Gorth

No, wait, I believe it would be better if you stop pretending to be able to give "legal advice" on the subject. From Lucas Arts EULA (the Kotor games): The computer software, artwork, music, and other components included in this product, as such may be updated (collectively referred to as the "Software"), are the copyrighted property of LucasArts, a division of Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd., and/or its affiliated entities or divisions, and its licensors (collectively referred to as "LucasArts"). The Software is licensed (not sold) to you, and LucasArts owns and/or controls all copyright, trade secret, patent and other proprietary rights in the Software. You may use the Software on a single computer. You may not: (1) copy (other than once for back-up purposes), distribute, rent, lease or sublicense all or any portion of the Software; (2) modify or prepare derivative works of the Software; (3) transmit the Software over a network, by telephone, or electronically using any means, except in the course of your network multi-player play of the Software over authorized networks; (4) engage in matchmaking for multi-player play over unauthorized networks; (5) design or distribute unauthorized levels; or (6) reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software. You may transfer the Software, but only if the recipient agrees to accept and be bound by the terms and conditions of this Agreement. If you transfer the Software, you must transfer all components and documentation and erase any copies residing on the game console and/or computer equipment. Your rights in and to this license are automatically terminated if and when you transfer the Software. Relevant part in bold You lose any and all rights to use the game yourself the moment you send even a part of the game to somebody else. You would need to ask Lucas Arts or your retail store for a replacement media. Not sure what their policies are on that though.

Heh, trust You to find such well hidden info Still somewhat in the future yet. Questions is, is it going to be any good or will it be something like "Fire Warrior" (at least thats what I think it was called)? A friend of mine bought it for his console years ago. Bored him to tears. Why, oh why Obsidian? Why can't you bully/bribe/persuade those THQ guys that Warhammer (40K) and Obsidian would be a match made in heaven for a dark and gritty crpg?

MSDN = Microsoft Developer Network. Gives you access to, among other things, most applications, development tools, operating systems and server software from Microsoft without paying a "per whatever" price. Used by developer for inhouse development and testing. Part of the package is a "Virtual PC" thing which you can use to create a bunch of test setups. I.e. we have harddisk image files with Email/Web server setup, Commerce Server/Biztalk Server Setup, several alternate Windows Versions and so forth. I'll grab a Windows XP and a Windows Vista image and just install it on the virtual pc (sandboxing). No need to uninstall it, I just delete the copy of the virtual harddisk file.

What does a sandbox have to do with MSDN? http://www.sandboxie.com/ Thanks, but I already have a library of different VM's. I'll just pick one and test when given the time. If I don't like it, I can just delete the image file again. No harm done (it is beta after all)

Pretty close Edit: On topic, I might just have to download that browser and try it out on a virtual machine. One of the benefits of MSDN subscriptions. Gives you the chance to try out things without messing up your physical machine

Oh yes, especially Wikipedia is bad... For somebody as notoriously curious as me, that place is like a monkey trap. The number of tabs grows exponentially and I can't let go. Darn history pages...

You've obviously never played full-contact chess! No, I simply don't have the time these days to keep track of several games. A fringe benefit of forums, you get to hear stuff you would otherwise miss.

Damn straight. JA3 looks, unsurprisingly, like Silent Storm, and how anyone could look at S^2 and think "3rd person multiplayer shooter" is beyond me. From Akella's website: Coop and multiplayer modes, Four different sides to choose from. From Strategy Firsts website: It

That is/was my experience too. It is such a relief when I switch on my old computer and use Windows XP again... even if it sounds like a jet plane taking off. No more Windows telling me where it want me to go, I tell it where *I* want to go

Civilization I didn't like the original Civilization A few examples, Lords of Midnight turned into garbage in it's third (3d) and final game, Master of Orion 3 (3d engine) wasn't really that good, Heroes of Might & Magic 4 and later turned lame after moving onto 3d engines, Fallout 3... don't even get me started on what my expectations are for that one, Jagged Alliance 3 looks like a mid 90'es attempt at a 3rd person multiplayer shooter, the 2003 version of Defender of the Crown? Bleh... enough rambling I feel sand between my toes. Is that the trolls demolishing the sand castles again?

Optus.

I don't know what you're talking about. Now excuse me as I go watch some HD-HBO while I'm waiting for my humongous download to finish. Sure, rub the wound with salt

Real men use RAID 0 and don't take backups. It's better to burn out than fade away As I said, it really depends on what you need. Cheap storage where speed doesn't matter, you could go for RAID 5. Gives you redundancy at the cost of 1 HDD, no matter how many more disks you add to the set. If you need speed (not just read, but write speed), you need something with a 0 in it. RAID 0, RAID 1+0 or RAID 0+1. If you need safety you can get RAID 5 or 1 (if you don't need the speed) or RAID 1+0 or RAID 0+1 Both the 1+0 and 0+1 requires 4HDD's as a minimum, giving you the capacity of 2 HDD's I am currently looking to buy two 500 Gb disks to put in a RAID 0 to keep my 1TB disk (no RAID) company. But then, I *do* back up essential stuff every now and then to either DVD or Blu-Ray disks.

You guys are spoiled I have a 30Gb monthly cap at the moment and that is a vast improvement over my previous provider.

Does this assume that doctors must believe that pregnancy is a sickness that must be cured with abortion? Or could their morals compel them to apply the Hippocratic Oath to unborn children? If there were a cosmetic procedure that a doctor found morally objectionable, should he be legally compelled to perform such a procedure? Should a devout Catholic doctor be legally compelled to prescribe birth control pills rather than allowing him to recommend another doctor? Isn't that why countries have laws in the first place? I could imagine a certain chaos as a result of all individuals doing as they pleased, disregarding the well being of other members of society at a whim if they don't agree with their faith, ethnicity, moral values whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if it said somewhere in some law that you are not allowed to treat people differently just because of race, creed and colour or whatever that line is.

The "wasted" space is different for different raids: It isn't really wasted, since it is what gives redundancy, but lets just call it "waste" since you can't use it directly. RAID 0 = No wasted space RAID 1 = half your disk capacity RAID 5 = 1/number of disks RAID 1+0 = half your disk capacity Speed gains: RAID 0 = Lots RAID 1 = Insignificant/None RAID 5 = Loss RAID 1+0 Lots Redundancy: RAID 0 = None, on the contrary... RAID 1 = Lots RAID 5 = Lots RAID 1+0 = Lots (Lots = can survive the complete crash of a single disk) Lets say you put together a couple of RAID 0's like I used to have in my old pc: RAID 0 set 1 HDD1 + HDD2 striped RAID 0 set 2 HDD3 + HDD4 striped Now, what windows sees is just "Physical Drive 1" and "Physical Drive 2", which can be treated like any other single drives. The RAID hardware is what handles all the disks and tells Windows, Hey, I got one disk for you here. My RAID 0 set 1, I had split up in 3 partitions, two smaller (E: and F: and a larger G: with the remaining disk space) Set 2 was likewise split up in three logical drives, with primary partition and extended partions like set 1 Makes sense?

Short answer: Yes Long answer: You have different raid configurations for different needs. If you want speed, you go for a raid that adds "striping" (RAID 0), i.e. it splits data between multiple disks, treating them as a single disk as far as you application sees it. It can theoretically double your disk speed (although the gains are typically around a 50% speed increase). Another raid configuration is "mirroring" (RAID 1) which gives you redundancy because, if one your disks crashes, you have identical data on the other. Ideally you would have both (RAID 1+0) which has two striped sets, mirrored (or mirrored stripe sets). That means you get the speed increase and the redundancy (because if you lose a disk in a striped set, you do indeed lose the entire content of all disks). There is also something called RAID 5, striping with parity, but that is an ugly thing best forgotten and hopefully never seen in a production environment. A poor mans raid so to speak, giving you redundancy at the cost of (random write) speed. The better you want it, the more HDD's you need.

I will not say that 3D games suck in general, but I can't think of any game franchise that I love(d), which made a successful transition from 2D to 3D. I like Stardocks attitude, even if I think they are putting it on a bit thick here and there (like Samm said). Sadly, I have yet to buy one of their games (I did buy their Windows gimmicks, first Windowblinds and later the entire suite though).

Mine sits in the following spot: Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Turn User Account Control On or Off At least, thats the one I think it is. Didn't dare change anything because I was so relieved to make it go away.

Huh... WTF, he annoied me in ways I didn't actually think a character could annoy me... Well, Bastila was stiff competition for Carth, in terms of annoyance levels. Hmm... with Carth I wanted the option to leave him back on the ship at the very beginning. Wasn't a competition really. I wanted to give Bastila back to the Black Vulkars, but they wouln't take her off my hands I guess my "look forward to" list looks something like this at the moment (in no particular order): Jagged Alliance 3 (although my hopes for a good game sinks every month), Disciples 3, Storm of Zehir, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, Alpha Protocol & Aliens (Obsidians).

I did have to use the space bar every now and then to pause the IE games. I am weak >_

Where were you initially from? Certainly not australia right? Denmark No self respecting Dane would be so rude as to ask a complete stranger how he/she is doing >_

How could you do this to the poor guy? He might be completely lost if you don't follow the script. Nothing like the unexpected to throw people off. Reminds me a bit of my very first phone conversation with a guy from London over the phone: He asked me "How are you?" and my gut response (which I luckily suppressed by biting my tongue) was "None of your business". I mean, how dare he ask for details about things he doesn't need to know about. We were not that familiar after all. Later I found out that it is common courtesy thing in English speaking countries and you are not even expected to give a sincere answer to the question.

Girls with tails Horns are optional. Nice if they have them, but not essential >_ Apart from that, a sense of purpose in a believable world. By believeable, I don't mean real, but a system where things acts according to the natural laws of the setting.

Use the biggest hammer you can find Sorry, I am not at home right now (where my Vista machine is). I'll see if I remember this thread when I get home from work tonight, or better yet, somebody else chimes in with the answer