Humodour

Since I figured a lot of you guys follow American politics, or at least followed the American election, you might be interested to know that the Democrats (Obama's party) just got their 60th Senate seat. In America, over the years, the senate has evolved such that you need not just a majority (50%) but a supermajority (60%) in order to pass legislation (cloture used to be a rare move, but since around Bush senior's term its been used willy nilly). The Republicans were trying extremely hard to prevent Dem cloture, but now a Republican has defected to the Democrats, so for the next two years the Dems will be able to pass subject only to their own party discipline (which isn't a sure thing - there's lots of moderate and conservative Democrat senators, Arlen Spector for one). http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...sg0VpgD97RKDNO1 Al Franken is waiting to be seated after being certified by his state as a Senator. He can't beat seated until the Senator he beat - Republican Coleman - stops trying to sue him for winning, however. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=topnews

I bookmark lots of links for "future reference" and the only time I ever use them is on a forum to prove a point. It's really not worth it, though as something to show your kids or comment on culture years from now I'm sure it has validity. P.S.: how do you live without Firefox? Or specifically how do you live with IE.

How else would it be financed? Thats why countries with socialist programs pay upwards of 60% taxes. Point a) Americans spends as much tax money per capita on healthcare as the 'socialist' (lol) democracies (mainly Scandinavia) anyway,so moot point. Point b) Australia spends less tax money per capita on healthcare than America and has roughly the same taxation level, so again, moot point. a UHS implementation in the US will result in a dramatic increase in my taxes to pay for it. No it won't.

Pretty sure DHTML doesn't work on the forums. And I can't believe you didn't score.

****, I forgot to buy this on the cheap.

Didya read my info post? Obviously not. Liar.

The CDC in America has confirmed this flu has 4 different strains in it: avian flu, North American swine flu, Asian swine flu, human flu. Apparently that's extremely rare; it's the maximum number of strain combinations possible (because flu has 8 RNA strands, which is part of what makes it so viral - it mutates and accepts new RNA so easily). Have you even read the thread? Notably, this flu will be PART of the flu season. For example, the Spanish flu was very mild when it first hit in summer, then come flu season in winter, it mutated and mixed with normal human flu and killed millions.

How else would it be financed? Thats why countries with socialist programs pay upwards of 60% taxes. Point a) Americans spends as much tax money per capita on healthcare as the 'socialist' (lol) democracies (mainly Scandinavia) anyway,so moot point. Point b) Australia spends less tax money per capita on healthcare than America and has roughly the same taxation level, so again, moot point. The majority of Americans most certainly do want healthcare. More Americans want healthcare than even voted for Obama (in percentage terms). Roughly 60% to 80% or so, depending on the wording of the poll question.

Lost Coast? I dunno. It's not exactly got bad graphics.

You're right: universal healthcare is a pipe dream. Why did all those silly countries-that-aren't-America bother implementing it? The fact that's it's been working for decades now is an illusion. Soon the debt fairy will come to collect all in one lump sum! Of course you think this is untouchable. What aspect of 'working for decades' says sustainability to anyone in todays climate? The unavoidable fact is that an ounce of prevention(responsibility) while free to begin with is worth a pound of cure. Why meet the demand for free pounds of cure except to capture the vote of the irresponsible. Another 'obama promise' to dig people out of the hole they dug themselves while piling on ever more debt. If I recall, every single country with universal healthcare is in less government debt than America is, per capita, and also their governments spend the same amount of money on healthcare as America, per capita. So much for that, mate.

Windmills do not work that way.

It doesn't sound nefarious, it sounds comedic. Um, SARS never made the leap to human transmission (it was always avian-human, not human-human). This has. SARS was a concern because if it ever did make the leap, it'd be a very deadly virus. Not unfounded given that viruses mutate thousands of times each day. And this ones mortality rate is as high as the Spanish flu. How is that 'not high enough'? :S

HL2 was fun but it was missing the soul that made HL1 great. But that's neither here nor there.

Well I was hoping I could rely on Australian isolation to get me through, but New Zealand was one of the first countries to get infected and we have open borders with them, so scratch that theory.

Mortality rate increases rapidly around mid-teens. I just did some digging and it looks like the Spanish flu also had a 5% mortality rate and was a swine flu.

This isn't a media scare. It's following exactly the same pattern as the Spanish flu which killed 50 million people (more than WW1). Avian flu is bird-to-human. Swine flu is human-to-human. That's a massive difference. Moreover, normal human flu has a 5% fatality rate among hospitalised populations. This flu has a 5 to 10% mortality rate amongst ALL infected. With 8 billion people in the world, that's almost a billon potential dead if this spreads. Normal flu kills elderly and children. The Spanish flu killed young and middle-aged health, fit people by triggering a cytokine storm in strong immune systems. Guess what? This flu is mainly killing healthy young people. Exhibit a: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:W_curve.png Oh, and did I mention we have modern air and rail systems now and far denser populations?

You're right: universal healthcare is a pipe dream. Why did all those silly countries-that-aren't-America bother implementing it? The fact that's it's been working for decades now is an illusion. Soon the debt fairy will come to collect all in one lump sum!

Well, I wrote it off as that at first, but the people I was playing it with are console fanatics, so upon hearing them complain about it also, it got me thinking.

I don't know... I understand that Obsidian have to use (at least in part) existing franchises for business reason since they still haven't got the marketing power of a Blizzard or a EA... but why translate in real time a rule system that was tailored for miniatures turn based game? If they want to make a fantasy game and to use an existing IP for marketing reasons, why don't they try to acquire the right to famous IP like A song of Ice and Fire or Wheel of Time, and create a ruleset that is indeed good for real time combat, instead of trying to make an interpretation of the D&D system that in most case is bound to be pretty artificial? Preaching to the converted, mate.

In a way it is. To the point I was initially confused it was even an issue in America (any Australian politician who complained about universal healthcare would be crucified). No, it's not perfect, but it is better than America's current situation in many, many ways, no? Monte Carlo's post was interesting. It seems the British model is different (inferior? ) to the Australian model, so of course one's mileage may vary when it comes to government-run healthcare systems. For reference, about 50% to 60% of Australians have private health insurance alongside Medicare. Myself included.

a) I've almost always used the public health system and rarely ever had a problem with wait times. Certainly I've never had a problem with coverage. b) What's your point? Any coverage is better than no coverage for the people this affects. c) Public healthcare keeps private insurance costs down. Health insurance in America is twice the cost it is in almost every other Western country, and the biter is that in America, government expenses spent on health insurance as a percentage of GDP are identical to countries with universal healthcare! So it's not like Americans even get the benefit of smaller government spending by not having universal healthcare. Well, as long as it's mandatory that could work. I haven't looked into it.

How does the macs design consistancy relate to stability? Easy. You could have read it above, but I'll repeat it for you: closed systems are orders of magnitude easier to QA than open ones. Apple computers are known for being rugged? http://i.gizmodo.com/5204395/apple-private...s-crack-problem Yes, rugged. Problems such as the above are extremely rare and that one only occurred because of the specific polymer (plastic) they were using. A failure of materials science, certainly, but that's why they switched to aluminium (the aim was light-weight design). Gorgon: not really. You can keep ignoring any positive aspects to Macs but that doesn't mean they don't exist. What I cannot fathom is how a thread about eye-opening business trends for two major tech companies ended up as a "Macs sux lol" thread. Has nobody else observed that Microsoft is following the same path IBM did in its downfall?

Obsidian's latest two titles were both their own rulesets and essentially their own IPs (Aliens is half-half). I think it's fair to say they certainly want to do their own thing. But given circumstances, there's a fair chance this next unannounced project won't be their own ruleset/setting. Actually, there's a fair chance it will be their own setting too. How about a coin toss?

You sound like my friend when I told him they were butchering DX2. Still, it's a bit different now since I'm hoping for a better game than DX2 (easy to do), not a game as good as DX1 (hard to do), so I'll still buy I'd say.

I was asking about L4D, as I've only played the demo on PC. I was talking about L4D. Well your theory falls apart because we found it boring (or at least, certainly far less fun and engaging) on the consoles and exciting on the PC (short as it is). You can try and say we found the combat 'experience' boring and not the game, but that sounds a bit silly. Basically: if it plays differently between platforms, then that's effectively a different game, regardless of whether or not the source differs greatly.