metadigital

WHERE?! HOW?! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Here

Yep, just got JC from China back to see Dowd in Hell's Kitchen. Then I started a quick game of the EU3 demo ... and I just woke up. "

I just played the demo. First game of EU ever. The balance issues I can see the developers skewing for the demo to help show players what the game is about (that's the point of a demo, after all). First impressions are that it is like Civ only deveral orders of magnitude more complex and larger. (One quick fix I'd like to see modded or not is when you press "goto" in a dialog box, it should highlight the territory ... it can get really confusing with a hundred or so little provinces and I like to think I know my geography pretty well ... ) That's a good thing, and a bad thing. I'll probably buy the game because it will be enormous fun to play. I'll definitely lose far too much of my life playing it. That might actually count against it, as it could dissuade me from playing. I had the demo on fast most of the time (pausing only briefly) and it took over six hours to play 400 years (the length of the demo).

It's etymology is that the word started with the iPod revolution; it has since expanded to describe all such narrowcasts (which was the previous name for them, though this didn't require a separate item of hardware: one just listened on the PC).

Could be all sorts of reasons, most likely the code base Obsidian were given did not include all the latest updates (if they were added as part of the expansions, and the expansions weren't part of the hand-over, for example). This makes sense if Obsidian thought they were going to overhaul the AI, and wanted the stripped-down basics to bolt together and optimise themselves, say. Programming is quite often counter-intuitive; take the example of the "unlimited undo" feature in a word processor. Adding "undo" is not impossible, but it is actually easier to re-write the word processor from scratch with the unlimited undo function in mind, then it is to add it on afterwards, because it is so integral to the way the processor works. I'm not saying this is what happened; I'm just speculating about why we might see the AI in NwN2 seemingly less optimal than, say, HotU.

Are you suggesting that under no circumstances would a legal firm take up his case pro-bono? I can recall the Rolling Stones successfully suing someone who had sampled some of their work, in similar circumstances, only in the last few years. So the precedent is already there. I suspect the fact that Solomon Linda was black, from South Africa, and the song was published in 1939, all contributed to the length of time it took to find someone interested in his case.

The Chinese have had lasers that can be deployed in the battlefield to blind troops (either temporarily or permanently) for about a decade, too.

You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. In my experience genius is very close to insanity. I certainly don't have the evidence to contradict his (metaphysical) philosophies, and his psychology has always been very well respected, too.

Yes, music then uses one as a tool of expression.

Well at least he took preparations to smell nice. I suspect the DVD was the object of their derision, much like the *person of dubious personal status, and functional purpose* wearing a New York pull-over. (Otherwise I can't fathom it.) *Edited by Walsingham. Meta's natural revulsion overcoming his otherwise high standards of language and manners* **Edited again by tarna. Just because.

If you read my post, you will see I didn't mention pro-bono. I explicitly excluded it. And if you don't think that there would be dozens of law firms chasing after a few million dollars (the US legal system has punitive damages, don't forget), then you are deluded. Sure it might take some time, but the Finnish guy wasn't doing a lot of promotion, anyway, so it's all gravy for him.

OIC.

I actually think this makes the victory sweeter for the English; they seem to revel in the fact that they won (even though replays show the ball never crossed the goal line): just so long as they can make a chant up to irritate the German fans, then all is well.

That's not even slightly true. Even disregarding pro-bono work, any US legal would jump at the chance to make free money, leveraging their risk with a fatter percentage of the damages when they win. Yes, ALL AMERICANS. Those Native Americans, those Brazilians, every single person in the whole USA, they all cheat India out of her herbal remedies. Exaggerate much? And I know that you aren't advocating piracy on the Obsidian corporate forum, because I'd have to give you a formal warning for that.

There was a boxing advocate defending the sport, I saw recently, and he cited figures to demonstrate that there are more and worse injuries in Rugby than in Boxing ...

Krookie said straight up that basketball is a non contact sport. He's later qualified it as "no/limited contact" sport. As for the FIBA game, the Greeks played a fantastic game against the United States, and their Semi-final game was not particularly "soft." Both teams shot over 30 freethrows. Fortunately for Greece, they were absolutely on fire that game. It's hard to lose when you're making more than 60% of your shots. They also hit their first 13 shots of the second half. It's hard to win when even if you play good defense, the other team still finds a way to cash the shot. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Basketball is the most violent non-contact sport I have ever seen.

and CLEARLY it was added so the writers can do something other than basically stage a play of Shakespeare's Caesar. However, those parts have always been predictable. To argue that their just a technique to give context to the period is to say the characters in Deadwood are the same. Sure, they give context, but that's not nearly the only point of their existence. Especially if they're the lead. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Haven't seen Deadwood so I'm not quite sure what your point is there ... and I didn't say that that was the only point of the two characters. For sure we get to see life through the eyes of a Roman soldier, a centurion, a member of the senate (before C

No, that's the drama bit (story-telling technique) that has been added to help give some context to the period. And I think the writers made it work particularly well (at least in the first series).

Only a mass exodus of Windows users. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, it would only be from market forces. My observation was that Microsoft are leveraging their hegemony to create this wholly-owned digital delivery channel (I agree with Gutman's conclusion). This may be a brilliant strategic manu

Good for pest control, too. )

Um, it's a historical docudrama. Can't really defy predictability when history is already set ...

Well, OSX is just Apple's GUI on a Linux distro. But I agree, Apple must be licking their lips here. I was thinking more about the countries around the world who aren't particularly happy about having their infrastructure run by a US company (Microsoft).

With five interconnected PCs you aren't going to have a huge demand (depending on your mother-in-law's business, of course: if she manages five pay-per-view video sites, then that might change things a little ... :D ) on the network. I know someone who is perfect to answer this question: *casts summon Fenghuang* Big hardrive capacity (try RAID1 or better, RAID5 if the information is really important), you can do RAID1 with two disks, say: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB. RAID5 allows you to hot-swap a disk in the array should it fail, but also needs at least three disks to start, so you can use a couple of smaller drives, like the Samsung Spinpoint T133. Critical storage behooves you to have a good archive procedure, too. Don't forget some way to back it all up, and to have it performed (and a copy of the backups kept in a fireproof safe, offsite, preferably). Tape is cheapest. DVDs can be a big pain (CDs are worse). Apart from that, lots of RAM will help (though not more than 4GB, unless you are using Windows XP 64 bit). Make sure you tweak Windows to concentrate on file serving, rather than the foreground applications, too. Good network connectivity is important, too. As for your question about internet connectivity, it doesn't sound too promising. Cable, DSL and satellite are about the only alternatives to dialup (I'm assuming you don't want a microwave line-of-sight link ), so perhaps she can get Sky or similar? Otherwise it's dialup.

I don't own an iPod as I don't listen to music.

Oh, I forgot informal sports, too. I used to go waterskiing every weekend; best way to blow away the hangover is being dragged behind a boat at 60mph. ) Also did a couple of weeks of snow-skiing (annual ski trips of a week each), though the snowfall in Australia is lamentable. Also, I lived on the beach for most of my life, so I used to go surfing almost daily. Never quite had the stamina to go life-saving on Sunday mornings at 7am, though, like my nephews are.