Hurlshort

Defendor - Woody Harrelson plays a learning disabled superhero. It was surprisingly heartwarming. I enjoyed it a lot.

That was pretty irritating. These are both your quotes, the top is what started this argument. Do you see the problem here? Ok, sure, except this is the way you state your facts: That is hardly looking at facts. These are loaded statements designed to cast as negative a light as possible on organized religion. That is fine, but don't try to deny you have an agenda here, you are looking to trash organized religion. Own it, because comments like this make you look bad: I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm not Christian or Muslim or a Buddhist. My personal beliefs are along the lines of Deism. I do spend a lot of time studying religion though. It is my job to do so, but it is also something I find fascinating. I take part in a variety of different religious events, from Ramadan to Christmas to Rosh Hashanah to the Chinese New Year. I've even attended a Wiccan handfasting ceremony. And you know what, they all share the same basic concept of community. It is impossible to measure pros and cons of organized religion like some sort of metric system. It is too big. It is like arguing the true nature of humans.

The problem I have with your posts on organized religion is they are way over to one extreme. I usually do take exception to people attacking organized religion as some sort of evil incarnate. I also take exception to the folks who believe organized religion is infallible. Religion is simply a manifestation of human nature. It is as great and terrible as man himself. When you make a claim like "Our world history would be a LOT more peaceful" it is rife with problems. What if a pagan religion had dominated Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire instead of Christianity? Do you really imagine it would have been sunshine and butterflies for everyone? Most pagan religions practiced various forms of sacrifice, and the tribes that practiced paganism weren't known for their peacefulness. What if Buddhism swept across the world? Buddhists have a history of violence as well. It's just not a realistic argument, religion has always existed and, as I said earlier, it can be as great and as terrible as human nature itself.

Geez. I have a hard time believing she will even get within sniffing distance of the Republican presidential nomination.

Bible bleeding heart, awesome! I will be honest, you are probably the most close minded person on this forum, so it is funny to hear you go on about this stuff. Not sure if you've noticed, but no one has condemned you for being wiccan, while you seem eager to condemn folks for being Christian...even when they haven't stated their beliefs.

But organized religion is teh bad! All those soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and community outreach programs are tools of the devil.

I'm glad my daughter can now yell at me when I forget to do her buckles.

Even the Crusades were a response to the crumbling of the Byzantine Empire.

That was pretty random. I'm going to go out on a limb and say alcohol was involved in this post

ugh, really? I thought you could activate it online. I mean, this version I have here, it's in english, in order to play it I just have to buy a serial code and then activate the game. or I can play through the tutorial for free. or it's available only in Europe? I hear it's sketchy to get it that way, I'll wait for the NA release. It will also give it time for bugs to get worked out. I also have a crappy internet connection.

Everyone understands that video games are non-essential for life, right?

Well, a good chunk of us won't see the game until at least January.

I'd like to see a return to the Redguard swashbuckling stuff myself.

That's it, thanks! Pretty sad stuff, really.

I traded in my Wii and got a Playstation Move for my daughter. She is only 3 and a half, and the Wii remote was always too confusing for her. The Move ice cream looking thing is much better designed for young people, it has one big button and then a trigger, and that controls most everything. It is also motion sensitive with the camera, so right now she is playing this eyepet game and she can chase it around without the controller. So far it looks like a pretty awesome setup, I picked up the Sly trilogy, so I'll try that later. She does keep trying to take the pet to her bedroom though. I haven't quite explained that he is only in the TV.

It does have this. It is broken up into chapters and books, and each book is a self-contained storyline. As a fan of RPG's, LotRO compares very favorably with some of the best. It has some of the best storytelling I've encountered in any game genre. edit: Oh, and it is free, so nothing lost if it doesn't turn out to be your cup o' tea.

If an Eastern European gamer making, say, $400 a month, buys a $1000 PC, he will probably be doing so through a small loan paid over 2 years with an interest rate of at least 20%. Which means that he will be paying at first, some 50$ out of his monthly income in the first year. Now, it's not unreasonable to suppose that this gamer will spend $300 a month in various expenses, including rent, food, phone, gas, electricity, water and transportation. Now, how does this gamer play games on his $1000 PC? He pirates them. Now, I said Eastern European, but I could have said South American, Southeast Asian, or Southern European. These are huge markets and games simply aren't priced to be sold there at all. Games are a luxury. He could also wait for the price point to come down, or only buy a few titles a year. It's a poor excuse. Wasn't there a game awhile back that was offered at a pay whatever you can afford model, and it was still taken for free by a sizable number of people?

You are not looking at this from a business perspective. Logically, you might be correct, but businesses run on profit & loss, supply & demand. They have a product with a high demand, but they are unable to make a profit on half of the users. What I'm saying is at some point, most businesses are going to look at that and decide there is an opportunity for more profit and less loss on the consoles. I'm just saying this is a huge problem for the PC industry. Like numero uno. I'm glad we can agree that piracy is bad. edit: I'm making a big deal about this because it shocked the heck out of me. I've always been a vocal opponent of piracy, but I didn't realize it was this rampant. I figured most games suffered about 10-20% losses to piracy, and I assumed a good chunk of piracy occurred after a game was released for awhile. This is a brand new game and it is seeing close to 50% piracy numbers. That is absolutely crazy to me. If I spent years of my life working on a game and I knew that many people took it without paying, I would quit and go do something else with my creative talent.

It is a completely ridiculous argument to say that they wouldn't pay for it anyways. That isn't how businesses work, they work on supply and demand. There are 6 million people using the product. Only half are paying for it. That is a serious problem. From a business perspective, that is a huge loss. I can't think of another industry with a 50% theft rate. That's insane.

I can't speak for Poland, but most of these exist in the US. But all this means is there is a paperwork process that needs to be gone through in order to do certain things. None of these things are actively withheld from citizens, and if they are, there is a legal system that heavily favors the individual citizen. Also, most of this stuff is designed to protect people. I don't want people driving around in unregistered cars without licenses and insurance on makeshift roads with no police presence! I want to know that when some bozo hits me, I have legal recourse.

Agreed about the companions. Heck, most people are now complaining that they are too effective.

No, but it's nothing to upset them as they're not a factor. I wonder if anyone's totalled up the piracy numbers for non-torrent sources though, for both console and PC. I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Do you see that this is rampant piracy? Does it make sense to you that this is a large problem for the PC industry? Is it logical that with piracy like this, less developers will choose to create PC games? That's all I'm getting at.

So when someone creates something and sells it online, and then 2.7 million people take it without paying, do you think it is comforting for them that those people likely wouldn't have bought it anyway?

I was a War Paladin. Pretty predictable.