metadigital

Oh wow, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (-Bohm) phenomenon. That is a cool concept for theoretical quantum cryptography.

Pah! I just cast a disable droid three or four times and it's scrap. Singlehanded.

I've also wondered about that mysterious open tenth slot in your party screen. I, for one, am glad. At least on Telos, she was quite the obnoxious, though her character model is quite spiffy.. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Um, isn't the tenth spot for HK-47?

For reasons I can't explain, this idea amuses me greatly. I may have to try it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Perhaps it's my rakish pseudo-Austrian accent transliterated to English ... :D

Sure, but that interest could be a morbid fascination in what makes someone want to be evil. It doesn't necessary follow that the person investigating is evil, or will become evil. I would suggest that current evidence is we develop our ehtics pretty early in life (say by seven years old), with scope for only minor modifications later (barring some life-shattering event, like a loved one being raped or murdered, which may send the person off on a behavioral tangent, or not). You are basically arguing that screen violence leads to real violence. I hope you are wrong, or our children's generation are in for the apocalypse. (But those who have experienced real violence, like a war, are seldom violent -- apart from those that were psychopathic before the experience). Otherwise the 50s in the US would have been like the Balkans in the 90s. I think you're making the mistake of either / or. Either you don't like to roleplay against type (e.g. evil), or you harbour urges to be that type (evil). I think the situation is slightly more complex than black and white.

the only negative I can see with complex multiple interlaced IP ownership is the logitical nightmare involved in agreeing revneues when producing a new game. Other than that, sa long as the dev team have a long leash, I'm all for it.

one of the main Force powers you see being used in the movies is, in fact, using the Force to throw debris at your opponent. We haven't seen that yet in the KOTOR games (not sure if we've even seen it in cutscreens). I would like to see that. Perhaps the main reason we haven't seen it is, when you think about it, this would be a little tricky to implement since you would have to select which object to throw and at whom and how forceful, etc. But it would be cool if they found a way to do it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How is it any better / different to Force Lightning / Force Push ? Or: what's the point? I don't see any need to implement it. I would much rather the extra effort went into plot and character develpoment!

I have not yet played Fallout but Morrowind has the same thing...you can attack just about anyone at anytime (including people who are tying to help you). While I like the idea of some more open-endedness, I think that such a move would cheapen these games. These games are heavily story-focused and, of course, we are talking about Star Wars here. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Just have a "reputation" stat. If you kill innocents then your rep reflects that. Also, if you are seen as the soft-touch of the universe, then you should be flocked by every hard-luck-Harry and Susy-sob-story in the game. The easiest way to prevent killing story-significant NPCs is to annouce that the PC has just prevented themselves from finishing the main plot (

A PC emulation would be interesting ... I guess SPORE might be similar.

Isle of Man has the oldest continuous democracy: Iceland had a break for fifty years or so back in the last century of the first millennium (er, the tenth century, then).

I guess they put that article there so that whitevanmen could pretend to be reading about GL instead of perving at a young girls mamories. In fact, maybe it is a cunning meme, placed in the paper by social engineers to measure the reach of page 3 in society ... "

I disagree. You are arguing for a reduction in empathy; that sociopathic and psychopathic traits are somehow "addictive", or triggerd by roleplay. Why can't the audience of one be fascinated in a horrified way by the actions of their avatar? I don't believe most people who watch a horror film are imagining themselves as the monster! I think it is a case of poor roleplay. By experiencing the feelings of killing another, I would expect a normal individual to feel uncomfortable and not want to imitate the action in RL. (There are estimated to be about 2% of the population who are maladjusted and find homocide uneventful.)

Then roleplaying a bad character might do you some good. I don't expect you to start adopting anti-social behaviour in RL, nor become a sociopath and use machievelli's precepts to engineer your friends and enemies into making your life better! I find it can help clarify why bad is bad and explain goodness without all the (normally present) religious baggage associated with such ethical discourse. Seeing how a Sith operates allows you to feel the impact on your alter ego (PC) and helps re-inforce ideas of fairness and morality, I think. Certainly nobody will be hurt in the experiment.

Because Pokemon appeared when I had left school completely, I had no exposure to it; I found your synopsis very interesting. I see it is very game-theory-intensive, with the complexities of Mendell's laws thrown in (and genotype and phenotypes, too). What sort of game engine is it? I was only aware of the cards and little game-and-watch-type (showing my age there) handheld computer devices. Is there a Pokemon game for the PC or a console? Game Theory is very cool.

Sounds awfully like an "Ewok Adventure" movie ... :ph34r:

Is porn the expression of an obsessively pent-up sexuality, or an overly exposed one? Is the attraction to animated "hentai" merely a function of cultural appreciation for anime, or is it the symptom of the desire for idealized and artificial people? Is a pop culture defined by cuteness, sexuality, and violence the normal outgrowth of a peaceful society, or is it only the surface of forcibly suppressed militarism? Is Japan "just another weird foreign country" (as us Americans might see 90% of the world), or is it a nation whose psychology has been fundamentally damaged? May I inject a bit of mind tickle on the subject? Not so much an intellectual debate, more of a speculative one. Much of the Japanese aesthetics I have been exposed to remind me of a paper I once read concerning the aesthetics of post-WWI/WWII society. The paper can be found here: http://bid.berkeley.edu/bidclass/readings/benjamin.html. In particular, I am referring to this concluding passage: Besides the obvious link with historical Fascism, one might argue that the aesthetics of the so-called "first-world" are little different than Japan's, save only for the aversion to sexual perversity. After all, Japan isn't the only country producing art that might be characterized as "self-alienating" - Hollywood is just as guilty, and becoming increasingly so with its love of apocalyptic cinema (ie everything from ID4 to the recently debuted The Day After Tomorrow, to the upcoming War of Worlds). To this end, one might question whether the equation of Japan with sexual perversity is not merely the byproduct of an absence of "Protestant ethics", and whether the US would not have ended the same way had it not have its persistent alliance to Christian morals (which, btw, we all seem to take for granted in being disturbed by Japan's so-called "perversity"). We might conjure up the aesthetics of historic Japan in support of these views. We might point out that modern hentai had its roots in the "erotic" art produced ages ago in Japan. We would, however, run into the problems of Western "erotic" art produced along the same lines, around the same periods of time. Erotic torture and bondage, after all, were popular even during the Medieval times. And then again, the US had always believed that it had stood on the side of "righteousness", that its participation in the numerous wars of the world have always been a crusade for the sake of democracy and God. Japan, having lost WW2, does not have the luxury of such beliefs, and must instead deal with the problem of its own ugliness, its alliance with what is considered the "Axis of Evil." Some, it is true, believe that Japan has long left behind its former self, that in reclaiming its image as a productive first-world society, its people have already gotten over that stage of Japanese history. Some wounds, however, take longer than others to heal. Particularly ones opened by the blast of the only atomic bombs ever dropped on major human cities. The only comparison we can make in this case would be with Germany and Italy. My sources tell me that the Germans in Berlin are almost obsessed with the idea of peace. Though that itself maybe a symptom of deeper issues, is a similar trend followed by Japan? Apparently not, given the resurgence of militarism among the political right as of late, and the escalation of tensions between Japan and China. How do you navigate the social dynamics of a culture that has always prided itself on its military honor, a "warrior" society in every sense of the word, but which has been deprived of exactly that? How do you express the shame of defeat and powerlessness, of being an "occupied" country and a antagonist in world politics, through art? And then there's the matter of modern Japanese society, with its aging population, its obsessive work mentality, and its traditional code of manners that would mark a Japanese anywhere else in the world, but which for that reason makes it that much easier to feel "at home" in Japan. What, if anything, lurks below the surface of a society that by no means can be considered "healthy" in its expectations for the amount of work required for (especially) a male, and which has such a wide abundance of distractions in the form of its often escapist aesthetics? Is the latter the result of the former, as pop psychology might inform us, or is it something more complicated than that? Is the "disturbing" (as we might see it) trend of fanservice in the form of female submissiveness to the point of enslavement, as is common in Japanese pop culture (particularly anime), merely the psychological defense mechanism of an exhausted patriarchy unable to stem the tides of feminism, as we would proclaim based on Western patterns? Or is it something else beyond that? How do you account for, after all, the twisting together of cuteness-violence and cuteness-sexuality that seems to most Westerners a most unlikely and disturbing combination, until we examine our own aesthetics to find hints of the same? (ie any film with "cuddly", yet evil, children) Before we look, we must first realize that our eyes are mirrors. Most of us do not look to see the "truth", if it exists, but to see ourselves mirrored in the eyes of other people, in the cultures of other nations. A lack of understanding is not unusual, but to be expected, as no man can look through another man's eyes. But in judging others, I wonder if we're not really in the business of trying to judge ourselves? After all, most people could care less what happened to a starving child in some third world country, yet identify a pedophile in America and the whole country will turn against him, screaming for his judgment. What makes a victim of nature any less significant than a victim of sexual perversity? Why are we so quick to deal out punishment, but so hesitant to hand out aid? It's human nature - that's the obvious answer. But what are the implications of that nature? The answer to that question, I think, has alot to do with a understanding of Japan and its cultural mentality. After all, was Japan not at the receiving end of a judgment and a punishment that resonates even to this day? And are not its cultural expressions a subject of judgment even now? Judgments are mirrors of those who judge and we, who are "righteously" disturbed by Japan's perversity, have only to ask ourselves what they're mirroring in us. But even beyond that, we must ask what is mirrored in the eyes of they who live in the mirror. When the average Japanese "joe" looks at his country's history how is he supposed to judge? Is he supposed to say that his people were evil doers who have now turned to the light? Is he supposed to say that his country is filled with perverts? Of course not? And we wonder, we really do, what sort of mirror is created, when one looks inwards and judges himself. Will he ignore the past, and be doomed to repeat its mistakes? Will he condemn it, and attempt to move beyond its indignity? Or will he embrace it, and become that which the world has judged him to be: "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determin

Oh, so she's homosexual, not bisexual. Gotcha. So it's not like the error in Elite Force, then.

Is there any nice wine left in the cellar?

Is Wryly an NPC who can join the party? (I never asked him to pick out a nice cabernet sauvignon ...)

... Not that I would wish my cookies or knitting on anyone. But the general sentiment of willing helper's assistant, was what I was echoing.

Log onto the forum and troll for fights about people who do? <_<

Sounds like a memory overflow. The arms and faces and characteristics are all drawn ad hoc; I had one instance (PC) with my party consisting of bodies that looked as though they had been pur

But what about all the Jedi in the Ebon Hawk? That's a blinking beacon! (Pun intended. :D )

Poorly optimized buggy game and they have the nerve to say that it works with 256 MB RAM. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What are you talking about? I played Planetside on my Apple //e, which had a total of 64kB of RAM (with the funky 16kB "language card" included as standard with the main 40kB onboard RAM). 256MB? That's an order of 16384 times larger than is required to run the game! In case you didn't bother to follow the link, Planetside was an Infocom game, like the Zork trilogy predecessors. (You'd be better off buying a second hand Apple ][ or //e or //c.)

Or installing me as a benign dictator. Honest.