Randox

Just something I want to jump in with, and perhaps I should see about commissioning a guide for this someplace... It is actually possible to do this with browsers, at least for users with actual graphics cards as opposed to integrated graphics chips. I'm not sure exactly how it works for Nvidia, but for ATI their graphics cards come with the catalyst program. Among it's features is the ability to force it to use certain settings and ignore the graphics settings of games. If you set it to Anti Alias automatically regardless of what the game says, then you only have to enable the bloom option in RuneScape and they will both work. You just have to remember not to turn AA on in the game, or even though the setting wont change anything, it will still turn bloom off. Makes me think there might be a future with some sort of general tech guide or something, but that's a discussion for another time and place.

To expand on this... Why would you expect someone to sacrifice their own potential gain for your benefit? Do we really have people here who expect other people to be this magnanimous? If people have the money to spend, and it gets them ahead, why would you expect them to not do this? If this makes the game more fun for them, why would you expect them to sacrifice their joy? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be mad at Jagex and their investors for making this an option, but I don't understand how people can be so mad at other people for being human. Sure, I don't like it anymore than other people do. The more people spend the more Jagex is encouraged to do it. But it's not the players fault that it's an option, and if they can take advantage of it, there is no reason they shouldn't. Also, the people who are in a place in their lives where they see what the future implications of this will be are in a totally different place from the people who are spending money. The people spending money either don't care, or are not yet old enough to see this kind of big picture (or not old enough to care). It's like getting mad at a 6 year old for not understanding why their parents can't afford every toy in the store.

I feel like if any of us had an issue with competition, we probably wouldn't enjoy the olympics ;) I think what you have totally missed, is that the Olympics are not just about people proving their dominance in a given sport. After all, almost every sport hosted has a world cup or equivalent. Those are all about the competition. The Olympics are about unity. Every two years much of the world comes together to show case their best athletes in competition against everyone else, not only in a competitive spirit, but in...almost as a show of friendship. Their are countries at the Olympics who are at war with each other and they set this aside to come together in the spirit of international competition and cooperation. If you try to make the games about who wins the most medals or anything like that, then you just turn it into a superfluous addition to the world cups, and rob it of everything that makes it special. Also, as someone pointed out, the whole idea of moving the host around is to spread the financial burden, and to allow different countries a chance to showcase themselves, and show off a bit. Each country normally takes the opportunity to showcase something special about themselves. And as a final point, if the Olympics were to be permanently held in one location, the logical choice would be Athens, Greece, because that is where they were created. No one else can really lay any sort of claim to them. And yes, it is very annoying when they do any sort of re-run during the day in lieu of showing events just because we don't have any people there. There is absolutely no reason to show anything but live coverage during the day when the 3 channels are already incapable of covering everything that is going on. I expect better from them. Also, I hate soccer, I think it's less exciting than watching paint dry. Soccer is to curling what ballet is to a gladiator match. Stick that shit on the 2am rotation :lol:

Cleaned up some posts. I would remind everyone that bashing other users with personal attacks are not permitted on these boards. Additionally, political discussion, including political based insults, are forbidden from this area of the boards, and pointless commentary of fights on the boards is considered spam. If you are not capable of debating in a calm and civilized manner, and feel the need to resort to petty attacks of each others character then do not post. Anyone who goes back to attacking fellow users, rather than what is being said, or otherwise resorts to trolling/bashing/intentionally posting false arguments etc, will either receive a much more personal warning, or a face a suspension. Have a nice day.

I would like to take a minute to point out that Noxx just had a talk with the other girl about what their relationship status was, and that doing this so soon after will send the very loud and clear message that she is not moving fast enough for him, and so he is looking for other options. For a normal person who is used to a monogamous society (read: just about everyone), the implication would be that he isn't all that into her, or he would have given her more time. So. Tread very lightly.

Today I watched some Olympics. Glad we have three channels, because boxing and soccer each tied up one for much of the day. I still had to settle for tennis though for a bit, but the gymnastics makes up for it. Looking forward to hopefully seeing more Canadians though in the future events (I think we have a lot in the paddling area). I don't think I have seen anyone from France yet, and I don't remember them in the parade. I also tuned up my bike today. I feel like I have fewer usable gears now because some of them rub the front derailleur, but now I have all the gears I actually use available. My disc brakes also no longer rub at all, which I hadn't noticed they were doing, which is nice, and should substantially reduce the effort of peddling. Next season I think I want a new chain, because the one I have right now seems to be bent. I probably left it over the winter in a gear where the chain wasn't kept in a strait line, and that's why I am having so much trouble getting the derailleur set so that I don't get rubbing. Bikes finally getting old enough to get quirks :D

Something about the dress code I expect. I know at least one of the sports has very clear rules about what you can wear, and I think the other does too. I don't understand why debate is even being entertained on this issue.

How exactly would you prepare for a live fire exercise where someone is shooting back though? It's already been conclusively proven that your shooting range accuracy has about as much to do with your live fire accuracy as the batting average of your next door neighbor. A shooting range just means you can aim a gun, but has no correlation to your ability to transfer this skill to a super high stress situation. The closest thing I can think of that might actually help with that would be paintball and airsoft, though neither of those have the potential for death that an opposing assult rifle presents. Add in a freaking smoke grenade and yeah, if you have multiple shooters, it is not unreasonable to assume that people probably would have started shooting at everyone else who was shooting, and probably wouldn't have hit each other, but rather anyone near them.

They fixed the resource collection :( And wiped all the scores from day one to boot apparently. When it was first released, you could one tick pick in farming making it probably the fastest points. Without that, can't say I have much interest in that event anymore :lol:

I really liked the torch/bowl. I thought that was really neat, and I also like having the young Olympians light it. I did not realize that Britian and the States teams were so much larger than everyone elses, and I also feel like Germany and France were not in the parade (though the americans did an excellent job of looking french, while the Canadians were quite possibly the most boring looking team there). They also made some mention about someones team refusing to practice next to someone elses team? Why did we not kick them out of the games and send them home for that? The whole point is international cooperation and putting your differences aside (and to that affect I would consider the games to be one of the monumental achievements of our species, because of what they represent). Also have to wonder why the host country didn't haul them home. I do hope that if anyone from Canada does anything like that, we haul them home ourselves out of shame (I think that anyone from here who did something like that would find out they are now a pariah upon their return. Not sure about the rest of the country, but most of the locals here are pretty big on sportsmanlike behavior). On a side note, those are the first opening ceremonies I have ever watched, though I only started just a big after the parade of nations started. Not the most riveting event I have ever watched, but I do enjoy seeing the countries who are obviously really happy to be there, which you really see in the smaller teams (though Britian was pretty into it as well). Didn't dislike anything, except for the speeches that came right after the parade (got a little high and mighty there), and I can't say I really liked the band, though I have to say they are very British looking. No complaints with Paul, though I was kind of hoping Queen would make an appearance, because you really can't get a better song that We are the Champions.

A very happy day to see this finally happen. Looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership between us, SwiftKit, and SwiftIRC. Also very nice to see Stev's DGSweeper officially recognized and hosted by our site so that we can officially make it available to all of our users. This is all very cool :thumbsup: And of course a warm welcome to all the SwiftKit staff who have now joined us on the forums.

Part of it depends on how broad you are. I am going to assume that Obfuscator is not exactly wide through the shoulders, or else at 144 he'd look like a toothpick.

I love GTA 4, but each game needs to have something anoying about it. If GTA 4, its brucie (and in Gay Tony, Brucies brother), and your frineds. I felt this photoplasty entry from cracked was appropriate:

My first comment would be the helmets, at least on female players, and unbelievably ugly. I had to destroy mine because I thought it was going to steal my soul :ohnoes: Cheese rolling might be frustrating because of the terrible controls, unlear rules, and the nice loading zone halfway down the hill, but it seems to be very fast points, though I haven't actually timed it. It feels faster though, and that's what counts.

It's like lamps (since they give the same amount of xp), but less convenient and harder to get. For once, nothing to complain about, and maybe they will displace some of the garbage still floating around on the wheel that I get every once in a while.

You've never talked to anyone with extreme beliefs have you. I can assure you there are people who are very certain (one way or the other) about the existence of God. Proof is beside the point. An absence of proof is nothing in the face of human belief. People continue to believe things that are backed up by irrefutable proof, and the way our brains are designed mean that we actually fight harder to hold on to what we understand to be true the more our understanding is challenged. This is why it's pretty much impossible to convince anyone of anything if you attack their beliefs, and why pretty much everyone is going to have things that simply can't be refuted, because they are too fundamental to their being, and the defence mechanisms for those understandings are simply much too strong. By way of hypothetical example in keeping with this thread, there are no shortage of religious extremists who would not change their views if god/Jesus/Mohammad/whoever appeared before them and told them they were wrong, so strong is their belief. They would simply believe that person/being to be an impostor and forge on. As a side note, there is no shortage of this example in science fiction, possibly because I am not the only person on this planet who it totally fascinated by this mechanism that ensures we care more about being right than we care about actually being right (that we are right, regardless of the truth/facts). It's a dominance trait, and we show dominance by being right, no matter what the evidence says.

Wanna swap weights? I weigh 171 atm and wanna drop back to 140. How tall are you Tim? You'd have to be fairly short for 171 to be significantly overweight. Just for fun, I want to make a guess. If 140 is a desirable weight, I'd go with maybe 5'8 or a little shorter. Of course I might be totally off, but I want to see. Finally got some rain. Hopefully more tomorrow.

So apparently that rescue was nothing at all. Today I performed a rondevouz, or tried to rather. While trying to get my small pod (riding on a small engine and outfitted with RCS) to meet up with the big one (my big lander, which has no RCS and isn't spectacularly maneuverable), I accidently jesesoned my small capsule from the engine. Stranding it roughly half a klck from the large one, where the crew swap was supposed to happen. Of course this also means the small pod can't de-orbit, and it's not in a perfectly circular orbit, so the chance of ever getting another vessal close were not good. So I switched over to the big pod, and with some very very careful controlled bursts from it's engines, was able to, over the next 5 minutes or so, get it to close in to about 200m and hold position, then EVA'd the kerbal out of the doomed capsule and make a run for it's larger brother. After that I extended one of the ladders so he had a nice perch to hold on. Was going to be a fun ride. The next 5-10 minutes were spent setting the engines and then controlling the kerbal so he wouldn't slide off the ladder (did that once, and that was probably the hardest EVA I have performed trying to get back on to a capsule rapidly losing any sembalence of stability as it hit the atmosphere). I was able to slow it down, but I was late deploying the chute (noticed when the capsule suddenly snapped around to point forward). Got the chute out and the capsule pointed the right way again without tossing my passenger off. I then spent nearly all the fuel on board getting the capsule going really slow before the chute actually opened, since my normal open speed would have proven fatal for the dude on the ladder. A side effect of going so slow is the when the chute opens, it doesn't pull up very hard which makes the capsule rediculously unstables, so we spent the next 300m spinning and tossing until I shut the engines off, which quickly resolved the problem. After that, the last fumes in the tank were used to keep the speed down, for a reasonably gentle splash down, which only destroyed most of the ship, but my passenger survived. Kerbal leaving the small pod, with the large one in the distance. The landed pod, floating with the remaining pieces that survived the water landing. And I never though to take a picture of the ride down, but here is a picture of an identical lander to the one that made the impromptu rescue.

No, there is a very big difference between a pedestrian who makes sure your actually going to stop, or even waits for you to stop, and a pedestrian who waits so long before they make a move than people start driving again because they think your not actually going to walk. The second group are infinitely annoying, and incredibly dangerous to themselves and everyone else since they not only risk getting hit themselves, but if they time it just right they can cause rear end collisions when the person in front has to stand on the brakes to avoid taking them out.

Agreed, just talk to her. Quite frankly, if your already talking to each other that much every day, you would have to go above and beyond the call of duty to do anything that would seem needy. Also, as Muggi pointed out, your in the infatuation stage anyway, which makes it that much harder to appear clingy or needy.

So I got 0.16 working. Remade my old rocket, mostly, and took it to the Mun. It tipped over on the landing, stranding my Kerbal. So I made a rocket using the new, bigger, parts. I think it could use some serious slimming down, but after finally attaching enough struts and realizing that I need to modulate the throttle a bit, I got it to fly without destroying the separation ring (which causes the bottom of the rocket to fly through the top sections). It's a barge to control, and it only barely gets into orbit without falling apart, but by making one seat available I was able to get it to the Mun and land it 4km away from my stranded capsule in what I can only describe as the most white knuckle landing I have ever performed where everyone didn't die, complements of time warping too far at one point. This was after the previous lander crashed because the one landing engine really wasn't powerful enough, so I strapped on two of the side ones. Flew home, and getting onto a landing trajectory used up most of my fuel. I wanted to hit land, but I didn't think I had enough fuel to correct myself, and I certainly didn't have enough for that and a powered landing (which is required because I am landing the entire lander assembly , not just a capsule). I forgot to orient for the approach, so I got stuck nose forward, and so deployed the parachute at 3km up and prayed that it would be enough to turn me around so I could fire the engines before it opened at 500m, or I knew the chute would just get ripped off. It managed to turn me around just in time to get the engines at full throttle, which was good because I still lost the chute, but I didn't realize that at first and so shut the engines off. Then in a panic I turned them back on and tried to get the rocket point the right way. The extra engines saved everyone's lives for a second time (would have been a repeat of the Mun crash, since I made the same mistake twice) by getting the vehicle slow enough that the pod didn't explode on impact with the ocean, though everything else was lost. Also, good thing I never made it to land, since I still impacted way to fast for a hard landing, even if it had been without any lateral velocity. Fun times. Now I need to launch it up again and try landing it, and see if it actually can perform a re-entry backwards or if I need to add another separation ring. I hope it just means I can't EVA during a landing anymore (because that's what allowed it to flip over). Did some tests, and I should never be aiming for land with that particular lander design. If it doesn't get under ~75 m/s before 500m, it has no chute and it's not going to be going even close to slow enough to land. The parachute works fine to keep it pointed the right way though at least, and will deploy high enough that the engines should be able to do their jobs, if there is enough fuel. In all honesty, after taking off from the Mun, I doubt it would have enough fuel to make it. Perhaps if I only use the small engine on the Mun and have the extras activate with the chute (that would be one scary landing, but it can do it) the better efficiency might make everything possible, but I doubt it.

I can't remember if I mentioned it, but I got L4D and L4D2 as well, again mostly for the staff games. Probably the first time I have really enjoyed (online) multiplayer in a shooter game.

The armour might not stop all the injuries, or even prevent them from escalating to the point where they will be life threatening if left untreated, but full SWAT ballistic armour against a 9mm or other small caliber hand gun would certainly allow you to be at least partially mobile and very alert even after taking multiple hits. If you had multiple people shooting at him, yeah, he'd probably go down. But with that kind of armour he would still be more than able to keep shooting long enough to kill whoever fired at him and probably everyone in his immediate vicinity. Even a large caliber handgun at close range would probably take several shots to make him go down immediately.

Honestly, I would consider this an impasse. If you relent without somehow not being bothered by it anymore, you'll come to resent her, if that hasn't started already. If she only stops seeing him because she thinks your going to leave her, she will resent you. So, at the end of the day, there is a problem, and your relationship will not survive indefinitely as long as this problem exists. If the problem is resolved in a manner that breeds resentment, your relationship is doomed. This is very easy for me to say as someone with no stake in the situation, but I think its time for a breakup. Unless someone has an idea of how to get over this kind of thing (and don't say 'suck it up', that's a one way street to failure).

Sun Burns. Sun Burns are stupid.