SteveThaiBinh

No. I've read The Starlight Barking, and if it's not good enough for the dogs, it's not good enough for me.

Apparently Ragnar Tornquist has promised that the conclusion to the Dreamfall/Longest Journey story will get out, either as a game or in some other form. That makes me feel a little better.

Looks nice. I wonder how well it plays. Unless there's meaningful mounted combat, you'd just end up dismounting the whole time in regular adventuring, and I don't think even well-implemented jousting would quite make up for that. I never really understood why Atari wanted Bioware to stop producing these premium modules. I can't really imagine they'd hurt sales of NWN2.

From a distance, if possible. My nord fighter used his magic shield power a lot, too.

I just finished Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. I need a few hours to decide how I feel about that.

I winced when I read this. I think Oblivion's persuasion mini-game has scarred me for life. Good to see motion capture becoming more widely used. I really enjoyed it in Fahrenheit. However, there is no substitute for good voice actors delivering well-written dialogue, and that means you need professional and talented writers, you need to hire decent actors, and you need a director with the time to work with the actors to get good performances out of them. I think some of these may cost money.

I'll be buying it. I wonder if there'll be much new material, as I gather was the case with Fable: The Lost Chapters. The article only mentions monsters, AI and the like. Is there going to be a Jade Empire 2, or are Bioware busy with Mass Effect and/or Dragon Age?

Hello and welcome. Why no Rubens avatar?

That's a shame. What about the guy's suggestion of a hello thread for new members? It could be in the Way Off Topic forum, and dedicated to welcoming new people in a friendly way.

A few weeks ago, System Requirements Labs' 'Can You Run It?' would check your system against the minimum and recommended specs for NWN2. Now, NWN2 has disappeared from the list of games covered. I wonder if the requirements are about to change.

Why not? Wouldn't it fit?

I've never even had that. I guess it just varies from system to system. I do have problems with the sound suddenly resetting to maximum every time I load a game, but even that disappeared with Tutu. That's a shame. It wouldn't have need a huge amount of effort to put it all on one DVD, surely? It reminds me of the Ultima Collection CD, released in the Windows age without the slightest care that several of the games won't run at all under Windows. So much for putting the customer first.

I think I'll pre-order the Collector's Edition. Lawful good, of course. Pre-ordering will get it here in reasonable time, I hope, though I don't suppose it would be hard to find it in a shop. It has to go to a friend in the UK, then get parcelled up and sent out to Saudi Arabia, probably not in the original box and without the figurine, although I'll insist on the cloth map. The less goes with it, the less customs can potentially object to. Some games make it out to the shops here - I've seen Oblivion, Civilization IV and Sacred of all things, but many big games don't appear. I don't think I'll chance it.

Shouldn't this be a poll? How about this? Do you wish Eddo a happy birthday? 1) Yes 2) No 3) Don't know 4) Other (please explain) I vote 1.

I love Stargate SG-1, but I think it's time to call it a day with this cast. Television history is full of series that just didn't know when to die. Let Stargate: Atlantis go on by itself for a few more seasons, then maybe it'll be time for a new SG-1.

You didn't mention the law directly, but the law is important in this debate. You, I, governments, church organisations and anyone else can give advice and say what we think should happen, but no-one is obliged to follow or even listen to our advice. We can discuss whose decision we think it should be, but ultimately the law has to clarify whose decision it actually is. At the moment in the UK, it's the woman's alone. How would you change that?

Are you suggesting that the law require some kind of compulsory mediation or counselling session? Would that involve the woman and man together or seperately, with or without their families? Yes. As it stands, the man has control over his sperm until it enters the woman's body, and must consent to that entry. Once that has happened, he has no rights until the child leaves the mother's body. It's important that the law be workable in practice, and this seems to be.

I'm interested to know how you would see this working in practice. If the mother wants an abortion and the father does not, what happens? How about if the father wants an abortion and the mother does not? Where does the casting vote fall? You suggest that the mother cannot have full say in what to do with the baby, yet at the moment that's exactly how UK law stands (I don't know if US law is different). A woman is under no obligation even to inform the foetus' father that she's having an abortion, let alone get his permission.

I agree with Hades. In the end, it has to be the woman's decision alone. If she's part of a loving relationship or family she will probably want to involve others in the decision, and that's for the better, but we can't assume or require that. It is her body, and no-one else's.

Because we're talking about what's normal and what's not, and normality is defined by society, very subjectively. The word is pregnant with non-scientific significance, one more reason why: And with each post, we prove you more right.

I'd have thought that was very unlikely. I recommend Tutu, though, especially with the NPC Project mod installed as well.

Turning that on its head, does the fact that only a small percentage of the human population is gay not support the idea that homosexuality is normal? Our species is operating within acceptable parameters. Society can get rid of its intolerance of homosexuality and the survival of the species is not in jeopardy.

Does the Baldur's Gate one have BG1 and BG2 on a single DVD? If so, I might get this. It would be nice not to have to fiddle around with 11 CDs each time I install.

I finally got it to work. I had either to patch or clean install DirectX, not quite sure what it was, but the demo's working now. Good to see George again. Plus, point and click mouse control. It stuttered a little, though, on a scene whose graphics didn't seem to warrant it. Might be my value sound card's fault. I haven't got very far into the demo yet. I might not bother in the end, after all it's not as if I'm not going to buy this game. :D

Difficult to say. In the long run, liberal democracy is much better at controlling extremism than authoritarianism, but in the short term, the reverse seems to be true. I can see how a sudden revolution and switch to democracy would be a huge gamble and could easily be disastrous, for the Saudis and for the West, especially with the quagmire of Iraq next door ready to spill its 'freedom fighters' over the border. The problem is that authoritarianism breeds extremism, because the safety valve of moderate opposition can't work properly. So it's like a drug - you need ever greater doses of it just to feel OK, and it ends up killing you. Apparently, during the Saudi local elections last year, people were eager to discuss things like extending the franchise to women, allowing women to drive, and reforming government institutions to stamp out corruption. The government complained that these were not 'local' issues and shouldn't be part of the debate, but it didn't try to silence people. I think that if the House of Saud did what it's said it wants, and follows a programme of reducing repression/restrictions and phasing in some form of democracy, it would stand a reasonable chance of success. Unfortunately, what the House of Saud actually wants is something else entirely.