Hurlshort

Actually I have no clue what happened. I've posted them before and it worked fine, but this time for some reason they came out super small. Any suggestions?

It's even higher in countries with free health care and more socialist services. The average federal tax is only about 10% of a person's income, although it varies depending on salary, dependants, write offs, etc. I'm not complaining about taxes. I enjoy th quality of life I have in the US, and I know a large part of that is because I pay taxes. Of curse, my slary is also paid by the taxpayers, so it would be silly to complain too much on my end. No matter how low the taxes are, though, there will always be people complaining they are too much.

Clearly I'm a happy carpenter.

Woohoo, a cloak Group harvesting is awesome My noble steed

I just watched the Illusionist as well. I enjoyed it, but I found it hard not to compare it to the other magician movie, The Prestige. I liked how The Prestige realy explained every detail of the tricks, even the supernatural ones. Still, the Illusionist was a good story.

MMO's don't need to compete with WoW to be succesful. Pulling in around 100,000 subscribers can keep a solid revenue flow going. For example, City of Heroes and Everquest 2 are still doing very well.

I'd say the student Visa program is probably your best bet as well. If it turns out Oerwinde is a terrorist, we are all going to jail!

Yeah if you're happy with WoW I see no reason to change. It's the most stable game out there, and it stll looks great to me. I just have a short attention span and can never stick with one game too long. WoW kept my interest for nearly 2 years, so I definitely appreciate it. Not to be a total fanboy, but if you get tired of WoW ever, try Vanguard. There is plenty of magic. You can even levitate...which is surprisingly tricky. It feels more like controlling a boat than walking.

I do recommend getting an HDTV to everybody, even if it's a lower end model. They are pretty reasonably priced at this point, and the movie and gamin experience is a big step up.

Vanguard is very massive, and that's really why I chose it over LotR Online, although down the line I can see myself playing both. I wasn't actually sold on Vanguard until about 2 days before the game went live. Like you, it ran terribly on my machine and the bugs were numerous. But in the two weeks before release, Sigil put in major patches pretty much every day, including weekends. My performance skyrocketed, and once the debugging software was turned off, I was able to run smoothly enough with the graphics set to balanced. It is a beautiful game on those settings, and I can see how in a couple years it will continue to look stunning. The bugs are an ongoing process. I won't lie, there are a lot. But the game really has so much to do that it's not surprising. For example, my crafting was borked for a few days. So I stopped crafting and did diplomacy, harvested resources, and adventured. There are just a lot of different options. Things are being fixed often, and we are getting big patches every few days. I'm really just impressed at how hard Sgil is clearly working, and that is why I'm willing to pay them money. If the game was this buggy and I didn't see the effort, I'd suspend my account. There are three continents and something like 16 different starting areas. I really feel that Turbine missed the boat by not including places like Gondor and Rohan, although I understand the difficulty of designng such huge areas. If they release an expansion every 6 months with a new area, I can see it working, but otherwise I think the game will be old and people will move on before they really fill the world out.

I wouldn't go in with the expectation that the game is similiar to GW. It's very different.

I agree with your synopsis, but my main complaint is the tiny size of the gameworld. I got into the closed beta and was blown away by the story telling aspects and great low magic, combo style combat. I really enjoyed the game up until level 15, but then I relized how tiny it is. They show the entire Middle Earth map, but the only areas accessible for retail are places like Rivendell and the Shire. Gondor, Rohan, and Mordor are all missing. I'm sure they will add them eventually, but as of now they only have 1/8 of the Middle Earth map completed. Exploration is a big reason I buy MMO's, and this world just seems too tiny.

They need Tom Berenger to come in and clean this school out!

I love mine, but I also didn't buy it. I'm a bit ticked off that Windows Media Player 11 somehow ruined the connection it had going with my PC, meaning I can't watch videos or listen to music on my 360 from my PC, but I figure that will be addressed eventually.

Really? Were you a fan of Aftermath and Aftershock? I'm not a big fan of the whole real time combat, but I love the Xcom elements.

I'm in a total state of shock. It doesn't seem like the Sharks really paid anything for Guerin. They gave up two high first round picks for two experienced players. A line with Thornton, Cheechoo, and Guerin could be very good. I'm a bit surprised Florida gave up Bertuzzi like that. I know he's been injured pretty much all year, but they sure didn't get much in return. I'm nervous about him being in Detroit, but he seems pretty broken since the entire Moore incident.

I'm not sure what to think of the Rivet trade right now. They have an extra first round pick but it's going to be a late one considering where San Jose is in the standings. I don't know much about the defenceman that we got other than he's young and he was on the Canadian World Juniors team a couple years ago. I think it will really depend on what Montreal does with the pick. Ideally I'd like to see them take that pick and use it as part of a deal for another player. Maybe see if they can get Bertuzzi from Florida for some depth at centre. Josh Gorges is a solid pickup. He's only 22, but he played most of last season. He's struggled a bit this year because he's thinking too much. If he gets back to basics he's fast enough and plays hard enough to make a good 5th or 6th defenseman, and in a couple years could be a top four guy. He's definitely a hard worker, the guy wasn't even drafted, just showed up to training camp and earned a spot on a pretty competitive team. I don't know much about Rivet, but the Sharks definitely need some leadership. It's a team with a ton of talent and zero experience.

The Reno 911 movie. It was surprisingly funny. If you are even somewhat a fan of the show, you should go see it. It's also pretty graphic.

Here's a couple answers: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-pluck-yew.htm You know, you could do your own research on this stuff.

Looks like this is the end...

Those are very sensible options Diamond, but the fact is many 13 year old kids don't have that type of common sense. Also, a lot of bullying takes place on blogs like Myspace. Now even if the victim doesn't have a Myspace site, it's still psychologically debillitating to know that someone's website has slanderous things about you on it. For example, I went to a website a couple years back called ratemyteacher.com. Most of the comments were favorable, but there was one that really got under my skin, even as an adult. The student had referred to me as a "glorified copy machine". My solution to that problem was to avoid the website and make a few less copies, but a 13-year old kid probably won't make that decision, and just the knowledge that they are the target of such comments is a serious blow.

What do you mean by bull? I understand you weren't advocating school shootings, but that is an unfortunate end result in some of these situations. I totally agree that students should defend themselves and their classmates. If every child took a stand against bullying, their wouldn't be any bullies out there. But that isn't reality. The reality is that there are kids who go to school every day absolutely terrified about being picked on, and it doesn't even have to be physical. The whole cyberbullying is just another aspect of this, and it should be something that adults are aware of, whether they are parents, school administrators, or law enforcement. I can tell you what the typical classroom looks like. You might have 1 kid very capable of bullying in a classroom of 30. He or she probably is picked on by a parent or an older sibling. He or she probably has a 2 friends who will follow him or her around all the time because that way they avoid getting bullied themselves. Then you have one kid who doesn't quite fit in. He or she might have acne or be overweight, or might just be different than other kids. It doesn't matter what the difference is, that bully will find it and exploit it. So this different kid...why doesn't he just defend himself? Maybe he did once and got beat down, maybe he just doesn't have a confidence. It doesn't matter, the real issue is that the 26 other students aren't doing anything to help the poor kid. Those are the kids who can make a change, but it's not going to happen unless they are called out. Anyways, I know I'm ranting here, but it's late and these are issues I have to try and solve every frickin' day. So quit acting like it's some easy cure "just defend yourself" answer.

Many of these kids do eventually hit back, as a few are suggesting they do. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

Well, I hope they treat it less like a frenetic combat shooter and more like a space combat simulator (I know, that sounds odd). But the great thing about the early WC games and the X-Wing/Tie Fighter series was the strategy involved in flying a spacecraft. It wasn't just point and fire.

The whole reason schools need to be involved in cyberbullying as that it always, and I mean ALWAYS, spills into the school grounds. Does anyone else here work with 12-14 year old kids? They are emotionally all over the place. Try to think back to when you were that age, it was probably not the easiest time in your life. Just removing kids from the internet is not the answer Arkan. Just like homeschooling, taking your kid away from that entire social structure will only make it harder for them to adjust when they leave home. The internet is a huge part of our daily lives, and keeping a kid away from it will only serve to isolate them. Basically you are exchanging the "I'm being picked on" tag for a "I'm completely ignored by my peers" tag. Neither one is good. Now the best thing would be to have actual active parents who know what their children are doing, but those who live in reality know that will never happen. I've been teaching for awhile, and even in the best schools, only about 20% of the parents have a clue what their children are doing. I'm not saying I know some magic answer for cyberbullying, any more than I do for regular bullying. But at least this legislation attempts to address the problem. I know my school has been tackling cyberbullying for that last few years, and I spend about a week focusing strictly on bullying. Sure, a week of classtime is extremely difficult considering the massive amount of content I'm supposed to cover, but if it helps even one kid stand up against bullying, it's worth it. edit: Do you think Columbine happens if there is no bullying at that school?