metadigital

*sound of Petay collapsing on the ground, breathless*

Maybe it is predictably frequent random encounters that you despise? I know I do. That's why I lost interest in playing Wizardry 8: "Oh, I have to travel eighteen square across the map, that is eight-to-nine "random" encounters with groups of eight-to-nine annoying monsters of sufficient power to seriously endanger my party / give one character an annoyingly difficult affliction to cure / etc ... oh stuff it, I can't be bothered ..."

I had that problem playing one (whatever FF it was, back on the PSone: I give up with trying to decipher the arcane numbering system ). I got stuck after I decided that I wanted to do a particular map, and it was obvious (from my PC's survival statistics) that it wasn't where I was meant to go. That and Chokobos. They gave me the chips.

The problem is that the "extreme Muslims" are about as Islamic as pork chops in a white wine sauce.

Ouch! Handbags at ten paces!

)

Awww. I was hoping for a sizzlingly startling scrutinisation of a sufficiently amorphous subject from the always opinionated Portugese Pedagogue ...

I've seen quite a few green ids, not just QAs and JES, and I agree it doesn't look coordinated (memo: if it is meant to be you better re-start those corporate "one-team, one-message" breakfasts) so I think it's just a little steam-venting and (dare I say it) some gratuitous enjoyment on the part of the OE staff ... similar to what might be expected after completing stage two of thirteen in the dev cycle, as the guys cool their heels before the suits orchestrate whatever flashy marketing campaign, stage two, is to be rolled out. [/muted optimism]

I thought he was using a virus.

The point I was making (evidently not eloquently enough) was that there are just as many seditious verses in the Bible, and we have people right here on the forum who believe the Bible is the divine word of God *doesn't look at anyone in particular "* Incidentally, is that another interpretation of the divine word of god? Different from the King James Bible? This is a very interesting point of view. I am not christian, but have a mild belief that jesus did exist, and possibly that he never really thought of himself as the son of god any more than 'we are all the sons of god'. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The Messianic Legacy covers a lot of it in the first half of the book (Michael Baigent co-wrote the run-away bestseller Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which sat atop the book charts for most of the eighties and which is currently the claimant in a suit against The Davinci code for plagiarism; this is a sequel, which delves into a lot of the historical evidence of Christ, most of which is taught to clergy in seminaries and they consequently come to terms with it and have no problems accepting it, the liety is just presumed not to be smart enough to be told ... the bookk includes citations for all their references, so you can do your own checking.)

π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Which is the magnitude of the distance around the circle compared to the distance between two points on the edge, of a line that travels through the centre. It was at this point in the film that every network engineer who ever watched it started laughing their eyes out. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What film?

Azarkon says that liberals are right-hemisphere-dominant and conservatives are left-hemisphere-dominant! Tree-humping

Whatever stews your meat.

I didn't mean completed developed. I meant an intervening stage in the development process had been achieved. It seems like the devs have had a chance to get out and wash the anxieties and relieve the eye-strain of micro-development ... which is what I tend to do when I reach some sort of milestone (because on the way to a milestone there is little time to waste in the all-consuming urge to achieve it).

Linux can be very simple to use: I have it on an old laptop that used to be WinME (coincidence?! I think not!) and the XWindows interface is unremarkably similar to M$. Assuming your folks don't need to use M$ software, like Office, there are plenty of easy-to-use and better equivalents to all Windows stuff on Linux. (FireFox, OpenOffice.org, Eudora, etc.) A small upfront investment (by you, presumeably) in setting up the system would pay off in other ways ... like never having to reboot the machine ... being immune to all the M$ worms, mail-bombs, ActiveX trojans and spyware ...

It's something tha only a coder would most likely understand. There can be certain parts of code in a game for example that are so clever, and work so beautifully that it can be appriciated as being art, because it's been constructed with such skill, and such imagination. Yet the end user usually doesn't see this, and better still, the end user can't even tell that he's probably being tricked! As for that efficiant memory management algorithm, that works like magic, well nobody even notices. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Using the same criteria (because I concur), there is art in science, too. Newton's equations have a beauty about them, for example, and I believe his Principia is yet another beautiful layer of abstraction on top of the science (I haven't read it in Latin, yet), thus: For every action, there is an equal yet opposite reaction. Poetry. Einstein said (on his deathbed) "I am not smart. I just ask questions. ... I keep asking questions ... and when the answer is simple ... then that is God talking." And surely God is beauty is art.

It'll be in all the game mags this month, I expect. (I saw a teaser in last month's, iirc ...)

Actually, I found many of the NwN community mods far superior to the official campaign. Bearing this is mind, I am much more upbeat (unusually for me: perhaps my desires are clouding my usually-realistic-worldview? ") about the future of gaming in general and RPGs in particular. I see NwN as the provision of the computer-equivalent to the AD&D library and a pad and bunch of pencils: it's a winning decentralised strategy for maximising creative output. Which is why I feel so sanguine on the subject. That was John Wayne, Pattern said that the idea of war isn't to die for your countary, but to make the other poor bastard die for his. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Patton was a warrior poet and did not denigrate his enemy; in fact his greatest strength was the respect that he showed ("I read your book, Rommel!"). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ah, thanks for the fix. You're right, it makes a differance. But yes, he also seemed to be a bit...'eccentric' effective, but eccentric. Then again, most of my 'knowledge' comes from the film. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And a great Oscar Winner it is. On my bookshelf, too. Tangential aside: The reason I know about the "I read your book, Rommel!" line is because I was watching a director of a recent Oscars (do do doo doo do do doo doo: two mentions in the one post! We've just entered The Twilight Zone) who quoted it as part of his preparation ...

... And there was much rejoicing! (w00t) (Would you do the Richard Bachman thing ...?) Oh, I've read them many times. But what's written in the books and what's used with actual characters and settings, especially today, is quite different. You're right, different writers do approach these definitions differently, but in the Forgotten Realms of 2006, it's pretty shallow. Sorry to reduce my reply to the foundation of what you wrote, but I think we both recognize that the reality of how alignment is used in D&D today is typically far from what was written in the 1st Ed. DMG. Similarly, the way White Wolf wrote up the tendencies of the clans in Vampire, you'd think that there's a lot of room for exploration in the characters across all different clans. But that's not the way most people play them. They get flattened to the most obnoxious absurdities of the archetypes. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I would be pleased to see a game where there are more than the primary denominations of alignment available to play. For example, the dialogue options of KotOR usually had a virtuous response, a non-commital response and a chaotic-stupid response. It would be good to see more variation (maybe dynamic responses based on character development?) like the ability to pretend to be working with a party before dropping them in it at the most propitious time ... (rather than just "[LIE] The cheque is in the mail.")

Indeed. I'll give you my PayPal details ...

Windows ME is just a(nother) new face on Windows 95. (Which is just Windows 3.11, really, with a few pretty widgets.) You'd be better off with Linux ...

(but it doesn't make a difference if virtual Blank is generous with his points or not, since the points virtual Blank gives do not count in reality, right?) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not at all! Virtual points are a valuable commodity in the virtual universe. Just like the imaginary number system, based on √-1, counter-intuitively has very real effects on the real universe (Chaos theory, etc)!

Ditto. And yes it's a slow news day. It's okay, put it out of our misery.

i'm not sure what i think about that... Edit: my mind is still boggled about this, and whole minute has passed . i think pixies deserves +1 TOMBS point (simulatory according to Meta). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Bongos, Dr Bob? It's okay, virtual Blank, Pixies can have some real points

But the "poverty and disease are solved" vision is a complete fantasy. Also (taking the debate a little deeper into theological / philosophical waters) without suffering and evil there can be no good. In a universe without evil, there is no change: stagnation: perfection. It is a sad fact that good requires evil to exist: yin and yang.