metadigital

chocoloate. No, wait vanilla ................. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

You cannot negotiate with a terrorist. Any form of aquiecence to extortion will necessarily grant carte blanche to all future demagogues to use the tactics to gain whatever results they want. The only way to deal with terrorism is to refuse to deal with it. This presents the dilemma of how to netiate a settlement to an intractable conflict (like the centuries of skirmish in Northern Ireland). At some point, negotiation is possible, but it requires the cessation of all use of force and especially terrorism. Until that point, it is a war. And war is ugly. War has few rules, except that the winner is right. (Chemical and biological weapons banned by the Geneva convention? Who has the largest stockpiles of biological weapons? Countries of the former USSR, the US, the UK and China. And they have a LOT, including smallpox, the only virus that humans have ever destroyed.)

I never believed those were real until I saw them. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> "Seeing is believing." I suppose if the authorities put a (camouflaged) CCTV camera on them then it would be a useful "honeypot" security device to attract and mark such deviants for closer observation ...

No producer/developer wants the aggrovation from card-carrying loonies screaming "Death to the purveyors of child abuse!" on their front lawns. It's much better to just avoid the issue entirely. As for sensitive handling, there is a community mod (by Adam Miller, iIrc: Dreamcatcher 3) where the PC has to decide whether to kill a child who has a fatal illness, or give her vampire blood as a "cure". Obviously this is a pivotal moral dilemma. (Is it right to end a life, even if it is suffering, or is it better to curse the little girl to eternal undead?)

Europe has a very long way for such an japanese way of looking at porn. And most likely will never get there or even want to get at that point. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, Europe are still waiting for their first "soiled teenager panties" vending machine. <_<

I agree with your sentiments almost totally. Except that it is not possible to compare the SW RPG classes with D&D, as there just aren't enough types. D&D has two types of magic: arcane (magic users, illusionists and sorcerors) and divine (clerics, druids and high level paladins/blackgurards and anti-/rangers). SW KotOR has Jedi/Sith, which are basically the equivalent of the paladin/blackguard classes. (All Jedi and Sith can wield a lightsaber as well as any soldier / fighter can wield a sword). So you aren't going to find as much satisfaction in the KotOR games (we haven't even touched on the Thief / Assassin and Monk classes, let alone prestige classes like Shadowdancer, Dragon Disciple or Necromancer). Still, limited classes can still provide good RPG environments: look at Deus Ex.

Bao-Dur was a very useful NPC. (Just the voice acting was attrocious.) Hmm, T3, Kreia or HK-47? HK-47 didn't really get any more than a cameo, thanks to the editing. T3 did most of the work (he's the real criminal mastermind in the KotOR universe: cleverly ducking behind the G0-T0 droid when things get too obvious ...) Kreia was by far the deepest and most interesting character in both games.

The force powers mentioned are all quite useful. I would suggest practising with a character and giving this PC these powers and watching what happens in battle when using them. (Look at the combat log to see the actual dice rolls and bonuses added, etc.) The most useless Force Powers are: Beast Trick and Force Breathing. Beast Trick is only meant ot be used when you are storming the Palace on Onderon. The Force Breathing is only used in the Jek Jek Tarr. Of the two, probably Beast Trick is the absolute most pointless, because the targeted creature is only in stasis for a short time and then has to be killed anyway. Force Breathing doesn't work anywhere else (even though a blue bubble surrounds the PC when invoking elsewhere). Buggy, lazy or stupid idea -- who knows?

:D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not an organ donor, then?

Death of the Force is not synonymous with death of all life. (Although this is hinted at in some parts of the monologues given by Atris and Traya.) I was very keen to determine this one way or the other, but after analysing their speeches line by line, I decided that they were so inconsistent it was a fruitless task. Hence I propose that Kreia may have known something that we haven't yet cottoned onto. If there really is no free will, and the Force is predetermining all future events for all life in the universe, then the Force is nothing more or less than an autocrat, a tyrant. But, because said life believes in the illusory fredom of will, then life is being manipulated to some secret agenda. This means that the Force is malevolent (as no good Force would give the illusion of free will -- it would bring us right back to the Epicurean Paradox). Ergo, the Force is a malevolent despotic force that needs to be combated to restore true fredom of choice and free will to the beings of the universe. Join US! (w00t)

Probably there are so few of them because they got a very bad brain disease (similar to the Mad Cow Disease) by doing this. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah, the legendary Kuru. It is very, very rare. As a prion disease, you need to eat infected flesh (well, brains, really). Not good for all those New Guinea zombies ... (Actually I think it isn't that popular because it is pretty gross. :D ) The buddhist monks in Tibet leave the cadavers for the "Sky God", i.e. the vultures, to dispose of; this is a very good recycling idea (very buddhist) ... Soylent Green is made out of people! :ph34r:

The Dark Side has no friends. Just people you control with extortion -- whether you threaten their baby's life, or their elderly mother's bad knee. It's all about control. A Light Side (Good) character will ask for help. A Dark Side (evil) character will force others to assist. That's why the bad guys always lose their party when the scenario goes pear shape; no-one wanted to be there in the first place.

No amount you say.....either you're just foolish or you don't watch the news....and those "criminals" are making major damage to the "democratic" process in Iraq every single day.....if the US pulled out of Iraq, the new goverment wouldn't last for more then 2 months....and the fanatics that blow themselfs up, they have those waiting in lines just to have a chance to kill "the enemies of Islam", because they are 100% sure if they die in jihad, the muslims believe they go strait to haven where there are 72 virgins waiting for them (not kidding)....they are just convienced in that like you and me are that if we put our arm in fire that we would get burned.....the future is far more cloudy then you see it.... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't know about your two-month timeline for the Iraqi government without US support. For a start there are more members of the Iraqi security force than US armed forces personnel in Iraq now, and secondly I doubt whether they would ever run out of funding to keep these forces better equipt than the insurgents. I also think the insurgents will not be able to do any more damage than they are doing now. Even if the state turns into another Lebanon, the focus of UN attention and US funds is sufficient, I think, to keep a militant government in power. (Whether this is a good idea we will not know for a long time.) Reminds me of an anecdote, apparently from the Chinese Ambassor. He was asked about his opinion on the outcome of the French Revolution. his response was that it is still too early to tell.

Intelligence is a cul-de-sac in the highway of existence; it is a dead end where too many precious resources are wasted to create the brain that ultimately ends up contemplating its navel instead of continuing the gene game. The armoured anthropods had it right, first. Loads of dumb animals will overcome even the most puzzling of survival problems with sheer numerical force and a frequent reproductive cycle to react quickly to the environment. I believe in Nothing. Everything is sacred. I beleive in Everything. Nothing is sacred. ~

i dunno, maybe because he knows that sweden is tiny and has very little impact in world politics? the "wave" of international belief is to hate the US because it is the only remaining superpower, and bin laden is smart enough to know that the only way he can get any attention is to fight the US. remember, the last time bin laden "took up a cause" was against the russians in afghanistan. not coincidentally against the 2nd to last superpower. duh. your brilliance amazes, kaftan. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Play nice, taks. Osama Bin Laden's main goal is to have the US military presence removed from the Holy Lands (i.e. Saudi Arabia, in which lies the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah). The irony is that the US has all but obliged this demand in the years since 9/11 and in order to invade Iraq. So Osama Bin Laden has almost achieved this stated aim. His next target is the Royal Family Saud.

You can see the equation from the above post by highlighting the text (much like text within the SPOILER tags). PS That sounds really interesting: fluid dynamics is one of the few computations that still needs a super computer ... complex stuff!

Actually there are some cultures (not many, admitedly) that regard the eating of their dead as the ultimate veneration of their spirit and memory. They can eat me when I'm dead: I don't need the body anymore. (I'm not a Rastafarian*.) *Rastas are physical immortalists who believe the chosen few will continue to live forever in their current bodies. This idea of everliving (rather than everlasting) life is very strong and important.

The only issue with playing DS is not how I feel about being "bad", it is how I feel acting brainless, because all the DS dialogue options make the PC sound like a psychopath without a second neuron to bang into their first.

You've hit the nail square on. The whole problem with teleportation is keeping the integrity of the object. Literally, the process is mapping the entire object, atom by atom, converting the mass to energy, then transporting this energy to a destination, then reconstituing the energy back to mass according to the map originally made. Even if you make the map of the atomic structure of the object instantaneously, there are still problems to overcome: think about all the chemical processes taking place in the brain, stomache, etc. (It would be reasonable to expect any live creature to be in a state of suspended animation.) Nevertheless, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know both the location and velocity (a vector of speed in a direction) at the same instant. Teleportation Star Trek tranporter Treknobabble Science of Star Trek: FTL travel Transporters Super Conductivity occurs in certain new artificial substances at high temperatures (i.e. approx. 100

You are referring to the mind/brain seperation. I.e. the "brain" is the physical mass of fat, endocrine glands & secretions, and axions & dendrites that make up the corporeal structure including the spinal cord. The "Mind" is the soul or spirit. (Some people suggest that only people have a mind, regardless of the animals that are more intelligent.) Is the Mind a part of the Brain? Knock yourself out: you've just hit the philosophical boundary of experimental neuroscience!

If that had actually made any sense I would have asked, "and you would know this how?" I don't really agree at all with anything you said, so answer these... If the "hole" doesn't lead anywhere, and the object broke up, where did the peices go? With it being a collpsed(imploded) star, yes true, but it's not of infinite mass, not mass really at all, it's of the exact opposite mass that the star had. Since a star is energy, when it's imploded it's made negative, so if something is pulled into it and the object is converted into energy, where does the energy go? (since a black hole is the opposite of energy) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'll step in here. The point of singularity at the heart of a black hole (and cosmologists have observed a couple, and it is postulated there are loads of them -- including a massive super-black hole -- at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy) slows down time, as matter approaches it. So matter is basically "frozen" in the last nanoseconds of time at the periphery of the black hole, just before entering the point of singularity. The mass of the star is converted to energy, which we see in the radio and microwave spectra (it's too long a wavelength for visible light). As an object approaches the speed of light, it gets heavier and time slows down. This is called Time Dilation and is described in Einstein's "special" case -- i.e. no gravity effects -- of Relativity. (Relativity of motion was introduced by Galileo, who overturned Aristotle's theory of absolute motion.) When you look at the night sky and pick out the fourth brightest star, Alpha Centauri (actually it is a triple star system: Alpha Centauri A is a binary with the red dwarf Alpha Centauri B; plus Proxima Centauri, which is the closest, but not as bright) -- at four (4.36) light-years distant, (9.46

Iberia was the name the Phonecians gave to the land overrun with rabbits; it means "land of rabbits". Almost all the rabbits are gone (disease), so the main predator, the Iberian Lynx, is almost extinct, because they only eat rabbits. There are only about 20 left (it is the rarest cat in the world).

Has anyone bought a Citro

The main problem with religion (and I know this is a science thread, but my comment is pertinent that that as well) is that it is outside science. Not only is this convenient to help mop up the current unexplainables of science, but is also prevents further examination -- we already have a cause: God. Now, I am quite happy to discuss the boundaries of science and further the science. The problem is -- and this is no accident -- only a very few people are qulaified to discuss such things. Because they are very complex, and rely on a lot of other complex knowledge, which is not readily available to the amateur cosmologist. It is very easy in this day and age to become a world expert on a tiny subject (heck I am a world expert on my thesis topic) -- but to gain enough broad spectrum scientific knowledge requires the total dedication of a lifetime's work -- unless you feel that today's physicists are not that bright. Consequently there will be questions that are unanswerable -- especially to us and especially in such a forum -- but this is not an excuse to say they are insoluable. I do enjoy the mental calisthenics involved in the contemplation of the beyond-knowledge, but this will inevitably incorporate some philosophical discource. And probably not a small amount of theological cerebration, as well. And I may be just a tad over-sensitive about the theological encroachment into rigorous science (but I make no excuses for that! )

Anything to tinker with success rather than go out and try and create something excellent. Not to mention one last whoring of the current content as "last time available ever", before he adds a two-headed green Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader becomes Darth Moeder. Then again, if it means Episode I and II will have a complete rescripting (yeah, sure) then I see nothing to lose ...