Gorth

Um, it's THEIR money. Where the smeg else are they going to build it? In Australia for all the Australians to enjoy? :headbang: "Naaah, we can't try to make this a great place to be, because this is a bad place to be!" Well, frankly, yes. Might just as well build a massive butter palace on the slopes of Montserrat. Maybe Britain should just let itself devolve into ghettos, in case you get too prosperous and Portugal invades. Unlikely to happen. The treaty of Windsor is still in effect (has been since 1386).

Yeah, I could have said no, but that would be like shooting myself in the foot Funny how training always feels like it comes after the point where you needed it the most. It's been a recurring experience the last 15 years. Still, it's nice to catch up on some things and see if you did figure out most of the worthwhile stuff or if there was still room for improvement.

I somehow doubt they would sit around and play those games they downloaded

That sounds like Kaspersky support... Tomorrow is going to be one of those days where I wish public holidays were the same countrywide. Microsoft is doing a training course online out of Singapore tomorrow and that means i have to go to work, even though it is a public holiday here (but not in the rest of Australia). Bye bye long weekend.

I think people who download stuff without paying for it are THAT hypocritical. As I said before, no problem with people boycotting a publisher if they don't like their conduct. The very moment they pirate their products, they lose any moral high ground by proving themselves to be hypocrites. They want their products, just don't want to pay if they can weasel their way out of it somehow.

I know it's a game, but Europa Universalis III is a very bad influence, giving you all sorts of obscure, interesting, distant and sometimes unheard of cultures and conflicts as inspiration for searches on the net. While outside my normal "time zone" of interest, it was very interesting checking out the history of the Timurids and their successor state, the Mughal Empire. Much, if not most of Europe (and by extension the "western world") is actually shaped by events in the Transoxiana region. The great migrations had a lot of impact on current demographics.

Seriously, I know you are smarter than this. In a transaction between two individuals, where tangible goods -or services- are being exchanged it makes sense to talk of thievery. Do not equivocate the issue. This is not thievery, it's freeloading. It's just a tad more complicated. So can we just call things by their names and leave corny appeals to emotion out of it, pretty please? At least I'm not referring to Somali pirates to make digital pirates look less bad

I wonder if you would take the same stance towards your employer the day he decides not to pay you, because he didn't really take any goods off your hands, only the time invested in performing your job?

Of course. If they check the Internet, how can they possibly not change their wicked ways?

Now I'm curious... is there even such a thing as 'A Swiss'? I thought they were ethnic Germans, Italians and French living together.

And this makes a sweeping, evidently racist comment okay? No, tell you what, it doesn't. It's an insult to my family in the first place, so, yeah, I'll take it personally. Well, I hope you'll bring your family my apology if they feel offended then, but the Swiss state has had some rather dubious practices for a long time. From protecting organised crime and the being the piggy bank of the Nazis to being one of the more overtly xenophobic (sounds nicer than racist) countries in Europe. Whatever the Swiss government says regarding ethics is going to met with a raised eyebrow and an 'uh-huh?'

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.