The groups I played with used the concept that if your character's not in combat, and is given a lethal blow, he dies. If he is sleeping and gets his throat cut, he's going to die no matter how tough he is.
The coup de grace rules are honestly pretty good for that sort of thing. If you attack somebody with the intent to kill while they're helpless (asleep, restrained, paralyzed, etc), you automatically hit, automatically critical, get sneak attack damage (if possible), and they have to make a Fortitude save with a DC of 10 + the damage taken or die.
Yes, it's reasonable for there to be a saving throw on that; the DC scales up pretty quickly even for weak characters. A commoner might be able to do, say, 12 points of damage on an average crit with a longsword, assuming that strength is our commoner's good stat, and he has a +2 bonus on it. DC 22, that's nigh-impossible for any low-level character make unless they're very lucky. On the other hand, a 10th-level character with a "good" Fortitude save has a not insignificant chance of surviving that. Feel free to house rule that a 20 isn't an automatic success if you think a 5% chance of a low-level character getting lucky or the attacker screwing up is too much.
It may seem unrealistic, but face it, most real people are the equivalent of 1st or 2nd level commoners; by the time somebody is a 10th level fighter, it's perfectly believable that he's so incredibly tough that it takes somebody two tries to deliver a lethal blow. Even a 5th-level fighter can probably do enough damage to get that up to a DC 30. That starts to get up into the "hard to survive unless you're epic" range.
And that's just a longsword, which really isn't an ideal weapon for that sort of thing. Let's say the same commoner has an executioner's axe, which we'll say has the same stats as a greataxe. His average crit damage is probably up to 24 or so. Nobody who's not very high level is going to survive a DC 34 Fort save. Even if our commoner really screws up his swing and gets the minimum possible crit damage, 9, that's still a DC 19 save, which is very tough for low-level characters and still a challenge for mid-level characters.
If it seems silly that there is a chance of survival, you may be suffering from "fighters aren't allowed to have anything nice" syndrome. Bear in mind that by level 10, wizards are permanently turning people into small animals, bards are so good that outsiders come to the prime material plane to listen to their performances, and a smart rogue will be stabbing people for +15d6 points of damage per round while completely dodging 20'-radius fireballs at the same time.
Oops, the section on retrieving an item slipped my mind.
As for the others -- yeah, I know that as the rules are written, monsters should get grapple checks based on their BAB, but that basically means that any PC with multiple attacks per round is an unstoppable grappling force unless he's grappling a monster who is several size categories larger than him. (recall that most monsters don't have multiple attacks based on their BAB)
The grappling rules doesn't say anything about SU abilities. It makes sense that you could use them, sure, but if you're interpreting the rules literally, it's against them.
And the move section says "You can move half your speed (bringing all others engaged in the grapple with you)". If you're moving within a larger creature's square, though, you can't bring him with you -- and if he's trying to move you within his area, well, he's not actually moving at all.
Yeah, you can houserule it, but those things are all constant sources of debate.
Can you publish an edition that likens back to 1st Edition AD&D where four books and a module pretty much could sum up a session?
Four books? In 3.5 you only need three books (PHB, DMG, MM) and a module. Heck, you don't even need the module if you're up to making your own. In fact, you don't really need the books at all, you can just use d20srd.org; the only things it's missing are some flavor text and the experience & gold charts for players.
How about putting more energy into fleshing out a world instead of bloating the ruleset or creating more classes?
If you want a fleshed out world, you might check out the Eberron setting. There are a number of books for it that are filled mostly with content that expands the setting with relatively few new rules or mechanical options.
Grappling's actually pretty easy once you read and understand the process.
Ok, here's a few questions for you...
Characters with multiple attacks due to BAB get multiple grapple checks. Do creatures with multiple natural attacks get multiple grapple checks? What about secondary natural attacks? If so, where does it say that? And if not, grappling is horribly broken in favor of characters with class levels rather than monsters.
Wizards can't cast spells with material components unless they already have the components in hand. How do you determine what copmonents you had in hand at the time you were grappled? At least, in most games I've played in, they don't worry about describing in detail the wizard pulling out components every round, and it's just assumed that he has whatever he needs for casting the spell at the time. Also, if a character can draw a light weapon in a grapple, why can't a wizard pull out more components?
Can I use a supernatural ability in a grapple? The list of actions you're allowed to take in a grapple doesn't specifically say so, but that doesn't make sense. Supernatural abilities have no components and don't require concentration. There's no reason why it should be possible to cast spells but not use supernatural abilities. If I can do that, what other actions can I take that aren't listed there?
When you grapple a creature, you move into its square. If I move into the square of a creature larger than me, exactly where within its area am I located? It doesn't seem important until the wizard starts casting area-of-effect spells that may or may not clip the creature but not hit me. Is it possible for me to move around within the creature's area? Is it possible for it to move me around? There are rules for moving the grapple, but that's for actually moving the location of both grapplers, not one who is within the other's area.
I don't actually need answers for those, by the way -- the point is, the rules for grappling are a mess.
Who cares if you break rule #435B to make your gaming experience more enjoyable?
The problem is that if you break rule #435B, sometimes that means you're also going to have to changes rules #237 and #468 to be compatible, and rules #387 through #401 won't work at all. You probably won't even notice that rule #105 doesn't work any more until somebody trips over it and your group spends 30 minutes debating how it should work. It's a lot easier when the entire rule set works right without having to fudge it.
The rogue dodged a 20 foot radius effect, without moving. That's not fantastic, it's nonsense.
Nowhere does it say that the rogue can dodge the effect without moving. In fact, it specifically says that Evasion doesn't work if you're helpless. Draw a five-foot square around you; that's really quite a bit of space to maneuver around in. If it would make you feel better, you can tell yourself that the rogue managed to quickly hide himself in a depression in the wall or floor, or that he's just so damn good at dodging that he dodged the fireball's individual waves of heat.
Also, it's worth noting that paladins are, in fact, not required to worship a god. Seriously, check the class description. They can get their powers just from being incredibly uptight. (for that matter, they're not even required to worship a god who's within a step of their alignment, like clerics are -- a lawful good paladin could worship Vecna, although he might have some trouble resolving that internal conflict)
And if we're talking about silly powers, a number of things from list of monk class features makes no logical sense at all, especially higher level ones.. Seriously, Tongue of the Sun and Moon? Empty Body? WTF?
Well, sure, if the spellcasters get the jump on them or have an opportunity to prebuff... but there are other situations where melee combatants are invaluable.
There are situations that are weighted heavily towards melee combat, but that doesn't mean that pure melee classes are invaluable. A druid can just wild shape into a dire polar bear while a cleric casts Divine Power on himself, and now they can stand toe-to-toe with the fighters (while still tossing out 9th-level spells if they get bored); a wizard can just cast Time Stop on himself and either give himself whatever buffs are appropriate or set out a few spells that will erase his enemies when Time Stop ends. Granted, that's a pretty high-level tactic, but even at mid levels, if something gets a drop on a caster and they're unprepared, they've got things like Contingency, Teleport, and Word of Recall to get them home safely. The fighter's going to have some trouble getting away from anything he can't handle.
We have something like that in the monk's stunning fist ability; other abilities that can be used similarly might be interesting.
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with the Tome of Battle? It's become the favorite book of all the melee fans in my group since it was released, and it sounds like it's exactly what you're looking for.
There are spells in there that push the bounds of balance, and there's sort of a mutual agreement among our players not to use them.
It's not like the spells in the PHB are balanced, either. If your spellcasters aren't making your melee combatants cry themselves to sleep at night, they're doing something wrong.
all the magic using characters are still very defined by the list of spells in the player's handbook
Out of curiosity, could you clarify what you mean by that? There are many more sources of spells than the PHB -- the Spell Compendium is an obvious resource that contains many new spells, and almost all of the splatbooks devote a chapter to new spells. If you want a spell to do something, it's probably out there, somewhere. If none of those spells do exactly what you want, there are general rules for researching new spells in the PHB; you can make anything you want as long as the player and DM can agree on it being balanced. If you want more detailed rules for creating spells, look at the rules for epic spell research in the Epic Level Handbook. They're very detailed. I've made a number of spellcasting characters who only rarely used anything from the PHB.
or will DMs still essentially have to adapt their world to the magic system?
If it's the system you have a problem with rather than the spell effects, there are alternate systems, too; Unearthed Arcana has a variant spell point system rather than spells-per-day, and it's not balanced particularly well, but it works. You might also take a look at the Expanded Psionics Handbook; while psionics were a broken mess in 2e and 3e, 3.5e psionics are surprisingly simple and balanced. You've also got the new systems present in Magic of Incarnum and The Tome of Magic, although out of the latter, the binder is the only class that is balanced particularly well.
The "Evasion" class ability doesn't affect your AC at all. You might want to check your PHB again.
It's a little silly that a rogue could completely dodge a fireball when standing in a 5' wide hallway, sure, but I don't think it's any more silly than some guy in robes who waves his hand to produce fireworks, or some guy in armor who can hit evil creatures really hard just because he really hates evil.
I can answer a couple of those for you, based on what I've read. First, no, 4 isn't going to be backwards-compatible with 3.5. The changes aren't quite as drastic as going from 2 to 3, but they're still big enough that it will require serious work to convert anything.
The first campaign setting that will be converted is Forgotten Realms, and it should be done sometime within the first year (hopefully fairly quickly) after 4 comes out; Eberron will come out a year later. I've heard there are going to be some unofficial Eberron conversion materials made available in the meantime.
Why do they keep selling themselves to DirectX instead of OpenGL? GRRRR!
Because DirectX and OpenGL are not equivalents. OpenGL is only an API for drawing graphics; with DirectX you can not only do graphics, but you can also handle sound, input, networking, and more. The only open source equivalent to DirectX that I'm aware of is SDL, which is perfectly usable, but honestly it's not nearly as powerful as DirectX is. If you want just as much power, you'll have to go hunting through half a dozen common different alternatives for every aspect of your game, and none of them will work on every Linux system out there.
That post really needed some more to be organized into coherent paragraphs, but I'll answer anyway...
is it because of the "scene" or is it because you "can"?
Yes, it's because they can. They enjoy the challenge.
When you have broken the system security to release your own homebrew - then what? Challenge over?
Yep, and then you move on to a new challenge. In reality, though, breaking the system security is just one of the first steps to making homebrew software; there are still many challenges left.
Now realize this my friend - why not create your OWN hardware with your OWN challenges?
Because that's a different kind of challenge, and not as fun to some people. Why don't you forge your own plate armor? Or learn a new language? Or study Tai Chi? Those are all challenges, but they're different and appeal to different types of people. Some people -- the people who are working on this kind of project, in fact -- think that breaking a system's security and making homebrew software is much more fun than making their own hardware.
Point is - whatever you end up doing - make sure you use that time you got - wisely - otherwise you're technically just wasting your time doing it!
If you spent your time having fun, is it really wasted?
Hmm. Can I access Gmail when I'm not connected to the internet?
That may seem like a silly question, but there have been many times that I've had my laptop with me somewhere where there's no internet access, and I needed to check something in my e-mail archives.
You managed to hit most of the big names, but I think it's worth also mentioning:
1) Koichi Sugiyama, composer of the Dragon Quest series, and the guy who made people take video game music seriously in the first place.
2) Sound Team JDK, though not a single person, is behind the music of the Ys series; the Ys series is, sadly, not very popular in the US, but I think you'll find that gamers who are familiar with the series agree that their soundtracks are among the very best.
Yes AAC came out in 1997 and it's actually better then MP3 in almost all measures, but there still isn't any decent application to use it.
What do you mean by that? Every popular audio playing application I'm aware of supports it. The world's most popular portable music player supports it, and many of the less popular ones do, too. How many "decent" applications can't use it?
Code actually takes up a very small amount of disk space. The vast majority of the data on any given game disc is textures, models, and movies, and you can only compress those so much before the drop in quality is very noticeable.
Cuz thats the only thing i can think of as a use for a 5 ghz computer in an average household.
Editing home movies / photos? Playing games? Doing other things while watching hi-def movies? Or maybe just so that your computer and programs will start faster? That's not even getting into the "power user" that will use such a processor for rendering graphics, compiling code, and running other operating systems through virtualization. I think you're not thinking very hard.
So you're comfortable saying all of those are sports? Just trying to keep things honest here.
Sure, that's fine with me.
The funny thing is, that paragraph will upset a few people. And I have no idea why.
The reason it offends people is because you're using a word to mean something other than what it actually means. Your opinion isn't particularly uncommon, either, and most of the time, people who have your opinion are also implying that the things they don't consider sports are somehow "inferior."
The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem essentially states that it is possible to perfectly reconstruct a sampled signal if the signal is band-limited and your sample rate is greater than twice the bandwidth.
In practice, what this means is that the article summary is just plain wrong. No matter how many bumpy your vinyl disc is, it's possible for a digital version of it to sound exactly the same, as far as human ears are concerned.
I wasn't laughing at them. I was laughing at calling it a "sport" - I laugh the same way at golfers who call their game a 'sport'(Tiger Woods makes more taking a dump than all video sportsman combined). At least the golfers have to walk - a little.
The dictionary says, among other things, that a "sport" is a: 3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime..
Golf and video games both easily fit into that definition.
It's pretty funny that you're insulting golf, though. I'm guessing that you haven't golfed much, or, if you have played at all, you haven't tried to actually compete -- you'll find that playing golf well takes a fair amount of physical coordination and fitness. Similarly, the best video game players need both physical coordination and quick reflexes. That's not the same as the pure muscle strength that many sports require, but they're still far from purely mental activities.
there's a trade-off between how many bits you can encode onto the card and how much range you have for the camera to read the card
The trade-off isn't really significant. A UPC barcode, which is the type printed on every single item at the store, is small, very easy to read, and can represent 12 digits -- about 1 trillion possible different values. If we space things out so that only one in every 2000 values is actually valid, that's still half a billion different values, which is probably far more cards than they will ever even print. There's no need to ban people who are legitimately sharing cards, but it's safe to assume that if you see a card being scanned by >30 different people on the same day, there's something fishy going on.
Slashdot Mirror
The groups I played with used the concept that if your character's not in combat, and is given a lethal blow, he dies. If he is sleeping and gets his throat cut, he's going to die no matter how tough he is.
The coup de grace rules are honestly pretty good for that sort of thing. If you attack somebody with the intent to kill while they're helpless (asleep, restrained, paralyzed, etc), you automatically hit, automatically critical, get sneak attack damage (if possible), and they have to make a Fortitude save with a DC of 10 + the damage taken or die.
Yes, it's reasonable for there to be a saving throw on that; the DC scales up pretty quickly even for weak characters. A commoner might be able to do, say, 12 points of damage on an average crit with a longsword, assuming that strength is our commoner's good stat, and he has a +2 bonus on it. DC 22, that's nigh-impossible for any low-level character make unless they're very lucky. On the other hand, a 10th-level character with a "good" Fortitude save has a not insignificant chance of surviving that. Feel free to house rule that a 20 isn't an automatic success if you think a 5% chance of a low-level character getting lucky or the attacker screwing up is too much.
It may seem unrealistic, but face it, most real people are the equivalent of 1st or 2nd level commoners; by the time somebody is a 10th level fighter, it's perfectly believable that he's so incredibly tough that it takes somebody two tries to deliver a lethal blow. Even a 5th-level fighter can probably do enough damage to get that up to a DC 30. That starts to get up into the "hard to survive unless you're epic" range.
And that's just a longsword, which really isn't an ideal weapon for that sort of thing. Let's say the same commoner has an executioner's axe, which we'll say has the same stats as a greataxe. His average crit damage is probably up to 24 or so. Nobody who's not very high level is going to survive a DC 34 Fort save. Even if our commoner really screws up his swing and gets the minimum possible crit damage, 9, that's still a DC 19 save, which is very tough for low-level characters and still a challenge for mid-level characters.
If it seems silly that there is a chance of survival, you may be suffering from "fighters aren't allowed to have anything nice" syndrome. Bear in mind that by level 10, wizards are permanently turning people into small animals, bards are so good that outsiders come to the prime material plane to listen to their performances, and a smart rogue will be stabbing people for +15d6 points of damage per round while completely dodging 20'-radius fireballs at the same time.
Oops, the section on retrieving an item slipped my mind.
As for the others -- yeah, I know that as the rules are written, monsters should get grapple checks based on their BAB, but that basically means that any PC with multiple attacks per round is an unstoppable grappling force unless he's grappling a monster who is several size categories larger than him. (recall that most monsters don't have multiple attacks based on their BAB)
The grappling rules doesn't say anything about SU abilities. It makes sense that you could use them, sure, but if you're interpreting the rules literally, it's against them.
And the move section says "You can move half your speed (bringing all others engaged in the grapple with you)". If you're moving within a larger creature's square, though, you can't bring him with you -- and if he's trying to move you within his area, well, he's not actually moving at all.
Yeah, you can houserule it, but those things are all constant sources of debate.
Can you publish an edition that likens back to 1st Edition AD&D where four books and a module pretty much could sum up a session?
Four books? In 3.5 you only need three books (PHB, DMG, MM) and a module. Heck, you don't even need the module if you're up to making your own. In fact, you don't really need the books at all, you can just use d20srd.org; the only things it's missing are some flavor text and the experience & gold charts for players.
How about putting more energy into fleshing out a world instead of bloating the ruleset or creating more classes?
If you want a fleshed out world, you might check out the Eberron setting. There are a number of books for it that are filled mostly with content that expands the setting with relatively few new rules or mechanical options.
Grappling's actually pretty easy once you read and understand the process.
Ok, here's a few questions for you...
Characters with multiple attacks due to BAB get multiple grapple checks. Do creatures with multiple natural attacks get multiple grapple checks? What about secondary natural attacks? If so, where does it say that? And if not, grappling is horribly broken in favor of characters with class levels rather than monsters.
Wizards can't cast spells with material components unless they already have the components in hand. How do you determine what copmonents you had in hand at the time you were grappled? At least, in most games I've played in, they don't worry about describing in detail the wizard pulling out components every round, and it's just assumed that he has whatever he needs for casting the spell at the time. Also, if a character can draw a light weapon in a grapple, why can't a wizard pull out more components?
Can I use a supernatural ability in a grapple? The list of actions you're allowed to take in a grapple doesn't specifically say so, but that doesn't make sense. Supernatural abilities have no components and don't require concentration. There's no reason why it should be possible to cast spells but not use supernatural abilities. If I can do that, what other actions can I take that aren't listed there?
When you grapple a creature, you move into its square. If I move into the square of a creature larger than me, exactly where within its area am I located? It doesn't seem important until the wizard starts casting area-of-effect spells that may or may not clip the creature but not hit me. Is it possible for me to move around within the creature's area? Is it possible for it to move me around? There are rules for moving the grapple, but that's for actually moving the location of both grapplers, not one who is within the other's area.
I don't actually need answers for those, by the way -- the point is, the rules for grappling are a mess.
Who cares if you break rule #435B to make your gaming experience more enjoyable?
The problem is that if you break rule #435B, sometimes that means you're also going to have to changes rules #237 and #468 to be compatible, and rules #387 through #401 won't work at all. You probably won't even notice that rule #105 doesn't work any more until somebody trips over it and your group spends 30 minutes debating how it should work. It's a lot easier when the entire rule set works right without having to fudge it.
The rogue dodged a 20 foot radius effect, without moving. That's not fantastic, it's nonsense.
Nowhere does it say that the rogue can dodge the effect without moving. In fact, it specifically says that Evasion doesn't work if you're helpless. Draw a five-foot square around you; that's really quite a bit of space to maneuver around in. If it would make you feel better, you can tell yourself that the rogue managed to quickly hide himself in a depression in the wall or floor, or that he's just so damn good at dodging that he dodged the fireball's individual waves of heat.
Also, it's worth noting that paladins are, in fact, not required to worship a god. Seriously, check the class description. They can get their powers just from being incredibly uptight. (for that matter, they're not even required to worship a god who's within a step of their alignment, like clerics are -- a lawful good paladin could worship Vecna, although he might have some trouble resolving that internal conflict)
And if we're talking about silly powers, a number of things from list of monk class features makes no logical sense at all, especially higher level ones.. Seriously, Tongue of the Sun and Moon? Empty Body? WTF?
Well, sure, if the spellcasters get the jump on them or have an opportunity to prebuff... but there are other situations where melee combatants are invaluable.
There are situations that are weighted heavily towards melee combat, but that doesn't mean that pure melee classes are invaluable. A druid can just wild shape into a dire polar bear while a cleric casts Divine Power on himself, and now they can stand toe-to-toe with the fighters (while still tossing out 9th-level spells if they get bored); a wizard can just cast Time Stop on himself and either give himself whatever buffs are appropriate or set out a few spells that will erase his enemies when Time Stop ends. Granted, that's a pretty high-level tactic, but even at mid levels, if something gets a drop on a caster and they're unprepared, they've got things like Contingency, Teleport, and Word of Recall to get them home safely. The fighter's going to have some trouble getting away from anything he can't handle.
We have something like that in the monk's stunning fist ability; other abilities that can be used similarly might be interesting.
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with the Tome of Battle? It's become the favorite book of all the melee fans in my group since it was released, and it sounds like it's exactly what you're looking for.
There are spells in there that push the bounds of balance, and there's sort of a mutual agreement among our players not to use them.
It's not like the spells in the PHB are balanced, either. If your spellcasters aren't making your melee combatants cry themselves to sleep at night, they're doing something wrong.
all the magic using characters are still very defined by the list of spells in the player's handbook
Out of curiosity, could you clarify what you mean by that? There are many more sources of spells than the PHB -- the Spell Compendium is an obvious resource that contains many new spells, and almost all of the splatbooks devote a chapter to new spells. If you want a spell to do something, it's probably out there, somewhere. If none of those spells do exactly what you want, there are general rules for researching new spells in the PHB; you can make anything you want as long as the player and DM can agree on it being balanced. If you want more detailed rules for creating spells, look at the rules for epic spell research in the Epic Level Handbook. They're very detailed. I've made a number of spellcasting characters who only rarely used anything from the PHB.
or will DMs still essentially have to adapt their world to the magic system?
If it's the system you have a problem with rather than the spell effects, there are alternate systems, too; Unearthed Arcana has a variant spell point system rather than spells-per-day, and it's not balanced particularly well, but it works. You might also take a look at the Expanded Psionics Handbook; while psionics were a broken mess in 2e and 3e, 3.5e psionics are surprisingly simple and balanced. You've also got the new systems present in Magic of Incarnum and The Tome of Magic, although out of the latter, the binder is the only class that is balanced particularly well.
The "Evasion" class ability doesn't affect your AC at all. You might want to check your PHB again.
It's a little silly that a rogue could completely dodge a fireball when standing in a 5' wide hallway, sure, but I don't think it's any more silly than some guy in robes who waves his hand to produce fireworks, or some guy in armor who can hit evil creatures really hard just because he really hates evil.
I can answer a couple of those for you, based on what I've read. First, no, 4 isn't going to be backwards-compatible with 3.5. The changes aren't quite as drastic as going from 2 to 3, but they're still big enough that it will require serious work to convert anything.
The first campaign setting that will be converted is Forgotten Realms, and it should be done sometime within the first year (hopefully fairly quickly) after 4 comes out; Eberron will come out a year later. I've heard there are going to be some unofficial Eberron conversion materials made available in the meantime.
Why do they keep selling themselves to DirectX instead of OpenGL? GRRRR!
Because DirectX and OpenGL are not equivalents. OpenGL is only an API for drawing graphics; with DirectX you can not only do graphics, but you can also handle sound, input, networking, and more. The only open source equivalent to DirectX that I'm aware of is SDL, which is perfectly usable, but honestly it's not nearly as powerful as DirectX is. If you want just as much power, you'll have to go hunting through half a dozen common different alternatives for every aspect of your game, and none of them will work on every Linux system out there.
That post really needed some more to be organized into coherent paragraphs, but I'll answer anyway...
is it because of the "scene" or is it because you "can"?
Yes, it's because they can. They enjoy the challenge.
When you have broken the system security to release your own homebrew - then what? Challenge over?
Yep, and then you move on to a new challenge. In reality, though, breaking the system security is just one of the first steps to making homebrew software; there are still many challenges left.
Now realize this my friend - why not create your OWN hardware with your OWN challenges?
Because that's a different kind of challenge, and not as fun to some people. Why don't you forge your own plate armor? Or learn a new language? Or study Tai Chi? Those are all challenges, but they're different and appeal to different types of people. Some people -- the people who are working on this kind of project, in fact -- think that breaking a system's security and making homebrew software is much more fun than making their own hardware.
Point is - whatever you end up doing - make sure you use that time you got - wisely - otherwise you're technically just wasting your time doing it!
If you spent your time having fun, is it really wasted?
Hmm. Can I access Gmail when I'm not connected to the internet?
That may seem like a silly question, but there have been many times that I've had my laptop with me somewhere where there's no internet access, and I needed to check something in my e-mail archives.
You managed to hit most of the big names, but I think it's worth also mentioning:
1) Koichi Sugiyama, composer of the Dragon Quest series, and the guy who made people take video game music seriously in the first place.
2) Sound Team JDK, though not a single person, is behind the music of the Ys series; the Ys series is, sadly, not very popular in the US, but I think you'll find that gamers who are familiar with the series agree that their soundtracks are among the very best.
It's rare to find a spot where the camera is in a bad position, but you can always rotate it to a good one if need be.
Uh.. no, you can't. There are many places where they lock the player out of rotating the camera, and if you don't like the angle, it's very annoying.
Yes AAC came out in 1997 and it's actually better then MP3 in almost all measures, but there still isn't any decent application to use it.
What do you mean by that? Every popular audio playing application I'm aware of supports it. The world's most popular portable music player supports it, and many of the less popular ones do, too. How many "decent" applications can't use it?
Somehow, I don't think that you understand what the word "standby" means. Learn what you're talking about before you write any more comments, please.
Code actually takes up a very small amount of disk space. The vast majority of the data on any given game disc is textures, models, and movies, and you can only compress those so much before the drop in quality is very noticeable.
It's called schadenfreude. People outside the group like to make themselves feel better by laughing at the misfortunes of people inside the group.
Cuz thats the only thing i can think of as a use for a 5 ghz computer in an average household.
Editing home movies / photos? Playing games? Doing other things while watching hi-def movies? Or maybe just so that your computer and programs will start faster? That's not even getting into the "power user" that will use such a processor for rendering graphics, compiling code, and running other operating systems through virtualization. I think you're not thinking very hard.
So you're comfortable saying all of those are sports? Just trying to keep things honest here.
Sure, that's fine with me.
The funny thing is, that paragraph will upset a few people. And I have no idea why.
The reason it offends people is because you're using a word to mean something other than what it actually means. Your opinion isn't particularly uncommon, either, and most of the time, people who have your opinion are also implying that the things they don't consider sports are somehow "inferior."
The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem essentially states that it is possible to perfectly reconstruct a sampled signal if the signal is band-limited and your sample rate is greater than twice the bandwidth.
In practice, what this means is that the article summary is just plain wrong. No matter how many bumpy your vinyl disc is, it's possible for a digital version of it to sound exactly the same, as far as human ears are concerned.
I wasn't laughing at them. I was laughing at calling it a "sport" - I laugh the same way at golfers who call their game a 'sport'(Tiger Woods makes more taking a dump than all video sportsman combined). At least the golfers have to walk - a little.
The dictionary says, among other things, that a "sport" is a: 3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime..
Golf and video games both easily fit into that definition.
It's pretty funny that you're insulting golf, though. I'm guessing that you haven't golfed much, or, if you have played at all, you haven't tried to actually compete -- you'll find that playing golf well takes a fair amount of physical coordination and fitness. Similarly, the best video game players need both physical coordination and quick reflexes. That's not the same as the pure muscle strength that many sports require, but they're still far from purely mental activities.
there's a trade-off between how many bits you can encode onto the card and how much range you have for the camera to read the card
The trade-off isn't really significant. A UPC barcode, which is the type printed on every single item at the store, is small, very easy to read, and can represent 12 digits -- about 1 trillion possible different values. If we space things out so that only one in every 2000 values is actually valid, that's still half a billion different values, which is probably far more cards than they will ever even print. There's no need to ban people who are legitimately sharing cards, but it's safe to assume that if you see a card being scanned by >30 different people on the same day, there's something fishy going on.