Amentep

The way I see it, no single piece of evidence, no matter how convincing, isn't going to prove anything. What's going to prove something is when a procedure is estblished that anyone can follow and duplicate the same results. Even if you bring in a bigfoot body, if you only let one person see it and test it, and only one person can say OMG Bigfoot DNA!!!, then nothing has been proved. If you've got a bigfoot body you need to let everyone test it. If everyone tests it and ends up with the same results then you've got proof. Proof of something is never a one-off event. I agree in terms of Bigfoot. But lets say you have a piece of metal that you claim is part of an alien craft. You can give it to as many scientists as you want and even if its an unusual or new alloy using rare metals, it doesn't prove its of extraterrestrial origins as opposed to a prototype Earth vehicle. Short of being able to bring a ghost, alien or bigfoot to people, I don't think there is going to be proof that will satisfy everyone.

I did a 360 flip and landed on my face at 3.6 meters.

Inherent problem with that is that we don't know the motivation for ghosts to appear in the first place (if they exit) which makes it difficult to determine how to repeat the phenomena. I suppose a ghost hunting crew could try and work on finding a way to make a ghost appear as opposed to trying to find some proof the ghost exists, but you'd need know a ghost is really there to know you could find a way to make it appear. Egads, I think my brain just broke. Also there is the fact that you're trying to do science experiments in the wild as opposed to a controlled situation anyhow, so until there's a haunted multi-million dollar science laboratory...

Well there are groups that have tried. The problem is kind of two fold, one is that until we know more about the phenomena (if it exists) its nearly impossible to determine how to test it and if what we have to test is really testing what we think its testing, or if its testing something that happens to be coincidental to the phenomena (the "do ghosts make cold spots, or do ghosts tend to be associated with old drafty houses that naturally have cold spots" problem). Then the other is that there a large number of skeptics who don't believe the scientific principle works with Fortean phenomena, insisting instead that fantastic claims require fantastic proof (the "I don't care if you have a rare piece of metal alloy unheard of on Earth as of yet and photos of a UFO, you need to bring me an alien to talk to before I believe you were abducted" problem) I've seen a fair number of skeptical scientists shoot down attempts at following scientific procedures because they feel that they're using equipment in ways it wasn't originally intended - which is typically true, but until you can quantify what you're looking for its a bit hard to come up with specialist equipment.

Fallout 1 [ 22 ] ** [39.29%] Fallout 2 [ 21 ] ** [37.50%] Fallout 3 [ 13 ] ** [23.21%] Looks like the fights not over yet.

That's true. But my point was more that the public awareness of UFO's didn't really take off until the 40's and 50's. If someone in the 20's was interested in making some sort of hoax photo, they most likely would have choosen a medium with ectoplasm coming from her nose as the photo subject not a flying saucer. Seances and the paranormal were very much a part of the public consciousness even then, UFOs were not. Anyway, I'm not saying that age makes them any more real than a contemporary photo, only that I find it interesting that photos of UFOs go back that far. Yeah, I understand what you're saying about faking it, but that doesn't mean that an unfaked picture couldn't have an object in it that is only seen as being a UFO in retrospective viewings of the photo, but at the time wasn't considered to be anything more than...oh, dust on the lens or something. Documenting UFOs goes back far into history (Chinese documents indicate appearances of what is believed to be Halley's Comet in 240 BC; Shen Kuo a scholar and official wrote of testimony from people in the 11th century who saw a fast moving, glowing pearl shaped object); there are a number of sightings in the late 1800s and early 1900s that all predate the 1940s & 1950s UFO craze.

Its those nuclear power cells, I'd suspect.

Besides which, even if the photo dates to 1920, the identification of a weird flying object may not have come until later. Until then people might have just thought it was some weird bit on the photo. Need some history of the photo to know for sure.

Well the problem is that it assumes that all UFOs have a common origin. Even if assume a significant amount of UFOs aren't earthly in origin, that still leads a vast potential for multiple different extraterrestrials visiting the earth for a multitude of reasons. So a consistent plan in terms of motivation can't really be created without making a large number of assumptions. As far as we know, the greys come to investigate the dero in the hollow earth and then some other aliens come afterwords to try and figure out why the greys were poking around... It was your ability in Maths that tipped us off.

Also known as "Our Secret Atlantean Masters"

I don't think its impossible for there to be UFOs that are of extraterrestrial origin, but I think there are far to many people who see something that on the surface is inexplicable and leap to the conclusion that it IS extraterrestrial (and just as many who insist quickly there is no way it could be extraterrestrial). Which is sort of my take on most of the "paranormal" studies.

I got caught in between two cars exploding during a firefight at a drive-in. It killed me, tossed me in the air and blew off my arms and legs (it did the same for the raiders I was trying to kill and we all landed legless and armless corpses in a little pile!) Also exploring is fun until you explore to far and find yourself running away while getting hit in the back with lasers and trying to outrun missles.

It depends on the listeners. Some may assumed as taks pointed out that the listeners may have assumed an expertise that wasn't there. But there are a number of people who will believe any unusual phenomenon even in the face of scientific evidence (for example the proliferation of ghost hunters having "ghost orb" photos taken with a digital camera which is usually, in fact, backscatter or near-camera reflection due to decreasing size in cameras - particularly digital ones).

Well there has been a long string of American actors who played Robin Hood, but with Robert Frazer from Massachusetts, Douglas Fairbanks from Colorado, George Segal from New York, Richard Guatier & Kevin Costner from California, it seems no one has hit on the awesome mid-westerness yet

Wayne lobbied for the part based on the script; as a huge box-office star he was a reasonable choice once he made his interest known (although director **** Powell stated before he died that he tried to talk Wayne out of it). The writer wanted Marlon Brando for the part.

John Wayne was many things, but a good Genghis Khan wasn't it (despite Howard Hughes love of it).

Maybe all three! A personal desire to increase ones knowledge of nautical bondage!

You know just this weekend I was thinking that Genghis Khan was due for a modern bio/epic movie. Interesting to see someone in Russia was ahead of my thoughts!

I don't like or dislike crafting inherently; it really depends on how its done. I'm not wild about the scavenger hunt aspect of most crafting in games though. And I'm not wild about the "keep trying combinations and wasting your raw materials until you can make that low level armor that is worse than the clothes you started out in!" method of crafting in some games. But the only time I think it breaks the game is when you are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time crafting just to get decent equipment.

I was afraid to move past the most obvious of conclusions. But clearly I meant Fallout 2 was a lot like Fallout 1. And it was. same engine, same mechanics. Bigger in scope, certainly. And not a bad game. I've probably played FO1 and FO2 about the same amount of times.

This is one of those questions that I'm not sure there's an easy answer to. Fallout 1 was a very fun game. Was wary initially of the initial main quest being a timed quest, but it ultimately worked out. Fallout 2 was a lot like Fallout 2 but bigger in every sense (both good and bad). I didn't mind the humor as much as others, though. They aren't on the list but I never played Fallout: Tactics (never had the money to buy it while it was out) and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was just a poorly done game IMO (and this from someone who enjoys action RPGs and enjoyed the two Baldur's Gate games on the same engine). Not unplayable, but ultimately just not very interesting or fun to play. Fallout 3 has been fun so far. But like FO:BoS, its a very different game from the first two Fallouts. Not bad, just different. It makes them hard to compare; for what Fallout 3 has set out to do it has done well, so far in the game though. So at the moment, I'd probably give Fallout 1 the nod for the best of the series.

I certainly agree that it can kill immersion if not well done. As Morgoth points out, respawning was OK in SS2, mostly because it was pretty subtle. Far Cry 2 has respawning that is about as subtle as brick to a head. Yeah the respawning in Far Cry 2 kinda made me unhappy with the game (although the motion sickness from driving a jeep didn't help ) But handled well it certainly isn't necessarily a detriment to the game. It really just depends on whether its sensible or not for the situation.

Good point. When the rules of the game universe only applies to the player Yeah! That! The thing is that there is there is to me at least a limit to how far you can go to limit the players options but allowing the opponent to go on before it starts being a problem with the game. As in my example, when an opponent can target you from a distance with a weapon or spell and you can't attack back with the exact same weapon or spell then something isn't right. And when the game then additionally forces your party to stick in a bunch guaranteeing that every area attack spell sent over that great distance will hit your entire party...that's not fun, that's an exercise in constant reloading because your party keeps getting wiped out. I understand the need to limit player options, but I think there's a reasonable side to it and a broken side. Any game that has a really, really long prologue that isn't skipable whether its a tutorial, in game character creation or similar can be a pain. Particularly for inveterate game restarters like myself.

That's kinda why I figure it won't effect much in the short term; a game complete or 90% complete probably won't be scrapped, but I could see a publisher/developer being wary about commiting to a lot of projects down the line. So if they start making less games we'll see it 2-3 years or so down the line. A bit how studios balked at funding now a Steven Speilberg/Peter Jackson version of Tintin. Not that they couldn't make money on it - those names alone would sell it in the US where Tintin isn't as big as it is elsewhere, but the immediate cost didn't make up for the potential future profits a couple of years from now.

One thing that really bugs me about game design - and I can't think of a recent example so maybe developers have moved away from it - opponents who have vastly better abilities or options than its ever possible for me or my group to have. The best example I can think of this atm is Wizardry 8 where your party is forced to stick in a group (yet the villains aren't) and where enemy magic casters could regularly cast area spells at distances that I couldn't (meaning that they could tag my party all day long while I tried to move the distance to where they were at without ever being able to attack them).