BruceVC

Are you looking to get laid and party or something more touristy? I was thinking something romantic. My girlfriends birthday is in October and I wanted to surprise her with a vacation somewhere exciting. From what I'm seeing though Italy might be a hell of a lot more trouble than I thought. It seems to require a lot of planning to actually see all the interesting places. It's something you can just go and do when you feel like it. I was actually looking at the US Virgin Islands but October is the peak of hurricane season. So, now I'm looking at Jackson Hole or Hawaii Come on GD nothing beats the Strip in Vegas for a bit of romance, and you don't have to fly very far?

Well its good to you see acknowledging your stupidity, the first step to dealing with any problem is accepting it

Say guy who never been in Russia, and probably never meet with true Russians ( majority of "Russian" emigrants on the West are not Russians IRL ).Per my entire life in Russia i only once see prostitute-girl from Ukraine ( quite ugly ) in Moscow hotel, and visit strip-club 2 times (slag-parties, striptease-girls looks not bad, but not perfect ). Obviously, i talk not about such poor girls. You right I haven't been to Russia but you should come to South Africa or go to Dubai. You'll meet loads of hot Russian strippers. But we also have Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romanian and many other East European girls working here. I can promise you the Russian strippers are amongst the most beautiful, the problem is they are just after money and you can't have a real relationship with them By the way I have no issue with a person who is stripper as a job, I don't judge people and I know its a tough life. But the facts speak for themselves, we do have loads of Russian strippers in South Africa

So then, why is it not the parent's responsibility to monitor the child? Its not like there aren't local solutions to blocking a child's access that doesn't make it a mandatory for all users unless they opt out. I'm not sure if I understand you but at the moment the government feels its not assisting parents or rather making the jobs of parents easier as at the moment porn access is unrestricted. There is no enforced filtering. So with the proposed legislation there will be no porn access unless a parent allows it. Its a measure they think will help as at least they can say " this was the parents choice to allow access" Note I use the porn as an example but it could apply to other types of possibly sensitive websites. At the moment there is no system that automatically blocks access to certain websites in the UK that is legally mandatory, that's the difference between the current law and the future. I don't agree with this, I think its stupid and will be ineffective but this is the way the people proposing this monitoring see it.

No his analogy is relevant as the law is intended to prevent minors accessing porn and other possibly harmful websites. If you are 18 then you could open an account at an ISP and request any filtering to be removed In both cases the child's access to porn is provided by the parent. Parent gets an ISP and leaves the child unmonitored on the internet has provided the child access to porn. Parent goes to the newsagent, buys porn and puts it in a box in the middle of the room and leaves the child unmonitored in the room has also provided the child access to porn. In both cases its the parent purchasing and then providing the access to the porn; the ISP's aren't opening up accounts to kids and selling them porn just as the newsagent isn't. The question is, why is the ISP liable for the parent's lack of monitoring and not the newsagents? Okay if that's what you meant then I agree, the ISP isn't liable but it will restrict access. However in the context of the newspaper example if the parent requests access than a child can use there account and access porn and it would be the same example as a child reading a parents porn magazine left on a table. From what's been said, it's not so much as saying remove the filtering, as just switch it to a position where it doesn't stop access. The interesting thing will be whether it records any traffic whether it's on or off, how many additional "non-porn" elements just "happen" to be filtered as well in the name of protecting minors because apparently you can't trust parents, and how much security the government is actually going to have over Huawei's involvement. Also, has no-one explained to the government how some basic tech-smart under 18's can easily access a proxie server to get around this? There is very advanced firewall and monitoring software that will be very hard to bypass that companies, governments and ISP can invest in. For example end of the day TCP/IP uses a routing technology to send data. So an ISP gets an assigned range of IP addresses and this clever software would track any IP address that uses its gateways. If you are using some sort of Proxy the software will pick this up as the IP address gets translated or just say this is an invalid address. Also they have the ability to look at data within the actual IP packet, so they wil see references to hotporn.com and block communication. In can be done with the right technology

Isn't your internet example not equivilent to selling to a minor at a newsagent, but selling to a dad at the newsagent who then hides his purchase by putting it in a box in the living room labeled "porn - do not open"? No his analogy is relevant as the law is intended to prevent minors accessing porn and other possibly harmful websites. If you are 18 then you could open an account at an ISP and request any filtering to be removed

Another post that made me laugh

And I don't get what's interesting about a Fighter offering deep insights like "I am Remond of the Nine Hills and I hate Orcs! Hurrrrrrrr. Feed me strawberries to keep me happy." The Ultima companions were a compromise between interactivity (they offered some unique dialogue every now and then) and leaving all strategical aspects to the player. That post made me laugh but can you Romance puppet characters ( come on I had to ask )

I mentioned this before but the Chinese ownership through Huawei of the suggested monitoring software should be the biggest concern to people, Huawei has been linked to software espionage in the USA

I also don't see what is interesting about puppets?

Basically the law if enforced will automatically block certain websites, like Adult Movie sites (porn) You would then have to contact your ISP to get the filter removed. The idea is an underage person wouldn't be able to remove the blocking as they wouldn't be the actual owner of the ISP account. There parents would be so in theory this would stop kids watching porn unless there parents say its okay

But Oby we don't all work in Russian brothels and strip-clubs, so I admit you have an advantage

Oh, pornography in general is illegal in England? With all the breasts in your newspapers this surprises me. No its not illegal in the UK The UK is a country of hedonists, they would never pass such a pointless law

I voted BG as Viconia was in there and that was the most enjoyable Romance and interaction I have ever had in an RPG But I also liked the various character in DA1&2, NWN and Planescape so it was difficult to decide

Good one

Yeah that's the story of most of our lives, we have all these games and not enough time I am reminded of that every time I open up Steam and see the number of games I have yet to play

I would hope that this is is something that can work both ways. The reason I brought up the points with what Motorizer wrote was actually to give the party a reason to leave the dungeon. I am expecting Obsidian to give us reasons to explore the Old Paths, and as you stated, the more the better. I think that if Obsidian provides roadblocks to progress that are narrative driven in such a manner to make us leave the dungeon and the return with the correct solution to the problem of moving forward, it works better than a simple impassable lock or portal to elsewhere type solution. The funny thing about the 15 level dungeon, is that we know how many levels down we need to go to reach the end. If that wasn't the case, then leaving and coming back with some new information that extended the dungeon (like there is a path down behind a particular statue if you have a particular rune stone) would be less of an issue. Of course this could be handled with a "fake bottom" of sorts; you go down 15 levels and beat the big bad only to fine out that this was only a portion of the total dungeon and there is an entirely different area that is accessible from the 8th level that takes you to the real mega boss. Yeah leaving the dungeon to complete a quest would also work, I like it

Not really, before a person becomes a target of the ICC they have to found guilty primarily of genocide and serious human rights abuses. Not every criminal will qualify for this ignominious title so the ICC wouldn't get involved

A good and worthwhile list, Magicians End would be my favourite

You have raised some good points, I like the idea of the mega dungeon being the source of several quests that start outside it. For example you meet a group of gnomes living in caves who want you to retrieve an important ancestral artefact for them. The artefact is kept on level 8 of the Dungeon in a sealed off area that requires a key that they only give you if you agree to the quest. This concept has loads of potential

Walsie there is NO way they can link you to your past, so I wouldn't worry too much Never underestimate the effectiveness of plastic surgery my friend

If your players are 'passionate' this way about a game so to threated developer with death then you can only imagine the way they commonly treat each-other.You can leave it to fester but then normal players will be pushed out and the community will start to give you a bad name. And the whole Fish nonsense just proves how immature gaming community really is. Apparently devs and journalists included. But at least in a forum community you can ban people and ensure a level of respectability. There isn't that type of monitoring around most types of Social Media

Nice article JFSOCC But I have a solution to reduce the level of vehemence and criticism.... avoid Social Media. Its as simple as that. The author says "You can't give up on Twitter, because it's too good of a tool for interaction with your fans". That's nonsense, people choose to use Social Media as a means to communicate. What did people do 4 years to give updates? If I was a victim of abuse I would just use a website and post weekly comments. There is this real problem where people feel the need to update everyone all the time on what they doing and why they do it. And end of the day you become a victim of a tool that you don't need to use. Of course I'm not suggesting the level of abuse is acceptable but you won't change people making emotional comments so just remove the mechanism they use from your life and I promise you your stress levels will decrease

If they can, they probably will. I have a different idea how to save our children. How about better education and improving the school system? And when it comes to child pron, how about we do something to try to prevent it, instead of hiding it? Well, guess that would involve some serious work. No you right, sometimes the most applicable way to resolve a social problem is not what government's do

Yeah it is a amazing experience being able to max the graphic settings. I loved the hang-gliding, I would often do this as an alternative to the instant travel just for the panoramic views from the air