Gorth

Yay! Picture not working? Edit: Ok, clicking the link works. Maybe the https tags confuses the forum

I think that it's the fact that Bombs and splosions are controllable, more so than a gas. A bomb, you hit a spot, it explodes, and that spot is gone, you cut loose with Sarin and you've got your target zone, and anything down wind contaminated. It may be part of what causes the sentiment, but it's a truth with modifications. The long term effect of the landscape littered with DUP rounds and unexploded cluster bombs is still a subject of debate. Edit to add: Not condoning chemical weapons, just pointing out their propaganda value seems better than any military benefit, at least with the deployment methods available to the combatants.

"Jumping" a bit between games. In EUIII, Muscowy has expanded a bit, successful diplomacy (I was a lucky bastard and got a new monarch with diplomacy 9) has brought me claims on thrones of a number of the smaller states (Tver, Yaroslaw, Pskov) while anarchy in the Golden Horde after the untimely death of the khan means I could more or less unopposed settle a few provinces (targeting Samara as a priority because of the vast gold reserves). Needs to happen quick, as Lithuania, Bohemia and everybody else wants to participate in the great carving up the horde fest. When not subjugating the nomans, playing a bit of SWTor. Most of my characters have migrated by now, but my 3 key players are still residing in what is now truly a wasteland. Gorth (soon to be ex-gorth) completed Tattooine's main story a while ago, but after a brief visit to Alderaan decided to mop up on the desert world. It sure seems a lot bigger than Kotor1 let us to believe Being way overlevelled (35) at this time, he can solo through all the 'Heroic' missions without breaking a sweat. Noticed that passing level 30 added a number of bonus missions to the existing space missions. Horrible little time sinks, but not the worst mini-games I've seen. On a slightly related note, I noticed that it's just as well that I don't care much about 'achievements' as they are completely FUBAR in the character transfer process. At least the 'collections' things seems to work (and a very nice feature it is too), that is if you log out and delete the cache file in your program files folder every now and then.

Very subtle... You think your boss get the hint?

He probably can't count to 3 either

Heh, can't say anything negative about that... how many years have you spent on this now? 1.8.2 was sure worth it though (from a selfish player perspective).

Hmm, finally got around to see the videos. TW3? Major disappointment. Focus on bloom, soil erosion, twitch combat, slow-mo, kill cam and what have you. Surprised they didn't praise their blasted QTE's and minigames as unique [a]achievements[/s] (oops, shouldn't use that word, might just give them ideas), DA3? Meh. Didn't show anything other than having at least halfway competent animators and CGI artists. Time to go play some Conquistadors I think.

Entirely speculation on my part, but I suspect they have algorithms in place that triggers on key words and key sequences, like a heuristic analysis of whether or not a particular stream is of interest to monitor closer. It's probably also more targeted than just a shotgun shot in the dark (i.e. see above comments about industrial espionage and groupings/geographical areas of special interest). If homegrown terrorists are an anomaly, you can already start cutting down your target group to people who have either migrated the last 20 years or visited/traveled to "certain" areas/countries in the time. Still humongous amounts of data, but not necessarily a log of all the communications in the world. Interesting would be (if such was the case) to see the criteria for what would make it on such lists.

It took them 20 years???

I didn't mind Morrigan. As long as Fenris stays dead, I probably don't care (otherwise sticking my sword in his ribcage would have been a wasted effort). Wouldn't mind seeing Varric, Zevran and possibly Isabella again. Need to get closer to release date though before my interest really picks up.

Looking forward to "Hurlshot's annual RV trip" thread

Nice summary. Try to keep it civil guys (which is the PC way of saying 'stow it' with the personal insults). If you feel a need to debate mechanics, I'm sure there is already an appropriate thread somewhere for it.

I haven't actually tried the M4-78EP yet, but I figure I will give it a go when TSLRCM 1.8.3 gets released.

Maybe it can keep a jug of coffee warm in the middle? Like those samovars or whatever they are called

The ubiquitous huntsman spider (picture found on the internet), present everywhere, including indoors occasionally. It's quite flexible and can "twist" its legs so it flattens itself completely and can get through even very narrow cracks. Harmless for humans, although they can get quite big.

It's '****' in several dead and a few non-existing languages... I'm so going to demand they force the imposter to change

Depends a bit on the size of the thing. I've had huntsmen spiders that would leave large splotch marks running down the wall if confronted with big shoes. In those cases, violence it not an option. Chemical warfare is however. Redbacks, funnel spiders etc. you just try to avoid wrestling matches and use long pole arms where possible. Outdoors however, they don't bother me. I can stand a stare at the beauty of the critters and their sometimes meter high/wide webs for several moments.

Muppets One of the TV highlights of my younger years. Edit: I think the Swedish Chef was my favourite. That or Animal the drummer.

You should try living in Australia... Some states are GMT+9:30 some GMT+10. Easy enough. Except some of them have daylight savings and some don't. Part of the yaer, you'll be either half an hour ahead or behind of the rest, without actually going anywhere For a fun experience (been there, tried it a couple of times), fly from Auckland to Los Angeles. Taking off at 18:00 and after 10-12 hours of flight, you'll land at 16:00 the same day. Talk about time travel

Master of Orion 2 was the "ultimate" of it's genre Looks like I have to watch a couple of videos when I get home from work. I found TW2 so horrible that I never bothered finishing it (despite loving TW1 dearly). at least I managed to finish DA2 a couple of times. I'll wait with "judgement" until actually seeing the videos.

Nah, it wouldn't be the same After transferring a few characters across, I noticed one significant difference. In the last couple of months, I'd added 2 players to my ignore list. After 24 hours in a new place, I'd added 30, then I gave up and disabled general chat. The inanities were just painful At least the lag wasn't as bad as feared, only 3-5 times higher. I tried creating a test character on an east coast and one on a European server and it jumped from 48 ms to 700-800 ms. Not good. West coast servers it is

It's been a long weekend in Australia, so I finally got around to put some "serious" time into SWTor. 'Gorth' the bounty hunter is now level 35. Of course, 'Gorth' is soon to be 'Ex-Gorth' because of the forced server account migrations and some low-life, upstart gorth-wannabe is hogging the name on the server my character is destined for >_ I checked the other possible alternative server, but that was a no go too. No idea what I'm going to call myself. My character(s) have always been 'Gorth' the last 30 years.

I was a late, late backer (i.e. not original kickstarter) and I got the email too. Might want to give it a day (or two) in case their outgoing mail system is bogged down.

Things flying straight towards you may appear "stationary" at high altitude. If you're lucky it will burn up or do a "curve ball" away from your position in case it reaches the lower atmosphere. Well, that's (one of) Gorths "rational" explanation(s). Edit: Not really related, but quite impressive none the less. A rare Aussie phenomena, the "fire tornado". I can understand if my ancestors might have attributed divine powers to such displays from nature.

A bit of nostalgia... Got this one in my mailbox today. So old the junk filter didn't recognise it: Originating from an Irish yahoo address. It's the original scam, beware of imitations