Plano Skywalker

this is basically just a stunt to help sell the Guest Worker program to the Right Wing of the Republican party. the National Guardsmen will not actually be apprehending illegals, only providing logistical support to free Border Patrol cops up for the actual apprehension.

what people fail to realize (when they compare Xbox to PS2) is that the Xbox came out of nowhere and did, in fact, get an awful lot of market share and leap-frogged the PS2 in terms of power. the 360 was supposed to have a high-end "Xbox PC" version but that plan was shelved . That's right, MS is going to let Sony stick its neck out and then they are going to one-up them with that Xbox PC. I really think so. The PS3 will already be in short supply (due to costs) and the new Xbox will even undercut that in terms of price. what MS is doing right this time is focusing on titles. they want to keep the FPS market (that they share with PC format) but also branch out into other areas such as RPGs and have lined up some exclusive titles in those areas (Mass Effect, the Mistwalker games, and others).

day and night cycles would be very nice...thing is, this does NOT mean the game has to log time (the way Morrowind does). day and night progression = yes. in-game time = no.

hmmm, sounds like their designers were passing around a doobie and playing some Bard's Tale and said "hey, let's do something like that". one of the things I like about being able to see what I am about to say is that it can be used to allow me to fill in my own backstory....without text, there isn't going to be as much of that.

Amorphis -- The Karelian Isthmus (rerelease)

it looks like everything I was looking for in KOTOR with a better squad system. basically, it is the next step on the NWNs>>KOTOR leapfrog and that can't be a bad thing. ME is the reason I will plunk down ducats for a 360.

Touched By the Crimson King (album) -- Demons and Wizards

IMO, everything about the game was fantastic, except the story itself. The story just fell flat in the end. The presentation was awesome and I really did not mind "Simon Says". Perhaps a combination of Simon Says with a little conventional combat might be a good thing. IP is still one of the best games out there, though.

IMO, they should have just called it "Future Projects Speculation Thread" or something similar.

could mean that a "real" forum for the project will emerge soon.

yeah, they figured that, with the Sega title and post-production support for NWN2 (including expansions), they couldn't have PNJ and KOTOR 3 at the same time. So they dropped PNJ. :D

read the latest issue today...this is getting good.

I saw the 6th Sense for the first time a few nights ago. Yes, very good.

yeah, they have the right idea but who knows when it will really take hold? could be a lot longer than they thought. Sharepoint, on the other hand, is huge at the moment (although, that, too, is built on .NET).

the biggest problem with it is the way men are wired. men will seek to protect women even if it does not make military sense to do so. also, if a man and a woman are both captured, a man will go through great lengths to see that the woman is not tortured, possibly compromising the mission at hand. in short: NO, women should not be allowed to serve in Combat Arms divsions of the military. support roles (as now) are a bit different.

amen. (w00t)

Yes, it will, eventually. Just as M$ has made hardware a commodity, so the desktop and its apps will eventually be commodities. The new battle will (presumably) be over web services (charging a penny for every instance of an object someone wants across the web, etc). .NET is not so much the Java killer as it is M$'s key to survival.

IMO, Rummy's biggest failure was sticking to the NeoCon fantasy of a "light, nimble force" when, what was clearly needed, was an "overwhelming force" a la "the Powell doctrine". also, the lack of suitable vehicles and armor for urban warfare is just unacceptable. the overarching justification for the war may have been false but, it could be argued that, for a variety of reasons, we needed to assert our power in that region. I don't really have a problem with the concept of the second Iraq war. I have a problem with its implementation.

the idea of the U.S. adopting an Israel-like mandatory conscription policy is ridiculous as it is so antithetical to our founding documents. every once in a while even a "conservative" pundit (like talk show host Ken Hamblin) will push for such a thing. it is, at best, misguided, liberal, social engineering in drag. I think we do need something like the French Foreign Legion, though. Allow hardened criminals who are otherwise locked up in cages an opportunity to *volunteer* to serve their country. Also, you do not have to be a U.S. citizen to serve in the military (at least from certain countries). The Philippines is an example of this. They could look at expanding this practice if the need arises. I like the idea of a "guess worker" program and how, if you join the guest worker program, you get bumped up on the waiting list for naturalization. They could have a military version of this for those who want to be citizens.

Linux will not be viable on the corporate desktop until it has something that can go toe-to-toe with (enterprise) Exchange/Outlook and that is, if not free, very competitively priced.

while I do appreciate what our uniformed men and women are doing, the Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew we were involved in so many foreign entanglements. but then, they could have never envisioned WW II, the Cold War, the Space Race, etc. take a look at Switzerland and I think you will get an idea of what the Founding Fathers envisioned for national defense...the CITIZEN SOLDIER. We do have the National Guard but I don't think the concept of "militia" was limited to just the National Guard. The Framers envisioned the entire country being a militia to protect life, liberty, and pursuit of property (which as later changed to "happiness"). The Framers wanted an armed citizenry, not a professional military.

that is probably my favorite Simon and Garfunkel tune. very interesting lyrics.

I generally use IE. I recently finished a web design class and used Cascading Style Sheets extensively in my final project. The teacher said I did a nice job but that it rendered so differently in the other browsers than it did in IE that certain words were actually covered up in the other browsers. The web presentation is totally W3C-compliant XHTML. Some may wonder why there are rendering differences (that are so dramatic) when it comes to CSS. Is it laziness on M$'s part or just a predatory business practice? Or something else? I don't know, but I will go with M$ for any Corporate USA-type projects as that is where everyone prettty much is in such settings.

Megadeth -- Greatest Hits...EXCELLENT compilation BTW.

I think the bottom line with the "chosen one" device is that cRPGs are now about half adventure game and half RPG. That appeals to a wider market and, quite frankly, makes it easier to tell the story. However, if you are the "chosen one" by happenstance instead of some ancient prophecy or because you are part diety, etc, then that is a welcome variation of it. The intense backstory is just too effective as a storytelling device to think that it will ever go away. What we can hope for is multiple backstories (and slightly different objectives) so that, while we may be on a yellow brick road, we have some say (within the first 10 hours of the game) as to which yellow brick road we take. Dragon Age, apparently, will feature multiple backstories.