Humodour

I'm very excited about DX3 not least of all because they acknowledge DX:IW was a steaming pile of **** and DX1 was awesome.

That's fine with me. They are making similar games to what they made originally (diablo was actually originally these guy's baby, before they fell under Blizzard's wing). I am pretty excited about Torchlight 2, just hope they don't have the flayer jungle area. Torchlight 3 will be the MMORPG I'm thinking. They have been making an MMO on the side for a while now. It will probably have another name, though. Torchlight MMO was put on hold (or at least is moving a lot slower now) because they started working on Torchlight 2. They didn't originally plan to make a Torchlight 2 but the overwhelmingly positive reaction from gamers necessitated it, if only to add Co-op. That said, the MMO is still coming, yeah.

no I'm not I still play Diablo 2 from time to time. and earlier I already praised D2 so I thought it'd be clear My bad! Wasn't paying attention.

That's because their system requires a coalition government, ours doesn't. Our system doesn't require a coalition any more than America's does. Our system is simply kinder and more enabling of minor parties and independents, because people's preferences count, meaning more independents and third-party candidates, and thus coalitions are more likely. Labour typically governs without a coalition or agreement because they've got enough seats on their own. Example: Labour gets 35% of the vote The Coalition gets 45% of the vote The Greens get 20% of the vote In America the Coalition would govern. In Australia, the preferences of those who vote for minor parties are considered before this step. Because the Greens mostly support Labour instead of the Coalition, you can add that up to 55% to 45% on a two-party preferred basis, meaning Australians would actually prefer and chose Labour to form government.

Well said, Di.

This is actually becoming quite fascinating. The notionally conservative independents are ex-Nationals members who have a focus on rural issues. That means they support the National Broadband Network and things like water sustainability and renewable energy and education and health funding (they've listed these things as their main priorities). They might be conservatives but it's more likely to be a Labour government backed by the Greens that will provide them the most bang for their buck, which they seem to be hinting at. Bob Katter's take on which party he will support is as unique as the ad he ran to convince people to elect him (to be fair, his seat was safe): "Many times I've gone to bed as a ****le doodle doo and woke up the next morning as a feather duster - this might be one of those times," Mr Katter said. And here's his election ad: And for anybody who is interested, here's a good analysis of the situation as well as some of the implications for Australia's political future (it's not doom and gloom, just a permanent shift): http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2989935.htm

I don't understand why Wikileaks didn't redact the names of the informants. Anybody?

It does seem ridiculous. Like something the Chinese government would do to silence and eliminate 'nuisance' political activists and human rights campaigners.

**** this bull****, a hung parliament with a probable conservative Abbott government. There goes the National Broadband Network! Uhg. On the upside, it's an Abbott government that would struggle to last a full term (3 years) and which would have to deal with the Greens or Labour in the Senate to pass legislation. Hahahahaha! And possibly they'll even have to deal with the Greens in the lower house too since 2 Greens were elected - but so were 3 conservative independents. All in all an amazing and historic result for the Greens. Winning Melbourne from Labour in the lower house, alongside former Green Andrew Wilkie in the seat of Dennison. Polling near 12% in the lower house up from 7.8% last election. And winning a Senator in every state meaning guaranteed Senate balance of power. It's looking kind of like the situation in Britain - conservative party having to negotiate with a progressive centre-left party.

I feel like you are generally a pretty level-headed and fair person but these statements just seem to be huge and deliberate overexaggerations. I know you genuinely dislike his ideas for the ideas themselves and not for who Obama himself is, so if you could stop representing this as a battle against Hitler and the Nazis that would be great. Agreed. Extremist rhetoric unsettles me.

Yeah, stupid website design. FIRE THE LOT OF THEM!

The NZ economy is almost as bad as Portugal's.

I'll siege YOUR dungeon!

You're kind of implying that's a bad thing. What makes you think people are sick of Diablo 2 type games? We're not. It's the same mindset that people in the industry seem to have about 2d isometric and/or turn-based RPGs, but there's no evidence to back it up because such games have always sold well (indeed I read an interview with I think Feargus recently where he muses on this exact point, but with no obvious inclination to change the situation unfortunately).

You're still going to get crazy lag for stuff hosted outside of Australia, though. And, you know, that's kind of the beauty of it - 22 million lazy Australians with more bandwidth and speed than they could possibly hope to use, but constrained to traffic within the mainland? I imagine some pretty cool and uniquely Australian applications, inventions, social networks and entertainment sources are going to pop up, catering solely to Aussies. Not that I dislike what the rest of the world produces, but it dilutes our identity somewhat by the sheer numbers involved - something like 2 billion people on the net compared to 22 million Australians. I thought it was because of all the Swedish immigrants Meh, this country is fubar. Election coming up in a few days and the choice is between Abbot and Costello or Julia "Backstabber" Gillard. We are all doomed. No interest in the Greens? They will be controlling the balance of power after all. If even the Greens don't interest you then I can see why you might feel that way (perhaps the Australian Sex Party would get you excited?), but even so I don't think a ****ty election is justification to feel the country is ****ed. Because by most measures you care to name we're at the forefront of the world (although there's still so, so much about this country we can improve).

Australia is only 4th instead of 1st because our 1Gbps National Broadband Network isn't complete yet.

Orogun I think it's the language barrier but you're crazy. I fully support 100% drug decriminalisation. I only support legalisation for the soft drugs, mostly: marijuana, the tryptamine psychedelics (LSD and magic mushrooms), and the phenethylamine psychedelics (mescaline and MDMA/esctasy) I also support harm minimisation measures such as drug replacement therapy.

IWD3

I'm guessing this is about the 10 civilian doctors butchered there recently? I was going to post a thread about this myself, but was too seething with rage at the time. If ever I needed another reason to support the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, this was it.

Labor promised Broadband Internet on Optical Fibre to 99% of Australians at a cost of 4.7 Billion. People cheered. Including myself. Then Labor revised the figure to 43 Billion. Some people had reservations, but mostly people were happy. Then now the pricing from one ISP has come out and most people 'in the know' aren't going to switch over to optical fibre for their internet. They'll use their existing ADSL2+ broadband internet connection though their Copper phone line. I say 'in the know' because the majority of Australians think the optical fibre National Broadband Network is FREE in that you just pay your existing ISP what you've been paying now and when you switch over to optical fibre you get SUPERFAST 100 MBps internet speeds. But that's not the case. Someone has to pay the Government the $43 Billion to put this network in place and the best way for the Government to get their money back is have an exhorbitant fee for the ISPs to pay and then the ISPs will pass that cost onto the consumer. In other words, it's a TAX to gain revenue to pay back the 43 Billion. One of my work colleagues mentioned to me that even though he hates Labor, he's all for the NBN. When I showed and explained to him the pricing and someone has to pay back the 43 Billion... He was all like, 'But I thought it was free." He's quite shocked at the pricing and now understands and won't be using the NBN. I was too uninterested to reply to this earlier, but now I'm bored and full of energy. Point 1) the cost isn't $43 billion, since that cost comprises 51% government contribution and 49% industry contribution. So it's $21 billion. Point 2) that $21 billion is a maximum cost - it will not be that high. Point 3) that figure was predicated on not being able to make a deal with the copper cable monopolist Telstra - Telstra has since had a deal to retire or handover those cables to the Government, lowering the price further. Point 4) the NBN if FIBRE TO THE HOME. I cannot stress how important this point is - it's a network which will exist in hundreds of years time because of the physics of the situation. Fibre has max speeds in the petabits range. This is faster than wireless will ever be capable of. Even now NBN Co. has announced the rollout speed maximum customers will receive is 1 Gbps because that's just what a GPON delivers (with a guaranteed minimum of 100mbps, although I think that's disingenuous since physically with all 32 households the fibres is split to connect at once the minimum speed is only 78 mbps). Soon they will be able to replace all the GPONs with 10 GPONs, making the minimum speed about 1 Gbps and the maximum about 10 Gbps. After that, 100 GPONs I imagine. The point is that upgrading the NBN is ridiculously easy. All you do is replace the fibre-splitting hardware, NOT the fibres themselves, which can carry data at the speed of light. Point 5) the OECD recently did a report (2007 I believe) showing how every 10% increase in broadband penetration increased GDP by 1.2%. Similar results apply to broadband speeds. The boon this will be to local industry, trade, and education cannot be overstated. It is NOT just something for individual consumers. In fact, I'd argue that is NOT the aim of the NBN at all, and it would still be just as important if you cut individual consumers out completely. Point 6) On that note, businesses will get a full fibre connection, it won't be split into 32 as the home connections will be, guaranteeing the full speed possible (1 Gbps or more) Point 7) SUPPLY AND DEMAND & MARKET COMPETITION. The more users who connect to the NBN over time and the more ISPs that join the NBN, the lower the prices will go. If you think Internodes initial prices below are bad compared to current copper plans (I don't see how), give it a few years. Point final point - the NBN is designed to pay itself off. It is not a waste in any possible sense of the word - even if it didn't pay itself off it would be worth it. You think the NBN will be expensive to consumers? Internode disagrees with you. These are the prices Tasmanians are paying (as it is already mostly complete there) and it's the price the mainland will pay aswell: http://www.internode.on.net/residential/br...home/nbn_plans/ It's kind of like the trillion dollar bailout plan in America. Except Australians love the idea of the NBN. My point is, 95% of that bailout money has now been payed back to the US government, with the remainder to arrive in the next year or two from the recipients. The bailout was not a give-away. The NBN is splurge of tax payer money.

Of couse, you guys are the descedants of criminals! I imagine this is exactly the reason, frankly.

Crude language (not just this, but the whole gamut of vulgarity) is Australian. It's not nice on the ears for outsiders, but it's a cultural thing. It even bleeds through regularly into our TV shows and political speeches. The guy in the article is a racist ****, but that's about it.

I think this sums it up pretty well. Certain Dungeon class areas that generate randomly. Wouldn't be too hard to code... you don't even really need a random topography maker, just a flat floor in a few different tastes plus some objects to random about. It would encourage a lot of players and activities Exactly! If this game plays like Diablo or Torchlight, random dungeons are a must. If it plays like Icewind Dale 1, random dungeons don't seem appropriate.

That is inaccurate. It might fail at making the CURRENT generation better than what they are, but that does not apply to generations who have only ever known a time when gay marriage was enshrined in law as a right. fail. it ain't the judge who conveys rights. judges do not create laws. Oh you can argue that all you want. It's a different point, and one I think is pretty weak. But your original claim (as quoted) that the judge's decision won't achieve its goal (regardless of whether you support the decision) is incorrect. eh? are you responding to yourself? you sure ain't responding to Gromnir's posts. the decision will not change attitudes regarding homosexual marriage. the decision will, if anything, result in increased bigotry. however, we has mentioned in numerous posts now that this ain't like Brown... the difficulties o' implementation and enforcement is far less significant. IF this thing manages to survive (which is doubtful based on the law) we don't see same-sex marriage being killed by a resistant populace; there ain't enough resistance to begin with. but again, 'cause you clearly didn't pay attention, "a decision delivered by a Court will fail at making people better than what they is." the mere existence o' legalized same-sex marriage will not make peoples less bigoted... just as a ruling regarding desegregation did not make people less bigoted. only a fool believes that a court ruling will change the prejudices o' a populace. HA! Good Fun! To reiterate, because you missed the point again: this decision is not targeted at changing the attitudes of the current generation of bigots. If it is even aimed at changing attitudes at all as you imply (rather than simply eliminating institutional discrimination and protecting a minority from the tyranny of the masses), which I doubt, then it is aimed at preventing Americans yet to be born from becoming bigots in the first place by providing a world where the notion of homosexuals and heterosexuals having different rights under law is foreign; where the rule of law fully endorses equal rights for same-sex couples. Do I think legal judgement is necessary for homosexuals to enjoy equal rights under law? No - each generation is progressively less bigoted. But if homosexuals have to wait for the current generations of youth to replace the conservative elderly that die off before they receive equal treatment under law (or rather, distinction between heterosexual and homosexual is simply abolished), that's another decade or two away. It's simply unreasonable and unfair.