Gorth

I've got no less than 4 queen bed sized air beds stacked away in a closet. Only used 1 of them the last year and a half while moving interstate. If you had been living a bit closer to my place you could have had a couple of them for the taking

Once you have a population and a country of a certain size, you'll always run into the problem of balancing the protection of the rights minorities against the tyranny of minorities. Short of dissolving the union and creating 52 independent countries, you will always have the issue of how to ensure everybody has a say, yet still be able to actually accomplish anything without getting bogged down. EU has a similar problem, where they try to balance the influence of countries of very different sizes and influence without giving a lot of the smaller countries the feeling that they have simply been assimilated Borg style, yet without letting something like say Luxemburg and Estonia dictate German politics because they gang up on them 2 to 1.

You don't need to look any further than the presidential election in 2000, where the new president was effectively appointed by the judiciary system of Florida. Coincidentally a state run by a relative of the then new president.

The haunted house in VMBL did a good job of playing on peoples fears, building up gradually as you went along. Perhaps it was because it played on familiar subjects (something fantasy and scifi games might have problems with)?

Oh no!... [/lemming voice] New beginning >_

Start of old thread End of old thread I've been playing a bit of Fallout 3 lately (since I bought the big box with all DLC's cheap). Things sort of went fine until I went to Point Lookout. Currently stuck with an unsolvable main quest, because the game CTD's every time I try to reenter Calverts Mansion after finishing the Sacred Bog quest and talking to the addle-brained guys at the Cathedral. Not going to start over again. Bye bye Fallout 3... >_

Shame, man. Easy mistake to make. Poor bastard. Poor bastard indeed. Like the people killed by Irene, it just feels "unnecessary", as in it doesn't need to happen

I'll probably agree to disagree on the silent protagonist, but I still got my game installed. I have an xbox360 controller too, which I bought solely for this game when I got it. It makes the controls less awkward (imho)

Totally read that "testicle" at first. Them Freudian slips Anyway, I'm enjoying my new CD's. First music cd's I've bought in... 7 years? Now I just have to be a good cultist and The Great Old one will bestow gifts on me

Probably the bold faced part... When Yasi hit Queensland here in February (iirc), it was the equivalent of a category 4 hurricane, but much bigger (a bit smaller than the US and northern Mexico) and only lost strength after having travelled halfway through Australia. Only recorded death was one for the Darwin awards (a young man running a generator in a small enclosed space, died from monoxide poisoning). People more or less went underground, only a few stupid tv journalists making very brief appearances to take some shots before running full tilt for their concrete shelters. Banana prices are still sky high.

It might not have been the worlds most impressive earthquake, but it can be quite an experience the first time you literally feel the earth move. On a semi related note, how the heck can a small storm rack up a death toll like that? I mean, it's not like people weren't warned that Irene was heading that way

I liked Dead Space (quite a lot actually), but it never struck me as "survival horror". There was no gradual building of suspense (relying solely on simple jumping out of the expeccted shadows yelling Boo! at you gimmicks) nor any real shortage of ammo (played it on easy). The visual style and the "soundscape" were stunning however, as was the feeling of moving around in a supersized derelict space ship. Isaac was hard to like though as he never said anything. By that I do not just mean no voice overs. I can't remember him actually ever saying anything, just listening passively to instructions all the time, like some bot with built in voice recognition module. Oh, and the weapons were quite fun too, giving new meaning to 'cut and paste' (I'll cut you into a gooey paste) If it wasn't for EA's silly insisting that their customers needs online accounts to play single player games, Dead Space 2 would have been a must buy for me. I just can't be bothered to keep track of more logins.

"its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations." So, it would be bad behavioural bias to take the article at face value. Why does everybody assume that LoF is a "he"?

Playing with my new tentacle.

That description fits more than one country at the moment...

I'm not sure why anybody would want to use cheat codes, the game is rather easy as is Anyway, I'm not sure that it actually shows you a "console" when hitting the '~' key. Did you try just typing in just '~' and then one of the codes (eg 'bright') followed by enter?

Yes. I'm going to take a lean back and watch for 3-6 months approach on ME3. Mostly because the DA2 demo left a sour taste (yes, I'm aware that people claim the two teams are not "related").

Yes, always catering to the attention span challenged crowd. When I was young, loading times were so long that developers introduced games and movies/music to play during level loading

That would have been around the same time. Got into university studying computer science. In the beginning, it was mostly mail exchange with tutors, project advisors and contacts at universities around the world. Then transferring source files and documentation, downloading software packages (University of Illinois UIUC had made this fancy Object Oriented OS which we used as a case study). Working with Gohper and Archie protocols for searching the net was like making fire with two pieces of flint, but it gave you an idea of the underlying technology. The geek in me looks back through rose coloured glasses, the comfort creature in me appreciate google and browsers that support graphics. Ask people today how many has done anything in LaTeX and they look at you like you've just suggested something naughty

Probably no comfort to you, but you are not the only one (having been on the net since it was something "exclusive" used for information exchange to it became something "vulgar")

Still waiting for the cd's to arrive in my mailbox. Bought it together with the two Cthulhu carols cd's (and a tentacle)

Because we say so Never mind that they are not a uniform faction and led by former military personel, most likely looking to replace the current regime with a new, similar one, just with different names on the business cards.

"these are not the rebels you are looking for"...

Hey, it's called a CAPITAList system for a reason. News is commodities to be sold The demand for capital C's are up today, the market reacting nervously to other capital investments. Watch this space for further updates.

Too much talk about MMO's... nice clean thread here