Before the HBO serious came on I went back and re-read the books (well, the first three). Reading the first book again reminded me just how good it is. Great characters, quick paced action, sets up the politics quickly and interestingly.

Since you thought it was "Barely literate drivel." I'm wondering which books you were comparing it to. Since you slammed it pretty hard the least you could do is give some context, do you even read that genre? Give some examples of well written books that compare perhaps, that'd be helpful.

Now if you were going to slam the books four and five, be my guest.

Why would it need to serialize all that data every five seconds? I'm truly curious. I've stopped the game to save it, this brings up the 'save to' menu and you wait a couple seconds while it does the save (gather data, write to disk), then go back to the game. If it is a complicated game with lots and lots of information (e.g. Skyrim, how *do* they keep track of all those quest lines?) I can see a long save time, if it is a FPS I don't see why it would take so long. Even the PC standard F5 for 'quick save' can put up a 'Saving' message while it is going on so the frame rate doesn't matter, you aren't doing anything while it is saving.

I can see your point if the gamer expects the save to happen in the background, a la 'save point', while they continue to run around in game and do things. But I don't see why this should have an impact when I've decided to go to the save screen.

I have no interest in leaving my gaming rig running for an hour (or possibly more if conversation gets interesting) sucking back electricity, heating up my back room and possibly playing whatever hold music the game has. Allowing a save, I would think, is simple. Unless somebody with more knowledge explains why it is hard I'll just blame it on cheap console ports.

Speaking of which, I bought Dead Space on Steam when it came on sale but due to the horrible, horrible console port and controls I haven't been able to play them :(

Games that autosave only on checkpoints is a hangover from old consoles that didn't have the memory to allows gamers to save when they wanted to. Why this horrible restriction continues to perpetuate to modern PC games is beyond me. It's a throwback and it's annoying.

I can hear some people saying "It forces suspense in the game! You don't know when the next safe place is!". If you want that kind of suspense, let the game auto save for you. Personally if supper is ready I don't want to have to tell my wife "Wait, I know there must be an auto save waypoint around here somewhere, hold on while I play for another 5 - 10 minutes looking for it!" I want to hit cntl-s, quit, and go have supper.

Is it so hard to put 'save when you want' in to a game?

end-of-rant

This is a standard fight in every office I've been in. I have always wondered why we can put a man in space or replace my computer with a phone but we cannot properly control the temperature in a bunch of offices in a building.

Got moved in to a cube farm after ten years with an office and the only benefit is that the temperature is now consistent. The meeting rooms are freezing/sweltering but the cube farm is good.

Deterrence of North Korea? Like stopping them from their nuclear testing? Or perhaps stopping them from shelling South Korea? Didn't seem to work, unless you really believe North Korea *wants* to invade South Korea.

I think the OP meant 'automatic' as in the way most people think of automatics: there is no clutch pedal for you to work. I own a smart car and yes, there is some roughness from a dead stop. I avoid it by accelerating slowly, my wife avoids it by accelerating quickly. Still, no manual clutch = automatic. You can switch it over and force gear changes, but not much call for that while driving around town.

I think you are allowing an irrational hatred of the car mar your thought patterns, did somebody in a Smart car cut you off this morning?

Part of the reason I bought a Smart car was for the looks (I'm a sucker that way). It makes children smile and starts up conversations in parking lots, it doesn't look like anything else and I like that. Looks aside there are some very nice things in my Smart car that came standard (and I bought it over five years ago). Automatic lights? Yup. Automatic windshield wipers (front and rear)? Yup. Heated seats? Yup.

Stating that a 10 year old Hyundi Accent is a better option that an (implied) new Smart car shows you are veering in to hyperbole. Care to try the comparison again? There are better arguments for why a Smart car is not a good idea, you just didn't come up with many.

When I rolled my priest in WoW I spent 2 minutes thinking about what the worst name for a priest could be, so I name him "Leakage". Can't say I spent a lot of time on it and just created it to amuse myself. Of course that is PC gaming, I don't do console gaming so the idea of locking myself down to a single user name ... I guess I'd put more thought in to it.

At the end of every day I try to download all the pictures taken and do the first round of culling/commenting/geo-tagging. Given the vast amount of electronic pictures generated by myself and my wife there is no way I'll motivate myself to go through all of them once I'm home.

I still look through our vacation photos and wonder why we kept some of them. The daily cull needs to be more severe.

That video is good until the last 10% (starting at 9:20) when they lump "Too much government" to include welfare programs and "Soon a number of Romes producers could no longer make ends meet, and they went on the dole". Then it goes on to talk of wandering mobs demanding bread and circuses. So yeah ... goes from being informative to preachy.

In the end of the video it states the U.S.A. can keep a Republic, or move to a tyranny of the elite (oligopoly) and states that Democracy is a stepping stone to Oligopoly. Republican rules can be subverted as well and lead to oligopoly, it doesn't warn about that.

You lost me on the bold bit (emphasis mine). Having just come back from Vancouver Island I can assure you that cars stopping when you attempt to cross the street (no matter where) is very courteous and civilized.

I think the value in a helmet if more for the accidents that happen so quickly you don't have time to react. If you clip a car, sign, whatever, and have time to realize you are going down you drop the bike and roll. There is always the chance you won't see it coming: door prizes, ice on the street, pedestrians stepping out from between cars (of course then you make sure you land on them, nice and comfy), wet storm drain covers.

I was riding after it rained, turned a corner quickly and my front wheel hit a wet storm drain cover. Zip, no more traction and down I went. I felt my nose brush the tarmac then my helmet hit and bounced my face away from the street. No helmet would have meant me leaving my nose and face streaked across the tarmac. It's not like I had a modelling career, but holy f*ck am I happy I was wearing a helmet.

On a less serious note, you spend a lot of time as a bike courier rushing around madly and more than once I've rushed up to doors, pushed the bar and found them locked. I'd bounce my helmet off the door (not my head!), curse at whomever locked it, and move over to the other door.

Oh yeah, if you mountain bike, wear a helmet (assuming you are doing serious mountain biking, not just toodling down fire roads). I've messed up a descent and scraped my helmet across a rock face. No helmet would have been very, very ugly.

Of course, to each their own. I don't feel modern helmets are so restrictive that they aren't worth wearing.

1) I don't get ads at youtube ... could be my configuration of noscript
2) Thanks for pointing me over there, 30min of work time I can't get back ;)

I love the way the summary talks about the diseases this could help fix.

You know what the Scripps Ranch business types are really thinking: "OMG, we are going to *own* the diet industry!" cha-ching!

You'd think so, but I bought the original Fallout from GOG and was surprised by how slow it was. Anybody have any insight to that?