Dantius

IIRC, you can join Alwan's faction and he'll let you into the library. Then you can just stroll in and pocket the tome without anyone asking any question.

Well, the bioweapons thread encouraged me to put the Aeneid on hold and jump back into geopolitics with The Atomic Bazaar and 7 Deadly Scenarios. Both are great books, if you're into that sort of thing, I guess.

Originally Posted By: N¡oca Fail, I saw you in the chat yesterday. Or was it the day before? Meh. Yesterday, I believe. And you were on the E:B2 forums!

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Five to ten years may be a bit long, but there are viruses that can go a year or two without causing visible problems. *cough*AIDS*cough*

Originally Posted By: Golgoth But What causes more terror than killing many, What would scare you more a disease that could have a small chance of killing you or one that has a large chance of killing you? Remember the anthrax mail scares a few years back? Killed a few dozen people. Terrified the nation. I would bet that hundreds of times as many people drown is swimming pools annually. Which is scarier?

Originally Posted By: Golgoth Originally Posted By: VCH The endings are mostly the same. Jeff really forced the ending he wanted. Doesn't that ruin the atmosphere of the rpgs and avernums open endedness? It's Geneforge that's open-ended. From my experience, Avernum is much more restricted, with the PC's only able to choose between two or three major endings (Melanchion, Gladwell, and Starrus in this case; Dorikas and Redmark in A5, etc.)with some minor variations for smaller events.

Originally Posted By: eCool You learned that from Pandemic. Yeah, and you should release your virus in Madagascar!

Originally Posted By: Lilith Honestly, releasing ricin-producing microbes into a reservoir would probably be much, much less efficient than just growing your engineered microbes in a bioreactor, harvesting the ricin and dumping it in the water supply directly. I mean, I'm thinking from a bioterrorism standpoint rather than an accidental one here. Yes, but that wouldreally only be good for the shock value of "omg there's ricin in the water". It will kill people, sure, but there's so many things that would be so much more effective. Why not just reverse-engineer some Spanish influenza or smallpox? Both killed millions of people in their days, and I don't think most people are vaccinated against either.

It's like search engine indexing functions/programs, if I recall correctly.

Originally Posted By: The Mystic It also makes me wonder about all those failed end-of-the-world predictions for 2000.... Bah! Everybody knows that Nostradamus predicted that the world would end in 2012, like the Mayans! He never said anything about the year 2000! Besides, it's not like modern scientists are better informed than primitive tribes and philosophers living hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go incinerate this pile of New Age literature that this one friend of mine left at my house. I swear, Professor, I had NOTHING to do with it! It's not mine!

Originally Posted By: everyday847 While, of course, this is laughably improbable, it wouldn't be the first time that microorganisms irreversibly altered the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't microbes the only thing that has irreversibly altered the earth's atmosphere?

Originally Posted By: Lilith hahahahahaha yes because it would somehow be possible to make some kind of miraculous disease that could wipe out all edible plants, despite the fact that there are thousands of plants that we eat and no single natural disease, honed by billions of years of evolution, has managed to threaten more than a handful of them please don't trust cracked.com as a source of accurate and unbiased scientific evidence Hey, I remember that article. It was an excerpt from a book that one of the columnists wrote about scary ways the world ended. The genetic tinkering that the author claimed was going on was engineering a bacteria in the roots of nitrogen fixing plants that would vastly accelerate the decomposition of nonliving plant material, with the goal of making biofuel from corn husks from the millions of acres of cornfields in the US. Of course, one of the dangerous side effects of this is the production of ammonia. While NH3 is a common industrial fertilizer, it would be made in far too large of a quantity for the plant to be able to survive such a high dose (something the 13 ppm, if I recall the article correctly). He claimed that the bacteria would spread, and be able to produce enough ammonia to kill off vast swathes of crops, global famine; civil unrest; collapse of governments; societal breakdown; extinction of humanity; vast damage to the biosphere; the whole nine yards. Of course, there's a little concept known as "yellow journalism" that you might want to look up before you start believing everything you read on internet sites were "journalistic standards" is sometime they mock CNN for.

Originally Posted By: Lilith but yeah a guy setting up a one-person corporation and paying himself a salary is the most hilarious thing on earth I though Spiderweb was Jeff, Marianne, and that one other person whose name I forgot. Or are you talking about Basilisk?

Originally Posted By: Unbound Draykon You know i just realized something, this could be another version of 2012. It all starts with a mad scientist who creates and releases a type of modified lizard, not very different from an Unbound One. Of course from G4's description of an Unbound One is that they terrifying and nearly indestructable giant monstrosities. Even if he only made one it mean nukes would have to be deployed to destroy it. What? I mean seriously, what? I'm so confused right now.

Originally Posted By: Paralyzing Optimization But not actually reading Arthur C. Clarke? That's okay, Clarke is the weakest of the three. Heinlein wrote better and more influential individual books, but Asimov was a better writer looking at his entire career as a whole. Plus, he wrote a two thousand page guide to the old testament, which has got to count for something. I think Clarke helped write a movie that got kinda famous. Or something.

Originally Posted By: Ephesos Duh, non-stick coating. So birds are teflon? No wonder chicken has always seemed so... rubbery.

Originally Posted By: Lilith shareware game author is lazy; stop the presses In related news, the sky is blue. Tune in at 8 for a shocking expose with Larry King that the pope is actually a secret Catholic.

So does energy damage/energy agent get removed entirely? A good fifth, if not more, of the attacks in each game do magic damage. Other than that, that looks great. I think I'd play an Acid character, just to get the awesome-sounding Ooze Form.

Originally Posted By: Triumph I've read the Iliad but not the Odyssey; how do they compare? The Odyssey is many, many times better. I recommend Allen Mandelbaum's translation; it is excellent.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES I still don't understand how I never hear about file corruption related errors with any product other than SW games. How is that? It's all a conspiracy against you. An international communist conspiracy to corrupt your precious bodily files. EDIT: Seriously, though. I've has file corruption errors before. It may just have to do with the computer or your internet connection, I guess.

Originally Posted By: Triumph The Aeneid rocks. I read the Odyssey when I was like 15 and the Illiad a couple of years ago, so I finally decided to get around to reading the Aeneid at last.

If Will will let me hijack one of his wikis, I might copy over a nifty bit of code that allows me to plot political compass results onto a unified grid. It's great for comparison of different results, and it even gives averages!

I read some trashy thriller novel over my vacation called Terminal Freeze. Think a book version of The Thing,but it sucked. A great way to while away time on a plane, though On the other hand, now that I've finished that, I can now start on the definitely non-trashy Aeneid. I'm looking forward to it, the translation came highly recommended to me.

That's a pity. I, for one, will miss you. I guess there's no chance of you showing up on the calref chat from time to time?

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Now I know that it is even possible to master the skill of writing, and yet be a complete idiot. I'm still kind of amazed about that one, though. Timecube?