Dude, the center piece is the item. That's what the quest or the raid is for, to get the weapon.

Um, so by that logic you've already paid $40 for a mediocre set of armor? How's that working out for you?

The content of the game is in the quests and areas. Items are just rewards, nothing more. This module is no different.

Diamond Age is also a superb book, IMO. What other Neil Stephenson books do people recommend?

The twist here is that the game is free-to-play, with a business model that relies on purchases of additional abilities and weapons by those seeking an advantage.

Aha, I see. Back in the old days, we used to call this "Shareware".

"Why do people in the US and Canada think winter starts now?"

Because now is (very roughly) when it starts to get cold, on a regular and consistent basis. Just because it's the shortest day of the year doesn't make it the coldest day of the year. There is a connection between sunlight and the temperature outside, obviously, but it's not as direct as you might think. The main cause of this is water.

Oceans, lakes, and even groundwater collect an unbelievably immense amount of heat during the summer. That keeps the temperature somewhat regulated during the summer. This is why sometimes August is the hottest month even though the longest day of the year comes almost a month and a half earlier, in June(!) During that whole time the water is still absorbing all the heat and keeping the temperatures slightly lower than they otherwise would be. The reverse happens towards the shortest day of the year, as all the water is slowly letting off all that heat and keeping the temperature up. It may snow or there may be chill winds (because the upper atmosphere has long since cooled off) But overall it doesn't really get cold until the water has released all of its stored heat, and the limited daily amount of sunlight is all that's left to provide heat.

Yeah. I was gonna say, I've seen this in stores... it's not really revealing "plans"...

P.S. Mithril would've been a fantastic followup for Gold/Platinum. I can understand why the marketdroids would've vetoed it, since it really primarily appeals to the folk who already own the game or plan to, but still. Would've made for nice continuity. End geeking.

Just because somebody is cast to play idiots all the time doesn't make them an idiot.

Well, er, doing it *all the time* though? Actors do have the right to choose the roles they play, you know. They get to pick the scripts they play in. Sometimes, they may need to take a role, any role, to bring in some cash. I sincerely doubt Keanu is in that position after the Matrix.

Not that I'd call the characters Keanu plays to be "idiots". Just "wooden" is all. If the guy can act, he's certainly got me fooled. Would that mean he's a great actor after all?

Our youngest cat had a bad reaction (or an incompetent vet) to the anesthesia when she was declawed. She pretty much lost her sense of balance -- to the point that she couldn't walk in a straight line for several days, much less deal with typical kitten like behaviors of jumping, frolicing, etc. And it really took a few months before she didn't sway when on something tall.

What makes you so sure it was the anesthesia?

The reason I ask, and I don't mean to go all animal-rightsy on you, but that is a fairly common side effect from declawing surgery. I mean, it's the removal of the cat's fingers at the first joint, right? Imagine a dancer who relies less on the heels of the feet and more on the toes, the way a cat does. Then have the toes cut off. The dancer's (or the cat's) balance is not going to be the same anymore.

Sorry if my feelings on declawing show through a little, but I've read over this post and I think I've mostly managed to stick to facts. Although I do implore you to do some research of your own into declawing if you haven't already.

Please remember that the groups responsible for adding content and the ones responsible for fixing bugs are usually different and often have little to no overlap. Doing one does not necessarily preclude doing the other.

True in a technical sense, but as a software developer I am painfully aware that new feature = new bugs. No exceptions. And in that respect, yes, they really should avoid adding more bugs at this point. (And this is what they've been doing. For example, as of the patch before this one, they added a bug that made, for example, the boss Landslide in Mauradon lock you in one place until you log out and hit cancel(???) which seems to fix it. Obviously you can't do that during battle, so if you have a party with lots of rogues and warriors, and he aggros one of the casters, you're looking at a wipe. Serious issue, IMHO, and it didn't happen two patches ago.

Their torrent client sucks. It's simply inane and absolutely, positively does not work when there is more than 1 PC running WoW behind a firewall. We have to go screw with port assignments every patch in order to get our PCs patched. Stupid. Their repeated refusal to give even the slightest support to 3rd party downloads (except Fileplanet, which is a pay-for service) is also unacceptable. They wouldn't even give a MD5 hash for the last patch so people could download it and make sure the download was valid.

This is my biggest peeve about the game, really. Well, besides the honor system, but I'm not gonna harp on that at the moment. Two things to note: Once one computer has downloaded the patch using their abysmal torrent client, it's simply a somethingsomething-patch.exe in your World of Warcraft dir, and you can copy it to any computer from there and run it with no trouble at all.

Alternately, I've had great luck checking Filerush.com to find *real* torrents for the patch, which I can then download with a *real* bittorrent client that allows me to configure ports.

Diesel has better MPG, that is for certain. Diesel has a higher energy content than gasoline, but it takes more crude oil to create it. If you consider the MPG then Diesel is still cheaper at the moment, but it won't be for long if people start using it more. I believe it's cheaper primarily because it's taxed less than normal gasoline, to keep the trucking industry alive.

Biodiesel, on the other hand, that really could be a solution. Although to farm enough biodiesel to replace our current fossil fuel consumption we might need 3 earths or so...

Only if you pick an overloaded server. I have yet to experience this fabled 'login queue' on Feathermoon or Silvermoon, not even for a second, much less an hour.

Like Xenos said, four would be easy. I've had personal experience with what your European cars are like, and I can appreciate why you would ask that question, but over here when we say "seats 5 people" we mean reasonably comfortably with room to spare, not maximum theoretical number of people crammed in.

Also, it's getting to where plain vanilla keyboards are rare.

Fujitsu makes some excellent keyboards. As a programmer and gamer, for me there's no beating the Fujitsu 4700 series (I've got the 4725) which is a heavy, clicky keyboard similar to the Model M, though not quite so excessive. It's also very plain, with everything where it's supposed to be and no silly multimedia keys or screwed up ergonomics. They're not cheap, mine was CAD$75, but it's very worth it.

Alternately if you're on a budget or hate clicky keyboards, the 8700 series is basically the same thing but with soft keys and significantly cheaper.

The thing that sucks, is that there are very very few standalone music players that can do OGG.

I've got an iRiver IHP-120. It plays OGGs, is fully firmware upgradable and is in all respects a beautiful player.

http://www.iriver.com/

From what I heard, they bnetd guys never intended their program to be used for piracy. They approached Blizzard a few times trying to figure out some way to have their server check CD keys, but Blizzard stonewalled them. It was more about having a seperate network that they could build new features onto.

I love eBay. Where else can you find someone willing to pay $70 (once you include shipping) to get a gift certificate for $59.80 of services.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5524168987&ssPageName=MERC_VI_RSCC_Pr4_PcY_BID_Stores

Oh, and for director they name "...the talented and notoriously difficult to spell Andrzej Bartkowiak...", who directed...Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and Cradle 2 the Grave.

I initially read that as "Romero Must Die" and though, "Hey, that's appropriate!"

Just like all the other Bioware Mac releases. Insultingly late and priced like a new game.

Although I was half-expecting KOTOR2 XBox to be out before this was.

Eidos: Shitting on games you loved, since 1999.

Wow, you apparently don't understand what has just been said.
1: You have to get online to play games online.

Apparently you don't understand what he just said either. He didn't say play online, he said play multiplayer. ie, LAN games.

I don't know if his accusation is true or not, that you have to be online, but if so, that's upsetting. Hooking up a small LAN with no Internet access isn't that uncommon, whether it be a LAN party or what. That's one of the only ways we can play after-hours at work, for example, as playing while connected to the corporate (internet connected) network is flat-out unacceptable to the IT guys.

So yeah, there are situations where that would suck.

[Edit: Nevermind, the link in your earlier post made it clear that he is either wrong, or didn't read your link

This comment was edited on Aug 27, 02:24.

Ambrosia Software's game, "Escape Velocity: Nova" uses the same distribution method, (ie download first, play a bit, then unlock the rest of the game with a key purchased online) and it's great as far as I'm concerned.

It was better when it was a reason to brag that I had a Mac, but there's a Windows version now too.