Gorth

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.

He never did find out how to use the 3 seashells, did he? I think I wouldn't mind watching that one again, It's been quite a number of years since I saw it the first time.

Not sure what the "gate fight" is, but I made it into a circular tower where a bunch of courtier type people were residing (after fighting my way up and disposing of some usurper relative of Foltest's IIRC). Then when I walked out of the tower, another QTE kicked in an that's when I quit in disgust.

I can't help it, curiosity is getting the better of me. I paid for the damn thing so I want to really suffer all my moneys worth. That and I read something about the tutorial/intro level parts being changed.

I set the GoG downloader to download the W2 EE version. It seems to have grown a bit in size since the last time.

Blargh!... I should have said no the let MSN Messenger update itself. It's completely fubar now. Time to find a replacement. Also time to find out how to permanently delete old Windows Live profiles.

Not just the popular ones, the best ones don't either (Lexx, Firefly, Blakes 7, Space 1999 etc.)

Since we're calling spades spades... TPB does not have any copyrighted content to remove as they don't host anything bar the torrent information. As such people cannot go there to get illegal asterisks, they can only go there to obtain directions to get (potentially) illegal asterisks. That's why they're still in business. Maybe they just got tired of the semantics game and decided that "intent" sometimes counts too? In some parts of the world, you can get busted for knowingly assisting with illegal activity. Disclaimer: I've no clue what the legal situation is in the UK.

Hehe... need new gadgets? Let's jack up the tax rate by 0.25% Time to go on the offensive Hurlshot. Sue the school for damages and stress and loss of income from fretting over the schools obviously unsuitable gadgets that it offloads to employees without proper care instructions.

...how that would even make sense considering German titles are more expensive on Steam? Besides, Green Man Gaming has its own client and doesn't sell Steam/Origin games exclusively. It seems like reaching to me. Possibly. As indicated at the start of my post, it's just speculation on my part. Not a lot of info available on how they operate. I simply found a list of games on the Steam forums where people compared results of games purchased through those green man guys (i.e. they maintain a "positive" list of games that has been confirmed to work).

I was checking out my old game of Painkiller yester evening. Noticed the date stamp on the save file... August 2010. I could have sworn that was something I played and saved recently. Also a reminder that I really should reinstall Windows some day, too many quirks accumulated over time