E_Motion

One who aids and abets a crook is also a crook; pure and simple.

If you don't mind being a sucker, that's your choice. I can assure you that I and many other consumers won't be suckers again.

Agreed. No more LucasArts games. And I will be very reluctant to purchase anything else developed by Obsidian. Specifically, as much as ppl say that it's all LucasArt's fault, I notice that Chris Avellone has nothing negative to say about LucasArts and says Obsidian would like to work on the next KotOR in an interview here: http://www.gamer-girl.org/features/avelloneint2.html In my book, its not possible for Obsidian to have it both ways, i.e., we're a quality company despite all the problems we haven't fixed in this game because it's all LucasArts' fault, but we want to do all of this again with LucasArts. I continue to believe that Obsidian is part of the problem until and unless they do something about the problems in this game, or Obsidian demonstrates otherwise. And btw, I do know that some other games also have problems. The bad actions of other companies don't absolve LA and Obsidian of thier duty to stand behind what they make and sell. There are plenty of good games where the publisher and developer resolve all problems that they are aware of. And Microsoft, for all of its faults, sells WindowsXP for roughly twice what this game cost but has issued a hundred or so patches to fix problems there.

Exile: "Kreia?" Kreia: "Have you come with questions?" Exile: "Yes, and I need some answers." Kreia: "Have you looked in the cut content?" **********************

I didn't vote. KotOR 2 has good stuff and some problems. I finally decided that if neither the publisher nor developer were willing to take the time to fix the game, then I won't take the time to vote.

Exile: "Kreia, I need an answer. Are you Handmaiden's Mum?" Kreia: "You know the answer. You've always known." Exile: "Huh??" Kreia: "Mommies protect their little ones." Exile: "Huh??" Kreia: "Who did Mommy protect on Peragus?" Exile: "No!" Kreia: "Who did Mommy save from the mean old Jedi Council?" Exile: "Noooooooooo!" Kreia: "Give Mommy some sugar." ***************************** *****************************

That's right up there with the best of 'em! *************************** *************************** And here's a new one: KOTOR2: The Mystery of the Missing Plot *************************** ***************************

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: Sh*t Happens

You can't support a system then dismiss the result. If the elections were truly fair and representative, and the result was one that was not as palatable for the unrepresented, then that's tough. (Otherwise you're looking at the Guardian advising readers to write directly to members of the Ohio electorate in a Presidential election and try to convence them to vote for someone ...) " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I cannot disagree with what you say but will add a couple of reservations. First I never thought it a reasonable thing to expect Iraq to go directly from a state of absolute repression to a democratic state overnight. In that case ppl have learned through experience that they should grab power when they can because they may not get another chance. Democracy only works if ppl trust in the process and I believe it takes some years to develop such a trust. Second, we don't have a pure democracy in the US. Very few countries do. In a pure democracy, a majority can completely remove all rights from the minority. A representative democracy protects against that somewhat, as do constitutional limitations on the power of government.

I see that from this perspective.....the US sees democracy good only if it benefits their goals, when not, then they support various authocratic regimes that do so. They support the current regime in S.Arabia only because it's in their interest, mind the fact that S.Arabia is one of the most anti-democratic states in the Middle East and it terrorisis those of their citizens that don't act and live accordingly with their laws. Why not elections? Because that would endanger the flow of Saudi oil to the US, that would probably also mean they had to pull out their military facilities in S.Arabia. And why would they remove the present regime when they put most of their money in US banks - the Saudi have 1000 billion $ ( not kidding)stashed in US banks. Imagine that someone wins elections in S.Arabia and decides to cash out that amount, the US would be on the edge of financial chaos. MONEY BEFORE HUMAN LIVES, DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM The main policy of the US, if otherwise, they wouldn't be the superpower they are today. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Please understand that not all ppl in the United States are the same. I personally have never supported or believed Bush. A large number of Americans share that view, and the number grows every day. Americans have done lots of things for reasons other than our own self interest. If I remember correctly Hitler was elected via democratic voting. That wasn't a good thing...

I just heard someone with a great deal of expertise on the Middle East comment that some who know the country say that if free and fair democratic elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama Bin Laden would be the hands-down winner. Don't know if that is true or not; but if so would democracy still be a good thing for Saudia Arabia? Would that be the right way to start? Just wondering what ppl think.

Musopticon I spoke too harshly. I'm sorry. There are, of course, times when things are very frustrating. Times when nothing seems to help. I too resort to sarcasm (and have here in this forum) but its not the best solution. In the complex, real world, things are rarely simple. It doesn't necessarily boil down to who's right and who's wrong. Companies spend a great deal of money on public relations because it IS important to communicate. Even if a company can't fix every problem, it's important to communicate that they do try and they do care about the customer. If a company just throws up their hands and says "f*** all of you", its a sure path to disaster. I don't think OE has done that and just wanted to warn you (too strongly, I fear) that IMO you might, unintentionally, be giving ppl a wrong impression Probably should have kept my mouth shut.

Mathematically correct, but misleading from the standpoint of precision in writing. In terms of a conclusion in a technical report, "most" isn't strong. Would you fly on an airlines that tells you, "Most of the time, we don't crash."? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not any less than if the airline report said "We can say with that we don't crash an overwhelmingly majority of the time." Since you're analyzing it so deeply though, when is most no longer "most," but more "overwhelmingly majority" or something else so to speak? Furthermore, what if someone disagrees with your interpretation, or your interpretation isn't as known so someone uses it under a different standing? Is 80% most? 90%? 95%? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If you really want to know, and not just argue, just get a copy of that report and read the whole thing. I can assure you from the language of the conclusion that the entire report will include discussions with real percentages. The summary, on the other hand, is an attempt to put the report into layman's language. Believe what you want, but in the world of technical writing, "most instances" means a majority and nothing more. It isn't a comforting thing.

Mathematically correct, but misleading from the standpoint of precision in writing. In terms of a conclusion in a technical report, "most" isn't strong. Would you fly on an airlines that tells you, "Most of the time, we don't crash."?

"Most" merely means 51 out of 100. Believe me, if they had meant "In an overwhelming majority of cases", or "In nearly every case" or "In virtually all cases", they would have said that. But they only said "most". Not comforting at all.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> "In most instances"... Does that solve the problem for you? It doesn't for me.

This could be the event that kicks it off. Anyway the way I see it is like this. They hate what we are , they hate our values of freedom and democracy and since we will never change those (one would hope) we are at empasse. Where as we just hate what they do. I dont hold any particular ill feeling towards any group as long as they stay out of my backyard. And you cant have it both ways. You cant expect our help when your getting killed and not expect it the other way around when your the one doing the killing. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There is virtually no government in the world capable of repressing all terrorism - Saddam Hussein's cruelty was apparently close though. But if there is a strong national consensus that terrorism is wrong, and if ppl believe that the police will investigate fairly, then citizens in any country can stop most terrorists acts before they occur. But when they don't trust their own government, they won't bring their worries to the governments attention because they don't want to be part of an injustice. And if they see "rich" countries acting with arrogance and indifference to sufferings in their countries, they may wrongly think that violence against those "rich" countries is the right thing. "Cracking down" on terrorism has not decreased terrorist acts. The number of terrorist acts in the past year was greater than any year since records have been kept.

Did you neglect to read that part that said calculations clearly show that a person would have to stand absolutely still within the untouched blast radious for one year in order to suffer a "fairly high" dosage. Any calculation is only as good as the problem posed. I can assure you that whatever calculations to which you speak, are based on various assumptions that do not and cannot cover all possibilities. I can also assure you there was plenty of radioactive poisoning at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernoble (probably misspelled). And sadly, I can assure you that the history of nuclear materials is replete with false assurances of low risks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Given the number of tests done in both the US and Soviet union, this information is about as accurate as it comes. There is a significant differance in the spread radioactive material when it originates from recent nuclear fission, as opposed to when it is "cold" material spread by an ordinary explosion. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Do you recall the space shuttle disaster - NASA engineers thought some foam hit the shuttle during the launch - so in the days following the launch some of the world's best engineers, caring deeply about the astronauts and the space program, using the best computers in the world, concluded that there was virtually no chance that the foam could have damaged the shuttle. Following the disaster, and given the knowledge that something, most likely the foam, had harmed the shuttle, they came to a completly different conclusion.

Did you neglect to read that part that said calculations clearly show that a person would have to stand absolutely still within the untouched blast radious for one year in order to suffer a "fairly high" dosage. Any calculation is only as good as the problem posed. I can assure you that whatever calculations to which you speak, are based on various assumptions that do not and cannot cover all possibilities. I can also assure you there was plenty of radioactive poisoning at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernoble (probably misspelled). And sadly, I can assure you that the history of nuclear materials is replete with false assurances of low risks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nagasaki and Hiroshima didn't seem to be "dirty bombs" however. I'm not familiar with the details of Chernobyl. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> They were dirty in the sense that in those early days, building an efficient nuclear weapon wasn't possible. Those bombs were huge. And they were detonated above ground (i.e., in the air above the targets). Chernobyl is a city in a portion of the former Soviet Union that suffered a terrible and tragic disaster from a "breeder" nuclear reactor.

Did you neglect to read that part that said calculations clearly show that a person would have to stand absolutely still within the untouched blast radious for one year in order to suffer a "fairly high" dosage. Any calculation is only as good as the problem posed. I can assure you that whatever calculations to which you speak, are based on various assumptions that do not and cannot cover all possibilities. I can also assure you there was plenty of radioactive poisoning at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernoble (probably misspelled). And sadly, I can assure you that the history of nuclear materials is replete with false assurances of low risks.

try here: http://www.starwarsknights.com/itemstsl.php

I think there's a problem with terminology. In weapons terminology, a non-efficient device can be called a "dirty" device because it doesn't efficiently convert the radioactive material to energy but spreads radioactive material over a wide area. In terrorism terminology, an explosive device, nuclear or non-nuclear, wrapped with radioactive material is the fear. I can assure you that the danger is real either way. Yes, it can be cleaned up but the radioactive poisoning of ppl exposed can't be cured.

I can give you reassurance that that will never happen. A rapport by FOI(swedish defense research center) made a rapport where the probability of any terrorist association gaining access to such weapons was zero. And before you say anything; that rapport used source info gathered by US and Brittish intelligence. The chance of them having low-grade uranium(aka nuclear waste) is much higher but that cannot be used to maky any sort of weapon except a "dirty bomb", a weapon that requires its victim to stand still within the blast radius for aproximatly one year for them to absorb a dangerous dose of radiation " not exactly an intimidating weapon.. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I recommend you read "The Curve of Binding Energy" if it is still in print. It was written about an acknowledged genius who worked for the US nuclear weapons program and who is credited with miniaturizing our nuclear weapons. He wanted the book written, twenty or more years ago, because of his concerns that terrorists would build a nuclear device. He says that it is very hard to build a good one; but pretty easy to build a bad one; problem is that even a bad one could easily take out several city blocks. He took the author to nuclear refining and reprocessing facilities to see the poor security and it wasn't a pretty sight. Not to raise unwarrented fears, but we must not overlook the dangers. And we should all also realize that wmds aren't the biggest danger; as is proven again and again. But in my mind the real danger is when we stop caring about each other. When we come to believe that only the police and military can protect us. When we ignore the sufferings of others and unwittingly create an atmosphere that engenders a belief that our governments can't be trusted; that other ppl are bad. In free societies, we must all be prepared to look out for each other; or we must be prepared to abandon freedom.

I meant to respond to your earlier comment. Many of us care deeply about the deaths in Iraq. And also those in the former Yugoslavia. And also those in Africa. I'm happy that your friend's wife was spared physical harm. I fear though, that we all have been harmed spiritually. And I fear that if there is a dark side, it beckons loudly to all of us today.

I live in an area of the States with lots of so-called Christian Fundamentalists. These ppl truly amaze me. The fundamentals of the Christ I studied were, turn the other cheek; love thy neighbor; forgive, forgive, forgive; let the one with no sin cast the first stone. I keep telling myself that many religious ppl are trying to do good. But I see Billy Graham's "crusades" and wonder if he has any idea just how anti-christ the crusades were. I see a Pope living and traveling in splendor, flocked by worshipers; and I think of the Christ who refused to ride anything but a donkey... And just when I am about to give up all hope, for myself and the world, a shadow of Mother Theresa flickers past my mind's eye... if only for a fleeting second.