FrangaR33

In my opinion despite high wages and an uncompetitely high currency a major cause of the end of Australian car manufacturing is Ford USA, GM and the United States government. Now before i'm accused of having on my tin foil hat on, Ford and Holden both had massive export opportunities for their vehicles in the USA. Not long ago it looked like the XR8 and the XR6 Turbo was going to become the new workhorse of Police and Sheriff departments across the United States, it was big, powerful, rear wheel drive, all the things that are desirable features for cops on the beat. However politicians in the government werent to happy about this and were worried that if Ford Australia took over a hundred thousand orders (the estimate of potential sales over a number of years) it would cost jobs in Detroit and Ford was lobbied both externally and internally to instead continue the production of the old Crown Vic until a bastardised Tauraus police car could be developed. This one instance cost Ford Australia its future, if the Falcon had of been the only choice for a Ford based police car brand loyalty would of lead most of the departments to purchase Falcons and save not only the Falcon/Territory but also Ford Australia's manufacturing base. As for GM they never wanted the Pontiac G8 or Chevy SS to succeed, not when they continue to make piece of shit cars like the Impala or the Malibu. While they are reasonable cars, compared with a VF Commodore they are absolutely in the stone age. Of course most of this took place with the GFC as a backdrop and it was all about American jobs for Americans, while Australia obviously manufactured superior cars it was about the shit they could turn out in the Detriot not making great cars. Holden you shall be sorely missed.

TPS is definetly a likely possibility, could be something as simple as a dirty throttle body. Do you have any way of checking your car for error codes?

I remember about 13-14 years ago when I last went down to HMAS Cerberus they were still doing the live fire demonstrations. As a kid it was totally awesome watch them shoot stuff and blow things up

You never moved to NSW, you are in NSW visiting friends. I know people from VIC who have driven around in NSW for years without changing their license or rego. Hell they even got their rego stickers sent to their NSW residence. Also with TAS plates they will leave you alone unless you do really stupid shit.

Yep there is a lot of overpriced Skylines out there at the moment. I have my eye on a GTS-T at the moment for 8k (with rego) with a rebuilt motor, nistune, nismo injectors, high flowed turbo, front mount etc. So to me anything more than 7-8k is dreaming for anything close to stock.

256GB is no where near enough hard drive space for video editing. Raw HD footage takes up a huge amount of space, modern games taking roughly 8GB + each and high quality photo's can be upwards of 5MB each. With all the photo's and video from travel I'd imagine that little 256GB drive would be full in no time at all. If its just going to be a desktop replacement as you move around I would reccomend steering clear of a SSD, considering everything you have is going to be on that laptop your going to need a lot more hard drive space unless you plan on having it all on an external hard drive. Personally I would go for a 1.5TB internal standard hard drive, partion it as you wish and you have enough space for everything. Also as far as laptops go I cant recommend Toshiba more, I've worked on HP, Acer, Compaq and Toshiba by far has the best reliability. Also in my experience the best place for reasonably priced laptops is Jb Hi Fi, by far the best prices and its always good to feel the quality of a laptop if its going to be your lifeline while your overseas. It is especially good at JB when they have one of their 10-15% of laptop sales, you can pick up a real bargain if you keep an eye out.

LOL would probably be cheaper to built the airport he would need at the other end than the price of that plane.

I am so freaking excited about this game

+1 to all those points. I used to work in I.T so naturally my mrs friends and family all want me to fix their computers no big deal. I just told them I am not dealing with anything that is a Mac so just dont buy one its not worth the hassle. Of course now instead of using her $2k Apple laptop my mrs sister uses the desktop PC that I built for her brother for $400 because it actually works.

Yes I definetly think so. There is a quite a few interactions between Javik (the Prothean) and Shephard and the rest of the crew. He actually has cutscenes and proper interactions unlike Zaeed and Kasumi from ME2. Also he comes with the Prothean Beam Assualt rifle which is pretty sweet.

Battlefield 3 DLC Lets You Pay to Cheat (Basically) "Called "The Ultimate Shortcut Bundle", it costs 3200 Microsoft Points, and basically unlocks almost everything in the game that you'd otherwise have to play for hours and hours to get your hands on. Put another way, it lets the rich/stupid pay to get on the same footing as those who bought the game at launch have had to put in a lot of hard work for. This goes for vehicles, weapons and gadgets."

Apparently there is going to be a BRZ Sti "A BRZ STI would benefit from tweaks to the standard 147kW 2.0-litre ‘boxer’ motor that would reportedly peak power rise closer to 180kW. Other potential upgrades include modifications to its variable valve control system, re-developed intake, freer-flowing exhaust, and a raised rev-limit of 7500rpm." Motor magazine reckons that the Sti model will be $52k which if it does have 180KW isn't too bad when compared with its rivals. Personally i'm not really that keen, but the Mrs wants to get one second hand in a 3 or 4 years time when they get cheaper.

Has anyone else heard about Wing Commander Saga: The Darkest Dawn? Its a fan made game they have been working on for 10 years developed using the Free Space 2 engine. I watched the trailer and it looked pretty sweet, so i'm downloading it now and i'll see if its any good. Naturally like any fan made game its free

Spoilers below and in article Mass Effect 3 row prompts change to add 'further closure' Now I dont know about you guys but that reads like sorry we f**ked up and now we're going to try fix it because otherwise our rep is ruined and as a smaller dev thats all we really have. Interesting little tidbit in the first 10 weeks (aka when most of the sales are going to happen) from release Dragon Age 1 it outsold Dragon Age 2 by a factor of two to one, just goes to show fans were already showing their distaste for the new regime at Bioware ages ago.

Rumour has it there is DLC coming out with the title "The Truth", i'm not sure if its just fans getting themself into a tiz or if Bioware is just epic trolling. But I suppose we'll find out in the coming weeks.

Too true Xzibit, too true. Below is a post from Reddit with a theory about the ending I will make the post in white so those who dont want to read dont have to and those that do can just highlight it. Spoiler Alert. if you haven't finished the game please stop reading. In light of recent controversy concerning Mass Effect 3's ending I believe people may have overlooked something that I found quite mind blowing. First I want to present this image that was posted by firexcracker. I also want to bring to your attention the the . Then I'd like for you to recap this moment in the game. Finally, I want to direct you to the definition of the world crucible. cru·ci·ble: A severe test, as of patience or belief; a trial. Now there is a lot of deeper meaning built into this. The N7 ending where you can see Shepard waking up is only seen if you select the destroy all synthetic life option, thus ending the reapers. It is interesting to see how all of this held a deeper meaning and how the game pretty much mind f**ked you (indoctrinated you) into choosing the good (save the synthetics) or the neutral options. I can't speak for the ones who chose to destroy the synthetics because you passed the test but it may still be interesting for you to find out why even if you did pick to destroy the synthetics. In Shepard's last dream you see a sort of underlying message where Shepard and the child embrace, saying "you shouldn't listen to the child because if you do, you will burn." The child at the end was reaper's defense system and the ending was a test whether you've been indoctrinated as a player by invoking your conscious into thinking and caring about other synthetic life. If you did, as you had planned to do as you first set off, which is to destroy the reapers (and tell the child to f**k off), you've won over the indoctrination and thus you end up alive and breathing. If you didn't well... you die for certain. I just wanted to share this. I think the ending was trying to be profound but the execution was pretty poor hence, all the hate going around. Hopefully, I can add something exciting and positive to the ME3 ending. TL;DR: The game tried to indoctrinate you as a player. EDIT: I think there is a seemingly large disconnect between the audience and BioWare's artistic point of view. So, I want to address some issues. The ending sucked. There were no choices given. Mass Effect is all about choices. The fact that there were no choices at the ending was because the ending was something that was fabricated by the reapers. Hence, the lack of choice essentially. Infact, the Reapers go through the effort of colouring the choice that saves them as Paragon and the one that destroys them as Renegade. Those people were with you on earth, some of them were running together with you towards the beam, they could not possibly have gotten on the Normandy AND reached the relay. Remember, everything between the lazer beam hitting Shepard and you waking up in the end is fake. Do you really think BioWare will end something with a pad full of text saying "Shepard is now a hero"? It is a fake conclusion. But a Paragon Shepard would never sacrifice and entire race and chose the Renegade option. A paragon Shepard would never sacrifice his ideals This is a fantastic example of the Reaper indoctrination working on you as a Paragon player. The Reapers use this to their advantage. You have to understand that it is not the game that painted the Red and Blue colours on the choices, the Reapers did. If you had not gone into the mission with a clear head and a clear goal to destroy the reapers, nothing less and nothing more, you'd have overcome this indoctrination attempt. Imagine if those choices were not coloured or even better yet, the colours were reversed.

If you do all the side quests somewhere between 35-40 hours gameplay total. A bit longer than both ME1 and 2.

I completely agree. I never thought I would say this but I really hope this ending is just some massive cash grab by EA to make people buy the DLC to find out what really happend.

Edit: Here is a facebook group to "Retake Mass Effect"fans who demand a better ending in the last couple of hours its got 3k more likes, join up if you think the ending was crap. Its so true, I made so many Mass Effect 2 characters with the plan of using them to see all of the different outcomes and endings of the various decisions only to find out that the choices dont even matter. Definetly not gonna do more playthroughs now. Spoliers Below!!! Even if you tell the quarians not to go to war with the Geth they still do You kill the Rachni they still come back somehow and help the reapers What the shit Bioware!?!?! although to be honest this has got EA's money grubbing hands written all over it. You need an online code to get the best ending another $20 for EA everytime someone else plays the game second hand. Want a decent ending? That'll be another $10-20 in DLC probably. Bioware's game endings up until now (besides Dragon Age 2) have always been so good, KOTOR 1 and 2 were epic. The sense of satisfaction at the end of Mass Effect 1 and 2 was huge especially if you managed to keep your team alive. And now this it just doesnt fit Bioware's profile. Since EA bought Bioware the games stories have been dodgy at best, Mass Effect 2 was still mostly developed while Bioware wasn't owned by EA, But Dragon Age 2 and ME3 were, lets just see if theres a pattern, the endings are shockingly bad and to be completely honest Dragon Age 2 is shit compared with the first one.

SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING I never thought I would say this but on the issue of the ending i'm with Hitler on this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qYm738hq1o

Where did you preorder it from? Every where I've looked its at least $127.