213374U

Finally. I was beginning to think I was the only person here that didn't like HL2. If what you play games for is the narrative, you might as well get another game now, before your feeling of wasted time grows any further.

Well, the crowds at the parade aren't really actors like the rest of NPCs you find through the game. They don't appear in the radar, and their behavior and interactions seem to be greatly simplified so as to prevent any framerate drops. You can bump against them and kill them, though. I didn't try to go on a rampage in the middle of the parade, though, so I don't know how they would react. The end result is pretty good, anyway. No, as I said, the game does follow a plot, with pre-rendered scenes being played between missions. The plot is also reinforced by some bits of info you can get from the newspapers.

You just can't do that in this game. It's hard enough to approach someone from behind without them hearing and turning around (in which case you can't grab them) so you can knock them out, and it's often impossible to do because people can see you. At any rate, you won't be putting more than two or three people to sleep per level, and in most cases it'll be to grab a disguise or get an annoying potential witness out of the way. Well, yes and no. There seems to be more civilians than previous installments (bars, parties with 10-20 NPCs), but less guards and/or police. Also, guards tend not to stay still for more than a few seconds, and not always in the place that is convenient to you. As for crowds, there's a mission that takes place in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras parade. That enough for you?

Yeah, well. But it wasn't me posting the link, you see. Anyway, <--- idiot

http://www.gamershell.com/download_13964.shtml The best site to download games stuff.

So, who is this "23374U" person, anyway? "

Now, now. That would be telling... It's not. You always knock them out successfully, and for the rest of the mission. No deaths either, unless you do something afterwards. That's not so bad, really. You already have enough in your hands to have to worry about people waking up.

If he didn't do (a), he wouldn't be Carl Martini.

Oh, right. Well, that's not what I was taught. Chemical potential energy is a form of energy alright, but it has nothing to do with the current heat a piece of matter posesses at a given time, even though it can affect it if chemical reactions do appear. I don't understand how you could measure the energy/heat/temperature of a void. Um, no. You don't measure the temperature of the empty spaces between particles. You measure the gas as a whole, regardless of the distance between its constituent particles. Me too. And apparently I still screw up as I post the wrong links. You too... what? I'm calling it a night myself... its 3:20 AM over here.

Well, I was trying to point out that it's not that everything that isn't a star or a really hot rock really has a very low energy. But matter with low energy (and thus low temperature) takes much longer to lose energy via radiation. The 2,74K figure is somewhat inconsequential, I think, since there's a large part of the universe we can't see and many things that don't fit well into the present model (dark matter, for instance). So, while that temperature is probably deducted from observed irradiance, I'm not too convinced of any drawn conclusions from it. Nope, not nullified, since a part of the energy lost in water condensation does not get sent back to the surface. Think of it as a means of heat transport. Some of the heat from the surface is taken up to the clouds, where some is sent back to the surface, and some irradiated. Clouds can only emit in lower frequencies than visible light. Condensation is a thermodinamic process, and theferore energy lost is liberated in form of heat. It also doesn't matter if the CO2 is above the clouds, as a part of the IR energy absorbed and then irradiated back by the CO2 will always end up on the surface. No, but convection is. Heated gas will ascend, until it cools down. That's a valid point, I guess. At this point it's all speculation, though. Venus is much closer to the sun, too. A runaway greenhouse is a rather catastrophic atmospheric process, which seems unlikely if we consider environmental conditions in past periods, when it was much hotter. Something of greater impact than human influence would have to occur for the system to destabilize, I think.

Um, what link? The "Selective Surfaces" one? I can't find anything there regarding potential energy. At any rate, I'm not sure what potential energy you are referring to. Mechanical? Electrical? Chemical? And, you can't determine a piece of matter's "total energy". You can only measure energy exchanges, but knowing exactly how much energy something has (considering all aspects) involves breaking a few principles. Of course, where there is nothing, it makes no sense to measure temperature. However, there are also empty spaces between the particles that make up gases, and we measure their temperature no problem. Now, if you take that to places where the gas density is incredibly low, such as interstellar space, it's easy to understand how average temperatures are so damn low. Yeah, I'm actually having to think this stuff through before posting. It's been a while since I made use of these stuff and I'm also having to look up a lot of data... damn memory.

The thing is that, the colder something is, the less energy it does emit. The Stefan-Boltzmann law not only gives a correlation between energy emitted and temperature. It also provides a measure of the speed of that emission. Well, I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. But according to the Wikipedia, directly reflected energy only accounts for 30% of the total emitted, the amount reflected by clouds accounting for 20%. That means that 70% is actually IR radiation being emitted mostly by the atmosphere (since according to taks, only 25% gets through). So clouds, while important, are probably more a radiation leak outwards than a radiation mirror. I'm not sure water vapour pressure is a factor by itself. Clouds aren't actually water vapour, they are condensed water. So, at higher temperatures, there's more vapour that condenses forming clouds, because the atmosphere can accept more water in vapour form. That's my opinion, but I'm not an expert by any means. No, the planet liberates heat only in the form of EM radiation, to space. In a vacuum, there's no other way of transferring energy. However, heat is transferred from the surface and lower strates of the atmosphere by means of convection and cloud formation, which in turn is emitted both into space and back to the surface in the form of IR radiation. As for Venus, you need to consider that its atmosphere is incredibly dense (90 times more massive than our own, again according to the wikipedia). It is also richer in CO2. Compared to Mercury that has no atmosphere to speak of, it's not so strange that Venus is much hotter. I'm clueless on the subject. Reading a bit on it, it seems unlikely, though, since Venus atmospheric conditions are completely different.

Well, energy is energy. Saying that heat is a form of energy is not wrong, since heat can actually be transformed into other forms of energy. That's correct. But what really counts when calculating the average temperature of the universe is the immensity of empty space. Ultra low particle densities in interstellar space more than make up for the many stars that make up those huge galaxy superclusters. All in all, space is more empty than cold. I read somewhere that if you could find a way to compensate for the very nasty effects of vacuum and harmful radiation, you could make spacewalks in a t-shirt, since loss of heat due to radiation is a rather slow process at relatively low temperatures.

Taks probably meant radiation at shorter wavelengths. Radiation at those wavelengths isn't "heat" per se (as that's IR radiation), but visible light (which incidentally is the spectrum band in which most of the sun's energy is emitted) and UV rays. That's how I interpreted his post, anyway. You are not taking into consideration that the atmosphere radiates heat in both directions, not only towards the surface. Convection and condensation to form clouds transfer a lot of heat into the atmosphere, which is emitted to space. If the temperature increases, those processes increase as well. True. I'm sure you realize that if you don't consider other means of liberating heat, this logic leads to a cyclical heat exchange between the atmosphere and the surface of the planet that would continue until the surface reached a temperature high enough to start emitting most of its radiation in the near IR and visible spectre, effectively a furnace. That is obviously absurd. Therefore, and considering the present heat emission properties of the atmosphere (and taking into consideration what taks said about CO2 heat absorption) I'm inclined to think that the impact of human CO2 emissions in global warming is negligible.

I rest my case, ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury.

Uh... are you trying to use the Chewbacca Defense against me?

How can a $500 video card suck?

Yeah, that's pretty cool. It probably was a long time demand over at the IO boards. The most interesting new feature, however, is probably the notoriety system. Witnesses you allow to escape alive will be questioned by the police who will in turn elaborate a sketch that will be published in the papers and allow people to recognize you in later missions. The sketch's likeness depends on how many witnesses have seen you. You can also be recorded on CCTV, which will increase your notoriety by quite a bit. You can reduce your notoriety by means of exorbitant bribes, that can take up a large part of what you earn in a mission, though. The game also features a monetary penalty for any clues left in the scene such as your suit, or any of your custom weapons. I believe in the higher difficulty levels, this increases your notoriety as well. All in all, very good stuff.

Yep, I thought about that as well. I don't know about US retailers but over here, while they won't return the money, they are always happy to change your bad copy of the game for a new one. It sucks when you get a bad CD.

I think you just crossed the line of "retreating with honor", H.

Well, the only serious problem you'll probably have with the PS2 controller may be when sniping. Apart from that, you won't be getting into firefights, ever, unless you're not aiming for a Silent Assassin rating. And from what I've played, the game usually offers a close & personal alternative to using the sniper rifle (as you might not have it, since you choose your equipment before the mission). The graphics are an entirely different matter.

I think that's consistent with the setting. In Ancient warfare, if an army lost its strongman, it often fell into disarray and defeat was almost assured. Getting to the point where the leader of the army was killed usually implied that things weren't going all that well, to begin with.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, eh Hunter? Even if those scientists are right, all that means is that the notion of race is irrelevant and superfluous. It does not mean that race = species. Species is a taxonomical category, while race isn't. Equalling both only implies a lack of knowledge of the matter, and it's this lack of knowledge that has lead to the words "race" and "species" being used interchangeably in casual speech in many languages (Spanish, for instance, while I'm getting the impression that this isn't the case in English). It looks like the language barrier has once again played against you. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=race http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

Fixed.