Erkki

You're a Russian scientist living in an appartment building in Moscow. You have just done something really stupid -- discovered a nearly zero-cost energy source. Your big mouth told about it to someone you shouldn't have. The woman next door, whom you trust, and who is also a scientist, and very hot (but with small breasts) and much smarter than you, advises you to keep this secret for now and has information that the person you told is about to contact government officials about this. Your first task is to stop him. You fail, of course and pretty soon everyone is after you. The government wants your research to use it strictly for military purposes, the oil magnates want you dead and your research destroyed. You will start an escapade through the entire world (with your hot neighbour) but wherever you go, more agencies will be after you, and at the same time you have to build a network of people whom you trust to bring this discovery to use throughout the world.

Well, I just stopped too. It was a favorable situation that hepled me. But nicotine is physically addictive, plus there's that mental addiction. The first month was pretty tough.

All I'm saying is that if Linux continues as it is, it's never going to take any market share away from Windows as a desktop OS. But that's what it should be doing IMHO. The potential is there. And I have looked for but haven't found the most easy-to-use-but-hard-to-customize distribution instead of Mandrake (well, I haven't looked very hard to be honest). And I have nothing against the command line. The linux shell is definitely better than the windows/dos one. I'd just be more comfortable if I could do most basic things from the GUI instead of having to memorize obscurely named commands (some of them are, really).

I smoke. I managed to quit once for 6 months. After 3 months or so I didn't really have a constant desire for it any more, but then one day I decided to try one because after you haven't smoked for a while it feels especially good. I thought I was over it and one wouldn't hurt me. And then the next week I did one more and pretty soon I was smoking again. Now I'm planning to quit for good, but I'm waiting for the right time -- it's not easy (well it is for some people, I don't know how they do it) and when I managed to quit for the 6 months it was because I was hanging out a lot with some friends who weren't smokers.

San Andreas gets a lot better for me as I progress and get used to the controls. I played it a lot today and yesterday and I can handle the shooting pretty well now. Driving has become easier too, I don't hit as many posts as I used to. I found the motorcycle mission was actually better handled driving a bit more slowly and carefully instead of full speed, as the chasee stopped every now and again to wait for us. So far the only other mission I've got a real problem with is the one where you're on the back seat of a motorcycle with Big Smoke driving and have to shoot the Russians chasing you. The shooting before that was actually easy for me by now. I have to say, the missions have been pretty varied so far. Probably more than in any previous GTA game. The first GTA of 1998 some people said that in the end, all the missions were about driving from A to B. That was true to a point, and alot less true in GTA 3 and Vice City (if at all), but San Andreas is totally beyond that accusation. So far I've: - set fire to a house and then rescued a girl from it (with the help of a fire-extinguisher), who later became my girlfriend and likes to do drive-bys. - robbed some kind of colonels house - operated a forklift to load crates of weapons from an army warehouse into our truck - sneaked into a mansion to steal a rhyme book - survived a gang war - impressed a DJ with my dancing ETC. Finally the non-driving gameplay is as interesting as in Mafia or True Crime (true crime sucked though, but GTA has many of the same concepts done better) In conclusion, so far this game is everything I was hoping for, if not more.

I hate Linux people who think they're special. Well not the persons, but that attitude. One of my friends is like that. If I asked him advice when I wanted to learn linux, I got answers like "why do you want that? GUIs suck" etc. Recently I asked him what PHP IDE he uses at work, and he found a way to mention "I don't even use the find in files search inside the IDE. I use grep for that."

Oh... I'm not a native English speaker and don't get it. Now that I think of it, I get the feeling it should be funny, but I'd have to check the dictionary.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting this RPG stuff actually affecting the driving. But I already noticed it does. I've been working out every day, my muscles are already maximised. Should practice the shooting though.

Why?

The game is pretty good. I'm not sure I like it better than VC so far, but I've only explored so little. And I'd certainly like the PC port better. I think those missions I had trouble probably with weren't especially difficult compared to other PS2 games -- it's just that I'm not used to the PS2 controller. I keep forgetting what button does what and even things like changing radio stations take my focus away from driving. I'm getting better and have learned my way around the hood. I should find some kind of place for the paper map where I can glance at it during playing, so I could keep better track of where I am. Actually, if I think about it, I didn't fully memorize Vice City's layout either before getting a helicopter.

Ok, thanx. I solved that mission by driving over the niggas though (and switching cars when one got too damaged). Another one I find damn hard is where you pick up OG Loc from jail and have to chase a guy on a motorcycle.

I have this (fucking small 15") TFT monitor at work and as I've had to do a lot of reading PDF's here I one day decided to see if I could rotate it 90 degrees from landscape to portrait mode so the text would fit the screen better. To my surprise it worked! However, there's a pretty noticable shadow when the screen is in this position. If I turn it back, without making the video driver also rotate, the shadow disappears. So I'm coming to the conclusion that these monitors are somehow built with the idea that humans have two eyes and they'll look at it from a certain direction. Am I right?

Man, GTA is definitely better on the PC. But it's still quite playable on PS2. Except the cheap controller's buttons aren't as responsive as I'd expected. And the left analog stick seems too responsive, or maybe I should use the right stick for steering (on-foot)?

Yes, on the user side all a film needs to do in the end is put pixels to a screen and sound to speakers. A computer game can be millions of times more complicated than that at run-time. So I think they can't be compared like that.

Yeah, that's what I did. I bought a UPXUS Double Shock controller for about 20 euros. It has a couple of extra buttons which I have no idea what they do, but otherwise it seems to work fine. Only I can't play yet -- we only have one TV. Couldn't find the Thrustmaster one that's both for PC and PS2. Bc9b, why did you laugh at Thrustmaster? Does it suck?

We don't really have a chain like Wal-mart, but there's "Säästumarket" (direct transl. ~ savingsmarket) that just keeps popping up new stores everywhere. They have very low prices for most products, but that's only because they sell mostly crap and being a relatively small store don't have much of a selection.

But I have this big heavy antique (somewhat) desk and I like it.

I'd prefer a TFT if I could afford one right now. I have very little room and this thing is taking up half my desk. Ok, less but still nothing besides the keyboard fits in front of it and I can't have a keyboard drawer etc.

I thought this was somewhat relevant and I like digging up old threads, so... The free lunch is over. This talks about how writing software is going to get more difficult because processor manufacturers can't simply keep rising the clock speed, transistors and cache size at the same rate, but must make software work faster with different methods (hyperthreading etc.). But this doesn't mean Moore's Law is over yet:

I can totally refrain from commenting on this...

I didn't fall off, but then decided to jump.

Oh, Cow & Chicken and Two Stupid dogs were also great.

I haven't had cable for 5 years or so. Then I had Cartoon Network. Dexter and Powerpuff were cool (the latter less), I hated most of the others. Oh, and they show that horrible Spongebob Squarepants in the mornings (or used to). The name sounds lots of worse in Estonian. Käsna-Kalle Kantpüks. It makes me want to puke.

Thumbs... thumbs. Ashes Are not thumbs They float Somewhere Miniature Porcelain Poodles Death No, life It's there Look, mom! Nonono Not that Is it morning there? Bygones.

Is "Garry's Mod" the one you were talking about? http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92646 This seems great, but I haven't messed with it much yet.