Humodour

And that Saddam was a disgusting dictator which the world is far better off without. If America had the capability to remain in Iraq indefinitely (now that they're there), I would cheer it on. But unfortunately, it doesn't, as it's extremely expensive. All we can hope now is that Iraq is stable and democratic enough on its own when America leaves (behind a small peacekeeping force). One place I do support an indefinite presence in is Afghanistan, however. Not that this has anything to do with the Bush administration's use of torture; it certainly doesn't justify it.

And yet I still find them infinitely less annoying than you.

That's Alpha Protocol. Well, that's one piece of info at least: none of Obsidian's current projects use the Unreal engine, besides AP. "I am currently lead designer of our (currently unannounced) Unreal 3 project" Chris is lead designer on AP. Yes, but he automatically knew that the Unreal game was Alpha Protocol, which means it's the only one.

Can you update from the old one. I'm not sure I have enough contiguous free space without defragmenting first. Old 750 gig hd, lots and lots of clutter on it. You can but I wouldn't do it. I've heard the update feature is spotty and can cause stability issues. Still, it's worth trying if you really don't want to do a fresh install. Why not just back-up your data and replace existing Ubuntu partition? No need to free up space that way.

Often, yes. People forget there's a few other things going for Macs: - Design consistency (and hence stability) - Ruggedness - Mac OSX In the case of the Mac Mini, it's well worth it. I'll pass judgement on the rest if I ever buy them. Mkreku: nah, Macs perform identically to generic PCs with the same hardware, except they're less likely to have stability issues.

Holy ****, Blizzard has over 1000! Edit: that's 1000, not 1000!

Why should it amaze you? People were disappointed that Bethesda would be doing FO3, but when push came to shove, were keen for another installment, even if not as true to the originals as it could of been under BIS/Obsid. They resigned to the fact that FO was a Bethesda franchise now. Then, when they finally hear about Obsid getting a go at it, they remember all the things they disliked about FO3, even though it was an OK game, and get critical - for the purposes of ensuring Obsid does a better job. People get hopeful again for a real successor to FO1 and 2.

For Gorgon and others: Ubuntu 9.04 is out now. Grab an ISO and burn it. Apparently it provides a significant performance boost, too, along with various user interface updates and touch-ups in general (the work of Shuttleworth's new dedicated 'user experience' team no doubt). http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10226746-92. You can also enable the new ext4 file system in 9.04, which provides yet another performance increase. It will be enabled by default in 9.10, but for now it's up to you to enable it.

After doing some reading about Divine Divinity 2, there's a lot there that Obsidian could take a look at. I hope they take a leaf out of Larian's books, because I get the feeling they've lost their way with RPG's lately (including Alpha Protocol, but obviously the jury's still out on that one).

Some info: - Seamless world - "Dialogs are presented in a cinematic way with all the graphical fluff you

Oh, it's definitely a new game engine. Looks like they've opted for 3D: This looks like a shot of you in dragon form, flying: Looks like you can play as a female, so I imagine face customisation and stuff is also in: Playing as a guy: Dual-wielding: Playing as a dragon, spitting fire at enemies: This is an RPG first and foremost, so before you leave comments with "GRAFFICS R SO ****" keep that in mind. Personally I'll be happy if the graphics aren't the best thing out there, as it should hopefully mean more focus on the actual gameplay. Frankly, I must admit I'm disappointed it's not 2D isometric, or at least Dungeon Siege style. What's the world coming to? More screens here: http://www.gamershell.com/pc/divinity_2_eg...creenshots.html Spellcasting:

So I was randomly installing Divine Divinity on WINE since everyone says it works flawlessly there. I needed to get a patch so I went to Larian's website. Meanwhile I'm wondering "So whatever happened to Divine Divinity 2? It's been 7 years now." Lo and behold, I am greeted by the following: http://www.larian.com/egodraconis.php Divine Divinity 2 comes out this year. Anybody else excited? Looks like they've got a new engine, and you get to play as a dragon lord - so your character can switch between fighting as a dragon or a human. Sounds cool. I hope they still have character classes, unless they have something more akin to SPECIAL.

Microsoft has suffered the worst year in their existence, with the first ever year on year loss, which can only be partially blamed on the global recession (hint: netbooks): http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsofts_...rd_quarter_ever Apple has experienced the best year in their existence, despite the global recession, with their most recent quarter even being the best ever: http://au.gear.ign.com/articles/975/975650p1.html Winds of change and all.

That's pretty big. Enough for about 4 or 5 dedicated development teams. So certainly enough to work on at least 3 major games simultaneously.

That's Alpha Protocol. Well, that's one piece of info at least: none of Obsidian's current projects use the Unreal engine, besides AP.

Well, whatever, miscommunication abounds. The point Gorgon was making, largely tangentially, was that Kant was not a deontonologist, he just (seemingly) wrote from the perspective of the ethical framework he was currently analysing. And yeah, to a deontologist, the ethical choice is logically the 'best' choice, but from our perspective, it's often the opposite (who on earth would condone telling a murderer where their victim is hiding?). Edit: I did a quick dig, and I'm seeming to come to the same conclusion as you - Kant was a absolutist deontologist personally. Can somebody confirm/deny? Frankly, deontology is rather the opposite of utilitarianism.

*sigh*. You assumed your ethical system is the correct/only ethical system in your post (reproduced below), didn't you? If you'd actually understood Gorgon, I doubt you would have posted that. Not to a deontologist, or various other ethical frameworks. The 'better choice' depends on the ethical system. I'm pretty sure he was just pointing out that Kant didn't personally subscribe to deontology, he merely defined it. I could be wrong.

You can also go further up, say /. If you have patience and no one else answers, I can offer you a screenshot tomorrow. I press the '/' button, or type it into a command line..There are up and down arrows but they don't lead anywhere that shows the drives like the system dropdown menu. Maybe it's just that one application. Um. Ubuntu automatically mounts all drives, partitions and external storage. However, for internal drives/partitions, I often have to explore them (open as a folder) once at the start of each session for it to mount, but it will appear under 'Places' for you to do that easily. Assuming you've done that, go to /media and look for 'disk' or whatever the name of your drive is. If you're at command line, type: cd / cd /media ls And that will display all disks available. Oh, just to be clear, you don't NEED command line for this. You could just as easily click 'Places' then 'Computer' and see a GUI explorer view of it, like 'My Computer' on Windows.

I'd say 2 major projects + 2 or three smaller ones (including big projects in the early stages of production, expansions, etc). That sounds about right for a studio of 100 (I think the real number was actually about 120 last I heard). It'd be nice for somebody to dig up the real value, though.

Look up 'ethics' in a dictionary/encyclopedia: ethics is a system. You and I may have different ethical systems, and thus what's good to me may not be what's good to you. As such, the 'better choice' for a deontologist is to tell the truth. Whether or not you think that is the better choice is irrelevant to the ethical system of the deontologist. Kant definined numerous different ethical systems. He's worth reading. My ethical system is roughly utilitarian humanism.

How can you not have juries? That's just asking for trouble. Namely corruption and authoritarianism.

That was a serious example. You talk to him, he gives you a quest, you come back, he changes his mind and determines that you're not worthy of the weapon he crafted.

What about your LOLcats collection?

Can you refresh my memory? Gharbad the Weak. Not to mention that the direction Blizzard takes Dioablo 3 does not need to be in complete agreement with Diablo 2. Not many (any?) sequels are. Diablo 2 certainly changed a lot of Diablo 1 canon and backstory. I never did say that demons aren't evil, though. Nor has Blizzard. The point I was trying to get across was that many angels prize order above all else (including good), which provides room for shades of grey in how Blizzard portrays them and weaves the plot. The information released so far is simply that some angels wanted to destroy Sanctuary because they felt humans were ripe for corruption and chaos. Another aspect of the plot will probably be the notion that since humans are the offspring of demons and angels, they have immense magical powers unavailable to normal angels and demons, and since the world stone has been destroyed, these powers will no longer be dampened (under the World Stone, successive generations of humans lost more and more of their abilities). In fact the world stone's magical dampening net may have been what was preventing the above angels from destroying Sanctuary in the first place. So even without painting the angels as capable of evil, Blizzard could still fairly easily bring the player into conflict with heaven.

That's kinda hard to buy when we've faced thousands of demons, every last one of which was bloodthirsty and evil. And the leaders of hell are called the Prime Evils, with the Lesser Evils and Great Evils under them. Babylon 5 had the same problem; while the Vorlons weren't as good as they seemed, the Shadows were every bit as bad as they seemed. When we meet Gramnob, Demon of Liberty, and he doesn't immedately try to eat our face, then I'll believe Hell != Evil. We've already met a few such demons in Diablo 1 and 2. Anyway, I'm just reporting scraps of info Blizzard has released.