SteveThaiBinh

I know. I was enjoying it. I was trying to encourage you to keep going.

It's wonderful that they're working on a new game. It's also good that they're not trying to continue the story from Fahrenheit. That would not have been good. At all. The gap between what Fahrenheit did with motion capture and most other games I've seen was huge. The gap between what this game seems to be doing with facial expressions and, for example, Oblivion (which I'm playing at the moment) seems equally great.

So criticism of Fox News is only reliable or valid if it comes from people who like it or who don't know anything about it?

Or Afghanistan, or Guantanamo, or extraordinary rendition in Europe. The Geneva Convention makes it harder for governments to commit abuses by forcing them to do it under the cover of secrecy and lies and shame. Or is it better to do it openly? If we're to have torture in Guantanamo, why not in the town square as well?

Unless all the games are freeware or shareware, in which case it's probably still a con because you could get them elsewhere for nothing. Do they say what games they have?

I'm sorry, there are so many current situations. Which one are you referring to specifically?

If we're prepared to use any means, then we've already lost. The Geneva Convention exists to protect those who would perpetrate torture as much as those who might be subjected to it.

I agree with much of what's been said. Kotor 1 was a good game, and set new standards for movie-quality story-telling and voice acting. Sadly, this reinforces the trend towards shorter games, and makes it less likely we will ever see a true successor to Baldur's Gate 2. Kotor 2 aimed even higher, but fell because the later stages were misconceived or rushed or both. It was more interesting and thought-provoking, but also less satisfying. On balance, I'd vote for K1, but they are very different animals.

Discrimination did exist at the time it was written, yes. I'm suggesting that it would be easier to get rid of that discrimination in the present day if those writings were not still exerting an influence over millions of believers. Our society and culture have made considerable progress, yet still these ghosts of the past haunt us.

They're rarely if ever great art, but I think they have the potential to be. I don't agree with Roger Ebert that having player control means the medium is fundamentally flawed and cannot achieve the status he feels movies have. It's possible that a single game playthrough could be a work of art, as a collaboration between designer and player, without the game itself being a work of art. There was a long and interesting thread about this in the Computers and Consoles forum from months ago, in which you'll find many arguments more coherent than mine. :D

Religion has been very much a mixed bag. If it originates in part in the willingness of the unscrupulous to use people's fear and ignorance to control them, it's also in part the result of people's desire to face those fears and understand the world around them. A few thousand years ago someone wrote down that homosexuality was a sin, and we're still stuck with the aftermath of that 'absolute truth' today. Extremists use it as an excuse for discriminating against gays, and even moderates often feel torn in two directions. As time goes on, the gap between what absolutists and relativists hold to be good and true is likely to widen even further. That's really a sports team? Which sport?

Whatever you say about NWN's original campaign, at least it's clear that a lot of work went into it, and it did have some good moments. The same cannot be said for Lionheart after Barcelona. Characters? Story? Dialogue? Take out Barcelona and what you have is basically Sacred, about which the less said the better.

It's amazing that Bill Gates finds the time to read all these reports.

The Geneva Convention could perhaps use some updating. In my view, we should make it explicit that all the protections that applied to uniformed soldiers (back in the days when that was how wars were fought) now need to apply to non-uniformed combatants. I understand that others will take an opposing view, but better to argue this out in the open than have governments rewriting or reinterpreting it differently to suit themselves all the time. Once the UN has agreed a universal definition of a terrorist (this should happen pretty soon), we could create a new convention on how terrorists should be treated. I doubt that the 'intelligence' or whatever the US government has extracted from its prisoners by torture or not-quite-torture outweighs the damage done to the US' reputation - and thus power - by Abu Graib and the other incidents of abuse or murder by the US military. In the long run, the US military would be wiser to present a clear, coherent message on the humane treatment of prisoners to its soldiers.

Just a tad, yes. The widows of 9/11 who backed John Kerry are not immune from having their political beliefs challenged in open debate, but this:

There've been studies suggesting that prayer and other church activities are good for the health, so does this mean that believers are more nutritious than atheists?

That sounds rather more like the McDonald's we all know and love. Every shop the same, complete standardisation and central control. It's like communism. I hope you worked that out on a calculator. Evidence of mental arithmetic skills and a sense of humour - you're not exactly McDonald's material, are you?

It's important that same-sex couples have the same legal status as heterosexual couples. I don't know why it was felt necessary to call it 'civil partnership' rather than 'marriage', as the state recognises heterosexuals who have a civil wedding as 'married'. As for common-law couples, I don't think the concept exists in English law, despite what many people think, so of course it offers no greater legal protection than a flatshare. I believe it exists in Scottish law, though. No-one expects the Church or churches to recognise gay marriage, and indeed the Church of England doesn't recognise a lot of heterosexual marriages where one of the parties is divorced. I don't think that the churches hold exclusive rights to the word 'marriage'. People have long used 'wedding' and 'marriage' to apply to unions that were not blessed by any church.

Gay marriage should be recognised by the state and gay couples afforded all the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. Gay couples should also be free to adopt if they meet the same criteria as heterosexual couples. I think most children would have exposure to both sexes if adopted by a gay couple - through the extended family, friends, school or childcare, for example.

The patch seems to have screwed up the video playback. I only get Patrick Stewart in fits and starts.

And may the saga of Rooney's foot come to an end, one way or another. Go Saudi Arabia! (w00t)

I'm not familiar with that chain's policies, but if the doors are open and the lights are on, there's always a chance that someone would be willing to serve me. I'd go in and ask. However, these guys were just rude. You might try suggesting alternative places where they could eat at that hour, if it happens again, though be prepared in case they just want to vent their frustration on someone.

Mine's done the same, the first and second times I installed it. The third time, I waited about five minutes and it closed by itself. Disconcerting nonetheless, and not what you want when you're installing a new game and are on tenterhooks as to whether it will run at all. Now for the patch...

Just me, maybe? Oh well, for 'Iain', read 'The narrator' in my posts.

I'm confident your literary horizons are broader than mine. I seem to read very little these days... I don't think the beginning is bad at all, but it certainly didn't come across to me as fast. Iain gives all this detail about his job, for example. I think you could cut out a third of the words in that paragraph while still giving just as good an introduction to the character yet also supporting the idea that he's a man of few words. I'm not suggesting that you write the whole narrative in three-word sentences, just that the first paragraph is so important in giving us an impression of the man, and the things he chose to talk about and how he talked about them stay with the reader through the rest of the story. I think your writing has a number of strengths. I like Horace's 'small beautiful child some punk stole', because it contains a world of pain in very few words and you don't elaborate. I like the sudden changes of pace, at the crash site for example, suggesting a panic attack and then talking him down and back into calm? ambivalence? I've enjoyed the story more each time I've re-read it, and that's definitely a compliment. Obviously I wouldn't call Iain verbose to his face. I like my life, and my limbs. The lead-up to the murder suggests ambivalence and apathy, yet there's this anger that Iain creates within himself, then the murder itself is back to complete calm. I don't know - it works, but (and I'm not suggesting any anvils, I hope) could do with a bit more reflection, a bit more of the aftermath of each mood swing, and a bit more signposting for the reader. This is the time for Iain to get verbose, maybe? OK, I'm done now. :">