I've beaten the crap out my own HDD that was not spinning up and making the click of death noise and was able to recover my data from it.

I've never successfully resurrected a drive with the freezing method, but I'm going to try the double boil method next time I encounter a hiccupping drive that wont initialize.

eet was probably just corn

The video doesn’t tell the whole story, but it is obvious that this guy flipped out and that is the root cause of why he is now dead. You don’t screw around at airports, if I say a joke about bringing a bomb on board, I’ll be arrested.

Airports are places of heightened security nowadays and if this guy had injured someone, I’m sure the media would be bashing security for not doing their jobs in a post 9-11 environment.

You're so full of shit Zeph, you make me laugh.

The game sounded much better on my X-Fi card with hardware support.

2.2 works, but I noticed the sound quality reduction almost immediately. If the game sounded as good as before, I wouldn't care but it doesn't, so I hope Blizzard and Creative can work something out.

I guess it still wasn't witchy enough.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/25

This comment was edited on Jul 16, 15:33.

It looks like a furby.

I was never that enamoured with Dues Ex, I remember the actual firefights to be somewhat kludgey and the storyline itself failed to resonate with me.

I would rate games like Thief: The Dark Project and System Shock 2 far higher than Dues Ex.

SHARK!

Funny, after I unfocus my eyes and tag the image, I can pull back 15 feet from my monitor and still experience the 3-D effect.

As soon as I refocus, it becomes formless static again.

God: Welcome to Paradise! Here you shall spend all of eternity in blissful contentment at my side.

Gus: I’m so excited! I led a very Christian life.

God: I just have a few qualifying questions, then we can get you checked in…First, did you reject all evidence that contradicts the Bible in the following fields of study…

…anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, botany, chemistry, cosmology, ecology, embryology, entomology, evolution, genetics, geology, herpetology, mathematics, paleontology, plate tectonics, radiometric dating and zoology.

Gus: Yes.

God: Great, On to question #2…based on biblical teaching; do you accept the following as fact - talking snakes?

Gus: Yes, Genesis 3:1

God: Talking donkeys?

Gus: Numbers 22:28!

God: Gods that impregnate humans?

Gus: Of course!

God: Unicorns?

Gus: Numbers 23:22

God: Dragons?

Gus: For sure! Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Malachi all speak of dragons.

God: What about suicidal, demon possessed, cliff jumping pigs?

Gus: So it is written in Mark 5:13, so I believe.

God: And finally, did you do as I commanded and sell each and every one of your possessions and give all your money to the poor?

Gus: Well….wait, do what now?

God: Um, yeah. Luke 14:26-33 and Luke 18:18-22! I said it twice for Pete’s sake! You have to sell everything you own to be able to inherit eternal life!

Gus: Seriously, I thought that was metaphorical.

Pasted from Martin's Not A Blog.

HBO turns 'Fire' into fantasy series

Cabler acquires rights to Martin's 'Ice'

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy series "A Song of Fire & Ice" into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

"Fire" is the first TV project for Benioff ("Troy") and Weiss ("Halo") and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.

The series will begin with the 1996 first book, "A Game of Thrones," and the intention is for each novel (they average 1,000 pages each) to fuel a season's worth of episodes. Martin has nearly finished the fifth installment, but won't complete the seven-book cycle until 2011.

The author will co-exec produce the series along with Management 360's Guymon Casady and Created By's Vince Gerardis.

Martin's series has drawn comparisons to J.R.R. Tolkien, because both are period epics set in imagined lands. But Martin has eschewed Tolkien's good-vs.-evil theme in favor of flawed characters from seven noble families.

The book has a decidedly adult bent, with sex and violence comparable to series like "Rome" and "Deadwood."

"They tried for 50 years to make 'Lord of the Rings' as one movie before Peter Jackson found success making three," Martin said. "My books are bigger and more complicated, and would require 18 movies. Otherwise, you'd have to choose one or two characters."

Aside from writing the most recent draft of "Halo," Weiss recently adapted the William Gibson novel "Pattern Recognition" for WB and director Peter Weir.

The internet is democratic and has to be defended, but this struggle is to have some level of control to avoid the violations of people's fundamental rights, like privacy and intimacy

Lawyer Rubens Decousseau Tilkian

Maybe Mr. Tilkian should tell his brain dead client to fuck in a more private and intimate locale next time, not the fucking beach. If his client decides to run naked down the street, he shouldn't then be shocked to see his ass plastered all over the internet.

BANG!

REVO dammit! REVO!!!!

Dr. Hibbert: "And Hillbillies like to be called "Sons of the Soil," but it ain't gonna happen!

What I love about the PC is that I have control over the software and hardware. If a piece of hardware breaks or I want to replace it with something better, I can do it myself. It's the same thing with software, it's up to me if I want to apply a patch or not.

Consoles are great until something breaks, or you find a show stopping bug in one of your games. I'm not a huge console game player, but even my small library has 2 glitchy games, Morrowind and Thief: Deadly Shadows for the original XBOX. The AI bug in Thief was especially annoying, easily patched but Microsoft refuses to do anything about it.

It's always a good idea to get a release form (witnessed and signed by a third party) when settling out of insurance collision damages.

You have the injured party sign a form that states in consideration for the payment of $xxx.xx dollars, they relinquish you from any further liability.

If they refuse to sign the form, it's probably better to let the insurance companies deal with the accident. There is nothing worse than being contacted by an injured party six months after you thought you'd settled, saying that they have whiplash and demanding more restitution.

There is no chance of any beta tester transferring their characters back to a live server.

I haven't touched the game since last year, but having a new level cap will give my lvl 60 Pally something to do other than end game grinding. I'm probably going to buy the expansion and group with a few RL friends. We'll only sign on with our newly rolled characters when we're all able to play (probably once a week)so as not to have any leveling disparity.

I'll also use this as an excuse to finally upgrade my computer; I'm still using a GeForce 4 and PC-133 SD-RAM.

When I was playing, the people I adventured with were also mature players between the ages of 20-50. An Australian mother in her mid-forties ran my last guild before I quit the game.

I only encountered a minority of immature players on my WOW server. If you are a mature player and don't act like an idiot, you'll have no problem finding like-minded players.

PC games have most definitely suffered from this generation of consoles. A console controller is very different from a keyboard/mouse setup. Many games with PC roots that are now cross platform have had to be dumbed down to cater to the consoles.

Imagine a game like World of Warcraft being developed from the ground up to run on both consoles and the PC. There is no way it would resemble the game in it's current state because the current interface isn't compatible whatsoever with a TV/controller setup. And it is not just the cosmetic look of the interface, the actual guts of the game would have to be changed to work on a console. It would in essence have to be a completely different game.

Developers just aren't willing to make a game from the ground up twice to cater to both markets, they have to compromise and those compromises are hurting PC gameplay.

This comment was edited on Sep 23, 11:23.

Well you my friend, have been swindled out of $80.00!!!

That's something a cylon would say!!

I enjoy the series and am more than happy to fill the coffers of those who created it. Even George RR Martin likes it, he's the author of the ongoing Ice & Fire fantasy series, I read the following on his website.

The new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA on the Sci-Fi Channel has been a pleasant surprise. While I would not put it in a class with ROME or DEADWOOD, the episodes I've seen to date have pretty damn good... and certainly much better than godawful original series, the one with Lorne Greene that fans used to mock as BATTLESTAR PONDEROSA. It is easily the best thing on the Sci-Fi Channel (it puzzles me how the Sci-Fi Channel can start with a classic like EARTHSEA and turn it into drek, and then start with drek like BATTLESTAR PONDEROSA and turn it into something quite watchable, but there you are) and the best space show in many a year.

I am intrigued to note that the humans on the new GALACTICA call the Cylons "toasters" as a perjorative. As best I can recall, this was never used on the original show. My guess is that they picked up the usage from "Measure of a Man," one of the few good episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass. This was the episode where Data is on trial to detemine if he is man or a machine; during the trial, he is referred to as a toaster. Ron Moore, who created the new GALACTICA, worked on the NEXT GEN with Melinda, and was certainly familiar with her "toaster" usage.

Melinda in turn borrowed that riff from Walter Jon Williams, who had Dr. Travnicek call Modular Man a "toaster" in his WILD CARDS stories way back in 1985-86... though Modular Man appeared in our SuperWorld games long before WILD CARDS, and it may be that "toaster" (as applied to a mechanical man rather than a device for burning bread) made its first world appearance some late night in one of our games.

It bemuses me to think that a witticism first tossed out in a RPG has now entered the common parlance of SF, via WILD CARDS, STAR TREK, and the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Toasters of the galaxy, unite.