Dantius

I really hope that at sone point in my lifetime, I'll see the top marginal tax raised back up to Eisenhower-era levels. That would be pretty wonderful.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Originally Posted By: spidersilk "Oh, for ****'s sake! What are you people, 8 years old? Grow the **** up already! I'm a Hand of Avadon, not a ****ing daycare worker!" Avadon needs a Renegade option? I refuse to buy the game when it comes out on Windows unless someone can assure me that I can punch at least one reporter in the stomach. Ah yes, "reporters". Avadon has dismissed this claim.

Originally Posted By: Impudent Strumpet! Up to a limit, yes. Nobody wants Superman looking like Edward Cullen. FYT

I'm glad that's cleared up. VCH can just head over to the Mod Board anytime to pick up his complimentary bag of sugar .

I used the term "velocity" not in the sense of the physics usage of the word, where velocity implies a vector quantity with a magnitude and direction, but in the economic sense of the word, where the monetary velocity equals the average frequency of units of money spent per unit of time, and simply altered the definition to "average frequency of posts in a fixed unit of time".

Hey kids! Let's play a game of Guess That Logical Fallacy! The rules are simple: I'll post a sequence of comments and replies mad in this very thread, and you can guess which party committed which logical fallacy at what point in the thread! Guess right first and you might even win a very special prize! Now, let's begin! Click to reveal.. Originally Posted By: Master1 Originally Posted By: Danny The Fool Can't really blame them. Why invest in a market that is demonstrably unwilling to spend money? I'm willing to spend money, I just don't have an extra $1000+ to drop on a whim for a new computer. Originally Posted By: Slarty Yes, but other people do have that money, and are willing to spend it. While I am sympathetic, look at the general standard of living in this country and what many people drop money on. Even a non-smartphone cell phone plan will probably cost at least $50 a month. Thus, in the 5+ years since a PPC user has bought a new computer, if she has a cell phone, she's likely spent over $3000 on that. And cell phones are ubiquitous these days. I'd also say that -- again, in the context of this economy -- "once every five years" is hardly "on a whim." Originally Posted By: Master1 Here's the catch: I'm a high-school student. My phone is payed for by my parents, and my computer is my dad's old work computer. Also, paying a small price for cell phones over a longer period of time is different, if not in the end then on a month-to-month basis. In order to pay a similar amount on a monthly basis from Apple, I'd end up paying for my computer multiple times thanks to interest (or at least, I expect that to be the case). Originally Posted By: Slarty What, is a new computer supposed to be handed to you? You don't particularly sound like somebody who is enmeshed in the American upper classes' culture of entitlement. But as countless fathers have said to their children, "You want it? Get a job and save some money!" I mean, seriously, the argument is that Apple should base their decisions about chips and software architecture on the economic needs of teenagers whose parents pay for some, but not all, of their luxuries? Originally Posted By: Master1 I'm not saying that I deserve a new computer, and I'm not complaining (too much). I realize that the show must go on and my old PowerBook won't last forever. I do have a job, and I am saving money. Likewise, I wouldn't buy on interest, I would save up to full price before buying. I guess my point is just that it sucks for some of us who aren't able to keep up with the rest of the world. Originally Posted By: Slarty "the rest of the world"? Look around and expand your world: most of the world has neither cutting-edge computers nor the leisure time to play games on them. I'm not trying to be nitpicky about language here: I really am trying to make a point. The world is bigger than this. That can be hard to see as a teenager, when you have lived in one home your whole life. The world is bigger than this: it is a promise of hope, hope both for increased perspective and understanding of others, and hope also for survival and improvement when one's family situation is not so good. Threads converge. Happy fallacy hunting!

Originally Posted By: VCH But how much power do you need? How much power do I need? I need POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Yes, but other people do have that money, and are willing to spend it. While I am sympathetic, look at the general standard of living in this country and what many people drop money on. Even a non-smartphone cell phone plan will probably cost at least $50 a month. Thus, in the 5+ years since a PPC user has bought a new computer, if she has a cell phone, she's likely spent over $3000 on that. And cell phones are ubiquitous these days. I'd also say that -- again, in the context of this economy -- "once every five years" is hardly "on a whim." Plus, one of the things about buying a new computer is that, unlike buying, say, a car, you aren't paying $1000 for a marginal upgrade and aesthetic redesign of your old model- you're buying a device that is literally orders of magnitude more powerful (Well, in base 2). Just by using Moore's law as an approximation(I know it isn't perfect), a computer bought five years from now will be about six times as powerful for the same cost. And a computer bought ten years from now will be over 30 times as powerful. Now when you consider the fact that people are going out and buying hybrid cars that get barley twice their current MPG for tens of thousands of dollars, dropping a meager thousand on a piece of equipment you use four hours every day that's many times more powerful than your current one starts to seem like a lot less than "on a whim" and a lot more like a savvy investment.

I've heard that more books have been written about Lincoln than any other human being other than William Shakespeare or Jesus (H?) Christ. I suppose it does rather make sense, since he's probably one of the top three highest regarded Presidents in history, and he had incredibly important events happening around him at the time that he managed to triumph over, and he was president long enough ago that there's been time for the books to be written in earnest. I will be so bold to predict that books about FDR will outstrip him in number and popularity eventually, though, it's just that they've only had a timeframe of about 70 years in which to be written, whereas Lincoln has had a good 150.

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit Anti-intellectualism is not at all new. It was around when the US was founded in the 18th century. More recently, Adlai Stevenson lost both of his runs against Eisenhower in the '50s. He would be a prime example of an intellectual losing to a down-to-earth candidate. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower because he was an intellectual, I'd say he lost because he wasn't the greatest US war hero of all time. Plus, unlike his Pacific counterpart MacArthur, who was pretty much just an arrogant jackass, Eisenhower was likeable and friendly, or at least could seem as such when running. Plus, Eisenhower used television to great effect in his campaigns, while Stevenson did not, making him appear to be a much more ubiquitous figure, which also certainly helps a lot. But the whole "war hero" bet does tend to trump just about any other factors when people are voting. Just look at Grant: Terrible, terrible president, but people elected him anyways because he was the general who saved the Union.

I was unaware that a term as nebulous and undefined as "spiritual anything" had such a clear-cut definition. I simply used the term to describe a game that borrowed heavily from one single game in terms of atmosphere and style, much like Avadon did with Dragon Age. I did so because I first saw it used (with "successor" instead of predecessor) to describe Bioshock's relation to System Shock 2, and liked the turn of phrase (you'd probably have to have a hole in your head to claim that Bioshock was "what happened instead" of of a sequel to SS2).

Should this be moved to the Avadon forum?

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity The chief executive of a democracy is the nation's ambassador to itself, because that's what leading a democracy means. You have to create consensus, or as close to it as possible. So the American President is supposed to respect American taboos, even if they're irrational, as long as there's no overriding public good at stake. Clinton didn't, and that's a grave failing. The thing about it is that it's so widespread that calling it "taboo" becomes hypocritical. For instance, Newt Gingrich, the GOP speaker of the House pushing for Clinton's removal from office (different than being impeached, which just means you're charged with whatever), later admitted to having an affair and cheating on his wife, at the exact same time he was prosecuting Clinton for lying about his affair! And plenty of other presidents have had affairs- just off the top of my head, FDR, Kennedy, LBJ come to mind, and I'm sure there were more. I was always under the impression at the time that Clinton wasn't on trial for having an affair or even lying under oath, but that he was being made to stand trial for having raised taxes on the GOP's donors so much.

Originally Posted By: Impudent Strumpet! Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Alchemist Also, mathematically speaking, the Lowest Common Denominator is a relatively high number. Really, or are you just saying that? Because, you know, by definition, it's the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR. So, yeah. Low. Actually, the lowest common denominator can, in fact, be quite large, especially when working with large sets of prime numbers. For example the LCD of 1/5, 1/7, 1/12, and 1/13 would be 5460, since that's the smallest number you can use as the denominator to rewrite those numbers as fractions with the same denominator (1092/5460, 780/5460, 455/5460, and 420/5460)

See, I used to consider myself a member of the GOP, and I still endorse many of their policies on foreign affairs, crime, gun control, etc., but I've always been a strong advocate of Keynesian economic theory, which is really not a very good idea when one is trying to fit in in a party defined essentially by a desire for economic libertarianism and deregulation and small government (Also for its strange support of religious whackjobs. On a tangent, I've never understood why the GOP puts up with people who literally do nothing but make it look bad when it comes out they've been snorting crack off a male stripper's chest after they finish delivering their anti-gay sermons. It is hilarious, though, just not exactly good for the Party). So recently, I've pretty much decide "Well to hell with you [guys]," and switched to voting Democratic much more often (For the record, I've voted HW, Clinton, Clinton, W, Kerry, Obama, which does actually put me at more D's than R's, but hey). I still support Republicans for state office more often than not, simply because I always get this weird slimy feeling after voting for an Illinois Democrat . Click to reveal.. (References the Lewinsky scandal, wouldn't want to scar the minds of SW's multitude small children) Since the thread seems to also seems to have a little too much Clinton bashing for my tastes, I'd simply like to point out the fact that, as a Clinton apologist, I firmly believe that the President can have sex with whomever he pleases, if he can manage to both balance the budget, execute successful military action overseas with minimal loss to US lives, and preside over one of the largest economic expansion ever, and if he wants to lie about it, then the US public really should have better things to do with their newfound giant piles of cash than focus on whether or not the President is having sex with his secretary.

In all fairness, Avadon's "spiritual predecessor" (to borrow a Bioshock turn of phrase), Dragon Age, actually did a fairly good job of condensing multiple games into one game. Before you actually reached the main game, you played an hour or two of content unique to your class and race, and then later in the game, certain quests and characters' dialog options were only available if you were a certain race or class. If Jeff could shorten down the origin equivalent to maybe a half-hour to an hour, and add in maybe a quest or two and rewrite some dialog for Av2, then for maybe five or six hour of game content, or about 10-20% of current total gameplay time, he could create four seemingly totally different games. Of course, this also runs the risk of people just doing what they did for Dragon Age, which is rolling up six different characters, playing all the origin stories, and then only continuing the game with the character they felt was the most powerful or had the best loot.

Originally Posted By: Nikki. Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet Pssst. I think the real intention is for you to be able to build more awesome things faster with a friend. You're clearly underestimating humanity. So the goal of multiplayer is to systematically execute those players with avatars that are dissimilar to yours? That would be about my assessment given most of human history as a backgroud.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity FC/FN is uncanny. My opinion of Nietzsche is minimally perturbed, but The Family Circus will never be the same. The characters really look as though this is what they were actually saying. The creepiest one I've run across so far is this one. It is incredibly uncanny. Luckily, none of the newspapers I get have TFC in them, and I don't even like it much anyways, so I guess any changes in my opinion are irrelevant.

Random Family Circus + Random Nietzsche quote. They coincide more often than you would think, just click refresh to get a new one.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES I'm sure you know people online who would let you stay with them in an emergency. Ummmm... that might be a bad idea. No, wait, let me amend that. REALLY bad idea.

Was the G1 happy ending the one when you use the Geneforge, destroy it, and murder everybody who opposes you, establishing yourself as the ruler of a powerful kingdom in the wilderness in opposition to the Shapers? Because I think I've mentioned that I think that's the best ending in any SW game. Or damn near any game, for that matter.

Under normal circumstances I would point to the final fight in KotoR as an example of an interesting boss fight (It incorporated mechanics not seen elsewhere in the game, so it wasn't stale), but that's lessened by the fact that you have to spend hours fighting through streams of infinite respawning Dark Jedi to actually reach Malak, which is really not a good thing.

Originally Posted By: Clocknova What exactly is it that stops one from altering the files in the App Store version? Can't you just click 'unlock' or something? It seems to me that if the file is on my computer then I can change it. I've never met any form of file protection that couldn't be circumvented relatively easily. You technically could alter the files, but from what I understand, the game won't run unless every file has the exact same file size (i.e. number of characters) as before. So you could change a few statistics, but you couldn't create items or edit dialog scripts or alter encounters or anything.

Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Phariton's Eye True, actually. Remember the story of Ali Baba the merchant? Many assassins, ninjas in particular, were (maybe not are, I'm sure Jason Bourne is laughing at me) honorable people. Is the tale of Ali Baba the one where Ali Baba's brother finds the cave full of treasure, but then the robbers find him and chop him up into pieces and display him as a warning? That doesn't seem very honorable to me. Besides, I don't recall many ninjas in the Arabian Nights. Maybe you're getting it confused with a Japanese legend...

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES There have always -- at least, since Geneforge 1 -- been licensed-environment versions of SW games. You could buy most of the Geneforge series at a slight discount from various website stores that require you to be online to play. I seem to recall picking up G1 at RealArcade over a half-decade ago for some ridiculously cheap price- $6.99 IIRC. Now I think I must have gotten it confused with some other game, because I can't imagine Jeff allowing a distributor to sell his game at a quarter of his listed price. (In case you're wondering why I didn't register here then, it was because I had just discovered the PC ports of all the classic Sonic games and couldn't really transition from rushing across Emerald Hill to plodding around a mystery island hitting up dudes in robes for a boat. So I abandoned it. My loss.)