Meshugger

Who-ho! We finally got our christmas snow, and lots of of it. The scenery outside really looks like those old christmas-cards

/thread

Hay guise, do you know what is the best rock song ever made? Neil Young - My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue) Yeah, that one.

I find it funny that Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (or any cover of it) is played at christmas. That song has some serious sexual undertones and transendence. Not exactly a first thing to come to mind when doing a christmas charol. And oh, Jeff Buckley - "Hallelujah"

Oh dear, how the mighty Sonic have fallen.

Even though i cannot understand it, but because of my courses in japanese, i can at least spot the difference between Chinese Kanji, Japanese Katakana and Hiragana and Korean. I bet an internet cookie that the grafitti says something in the vein of "Lee was here". Nice photos, btw.

Here in the "cold" north, weather has been very "english" for the third year in a row. Meaning, it's snowing one day and rains the other, and the temperature is way warmer than it should be. Usually, there's a constant layer of snow from october to march/april. And oh, it snowed in Marocco yesterday. Here, it is raining with several degrees plus centigrade. Unbelievable.

...and here i missed all the fun, due to work

Primus - Tommy the cat

Tool - Third eye Trippy.

The father of Vlad Tepes (pronounced as T-e|as in tErminate|-p-e|same|-sch), a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Vlad Dracul, a.k.a. Count Dracola, was a member of the order of the Dragon. When becoming an adult, Vlad took the name "Dracul", which meant IIRC: "The son of the Dragon" or "Baptized by the Dragon".

Powerplants, agriculture, pharmacy, porn, alcoholic bewerages industry (wine, beer, whiskey) <-- Should be a start.

And oh, i bought myself a xmas present: A 37" FullHD LCD TV with an internal HD digital reciever. /me pats himself on the back.

From what i gather, at times like these many major companies are either downsizing or outsourcing. So i see 2-3 options available for you: 1) Outsourcing is usually the key. Find a company that specialises in engineering, preferbly on such areas that are currently being outsourced: Namely high-level engineering, enterprise solutions and information systems. Also, different specialist and consultant-firms would be an area to look out for. Companies will not take any risks at the moment and they will settle with those that have established a good name in the industry. I wouldn't be suprised if you would find work where your old company would be one of your first customers. 2) Find a nice scholarship and/or get a job at the labs at the local university. Usually the people in the engineering departments have the necessary contacts in the industry. You also have to the chance to get yourself a PhD diploma 3) Go fulltime with your home business. This might be of the highest risk, but you will probably work with the most enthusiasm as well.

Good to hear. I suppose I'm mostly interested because the setting is a bit different, and I quite like Greek mythology, but does the game have much to offer someone who doesn't really like fighting/action/combos and all that? Not really. The game is quite linear, so exploration and looting and sidequests are practically non-existant (there's a quest though where you have to find mead, but you basically just stumble over it). I'm also not very familiar with the Argonauts tale, so you shouldn't expect a true re-imagination of the Greek classic. In some way, it reminds me of Jade Empire, though the Chinese premise is replaced with a Greek-Warcraftish one. Dialogs are always linked with the gods alignment in mind, so there's no way you can play let's say a bastard (although in one case I could distribute a nasty punch-into-face). You always chose our line to favor a god, but that's okay I guess. After all, you play King Jason, not some me-wanna-be-a-Jedi-Rogue-rowdy or something. Overall writing is quite competent, although the voice actors aren't on par with say Mass Effect. Pan always gives you insides about some of the background knowledge, for example when activating s shrine. The strength of the game is that it tells a motivating story from start to finish, and albeit it follows the Bioware-design-school, it sometimes comes up with quite a few nice suprises on it's own. There're also some mini-games involved that are tight into the quests. Like you have to argue with a philosopher, and try to convince the crowd with your arguments (a ripp-off from Jade Empire). The arena is also a ripp-off of Kotor, but in this case it's actually fun. Combat is always very visceral and sharp, you basically only have four weapons, but these actually feel different and make a differnce. You also get a new armor after you found a descendent of a god (the main quests), and you can always replace these on the Argo, the ship equivalent to the Normandy of ME. Your four followers are Atalanta (bow and arrow, tree hugger), Pan (philisopher, mage), Hercules (wrestler, not very subtle) and that fourth guy (spear's man, braggart). You can take two along with you, and they always contemplate their thoughst within conversations, or give some general thoughts about the current situation. Pan is probably my most favorite one, as he's quite chatty. In addition, you also meet some other characters you can take along with the Argo, though they're basically irrelevant to the gameplay, as you can only chat with them a bit. The levels are also quite huge, especially the georgous Tarantara (?), sort of a greenish hell, which was really amazing. Upgrading works with deeds, some of the through dialogs, some through kinda like achievements (kill 20 Ionian soldiers, you get a deed). You spend these until you get a "level" up, and then you spend these on god powers and passive feats. If you put alot points into Hermes, you probably will be a master with a sword, Athena with the spear, Ares with the mace, Apollo with the shield, among other things like quicker dodging, more health and so on. Overall, I liked this system more than the 20 or so skills you spend in Mass Effect that didn't seem to have a noticable impact. So, if you like "RPG lite", a good story, fast and brutal combat , then you'll like RotA. If you seek something like Baldur's Gate or Torment, then you'll be disappointed. That actually sounds like something intriguing. I take it that it is on PC, is the performance ok-ish? bugs and so on?

DX10-only sounds like a very good businessplan. Nothing sells like marginalising your own consumer base.

There's nothing wrong with manly games for manly men. The comradeship, the sweat, the honor, and shooting their load of....bullets at each other. Yeah, that's right. Shooting bullets against each other, in a very heterosexual way, mind you. How's Killzone doing? All i see is a lot of hype. But no demo.

For some reason, FFversusXIII looks more appealing. Maybe because it looks less Final Fantasy-esque than the rest?

ah, mesh and i are both tarded. taks d'oh!

What happens if the company, that hold the DRM-licenses, go bust? Or if the studio/distributor/vendor as well? This applies to any mp3, movie or game that you have bought. I'm not answering for Caliban, but so what if they do? These things happen. I'm not going to fret about the 99 cents I spent on a song, or the $20 I spent on a movie, or even the $50 I spent on the game. Sure, if the companies tank and make my stuff unusable after a month, I'll be sore about it. But when has that ever happened? Usually any company that goes under creates a business plan that gives some support for at least a few months after the collapse. I really don't expect the media I purchase to last forever. And I'm ok with that. The good stuff will be remastered for new media, and there is always new stuff coming out anyways. [scenario]Lets say that you bought the original 'White Album'-LP by the Beatles back in the '60. Five years later, you couldn't listen to it because of DRM. Fair and square?[/scenario] I obviously removed the part of "Respecting personal property", as in actually owning the product that i buy.

Let me guess, Linear Programming Models or general Problem Solving, right?

Claymore is 3/5, Berserk is 5/5 (based on the anime only) I don't know of any 'twilight', but Vampire Knight is seriously disturbing. It's like when you buy that expensive wine that tastes bloody awful, but you still have to drink it up since you well bought it. Let me remind you, this show is aimed to girls at the LOWER teens. Consequently, animated as such. I don't care about spoilers, so i will tell you anyway: The girl is special. Everyone loves her and forgives her, everyone understands her and suffers with her when she suffers. She is the only one who doesn't understand their feelings. Turns out that she is a PUREBLOOD VAMPIRE PRINCESS, the highest and best ranking of them all. And oh yeah, she lets her non-blood related brother suck her blood (he's a vampire hunter turned into vampire because he cared too much about her. Oh the angst, oh the horror) in scenes that have serious sexual undertones. And oh, it gets even better. She is in love with her REAL brother, and he wants them to be lovers, just like mom and dad was. They have of course passionately kissed each other while the blood drips from their mouths. Of course, no one mentions how the hell vampires get babies to begin with. All of this is wrapped up and disguised as a romantic, and tragic show for young girls in their teens. Where men behave like women, and women behave like morons. It is so despicable that i just have to watch this trite to the end. I mean, at least tentacle rape is what it is, namely tentacle rape. Not a tentacle that feels uneasy and questioning the whether it loves one hole more than the other, and whether if one of the soon-to-be-raped holes really loves the tentacle. Because that is what Vampire Knight really is.

I tried out the demo, but this game is totally gay (and unmanly). It's just this anime crap I can't stomach. I mean seriously, 12 year old girl in mini, armed with rifle and giving orders. How AWESOME isn't that? Kudos to the nice cell-shading graphics though. Yup, totally agree.

What happens if the company, that hold the DRM-licenses, go bust? Or if the studio/distributor/vendor as well? This applies to any mp3, movie or game that you have bought.

Where's Oblivion 2?