metadigital

Er, no. Sorry, but you're mistaking the age of KotOR with the age of Naga Sadow. It's true that some of the Tales of the Jedi comic books (the "Golden Age of the Sith" and "Fall of the Sith Empire" series) do take place around 5000 before the Battle of Yavin, but the other Tales of the Jedi stories (the original five issues and the "Freedon Nadd Uprising", "Dark Lords of the Sith", "Sith War", and "Redemption" series) all take place about a thousand years after around 4000 before the Battle of Yavin (bBY). The earliest of these (the original five issues about Ulic and Nomi) take place 4000 bBY, while the last ("Redemption") takes place place around 3986 bBY. The "Sith War" was set around 3996 bBY, and since KotOR1 takes place about 50 years later, it probably takes place around 3956 bBY and KotOR2 around 3951 bBY. I'd say Nomi was still in her 20s during the Sith War, which would put her in her 70s or 80s at the time of the KotOR games. She might have died of old age by then, but she also might still be alive. Even if we discount the timeline speculation, it's still clear that Nomi could not have lived a thousand years before, since the only time we hear of her in KotOR1 is when Jolee remembers her, which would be impossible unless he is a thousand years old himself... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Which all goes to prove that GL is not really interested in continuity; he is barely able to provide it for two consecutive films, let alone encompassing all the EU. From what I see, GL is more interested in making (poorly researched) references to them, to appear like there is a larger universe of work, because of the scarcity of LA's success. I wouldn't be surprised if LA had Revan appearing after RotJ. :D

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As a stimulant, it is possible it may depress the libido, as in the case of amphetamines. It probably affects sperm motility; I've no idea if it affects ova in any way. (Nicotine causes low-birthweight and premature neo-natals, and this in turn has been shown to affect mental aptitude years later ...) I would query the results of the psychological test cited in your post, too. From personal experience, I know that my physical fitness has more of an impact on any mental exercise than any drug; the somatopsychic effects of a good cardiovascular system (after all the brain uses

I called Mean Girls a "fun little movie". I approach a Mean Girls differently than I would approach a Citizen Kane. If I'm reading a mystery novel, I'll judge it on different standards than I'd judge a work of high literature. Anyway, a movie lives or dies in the director's hands. A good director can save a crappy script, and a brilliant script can die in the hands of a crappy director. A good director can coax great performances out of mediocre actors, and again vice versa. Jackson managed to bore me with Cate Blanchett and Sean Bean in his troupe. Maybe his problem was sticking as close to the books (I assume, I haven't read them) as he did, and should have strayed more from them than he did. That's something else a good director can do. A good director should be able to take a story and glue my ass to the seat making me want to see how it all ends. So I don't think Jackson is a good director. I know I can find review after review praising the LoTR films and Jackson, but they are not universally beloved. Linky Linky

Hip, hip ...

Germans Teutonic ingenuity at the start, I like it! Yep, that's the best way to win. Still. Certainly on the highest level, you will not win unless you defend with attack, viz: "Attack is the best form of defence" (as the Prussians used to believe!). I think they were trying to make increasing the size of your civilization a case of diminishing returns. That's the only explanation I can think of. The problem is, it didn't work - it's still usually the largest Civ that wins the game, which to me is quite boring, especially as I tend to play as a pacifist, and only take territory if I'm attacked first. It's also counter-intuitive - there is some link between the size of a country and its power, but it's not as clear-cut as the game makes it. I'd rather have a 'quality of life' victory - that by getting all your citizens university-educated, with access to all luxuries and very happy, you could win. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You are such a pacifist, Steve! Not that that's a bad thing, except if you're playing a game of world domination ...! I guess you are looking forward to more choice of religious expression in Civ4, so that your citizens can be buddhists ...

Thanks, I'll use that. Me too, that's my gamepad. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, well done, and thanks, Baley.

^^ But then you miss out on your friendly Yeti ...

Last I checked capital punishment is given to people who MURDER other people. I guess it's easy to forget the person who was killed should be avenged. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah, but should revenge be a motivation for the state? Law and Order is one principle, Justice is important, but vengence is not a moral imperative. After all, Christianity, for one, teaches the power of forgiveness. When the forgiveness process is undertaken by willing participants, and is conducted honestly, it grants the victims freedom from hate and the perpetrators clemency and a stake in the society, which ultimately will motivate most people to good citizenship. (There are those beyond redemption, obviously; I wouldn't like to see any psychopaths, nor most murderers out on the street.) I saw a doco on tv recently, where the parents of a young man forgave the other young man who killed their son. Obviously not an easy thing to do, and it is prone to many potential issues that esily might derail it, but when it works it is truly miraculous. In this particular case, the jailed man was reclaimed from a wasted life in jail (after serving the rest of his sentence) and the parents were freed from the slavish hatred of another

I remember there were two other (less bloody) Yeti and penguin games (obviously by the same guy, considering the verisimilitude of the graphics). My favourite is penguin tossing. :cool: Go here (you'll have to register, but it is trivial).

I thought the four presidents carved into South Dakota were meant to be the duck's nuts? ... George Washington represents the struggle for independence, Thomas Jefferson the idea of government by the people. Abraham Lincoln for his ideas on equality and the permanent union of the states, and Theodore Roosevelt for the 20th century role of the United States in world affairs. ...

Copyright

What's the cleric caste, from the Torah / OT ? Can't think of their name off hand, and I don't have a Bible handy ... it's all in the Pentateuch, Leviticus or Exodus from memory ...

Firstly, reading taks's analysis of the charges, it does seem pretty jumped up. It's nothing like the Micro$oft extortion against Apple to squeeze Netscape off the Mac desktop, as demonstrated in the Bill Gates' emails subpoenaed for the last anti-trust investigation by the DoJ. Secondly, I would also like to state that a duopoly doesn't automatically grant the consumers more value or even choice. Even if AMD get a significant market share, there is no guarantee that consumers will benefit in any specific way. Thirdly, there is still a residual stigma associated with the other processor manufacturer; always the guarded threat that software might not run 100% on your different hardware. Insidiously invidious marketing. let the buyer beware. we have a heck of a tool in the internet. if a company is abusing whatever power it may have (only granted via government intervention, btw) then people will find out and stop buying. when given a free reign in an unobstructed market, coporations have zero power. they simply operate in a manner in which they can make the most profit. if they screw up, people stop buying their products, end of story. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't agree; it is a natural goal for any capitalist corporation to rule its market in a monopolistic fashion. That is the best way to provide the most return to their shareholders for the least expenditure. That's why Bell became the behemoth it did. It was just carrying its business plan to the ultimate phase of implementation. Are you suggesting that the US shouldn't have broken up Standard Oil? Or was that a legitimate enterprise illadvisedly interfered with by the government? This seems a little self-contradictory, or at least semantically challenging. Can you clarify what the restrictions a government ought to provide, as opposed to those it shouldn't? I think the government's role in a capitalist system is to monitor and prevent abuses of the system by large corporations.

I'm waiting for a geek to make a Kobayashi Maru joke ...

If you lie down with [lousy] dogs [meaning the less-than righteous sections of the cummunity whose support was garnered by the Kennedy family], you get up with fleas. Still, my point was that Kennedy is almost universally lauded as an exemplary leader. It is ironic that he had to cheat to get in. I wonder if we can draw any conclusions from that ... "

he did on the second one but against al gore he only got 49% but he achieved the electoral # required. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You must hate the last president to cheat the system too ... let's see, the 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who obtained office via his father's bribery-led vote-rigging in Massachusetts, Illinois and Texas. "... Serious allegations that vote fraud in Texas and Illinois had cost Nixon the presidency[4]. Especially troubling were the unusually huge margins in Richard Daley's Chicago

GOLD Unfortunately, it does indeed sound like it's Morrowind with Jedi. Space Combat sounds good though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You might want to edit the

It's all down to balance. There are very enjoyable aspects associated with low-level character interactions, just as there are with epic levels, and every level in between as long as the interactions are balanced. Some people may not find a game dynamic interesting if it means working with a PC that is not very powerful (and we needn't go into the reasons

Now you're talking. Don't forget Pong. I can still play that. Seriously. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Absolutely. And Tetris. And what was that Galaga-type-game where you went right around the screen? Y'know, the one with the warping through the solar system? Two Warps to Neptune ... Three Warps to Uranus (Boom! Boom!) ... Three Warps to Saturn ... Three Warps to Jupiter ... Three Warps to Mars ... Three Warps to Earth (that's when it got silly, with the enemy ships ludicrously fast) ... then back to Three Warps to Neptune ... ~35? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ... and counting ...

Stop psycho-analyzing him! There is a (made for tv?) film about that: two salesmen go to an out-of-town office, and the one manipulates the other into falling for a co-worker in that office (by talking her up to him, and giving his encouragement), whilst dating the woman, with the conclusion of the film being he was simply manipulating the guy so that he could out-perform him at work! The fact that he left the other guy crestfallen with unrequited love for the co-worker (which raises interesting tangential isues about the meaning of "love", how easy it is to "fall in love", and how it may differ between individuals, but let's not cover that here and now), the co-worker totally jaded with both of them, in addition to his primary goal of a totally superior sales performance, only served to put icing on the cake. I can't remember the name of the film, but it was within the last ten years, IIRC ... (I will give a cookie to anyone that can name it.)

No, I am not forgetting. I liked the fact that you could "be the rocket", like some sort of cyborg buddhist ... :cool:

Yup. I think they tried to make IW's story as grand as the original, but what they accomplised was in fact, to bastardize Deus Ex's story. I mean, at the end I was expecting to hear something like "We are the Borg, you will be assimilated". Yeah. Why the hell do they have to explode on death? That was not only lame, but it effectively forced you to use ranged weapons, rendering close combat useless. And hey, thank God the . Since when did they become the freaking MJ12? Ah, yeah. I was expecting for it to be revealed as an instrument of either the . But in the end, nothing. Damn shame. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I would like to register my agreement with the above. I think NG was meant to tie in with one of the factions, and so too the other factions were meant to be stronger (in literature terms), but it seems those "I"s were not dotted. I did like the guided rocket launcher missile, though, that at least made ranged attacks on the paladins fun ... PS Fishboot, what did you do to the spoiler tags, they're pre-revealed?!

"It's highly likely that it's caused by an eruption of an underwater volcano," coast guard spokesman Shigeyuki Sato said, adding it [could also be Godzilla trumping;] it had happened before.

Oh, that was a Richard & Judy Book Club item, wasn't it? Reviewed by that fop from Have I Got News For You, whatzisname, *qucikly does a google, well whatdya know, it's in the wiki!* Ian Hislop. I might pick that up as soon as I attack and devour a significant part of my reading stack ...