It was pretty much the same with D&D 3.5e, but at least you had (more or less) sensible mechanics combined with a load of fun. And if you didn't have miniatures like most of my D&D companions did, there was always something to replace that: distinctly coloured marbles, rarely used dice.

D&D 4e has its plethora of powers (just about everything has been turned into a power, even the combat styles), but with its lack of applicability: the really good ones are limited to per-encounter or per-day use, while the at-will powers would not penetrate a Minotaur's hide (or perhaps it's the Minotaur's thick hide that's the problem here). To me, that is no fun at all. If you base your character purely on what your ideas about it are, it would basically suck. If you min-maxed it to the point that it was no longer a joy to play with you might get lucky and maybe, maybe, if you were really, really, luck, you would hit something.

I've played a multitude of characters in 3.5e settings and there was always something off about them because I "designed" them that way. I don't like my characters to be perfect examples of virtue or perfect masters of sword and archery. Oftentimes I like my character to be something different as well, paradoxical even. Sometimes even mysterious.

Cancelling your subscription is the worst thing you could have done. You do not get it, do you? If a company, be it an ISP or anything else, is ordered by a court, to block access to something, the only thing that company CAN do is execute that order, however nonsensical said order. Why? Because, if they want to fight the judge's decision - and both Ziggo and XS4ALL have already announced they are going to - their chances of winning that appeal go way up. Not executing a court's order opens up a whole can of worms of possibilities for the counterparty to sue them into the ground for all eternity, or for the (next, higher) court to find them in contempt in the appeal. At least now they can say they complied with the order, even if it was under great protest.

The judge - who almost certainly must have made a fortune with this case or must be the dumbest judge in the world - has basically given Brein carte blanche to have Ziggo and XS4ALL block anything on the internet they deem to be violating the copyrights of the artists they represent, which to me is a far greater concern than the fact that the instigating factor happens to be TPB. If BREIN, or its trigger happy director Tim Kuik sees anything it does not like, for example on '/.'. In name, it will always be something along the lines of 'that page on that site is violating the rights of this and that artist', but because the judge's decision does not allow verification of the lists BREIN sends to these ISPs, virtually any ip-address or fqhn could appear on that list and the ISPs in question would - at least until their appeal is fought and won - have no choice but to block access to it.

I'm no expert, but cases like these fascinate me, because they touch on the very cornerstone of everything we hold dear, both in the internet community and in the real world: freedom, in every way possible. How far does freedom of expression go? How high (or how low) should the powers of big conglomerates reach? How far does the concept of 'fair use' extend? Holland was one of the first countries to actually implement a law requiring net neutrality. The very first if I'm not mistaken. Now that supposed net neutrality has been given a serious blow, and so has the freedom of expression in Holland.

Everyone is screaming at M$oft to bring back the drop-down menus (and in some cases they did), and now Ubuntu is getting ready to drop them as well.

There is something to be said for getting rid of all patents. There is, however, also something to be said for keeping them.

Patents should serve their primary purpose, which is protect and acknowledge original art, and should serve it well. But they should never, ever be allowed to be used to ban products from the market. Why? Because the customer is king, not the other way around.

So far, it has only been about banning the sales of specific products, but there comes a time when the litigation escalates to such an extent that the customer will be left with inoperable hardware (because the automatic update of his favorite tool has invalidated its use), or even that the company that built the device goes bankrupt.

Did you ever get around to coding your own synthesizer on de C64?

However, since IP-addresses can never truly identify people beyond the shadow of a doubt, this is somewhat misleading.

The moment someone is behind a NAT-ting firewall, the identification goes haywire because the IP address through which to correlate the Skype data with BitTorrent data will always be the public IP address. It could very well be that user A is on the private network using BitTorrent, while user B is on that same private network using Skype.

"They will make an arrest (looks good), seize the computers, and then the prosecutor will attempt to get the accused to plead guilty on reduced charges (once again it looks good). "

That is why plea-bargains are the worst kind of mistake ever invented as far a concepts in justice systems goes, side by side with the concept of a jury. The former is fundamentally flawed because it does not make sense to criminalize perjury, but at the same time allow for a suspect to confess to something he did not do in exchange for a lighter conviction. The latter is fundamentally flawed because having lay men determine the guilt or innocence of a person is virtually the same as having a lynchmob execute the suspect right away.

The worst part of it is that this so-called puritanism is blowing over back to Europe as well. Whole legions of quasi-politicians, yet full-blown demagogues are crying wolf over the (fictitious) advent of Sharia law in European countries, while at the same time implementing their own version of it in the name of national security and general protection of the populace. Both are symptoms of the underlying problem: when it comes to "hot" issues such as acts of terrorism or child abuse people loose all sense of proportion and grab straight for the proverbial jackpot: they look for a scapegoat and blame everything on it.

Child abuse bad. But labelling teenagers who photograph themselves (in whatever way) and send these photos to eachother as sex offenders is worse, because it does away with the common sense that teenagers are adolescents: they are developing from child to grownup. What do you think would damage their psyches (and their futures) more: time in prison and being labelled a sex offender, or the fact that someone else sees them naked? I think the answer is obvious.

Moreover, modesty is adopted behaviour. We learned it from our parents, who learned it from theirs and so forth. In turn we teach it to our children. Nothing wrong with that, but the fact remains that our natural state of being, and the state in which we are born, is nude. Everything around it is subject to social and cultural convention. And no matter how you dress, there is always some idiot who considers it offensive or even harmful, whether it is to himself or to you. If we start making laws for every single case, all of us (as mondial citizens) should consider buying land on the moon, put fences around our patch of land and insulate ourselves from everyone else. Only then does it even have the tiniest bit of chance of succeeding in pleasing everyone, and who knows, maybe even that idiot.

By the way, labelling the recipient of such pictures as the offender if he or she does not report it is even worse. Receiving an SMS message or any other kind of message is not an act, and as such cannot and should not be criminialized. Ever heard of the phrase 'the cure is worse than the disease'? This is just that. Only now, there is no cure. Or a disease for that matter.

The 'ribbon' is most likely M$'s worst invention ever. Instead of keeping it simple with drop down menus and stuff like that, they are going for the option to make the user experience his worst nightmare on earth by an interface that eats up most a window's free space. And also, the options that you really need are never there.