Humodour

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.

We're hitting up Queenstown instead of Christchurch, but we'll have a day's stop-over in Christchurch anyway and sleep the night there. Hopefully we don't get shanked.

Oh come on, worth a poke if your telly's broke, yeah?

That's true. Or at least it is in an election where you only need quota (not majority) to win. I don't know if that little observation would hold in America's voting system.

Just need to smoke some jays aaaay

Dear God, a Kiwi! Everyone hide, your sheep are in danger! Zing!

lol.

I'm not buying the retail copy. No way I'm putting up with online activation bull**** like that. I'll buy the Steam version I think (assuming no 3rd party DRM). And maybe I'll buy it straight away at the ridiculously inflated price of $70, or maybe I'll wait for the price to fall below $50. Depends how good you guys say the game is.

Because the former constituent republics of the USSR aren't oppressive at all... wait... If Gorbachev had his way, the USSR would have peacefully socially and politically liberalized, rather than fracturing into a large number of right-wing dictatorships. I don't see how you think the historical result was a "good thing." I can vaguely (very vaguely) see it as a "good thing" in comparison to the continued existence of the USSR (though someone as ignorant as you is probably conflating the USSR under Stalin and the USSR under Andropov). But it really ****ed over everybody living there, and Russia still has 15% unemployment and a dictatorial President Prime Minister. Quality of life has gone downhill for pretty much everyone there. Agreed.

Regardless of the hopelessly romantic prism through which you are reviewing history, are you sure that using this guy as an example of what you are saying is a good idea? The guy who peacefully dismantled the Soviet Union? Yes, that might be quite the good example. Yeah, only that wasn't his intention by any stretch of the imagination -- American geopolitical and economic machinations were much more decisive in leading to the collapse of the USSR than he was. As a statesman, Gorbachev was pretty terrible, and he's actually a better example of what Hades said than of your own thesis. Of course, we love him because he sucked at being a bloodthirsty, power-crazed communist dictator, but that's a different story... Gorbachev wanted a much more free and open Soviet Union - that has never been in dispute. His original intention wasn't full democracy, although interestingly it is now.

Automatically? Still ****ing horrible. I hate limited activations.

My point was far more general. The first example to spring to mind is how Democrat lawmakers responded to healthcare. Edit: But that's off-topic. Israel's blatant disregard for any attempt at a peace process has really turned me off them. I quite like Israel as a country, but it is run by idiots ATM.

Yeah, this is ****ed up. When you hear Americans calling the Democrats 'left-wing', you have to have a bit of a chuckle.

Butter has unhealthy fats in it. Margerine has healthy fats in it - lots of them (and no trans fats, so I can't see the problem when people say "it's processed"). Certainly in my little corner of the world where my grandfather is a diabetic and my mum is a diabetes nurse, margerine is the superior choice for diabetics.

Normal. Give it a month for your stomach to adjust.

You'd buy it.

Nature: glaciers, caves, rainforests, climbing, volcanoes, skiing, etc. And alcohol.

Hey, all you Kiwis, give me some info... I'm travelling to South Island for 10 days on the 20th of June and am wondering about currency conversion (specifically, when to do it). Is your economy starting to get hotter yet? Are you still in recession? What's your unemployment and growth rate for the past few months/quarters? And most importantly, have you raised interest rates any yet, and are any rate rises planned? The NZD hasn't been this low against the AUD since 2000, so now is a good time to convert, but I wanted to know if it might go lower still. Also, what's good to visit on South Island? Edit - Looks like sooner rather than later is a good time to convert: http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?i...150&rf=true

ginji, not everyone lives in America. In New Zealand (and probably Australia), online is nearly always cheaper than retail. In many cases, significantly cheaper. And for older or less advertised games, it's much easier to find as well. In short, retail is more expensive with a limited selection - completely opposite to your guesses, it's rarely worth it. In fact I dont even know where you're coming from for some of this - download prices never drop? digital download has worse DRM than boxed copies? It's the opposite. Spot on.

There are some things which are best done by hand and not trusted to cylons. I mean scripts. Well if you code it yourself, or verify the source before using it, you'll be fine :D