Randox

So I really shouldn't even start steam up anymore :lol: At least not during midweek madness Today I discovered the indie space bundle pack, which I promptly bought because aside from the fps that I probably won't care for (I don't like many of them), it looks fantastic. Especially the gratuitous space space battles game. I can deal with a lack of story if I can finally get a game where I just set up kick ass space battle, and then let them duke it out with minimal further input required. And the lunar lander also looks like it could be really awesome. Should be $20 well spent though.

Started giving multiplayer a shot now that I have beaten the game (in much less time than D2 would have taken me, but maybe I'm just braver now, since I didn't need to spend any time trying to get my levels up instead of just questing). Pretty much the same feel, though I'm not sure how to show items to other people in the chat box so they can see it and decide if they want it. Had a nice game going with 4 people at one point, then someone opened a fence and let the crazy monsters out I guess (after I decided to take on a yellow dude and his minions solo), and someone [bleep]ed about that, then the teamwork fell apart. Me and some guy whith a chinese name took on the released monsters while the other two got themselves killed a few times, then they left once they won, and me and china man took on another horde that involved a lot of running away (warm up for inferno). Was a lot of fun though, though its actually almost slower than solo once you have more than 2 people in a game.

I guess it would depend on what 'Jagex' is. As a gaming company, they have moved away from providing an epic game to milking it. While I can't blame them for wanting to make as much money as possible, as a player, I have to wish they wouldn't. I respect them least in their ability to communicate with players, in a clear and timely fashion. For all their talk about trying to move away from this, they are still a very secretive company. They also lie to their players, and I can't accept that. But if you talk to some of the people they have working for them, some of them are really awesome people who are really into games. One mod in particular I have gotten a few chances to talk to (with other people) for extended periods of time as they did their other work, and I really respect them, and the other people who work for Jagex who are like them. I even once got a glimmer of what a jmod was really thinking, contrary to the line towed by the company which was kind of neat. So while I don't really respect the company, I do respect a great many of the people who work for it.

I hadn't heard of Wii U before this thread (because I live in a cave apparently). One look at their controller, and I don't think I will be tempted. I don't mind the touch screen gaming too much (phantom hourglass was great at least), but I can't see how you can intigrate that into a console without the 'oh, now I need to release all my right hand controls and hope the thing understands my gestures). Unless you only need that xboxish controller, in which case I can deal with that. Surprised they are moving away from the motion controls though. That was their big selling point, and even with their own systems, neither microsoft or sony can really get a piece of the whole home fitness market segment which is the reason why Nintendo could have got up on stage, rolled around in money naked, and then mooned the audience as their entire presentation and still be out selling everyone else. Oh, and its stupid large. Even if I wanted the touch screen, I am not going to use something the size of a [bleep]ing tablet computer as my remote. What I am afraid is that they are going to pull a Nintendo and sell games that require other perephrials (let me rephrase. My teeth will fall out if they don't do this), or are at the very least designed for them. My only real issue with Nintendo is how they consistently try to rob everyone blind by having a gazillion perephrials that cost more than your game library. And yet, they are still my favourite of the 3 console makers, possibly because they have yoshi, samus, and link. I don't think I am buying any more consoles, at least not until I have children.

I'm tempted to look into the first one now. It's my favorite xbox game. This was all I needed to know. So tired of them making BS deadspace games for things that aren't my PC. And I'll be honest, I haven't gotten through the first one either, but mostly because the controls are messed and the crosshair lags behind my mouse, which makes it impossible to actually aim at anything in under 3 seconds.

EDIT: If your going to correct grammar, then you could try to be helpful. I never knew that the phrase 'begs the question' comes from a logical fallacy, and actually has a specific meaning. As a side point, this actually raises the question of whether you knew that when you corrected me :P

Having a high standard of living helps democracy, not the other way around (neccesarily) :P. For example if you don't have a car/bus/train, it's harder to go out there and vote. Especially if you can't afford to lose a days (or more) worth of wages walking there. Democracy is more of a luxury. It's really popular with the people (and the people do have an influence in a dictatorship, just not as officially or directly). You could see democracy as a sort of inescapable state of goverment. It won't vote to abolish itself (political & bureaucratic inertia) and (pretty much by definition) it includes everyone, basically reducing the chance of a revolution (that leads to not-democracy) to zero. That's a fair point. I hadn't thought about it like that.

I'd like to know how I kicked off a corner of my nail too. I was running at the time, which it probably part of it. I think what happened is the nail caught through my shoe, and got torn up. If it was direct, I would have been in a lot more pain, and my nail would be in one piece.

Honestly, just talk to people. I would consider friends chats to be a sub par approach, because making friends works better in a one on one situation. All my good friends on runescape, I became friends with by talking to people who were training near me. You strike up a conversation, and if your having fun you keep talking. If after an hour or two, its time for one of you to go and you think you would like to talk to this person again, you say 'friends?' or 'added', you both add each other, and you go from there. Sometimes you can meet people in chats too. Sometimes, people start talking to each other directly, or a conversation moves from the clan chat to private on a whim. That works too, but its a harder approach.

I think that bags the question, why do you have crickets in your room? Seems like they would be a very annoying pet.

My point was, that right now all the highest standard of living countries are democratic. My point being, it probably helps. If not the democracy itself, then it is probably conected to something else that is helping. And no, a democracy isn't necessarily less corrupt (though outlawing lobbiests probably helps a bit), but it is inherently more resiliant to it because it greatly reduces the power of any one person, and requires the corruption to be more widespread. In a dictatorship, you only need a fraction of the corrupt individuals and a some loyalists and your set to go. In a democracy, with a strong legal system and a constitution (if your a republic. True democracies have no constitution), and it much harder to do what you want. At least, it is harder to do certain things. Exports help. Being a net importer is a very poor way to try and grow a large economy. You want to offset as much of your imports as possible, and you want to be a net exporter if you can to draw more money into your economy and encourage growth.

"If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape." - someone someplace? I think super glue needs to be added to the universal tool belt. Just not sure how to fit it in. Super glue is wonderful for fixing the human body. It makes a great substitute for stiches in a pinch (or on the battle field), and it can mend nails, and all kinds of non human based trinkets as well. For not the first time in my life, I stubbed my toe and broke my big toe nail, and used super glue to hold it all together. My best repair was the last one though where almost the entire front third of the nail came off side to side. Took two applications (one to set it, and one to give it enough strength that it could stand up to socks and nail clippers), but I got it back on. The real trick is making sure you get the nail exactly where it used to be, or it feels super weird. And once its cured, the stuff isn't water soluble (though a few months in your mouth will dissolve it, which I found out after using it to repair a cracked a retainer), so it doesn't come off in the shower. Just wonderful stuff.

I see I missed some fun, but read your reply muggi, and it makes me feel better. One of my rules for relationships, and I think this easily applies just as well to your style, is that you can't make an ultimatum. Once an ultimatum is made, the relationship is over, and you go your separate ways. This doesn't even rule out 'we are doing this my way', it just means at no point is anyone in a serious relationship allowed to say 'we/you are doing x or I am leaving you/other threat'. As a general question, and sorry if this was answered after my eyes glazed over, how do you feel about people who want to have children. I can see the potential for meaningful relationships in a poly arangement, even if I can't understand how you can take it or leave it, but one of the key aspects would seem to be zero commitment to the long term. I just can't see having children in that kind of arrangement. At the end of the day, I would still have to favor either monogamy, or serial monogamy on the terms that when you have children, your going to see them through to financial independance before you can move on to someone else (which would be about twice as long as your biological serial clock wants you to stick around I would imagine).

Just something I would like to jump in with. I place a huge value on compromise myself, because I think if the whole world operated on 'my way or not at all' it would be a very miserable place. As it applies to social relationships, I can't wrap my head around the part where the second there is a disagreement, you either part ways or bully the other person by forcing them to always be the one compromising. To me, that is emotional blackmail. Your forcing them to decide between you and the point of contention. The whole "my way or not at all" approach that I can't stand. (and I do see the irony in my own uncompromising stance on this issue. It was not lost on me :lol:)

I don't think I said that beliefs were not important. For me, my faith would dictate that I am supposed to figure out what I believe on my own though, so yes, much of a United Church Service will not be about what you believe, at least, not telling you what to believe. The actual 'religious' part would be a few scripture readings, and a sermon. The point of the sermon is to talk about what meaning we can take from the scripture, and how it can apply to our lives. Values are a critical part of any religion though, and values are going to have a much larger impact on the daily lives of most people, most of the time, so values are still very important, and the different denominations will differ on both of these. I'm going to use Catholics because they are a perfect example of a difference between them (and the Orthodox churches) vs teh protestants. And please someone correct me if I get any of this wrong. One of the probably more famous parts of the Catholic Church is the confesional. As I understand it, Catholics believe that only their priests can talk to god, and so they confess their sins to the priest so that he may speak on their behalf. I think the Orthodox Christian Churches also all have this belief. The Catholics also believe in original sin, in that everyone is born already a sinner (I'm not sure on the specifics of this one). I don't know of any protestant churches that have either of these things. To the best of my knowledge, they all believe that anyone can talk to god, and none of them have the original sin component, that we are all born free of sin. Another example, the Mormon's vs I think everyone else, is that they don't have the same scripture that we do, because they have an extra book that no other Christian faith uses. At best, you can group the denominations of say Christianity into little clusters that are fairly similar, with a few that are still going to stand out on their own. The notion that all Christian Churches are even vaguely similar though, just doesn't stand up. When I can walk into various christian churches and be presented with different beliefs and values, these are not all the same religion. Throughout history, religions, and then their denominations start to split up into almost splinter groups, because not everyone will believe the same thing, so a new church gets created that speaks to these people. Recombining however, is exceptionally rare, and so now you have these clusters of religions that are similar because they are in the same branch of splits. But the further up that branch you go, the more different they become, and once you go back down on a different branch, they really aren't the same religion anymore at all.

And that terrible, but the beuty of that (from a technological point of view) is that world wars are huge, and they drive innovation harder than normal wars (like your run of the mill invasion) because there is so much more at stake. As a side note, it surprises me in some respects that North America and Australia became first world (except Mexico). They all have their origins as colonies, yet at some point they all developed armies in their own right, though where Australia is on the Military power scale, I have no idea. Also, Canada is no longer a military power (except for snipers), at least not compared to the states or Russia. So another key would seem to be some form of democratic government, either a Republic or a true Democracy (Canada, Britain, and Australia are I think all technically monarchies, but in terms of practical government they are a republic, democracy, and I think Aus is also a republic). While you really can't get rid of corruption, democratic government styles tend to be much more resilient to this than true monarchies and dictatorships. This coupled with Capitalism would seem to allow a country to thrive, since all the first world countires are running some form of democratic cpitalist system, though there are also many democratic socialist countries that are also doing quite well. So I would say that democracy is probably the more important component.

My view on the harrasement is that what everyone is seeing is how men treat each other. Some of it is going to be good old fashioned chauvinism yes, but a lot of it is how some men behave around everyone. I'm not saying its right, but I wouldn't say girls are getting singled out in particular. On an side note, that article makes RuneScape look pretty damn good. It also reminds me of a game I've not played in a while, subspace/continuum. Subspace has a very small portion of admitted females. One of their servers I used to frequent was the Metal Gear CTF server, which apparently had one female that was known, and she was one of the pros. Many of the regulars there (her included) liked to insult each other in every way they could think of if they weren't busy shooting at each other in the game itself. It was part of the server culture. To their credit though, they left those that didn't ever start a fight alone for the most part (as long as you had skill), and many of them were nice if you got them between [bleep]ing matches. It's less prevalent in the other servers (except extreme games, but it has a younger player base than MG CTF did, so the insults are weaker). They also used to have a quotes database, and I always thought it was telling that over half the off colored jokes came from the MG CTF sever.

Most people don't. I don't mind at all. And yes, that's exactly what I meant. And in all this talking, I forget to talk about my day. Our wheelbarrows are in rought shape, whith one of them having a broken frame right by the wheel, so we got new ones for them. So my job is to take them apart, scrub them, and wirebrush the paint off all the metal and repaint them, and I am doing the same for all the nuts/bolts/washers so that it will look nice when I put it back together (and for the bolts, so I can actually use them. Threds are quite cloged with rust). I also snapped 2 bolts clean off (or maybe 3) and I think there is one more than needs to be cut because I can't get a grip on the bolt to hold it steady. So more work than I thought, but its work I enjoy for the most part. And yesterday I built our new barbeque.

I too enjoyed TFP's article (I'll probably read the others later tonight). I used to be like you are now, and then I started to feel that it was like doing virtual chores. Right now, I am not wealthy, but I have enough money to cover most of my spur of the moment choices. As long as I don't try to bankroll a skill, or super fancy armour, I am normally able to manage a net increase in wealth with the kingdom alone (which is getting seriously neglected with my self imposed exile to the new rc thingy). For me, the game is just an escape now, and an old habbit, and I play it strictly for fun. This is why I don't farm, or merchant. I am not willing to have my virtual life interupted by tasks that I don't want to do right then and there, so I find other ways to make my money. Slower ways that work into whatever it is I am doing, and I train slowly and cheeply, or just stick mostly to the free skills, and I plod along putting free xp to the skills I dislike as the fancy takes me (or the random). Every once in a blue moon, I even put my statue together. I've build my statue 3 times since it was released (and the rate is slowing down). I exist in runescape for my own enjoyment, mostly, and to continue to be part of the comunity. I would like to get back into the circus though, and maybe its time to leave the runespan for a while and tend to a few things before I go back in (like mothballing the kingdom until I'm ready for it).

My only complaint at the moment is that I think they said something about nuking special abilities out of existance. While I could care less about losing most of them, I did value specs like the BGS being able to destroy a bosses defence level, or excalibers ability to seriously compliment your secondary healing options (anything that isn't a consumable to regain health). My other concern, though I will hold judgement until I see the beta, is that this is less a new combat system, and more a whole bunch of special moves with countdown timers on them. At the end of the day, its still just a random number generator, except now they've made it less afkable (which is actually a plus for me. I dislike afk training as a matter of principle). That said, I am looking forward to being able to get into the beta and see what they actually did. The part I am looking forward to seeing is how the balence out the combat triangle, since I always thought that was the the real issue anyway (not the combat system mechanics themselves). And how they plan on making it so that can add more awesome gear, and what stuff they added that was 'missing' (I smell bandos helm and gloves). The best part is, I am already maxed melee, and with two more ranged levels I will never be required to engage in combat again if I don't want to (I still plan on some boss hunting though, and quests). I'm guessing they might have made ranged even more effective, which will help me, and after I get my two levels, I don't care anymore. If I like it, maybe I'll get into slayer and keep on fighting. If I don't, well there are plenty of other skills. I can't really lose :thumbsup:

I get this sometimes. You get a really good tune, and wish the artist had picked a different song to use it in, or a different artist had thought it up altogether.

Perhaps a better aproach might be to consider how the first world countries ended up as first world countries to begin with. While the existence of other first wold countries will certainly impede the progress of everyone else (because at the end of the day, it is in the developed worlds best interest to keep everyone else in the dirt, with a fairly significant reason being that if the whole world turned into north america, billions of people would starve as a result of the planet being unable to sustain our current population with everyone at that standard of living, mostly because of land usage issues). So before we move on with my suggestion, the first step would be the fall of western civilization, so that we are no longer the alpha male protecting our position. Unfortunately, I don't study history, and when I do, I only study the devices we use to make war, and any other cool shit we might have built. The history part is largely boring. Form what little I do know, the first step would seem to be becoming a major military power. At least part of that is probably because its very difficult to advance when people keep invading you, so by becoming a major military power, you don't have to put up with being conquered by the other powers all the time. My other observation is that war leads to innovation, and once the war is over, many of the innovations get adapted for our civilian lives. A few examples are: The entire field of cryptography, nuclear technology, almost every major aviation innovation, radar, microwave ovens, the internet, and probably many more I can't think of right now. While we are certainly able to invent stuff without war, the need to out technology your rivals, and a huge budget, go a long way to speeding things up, and thinking up things that you might not otherwise ever think of (I doubt microwave ovens would exist if not for radar coming along when it did, and a happy accident that showed it could melt chocolate. We are to wary of radiation now to think of blasting it at our food). Medicine is an oddball, unless you count chemical warefare, since most of the wartime advances in that field are confined to surgical techniques.

And I still say that ignoring the differences between denominations is just gross ignorance. As a more specific example, inspired by your posts in the today thread... My parents would be going against their christian faith if they did not accept me if I were to come out as a lesbian to them, because our faith does take official stances on certain issues, and one of them is that they accept everyone regardless of things like gender, ethnicity, social/financial standing, religion, or sexual orientation, and they do perform gay marriages in their churches (though this is actually optional by congregation). While they don't demand it (they don't demand anything), they do encourage acceptance of everyone regardless of who they are, what their life circumstances are, what they believe in, or who they are attracted too. In the same vein, the church does not denounce abortions. It encourages its adherents to seek out alternatives, but if it comes to abortion, the church is still going to support and accept you. That's the way it rolls. My point is, that there is no "christian faith" any more than there is an "islamic faith" or a "jewish faith" or anything else. Omar said it perfectly. All Christianity, Judaisim, Islam, or any other such label is, is really what scripture they use. Each and every denomination is a seperate religion in and of itself. Some of them are similar, and some of them are total oposities in their practical beliefs and practices. So while there are certainly going to be common themes among say Christians regarding the holy day (though seventh day Adventists use Saturday, not Sunday), or Jesus, many of the religions have nothing in common with each other beyond these points, and even on the hard set ones, the only point that is going to be exactly the same in every Christian denomination, is the belief that Jesus was the son of God. Even the interpretation of the 10 commandments differs among the denominations. If I sit through a Catholic service, it has no more relation to what I believe, and how I practice my faith than a service in a mosque (I have no idea what they call their services). Even if I walk into a different United church, its not going to feel the same (though in this case, that is a quirk of the United denomination. Catholics for example are much more consistent between their churches than we are).

Hard to believe, but I agree with Assume (and less amazingly, with RPG). The girl who wrote you those letteres doesn't exist. If you want to keep them for old times sake, then whatever floats your boat. But unless you have a time machine, that isn't happening. Tim, that's awesome that you were finally able to do that, and even better that your Dad was actually cool with it. Can't say I saw that coming, at least not right away. That must be a huge burden off your chest. I do not envy the position you were in, even if it were my parents instead of yours (and I know my parents would be cool with it, just sad because they don't want to see their children face more challenges like that then they need to).

Just a note that I decided to remove a couple posts (and the quotes of the posts), from this thread. Especially given the nature of this thread, the sarcastic questions/advice really aren't going to fly here. I don't mind humor on this thread (in fact, I think we could all use more of that), and good natured joking around is fine, but the trollish advice and passive agressive comments aren't going to cut it. If I have to remove more of their like, you'll be finding out about it via pm instead. And now, back to the show! Required reading for the girls dad hates you issue from the good people at cracked: http://www.cracked.com/article_18893_6-scientific-reasons-your-girlfriends-father-hates-you.html Sounds like issue #4 Riku, and maybe #3 thinking back to previous discussion. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can really do about it except hope that he gets over it. For the whole marriage thing, I wouldn't take issue with hoping for marriage, only with actually planning for it. There are a lot of issues that can come up once your a couple and living your lives together, and you probably want to figure out where you both stand on as many of those as possible, which is why normally when we meet people, we don't go from 'just met' to 'engaged' in 2 weeks. You need to get to know each other. You also want to be old enough to have an inkling of what issues might come up, and maybe even listen to your parents because they have first hand experience, and probably better insight than anyone else what issues are going to come up for you. For my parents, this opinion is forthcoming on its own, which is both a blessing (not needing to ask) and a curse (not waiting until I ask).