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The stock market kind, of course. :D

I can't believe nobody asked about permadeath...

Come now, taks. Everyone knows you're a high-profile, cigar-smoking ruthless speculator.

The opera one was fun. I assume you were satisfied with Mr. 47's "performance"?

I'm surprised nobody posted this one: Geeks only.

That is patently absurd, since Chess or Poker aren't Olympical sports, and those've been around way longer. Which undoubtedly means we'll see it sooner than later. I'm not sure I'd like to spend 12-15 hours daily playing UT2K7 for three years in order to prepare for the Olympics, anyway. I reckon it would be the wet dream of lots of folks, though.

You be careful about what you wish...

I'm a full-time slacker right now, as I got fired from my previous position as a sperm donor. In a month and a half or so, I'll fulfill my long-time dream of becoming a lowly grunt.

How inconsiderate of you to deny your working partners the opportunity to leave their duties unattended in order to be hypocritically obsequious once a year.

The system can be stagnant within a cycle.

I don't know about US versions of console games, but PAL versions don't include a written EULA anyway. All there is is a warning about the illegality of making copies. So, nowhere it's stated that what I have bought is just a license that can't be transferred or stuff. Lawl. Eh, wait a second. The MPAA propaganda campaign is working! OH NOES!!1 It's their right and duty to try and make as much money as possible. It's my right and pleasure to thwart their efforts as far as I'm able to.

Jeez, get a thread, you two.

"He's dead, Jinn"

Anti-Atari? Why, I never!

"The Anti-Atari Brigade strikes again!" "High five!"

"I can still smell the conspiracy!"

Really, for me it's more a matter of impatience, than one of moral scruples. If I don't like a game it's unimportant if I download it or not, as I'm not going to buy it anyway. But I don't like wasting my time and bandwidth downloading stuff that isn't even guaranteed to work, when I can easily and quickly get it for an insignificant sum (~

Not to mention they'll be abandonware by then...

It is. I won't tell anyone if you don't. :ph34r: The thing is, most people that know how to download a no-CD patch for a game (thus incurring in rental-based piracy), also know how to download the actual game, and don't even bother to walk down to the store. I rent most of my games, and usually after beating them, I decide if they're worth owning or not. Mostly they aren't. Sometimes I just buy the thing to support the dev, too. That's what I did with KotOR2, even though I've replayed that one once or twice since. Rental is also a nice way of scratching the itch until the game appears in the bargain bin... Oh yeah? We'll see who gets the last laugh when we sink the indistry!

Wow, you've been following up? My bad. At any rate, if the percentage is even slower, that only reinforces what I was saying. No. The surface and the atmosphere are different parts of the system, as the surface also can hold heat and therefore emits radiation as well. See Mercury. Also, IR radiations don't get "trapped" in the atmosphere. They are radiated from the surface, and a part of that of that is absorbed by greenhouse gases, water evaporation processes, and convection. Of that heat now present in the atmosphere, a part is radiated into space, and another part is reradiated back to the surface, which in turn absorbs it, starting the process all over again. I don't have figures for the exact proportions, but you seem to be better at finding those than I am. I agree, however, with your previous speculation that CO2 would make the atmosphere unbreathable before any significant (and potentially catastrophic) increase of temperature took place. No. That's negligible. Background radiation, solar wind, and even (non-cataclysmic) object impacts are insignificant as a means of delivering a significant amount of energy at a planetary scale. Consider Pluto, for instance, which is far enough from the Sun to receive substantially less direct radiation than the inner planets do. It's a frozen rock.

Eh, I got it from the rental store, thank you. As for the release date, it was out in Europe on the 26th. For you Amerikans... who knows?

Basically, a dungeon crawl. Very good ones, though.

PC, alright. Rental 4TW!

Story? Oh right, the story. Let me tell you about the story... hey, check out these cool physics!