Ebony: I really like this, I do. I'm assuming this is Numero Catorce, heh. (At first I thought it might be Bella Fuego, but a quick check of who drives
who cleared that up).

Maybe it's because I grew up in the southwest, but this really rings a nostalgic note. Apruebo!



--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Quote: She and Syndesis have a strange relationship.

I've said for years that I have some very specific requirements of an electric or hybrid car that have to be met before I would consider buying one.

It has to have performance at least comparable to a gasoline powered car - in every way.

It has to have the range of a gas powered car, or better. This is based on the assumption that the charging/refueling infrastructure will lag behind the cars
themselves. If I'm going to use an electric car, I want to be able to take a long road trip with it out of state, just like I could a gas powered car.
That's REALLY important in Texas, where drive times are longer than most other places.

It should be able to have some room inside the car, and not be super-heavy due to batteries. Some reasonable cargo space. If I'm going to make that cross
country trip, I should be able to carry some luggage with me.

The thing should either be rechargeable in 10 minutes or less, or have an on board recharge system.

While we're at it, make the braking system into part of the recharge system.

Folks? That car has now been made!

Quote: A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW's Mini Cooper. The PML Mini
QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors - one on
each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors.
The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small
conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved.

That bastard with the death note is at it again. *sigh*

Saw this over at Steve Jackson games in the news for yesterday. Kevin Siembieda has a tribute to him here.

We would probably know him best for these things (copied from the the link above)

Quote: Erick is best known for his many RPG games and contributions to Palladium Books®, including The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® RPG, several
TMNT® sourcebooks, After the Bomb® RPG and sourcebooks for it, Ninjas & Superspies™, Mystic China™, Rifts®
China One and Two, Revised RECON®, Wolfen Empire™ and many others. He is also famous for Amber® Diceless, the
first truly "diceless" role-playing game, published under Erick's own label, Phage Press. Erick also published
Amberzine® and founded Ambercon™, a series of conventions celebrating gaming, friendship and the world of Amber, hosted at
numerous locations around the world.

I've known about these coming out for a while now, but in case anyone else hasn't:

Knight Sabers with Transforming Motoslaves
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

ok, I've browsed through the forum history, but I couldn't find the original post about this topic, so I'm starting a new one.

I'm getting tired of playing CoX on my 3 year old laptop. I want the eye candy.

I have about $1000-1200 I've put aside for the purposes of building a gaming rig, and (being a mac fanboi) I have no idea where to start.

Given the previous discussions on graphics cards and whatnot I trust this group to at least point me in the right direction.

This will be used to play CoX (and most likely spore when it comes out).

I have no problem at all building my own rig piecemeal, but I'm clueless when it come to parts.

Thanks in advance.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

http://news.windingroad.com/concept-car ... t-vehicle/]BMW's GINA concept car.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, that is. FoT and A-W released their http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/300.html]fansub of episode 200 today, finishing off the series in easily-accessible digital form.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

So…



I picked up the D&D V4 Players Handbook.



The art is kind of nice.
Much in the same way that rice pudding is kind of nice. Nice, not thrilling, but nice.



First impressions.



Races: I was willing to
give them writers a moderate arse-load of credit for kicking gnomes to the curb. Yes, I have had it in for those
whimsical little bastards for years, and seeing them relegated to monster status (one step above my status for them - lawnmower chow) did have a certain
charm. Now, I am almost feeling nostalgic for the gormless little bastards.



Here's why.



Dragonkind. Yep, you can
play a half dragon, a steroid pissing, breath weapon spewing, member of a draconic hybrid that could only have been possible through the excessive usage of +5
Oil of lubrication, or possibly the turkey baster of ultimate insemination. I threw up a little in my mouth when I read
about this addition.



Fey-touched-mystic-bastards.
I forget the term they use for these pricks. If elves are light beer, these are the cut-with-a-knife German
brews that cross your eyes and kick your kidney's like Beckham with a soccer ball. Oh, and they can teleport five
areas at will. For those who want to play the displaced, mystic, forest, emo, but didn't think elves were hard-core
enough.



Tieflings. Half demonic
humanoids, whose parents drummed their heels on the wrong set of buttocks, or alternately had their buttocks drummed on by the wrong set of heels. Add a little demonic power and some ribbed for his/her pleasure textures in odd places and you are ready to party. Perfect for the dark and brooding anti-hero. Excuse me while I throw up in this
conveniently located bucket.



Elves, half elves, Halflings and dwarves make it through the
process with most of their dignity intact; and there feels like there is some balance involved. Half orcs are monsters
again, as lubricated dragon sex, or demonic rumpy-pumpy are obviously more attractive than the result of some drunken war-pig riding.



Classes:



Okay, here is where I am very uncertain as to the new
system. The MMO influence is more obvious than the Christian imagery at the end of Braveheart, and upon reading the
class descriptions, I kind of wanted to have my limbs pulled off at the command of Edward the Longshanks; that was
because the book had spread out Christ-like on my hands and screamed "Warcraft!" in a loud, emotion laden, voice while some celtic bint ululated in
the background.



Tanks, controllers, strikers, buffers; yes all the roles that you
have come to love in standard MMOs have made their was to the ADD experience, the only one missing was fluffer, and I await the Ron Jeremy expansion module for
that one to rear up…



Bards are gone, as they are obviously not hardcore enough for this
new take on the world, useless lute strumming gits to a man. Instead you have War Masters, a combination of fighter and
cheerleading team; without the benefit of pom-poms, panty-shots and G. W. Bush in his college days (hardly a benefit, but what the hell). Druids are also absent. There is a new type of magic user based on astral/demonic/god
pacts, as well as fighters, rangers and paladins. Clerics stay put. I don't
recall seeing monks either, so obsessive compulsive investigators and arse kicking temple initiates are going to be left feeling less loved than
normal.



So the mechanics.



The MMO influence rears up again, and I shall avoid the inevitable
repetition of the Ron Jeremy joke. All attacks/abilities are in three categories (that switch names depending on
class). You have things you can do all the time (your core attacks/abilities), things you can do once and encounter (more powerful abilities) and things you
can do once a day (the hardcore stuff.) You get to choose new ones as you go up in level, and because the later ones
are more powerful, there is even a handy respect option, in case you felt the MMO influence wane, this should bring it back like a cricket bat to the
nuts.



Some 3.X elements seem unchanged, including my personal bug-a-boo
of magic items being more common than breasts on Baywatch (and yes Hoff's count) and available in every shop in town.



Oh, and multi-classing is pretty much out, but you can take feats
that allow you to dip your beak into any of the other classes; I suspect that the min/maxing power games types are going to eschew Viagra for the foreseeable
future as they contemplate the abuses that the system probably allows for.



Again, these are first impressions on skimming the material. I will
give it another once over, but my first impressions are not particularly favorable. Even more-so than three, this game
feels like it requires scale maps and figures to adequately handle the new combat.



Okay - with all the myriad abilities marshalling combat is going to
be even trickier, as there are interrupt conditions, at will conditions, and if you are game mastering, the eventual emergence of nervous conditions, as the
table erupts with interruptions at every instance when one of their abilities fires off like (fade to Ron Jeremy joke.)



Cheers,

Shayne

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/traffic

posted here for discussion, also to archive it for later arguing purposes.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies