Prince of Kitties

This is because of the .desktop file that Squeeze uses for Wine. It just invokes the executable with 'wine', and you need to invoke it with 'wine start /unix' or you'll get spectacular graphics glitches. BTW, I wouldn't recommend using Squeeze's Wine with CBoE, due to sound bugs. If you want to play with sound on, you need Wine 1.3.39 or 1.4.1 - not sure about the latter but the former is available through PlayOnLinux. Re git - I happen to love git, but then again it's the only VCS I know anything about at all. OTOH git is terrible to deal with on Windows.

Aside from Real Life, I mean, which is a whole other can of worms. Simply put: - The Exile games do not hold my interest at this point - BoE has not had anything going on for years - The BoE editor is all but impossible to work with - I do not have a taste for animated, isometric games Additionally, I've finally gotten enough of a handle on C to work more-or-less comfortably with the Angband codebase. This is much easier to work with than BoE, and allows more room for interesting gameplay (albeit without much in the way of plot). So yeah, not much reason to stick around here any more. It's been nice talking to you people though. See y'all later!

Discuss: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/What-Turned-Jaron-Lanier-Against-the-Web-183832741.html?c=y&story=fullstory

Umm, another thought: what about overheating? Is the heatsink secure? The CPU fan working? Sometimes obvious things are the easiest to miss.

Hmm. Did it give any beepcodes? FWIW I once had this happen to a computer. I never figured out what was wrong with it, and was never able to fix it. Good luck!

There was also zero justification or logic to killing Jews, or burning "witches" alive at the stake. I'm not going to argue that sanity is purely relative, but what we consider a sane state of mind leaves a lot to be desired.

Lilith is correct, I'm referring to tantalum mining. The current revolution in compter technology has also been a humanitarian disaster, probably on about the same scale as the Second World War. But corporations only care about profits, and governments only care about their continued existence, and everyone cares about cheap computers... And almost nobody cares about the many, many unfortunate people who are variously raped, murdered, and/or enslaved in the name of such things. That a lot of them have dark skin probably doesn't help. I can think of more to say on the issue, but I think I'd better stop posting for now, lest I blow a fuse. Edit: suffice to say that if we as a species were "right in the head," the absence of violent nutcases shooting elementary school students would be just the very beginning of how different things would be.

On the other hand, "completely right in the head" entails a lot more than not having a known mental illness or personality disorder. "Sane" encompasses plenty of unethical and irrational stuff. Heck, we're posting these messages using machines that were (in part) build using slave labor. Ain't none of us completely right in the head.

For once I actually agree. IMO it would be helpful if mental health care didn't cary such a stigma here. We've come a long way, in terms of treating mental illness as opposed to punishing people for it, but we still have a long way to go (particularly in terms of popular opinion).

Hmm. Another possibility that comes to mind is that this is a bug that only occurs on older Windows NT versions, like 2000 and XP. Your idea sounds more likely though... I should note, though, that the CPU churning does not occur (in Wine at least) if I use the original BoE editor.

Umm. Last I heard, a person is significantly more likely to be murdered by someone they know - an acquaintance, a friend, even a family member - than by a stranger. We humans do not usually have as much self-control as we like to think. One of the reasons I do not want firearms in my house, is that I don't want to have a highly lethal weapon around when I'm feeling sad and/or angry. (And yes, IMO there is such a thing as a healthy level of distrust in one's self, as well as a healthy level of trust. Too much anger makes people irrational and stupid, and trusting one's self in such a state is a bad idea.) I would also point out that in the case of armed home invasion, a gun safely locked away somewhere out of easy reach (as per the legal requirements) will not do one much good. Sleeping with a gun under the pillow would work, but there are good reasons that that is illegal.

A while ago I noticed that the CBoE scenario editor causes continuous ~80% CPU usage when editing terrain. I figured this was a problem with Wine. More recently I got to test CBoE in Windows 2000, under Virtualbox. Unfortunately, the same problem exists there, so it is probably not a Wine issue. Has anyone else noticed this? Any ideas what Windows tools I could use to spot the CPU hogging function?

I concur re open BoE, it runs on modern Windows and fixes many old bugs. You can grab the latest version (1.2.0a) from here: http://code.google.c.../downloads/list There are also a ton of scenarios. The ones I'd recommend if you liked the Exile series are those by Stareye and by Alcritas. Especially try Falling Stars.(But mind I don't play BoE much any more, and probably see some scenarios through the rose-colored glasses of my youth.)

So when some someone comes in with a gun, the staff can shoot back... And hopefully not panic and shoot the wrong person. Or miss and hit someone else. Or add to the panic, and prevent people from getting away. Etc. IMO this is an absolutely loopy idea. It is in the realm of action movie fantasy, not real life. If the Michigan bill is genuine, I sincerely hope it does not pass.

You mean "Slow 1-2 damage per turn fire." Anyway it's clear who wins: whoever gets the first move and uses it to cast Slow Group or equivalent. From there on it would be a downhill battle for them and an uphill one for everyone else.

Hate to say it, but Romney will probably win. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/03/report-5-million-voters-i_n_992530.html Voting for Obama anyway, but I'm getting rather disgusted. This was not funny in the first place and it's not funny now.

OMG the Lyceum still exists? Like, OMG! *goes off to look for The Creator's scenario parodies*

Lacan's abuse of mathematics makes it impossible for me to take him seriously. Anyone who equates the male reproductive apparatus to the square root of negative one is, at the very least, suffering from a serious case of Dunning-Kruger effect (Also, I have a rather dim view of people who practice any kind of medicine based on pure theoreticals. A clinical psychologist can change how his or her patients think; knowing what he or she is doing is not optional, and being well-meaning is not enough.)

Just wondering - for those of you who have created complete BoE scenarios of any length, about how many hours did it take? For how big a scenario? (Because I've on-and-off tried to start on a simple scenario in my spare time, and found the time consumption factor offputtingly huge. How did you people manage it in the Olden Days?)

As in bona fide, sword-swinging fantasy hero types? I don't think I've ever played a tabletop RPG in my life, but I really love the idea of a high-fantasy-style Adventurer Party trying to "make it" in modern America. (Even if it's modern America with monsters.)

The biggest reason I avoid Windows as a main OS is that it's labor-intensive and inconvenient to maintain. On Windows I end up putting as much effort into keeping the stupid thing secured and updated as into getting work (and play) done. The security stuff especially is ridiculous.

Disagree. Most strongly. But that is a subject for another thread.

These days they're thankfully called "Scrolls of Banishment."

Hmm. I wonder if there are any edible insects on the American market... Like, at all

In some ways it's unavoidable, unless you want to live in an isolated commune somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Modern society is built on incredible, incomprehensible levels of suffering. The buzzword these days is to be "aware"; but "aware" doesn't fill empty stomachs or cure illnesses. Nonetheless... Yes, I agree with you. People tend to think that they're "good" by default because they don't directly commit bad acts. It's easy to avoid committing murder. But to be party to something evil is another matter. It is extremely easy to stand by and do nothing when evil is done, or to let one's self enjoy the fruits of someone else's suffering, or to have a moment of fun at someone else's expense, or... I'm not sure where you folks variously stand on religion. Me, I'm an atheist. I feel very strongly that there is no reward for good nor punishment for evil, beyond what human societies dole out. That is not a very comforting belief. I look at our governments and institutions, and it seems to me that they have no real concept of justice. I look at our social norms, and see horrible things considered perfectly ordinary. I look at what passes for morality, and I see pride, ignorance, and hatred. It seems to me that the world is in an ugly way. I try to walk the narrow road, and I don't always know whether I've veered from it, or how far. I think that empathy, applied universally, can be a way out. But "applied universally" is the hard part. We're born with blind spots, raised with blind spots, and indoctrinated with blind spots. Overcoming those blinds spots is hard. Being able to admit that one has done real evil, even out of ignorance, is hard. Being, and staying, a decent person... Is hard. Even if not murdering your neighbor is easy. ... And I think I'm done for now. I hope I've imparted some wisdom, objective thought, and maybe even inspiration, because boy howdy, I'm lacking all three of those.