taks

uh, i did. not sure what kind of environment you grew up in, but i fully understood the consequences of what a grenade could do to people when i was 15. 15 is certainly within a crossover region between child and adult, and not all kids are mature enough at 15 to be held fully responsible for their actions, but only a few are so immature that they could reasonably claim they had "no idea how much damage a grenade would do" with a straight face. ahem. taks

HotU had some content that was otherwise only available from SoU, but the latter was not required for the former. they simply included the required stuff in HotU, leaving out anything that was otherwise SoU only. same would likely apply here. i think morgoth was referring more to "will the original NWN2 be required to run zehir" to which i think the answer is unequivocally "yes," simply because these are expansion modules (or campaigns) that run on the original NWN2 engine. taks

exactly... taks

given that he's returned, so goes the notion that he went to crimea to avoid extradition. taks

meh. i have one and it's not nearly as good as the sliced bread these things are compared to. i still ended up with a mess in my case. taks

hehe... <insert obvious tard joke here>, ahem. it may not be listed in an obvious "this rail has this many watts" manner, but there should be SOME sticker on the outside of the case. it should list all the voltage rails as well as their current capacity, e.g., 5 V: 10 A, etc. taks

i've got a big antec server case, which i like, but it has issues with anything that uses IDE cabling (such as my older CDROM). my wife has one of those antec "quiet" cases and, quite frankly, it's noisier than my server case and more crowded to boot. either way, i'm an antec case/PSU fan since they've both always proven very reliable. taks

that's what i was getting at, not so much his showing up or not. congress is trying to get him to testify on inner workings of the white house, which they don't necessarily have a legal right to ask (well, asking ain't the problem, but punishing him for not answering may be). i agree he should have shown up if he was properly summoned. agreed. taks

it's hardly "getting away with it" if there is no legal standing for congress on this issue. last time i checked, this is a battle between the executive and legislative branches and no determination has been made as to which side has constitutional mandate. i'm not even sure this is something the supreme court would (or could) hear, which ultimately means there ain't much congress can do. taks

no kidding... if it gets ported, and sells well, that would only serve to continue the franchise on any platform. taks

yes. while you can find 32-bit jobs, none of the newer processors (last few years) are 32-bit anymore - intel or AMD. the OS department simply lags waaaaay behind processor development. taks

not if you read his comments on the derivation of orcs (good writeup on all this at wiki)... but that's immaterial. apparently he actually trademarked the name "hobbit," btw. since the names elf and orc (or close enough) both existed in some fashion or another prior to his writings, i guess he wasn't allowed to trademark them as well. taks

yes, i was about to say "elfs" not "elves." there's enough overlap from the original incarnations, however, that there was no infringement issue, and hence, TSR was allowed to use them. taks

yeah... hobbits were tolkien "inventions," but not orcs nor elves, which is apparent in the use of the "halfling" in D&D because of an infringement issue (as i recall). taks

btw, out of curiosity i just took a gander at pricewatch and was amazed. i've been out of the shopping market for long enough that i'm now confused. how many freaking parts does intel need to adequately address the market? sheesh... taks

the extreme parts do have better performance, though i'm not sure how much you'll notice depending upon what you get for other equipment. if your primary use is for games, you'll probably end up graphics limited more than anything. opterons and xenons are server chips, yes. i've got two dual-core xenons in the dell server sitting next to me right now, actually. man the fan is noisy (it's a blade, with 1.5 TB of HDD space to boot). quite frankly, i should have spent more on a quad or extreme part (for home) since, at least at one point, my primary use was for simulations, which were taking hours to run. that's all over now, however, but i still don't have anything more graphics hogging than NWN2, and i'm running an 8800 of some sort which is more than sufficient. one thing to note, your drives may not all be usable with newer mobos. most are going SATA these days, with one master/slave IDE hookup, if there is any at all. taks

my impression of the "magic is rare but powerful" concept is that it applies more to equipment/loot than to your magic using dude. i.e., you might not see a whole lot of enchanted swords, but when you do, they are +uberkill. otherwise, as suggested by RangerSG, what would be the point of playing a caster? taks

cheerleading. taks

here are some pictures of the rio grande pyramid and "the window" which is next to it. these are NOT the pictures we took, but they give you a good indication of what we saw on the hike (add in some grass, and a lot less snow). we did climb into the window, btw, though we did not scale the pyramid. it started to rain shortly after we got down from the pyramid while we were eating lunch. we had to hike down to the weminuche pass during the 3-hour rain-storm. taks

yup, you know it's bad, and you know it will damage you, but... it's still something curious that you MUST see... aaaah. taks

nope, i was tarded enough to just type the danged thing into my url bar. ugh. i should learn not to do that, particularly when such a link comes from the likes of this board's denizens. back to DA, regardless of what everyone thinks about bio's marketing scheme, it has succeeded in its ultimate purpose: people are talking about how bio is marketing DA, and as a result, they're talking about DA. even ve3d slammed bio for their tactic, but the slam is still an advert. taks

oh my... you guys are just plain bad. i think i just suffered irreparable damage to my psyche. taks

well, there IS an ongoing plot, and it really does dominate what is happening in the show, though subtly. each episode, however, centers around the particular job he's doing that ultimately pay for his search for the truth about why he was burned. some of the episodes have more involvement with the central plot in that the "job" is connected with the main plot to begin with. last night was a perfect example of this, btw. the "job" was to help a guy that got screwed by the puppet masters (for lack of a better term, since we don't exactly know who is pulling his strings yet). taks

uh, i meant that we thought we knew which actual actress was playing the part, someone we knew from some other show. we were wrong. taks

i don't watch either so it is hard to say. there is a driving plot: michael got "burned" from the CIA and is now left in miami without any money or job, and his primary focus is to figure out who burned him (basically, he was fired and listed as a security risk). the show is about all the odd "jobs" he does while dealing with the constant surveillance from the FBI along with his attempts find out who burned him. last night was the first encounter he had with the people that are actually pulling his strings, btw. taks