...it's the way the ending was implemented.

Battle Readiness high or low? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Geth or Quarians alive? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Rachni queen alive or dead? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Renegade or Paragon? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.

Regardless of plot holes and deux ex machina, what pissed me off was that the last 10 minutes of the game was antithetical to the way the entire series - hundreds of hours of playtime - functioned up to that point. The whole frickin' point of Mass Effect was that your choices mattered but ultimately they just didn't. And the fact that choosing control, destroy or synthesize only ended up changing the color of the explosions (okay plants had circuit boards in their leaves if you chose synthesize) was a fart in a bathtub.

I had a Paragon save and a Renegade save from Mass Effect 2 and played the Paragon first. There is no incentive whatsoever to play the Renegade save. I'm not even interested in any DLC because it's all pointless.

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_digital_pen.asp

I love the retro look of these.

Agreed on the menubar. This may help Menupop

I just heard Bill Gates tried to kill himself but botched it and is recovering in a Seattle hospital.

I once saw a XBL gamertag that was Shatnermouth. Is that you? If so, wanna play some Star Trek Legacy sometime?

Has Been was a very good album. For real. Check it out.

So what are the fans like at the T.J. Hooker conventions?

PARENT LINK IS GOATSE

I have cable internet with no download caps. However it's looking like my Lion download will be taking 5-6 hours.

Why?

Because Time Warner oversold my node. This became very apparent last week when a thunderstorm briefly knocked out power in my neighborhood my throughput speeds went through the roof - for a little bit. Speeds regularly dip into dialup threshold between 6-8 on weekdays.

Why don't I switch providers? Because they are my only option for internet access aside from dialup and I suppose satellite. So I would imagine that for a great number of people with cable internet and no caps this upgrade still going to be a multi-hour affair.

Count yourself lucky.

It's not being a beer snob. American brews truly are watered down compared to most beer the rest of the world brews. Try a taste test with an MGD 64 and a St. Pauli Girl and the Miller product will have much less flavor in comparison (but you may prefer that). Plus American beers taste awful unless they are ice-cold. A standard brew will taste okay at far warmer temperatures. Also, American beers are all relatively the same. Pour a Bud, a Miller and a Coors in a glass and you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. They don't have the variety of selection like wheat beers, nut-brown ales, dark lagers, etc. Is it snobbery if someone likes a little variety?

Now, if you prefer the watered down taste that's fine but it's not snobbery if someone prefers a more time-honored and traditional brew.

It depends, I think the Magneto/Charles Xavier origins story can be quite interesting - far more so than Wolverine. Wolverine, while likable, is just another mutant. The X-Men universe centers around Magneto and Xavier and their backstories. Plus, the X-Men comic books have such complex and convoluted continuity issues, frankly a reboot to the beginning is needed to introduce them to a new generation. FWIW, I've never found the slutty psychic thing Emma Frost has going nearly as compelling as Charles Xavier. Then again, I think comic books hurt their own credibility when they portray female characters as they do.

Despite, my enthusiasm for the Magneto/Xavier origins, I don't have much hope that the movie will be pulled off well though. I hope I'm surprised.

The Spiderman reboot is completely unnecessary - especially with an Avengers movie coming out soon. It's overexposure. There are plenty of interesting characters from the Marvel universe to draw from.

Wow. I had no idea. Thanks for the info.

I love Jeremy all the same :)

Great show - one of my all-time faves but you have to understand that they have a clear bias for British-made cars and a overall attitude that European-made cars are superior to everything else. They absolutely loathe the United States, lampooning it in their trips here and dislike almost all American cars (except for the Ford GT that Jeremy owns).

Just know that Top Gear is a fun show meant for entertainment purposes only not as a source of factual information. It's kinda like the Glenn Beck of the automotive world.

I'm guessing it's because Microsoft doesn't have a touch-based UI for Windows that they're saying tablets are a fad. They thought the same about the internet and portable mp3 players too. Yes, they had tablet PC's long before others but it was a barely-modified version of XP that simply replaced a mouse with a stylus - it wasn't the same.

They'll get into the market as soon as they can cobble together a "good enough" touch-based UI for Windows and then leave it about 5 years later when they realize they aren't making any headway against already well-entrenched Android and iOS markets.

The Microsoft-dominated era is over unless they can figure out a way to execute at least as well as their rivals.

As a web developer on the Mac (never was a switcher), I think what you're experiencing is what most switchers do when they go Mac - they want to force it to work they way they did when they were in Windows or Linux and they don't take the time to learn. Usually, they assume a tool or solution doesn't exist if it's not presented in the same manner as Windows or Linux

It has not taken 8 years to support tabs. Textmate has always had tabs, albeit only in a project window. BBEdit, a text editor that predates OS X, has always had the ability to have multiple documents in a single window for as long as I can remember. Aside from the GUI way to switch between documents, you can use command-{, command-} in Textmate and option-command [, option-command-] in BBEdit.

Finder sucks. No doubt about that. If you want customization and things like SVN in a file manager, try a Finder replacement like Path Finder (think Windows Explorer with extensions built in). However, you don't require an SVN-enabled Finder as both Textmate and BBEdit have SVN built in.