Gorth

It gives you a fighting chance to survive nerve gas (sarin etc.) attacks, which was in plentiful supply everywhere during the cold war. Part of your abc training (atomic, biological and chemical).

Makes you wonder what kinder of people find any thrills in playing a loser. Considering that your average rapist is a youngish male, often lonely, insecure in his "manhood" and a general failure in life (i.e. no control over their lives). That is probably why games where you play "winner" types have more appeal.

Not true. What bugs are you refering to? I didn't encounter a single one in my playthrough. On PeeCee. How can you actually state, explicitly that my experience hasn't been buggy. I knew you was dim but geez. It's been everything from CTD, to items removing themselves from the inventory, to not recieve'in quest rewards. This is when I've gone back and played through the original campign after installing the expansion, which wasn't so bad . The one that nailed the lid in the coffin for me was getting rather permanently locked out by the treacherous dwarves. So much for trying to complete it as a dwarven commoner. It had its share of minor bugs, but that was the only gamebreaking one I ran into.

In Denmark, way back in time when my hair still had little grey in it, the draft was a "lottery". You would pick a number from a ballot and the lower the number, the more likely you were to get military service. The higher numbers got sent to the civil defence and the highest numbers went "free". I ended up in the civil defence and had generally a good time (apart from being irritated by not being able to dispose over my time myself). I was tought things like firefighting, rescue service in disaster areas, etc. Not too bad really. Oh, and we got to crawl through a lot of sewers and subterranean tunnels too, trying to rescue those 80kg dummies that the trainers had hidden down there Edit: Never got to shoot our self with those little Atropine injection thingies though. Turns out that the cold war ended before there was any real need for them anyway.

Maybe if the ears where equipped with venomous tips for those up close and personal fights?

Heh, I uninstalled DA a few weeks ago, not really imagining myself ever coming back to the world of Ferelden. You guys are doing a lousy job of convincing me to pick it up and get expansion

My problem with mixing faith and science is, that faith sort of implies a stop for the search for answers, since you believe you know them. I would rather keep the two separate

Yay for Pop! Thanks for sharing Not lets get this thing in the stores already so the rest of us can watch it dammit.

I've seen two movies lately. One, Drag me to Hell which I bought on DVD together with a handful of other DVD's and Halloween Resurrection showing late last night on tv. Drag me to Hell... sheesh, what a disappointment. Talk about a movie that doesn't know what it wants. It's like it's trying to mix romantic comedy, horror comedy and funny comedy, but none of it is particularly funny. The cast is completely wrong, the story (with one microscopic exception towards the end) completely predictable. Like something you would read in a bad comic book and forget the day after, never to revisit. I sure hope it was one of the cheaper movies in my pile Halloween Resurrection... What a refreshing change from the above. No aiming for mediocrisy here, but going straight for abysmal failure right away. As if somebody tried to create a bastard child between Blair Witch Project and Americas next Top Model. Bad script, bad acting, bad direction, bad screen play and godawful choice of music. The good part? It made Drag me to Hell look good by comparison

Nick Cave - The Weeping song "Father why are all the children weeping? They are merely crying son. O, are they merely crying father? Yes, true weeping is yet to come." Such a sad song

You have a problem?

"There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm

Unfortunately, that is the way the world works sometimes. People remember the emotionally charged debates, the insults, the many people killed, the bombings, the embassy burnings, the reprints, eventually forgetting the lesson of the why it happened in the first place Today it has become some kind of thing that is being fought over for its perceived symbolic values, rather than what it originally was about, everybody projecting their own bias into the debate, seing only that aspect of it that suits their preconceptions.

Out of curiosity, when is it warranted to stand up for free speech? Ever asked yourself why they were published in the first place? They were a protest against intimidation attempts against book publishers, trying to tell them what they could print and what not. A group of artists decided to protest with the tools of their trade, the pen, portraying people who commit violence in the name religion, giving an artists interpretation of how they saw it. Sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword when trying to get a message through. I honestly don't believe you mean that everytime somebody threatens you, the right thing to do, is to give up your civil rights, because it might hurt the sensibilities of those who threatens you.

I turn all green with envy Looking forward to hear your experiences

Sounds a bit like Sri Lanka where elections are "Winner takes all" and the loser gets dragged away in handcuffs and done away with. What happened to good old Roman gladiatorial fights? Lets reintroduce arenas for politicians. That ought to leave us only with the truly passionate and the idealists (and the vicious brutes, but you can't win them all).

If you want to attribute words to me, at least do it correctly What I said was: I never said they must leave. They have the freedom of choice to leave if they find the place so awful. Also, you seem to have taken offense at my use of the terms "guest" and "host". Let me ask you this... If somebody moves into your place, yet clearly states they don't want to be part of your household. Do you consider them family or guests? If they not only do not want to be part of your household, but wants to wreck the place, then I think "guest" is being a very generous term.

We could clean out some of the prisons by sending the inmates on a rocket to England. Just imagine the irony

I can't argue that. Personally, I'd take the boobie cards as well. AT least they don't have bad dialogue. I don't know. True enough for the cards themselves, but the dialogue you had to suffer through to get them was at times quite horrendous. "Nice dress, lets have sex!"... whats so bad about that dialogue?

Heh, what would the next step be... a Chinese style firewall to protect Texas against the damaging influences from the rest of the world?!? Whatever happened to presenting information from different sources and teach the kids critical reading and questioning their sources?

The only fun mini game in years, the Collectible Card Game, is gone. Does that mean I have to grow up?

Never heard about them I have some nice old Sony headset bought years ago (set me back 125 kiwi dollars). The headset itself is Ok, but the real selling point was the external usb soundcard. I use Skype a lot, so having separate audio devices and not having to switch between them in the control panel is a plus. I could use a new headset though

As DRM's become more and more obnoxious and intrusive, they loom ever larger in peoples consciousness.

Wouldn't the difference be the way its done? Legally, nobody is allowed to distribute the original files, in part or full. Receiving such a file would make you an accessory to an illegal activity. But that doesn't cover other ways of doing it that doesn't involve distribution of original files. No, I am not going to provide a list of options

The previews looks interesting. I think The Witcher 2 just joined my list (increasing it by 100%)