SteveThaiBinh

Getting back to the map, are all those names settlements? That would make a huge game, Morrowind-style. But only 62 characters with voiced dialogue? Is that every character in the game? It'd be a lot smaller if that's the case.

I thought the scandal a while ago was precisely because Bush ordered surveillance that he wasn't allowed to do, not even in the Patriot Act. I don't think the government should be able to order phone tapping without approval from a neutral judge, but I accept that others disagree. Either way, this should be debated openly, and then a law passed. The very real danger comes when the administration decides that it can do anything it wants because it's a 'security' issue. Pretty much anything can be spun into a security issue. It's a dangerous path to walk down. Personally, I'm not too worried about the security services bugging more people, so long as a judge is still involved in the process, and I see no reason why one wouldn't be.

This from Wikipedia: I agree that it's a story of very little practical importance, but still it's of huge interest to a great many people, probably everyone who studied science at school. Something that we thought we knew absolutely has changed forever. Well, until the next meeting of the IAU at least. :D As I understand it, they haven't changed the criteria for being a planet, they've created them. Before, there was nothing but convention and tradition.

Uranus was quite late, I think. I'll head off to Wikipedia to check. Edit: Yup. William Herschel did the deed. I guess Germany and Britain can share that one, though the Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese and/or Japanese are still somewhat in the lead.

I don't think your friend is right. I have heard of charisma having an effect on companions' alignment shifts, but I don't remember ever noticing it in the game. As others have already pointed out, if you gain influence with companions from the time you meet them, their alignment will get closer to your own. If you lose influence, their alignment will shift to the opposite of yours. Some characters start out either lightside or darkside, so you may never drag them fully in the opposite direction, but you will have an effect. Curiously, having very high influence and having very low influence open up the same options with companions. Obsidian had a (rather unconvincing) explanation for this, but I don't remember it.

It does. It must be weird talking to him - like talking to a mirror? Maybe that's why he's looking away all the time. I would seek out and buy a Kotor comic involving the characters from the game (I still have Aimo's somewhere on my hard drive), but these ones don't really interest me.

It was obvious from the start that siding with the Queen was the 'Jedi' thing to do, but not necessarily that it was the 'right' thing to do. Vaklu spoiled it somewhat with the pantomime villain behaviour and the whole being-in-league-with-the-Sith thing, but there's nothing wrong with wanting your planet to withdraw from the Republic or opposing an unelected ruler. At least, that's how I remember it - I haven't played this game in ages.

Really? I guess it's a nice thing to do for the people who've bought your game, so that when we play it again a few years later and the technology has caught up, we get an enhanced experience. Plus it encourages us to keep playing, which will presumably also encourage us to buy the sequel. The problem comes if the developers neglect optimisation of the game for low-mid end systems that many, perhaps even most, gamers will initially play the game on.

As one of the links pointed out, Ceres the asteroid was misclassified as a planet for a while. I certainly hadn't heard about that before. Within a decade or two the notion that there are nine planets will have been forgotten, as will Pluto itself, most likely. The real victim in all of this is Colin Matthews.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Naff-all?

Well, not Gothic 3, as apparently: You want something that showcases your new machine's capabilities and makes you feel good about your purchase, not some buggy new release that stutters because it's not properly finished. I'd recommend Oblivion as well, and I hear Dreamfall is very good.

Congratulations. I'm sure NWN2 will be very shiny on that. I hope you managed to buy a desk to put it on, because it will be rather uncomfortable on the floor.

Bye bye, thread. And bye bye, Dark Raven. You were a fine mod. Don't be a stranger.

So they've expelled it from the main series, but softened the blow by creating a spin-off, Pluto and the Plutons. This has been a long time coming. I wonder if it will stick. And now we get to see the astrologers dance. Between Pluto, Ophiuchus and Sedna, they're in trouble.

I wasn't really talking about fair play, in either case. I'm talking about states that feel their security is better served by a (relatively) nuclear-free world than by a world in which everyone has their own nuclear deterrent, and the non-proliferation treaty as the legal expression of that policy. With regard to South Africa, I'm trying to make the point that the existence of the non-proliferation treaty means that there are diplomatic consequences for breaking it, even if there are no immediate economic or military consequences, and that these diplomatic consequences matter and are a factor in countries' decisions to abide by the treaty or not. I'm afraid I have to say that your representation of international politics here is rather one-dimensional. Aren't you saying that narrow national self-interest is the only factor that matters? It certainly was not the only factor that lead to the French government's opposition to the Iraq War, for example. I wasn't trying in my comments to give a full picture of how international relations works, and I certainly didn't want to imply that it's simple and governed wholly by international law, but I do suggest that treaties and law are important, and force and the threat of force are not the only factors that count.

Well, I just ordered mine. They're going like hotcakes over at Novatech. I would have liked to wait for the perfect motherboard, but I'll only be in the UK for a two week window in September and I want to get everything sorted out now. Besides, if I waited for the motherboard, I might end up waiting for a DirectX10 graphics card, and so on, and never actually buy the thing. Reading the specifications for RAM is giving me a headache.

Awww, shucks, right back at ya. :"> If you think that would be entertaining, you're prime mod material yourself. :D :ph34r:

He became deaf later in life, yes. Interesting questions, Krookie. One of the common complaints made against tabloid newspapers, and the way they pry into politicians' lives, is that if they'd been around 70 years ago Churchill would never have become Prime Minister, with unhappy results all round. :ph34r:

Dark Raven is now an Obsidian VIP, not a mod. Unless there are secret mods, watching our every movement from the darkness, waiting, waiting... :ph34r:

I watched an amateur dramatics production of a murder mystery once in which one of the victims was called Lucian. All I remember was a rather prim, elderly lady on stage opening a box, slowly pulling out a round object and saying enthusiastically, "It's Lucian's head!". Curtain falls. Nice enough name, mind.

Interesting. I was looking into this PhysX card for my new computer, but the list of games that can use it is very short and nothing really that I'd like. Nevertheless the DELL salesman was very keen on it, probably not expecting me to have done any research. I don't think I'll get one, but maybe DELL's support is enough to keep it going?

Dark Raven and Master Revan are AWOL. I would start a 'Goodbye Old Mod' thread (as opposed to the interminable 'Welcome New Mod' threads we get at each rotation of the revolving door that is Obsidian modhood), but I think we can handle everything here. So Dark Raven, Master Revan, what happened? Are you still around? Don't you love us anymore? :'(

Fixed. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Have a cookie! No, have two! I'm not voting for Mkreku, though, even if you pull out and support him. I liked Gothic 2, but I don't want to be banned for not buying Gothic 3.

I'm saying the treaty has value even if it's not fully enforceable, because it creates law and gives legitimacy to those who seek, by whatever means, to enforce it. It's a useful tool. If the whole world were to agree to an embargo, that embargo would need to have legitimacy. Where would that come from, if not the treaty and the UN? With the treaty, the diplomats can talk to the Iranians about how they can meet the terms of the treaty they signed up to. Without the treaty, what will they talk about? How the Iranians can meet the arbitrary demands of a superpower because it wants all the weapons for itself? That's a very different discussion, and one that's much less likely to be solved without the use of force. What of nations that had the capability to develop nuclear weapons but didn't, probably hardly even thought seriously about it, because they chose to commit themselves to a vision of world stability as expressed in the treaty? And what indeed of South Africa? Why did they decide to give up a nuclear programme? I don't imagine they particularly feared their neighbours, but that doesn't mean they'd just throw away a tactical advantage over them. I don't think they feared a US military invasion, either. They did it largely because they wanted to leave behind the diplomatic isolation of the apartheid era, and that isolation might continue if they developed nuclear weapons because they're illegal under the non-proliferation treaty. I don't think that same pressure would have existed without the pre-existing framework of the treaty. I can't really see a concerted international campaign against the government of Nelson Mandela because it can't be trusted with nuclear weapons? The fact that you've broken the law, and everyone knows it. World attention, diplomatic isolation, heightened regional tension, visits by the IAEA, and ultimately, yes, the threat of sanctions by the United Nations security council, either economic or military. Nothing so spectacular as some might like, but they are consequences. It's very easy to dismiss this, but international relations is a chess game, and countries weigh advantages and risks very carefully. Plus the US is more likely to get approval for sanctions from the UN Security Council because the treaty has created international law in this area to be broken. If you object to the police analogy or find it useless, then fine. I was just trying to illustrate a particular point. I'm sorry you feel the need to supplement your arguments with comments about my grasp of reality and didactic tone, but I suppose that's just your style.