Gorth

Not caring one inch about AFL, I've checked my stock of old Cognac (and it looks good) and browsed through my DVD collection for things I haven't seen for long time. "Galaxy Quest" and "Firefly" it is tonight I think. A number of my old movies are going to be phased out and replaced with Blu-Rays. The old and most time worn ones first. Time to order "The Fifth Element" and the new deluxe compilation bunch of all things "Bladerunner".

No Witcher EE in the stores here yet No STALKER clear sky yet either... I need something to play on my new toy (computer). Maybe I should see if the have Bioshock.

Some beautyful views you've got there

hey yeah, haven't seen him around in ages he was the reason i actually joined I think he finished some school (Baccalaureate?) this summer and is probably busy working on the future. The guy has a great writing talent

Another entry in Gorth's diary. While the gfx card is nice and I don't really have any games besides NWN2 that challenges it, the noise levels are just unbelievable. A vaccuum (sp?) cleaner running on full power would feel at home there, Ordered the following beauty from EK Waterblocks in Slovenia. Hopefully, that will bring some peace and quiet back to my office The darn sound card is still on back order... *grumble* I suppose my next task is to find a monitor that does justice to the nice capabilities.

I don't think you've seen the last of these guys, although it is a while since the poster formerly known as Eldar has been here.

Got a Commodore 64 in '83 I had been playing around on the highschool computers during my second year there and got myself moderately interested in programming. Didn't think much of it as a career though, as the machines were big and heavy (cast iron?) and cost more than a luxury car. Then one day, my dad came home with this colourful pamphlet advertising the C64. The thing had sound AND colour AND a staggering amount of memory. Adding to that, it was only a 1000$. Selling everything of any value and getting a night job over the winter, I managed to afford not only the C64, but also the tape drive and my very first game, "Gridrunner" by Jeff Minters Llamasoft After that, I bought a few more games, including a 'cartridge' game (probably my first and only console game). The Hobbit was what got me into reading Tolkien and many an afternoon was spent playing International Soccer or Beach Head Plus, it gave me a platform that enabled me to start programming at home. I learnt a lot from those old computer mags, like Byte and Your Computer. The latter usually had the source code for games for various platforms. The best Pac Man game I've had came as a "Type it yourself" game

Enforced socialism has a poor track record too when it comes to economics. It is a good way to lift feudal societies up to the "next stage", but only to a certain point. Then you need to gradually move into market economy to improve economics further. On a personal level, I am not a fan of unfettered capitalism, as I know corporation 'A' doesn't care one inch about me and my wellbeing, it only cares about the wellbeing of corporation 'A'. Since it is not a person, you can't attribute nor expect it to have any morals, hence the need for counterbalances that protects individuals from corporate interests (unions, legislatators, watch dogs, anti trust whatever). The challenge is to find the sweet spot where it is attractive for corporations to do business without running roughshod over people (e.g. Victorian age industrialisation). Not having lived for a long time anywhere where I would eligible for voting on anything, I've lost interest in politics. Still funny to observe though

EA and Atari are investors. They finance projects and expects returns on their investments. Different publishers, different ways of achieving it. Some like to have control over the projects, some prefer a more hands off approach. They have to keep their share holders happy first and foremost. With a bit of luck, we get something that makes us, the gamers, happy in the process. Edit: By extension, with a bit of bad luck, we get something we don't like.

Thanks Nice to put a bit of background in a lay man undertandable way to some of the names and preceeding events.

That about sums it up. The Intel raid seems to be the odd one out. I updated my bios too yesterday through the ASUS update tool, running under Vista no less, didn't even need to reboot right away afterwards. Alternatively, the bios can be (re)flashed from a usb stick if you mess it up completely.

Football even. Point taken however... Of course I knew that. Just checking if people were paying attention.Thats it, yes...

*Cough* How about discussing Ice Hockey and leave out the personal jabs? That also goes for implied ridiculing of fellow posters

Yeah, I know. I need to put more skillpoints in "Romance". I got all the charm of a slab of concrete

Woohoo... Got my Sapphire 4780x2 plugged in (sort of, see below), plus the additional HDD's Having fun with the HDD's trying to set them up as a bios raid. It bsods Windows and according to the allmighty google, all I need is to reinstall Windows and use a floppy disk with some special Intel drivers on it I think I might look for alternatives, if necessary just as two separate disks at the moment. Obervations on Sapphire cards: It's friggin heavy It looks like a brick, it weighs like a brick (close to a Kilogram) and it alone is as noisy as my old PC (I know, Mkreku had warned me about that) And finally, it's an incredibly poor fit inside the case with more than half a centimeter gap beween the rear panel and the mounting/fitting thing of the card. Poor design or poor craftmansship? I might need to find some pieces of metal tubing and some very long screws to actually attach that brick of a card to the case. I definitely need water cooling for this one Oh yeah, and then of course, it is very fast. I always did wonder what NWN2 would look like maxed out and still have a good framerate. Now I know

Thread pruned a bit... Lets see if there is more love to share without the innuendo

I think this thread left EA and Securom a long time ago... If people feel like discussing pros and cons of platforms, they are welcome to do so in a new thread. Same thing goes for DRM discussions in general. And, just a reminder to those who think it is funny to resort to name calling, however cleverly veiled, of other companies in the business of making games

Sitting here at work, staring out of the corner of my eye at the Sapphire ATI Radeon 4780X2 lying on my desk... trying to very hard to stay focused on work... must stay focused...

It's Michael Thorton dammit!

@Random n00b: He's an artist. He has a compulsory urge to make outrageous statements and blanket generalisations... I am sort of sitting on the fence on this one. On one side, I really love the Warhammer setting, on the other side (my problem with mmo's in general) I don't always have the time to make new connections and meet people to team up with. I suspect they are only half the fun without friends to play online with.

The only fun thing to do on Manaan is to poison that oversized shark and watch all the Sushi go "Aiieee! What have you done?"

Maybe Fionavar should set up a little e-shop... custom titles for sale... I think I should sell that idea

A question for you GD (and taks too for that matter, you guys being the "arch-capitalists), whats your view on the current goverment takeover of the large financial institutions? Shouldn't they have been left in peace, to crash and burn as would have been naturally, perhaps paving the road for new and upstart banks, insurers what have you? If say some South American government had "nationalised" companies in that way, there would have been no end to the outrage.

Hey, it's hard to forget such a dedicated Bruce Lee fan

The original fallout between HA and Bandidos was about market shares of the drug market. What started with a few killings eventually escalated, using heavy military equipment (hand grenades, car bombs, rocket launchers, assault weapons etc.) and they started dying faster than they could recruit new members. Never had it been that easy to join a "biker gang" The problem was solved then by the police and politicians in cooperation, simply cracking down hard on them, especially where it really hurt, on their wallets. No ridiculous excuse was spared to impound assets, condiscate money, putting them behind bars for having a malfunctioning stop light on a bike etc. Eventually they got tired of the police and took it to Sweden, causing a diplomatic incident between Denmark and Sweden (Sweden accused Denmark of just exporting their problems ) The new conflict is a similar one, except it's between an "ethnic" gang and the old biker gangers fighting over the drug market and organised crime again. I wouldn't be surprised if the same solution would work again, once the politicians finally get their act together.