Shocker

Bought it today. Wasn't sure what to expect, but it plays amazingly well on my Touch (latest model). I don't mind the premium price, but for NZ$13.99 I would have expected a few more skirmish maps thrown into the base game, instead of reserving them for the paid DLC.

A similar system worked quite well in Company of Heroes/DOW2. I do like those games, but I'm not sure if it's a fit for C&C...there's something to be said for the simplicity of building up a force and then steamrolling the other player's base. On another note, I like the fact that "combat lethality is very low". I always thought that units died waaay too fast in C&C:TW.

YAY: * I'm keen to see how the storyline plays out. NAY: * Not sold on the new gameplay mechanics, but I'm willing to reserve judgment until some gameplay vids come out. * Really not happy that I'll have to be online to play.

If you want to make the most of your memory, you'll need to buy a 64-bit version of Vista.

Australia probably does have an obesity epidemic, but denying surgery and offering gym discounts on the basis of BMI is one of the stupidest suggestions I've ever heard. BMI is essentially useless for anyone remotely athletic or muscular. Hell, it's no use for the "average" person either--it completely ignores frame size, muscularity, bone density etc. Body composition is far more important. And yeah, a BMI of 4 is impossible. A 5 foot 8 person would have to weigh around 12kg.

I misunderstood the purpose of the trip. All good :-)

It was a freebie from my Dad -- he won it at a prize draw in a Microsoft conference and had no use for it I actually prefer Business to all the other Vista editions. It's the closest to XP Professional, and I don't need any of the "personal" stuff in Home Premium or Ultimate.

Reading a patch changelog for any EALA RTS never fails to bring a smile to my face. X unit damage increased by 90% X structure build time reduced by 80% X unit damage versus Y unit cut by 60% Subtle tweaking it ain't But seriously, I'm not sure if such a massive variety of balance changes was entirely necessary...guess I'll find out soon enough.

That is indeed an awesome name. Welcome from the resident lurker

Aerelon - Gaming PC CPU: Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.67GHZ Memory: 4GB DDR2-800 GFX: Geforce 9600GT HDD: 2 x 400GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 OS: Vista Business (boo!) Caprica - Macbook (White) CPU: Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.4GHZ Memory: 4GB DDR2-667 GFX: Intel GMA X3100 (lol!) HDD: 160GB OS: Mac OS X Leopard (yay!)

FF3 runs amazingly well on my Macbook, it's even faster than Safari. FF3 also supports Mozilla Weave for synchronizing bookmarks, passwords and browsing histories between computers...it works a treat, but the service is still in beta so there are occasional outages. I've found it to be very handy.

Sonic: Congrats on scoring the 9600GT, that's a great gift I'm looking forward to your write-up...especially your opinions regarding the naval combat/bases.

Everything sounds great so far. I'm especially happy to hear that the game will be slower than TW. Now all I want is an increase in the maximum zoom distance...

I preordered the collector's edition a few weeks ago . Definitely an exceptional game from a very talented studio.

Company of Heroes (PC) [*] Star Trek: Legacy (PC) [*] FEAR: Extraction Point (PC) [*] Flight Simulator X (PC) [*] Defcon (PC) [*] W40K: Dark Crusade (PC) [*] Paraworld (PC) [*] Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC) Should make for some enjoyable months after my November exams.

* 24 * Black Books * The IT Crowd * Prison Break * Supernatural * Doctor Who

Blue Oyster Cult - Agents of Fortune

It's hilarious how some posters in this thread blame "liberals" for lax enforcement of US immigration law. Of course, you won't hear them mention the fact that between 1999 and 2003, INS raids on work-sites were scaled back by 95 percent. Or that 182 companies were prosecuted in 1999 for employing illegals, and only 4 in 2003. You won't hear them say that 417 companies had fines levied against them for immigration offences in 1999, and only 3 in 2003. :roll:

That's not very fair. You're maligning all Canadians because of the opinions of one stupid boy and his family. Think of it this way: Is it fair to think of all American soldiers as civilian murdering, gang-raping scumbags because of William Calley and his platoon's actions at My Lai?

That used to be the case with the old Athlon/Athlon XP range -- they had exposed CPU cores and ran hotter than equivalent chips from Intel. Since the Athlon 64 & Opteron however, the situation has actually reversed. Also, all AMD processors have had integrated heatspeaders for a few years now, so you can't really say that they're fragile anymore. If you want to read a good article on the topic, check out SPCR's April 2006 Desktop CPU Power Survey edit: Needless to say, it looks like Intel will take back the performance/efficiency crown when the Core 2 Duo's come out.

Remember that stealth technology isn't infallible, and it certainly doesn't make a plane invisible -- if you can see it with your eyes, you can shoot at it. During the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs took out an F-117 with a pretty archaic surface-to-air missile system. I don't know if the F-22 suffers the same problems as the B2 and the F-117, in that rain dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the radar countermeasures, but it would be a mistake to think of stealth technology as some of kind of Star Trek cloaking device.

You take what you get given

EP1 is the usual class act from Valve . The visuals are just stunning, and the new animations that they've given Alyx are pretty impressive. I can't wait for EP2 (make you check out the EP2 trailer, it'll be in your Steam folder.)

Crazy! I JUST got all three of those! Oblivion is phenomenal, though I haven't had any time to really get into it, and since the move my gaming rig has been down and I haven't been able to try Episode 1 or the new Ghost Recon How are they? I own all three as well. GRAW is...well, I've never had such a love/hate relationship with a game before. On the one hand, the presentation is beautiful (although the game engine seem poorly optimised), and the core gameplay is solid. On the other hand, the AI is as thick as two bricks. If you tell your squadmates to take cover at a suitable location, for example, more often than not they'll mill around like headless chickens just waiting to be picked off by the enemy. It's a real challenge to keep them alive -- you'll need to constantly micromanage them via the satellite map. It's a good game, but I wish that I'd waited for it to drop in price first :/

If you're talking in terms of military strength, the US military is in a class of its own when it comes to operational resources, technological prowess and force-projection capabilities. Put simply, I don't think the PLA poses, or will pose in the foreseeable future, much of a threat to the USA's military dominance. If you're talking in economic terms however, then that's a different issue . Even then, I'm inclined to say that predictions that China's economy will overtake the USA's by 2050 are hopelessly optimistic (optimistic from China's point of view, that is.)