizarre coincidence, the worst seasons of both shows just so happened to be the fourth one in both cases.

Season 4 of Angel had a lot of pretty decent individual bits, but focusing every single episode on the main plot made the Angel crew seem alarmingly self-absorbed. Making people who are actively trying to save the world seem like selfish dicks is quite an accomplishment. Angelus was pretty pathetic. Cordelia and Connor's affair was horribly soap operatic. Even early on, when Joss was still setting up Cordelia's return and such, every issue they ever dealt with was directly related to a major cast member. The Vegas dude was stealing people's destinies, but the problem was that he also had Lorne hostage. The evil professor portal'd away every student who outsmarted him, but the point was that he did it to Fred. There was never an episode that was about helping other people, which is pretty damning for a cast whose actual mission statement is "we help the helpless."

I still can't put my finger on why Season 4 of Buffy was as bad as it was. It seemed kind of aimless and contrived. There wasn't a strong villain until the last three episodes or so, which were also the best episodes of the season. It seems like there's more to it than just that, though.