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The Democrats had 48,000 Independents and Republicans register on their side in Iowa. Republicans had only 9000.

I disagree, Walsh. Bush has put so much resources into Afganistan and Iraq that the US has to borrow money from China, thusly making us reliant on a hostile power. With that level of dependence, add to the fact that the lack of resources for taking care of problems we have domestically like Hurricane Katrina and the more recent rash of tornadoes that swept through the south is hurting the economy. While we get more and more into debt and the deficit looms larger and larger how does it make any sort of sense to spend resources we don't have and take on loans that allows nations like China have power over us? Of course you don't have to worry about that. You live in Britain, but if the US government doesn't do a 180 in its foreign and domestic policies we US citizens are going to get screwed over big time. We are losing the war, Walsh.

The problem is Walsh, we are not winning. We are dragging our heels, wasting resources on countries that can never pay it back, and all the while pissing off our long time allies with the exception of, more or less, Britain. Sure we take out an Al Qaeda cell here, a leader there but in the end they just get replaced by someone else. You might have a point, Walsh, if we were in fact winning but we aren't. Just for your information there is more to winning a war than just killing the bad guy. If we do win, with how much resources we are spending in this fiasco it will be a pyrrhic victory.

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDA!

Well, with the exception of Fallout, a game 11 years old, what examples of Cain's programming work do we have to determine if his skill is "fine" or not?

Since Tim Cain was the Lead Designer and Project Leader it was his responsibility to release a working product. Also it looks like Troika didn't have a QA team on this which falls on the Project Leader's head. I guess ToEE's failure in design and programming is shared by Atari and Tim Cain, but still I don't see how people can give such praise to a man who has only one good game under his belt in 10 years.

That is good news, Arkan.

That is one of the reasons, as a game player, I am moving towards consoles. I spent my PC upgrading money on a XBox 360 Elite and I have absolutely no complaints.

Hey, it couldn't hurt. It wouldn't work, but it would be funny.

Nice assumption you made there. I don't download porn. At all. Using my gaming rig I only go to trusted sites, such as this one, and I do take have various safeguards in place. My gaming rig, and my gaming rigs in the past, have been clean and hard drives defragged weekly. Also I only get hardware from manufacturers I trust. ATI, BFG, Creative, EVGA, and Western Digital are manufacturers I use in each rig. I only go back and forth on AMD and Intel depedning on prices. I also only buy hardware from one source. Newegg. They have been damn reliable. Given all that I very much doubt it was a hardware problem. You say you had no problems with the game. Fine. Good for you. I can only go by my experience with the game and my experience only. In my experience with the game, in my opinion its bad programming. You are not going to change that opinion nor my opinion of Tim Cain.

All I care about is when I install a game that it works. If it doesn't, its bad programming. If it does, then its all good. As a game PLAYER what else do I need to know?

1. War is war. If we are going to war we need to go full tilt as in WW2 style, minus the old atomic bomb. If our allies find that unacceptable then that is their problem. We can pull out completely leading to... 2. Close down all military bases in other countries and buld new military bases along the borders. Stop all foreign aid to other countries and use that money to fund walls between ourselves and our neighbors. Beef up the Coast Guard and have them patrol our waterways and access to the oceans. Implement anti-illegal immigration laws similar to those set in Oklahoma on a federal level. Yeah, a bit extreme, but it would make things harder for foreign terrorists getting into our country. I am just sick of our government doing half assed efforts and getting no where in the end.

There are bugs and there are bugs. Minor bugs I don't care to much about. I can still play the game and get some fun out of it. Bugs that makes a game fail to load or constantly crash, which should be a glaring clue something is not right with the code, should be caught prior of release if the programming staff were competently skilled.

So you guys are saying that programming skills are irrelevant, that QA should fix all the errors in games? Then why should game companies hire programmers in the first place. Let them just have hoardes and hoardes of QA staff! NO PROGRAMMERS NEEDED! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! The purpose of QA is to find the problems not fix the problems in software. The bottomline, the code is the responsibility of the programmers to get it right. If a QA guy finds a problem and the programmers failed to fix it, who is to blame? The programmers. If the QA fails to find a problem, who coded the error in the first place? The programmers. The QA team is the spell checker of the document, not the writer.

What is the problem, G1? Leave or stay. Those are our options. If we stay the only way we will win is to take the kid gloves off and go in full tilt fighting, and eliminate the threats. If we leave we need to pull out fully, leave no US soldier, citizen, and equipment with in those countries, then fortify our own borders while blockading them so they cannot follow us home. Leave or stay. In either case we can't afford to half-ass it.

Walsh, why send troops end? We have missiles, bombs, and drone attack planes. Use the resources we have without losing a single life on our side. Sorry to say this but there is no grey area on this. In the elimination of Al Qaeda and the Taliban there will be sympathisers killed. We either need to do the complete job, or get our people out of harms way and fortify our borders. Leave or stay. If we stay we need to go into battle as if we are in a full war. If we leave, we need to fortify our borders and secure ourselves for these people never get in. Our next president needs to choose one or the other for our current "police action" tactics is not working all that effectively.

I just think that Bioware announced Dragon Age a little prematurely. They should have announced it a little closer to release time than what they did.

If the programming was done right there wouldn't be a need for QA.

All I care about is if a game is going to work when I load it and fun when I play it. ToEE I couldn't even to get it to load up till after the first patch. When I started playing it there was so many glitches the game crashed more often than not. It was so bad that I never gotten past the moat house in that game. I just couldn't stand it any more. In comparison between ToEE and NWN2, NWN2 was flawless.

Sounds to me that you need a widescreen monitor. I set my resolution to 1280 x 720 and all the games I play on it, though mostly ME, looks just great. At that resolution it mimics 720i HD.

I have no need for a HDTV. I hooked up my X Box 360 to my PC system.

Pretty much, and yes, the US is a dangerous country. Any country with nuclear weapons is bloody dangerous. If our leadership decided to go all nutty and launch nuclear weapons who would be there to stop them? Pakistan is an unstable country. Its leadership is power mad, its people are running through the streets, terrorists and extremists are in the hillside making plans. In its current state of affairs, it is a very dangerous country.

Anyhoot, I have been thinking that it really doesn't matter what platform a game is on any more. If the game is fun, then that is what matters. Gabs, I think you are really missing out on Mass Effect. I really do. Mass Effect would only be better than the BG games if it was as long as BG2, with more planets to explore and a longer and more involved story line. Mass Effect is better than Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights. No contest there.

Which is the more dangerous country? The one who has nukes or the one that doesn't?

While I am not against setting up diplomatic ties to Iran I am against any sort of negotiations with Al Qaeda. Only negotiation we need to do with them is at the business end of a gun. Kill them all. As for Pakistan, which is a nuclear power with an unstable government where militants and terrorists go for shelter, we need to eliminate them as an ally. Pakistan is more dangerous than Iran or North Korea. McCain I can respect but if he has either Romney or Huckabee as a vice I will not even bother. Those two wear their religion on their sleeve and I am afraid that they would use their political power to advance the agendas of their faiths. Being for the separation of church and state, I cannot with good conscience support those who use religion as a ticket to political office. I don't like anyone of them to be president to be honest. Too bad we can't get a mix. I would be all for McCain as president with Obama as Vice.