LadyCrimson

I just looked at our dryer circuit, and it's rated at 30amps. So again, it depends on your circuit capacities. It's possible that more modern buildings would have 'general purpose' circuits that are more than 15amp these days. EDIT: lol, ditto. I think my basic concept is correct, but there may be more info/details to consider that I know nothing about that could mean better or worse in terms of the question. heh

My understanding is it's less to do with the how many plugs/outlets, and more to do with how your house is wired and what its amp/watt capacity limits are before the circuits become overloaded. ie, there's no single answer. You know how in many modern homes wiring systems divide the circuit breakers (one for living room, one for kitchen, one for washer/dryer etc)? That's so you can still run your washer/dryer without having to turn everything else off first. Only adding more outlets to a room, that are still attached to the same circuit as the others doesn't help at all. Again, same thing, running an extension from another room would only alleviate some of the load if that other room is on a different circuit than the original room. In the US 120 volt outlets can handle only so many amps of maximum current. 120 volts multiplied by amps (typically 15amp in US for general purpose) = maximum watts. So the total power of all "things" per circuit must be equal to or less than that max. watts number. I don't know how they do things in the UK, but in the US, unless you have very very old, non-updated wiring in the house or faulty circuit breakers, there's not typically a high degree of danger. Most things don't use that many watts. My husband probably has a gajillion things plugged into one circuit - multiple monitors, several pc's, printers, modems, firewalls, and on and on) and has never run into a problem (he's fairly schooled in electronics/the hows & whys & doesn't worry overmuch) so I doubt you're in any real danger. Granted, he rarely has all of those things on at once, but if you then add on my two PC's and peripherals + lights + fans in summer, well....no problems yet. It is a good question tho, since it probably won't be long before all the things we want to plug in at one time will end up being more than what average houses have, without extensive re-wiring. And yes, the fire danger comes from the circuit breaker (or other wiring) being faulty/not up to code or not working properly. Otherwise, the circuit breaker should trip and everything just turns off, like the power going out.

That update makes their stance a lot clearer....they could have posted that in the first place. I still have my personal reservations, but I will grant that if anyone can make a popular entertainment activity where real names are required (vs. work or government etc) a more commonplace, non-feared trend, than it would probably be Blizzard. I also went and looked, and they do have an ignore user feature now, so that's good. From what I understand, RealID in the game itself can be 'turned off' by turning on the parental controls, as well as the fact that you don't have to accept any 'friends' in the first place, so it affecting privacy while actually playing isn't an issue. However that will automatically shut you out from the fora as well (it won't circumvent that aspect). And it's not just WoW, it's SC2 & eventually all their games. Some have been speculating that this could be the start of some future revenue generating model (w/a desired side-effect feature)...Activision/Facebook/Blizzard, social networking etc...I'm not convinced of that, but it is curious.

If it's legal to grow at home in 25 sq. feet (with no permits required?) CA wouldn't see nearly as much revenue as some expect since it's very easy to grow (good stuff) in a couple containers in a closet, just for personal consumption, cutting out/limiting any need for a middleman grower. There'd be little need for taxed pot farms (like there is with fruit/vegie farms & distribution) except for hemp products like rope or whatnot. Although, there could be revenue from permits from public places that might want to allow consumption on their grounds (weed bars!) and I suppose that could lead to having to buy/consume offered product instead of your own (like booze) and eventually it might become a normal enough thing to produce a lot of income. Yes, it may be irrelevant in terms of whether it should be legal/not legal, but it is interesting to mull over the possible (social/political) results of legality. Such as, if it's legal to grow that much at home, will consumption initially rise dramatically enough to cause any problems for a while? I mean, if you can suddenly grow it (without any legal fear or neighbors paranoia) instead of having to scrounge up cash to buy it, over-indulgence could rise. Would this mean anything? imo, probably nothing more than a few more skipped classes/work days...but it'll be interesting to watch. California, the land of sun, raisins, happy cows, and a pot plant growing on every balcony.

So true. Not only that, but the ambitious mods that sounded promising but the ppl never finished them, or I remember for DS1, someone would make yet another bigger backpack "mod." Yea, I'd think the multi-platform would be a big issue. It is too bad tho, since (imo) modding tools for single-player are sometimes the most fun things ever, since you don't have to worry about whether it affects other players & can just have fun with it. Multiplayer ones...eh...don't really care personally, but I imagine it would be cool for LAN type friend gaming.

--@Thorton_AP - I agree about the lvl1 alt situation. It certainly would help, I'd think, if they only allowed one username/chr. If you don't want your high lvl main to be harassed in-game & choose a low level alt, you're stuck with that one forever. --@Gorgon - If Blizz thinks this works well on WoW forums, it wouldn't surprise me if they decided to implement it on all their forums. Could be a 'test run' on one of their current biggest fora to see how it's received/works etc. --I'd also be fine if it was first names only. You'd have to have a first name like "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" to make that very risky. --Thinking a bit, you'd be surprised how many people seem unaware how easy it is to get info via searching, even minus Facebook. Utterly clueless. Also, it's not just the info YOU put out about yourself on the web, it's also the info business, local news, work, schools, angry friends (haha) and so on might put up there, that you (may) have no control over. I have a friend who barely uses the 'net at all (no social networking) & I could still find all kinds of info on her when I tried. Whether this bothers someone or not is up to them but you see the point. Some (especially us geeky folk) may be pretty savvy about such risks, but as the internet has exploded, many many more are not. It's one thing to agree to/not mind to real names when you're aware of what it could mean...what about those who aren't? The more I think about it, the more I hope all the protesting will make Blizzard soon change their minds. Surely they could've come up with something else/better to try.

On the one hand, it makes me glad to see that I'm not the only one who doesn't like moderately high temps. On the other hand, I suspect that most of you would laugh when I think it gets a bit too chilly, since I live in the San Fran area. ...at least I'm as cold-wimpy as some around here. It has to be at least 55F/12C before I reach for even a light jacket. Although if I'm at the computer desk for long periods, my bare feet start to feel frozen a lot sooner. And it's in the low 70's today, which is a nice relief from the mid-80's of the past several days.

lol, exactly. And this is one of the better forums I've ever been a member of. My main issue is I don't like having everything I type trickling into search engines. In real life we can pick & choose who to tell what to, based on trust and friendships etc...with impartial search engines, you never know who is going to read it. Thus you might end up with a lot less interesting 'net conversations if ppl feel they can't talk about stuff w/out being paranoid of who may one day read it three years from now. But yes, bottom line it's Blizzard's forum and they can do what they want. It will be interesting to see how it works for them.

Point taken, but I'm still not convinced that using real names is going to discourage the career trolls that much, if they aren't also convinced that Blizzard will somehow use that to better police/punish trollish behavior. Do the Blizzard forums have the 'ignore user' feature yet? That feature is one of the better ones for the posters themselves to at least not have to 'see' troll posts, if one is that consistently upset by certain users...and if you don't avail yourself of that ability, that's your choice. It may also encourage 'career trolls' to increase their activity in some kind of rebellious defiance. I dunno...I do understand wanting to foster a more friendly community, I'm just not convinced this is the way to do it. As always, time will decide.

User friendly toolsets that allow people to mod do tend to extend longevity (in terms of playability) to the game, for some people. Whether that constitutes 'flash in the pan' is debatable, imo, since I'd guess most consumers aren't into the actual mod-making themselves, anyway. I'm not sure it increases actual sales much, either, for the same reason, hence not often worthwhile (from a business perspective) for them to put in the time to include toolsets. But that's just a guess, I don't really know for sure.

Like I said, haven't been to their forums in ages...so maybe it's different now. But in the past the serious troll problems seemed to have more to do with lack of 'policing' the forums than anything else. A lot of stuff was just allowed to go on and on w/no one stepping in to curtail it. Has that improved? If not, how are real names going to help with that if the modding of the forums isn't more stringent?

When they made item/skill hack editors, of course. But seriously, there are quite a few popular single-player D2 mods that I'm aware of, that not only change items but skins and rules/skills etc (examples), and of course the ones that didn't alter the main game but did insert things like that super-diablo event (I can't remember what he was called now) into the SP game. I never tried any of the altering mods but I did use the one that put MP-only features into SP.

I vote for Norbert Nipplebottom!

Percy something & the Lightning Thief. I'm not a huge fan of the Potter movies, but Percy was definitely no Potter. It did have some cute moments and a lot of fun "oh look it's..." famous actor cameos/bits, but not very interesting overall.

Oh, no, Candyland is real. Never question Candyland. But I can't say where in Candyland I reside. Queen Frostine still has a grudge against me for when I chewed on her taffy throne.

Hey! You in the corner up there! Little help here please! Lazy, good for nothing NPC... Sledge may have been angry, but I was angrier. Bye bye Sledge.

I haven't been on any Blizzard forum in years....but wow, this is a bad move. I mean, rationally, for majority of people their real name isn't going to bring stalkers to your front door (assuming it's ONLY your name that's revealed, not email and other stuff) but psychologically many are uncomfortable about it...and not just the spammers/trolls. I have yet to knowingly put my real name 'out there' for Google to hunt down, and I refuse to do so for Blizzard.

Excited, I am excited! Defintely going to be a great 2011 for my love of action-rpg's....tho I'm still not quite convinced D3 will be 2011. It's Blizzard after all. That 3rd act boss definitely seemed made more for the summoner spellcasters...at least when you're unfamiliar/first try to kill him.

Bought a soundbar speaker for the TV. It's not like having a 10 speaker surround system but it's actually not too bad. Still needs a subwoofer for real bass tho. I sure miss the huge Radioshack tower speakers we used to use years ago that made the couch/floor literally rumble even at low volume. All this new fangled sound stuff, while it's definitely 'cleaner' sounding & you can get plenty of bass, most of it still, to me, doesn't have the same kind of bass impact that those old systems had. I don't know if that makes sense...but there it is.

Still Titan Quest. I also finally got around to downloading the newest Fraps to run on Win7 (my purchase/membership from 4 years ago still allowed me to download it free, that was a happy surprise) so I'm having idle fun w/that on the i7 pc. It's nice to be able to record stuff w/out the game lagging into a slide show. Yeah, we have an oldish 14 or 15 inch laptop. I could run them on that, but I don't like laptop keyboards... As to music...at least most older RPG music wasn't like NES type music. I do not miss things like Sonic Hedgehog's "drowning" music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TOkKttTkpo ...altho it was a good way to stress out the player.

Whenever I get a new PC and then play an older game, the high FPS numbers always crack me up.

I don't consider myself a graphic 'ho, but I'm discovering that really old games, the very pixelated 320 type resolution graphics are finally beginning to impede my enjoyment for most of those. I think part of it is having the 23" widescreen monitor tho, where it's either this super super super tiny window or stretched out to truly horrendous proportions. Should've kept one of the old small CRT's for such. heh

Well, the King's quest series is basically the Patriarch of the adventure game genre, and really the earliest blockbuster IP in the industry. It was the Super Mario of PC gaming, really. Then it's such a shame I somehow managed to not play any of them. The rest sounds interesting. Thanks. Kings Quest 4-6 is on GoG.com as a package deal for ten bucks, I think. ie, you could play them on Vista/Win7. I have the original on a CD version somewhere, bought many years ago, but I didn't get far into it before I ran into a bug or something. Maybe I should try that gog package myself sometimes.

I remember it did become a little more entertaining towards the end, w/a rather ambiguous ending (ie not Hollywood-happy), but whether that means it 'got any better' would be highly debatable. The beginning, when they were in the apartment etc., was truly awful. I didn't think Godzilla (the more recent remake anyway) was very good either, tho.

While I don't think it's "bloody melty" until at least 32C or so, I am the sort who wears flip flops, shorts and tank tops (or nothing...) when it's 20-22C (70ish F) so I can sympathize not liking heat. I do like the upper 70's F when outside w/a light breeze/in the shade etc but can't stand it being that temp inside the house. I remember a few days ago, however, some news headlines talking about your heat wave, complete with photos of ppl 'cooling' off by sitting with feet in fountains and under sprinklers, and it was maybe 74F...which made me chuckle. Even I wouldn't find that so hot I'd need to cool off in that fashion. heh