Remember that, according to SG canon, the Ancients inhabited Earth for a long period of time (and perhaps even originated here?), it's entirely possible that Destiny was launched from Earth before Atlantis migrated to the Pegasus galaxy. Icarus base / the Ancient database containing the reference to Earth as the point of origin could have been created during this time.

Actually I do, but if you went to the site you'd notice that the advert images don't use Flash or JS and are hosted locally on the website's domain. For example:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/openx/www/images/4876678be06cd81266d0bd84b9794faa.jpg

How exactly have you configured ABP and NoScript so that they can automatically distinguish that image as an advertisement?

From TFS:

Top 5 Articles

1. Nvidia GT300 yields are under 2%
2. Nvidia fakes Fermi boards at GPU Technology Conference
3. Apple keyboard firmware hack demonstrated
4. Miracles happen, GT300 tapes out!
5. Apple to Nvidia: Don't let the door hit your *ss on the way out

Oh, and there's AMD/ATI adverts all over it. Who gives a fuck about nVidia using a mock up, companies do this all the time at tech shows. It's a non-issue! What is the issue is why an article from a site that is so obviously geared around slagging off nVidia was posted here.

(and no, I'm not new here.)

the point often missed in dark series is that against a background of apparent despair hope shines all the more brightly

That is the best rebuttal I've ever heard to those who say BSG 2004 was way too dark. The few moments in the series where Galactica's crew were allowed to display positive emotions despite the insanely bleak circumstances were some of the most overwhelmingly powerful pieces of TV I've seen in recent times.... The kind of stuff that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, and occasionally makes you check if anyone is watching you as you fight to hold back a manly tear.

*SPOILER*
When they finally found Earth, for example, it was an immensely powerful scene of joy and celebration... you felt like all the unimaginably horrible shit these people had endured over the last few seasons had all been worth it somehow; the universe had eventually done right by them.... Only for the next scene to show the planet and the same crew surveying it left utterly broken and devestated. It was a total rollercoaster and had me completely glued to the screen. That's what I loved about BSG 2004 - not many shows dare to push those extremes so hard and so fast.

I can't find the exact quote, but on a program on Sky One in the UK I watched about BSG, Joss Whedon commented on it saying something along the lines of "You get more entertainment, more humanity, more action, more drama, more suspense and more storytelling than any other show, and then the opening credits roll".

So say we all!

You've veered a bit off-topic there, but if I had any mod points left I would still mod you up Insightful. Excellent post man, this is precisely why I still browse interesting stories with all the comments unhidden. :)

Yes exactly, I should have clarified that it's just a local client setting in my post. Quite why ms_force_dedicated_server is classed as an sv_cheat cvar is beyond me... but hey, it works fine, so roll with it.

I also mentioned this in a post earlier in the thread, but I have had over 300 hours out of L4D so far.

More content is needed, I don't disagree there (and indeed, it is on the way as promised)... but what is there currently is extremely fun and replayable, especially if you have a few friends / people on your Steam list to play with.

It's been 3 months since I bought the game and I'm still playing it almost every night. The last game I bought before this was Fallout 3, which was a very solid title with a relatively staggering amount of game content, yet I only got around 60 hours out of that. Go figure.

Forget the Survival Pack, the SDK is the release that will really extend this game's lifespan. There are already several fully fledged campaigns in the pipeline from the community, all they need is the tools to put in the finishing touches.

I love L4D, I agree that it's light on content and there are quite a few problems, but I've gotten about 300 hours out of a game that cost me $40ish. That's a bargain in my book, regardless of the issues.

A bunch of my friends and I set up a Steam group and got the dedicated server package installed on one of our Linux servers over Christmas.

If you play L4D a lot, this really is worth doing IMO (you can rent an 8 slot L4D game server for $10-15 a month, between a few people this is nothing) - we have a server geographically close to the majority of us on a decent tube, and we generally get around 30-40ms pings with 60ms spikes. It's very smooth, and is not difficult to setup (took me about 10-15 minutes one Sunday).

The best way we have found to connect to this server via the lobby system consistently is to set steam_group_exclusive in the cfg to our group only. This stops people not in your group from starting a lobby on it. Then when we want to play, we bring up the developer console after starting a lobby and use "sv_cheats 1; ms_force_dedicated_server IP:port". This then connects the lobby to our server every time when we click the Search menu item.

I agree Valve need to do something with this mess and it's a bit annoying to have to work around it like this, but this works nicely. You can of course alias the sv_cheats / ms_force_dedicated_server command to make this even easier.

You can apparently achieve similar results with setting an sv_search_key in the cfg and your group's clients, but this has given us problems so we use the above workaround instead. There is also the openserverbrowser command that gives you a browser window of available / recent / favourite L4D servers to connect to, similar to TF2, CS etc.

Given that a) you post on slashdot so I assume you're technically competent enough to install hlds and edit a config file, b) you obviously enjoy the game and c) your enjoyment is only being ruined by bad servers, I highly recommend you look into picking up your own server, sharing the cost with a few people if necessary. I can gaurentee you it will make the game a lot more enjoyable.

Yes? What do you want?

Man, the mods collective sense of humor is even lower than usual today...