alanschu

Just use the crystal shard!

He believes he is enforcing a Law that is way to lax. It's like Vhailor, the Lawful Neutral Mercykiller of Torment!

I know I avoided Gunther one time. I have always fought Simons, because by then....it was personal! I have heard you can run from him. I don't believe he drops anything like a key. Navarre for instance is blocking an infinite strength door/lock, so she has to go. Hers is the most obvious.

I don't know if you need to kill Simons, and I'm pretty sure Gunther can be avoided...it's just much, much easier to use the computer if he is dead.

Nobody knows. A lot of people hope it is, but that doesn't mean anything.

The DirectX 10 stuff is pretty intense. Check out screenshots of a game called Crysis.

No idea. EDIT: Ooo, you were fast with that one.

That doesn't even really make any sense.

Hahaha, yeah, that Sportsnet preview was god awful. EDIT: Link didn't work. ANd I agree, the Score is awesome. They're playoff postgame shows were far and away the best I had ever seen.

I agree with Pop, that the slippery slope can work both ways. I'm curious what the associated costs are between executing someone and having them serve a life sentence. I have heard that executions are not as cheap as people would like to believe, but I haven't found anything to substantiate that claim. The thing is though, are we okay with killing people just to save on some tax dollars? It's easy to throw out hypothetical examples too. Say someone comes home, and finds a guy has broken into his house and his sexually assaulting his 7 year old daughter. In a rage, the guy goes beserk, attacks the man. Gets the child rapist in a situation where he's helpless. In the emotional state that the father is in, he kills the rapist...perhaps even in a rather painful, suffering way. So we have torture, and we have murder. In the eyes of the law, I'd be surprised if he's not being executed. See, wasn't that fun? Or! We get the guy that was framed for someone's murder. And because we have people that want to speed up the appeal progress, and make executions more efficient (hey, we can save some $$$ here too!), the innocent man is executed, and he has less time to try to prove it as a result!!! (and no, DNA evidence is not infalliable. Even then, a creative person looking to frame someone could still plant DNA evidence). Too bad he was a single father looking after 3 kids, and was well liked in his community! (hint, hypothetical anecdotal examples are worthless. Unfortunately, they appeal to emotion and people are very easily swayed by them. It's why parents are now deathly afraid of letting their kids out alone, as the overrepresentation in the media gives the images that sexual predators are everywhere. I mean, he could get YOUR child. Do you want to take that chance!??!?!)

Is there really a larger variety? I've only really played through SS2 as a Hacking Navy as well as Psi. I guess the thing that sort of irked me with SS2 was how exceptionally, insanely useful hacking was.

So you'd have little problems if the government in power, which you have been exceptionally critical of, started determining what "heinous" crimes are? An interesting thing I found while looking around is that the studies have a disproprotionate amount of murder convicts that get executed tend to be both poor and from minorities. People without high quality legal counsel (i.e. public defenders) tend to have juries and judges consider their crimes more worthy of execution moreso than those that can afford higher quality attorneys. There's also the idea that the government serves as an example of the correct way of how things should be done. In other words, an eye for an eye is perfectly acceptable.

Well, who did you pick in those boxes?

Both are excellent games. The setting and environments of Deus Ex are more to my liking, so I picked it.

Never mind little things like how many attacks per turn a player gets, or how many turns a spell effect has. The combat most definitely is a sequence of turns.

If I can get financial savings, and it's a game I know I'm going to get, then I may preorder (since there's a tangible benefit to it). Other things that may have me preorder were DVD (compared to CD), assuming I could only get it via preorder. I don't find many places opting on giving me discounts for preorders though. Most of the time it's collectables or something, which I don't particularly value.

DNA evidence is overrated, overstated, and not infallible. I guess I should thank CSI. It actually didn't work at disuading people from committing capital crimes. http://www-tech.mit.edu/V113/N53/morrison.53o.html http://www.truthinjustice.org/922death.htm http://www.indiatogether.org/combatlaw/vol...2/deathmyth.htm http://www.aclu.org/capital/general/10441pub19971231.html

I'm an AMD fanboy and I'll acknowledge Intel's performance advantage.

That of course assumes that a lightsaber is made up purely of light energy. And that the physics of a fictional universe in any way coincide with ours.

I'm guessing not too big of a difference. You'll usually get some extra collectables or something if you preorder. With NWN2, I believe you get access to the toolset. I typically don't preorder games, because I generally don't believe in giving a company money without me getting something in return. I don't typically have a hard time getting games in the first week, so it's a moot issue. If I think there will be a hard time getting a game, I may put in a "preorder" about a week in advance, just to ensure I get a copy. Naturally these are games that I want to play at release and don't want to wait, like Half-Life 2 and whatnot.

Haha the top ones are always quite hard. I'd definitely go with one of Thornton/Jagr in the top one. Probably Thornton, as he seems to have more support around him and excellent chemistry with Cheechoo. #2 would be Crosby. I wouldn't be surprised to see him improve upon his point totals, especially if Gonchar plays like he did at the end of last season, and if Malkin isn't out for too long (they may get PP time together, as well as Malkin will provide an additional scoring threat for opponents to key on, rather than just Crosby). #5 has the homer in me wanting to pick Horcoff. Zetterburg may be good, but at the same time Detroit's lineup seems less offensive than last year. Excellent player though. Though I'd probably pick Marleau. He'll face weaker competition because of Thornton's presence, and will still get his fair share of icetime both at ES and on the PP. #10 well, he probably will get hurt, but if he doesn't, Forsberg is a steal. Plays well with Knuble and Gagne. I don't know if I cannot pick Forsberg. If you get lucky and he plays most of the season, he should destroy everyone else in that box. Otherwise, I think Sedin is a darkhorse. Plays well with his brother, and the word on the street is that they'll see lots of time with Naslund this year (and probably both on the PP and at ES). #13 Well, Iggy is good, but he's on a defensive team. But he has a new linemate in Tanguay. I don't know if it will be enough to get him back to his Art Ross winning numbers. McCabe might be a better bet, as he seems to be the go to offensive defensemen in Toronto, and has a good partner in Kaberle. On the other hand, Visnovsky seems to be getting better. This is a hard box. I think Iginla stands the best chance of breaking away from the rest. While his career has put him usually in the 60-70 point range, he has shown he can put up huge numbers. If things click for him and he gets going with Tanguay, I'd say he stands the best chance to breakout. Otherwise, it's probably a safer box as most players will score around each other. #14 is probably Gaborik. As far as I know, he does not have a contract discussion, and he'll be playing with Demitra as well. He'll get the big minutes and will probably score quite a bit, even in defensive minnesota. #15 if Forsberg is healthy, Knuble will probably score a lot. Vyborny would probably be a good one as well, as he has some offensive talent around him. This one was a tough one. #16 I'd go with Demitra. I have a good (bad) feeling that he and Gaborik are going to play really well.

If you want a hand, give me some boxes

Rolston over Lidstrom? Interesting. I guess Detroit has some question marks. Yours is just points based right? He with most goals/assists wins? With perhaps extra weighting on goals?

If you think you can get +/- elsewhere, it should probably work. I think I'm a bit lacking in goal scoring, as well as goaltending (it sounds like Niittymaki will play, but he's going to get 3 cortisone shots during the season, and then get surgery in the offseason. So that could come back and kick me in the butt.

You get one minute, 30 seconds. I don't disagree with Alfreddson probably being above McCabe, but in my roommate's experience, people that favour offensive defensemen tend to do better, as the number of points defensemen get drop rapidly compared to forwards. You're also allowed a limited number of "games" at each position. You can only have 164 LW/C/RW/G games, and 328 Defensemen games. This is because you have two active LW/C/RW/G slots, and 4 active D slots. So you can sub guys in and out depending on whether they play a game that day, but if you're too aggressive with your substitutions, you might not be able to play a position later on in the season. This is why there's a healthy mix in the draft, since you can't just draft the top point getters, since you won't be able to play them all the time. So with McCabe, if the way he ended up drafting would have had him taking a defensemen with say 40 points (~30 less than McCabe) if he had taken Alfredsson, then he wouldn't have really gotten much of a net gain (assuming the rest of his players) with respect to points. McCabe also gets PP points, and PIM, which are two other categories you are rated in. Having said that, Alfredsson is probably an elite enough of a player that it's probably best to go with him over McCabe. I went for Lidstrom because he'll get huge minutes as always, and ample opportunity to get points. Fernandez was because I wanted a goalie that will play a lot, and put up impressive numbers. This is my first time in a hockey pool so I just sort of played it by ear.