Humodour

UK's Labour government refuses to rule out blocking Wikileaks under this act. Man I really really hate UK Labour. Actually come to think of it Australian Labour is similarly ****ed up but they face a hostile Senate so haven't been able to pass internet censorship here (and the Greens will hold control full balance of power in the Senate next election so fat chance of passing Internet censorship any time soon Rudd you bloody ****). I digress. Meanwhile most of the Tories simply abstained rather than voting against it - what a great party of action and civil liberties they are.

I think you're misinformed on the topic, Wals. Maybe we caqn get into a citation war when I get off work. :D First of all: nobody is advocating 100% wind energy or 100% solar, because it's a ****ing stupid idea. Secondly, the energy production capabilities of the two are pretty high per dollar, they're just something like 20%, maybe 100% more expensive depending on whatever technology you're looking at. It's certainly NOT energy output capacity that is the limiting factor, rather bang for buck. This will change as fossil fuels get rare and demand increases (two related but independent processes, one a product of finite supply, the other a product of demand in developing nations). Thirdly, carbon requestration technologies are not showing much promise. It's not even certain they viable for mass industrial use. Nuclear is also a poor choice to power the world. It's good for powering something like 25% of energy requirements but you'd quickly run into problems if you wanted to switch to it near exclusively, not least because it IS a finite fuel (I guess less so for Thorium, and humanity could conceivably run on it for a couple of millenia before it ran out, but people ignore Thorium at the moment because all the reactors that exist are designed for Uranium, and reactors are expensive to make). The sane thing to do is opt for the mix of fuel technologies and it greatly frustrates me that people always want to pull the debate completely in one direction ("oooooh nuclear is evil, we must have 100% renewable energy!" or "omg don't be a tree hugger, who gives a ****, 100% coal is cheaper" or "100% atomic cheaper will solve all our problems").

Indeed. Mandelson is an absolute retard.

What alternative is there though?

He thinks communism made mistakes?! No, he thinks Stalin made mistakes. Certainly not communism. Hmmmm. Yes I do think out of all of us, you do have a "special" insight to what he is thinking. Just kidding. He doesn't bother me anymore. I've moved on to hating on contemporary Russian apologists like obykven or whatever his name is.

Too bad there isn't one to switch to. You're right: instead of one, there's many. Nuclear, solar, wind, geo and you can make the rest up with traditional fossil fuels if you don't have enough renewables or thorium (Haha get the joke? Thorium is abundant as ****, and clean too.) Come on mate, don't be so daft. Well, lets see, in the US there is a moritorium on building nuclear plants and we have not built one since the 80's. Solar power makes a nice supplement but no municipality can afford to implement it on a large scale, wind farms might power a building or two but that science is a long way from being perfected. Plus almost all of out cars are still gas powered because the average working person cannot afford a hybrid (which only gets slightly better mialage for double the cost) and smart cars and electrics are impractical or cost prohibitive. The US enegery policy since Bush 41 has been a bloody disaster and with every new administration it gets worse and worse. Fair enough.

It's a talent, and one we work hard to nurture. Hopefully this will be a good test of David Cameron's commitment to personal freedom - assuming he becomes PM - and it'll be repealed or revised very soon. I think we should get onto the Tories HQ and send a rocket up 'em on this point. Although, to be brutally honest I'd rather have a commitment that he's not going to roger the BBC. I don't get it - why do you immediately look to the Tories when you are opposed to them ideologically and know they're going to screw you over on a number of things you deem important (e.g. BBC)? The Lib Dems would seem a much stronger candidate for your vote, especially given their commitment to civil liberties and the economy. They're basically a socially conscious libertarian party, which would, in my mind, mesh well with your views. They've also indicated that if it came down to it, they'd support the Tories over Labour in a hung parliament, so again, all good there. And frankly I'd think you'd WANT a hung parliament because of the increased scrutiny it provides for all policy decisions. E.g. **** like this wouldn't pass if the UK had a hung parliament because it'd require support from either the Tories or the Lib Dems as well as the government (Labour). The Lib Dems certainly don't support it and the Tories say it was rushed and poorly thought out, without most abstaining. "Of the 189 Aye votes, I make it 185 Labour and 4 Conservatives. Plus the two tellers were Labour. Of the 47 Noe votes, I make it 23 Labour rebels, 16 Lib Dems, 5 Conservatives and 3 others (DUP, PC, Ind). Plus the two tellers were Lib Dem."

Too bad there isn't one to switch to. You're right: instead of one, there's many. Nuclear, solar, wind, geo and you can make the rest up with traditional fossil fuels if you don't have enough renewables or thorium (Haha get the joke? Thorium is abundant as ****, and clean too.) Come on mate, don't be so daft.

He thinks communism made mistakes?! No, he thinks Stalin made mistakes. Certainly not communism.

Oh wow, every time I think the UK can't **** things up any further they go and surprise me.

No, I'm sick of hearing that. The developer DOES have clout with their publisher, much as they might be happy to appear as if they don't with things like this.

Feck, it's not available for PC

Well we do. There's absolutely nothing wrong with legal porn and they've done enough psychology research studies to prove it isn't harmful (indeed can be beneficial) for me to wonder why you'd even make a statement like that.

So what you're saying is, Apple should add an adult content filter, such that adult content isn't displayed by default? Honestly Orugun01, it's not hard to satisfy everyone without being inconsistent authoritarian ****.

I love this response when one of America's domestic policies is questioned. It's hilarious every time, and reminds me quite a bit of how Chinese nationalists respond when somebody criticises things like China's human right's record. You're comparing America's gun laws to China's human rights record? Really? No. Read my post properly. I'm comparing a collective inability to handle criticism from those in other nations, which is rather reminiscent of Chinese nationalism. I don't recall seeing any such threads. Could it be because those policies were correctly identified and rejected many decades ago as the disgrace they were? Or are you saying you'd like to move from present-day policy failures in America to those of the past, such as slavery and institional racism? Or perhaps you're just saying somebody from Australia shouldn't criticise America now because Australia has made mistakes in the past. I hope this isn't actually your point, because from a logical perspective it is very stupid. So are China's human rights records. And I bring that up again because it helps illustrate my point: America is a big nation, one of the world's leading nations, and it acts like it and projects itself as such. When Chinese nationalists get all antsy about people criticising China's human rights record, I point this out to them: critical scrutiny comes with such aspirations. I'm not disappointed in you, however, more amused than anything.

Predicted customer response: Well, if you say so. http://www.cnet.com.au/apple-if-you-want-p...d-339302586.htm

We get the game before everyone else? Am I reading that correctly?

I love this response when one of America's domestic policies is questioned. It's hilarious every time, and reminds me quite a bit of how Chinese nationalists respond when somebody criticises things like China's human right's record.

OMG Wolfmother! So awesome.

Wals, a bunch of democratic Asian countries have news companies that produce English language versions. Indonesia is a good one because it has a free press, is democratic, is the largest Muslim country in the world, is part of Asia, and is detached from the Mid East and Arab world. The Jakarta Post is probably the prominent English news source of Indonesia. Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines also have English language news sources which are a good read when they haven't been ripped straight from Reuters or the AP. Strangely, I'm not aware of any English languages news sources from Japan. Indian papers are worth a read if you can get over the structure of Indian English.

Sure there is, you have as much access as Valve (or its partners) decide you have and they can cut it off at any time without legal recourse. To whit: Not that it means they will cut off access, just that they can and there's nothing you can do about it if they do. (Yes, I did not sell my soul to Gamestop or whoever it was) Earlier you said there's a 10 activation limit, now you're trying to imply Steam is going to maliciously cut people off somewhere down the track because you can't backup your original claim. I find that disingenuous.

I have **** internet indeed, but not dial-up, it can handle other stuff fine. So questions arise: 1) Why does a matchmaker / game starter service need so much more bandwidth than, say, a flash website? Why is it, in fact, even slower than or about as slow as loading youtube? 2) Why does it take the same time on a good computer even when in offline mode (and, soemtimes, tries to connect anyway?) 3) Why does it freeze and take ages to toggle between online/offline? I have to say it's your computer because it doesn't do that on mine. I have run into some of those problems some of the time but not regularly. As to the bandwidth requirements: I don't know why. 512 kbps up is fast. I THINK 256kbps was fine, from memory. How do I specify where to install Steam games? Specifically, with Steam on drive c, how do I get it to install games on drive d? I was under the impresison this oculdn't be done. It's annoying, but it's more the way the programme is designed rather than a deliberate move. You have to uninstall Steam and then reinstall it I believe, specifying the download directory during install. I've certainly got Steam installed to C drive but downloading/installing games to my external drive F. I can't remember the uninstall process so backup Steamapps just in case.

I avoid Al Jazeera. They're one of the less biased Middle Eastern news sources, and are good for a different perspective on international relations, but in some respects it's as useless as reading any newspaper that comes from China. Between Voice of America, BBC, Reuters, Bloomberg, and the various Australian news gigs, I get an OK analysis of things.

I don't have any speed problems. Unless you have a super-****ty computer, I'd say it's your connection speed (dial-up?), so Steam clearly isn't for you. That simple. And the last one about choosing where to install games is downright incorrect. Steam let's you play it on ANY computer. All you do is log into it. It's essentially in the cloud, so the fairly streamlined process of "online activation" as Zoraptor calls it is hassle-free (like logging into MSN) and for tangible gain. Even Steam savegames are being sent to their cloud servers now so you can continue progress on any computer. There's certainly no activation limit as somebody incorrectly claimed earlier in the thread. The ****ty DRM most publishers use, and which is being used here for AP does not come with any upside (but certainly comes with downsides - limited activations) - it's simply there to make life hard for legit customers and 2nd-hand games sales whilst not having any impact on illegal download rates. Edit: And furthermore, I log into my Steam profile and play Steam games with no net connection all the time. You don't even have to go into offline mode while online first.

http://www.physorg.com/news190293536.html Hehe.