Gorth

If you are interested in history, I can recommend reading up on the schism between Rome and Constantinople, the hostility between the Latin and Greek descendants of the Roman Empire, the Patriarch of Rome deciding he was better than the other four Patriarchs and declaring himself Pope and leading the western part of the Orthodox church into what became Catholicism. Basically, the Catholics were the first heretics of the church.

What Christians are you referring to? Catholics tend to love their gaudy symbols. I'm sure most of them are supposed to follow those 10 amendments Moses brought down from a mountain top or some such (15 if you believe in Monty Python) Edit: Commandments, dangit, not amendments. I had religion/history class about the subject in my native Danish as a kid

Looking at all those fancy GPU's... I need to upgrade my Ti 1050 (4Gb) some day. I could use more Cuda cores for rendering, but I worry that the trade off is going to be a noisy cooling. My current build (somewhere in this thread) is effectively noiseless.

Melting points... I'm so hot! I know from personal experience that when you light a large pile of magnesium, it burns very hot and very bright

Didn't the Christians have some kind of constitutional amendment against worship of symbols anyway?

I remember Visceris getting killed repeatedly by the werewolf and people getting a laugh out of it... RIP Visceris. The game oozed atmosphere though, even if it had it's weak spots here and there. The music and ambience might have contributed a lot to that. Most negative memory was a game breaking bug halfway through and one of my favourite memories was the TV commentator discussing things with my Malkavian (better than the stop sign conversation imho) Edit: The game also had some slightly surprising endings depending on your decisions

"I have something to say: it's better to burn out than to fade away!" (unnamed Kurgan in a church)

I remember when this joke was new... oldie but goodie internet joke (I first saw it on usenet on rec.humour.funny iirc) I never was able to verify the original source or attribution, but funny none the less Dr. Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, Final Exam question for May of 1997. Dr. Schambaugh is known for asking questions such as, "why do airplanes fly?" on his final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof." Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: "First, We postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist: If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic." The student, Tim Graham, got the only A.

Probably a carpenter forgetting to switch off something when leaving work.... sad to see. Lot's of history around that building. As for when the fire brigade shows/showed up, I don't think central Paris is easy to get trucks through and the cathedral was located on an island in the river. As somebody mentioned, water bombing the place would just have brought down the stone walls too. I guess the question for me is, why wasn't more done to 'fire proof' such a historical building?

Cassowaries are like the Funnel Spider in that regard, a good offense is the best defense and it will attack anything if in doubt, including rocks, trees, humans etc. It has a large, hardened lump on it's head that works like a shock absorbing helmet when charging headlong towards "enemies". Once close, it will try to disembowel whatever is in front of it. Edit: From Gromnirs link above, related articles: Five Fascinating Facts About the Amazing Cassowary (just the paragraph headlines) 1. Yes, they could absolutely kill you 2. They can jump five feet off the ground 3. They have giant fingernails on their heads 4. They don’t like you, either 5. Australia is trying to protect them, because they’re really endangered

Death to "Rouge Trader" and "Angles of Death!"

Hmm, because the $200m is only the initial development cost, not the running cost. Even assuming they sold 2 million boxes of $100 each (not including any subscriptions at all) would not cover the cost of the game the first day after launch. Only the subscribers would be able to cover the running costs. I checked a few websites (because I was curious) and none of them has swtor in their top 10, whether it being popular, populous, healthiest etc. whatever at the end of 2018. So it might have been able to stave off death by starvation for a while, but I do honestly wonder why EA is bothering at the moment (unless there is something we don't know in their Star Wars license agreement).

The number I heard was 200 (gamespot referencing a no longer existing Los Angels Times article, but it's still a tonne of money. Without a cash shop, it would have required 1 million users for a year to make a profit? (numbers pulled out of my butt, mind you) As for how Bioware ended up in where they are, I wouldn't really point fingers at EA, but at Bioware management and company culture. Things you can get away with as a small company tends to explode spectacularly and create headlines when playing the big league. Lots of talented people doing the work. but less impressive management.

Who cares about politics anyway, there are more important things in life From the BBC: 'The revolution can wait. Football comes first' The mood in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, was different on Wednesday. Anti-government protesters put up huge screens to watch Barcelona beat Manchester United 1-0 in the Champions League quarter-final first leg. "The revolution can wait," a journalist tweeted, summing up the mood of the crowd.

Oh stop getting reasonable...

I was listening to something slightly related when youtube recommended Sabaton... I listened to a few of them and found them to my liking. One for Poles I guess (Live in Poland): Live at Wacken:

I would've found all of the "Epic exclusive" type deals a bit more palatable if they were all 6 months vs. a year. A little bit. Agreed. 6 months is sort of a "sweet spot" for me. These days I don't buy games at launch anyway and 6 months means most of the obvious bugs will have been ironed out through patches.

So, scheduled for release in May 2027?

Somebody in the GOG thread mentioned nostalgia and the first PC game he ever played. Made me feel like dusting off the first two PC games I bought. While I don't have the boxed versions anymore, I do have Fallout 1 from the Fallout Trilogy pack (FO1,2 and Tactics) and I have the original Tombraider from GOG. Heh, I still remember actually buying an Orchid 3Dfx card just to get the nicer graphics in Tombraider. Glide drivers.... yeah. Those were the times Maybe I should try to see if I can find the emulator versions and have a go at the first two computer games I bought: International Soccer by Commodore and Beach head by Access Software/US Gold

Actually, according to the article, the problem is exactly that they thought they could do like Bioware of old and get away with it (it = a good game). With larger and larger projects, it just ended up not working, as the consequences became more and more severe. Edit: E.g. DA:I was just about salvageable as a project, ME:A didn't succeed particularly well. Swtor.... has an issues list that is longer than a Russian War and Peace novel and Anthem has it's own share of issues to deal with

Meh, nothing truly new (as that was revealed by Randy in a twit last year). New thing is it's "only" a six month exclusive. But yeah, Take 2 and their subsidy, Private Division, which sucks for Obsidian fans, has definitely decided to share their bed with Epic.

I used to have Origin installed, but since the last Bioware game I was interested in (ME3) got released a long time ago, I don't have it installed any more. Gog and Steam for me in that order, Epic when hell freezes over. Never had games that required the Ubi or Bethsoft launcher, so no idea how good or bad they are. Edit: Small correction, I probably use proprietary, game specific launchers the most for the two games spent the most time on the last 7 years, swtor and GW2

Just bought tickets for the Metallica concert in Melbourne later this year. Still 7 months away, but looking forward to it... https://youtu.be/i9fxUlTMRz8 /headbang

Need a bit of foreign policy stuff to take peoples minds off the Mueller report? Russian troops arriving in Venezuela. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47688711

More deeds done here