Enoch

Thanks, Ang. Very helpful stuff. I probably won't be making the order for another week or two-- I've got some important projects going, and I don't want to risk messing with my PC until they're off my plate. (I'm also not going to have much to play games until they're done, and what's the point in upgrading before you can actually use it?!)

Thanks for the input. Total $$ isn't as big a deal to me as value-- I'd like the whole of my machine to be obsolete at around the same time (I'll probably start considering a new rig in about a year and a half). As evidenced by my putting off an upgrade for this long, I don't need the bleeding edge (where I'd imagine that my processor would start to hold me back more than the vid card). Tentatively, I'd get worried about price if the whole transaction (vid card, RAM, PSU) starts getting into the $400 range. On the RAM, my owners' manual tells me that 1 gig is the maximum my mobo can handle. As for the video cards, an additional question: I'm a little lost in the differences within each model. I.e., what's the performance difference between a card with 128MB DDR3 VRAM and one with 256MB DDR VRAM? I'm probably a bit old fashioned in reading too much into the # of MB, especially considering that the pricetags tell me that the former setup is more desirable.

Thanks, Meta, thats helpful. I was afraid that messing with the power supply (which I've never done before) would be a pain. Should I worry about getting one that will fit well in my case, or is the size & screw configuration standard?

A few of the local experts might remember me piping into some of the recent video card discussions around here. I've finally done some preliminary shopping, and I've got a few questions. I'm looking for an AGP vid card to replace my old geforce3. The machine (a Dell purchased in 2002) is a 2.0 gig P4, with 512 MBs of RAM (I'm planning on doubling this; I'll probably order it with the vid card to save on shipping). I'm looking for something that'll extend its useful gaming life by another year or two (i.e., will run Oblivion, NWN2, Civ4 maps larger than "standard"). My current concern: Power supply is 250 W. Is this sufficient to run a newer card? If not, is this something that a relative neophyte can hope to replace by himself? (And approximately how much would that set me back?) Many thanks! (Note: For price references or retailer recommendations, I'm in the continental US)

Fixed that for you.

I enjoy it from time to time. It's interesting to note that they've been making an effort to make the theme ingredients things that everyday cooks can and would get their hands on. Sometimes this works pretty well (andouille sausage is a good example), but other times it's so super-generic that it feels like they just told the contestants to make whatever the heck they want (ground beef, onions, cheese). Although I was as amused as any over the ridiculous pageantry of the original, I certainly didn't miss the 15 minutes of stock footage that they used to run before the actual cooking starts.

I'm another one of the regulars around here who never played NWN. For me, money isn't an issue so much as time is. I just can't be bothered to make time for a game nowadays unless I'm confident that it'll be a very satisfying experience. What I know of NWN puts it solidly in the "meh" range. 5 years ago, I would've played it all the way through, but I just don't have that kind of time now.

Is it just me, or does scaling the entire world to level up with the character basically amounts to having no levels at all? The differences only seem to exist in that the world scaling isn't perfectly matched to the advances in character competence, which makes the difficulty swing in a seemingly random fashion.

Okay, I'll bite. Someone fill me in on why this particular copy protection scheme is so objectionable. The game certainly has my interest-- I haven't played a decent space trading game since Starflight 2.

So I went to my girlfriend's older sister's wedding last summer. This was the first time I would get a chance to meet any of her family beyond her parents & sister. As my girlfriend was the maid of honor and thus had important stuff to do, and I wanted to not be milling around having awkward conversations with members of her extended family, I volunteered to help an aunt or two set up some of the stuff (table centerpieces, etc.) at the reception venue just before the church service. I was already dressed for the ceremony. So, long story short, bending over to pick up a box, my pants split completely open. (They fit fine-- I just got a bit sweaty running around in a suit, and they hung up on my knees as I bent down.) Fortunately, I was able to hassle the event coordinator at the reception venue to find me a handful of safety pins. So, I rode with my girlfriend's Aunt Janine back to the church, pinning my pants together in her back seat. I made it through the ceremony sitting on 4 large safety pins. Aunt Janine, who lived nearby, got her husband to stop at home to grab a sewing kit on the way to the reception. Then, while everyone else was enjoying ****tail hour, I hung out in the mens room with no pants on while Aunt Janine did a quick stitch job (I later joked that she quite literally saved my ass). Luckily, the stitching held out through the reception (with all the attendant drinking & dancing).

Most of Freemasonsry's bad rap came about because it was adopted and promoted by many of the more radical leaders of the French Revolution. They wanted to purge the religious influence on society (see Diderot's line about the last aristocrat being throttled with the entrails of the last priest), but they believed that the ritualistic elements of Catholicism played an important role in promoting social stability. So they looked to the Freemasons for a system of secular ritual to replace the sectarian (the Masons being pretty much the only non-theocratic international organization of the day). Many of the U.S. founding fathers were members because they were, by and large, fellow travellers with their revolutionary brothers over the Atlantic. Thus, there was a perception that the group was anti-religious (which in a modern context is odd, because one of their few requirements for membership is a belief in basic monotheism). After this idealistic phase died down, though, the group became a plain old social club for men. The drunken pranks that such groups tend to produce also didn't much help it's reputation, and the temperance movement in the U.S. didn't like them one bit. Nowadays, like almost all major social clubs, the organization is dying a slow death as it's members die off and aren't being replaced by the younger generation. As Tarna mentions, though, most of their organizational activities are laudable charitable endeavors. Hardly the stuff of an evil conspiracy.

Why would you need a mod to remove the fast-travel option? Wouldn't it be simpler to just not use it? (I apologize if this question is somehow stupid-- I don't have the game (or a computer that will run it).)

I'm taking another whirl at Rome: Total War. If it hooks me again, I might pick up the expansion. Then again, I've got a series of deadlines coming up in a few weeks, so I doubt I'll have much time to play anything for awhile.

Damn. Now I want this game. I guess I'm off to newegg or somesuch to order more RAM and a new vid card. Then again, I'm probably not going to have much gaming time in the next month or so...

As a Giants fan, I'm thrilled that Owens has decided to bring another NFC East franchise down in flames. Also, another receiver doesn't help Dallas much unless they get some help on the offensive line. With the current state of their line, I'd say the over/under on Tony Romo's first start is Week 7. It'll be interesting to see how Owens reacts to that...

By "developers," do they mean studios or people? I'd say the latter is far more likely. It would be pretty tough to pad a list of "hot" studios all the way out to 100.

Ah...the glory days. The best part in those games was "deliberately" forgetting segments of the roller coaster. And so as the cart passes through the apex of the loop, it flies off into oblivion. The ensuing carnage was priceless. :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Who said anything about roller coasters?

Sweet! The original RR Tycoon is one of my all-time favorites. Hopefully there will be opportunities for some of the more sophisicated stock market manipulation that went on in the late 1800s.

As long as the argument is framed in terms of "toughness," Grom's gonna win this one easily. Anybody who went to a high school in the U.S. knows that soccer players are skinny guys who are good at tapdancing in cleats and can run around for a long time without getting tired. Football players are good at beating the snot out of stuff (with the exception of the kicker/punter, who tends to be a wannabe soccer player with asthma). They're the guys you want backing you up when there's a throwdown out behind the cafetorium. The only way a soccer player's winning the fight is if it's against a marching band geekling like myself, or by turning it into a footrace a la the Life of Brian (and there ain't too many high schoolers who fall over dead from a cardiac arrest).

I'm in a remarkably similar situation. I've got at rig with a 2.0 ghz processor, currently 512MB of RAM (will double to 1 gig with this upgrade), and an absolutely antiquated 64 MB GeForce 3. I keep putting off shopping around for a respectably modern, reasonably priced AGP vid card. Preliminarily, what I'm wondering is at what point does more vid card stop helping due to my processor/RAM limitations?

Hrmm, I figured he was just pissed at me not giving him tech. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That too. But with Monte, you know he's going to invade somebody fairly early in the game (usually as soon as he gets his Jaguars). Even if you'd given him the tech, he'd still probably be planning to attack. Wars with Montezuma usually follow a predictable pattern: He revokes open borders and threatens you for a few turns; then he marches a stack of a half-dozen axemen & jaguars into your territory; you switch all your production to axemen or horse archers to counter; his stack peters out at the gates of your nearest city; your cities (with better-developed infrastructure) outproduce his; and you slowly gobble up his territory. I've done exactly that in at least a half-dozen games. To go back to appeasement, though, I'd like to make the point that it isn't always a bad idea in this game-- it can be absolutely necessary on higher difficulties. A tech or a couple hundred gold is a small price to pay for delaying the inevitable war to a time of your choosing. BTW, I like the site you picked for the 5th city. Ports on inland seas are fun! (And it looks like the Germans or Chinese will probably build a canal we can use.)

I don't like our chances of actually getting the Oracle with no marble, no industrious, and this many civs on the map. But the cash payout from uncompleted wonders is actually very good (better than you get building Wealth), so it won't be a big loss. Also, when Monte cancels open borders that inevitably means he's building an invasion stack. We should be cranking axemen instead of granaries at this point.

Auto-flushing toilets.

The real engine of population growth in America isn't domestic reproduction (which is right around the replacement rate), it's immigration.

The real question is whether this means that the previous 'state of the art' tech will be getting cheaper...