Raithe

That's the trouble with an NPC like Harlequin. In-universe, the whole "immortal elves who happen to know magic beyond the average ken, and have got millenia of skills" make great plot background characters, or people moving pieces around. But they tend to be sucky for actually putting into statistics and having them rolling with (or against) the pc's. Which only comes out worse in crpg's.

I'm still kind of pondering on the whole "Chinese Company run by a former CPLA Officer" being behind the HomeSafe software... Like that's a great idea. Or a good inspiration.

Nonsense. It's a valid thread about the difference of perception in what is "attractive" in todays world and spread across different cultures and countries...

Heh. I actually got given a couple of cheesy soft-core porm mags for an Easter Present in replace of Easter Eggs one year as a joke by my mother when i was about hm, 13 or 14. Which itself was some oddball continuation of a joke from some months earlier from when we were cruising around the Med and we were leaving a Greek port to get back on board the ship. We had passed a news agents on the port that had stacks of greek playboys out, and I made some "hey, how about I get one of those as a souvenir of Greece" comment which got me a clip around the ear (in an amused manner) and a "maybe when you're older." Cut to that following Easter and a couple of Mayfair magazine with a yellow sticky note "Well, you're older now."

I also enjoyed DA 2, it was entertaining but not fantastic. And of course it had Isabela I enjoyed a lot of the ideas within DA2. The execution I tended to suffer through. I think it was a collection of the little things that just kept taking small slices of enjoyment from it. I loved the whole concept of this city, set over several years, seeing the consequences of your choices over that time. It just, didn't seem to actually be that worthwhile by the end of it. Especially with some of those story twists, turns and that inevitable fallout regardless of your choices.

Ah, but he's not running it on a "catch child offenders" he's pushing it on a "we can't trust parents to keep an eye on how their kids use the internet and we want to lock off access those unsupervised kids might have to porn". But they're blocking a whole heap more then just pornography. Also, the Tories did run with a whole heap of the "the Labour government has pushed the nanny state, we don't want to do that." This, seems a whole heap of "nanny state"...

Not sure if anyone here is really following it, but apparently we're about to get some lovely filters to our ISP's by reason of the government. Couple of stories on it that might entertain.. RT - Block and a hard place: UK’s online porn filter raises more issues than it solves Also, there's this one.. Wired - Cameron's Proposal Extends Beyond Porn

io9 - Scientists Freeze Light for an Entire Minute The Actual Science Paper: Physical Review Letters - Stopped Light and Image Storage by Electromagnetically Induced Transparency up to the Regime of One Minute

Heh, I've just gotten to the funeral and I totally called it. Damn. Now I wish I'd made a spoiler post earlier and stated it for all to see.

Spent a large chunk of the night running through it so far. Do enjoy the atmosphere, running around with an elven adept who punches things.. It's kind of fun to punch out a troll shadowrunner. I've only had a brief bit of trouble when running into the mercs/shadowrunners at the hangar, which kept catching me in multiple crossfires. I think that's my only issue, is the lack of any proper stealth. You can't do any sneaky shadowruns as such. But still, certainly enjoyable as it is.

Well, Steam is currently saying that it unlocks in approximately 16 hours from now. So that puts it around 6pm (gmt)...

Now not stricly about reading, but I thought it would add to the thread and I find it a really funky tattoo..

Well, it's a bit of a mix. The Windsor's as the House of Windsor is relatively recent. They were originally the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, but changed the name around WWI due to the germanic aspect. But it's not as if they've really been marrying outside the country that much for awhile. Queen Victoria was of the House of Hanover, and she married Albert who was of the Saxe-Coburg's.. So yes, there's a heavy mix of German in there. George V's mother was danish, and he married Mary of Teck, an English lady. George VI was married to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, another English Lady. You'll mostly remember her as the Queen Mum. Queen Elizabeth II married Philip and he's of Greece and Denmark. But yes, they're pretty much considered English.

I know there can be little quirks. No matter what I did, I could not improve my barbell shoulder press. Everything else I did improved over the years, but that one exercise just..

Heh, funny story, I ran into someone who still works at a place I did as a part-time job during university. Apparently some of the old staff still remember me, and actually consider me a raging psychopath. Mostly due to one of the guys trying to start a fight with me there and doing all the standard macho trash talk to get me to take a swing. I calmly and politely explained to him (and the surrounding friends of his) that this was quite silly, because getting into a fight would suggest I wanted to hurt him, and that if I wanted to hurt him I wouldn't give him a chance to hurt me. I'd come at him when he wasn't expecting it, with a bat and take out his knee from the side before bludgeoning the crap out of him to make sure he knew that I wanted him in pain. I made absolutely no threat, and just pointed out that if he or any of his friends really wanted to start something they should remember that for the future. I was exceptionally polite about the whole matter, never raising my voice, never swearing. And I never had any trouble from them for the remainder of the time I worked there.

Heh, when I was around 15-16 I started hitting gym regularly with a couple of friends. Established the whole routine, 3 nights a week doing 2-3 hours, specific muscle groups on each day. By the time we were in our twenties one of the guys had the incredibly toned bruce lee physique, one went overboard and literally could not cross his arms properly due to the size of his biceps and pecs, and I just had better stamina without any significant change to my body shape. Funny thing is that one of them has stopped doing any weights work and has started learning gymnastics exercises, which he says are incredibly harder and he's surprised at how difficult it is to do what are supposed to be "simple" gymnastic exercises compared to regular weights.

how many repetitions of the exercise you do within any specific set. "I did 3 sets of 10 reps at x weight" = I did the exercise 10 times, paused, did it another 10 times, paused, then a final 10 times.

My default on the internet is my default in the "real world". Wheaton's Law. Don't be a ****.

But my point is that the people that provided those taxes did so about 500+ years ago. The majority of the money the Royal Family has comes from real estate and the fee's earned via renting it out. And while you say the people gave that money to the King of the time, the point is that at that time, the money was used for a whole variety of reasons that were for the good of the Kingdom, not just the King. Why is that so different to the more run-of-the-mill capitalist uber-rich families? A service was provided, a fee was taken. Hell, the fee's taken helped provide the service. But because this original seed money was brought about via taxation of the time, it automatically makes it wrong for them to have any money now based on it?

I just find it interesting where people draw this mysterious ethical line over just what point it's all a-ok to be descendents gaining the benefit from different things that you have a modern perspective as being immoral sources of funds, and that for so many it seems that a king having taxed his subjects 900 years ago is seen as much worse then the slave trader of 200 years, or the industrial baron who wasn't bothered by working people to death a century ago..

Its a good thing you did, I would have just besmirched that lofty title with some hooker scandal. What's more liberal and philanthropic then making sure that hookers can earn money too? Making sure some young, pretty girl can actually pay her way through college and/or university and get that all important Law/Economics/Business degree?

I'm pretty sure that depends on how you look at it, the rich families that started out as Renaissance money-lenders might not be classed as "taxation" in the one sense... Also, please, the revolving door of politicians in any modern democracy make a killing via government money. They go in, spend their years as politicians making contacts, then come out to be lobbyists or work for a defence firm or some other group that swills from the government trough. Tell you what, shall we look at all the fine upstanding families that made their original fortune on the slave trade? Tell them that just because they haven't been involved in it for 200 years or so, it doesn't matter how they make their money now because the seed money comes from that, so the government has a right to take it away? Wait, shall we hit the swiss banks and do the same? Edit: By the by, didn't earn it? Do you really think it was easy becoming the first Kings and ruling a nation and protecting it from other people who wanting to crush it and add it to their domains?

Why single out the Royal family as if just because they're Royal it makes it worse then all the others you're totally happy with. Say "let's kick em out and take their money" all you want. Just be perfectly valid and say "Lets get rid of the Kennedy's!" or pretty much EVERY family group that's been rich for a century.

That depends how far back in history and how you define their own personal fortune. It gets a bit mixed when you look at any of the Royal Families throughout Europe. Think about it, the early Kings built treasuries from the taxes paid directly to them by the people they ruled. From that, they provided the security and government and wotnot. They used those treasuries to build castles, palaces, establish towns, pave roads, get flashy crowns and all that jazz. Rent from lands they owned added to their treasuries. After 500 or 1,000 years, it gets hard to figure out exactly what finances came from what. As was previously mentioned, for the previous 300 years, the royal family turn over what amounts to a bit over £200 million each year to the government in the form of the Crown Trust. Which is pretty much all the profit and income from the family land holdings. That is entirely seperate to whatever income is generated via tourism. The other side of it that tends to get ignored, is how they get used as free-floating Ambassadors of goodwill around the world. Frankly, it might be silly to many, but a lot of people react more to a visit from the Queen or Prince Charles then they do to a visiting President or Prime Minister. You can say "get rid of them" as much as you like, but people react to them. They aren't here and gone in 4 or 8 years. They grow up involved in it, they get decades of experience in handling those duties, and they keep doing them. Heh, and ill-gotten gains? Just how much money gets chiselled away in one form or another by most leading politicians? How many Presidents and Prime Ministers leave office with bank accounts the same size or smaller then when they started? Hell, should we look back at all the really rich families that made their money in the dark or middle ages? The Rothchilds and money lending which in those days.. yeah. Hell, shall we look at the "robber-barons" of the 18th century in America and just how they made fortunes on what are now totally illegal methods? The Rockefellers and their current fortune...

Technically, the queen also has to sign all changes to law. Out of curiousity, for those saying their land holdings should be appropriated.. What makes that right? As in, how many generations of family building landholdings / ownership of real estate is too many? So, if you say the monarchy should have their real estate re-possessed just because they're monarchy, or should we start saying any family that's been having large bank accounts and real-estate for more generations then x should have it re-possessed? For the wacky approach, should we look at the Kennedy's and the Bush's and say "Oh, well, you've been involved in government politics and getting money from the people for generations, we're going to take your real estate because you've had it too long"...