Gorth

Ehrm.. what has that to do with the game box? Have we already seen the intro to South Park and I missed it? Truth is, developer logos on the box are not that common. Check other THQ games. Check other Bethesda games. Nothing much to do with the box, just a commentary on the attitude of publishers, seemingly pretending developers don't exist. I don't think I have a THQ game (don't they mostly publish shooters and RTS games?), so I don't know what qualifies as MO for them. .

I didn't assume Dutch artists made more money because of piracy (re-read my post), only on a national level, some Dutch profit from it. I actually had various service providers in mind, which are quite numerous in Holland (torrent sites, file hosting services etc.) It's big business. The Swiss, well nobody really cares about the Swiss. They seem to have made it their national goal to profit from other peoples misery anyway for more than century, so whatever they do is always a bit suspect.

Like F:NV? I've never seen the physical box (got it from Steam), but at least the intro of the game has a blurb that acknowledges that Bethesda developed FO:NV in "association" with Obsidian Entertainment

Dutch government, not Danish. It doesn't say it doesn't decrease anyone's profit (in fact it confirms that those who gets pirated suffers losses), it just concludes that it is a net profit for Holland on a macro economy level. Probably because a lot of those who make a profit of piracy resides there, where as those who gets "robbed' reside outside Holland.

Space Rangers 2 is the best of its "type" since Elite 2. I've completed it once and is considering it again once my current stint with The Witcher 2 is over.

That's exactly what I need Off to convince a few individuals that they need to shift too. They share my sentiments on the current state of the MSN client.

It's an easy assumption to make though. There is nothing to defend about it really. Not even sucky "always online" DRM and watching your every move big brother style. The solution is really very, very simple. Ignore the game. Ignore the company. Buy something else somewhere else. It seems to have turned into a new culture/tradition with people just wanting to flop down in front of a screen and get passively entertained.

I'll try search for some of those names (Aim, Miranda and Trillian), thanks guys

Well, Microsoft Live Messenger without "Live" still makes it some kind social networking thing that they want to turn it into. I hadn't thought about Google+ (I even created an account there when it was opened up to the public). Facebook is banned on my router firewall. I wouldn't touch it with a fire poker. Maybe Skype will have to do, even if I hate giving out those details to more people than I have to.

I kind of liked the old MSN Messenger and hung on to it for years, including when it devolved into Live Messenger. After the last update however, it has become completely useless. Any tips for a good instant message replacement (first one to say twitter gets slapped with a fish)? Needs to be something simple I can convince family and old friends to use too, so not too sophisticated to set up and use. For various reasons I would prefer not to rely on Skype.

I had small wobbly table for my screen and keyboard when I lived in New Zealand. When I moved to Australia and got the room to spare, a real desk was high on the priority list. When I could afford it I went out to one of those specialist stores normally catering for corporate customers and bought desks (and drawers), chairs (and protective mats for the carpet) and wall units. Worth more than many a hardware upgrade in sheer improvement of the "pc experience"

Most disappointing. No smell of rotten eggs, no methane bubbles, no soggy, squishy noises when trudging through thigh deep black slime, no mosquitoes... it's a Witcher game in name only

No idea what people sing in a protestant church (I usually only go there for funerals and when somebody I know gets married), but the stretch of land where I originated from they would mostly sing traditionals. They are no longer "copyrighted", although a particular song book or recording of them would be. That means, you couldn't just photocopy the book or play the record at a gathering, but nothing prevented you from singing it your self or get some musicians together to perform it. As for "Happy Birthday", besides birthdays being much overrated, how many people actually sing that at large public gatherings? Alternatively, wait until it expires in 2030

You would need enough guns and sufficient overseas backers with money and influence. It helps if it's in a strategically important region and you kind find a powerful patron country to back your claim. The worst thing that could happen is if your patron(s) abandon you or are the weaker of two contestants in the region, particularly if your country also has resources.

I don't know if it's defined as ownership of ideas (isn't that more a patent office thing???), I usually think of it as the right to determine what happens with the result of your own work. Lawyers could probably write page up and page down about what the definition is, what the intended purpose of the definition is and a number of examples and precedents and interpretations of the definitions (and charge you $300 per hour doing so)

Star Wars Day - May the Fourth be With you.. I actually did read about that somewhere else, I just missed the connection

What's special about May 4th?

I once accidentally ended up on a wikipedia page about the English civil war (checking descendants of the Plantagenets and House of Anjou). It's almost as bad as tvtropes when you start exploring further links. Anyway, an interesting time in English history when it ceased to be a monarchy.

Regarding one of the parts not quoted from your post, most terms and conditions explicitly points out that it in part or whole may be superseded by local legislation. Nobody forces you to buy those products, just like nobody forces you at gunpoint to play video games. Entirely anecdotal, but I refuse to buy BD movies that are region encoded. A few major Hollywood companies actually offers them up on Amazon and they are the only ones that goes into my cart. Then they (movie companies) can whinge about dropping sales all they want. Do I regret buying ME3? You bet, it got uninstalled together with Origin again. Steam is currently the extreme pain threshold as far as I'm concerned. Don't like local laws? Vote some different politicians in. It's part of the game of democracy (conveniently forgotten by those who cry "censorship!" when a part of some imaginary wild west universe suddenly has to follow the same rules as those outside their protective bubble). Hands up those who think TPB has anything to with free speech (I know there is supposedly one born every minute, but still). It's going to take a lot of convincing to believe the outrage isn't the loudest and most vehement from those whose illegal downloads are going to be impeded and they actually have to do a little work to find new sources or alternate routes to the same sources.

I reinstalled the game and tried playing through the prologue again. The visuals are "weird" with that black halo thing shining around Geralt and objects in the game. I don't feel comfortable with the controls either. I've tried fiddling around with mouse sensitivity, but it lacks the gratifying responsiveness of TW1. This one feels like it's flitting around all over the place, like he has no mass. At least I found out how to gimp the QTE's this time around, so I actually made it to chapter 1.

Well, that is part of the problem with the "publisher" model, isn't it? Being investment companies there is a constant drive to try to tap new markets (or squeeze more out of existing). Sometimes through added advertising (product placement and targeted advertising through profiling), sometimes nickling and diming (DLC) people to death, price fixing (hello EA and others), acquisitions and mergers (to prevent competition) and so on. Anything goes when trying to corner a market.

I'm afraid Pangea has come and gone Krezack... Another interesting period, although mostly for understanding how related dinosaur fossils can be found on different continents today.

A choice can be so obvious that it's effectively "not any choice". Looking for somebody who wants to finance a project running on Onyx and somebody with a wallet comes along and offers to finance a project running on Onyx? Creates revenue and added experience with the in-house engine. I can't see how they could not make that choice.

Pretty much this. It's like watching reports from Egypt or Libya where goverment officials and insurgents try to paint each other as devils. They are probably both right. I think I mentioned in one of this threads predecessors my view. When you are cheating somebody out of payment for their work, you are "stealing" (call it whatever you prefer) their most valuable asset, the time and labor invested in something, which could have been put to more beneficial use instead. Not all creators of assets that can be reproduced digitally at little or no cost are big bad corporations. Some people actually depend on getting paid for their work to pay their rent (put kids in college, whatever).

Not really into the stone age stuff, but various civilizations when they reached the bronze age. The Archaic (pre-classical) Greek, the Hittittes, the Assyrians and the Sumerians and so forth. Then there is a jump up to the time around the transition from Roman Kingdom to Roman Republic (and later Empire), the history of the various Germanic tribes before they crossed the Rhine, the history of the Celts and the history of the Byzantine Empire, Then another jump up to the time of the 100 year war in Europe, it's causes and effects. Then my interest mostly stops and picks up again around WWII, but that is because it was a time period with consequences and effects that directly affects us to this day. Never got as much into the South Asian and Far Eastern cultures as I would have liked. Not for lack of interest, but lack of material when I actually had the time to study history in my spare time.