No, but in Los Angeles, the Trojans exploit YOU!

Dude, I'd totally buy that game.

But I see this said a lot by mostly USA gamers, who seem to have huge problems of insecurity as soon as sth could remotely make them labeled as gay. So I see lots of these comments, and it's fascinating to read, because I just can't understand where is this coming from.

Well, applying the American mindset to a Japanese protagonist probably isn't the smartest thing to do in the first place. I certainly don't see them as gay, but I grew up watching TV shows where the heroes were supremely confident and completely muscle-bound, square jaw, scars, and what have you. Probably why I still get a kick out of guys like Vin Diesel even though his net cultural contribution is minimal at best. Seeing slender protagonists like Squall moping about when he could be whooping somebody's ass flies in the face of everything I learned the first 15 years of my life. :)

FFIX was good. That's it, just good. I enjoyed it when it came out ten years ago, but I didn't enjoy it enough to want to play through it again. The music was generic and I couldn't tell you the first thing of what the game was about unless I looked it up first. My imported SNES copy of Final Fantasy V sees more action than the copy of FFIX I have collecting dust on the shelf at home.

Also, am I the only person who legitimately enjoyed FFVIII?

I was impressed by what I saw. The series has been on a downward slide for me since FFIX, but after watching the demo I think I'm ready to jump back into the pool again. I plan on importing this if it gets released on time in Japan, as I'll actually be over there when it gets released here.

One comment though, any other Japanese speakers notice the manner Lightning was speaking in? After years of male protagonists who could get mistaken as chicks, now we have a female protagonist who talks like a dude. For once I'd like to see a protagonist with no sexual identity issues and no antisocial behavior. Is that even possible anymore?

Your mom totally digs my meatsword.

It's actually more of a meatclaymore, but let's not get bogged down in the details.

That they actually listened to public opinion.

More like they tried to pull a fast one on their service areas and got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. If anything, this should make you more alert to sudden changes in their pricing structure - not more confident in them.

The Appalachian Mountains may look pretty, but a large survey from the Centers for Disease Control found those who live around them tend to be more prone to emotional problems.

Looks aren't everything. You know why Nebraska is the happiest state? It isn't because you can throw a rock and hit an ear of corn, or drive outside of the Omaha/Lincoln areas and see nothing but flat fields for miles on end. This place is uglier than sin for the most part (save for a few choice spots like the Black Elk-Neihardt Park on top of the hill in Blair, for example), and the weather ranges from stupidly hot in July to inhospitably cold in January.

But you know what? The economy is stable. Nobody's given up their football tickets. Companies are gonna need call centers. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg to live in the city. The most crime-ridden spots in Omaha are a fucking day care center compared to other cities. It doesn't surprise me at all when TFA says that Midwestern states are ranked up there with Hawaii.

His first point is you can use it with FF and Safari. Nice, but not a really big deal to most admins.

For sysadmins who want their users to stick with Firefox or something else not named Internet Explorer, an improvement to OWA may not be a huge deal but it's still nice. OWA on alternative browsers blows pretty hard. It works, but it blows.

Look at it this way, do you want to give people more reasons to stick with IE?

Well since Internet Explorer 7 doesn't run on Windows 2000 either, ditching Firefox for IE would be at least a step back for the user. Mozilla should be using this decision as an opportunity to educate users on how operating systems get old and fall out of the scope of support at their ISP, OEM, and what have you.

That's exactly what I'm up to now, albeit with a 10 year layoff as opposed to just a year. Supporting yourself for a couple years in the "real world" really puts a perspective on things your 18 year-old self couldn't have had, and it worked for me.

That said, using Facebook hasn't stopped me from clocking a 3.86 GPA since I got back. It's all about using your time more effectively.

Does that mean playing Amy Winehouse at a party is off limits?

Start here: http://www.djwheat.tv/

You can find some examples of him at work on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I8fa_HqxD4

Professional gaming looked set for the big time. It never happened...

I will tell you why it never happened: the same reason other dot com creations like Webvan and Pets.com "looked set for the big time" and then promptly disappeared. The difference between professional gaming and Webvan is that professional gaming refused to die. A friend of mine was active in that stuff for years and despite being pretty good at what he did, all he ever won was an $800 check that had to be split 4 ways with his teammates. That was after multiple trips to all four corners of this country and at least a couple outside of the country. Not enough people give enough of a shit for sponsors to care enough about professional gaming, therefore there is no money in it for the participants unless you win the whole thing. Even low-rent sports leagues like the AFL pay their bottom-rung players something.

The day an organized league with a valid, sustainable salary structure comes into town is the day professional gaming makes it. Otherwise all it'll ever be is a smattering of competitions for people who can afford to take long weekends to go sit in some hotel conference room and jam themselves full of Red Bull and play video games in tournament brackets.

Thank you, this discussion is now over. Everybody please exit the thread!