Humodour

You're still in Australia, right? That 100Mb isn't going to help much with lag when playing with people in NA or Europe. ****ing speed of light. Latency on European and NA servers in Heroes of Newerth is 160 to 200ms. Decent?

I can understand why her tirade on Facebook shook you up, I didn't read that bit at first.

Why do you care dude? I don't really think she was judging you all that much anyway. Take a chill pill. Edit: I read further and she seems to be emotionally weak and prone to depression in my expert opinion. You should be there for her. Frankly I'm generally a pacifist myself but I don't see how most video games are a problem since no-one is being harmed. I'm against some media such as certain types of horror/thriller or games like GTA but I'm resigned to them existing in a free society.

I might be lonely with you. I'm debating between paying $130 for a four-pack (for friends) on Steam (and saving about $250 AUD when discounts, Steam vs physical, and exchange rate are considered) or waiting for more reviews to come in as well as details on the MP system. I really think it'll be a downer if there's no social networking and anti-cheat platform like Battle.net, but that can be offset by playing exclusively with friends I guess.

Read that again when you're not stoned. Or at least share the love.

Haha it's $45 dollars. You got boned. God I'm glad there's no regional Australian pricing on Steam.

Post it anyway, can't hurt. Same goes for anybody else from here who is planning to buy it on Steam. Mine is: euclideanalgorithm (yes, I know, it's a weird name, but all my Valve games are on it now, so I can hardly change) I'm back on my swank 100 megabit line, too, so lag should be non-existent. I think I'll buy this, L4D2 and Torchlight right now on Steam.

That's the point when you throw them on the bed and show them a good time.

You're the first person I've ever heard talk about VLC like that, and I suspect I won't hear many after you. Although they could stand to spruce up the interface (and not with flashy graphics like Microsoft's media player, but simply smart GUI design, including better playlist management). I don't use it on Linux primarily for that reason - Amarok is simply better (except for those stupid glitchy videos that require VLC's superb error-handling abilities).

That's a lot of self-enjoyment. Personally I'd be a bit sore.

If there's a Battle.net equivalent I'll buy this. I might even if there isn't, but it'd sure help.

So is this like Left 4 Dead or Diablo 2 in terms of multiplayer? Do you have a character that gets saved between runs? Is there something like Battle.net to hook up millions of players around the world and prevent cheating?

Yeah, there has been a bunch of good co-op games lately and more to come.

This.

I'm not sure how good Torchlight will be, but it's by some old D2 hands and it looks like it has promise. And it's only like $17 on Steam.

Securom disk check. No limited activations. Supposedly copies made before the release date will have an online activation in that it phones home to check the date in order to prevent pre-release copies being playable. Any discs made after the release date will not have this limitation. Steam version just has Steam itself. Nothing extra. Information from here. Also supposed to have single disc LAN capability. No activation limit but we DO still have to activate it? **** it, no more Securom activation bull****, I'll just buy it on Steam. Given the exchange rate it'll probably be half the price anyway. "Just a disc check" is the info. The BG2 version of Securom, if you will. Hmmm. That's pretty tempting. Do they have something like Battle.net for MP games?

Dude, this is important. Your life could depend on this knowledge if Twoface ever kidnaps you. In fact, if I had of known about this back in the Summer of '62, I'd still have motor function in both my legs today.

http://www.physorg.com/news175267656.html They can be as much as 40-60. The trick is that the side it started on is the side most likely to come up.

So what are we talking about here? A completely broken application that needs ten patches and a lot of computer know-how to even get running? No. It's an application that auto-installs itself and then needs one patch to work properly (and by properly I mean works perfectly until you need to download something bigger than 270 MB or something). ONE PATCH. One that's automatically linked for you. Yes, I had to install the same patch when I bought Operation Anchorage. Download, install, done. Nuisance? Yes. Worth complaining your ass off on the internet for? In Bizarroland, apparently yes. So I assume your router doesn't support Windows XP's standard MTU size, correct? Because that is what GfWL uses. And this is GfWL's fault? Whose fault is it that your floppy disc reader doesn't support CD's then? I may be both delusional and a troll, but at least I can get an almost idiot-proof program to run. Think about that for a second. Let's start a war. Let's start a nuclear war. AT THE GAY BAR, GAY BAR, GAY BAR!

That's the first thing I thought of when I read your original post.

Well, I was thinking about the long-term. Put money in an investment in America, then wait 5 to 10 years for the next currency cycle when the AUD hits a low, and pull it out. I just wanted to confirm there wasn't a flaw in my thinking. That's pretty sweet. Better still, the AUD should be at parity with the USD for another year or so which meshes well with when I intend to start investing what I've saved.

Thanks heaps Oerwinde, GD, and Moose. I have enough info to start doing some reading. I've always sort of wondered this: Suppose I invested $100,000 in American shares while the AUD was at parity with the American dollar, and then a year later the AUD dropped to, say, 50% of the USD (i.e. 1 AUD = 0.5 USD) as it regularly does... if I were to then withdraw those shares and convert them to AUD, would I then have about $200,000? If that's true, isn't that pretty much a guaranteed get rich quick scheme, given the regularity of Australia's currency cycles? OK, so having money in the share market for only 1 year is silly, let's say it was in a savings account in America for a year instead.

From the Finnish macstore. It's completely irrevelant what kind of sales they have in the US. Even if I imported one I'd have to pay 30% tax, and if I did import I'd just get a similar PC for half the price Yuck at that import tax! But I just checked the Finnish Mac store and it's below 2000 Euros there, still nowhere near the 3000 Euro figure you mentioned. I was specifically talking about regular macbooks, not pros. Did they add dedicated GPU's since last summer? Cos that's when I last checked. They used to have ****ty Intel chips but that was updated exactly a year ago. The regular Macbooks have the nVidia 9400 I mentioned with 512 MB shared DDR3 1066 Mhz CPU RAM. It's about 25 times faster than the previous Intel onboard graphics card (no surprise). Edit: messed up quote tags

It sounded like she was eating all the random snacks people gave her as gifts, not her actual food rations.

Housing prices here will increase by about 20% by 2012, however I doubt $50,000 is enough to invest in the property market. I don't think they sell quarters of a house. Edit: And maybe I'm missing something, but 20% by 2012 is supposed to by a high increase, yet that's less than 7% per year. I could make that kind of appreciation on a basic long-term savings account. Hmm or maybe that was by the start of 2012 making it 20% in two years - that would make more sense.