metadigital

It's a tough one, alright. Certainly he (and his sons) killed and tortured many many thousands of people (apparently there were thousands of people writing in

So you are saying that, no matter how evil Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or Saddam Hussein were, they should not be coerced with force to prevent them from hurting other people

But really, what kind of trouble could gerbils get into driving a "couch"? " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You've never seen the result of a sofa road-kill, obviously ... "

Rationalize much? *snip most of the sanctimonious drivel* <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I wasn't implying that there was no art in the video game medium (apologies if that is what you took away from my comment); I was more laughing at the "games HAVE to be art or else they are WoW / Britney Spears / popular therefore not culture".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's meant to be Diablo+6 years, basically. So just Diablo with updated graphics (and gameplay?).

Wow, that is quite a detailed game.

No but we do have a Wiki going to keep track of who is doing what. Niah is also working on a base module for team use with common scripts for custom items, death, respawining, etc. But it is up to the builder to use it or not. I am using it. The builders are doing their own project, we are just working together to make some of the projects tie together. For example my mod is The Company of the Wolf. It is for new level 1 characters and will take you to level 5-6 depending on how you play it. Phoenixus mod begins at level 6. To keep it flowing my mod will include some events that lead up to his. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's good. I was more interested in the hard-won experiences of resource allocation for a project. By that I mean, what the critical path is (what needs to be done first, then next, etc, until the project is finished) and what those parts require (as in people's time and effort).

I thought it was an erroneous spelling for genre because if the context. Still, it's certainly apt, if applied as "genus" for the singular.

Yeah, it was just one long trench, from the Belgian coast all the way to Switzerland. CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) is used to confirm that the data being read is uncorrupted; basically it is checksum ... Anyway, exciting descriptions aside, it sounds like something is causing noise on the loading; as you have already determined that the disc contents are not corrupt (by loading it onto another PC), that just leaves the DVD drive, its driver, the cable, or your CPU / RAM / entire plane of reality. Try replacing the driver first. Then try using another DVD drive. Then petition your god for a new reality.

Meow! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Meta = :crazy: <_< <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't think you understand my comment.

It's listed at

First up, the Abrahamic religions don't place "Satan" as a god; they are monotheistic religions. Satan is just an archangel; as such (s)he was created by god. What you are thinking of is more along the lines of the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism (although this is still a hollywood-type religion, because it has a happy ending), where the believers hold that the universe is made up of differing ratios of good and evil matter. But this has nothing to do with the definition of evil. Even if a thoroughly evil person manages to do some good (even accidentally), that doesn't mean they aren't evil. (Arguing that evil is the absence of good is just semantics.) It is true that life is complex: out of great evil can come some great good. Smaller, warring, neighbouring countries can make an alliance to fight a common enemy, for example. Stating that "you cannot kill evil" and, by implication, fail to try is just defeatism of the worst sort. "Life is a journey," the Abrahamic Judgment Day, the Dao, even Confucian "Humaneness" (r

It is hard to know what to believe. Didn't the Brits have an undercover team dressed as arabs with explosives and detonators get caught - which they busted out of jail and destroyed the jail (did they kill anybody in that operation?) - in that town. The same town where they sevrved ham sandwiches to the leadership on a train ride. Seems like the saga continues. Seems to me that sometime after the US was caught torturing prizoners in Iraq all the news stories about Iraqis killed by other Iraqis started to include statements to the effect that their bodies showed signs of having been tortured. It would be interesting to do back search on news stories to see if there really was an increase in torture reports. Of course, even if there was, it is always possible that the incidence of torture really did increase. My gut feeling though is that at least half of the effect reflects a conscious propaganda strategy - to normalize torture of Iraqis. Why, killing Iraqis may seem almost benign if they are believed to be monstrous thieves, torturers and terrorists. Whatever the truth - I doubt there is any real honor to be rescued by anyone from the mess in Iraq. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm struggling to understand this interpretation, especially considering you have said: SO, I guess what you are saying is that everyone needs to put down their arms and "have a good talk" to solve all the world's problems. I'm making that sound as ridiculous as it is. You seem to be proceeding from a dangerous supposition (i.e. "Evil is the absence of good.") There are evil people in this world. These people do not "respect" anything except force, and force of arms is the best and only way to prevent them from killing other people. (If you haven't met any, then I am pleased for you.) It may even be necessary to fulfill the promise and kill them, if not to provide a deterrent than at least to nullify their negative effects.

If you succeed with your second (optional) resolution, you will definitely succeed with your first: smoking is

"Don't drive angry!" I think you are being silly; if you said "crash test dummies" then I'd have agreed.

Why? Why can't the initial programming be to "learn all that is learnable", including wisdom? As the above Diamond and Jimmy have already intimated, neural networks

So it needs artificial people?

Victim is a much more emotive word, and gets across a certain je ne sais quoi ... A lot to do with imprinting, I would guess ... just like how all the tv shows of the seventies have been made into films now (Brady Bunch, Scooby-Doo, et alia). I am immune from Transformers, as I grew up earlier (and so I have different triggers): I don't respond to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, either; but I have a soft spot for the Thunderbirds, though there has never been anything that would coerce me into buying those products (well, I did get a Thunderbird Two about thirty years ago for a present), except perhaps to buy the old shows to re-watch. .

Hmm... that's an interesting theory. If something is popular, that means people like it. If people like it, that means it's good. Your theory has been crushed by reality. What you really mean is that you don't like it, so you "feel" it's not good. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nah, he's just paying lip-service to Mr Mortis's "game as art" elitism.

You just incurred a 50% liquidated damages fee.

I was going to leave this, as it seems that I am having less than a little success in addressing the inconsistency in your grievance. Once. Twice. Doesn't get any shorter or clearer than that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You haven't actually addressed the issue, simply explaining over and over again that you don't like using player skills w.r.t. combat but don't mind so much using your own mind to determine strategic and tactical advantages in the combat (as an aside, does this mean you eschew strategic guides, too? Because they seem to be fairly popular). But anyway, I was just curious as to why you found it so distracting in combat and not so much elsewhere. I think for one reason it's tolerable, because it's something that really cannot be removed from the equation meta. It's possible to remove direct player input for combat, but we can't just shut down our brains. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, I don't think that's a defensible position, actually. Well, that's the first time I've got that from your writing here. Really? So you think that the game is unbalanced at lower levels? Or do you think that it's easy to circumvent the skill system? Now I'm really confused ...

But a quality product sells more. There actions after the fact is irrelevant to the topic because they were no longer Troika. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What? Why? As Gromnir has already pointed out, the talent has been seeded around the industry: more experienced and wiser (hopefully).

I do indeed, but it'll take some time to dredge them all up, with their correct attributions. I do like most of Socrates, to start with.