Humodour

Lay off, he just meant something like "You chose a great company to work for. Their games are entertaining to a lot of Chinese people even after the cultural barrier."

It depends on their level as well. I doubt you'll be able any time soon - they are meant to be very powerful foes.

That's epic. I was hoping it'd be Anders for the comedy value.

Pretty much. I'll be happy to use DX10 when I switch to Windows 7 - and I'll be a W7 early adopter. I think that by the time W7 has rolled out, the DX10 marketshare will be fairly massive between Vista and W7. Probably still not enough to validate DX10 only games, but devs will likely start to focus on it in favour of DX9/XP users by then (though I imagine XP will maintain a firm grip on some OS market share even then). Nah, that's correct. Thing is, corporate users are both some of the biggest users and one of the biggest indicators of OS success.

To start with, you're extrapolating a pistols skill to then mean separate skills for every other type of gun, which is extremely rare to find in games but also has no support from the article, which speaks only of pistols as a skill. I will be very surprised to find a separate skill for shotguns, rifles and machine guns each, as you claim, not least of all because it would **** up the skill system in terms of balance (one diplomacy skill but 5 or 6 weapon skills? lol), but also because it would be an annoying combat system for the player to work with, spreading things far too thinly as it were. And is the distinction really any less arbitrary? You might be able to make a case for it if they weren't building this game around Rambo-style playing being a definite option. Most recently, you illogically redefine the meaning of 'catch-all' to mean 'specific' so as to refer back to your original argument that weapon groups must be 100% realistic (even if it doesn't makes sense in terms of fun and game balance). This argument could only hold water if weapon grouping based on form/function (BG2, IWD2, your system) was a less arbitrary choice than weapon grouping based on size/complexity (BG1, KOTOR, SS2, Deus Ex, Fallouts), which signs indicate is not the case. Re: Did you by any chance come from RPGCodex or NMA?

Somehow, I'm glad.

Right, because it makes perfect sense that you could apply the rules to the Chain Shot ability to a crossbow, a shotgun or an assault rifle... No, wait, sorry. That was sarcasm. Even if that was a "catch-all term," the weapons it describes would be extremely similar (ie precise, fairly large clip, medium-to-long range, et cetera), and couldn't be held in such broad categories as "small guns". Face it: I'm right, you're wrong. Somebody has ego problems. But no, you're not 'right'; I've just stopped arguing with your circular logic. It seems you created this thread not to speculate about the skill system but to try and enforce your personal opinion of what it will be like. I'll continue to wait till more information is released about the weapon system before I blindly accept your overblown speculation about it - that will be a much better indicator of the truth.

Drawing parallels between SecuROM and the HIV virus only serves to cheapen both. On another note, one of the reasons people should oppose this kind of DRM is not because it's 'harmless' or 'overblown' as Gromnir believes, but because it's just one small step towards granting publishers ever more control over copyright. Stopping it right here and saying "that's enough" as has been the case with Mass Effect sets a precedent. It draws clear lines between what is acceptable and what is not, and will make further future 'progress' in DRM require clear discourse between publisher and consumer, as it should be. It should never, ever be a case of letting them get away with it simply because it is unobtrusive to the majority.

I think I'm most after a Cyberpunk type game. I guess you could say SS2 and DX1 (and almost Anachronox) came close. I'm thinking like a Bladerunner RPG or something. It would be refreshing. Edit: And yeah, turn-based isometric would be sweet. I think there's definitely a profitable market for it out there even if it doesn't pull in the big bucks of console gamers.

? I really liked this episode, as the story has finally moved forward. Can't wait for next week Holy crap, that was not meant for this thread. It was intended for Waslingham in a thread where he asked about laptop use outdoors. And agreed with your posts.

True. I've been planning to get a new PC for ages now. It's just a matter of money.

Pardon me if I ignore you when you start to compare this to AIDS, Gromnir.

Personally I'd like something more cool like a PipBoy or Denton's implants, than something boring and commercial like an iPhone or PDA.

Occam's razor doesn't apply here. Whilst the 'conspiracy' theory is certainly more complex, it potentially has better explanatory power to the 'accident/coincidence' theory, given the shrewd, manipulative mindset of corporate execs. Moreover, Occam's razor is more of a secondary support where all other evidence and attempts at proof fail - it should never be used as the main argument for why something is 'wrong', nor as a blanket back-up argument which is beyond question.

Intentional or not, I agree. These are the reasons I am hesitant for 'praise' Bioware for this move.

Actually, it's true that businesses are the dominant force in operating system uptake. Gamers are more about driving innovation, if that make sense. Linux plays many games fine. GTA, Oblivion, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, etc... granted you need the commercial Cedega atm (about $50 I think), but Wine also plays a lot of games and is catching up (considering Cedega stole Wine code, that makes sense). It's more of a patch solution for now, but the ability is certainly there and will only get better.

Last time you asked me that, I meant to post a link for 9% share figure, as of February 2008. Sorry. As of current, the figure is about 12% as of April 08: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_o...erating_systems Or for comparison with XP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Win...ng_environments I don't see why you're so surprised by that figure. Does it not make sense that people will stick with a product that works? When both the gaming or business industries have no strong incentive to switch, of course you're going to see very weak growth. A 2007 outlook of the problem, but it's still quite current in its poignancy: http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Busin...39283918,00.htm And here's a little present-day diagram for the visual learners:

Actually, barbequing a hard-drive is one of the best ways to erase the data. The old 'rub it with magnet tricks' is no substitute for scrambling the magnetic heads through heat. Other than that, there are free, quick open source programs you can download that re-write sectors so many times that theoretical retrieval of any meaningful data becomes as statistical improbability.

Well, you might be right. It's definitely not the battery. The biggest indicator of this was that a new battery didn't work. And I don't think it's the PSU because a few LEDs are on... the PSU were broken, nothing would be on, right? So it sounds like you might be on the money... how do I fix that?

How do you figure that? I thought 64-bit OS's had a 32-bit emulation layer?

Better than before I got the anti-glare screen. It was an old technology, though. You'd have to ask somebody else for the effectiveness of today's solutions, sorry.

Weird ep. Kara definitely said music this time, though. I was so hoping Anders would put his hand in the Cylon console. Cylon true death was interesting. I wonder who Deanna will see? It seems she saw only one of the final five. Anders looked a bit paranoid. Here's a 2007 overview of outdoor screens for laptops: http://www.pencomputing.com/features/outdo...e_notebooks.htm

You won't need to worry about needing Vista any time soon. Vista has about a 10 to 15% market share and is experiencing slow growth rates. No publisher will make their game DX10/Vista only. Similarly, most programs today don't even utilise 64-bit architecture and that's unlikely to change much any time soon. The pros? Well, 64-bit is generally only useful when you need to deal with lots of data. Bit increases become exponentially less beneficially the higher they go. It's definitely not a case of bigger is better. For gaming, I'd definitely stick with XP and a 32-bit architecture.

They removed that huh? Awesome. I think I can deal with the 3 installs thingo (and there will be a crack if I can't). So much for Gromnir calling our rants and boycotts a waste of time. In fairness to Grommy, your rant and my rant probably was a waste of time. It was the thousands of other rants that did it! That and somebody probably got the figures on cancelled pre-orders. True, but any one of those other rants on their own would have done nothing. You need to take these things as a collective - it's the fact that there was such large and widespread resistance to these features which made EA realise they were a bad idea. Kudos to EA for listening to its customers, as well. It's like in voting - any single voter's vote is meaningless, but if you apply that logic to all voters, things fall apart.

Damn ****ing straight.