Prince of Kitties

I'll admit I have a general dislike for realtime, first-person games. I prefer having the time to think about my next move. That said, I don't see why a first-person game has to have snazzy modern graphics. Graphics along the lines of e.g. Hexen could be effective enough to do the job. But really I don't think that would suit Spiderweb very well.

I've looked into it, and have no desire to read it. As Aloreal pointed out, if I wanted to read about horrible people doing horrible things, I'd read a newspaper. (And mind, I have a fairly high tolerance for horror and violence in writing.)

To be fair, Star Trek etc. have methods of nullifying G-forces, presumably by reducing the inertia of a spacecraft and its contents. How this is done is left to the viewer's imagination... Likewise, how the bizarre physiological consequences for the crew are avoided.

Not offensive ones, just ones that are absurd and silly. I think my favorite so far is "bad space weather." In bad SF films: ion storms look like huge purple storm clouds, and damage your starship's armor or whatever. In real life: "ion storms" don't look like anything, but will give you radiation poisoning. The realistic version seems like a better plot device to me, so I have to wonder why it barely ever gets used on film and television.

I also like some of the statements from him on mysticism vs. logic, in a "Grr, how can he make pure assertion sound like fact?" sort of way. Originally Posted By: "Student of Trinity" It's ironic that what he condemns in reason is violence, though, because the other striking thing about Chesterton is how he constantly strikes macho poses in favor of violence in a good cause. Maybe he was wimpy as a kid, and kept trying to make up for it in his writing. An armchair revolutionary? Wow, things haven't changed much then.

If we're going to go for "favorite" as in obnoxious, it's hard to beat this for offensiveness IMO: Originally Posted By: G.K. Chesterton Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.

You can borrow energy from nothing, but eventually you have to give it back; and the more energy, the higher the interest, so to speak. The Casimir effect is the result of lots of particles living their whole lives in debt. I'm not sure what uses the Casimir effect might have in nanotechnology. It probably isn't useful for space drives though, because space drives conflict horribly with a stable universe. Quote: [T]he invariance of physical systems with respect to spatial translation (in other words, that the laws of physics do not vary with locations in space) gives the law of conservation of linear momentum...

Hey, I have one of TM's BoE scenarios in my collection - Bandits II. It has a lot of strange references to Communism, crazily powerful items, and I'm not sure but I suspect the plot is loosely based on Dragonball Z or something. I'd wonder why I keep something like that, but I hey, I left my sanity at the door.

IMO, when that much suffering is involved, the truth is better off being known - even if it's painful.

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus The Felurian storyline was a bit much too. Yes, that came out of left field, and was somewhat painful reading.

In that case I stand corrected; thanks. I had no idea that the manufacturing process itself could be so involved.

Have you read The Player of Games yet? If not, read it. I know a lot of people like Use of Weapons, but IMO Player is Banks at his absolute peak in SF (at least thus far).

I thought The Name of the Wind was pretty good. The Wise Man's Fear not quite as good though, especially the stuff about the Adem. They had a bit much of "noble savage" about them, I think; and I found their pop-psychology somewhat revolting. Yes, I do recall what Larry Niven had to say about mistaking a character's opinion for the author's, but even so...

Even "expensive but functional" doesn't cut it; you still have people who can't afford insurance on a day-to-day basis, and when something bad does happen to them, they end up in debt for the rest of their lives - or, in some cases, dying slowly and miserably. I haven't been in that boat (yet), but I've known people who were, and am friends with people who are close to it. And none of those people are anything close to "welfare queens"; most of them have work ethics (and personal ethics) that make me feel ashamed of myself. There are really good human beings out there, that this country treats like dirt. Personally I would be fine with tax hikes - and even lower quality medical care for myself - if it meant that everyone would at least get halfway decent healthcare. BTW, before this post gets too ranty, please don't take the above as a political attack. There are things that free markets work great for... IMO it just happens that healthcare is not one of those. Edit: re Cadillacs, I don't think I've ever seen anyone younger than 60 driving one.

IMO the occasional person who leaches off the support system is the price you have to pay for a support system that works. Some people are going to be lazy no matter what, but the net drain from their laziness is less significant and less important than the net gain of actually providing for people who are in need. Not that I am in any way happy to see my taxes go to waste, but a little inefficiency is better than a lot of suffering. Also, I must admit that taxes don't bug me nearly as much as health insurance... - You pay an outrageous sum ever month in case something bad happens. - And also so you can afford medications you need, which cost almost nothing to manufacture, but are worth their weight in raw emeralds including the lactose filler. - And which the insurance company gets bargains on, but without them you'd have to pay the full price. - On top of which, if something bad does happen, the insurance company reserves the right to refuse payment for all manner of things, and for all manner of reasons. There's a phrase for that... The phrase is "protection racket."

What really disturbs me about this is that anyone is willing to let their fellow citizens hang out to dry like that. It's one thing to say that the Democrats' policies aren't helping people, and alternative solutions are needed. It's another entirely to say that no solutions are needed, and that it's okay to have lots of citizens with no access to food, housing, and/or medical care. The first is a difference of opinion. The second is at best denial of reality, and at worst a failure of basic ethics. I'll admit I haven't had all that much contact with people living below the poverty line, but I've done some volunteer work. There are parts of the nearest city, even suburbs, that are in terribly bad shape. You drive around, and nobody you see looks healthy; the houses are all in shambles, and everyone is missing teeth. To my mind, the belief that this is reasonable state of affairs probably indicates a kind of social Darwinism. And if that's not scary, I'm not sure what is.

Originally Posted By: Microsoft lacky Kidding aside ( I didn't really think the US should nuke Libya), I thought that an attack of a mostly gay hating country with tribal traditions of tying up women's vaginas and of 12 year old girl circumcision that was supposed to become more liberal after its dictator was routed, (how the hell do 12 men assault an armed embassy and succeed?) would rile up these boards a little more; and all I find you talking about is some obscure reference to a game maker's name sake being mauled by a bear. Really? a) The attackers were holdovers from Gaddafi's regime. Nuke jokes are about as funny as rape jokes, i.e. not funny at all. The OP may have been tasteless, but your post was off the charts. c) If you really want to get some ire up, take a look at what's been going on in Syria. Or Sudan, while everyone twiddled their thumbs and moaned that they couldn't help. Or Congo, while everyone dumped money into the very militias that are tearing the place apart.

I like to think I don't look quite as dumb as this Buster Bluth.

Click to reveal.. No, that's not a caricature (or photoshopped).

Originally Posted By: Harehunter Metacrawler found Exile for me. It was one of the earliest search engines for the newly blossoming World Wide Web. I've been hooked ever since. Hey, I remember Metacrawler. I feel older now than I have any right to.

1. Old games CD for Classic Mac that had an unregistered copy of Exile 1 on it. I think I was 13 or so at the time. (Yes I still enjoy that series. No there is nothing wrong with that. Yes I grew up. Please don't stare, it's impolite!) 2. Umm, not really, no; though I've mentioned Spiderweb games as examples of good RPGs on some forums. Originally Posted By: "Alorael" —Alorael, who believes Exile 2 was the second program he ever downloaded. The first was Angband. Curious how his early shots in the dark were such good ones. Angband (version 1.X I thin!k) was on that CD too, and wound up being how I learned to touch-type (despite the best efforts of Mavis Beacon). Which is too bad, because Angband typing is not proper touch-typing. (But it's still an awesome game. So awesome that I'm trying to fork my own variant. Woo.)

That sounds more like a very extreme postmodernist standpoint to me - "all views being equally valid," etc... Based on what I know of postmodernism anyway, which isn't a whole lot. Luckily I've never encountered anything quite that extreme IRL (seeing as such a viewpoint can be used to justify anything). But yes, IMHO it's better to levy criticism and risk being a hypocrite, than to keep one's peace and not help anyone. OTOH, the statement being anecdotal, I can't help but wonder if it's an outlier. There are a lot of WS writers, professors, and spokespeople out there; as with any large group, a few of them are bound to have a ridiculous opinion or two... Which once stated publicly, end up being used as propaganda against their peers. (Not that that's the case with Bawer, necessarily. One just has to be weary of individuals' statements being taken as general opinion.)

Does your distro use PulseAudio? In that case, yeah, it's still broken. Wine doesn't interact too well with Pulse. (Actually I don't think anything interacts too well with Pulse. It's given me nothing but trouble since it was introduced... Welcome to "Why Linux is not a major desktop OS," reason #255.)

Nope. Sound is indeed broken in Wine versions prior to 1.4. I don't mind though, I prefer to play with the sound off. (And I didn't buy Windows 7 just so I could play BoE! )

Both. I'd been using Linux as my main OS for quite a while.