Jonanananas

I've heard it is back, but nothing really reliable. I'm pretty sure it will eventually be permanent though, it would be the most obvious way to go with this.

The numbers look about right to me. What exactly were you expecting? More? less?

Well...I guess you could say it's fine, but without it, it still works better.

I'm pretty sure there was a fair number banned(Can't quite remember, but I think MMG named some numbers at Runefest) but it was definitely not a massban as in the sense they were trying to get everyone who was botting. Priority was indeed to make them stop work. If there were any bans, then it was the chronic gold farmers and the egregious botting offenders. Jagex offered amnesty to players that they had concrete evidence instead of no mercy. Yup pretty much this. I guess they wanted to soften the blow that would come from losing a lot of subscribers.

I'm pretty sure there was a fair number banned(Can't quite remember, but I think MMG named some numbers at Runefest) but it was definitely not a massban as in the sense they were trying to get everyone who was botting. Priority was indeed to make them stop work.

The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate." Taken from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty @Drizzle: The prisoner should make that decision himself though. And honestly, I think prison for life is better...It's not the death penalty itself that I would be really afraid of, but rather the 20, 30 years spent on death row, never knowing if you'll be going to be executed next year or wait another decade...

I wouldn't do that. Taking a break from time to time is fine, it helps you concentrate and be more effective. But your time working should really be spent working. Your employer pays you for working, not for working some bits and playing Runescape at the same time. edit: If you're a freelance, as Tripsis mentioned above, it's something else. You have to get your stuff done, but it's your choice how to manage your time.

Executions are very, very expensive. Yup. There's no way around it. Unless you're doing it dictator-style, death penalty is definitely more expensive than being in prison until your death. Part of that comes from them ALSO being locked up for a few decades, but that's good as it's given quite a few people the chance to show they are innocent.

To bring up a point that (I think?) hasn't been mentioned yet: The main reason I personally want to have a welfare system(And one that provides decent money, not just enough to be able to barely survive) are not the jobless themselves, but their children. It's not their fault they were born into such a familiy, and if they have to watch every penny and can buy almost nothing, go to no sports club, etc. it's quite likely they will have problems making contacts to other kids and integrating into society. Every child should have good oppurtunites to make something out of his life, no matter which family it's born into. They should probably work more with not giving out money but rather coupons, to avoid misuse of the money. Some cash should still be available though.

I see no advantage to the death penalty and only disadvantages, so personally I would always say no. However, I guess if you believe in a justice system based partially on vengeance, I guess it would be acceptable, if the evidence is absolutely failsafe.

Elimination of a threat is done by a life sentence (And it should obviously really be for the whole life). The likelyhood of escape is really quite small, especially in the high-security cells. And the death penalty still has the problem that 1.Even if you are quite certain, you almost never can be 100% certain(The chances of such crimes being caught on tape or being confessed by the suspect without tricks or torture is extremely low) 2.It's more expensive (If you do it in a somewhat acceptable way, if you just shoot them the day they're sentenced then I guess not, but it should be obvious that's a problem)

I want to briefly take the devil's advocate route here: Why does it matter what they spend it on, if they so choose? If they can live off a fraction of what they get, and decide to spend the rest on luxuries like tobacco, alcohol, or even strippers - why does it matter to you? I think the point made is that, if they can afford luxuries, then it means they got more money than they would absolutely need, so they should get less to be less of a burden on society.

If you're buying this mostly for Runescape, I'd advise you against spending your money for that(unless your old computer has *really* low specs in which case you would have problems with almost all programmes, not just Runescape) There are currently a lot of technical problems regarding the frame rate and even people with high-end computers are not immune to these. Having a better computer does not guarantee you'll get more FPS. It's possible of course, but there's a lot of chance involved here.

From the reviews etc. I've read it looks like this is really a good movie and they managed to avoid going down the twilight/teenage girl fandom route. Probably gonna watch it this friday or saturday, really excited for it :D

The first season was aired on Tv around here, but I messed up recording the first 3 episodes :wall: Oh well, not sure if I like the german synch anyway. I'll have to see where I can get hold of the second season...looks like I'll have to use some streaming site, even though I would be willing to pay for it >.> I have...not too excited about it. By far the weakest book in the series imo. Seemed like Martin had a lot of trouble handling the plot threads in this one - I'll just hope he is able to sort that out in Book 6 and 7.

That's actually not true anymore. Jagex updated this a few months ago, you just have to be on the same theme as the other players now if you cannot share one floor.

The new guide on Bakriminel bolts says any hatchet will work, but this is not entirely correct. It fails to mention that you will get higher yields if using a more valuable hatchet. Proof for that [qfc]15-16-309-63638157[/qfc] edit: will try to add links later, not working right now.

I have reached everything I've wanted so far without real grinding(aka I've never felt really bored about doing it). Sure, I don't have access to all the equipment and content that I'd like to have....but I'm okay with that because for me, it wouldn't be worth the time to get there. For others, it may be. This is no reason for me to start botting. if you don't like the game, QUIT. If you're so bored at a game that you have to resort to cheating, why not just move on? It's not like there aren't any alternatives out there. Yes, Jagex is responsible for creating a game that encourages botting in this way, but that doesn't mean that the botter suddenly would have a justification. Let's face it, Runescape is in large parts built upon grinding, and it won't be possible to change that in such a drastic way that botting would suddenly become uninteresting. This is what Runescape is like, either play it or don't, but don't start cheating.

Eh? Apart from the fact that there is some kind of tournament, I see practically no connection to the Goblet of Fire...also, if you say terrible ending...have you read all 3 books? Kids competing in a bloody tournament, very similar to it. No, just the first and it had a shitty ending. I've heard the third has a really bad ending too, not sure if I'll read it. Gotta disagree here. It shares similar traits but the underlying story is vastly different. Goblet of Fire is just a usual tournament, though tuned to Voldemort's purposes and it's essentially irrelevant, just a means to get Harry to Voldemort, which is the main story really. At the same time hunger games is kids directly fighting against each other, because they're forced to do so by an oppressive regime. I have read both books and beyond superficial stuff I don't really see many parallels here.

Hell, I don't PK (at all) nor am I a bosshunter and I can still see how the body special is useless...

I would so like to do that...but I really really really rarely remember my dreams. Maybe like once in a month... :/

Eh? Apart from the fact that there is some kind of tournament, I see practically no connection to the Goblet of Fire...also, if you say terrible ending...have you read all 3 books?

The concept is good...but the way they implemented it... Body shot is laughable. 1 hitpoint per second? Seriously? Even if you get the effect to stack up to 5, that would be....300 damage.(Even less because there will be some time passing between hits) Wooow. And that's spread over the time of a whole minute? Leg shot is a bit better, but I think bolas should do the job in most cases(I'm no Pker though, so maybe wrong on this one) The head shot is the only good one and yeah...it's easily negated without really big penalties.

You should read on. True, Jordan doesn't create the most diverse characters like e.g. martin , and you can usually categorize them into good/evil, but they go through a lot of development that adds at least a bit more depth. (Bit of a spoiler: Especially Rand changes a LOT, the whole range from being your likeable fantasy hero to an annoying douche). And, to be fair, that's a lot more than you'll find in most other fantasy books :P I don't think I'll be able to pull quotes but... 1.Perrin Aybara(Wheel of Time/Robert Jordan) Meh, it may be a bit stereotypical, but I just like those kind of characters that try not to stand out while at the same time being a great leader and helper because of that. Perrin is the prime example of this. 2.Tyrion(Game of Thrones/ G.R.R Martion) He just has to be on here. Extremely witty, likeable person that braves the world in spite of being cripple, with the right amount of having a sense of morale without it standing in its way when he needs to get things done in a rough world. Peter Dinklage does an excellent job in portraying him in the series btw :) 3.Binabik(Memory,Sorrow and Thorn/Tad Williams) A wise man(or rather...damn I forgot what his people were called...), a great friend and a lot of courage again despite being at a disadvantage because of his height. Oh and I have to agree with Lyra Belaqua :)

Glad to see that the articles this week are well received :) Regarding my article: Would you be interested in a "sequel", explaining the basic mechanics of how herding works? It was something I couldn't focus on in this one, and I thought it might interest people, even if it won't be your usualy style of article. Also... I believe the issue Jagex has with introducing PvP servers is that it would increase testing time a lot. At the moment, every server has the same code. You test one server, it fits for all of them, unless there's a real hardware error. If you introduce PvP servers...you basically have to test everything twice, on two different servers. Yes, if the update doesn't affect PvP then theoretically it should work the same...but well, bugs are hard to predict, and sometimes it just doesn't work the way it should. When the wilderness was removed, Jagex put up with having different server versions because they had to try their best to keep the PvP players of Runescape. Today, it's not that sure if PvP worlds would really be worth the effort.