BlueLancer

I don't think there's a single 3-digit large scale lottery in the world... Plus you're forgetting that double digit numbers can be included in 1 ball.. The odds of winning are thus astronomically low (counted in the tens/hundreds of millions to 1) For example, from the official site of the Powerball lottery in the USA: http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp Due to the prize amounts there isn't any way to cheat the system and gain a profit. Even if only single digits were involved & you played on odds, (such as purchasing 80% of all 4 digit numbers), you'd still lose in the long term (and not to mention, in this lottery you need 4 numbers and the special red number to get $10,000) Buying 80% of the tickets in the long run: 4 times out of 5: You win $40,000 with an investment of $32,000 (total profit every round: $2,000) 1 times out of 5: You win nothing with an investment of $8,000 (total profits from earlier 4 rounds nulled) Not to mention statistics only even out after a large sample.. You could hit a bad streak and lose 10 times in a row after winning 5 times. You can't cheat the lottery, and the odds are ridiculous. Just don't bother

Technically he's 100% correct, ethanol is treated as a poison... [1] You just wont die from it as fast as from propanol or methanol ingestion, but it can poison a body pretty fast & lead to death. There's no such thing as 'sugar poisoning' from soda (but excess sugar is dangerous to diabetics) and it doesn't cause similar physiological effects. I still find it to improve the taste of certain drinks in moderate amounts (like rum, which tastes pretty bland without alcohol).. I never drink to get 'drunk' though

I've played poker for years, went through countless tens of thousands of dealed hands & only encountered a single 'royal flush' (except in a table which I wasn't playing).. The odds of that are roughly 1 in 500,000... And none at all in live, non-online play. A lottery with 10 numbers has about 1 in ~15 million chance of winning... Even less in the lotteries with more numbers. The odds are *always* against you blatantly. The lottery does a lot of good like funding scholarships and public services in some countries.. But they also prey on superstitious people who somehow believe they "deserve" some divine reward or 'they' will hit the jackpot. Except for harmless entertainment, the lottery is worthless. I feel sorry for those people spending hundreds of dollars a week on it, thinking they're improving their odds (technically they are, but it's such a pathetically low part of a % it's not even worth mentioning)

Since a business like restaurant under US law is private property, they can in theory even select their clients (like excluding asian, white, etc. people from eating there) but they would probably lose the case if brought to court over discrimination charges & would have to pay significant compensation. Far as I know there isn't any legal precedent to remove a mother who breastfeeds her child from business property, unless she's acting abusive or aggressive. Or, if the business clearly has 'rules' at the entrance/lobby that specifically prohibits it (usually pets are disallowed from entering restaurants and it's legal due to hygiene reasons)

I used to be strictly absolutist, no alcohol whatsoever... Solely for the reason that indulging will cause clouded judgement and thinking. Now I buy only expensive rums/whiskeys and spirits in small bottles, from which I drink a few times a year usually with friends or bring to a party :lol: Too expensive to drink it all in 1 go, so a bottle can last very long... Too strong percentage of alcohol to drink in large portions, mixing is usually needed. Beer... ugh.. No. Some quality beers are ok, but the places I've lived in, beer is the 'teen' choice for cheap alcohol that tastes like piss, but they want to show off anyways by drinking 10 cans in ½ an hour.

lol. I listened to them since I was about 16 and so do a lot of people I know who are way under 25. Guess that's a matter of taste too. I like metal mostly, but classic rock like ACDC is stylish in it's own way. Classic anything is cool in a retro way, be it jazz, rock, pop, metal, rap etc.

Pretty much why I quit playing MMORPG's and shifted towards casual FPS gaming. I was looking for the ultimate pvp servers and medieval-type games similar to Diablo/Diablo2 where the main aspect was battling with other players & forming clans, etc... Up until a few years ago, such games didn't exist. If anything, game companies in the past tried to make games more "friendly" and reduce PvP aspects to boring basics. RuneScape was a very challenging game with it's pk/nonPK mode before they removed that as well / replaced it with wilderness (although I hear that feature made a comeback recently) Online FPS games have nothing else than PvP which can make it an attractive genre for people who prefer direct combat with real people rather than scripted, dumb NPC bots (like predictable monsters/bosses in World of Warcraft, etc.)

I just love snow and cold winds together. It numbs you to everything in the world like a drug, I don't view it as negative and destructive like a lot of people. (But snow does sadly also cause traffic accidents, extra yardwork, salting pavements etc.)

In the context of murder, that's understandable. Animals kill each other all the time but they do so because they have no understanding of morality. I though animals killed each other for food and women and invasion of land? Female animals kill too.. In fact when it comes to the most powerful animal species like lions, the male head of the pack just sits there in the savannah sleeping like an [wagon] all day & gets food brought to him.. It's the mothers who kill other animals and teach their offspring how to kill as well.

It's an animation, & the trailers seem to be mostly just running in the US so most people don't even know about it... Impossible to judge it yet.. It's not even going to be out for a while

There's like what, 30 megaman games. They should just give it a rest :lol: I can think of few series that are still good even after running for longer than necessary, Final Fantasy for one.. Although it's an age-old franchise, they still come up with good gameplay and some plots.

Hope everyone has a better 2009 than 2008 8-) Happy new year

Well you obviously can't buy Wii games from Steam, but if you want any new games at all for the PC, pick them up via the Steam service. The prices are so reasonable even pirates would consider paying $5 to get a legit copy at massive download speed (outside of peak hours Steam servers give full bandwidth to even 20-100mbps connections).

That's a crappy list to be honest. I've played almost all of those games, with the exception of maybe Spore and GTAIV, none of those games are anything special. I have COD5.. Why is it even listed up there? It's a completely average WW2 game. Wrath of Lich king expansion?! Left 4 Dead? Football Manager 2k9 at the top? No... This must be based on sales. No self-respecting publisher would make that list, and upon closer inspection it is a rather unknown site. The full top 20 list including those of Steam also suggests this is entirely sales-based, why else would CS (not even Source) still be up there?

Totally agree with Lenticular on that... I'm also frankly fed-up with all the crappy "ultra-special-ops versus ragged terrorist hip-aiming AK47" so-called 'action' games. Make a game about the Cuban revolution and the struggles of Fidel Castro, I'll play that in a heartbeat. To me, the game GTAIV is the perfect example of how modern storylines should be modeled. It isn't all peaches and cream for the main character who comes in America in search of the 'american dream'... He isn't automatically some super-criminal with vast connections. Already coming off the ship he has numerous enemies in the new country from his past life. He has to endure hardships, he & his cousin constantly get screwed over, people double cross them & have their own motivations. It doesn't have to be only success or only failure... Just make storylines more plausible. It's no wonder games like that get 9.8-10.0 ratings constantly, people generally want games like that. There simply aren't enough developers to supply them.

I've also played both games in my youth with friends... I *always* found Goldeneye 007 to be the better game. Not only does it have a good 4-player multiplayer mode, it has very interesting missions, details, music, etc. in single player as well. The ratings are deserved... For a pre-2000 game, in it's own genre it's as amazing as Ocarina of Time is in the adventure genre.

I looked into 4670, according to the name it should be a higher and thus "better" series, but it's really pretty much weaker than 3000-series and the 4800-series cards http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-radeo ... 0-review/2 Positive: Very low power consumption, half of comparable medium-high end chips That's not to say it's still not a steal for that price (seriously underpriced by ATI?), but it will suffer in performance compared to gpu's within the same price range +30-50 dollars. I personally wouldn't buy it unless on a very, very restricting low budget.

I got Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 and it plays all games including new ones like GTA 4, Crysis, etc.. At almost-full details on 1440x900 resolution, totally no lag, about 30-50fps at all times. (Over 100-300 fps in games like unreal tournament and some pre-2007 games) Would say it costs somewhere around $90-$110 these days, definitely recommend it. I don't really play games that much anymore.. Then again, if I were to build a new system, I'd definitely fork the extra 30 bucks for a HD 4850 like suggested above and get even better quality graphics. (The 4870X2 and other dual cards seem a bit too expensive IMO... At least I wouldn't spend $300-$500 *just* to get a slight FPS upgrade and run more anti-alias or shaders etc.)

I guess those are good points, but you have to remember Hamas doesn't have military targets. They do operate in a small area, and I say they're a terrorist organization, and fighting such an organization is like trying to beat dust, or insects. It just won't work. They operate in largely civilian areas, and have huge support thanks to disproportionate attacks. I can't comment on the Geneva convention, though - I know next to nothing about those points. Hamas was legitly elected into office by a landslide victory in 2006 by the palestinian people. You practically just called the people of palestine, who are mostly ordinary children, women and men, terrorists http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00372.html

I didn't say I believe in any of the things mentioned. I know what it's like to live in poverty. Besides paying taxes, I send a part of the money I earn back to my relatives in eastern europe. I've worked for UN peacekeeping in Kosovo. I simply think you're being delusional when it comes to understanding reality and the ultimate dependence on force & threat of violence for any society to work. There will never be a society where the stronger, brutal & more cunning people wont have more power and wealth than the average farmer, you're free to search for it; It doesn't exist on this planet. Even the basic concept of paying taxes is an application of force; If you don't do so, your property will be confiscated or you are forced to go to jail. Coral polyps are beautiful, but they don't have any capacity for intelligent thinking or significant resource consumption for survival. It doesn't compare to human or animal societies in any way. I don't want to discredit your dream about people sharing wealth or resources equally. It's just very unrealistic. It almost seems you aren't familiar with the concept of predation which happens amongst almost all mammal (and some fish) species, including humans. Inequal wealth distribution is not artificial or unnatural (but it's grossly unfair for the people living in poverty). It exists even in primitive tribal societies that have no technology or extensive knowledge about the world. If you thought I'm some sort of monster who hates poor people, you couldn't be more wrong...

Not to be nitpicking or anything, but Israel doesn't originally own any land. While some of it was legally *bought* prior to the formation of the state, a lot of it was illegally confiscated from the arabs living in those areas, who were in turn forced to flee their own farmlands and homes

While I support capitalism due to it's effectiveness, couldn't agree more with the above... Why would anyone support bailing out private banks with tax money, corporations that don't even answer to the british/american people, but to foreign shareholders only interested in maximum profit & dividends? If they were government owned, that'd mean their main responsibility is ensuring maximum benefit for the society. A lot of those banks are not. By paying taxes for a massive, multi-billion dollar bailout, you also line up the pockets of failed bankers with even more cash and bonuses they didn't deserve. They're getting away with failure & getting paid, only because of their connections. It's sickening.

That's exactly how the world works; The only core thing that matters is force and implementation of plans. Whoever is the smartest and strongest has always gotten advantages. I don't think it's "fair". It's just what reality is; Nothing will ever change that. Even if political parties & formal centralized power ceased to be, whoever had access to the most weapons and persuaded the most people to fight for him would get a bigger slice of the pie than you or me. What's "fair" is only hypothetical semantics and has nothing to do with objective reality.. Is it fair that wolfs tear apart sheep? Is it fair bears kill small fish, or that lions get to intimidate & eat every other animal in the jungle? Every structure has to have bottom feeders and something at the top. Absolute equality is an inexistent feature in nature. Why spend 8 years getting the necessary degrees to become a neurosurgeon when a bricklayer with 2 weeks of experience gets the same wage? It just makes absolutely no sense. Even Cuba which is strictly communist and socialist, recently removed wage restrictions[1] due to skilled labor moving abroad for better wages. I don't know where you can find thousands of idealistic doctors willing to work at minimum wage, but most people have families and material dreams & already moved out of countries like Cuba due to the inefficient system causing morale problems.

That's actually correct warri0r, apologies. Since it doesn't "propose" anything, the correct term would be academic discipline instead of 'science', but that term is occassionally used http://www.willamette.edu/cla/catalog/2 ... ines/math/

Some people have less abilities, intelligence and utility than other people. Some human beings are less of an asset to society due to their personal traits, professional skills, physical size, etc... That's not discrimination, that's a fact which has existed since the dawn of time. Companies that currently provide work to people were created by people who put their personal wealth at huge risk. The incentive for risking their wealth was to create further wealth by bringing new products or solutions on the market. Everyone can't have equal compensation. If there is no incentive to risk capital or allocate time into creating innovations, there wont be any jobs to begin with. Even the basic utilities of society like transporting food & water, are maintained by people who recieve monetary compensation to do so. Nothing works without elevated compensation for the person who creates those utilities and products. 99.9% of the population can mop a floor. 0.01% of the population can create nanoarchitechture for computer microprocessors. Due to their low availability and high demand, the engineers creating those microchips will always be paid more than a floor mopper. It isn't decided by anyone; It follows naturally due to many people requiring their services, but few people being available to fulfill them.