EnderAndrew

But Hobbes was tiger-eats-boy.

I thought Diplomacy was going to be PBEM. I haven't gotten an email on the subject yet. I'll try to hunt down the topic.

3D Zelda will never work! Zelda is 2D! 3D Zelda will suxxx! Then Zelda: Ocarina of Time comes out and some people swear it's the greatest video game of all time.

I've heard they only work with the WoW beta client, and don't support most of the newer features.

There are several current gen titles that push 6 gigs, and don't fit on a single-layer DVD. We'll push the limits of dual-layer discs very soon.

I really liked Korriban, though it was too short in KOTOR:2. I think Dxun/Onderon run a close second in my book. Nar Shadda had great potential, and was visually misrepresented.

Tetris: Worlds has a plotline. And they made a movie for Tron.

Science isn't about proving anything. Science is about observations, hypothesis, and then often disproving things. It's impossible to prove anything, though we can disprove a theory. Scientific process I firmly support. I however don't support all the prevalent theories of the scientific community. I think people accept them because "smart" people have proven them all to be true. Why shouldn't we accept them? The belief in science is as much a leap of faith as the belief in God. I didn't phrase that as well as I could have previously.

Nebraska is a favorite to win a national championship in baseball, despite being a cold weather state. Sunday they face off against Florida in the second round of the College World series.

McDonalds is sometimes mistaken as food, despite lacking taste and nutritional value. In marketing we studied how people prefer familiarity over quality. McDonalds is safe because McDonalds tastes the same anywhere you go. When you order from McDonalds, you know exactly what to expect. People eat that up.

I don't mind low-scoring, defensive basketball. I mind blowouts with inept offenses and no drama.

My freshmen year we had a class on archetypes in mythology around the world. We found the same stories were told in various cultures around the world that had no communication with each other. These cultures didn't steal the stories from one another. Those stories touched upon universal human experiences and themes. That's why they are archetypes.

Section 213 says you can delay the application for a warrant under 3 conditions. It doesn't say you no longer need a warrant for evidence to be submissible in court. Those three conditions seem reasonable to me. I was under the impression that with reasonable cause you could do those things before the Patriot Act. Maybe I was wrong. The Patriot Act does not say anyone can be imprisoned without court order just because someone thinks you are a terrorist. The Patriot Act doesn't bypass the 5th Ammendment, or any portion of the Constitution. It allows the government to access records it already has on you, monitor library records which the government owns, communicate with itself, obtain information easier, etc. etc. It makes law enforcement easier. I've heard plenty of horror stories of actions law enforcement agents have taken, or cases where innocent citizens were harassed. These were poor decisions on the behalf of various judges and law enforcement officers. Legislation wasn't to blame in these cases, yet we use the actions of judges to bash said legislation. I know that no one in the universe supports the Patriot Act today, despite strong bipartisan support initially. I've read most of it as the Patriot Act has been a large source of debate over the past year. Most of the time, I can't find any major fault with the law. My main concern is that Congress is more worried about public perception than they are with good legislation. I recall a Telecommunications Deceny Act of 1996 that made it illegal to broadcast any offensive language over an electronic medium, and that one could be fined $200,000 for having a debate about abortion, or dropping an F-Bomb over the internet. The law was deemed unenforcable. Never mind it pissed all over first ammendment rights. The then speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich was interviewed on whether or not the law was constitutional. Newt said he believed the law to be unconstitutional, and yet he also voted for it. But he said it wasn't Congress' purview to determine such things. That was the job of the Supreme Court. His job was simply to pass laws the people wanted. I disagree. I think Newt has never read the 14th Ammendment of the Constitution. Either way, does Congress care about their dutiess? Does Congress care about the well-being of this country? Have we gone so far that partisan propoganda, media sensationalism, and jockeying for position has become more important than judging laws on the basis of their merit? Around two years ago Bush was pushing a law to lower the cost of prescriptions for senior citizens, while both parties were gearing towards the next election. Congress was delaying the law because they didn't want Bush to have any victories, before Ted Kennedy (bad date, good senator) got up and said that for one moment people should look past whether or not the bill was put forth by one party or another and focus on passing a law that helped the American people. Why don't we see more of that?

That is a ridiculously biased and foolish article. I'm a big fan of PCs. I love my Athlon 64 system. The best Athlon 64 processors on the market can't touch the Cell processor. The best ATI and NVidia graphics cards on the market currently don't touch the GPUs for the PS3 and XBox 360. At launch, both consoles will provide far better processing power for the dollar than a PC. They will rival $3,000 PCs, if not beat them in capabilities. 4 years after launch, high-end gaming PCs will trounce those consoles, and yet those consoles will be selling for $150, and high-end gaming PCs will still be far more expensive. That has always been the PC to console relationship. Mind you, PCs do far more, but that article is horribly biased none the less.

Importing the characters won't happen. What if you played KOTOR:1 on the PC and KOTOR:2 on the XBox? What if you played KOTOR:1 and not KOTOR:2? Publishers also always want to keep the door open for possible players who haven't played either of the the first two games. Secondly, any game where you'd be able to start with uber-powered PCs from the first two games wouldn't allow for much progression. The game would be ridiculous. Lastly, fans would bitch and cry the second they realized their level 20 Revan PC is no where as powerful as the Exile PC.

It was a joke. I don't think anyone has any idea if and when a new Baldur's Gate game will come out at this point in time. Atari seems set on pushing Ebberon right now.

I think we need Fear and Loathing in Mos Eisley.

There should be new characters, but the storylines of K1 and K2 should still be continued.

I've always been unimpressed with Dragonball Z.

I've played in non-sanctioned free Ultima Online shards. Those often have the most dynamic worlds, where players affect major plot lines, and the world is reshaped to represent this. Entire cities can get destroyed, or may be under control by some invading army. Mind you, these shards have a small fraction the number of players that official shards have, but they also have a much smaller staff running them, and they manage to run quite a few events. The Matrix Online keeps track of your notoriety within your faction and world. Those with high enough notoriety get notices of major plotlines going down so that they have a chance to participate and shape the outcome of the world. These things are possible in a MMO environment, and are poorly handled now. These games will never truly be like single-player RPGs, because even when certian players can affect the world, they are in the minority. The playing experience for most players is vastly different from a singler player RPG. That doesn't mean they should abandon storyline and stick with a truly static world that only offers level-grinding.

A lot of people scream up and down about the Patriot Act and how it steals every right you have. Very few people have any idea what the Act actually covers, and what it doesn't. No one can violate your 5th Ammendment rights, and this Act is no different. However, bad press has Congress backing away from the Patriot Act, which originally passed with strong bipartisan support as a necessary tool for national security. Many didn't realize that before the Patriot Act, branches of US intelligence were forbidden from talking to each other. Some in the 9/11 Comission felt 9/11 could have been prevented if the branches had shared intel. Now Congress is voting to disallow the FBI and CIA to access library records. You may not be aware of this, but the government owns the library system. We also discovered that the 9/11 terrorists used library computers to communicate with each other on the internet because of their lax security and lack of monitoring. Democrats are worried that people might be targetted and harassed because of their reading selections, and honestly we don't want that. However, some 15 provisions of the Patriot Act that both parties initially supported will expire at year's end. Is national perception of this law more important than what it actually does, and whether or not it's needed? National perception is that univerally, the Patriot Act is a bad thing. If that's the case, why was it so universally popular in Congress to begin with? I wonder sometimes why the bastion of Democracy for the world is so uneducated on the political actions of their own government, and how we can't be bothered to be active in such affairs, but we damned well want to reserve the right to bitch. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/15/pat...s.ap/index.html

Stallone was pretty good in Oscar. I think that's an underrated comedy. Stop or My Mom Will Shoot was so bad I walked out during the movie. Arnie was good in Kindergarden Cop, Twins and Junior.

I've yet to see him do comedy. Who knows?

Are you honestly telling me that in a few days you could beat Ninja Gaiden on the toughest modes and get a good rating? 99.9% of the gamers in the world would have serious trouble accomplishing such a feat. Jade Empire has just as much replay value as KOTOR, and some people enjoy playing that game 8 times over again. Not only do you have two paths (closed-fist and open-fist) with different plots, but many quests have multiple solutions, unlike KOTOR. The game is very cinematic, and I'm curious to see all the movies I might miss playing only one path. Furthermore, the various styles are quite different. Combat in KOTOR is a matter of hitting one button to queue up Force Wave and Master Flurry. Combat in Jade Empire is just challenging enough to keep me awake, and have to reload a few times. I imagine the higher difficulty will be fun on the second play-through. Right now I'm really favoring Legendary Strike, and Fortune's Favorite. Both provide decent strength and good speed. Other styles require very differnt strategies. Fighting by draining chi to heal yourself, or using a slow but brutal style supported by paralysis or heaven's wave is very different from playing the game with speed. I could also play with Transformation styles to try and boost protection against certain attacks. The plot won't be too different to warrant more than two plays, but the variety in combat styles ensures I can have a different experience on multiple plays, where as with KOTOR combat gets consistently more boring the more I play it.

I think Star Wars is like a spaghetti-western with clear-cut good and evil for the most part, but Han Solo was certainly a criminal despite being a hero. Who do relate with more, Solo or Luke? I think Star Wars has always had more room for tough choices, especially when dealing with the Force and mysticism in general. I think MCA did a good job with KOTOR by exploring the repercussions of actions. The Jedi looked like total cowards and fools for not helping fight the Mandalorians. But if deep down they knew that fighting that war would only pull Jedi into the Sith, and a greater threat, then maybe they were right not to go. If they knew the deaths on Malachor V would threaten to destroy the Force, then maybe they were right to hold back. Maybe they were wrong to let things escalate that far. However, we see trends were wielding the Force and exerting your power can sometimes cause more problems than it fixes. In the end, Yoda and Obi-Wan spent their elder years in seclusion. Some say it was only out of fear. Maybe a part of it was realizing that by meddling with galactic affairs, Jedi sometimes make things worse for the wear. Was the Exile right for defying the Jedi? Was it worth it to help in largescale battles and lead to the deaths of so many? Is that really the path of a Jedi? These are questions that begged to be asked. MCA was bold enough to ask them. The flaw with KOTOR:2 was that we didn't get to spend more time answering these questions. We didn't get closure. I think a good KOTOR:3 done by Obsidian can make KOTOR:2 look much better in retrospect. I didn't want to see more jokes and come-ons. I wanted the final scene with Kreia to be more fufilling. I wanted a little more meat. Torment was a great game because it made you ask what can change the nature of a man. And when you finished the game, you had fully examined that question, and had an answer. KOTOR:2 didn't.