OrbWeaver

There is a GIMP DDS plugin at: http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/ It should open them fine, but I have had problems attempting to save them with this plugin.

Will the penis sizes have an effect on gameplay? For example, a generously-endowed Englishman (such as myself) should be able to wreak havoc on opposing forces by ripping of his cybersuit and lashing the aggressors around the head with his voluminous manhood. Obviously this option should not be available for the diminutive Scot.

That's not bad, given that the 6600 Series has only a 128-bit memory interface against the 6800's 256-bit. That said, "default" version of graphics cards are generally pretty lame, most people go for something with letters after it.

Is it intelligent, or just ridiculous feminist twaddle? I think if females didn't have orgasms they would be even more unwilling to engage in sexual activity than they already are, with obvious consequences for the survival of the species.

Yeah, sure it is.

The big question in human evolution is what drove the development of our big brains and high-functioning consciousness, when it is apparent from looking at the animal kingdom that such traits are certainly not necessary for survival.

I agree that it is better to focus on the level surroundings than the detail in the monsters. Perhaps not in Thief where you spend a lot of time looking at the AI, but in fast-paced shooter games like Quake the detail on the enemies is lost when they are charging at you in a darkened room.

They are on special offer from Ebuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...duct_uid=105306 Pretty good deal considering that is less expensive than the average X800 XL which was what I was originally intending to get. I only use 2x antialiasing and 4x AF, but now I can play in 1280x1024 at full framerate which I couldn't before with my 9800XT.

No shit - my nice new X850 XT has a dedicated vent port for the fan (standard 2-slot job) and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it starts up. Fortunately the fan never seems to go above 13 percent, even when playing games, so the noise isn't too much of a problem.

The only reason quantum effects are even mentioned is because some people are absolutely desperate to believe that there is something "beyond scientific explanation" about their conscious mind, whether or not they have religious beliefs. The funny thing is that I myself have never felt this way - it is totally natural to me to consider my own brain merely as a container for numerous competing and interacting "thoughts", which occasionally bubble to the surface and result in an action. In fact I don't see why the whole concept of "me" can't be just another thought pattern that happens to crop up more often than others (and have quite a lot of influence on the other developing patterns).

It's not so much a barrier as part of the laws of probability. The chance of massive amounts of quantum effects simultaneously occurring in such a way as to have a specific effect on a decision made by the brain is similar to the chance of cosmic rays introducing an effect on your PC's motherboard that turns your game of Doom into Quake.

Basically that's what I do anyway - if there is something we need that I think might be of interest to GtkRadiant in general, I suggest it to Spog. This not only benefits the community as a whole but also makes my life easier since he knows the code well and can implement things in a fraction of the time.

I've been using DarkRadiant, as it fits in with GtkRadiant and D3Radiant. Also spaces in pathnames are to be avoided so it makes sense to have the actual name space-free as well.

That's interesting, I've never seen anything like that. Can you post the map somewhere?

The major problem was that the theory made absolutely no attempt to explain HOW these mysterious quantum effects could affect consciousness. It was just replacing one mystery (free will) with another (quantum effects), without postulating any scientific link between the two. The problem is that there is not a shred of scientific evidence that points to the existence of genuine free will, in most cases it appears that the brain is just a complex machine that processes inputs and generates outputs. Although very little is known about the detailed mechanisms involved, there is little to suggest a lack of determinism other than "OMG OF C0URS3 I CAN CONTRL MY 0WN BRA!N!!!LOL". I find Dennett's theories to very well-thought out and reasonable. He doesn't make any assumptions based on the way things seem to be (like there is someone in control at the top of the brain with ultimate authority over everything else). The problem with relying on quantum effects is that they are absolutely tiny when compared to the (very deterministic) behaviour of neurons - they are no more likely to have an effect at the brain level than individual molecules in a gas could override the pressure equations.

Wasn't Penrose the puveyor of some ridiculous theory about quantum affects in certain cellular structures ("nanotubules" IIRC) being responsible for "free will"? Basically the theory was "free will is a bit weird and mysterious, and so is quantum theory, therefore perhaps they are related, who knows?".

I remember being impressed by the graphics on one of the original Tomb Raiders, unfortunately though I absolutely LOATHE 3rd person games (not because of any ideological elitism, I just can't stand not seeing what the character sees and all that lurching camera action gives me motion sickness).

Which textures inspector are you referring to? The black one with square images in doesn't display anything until the texture definitions are applied from the media browser.

oDDity's point does hold in a large proportion of cases though (especially at university, which I am personally very glad to be rid of).

I would quite like to "Blender-ise" the rotation mechanism, so that rotation could be performed around an object's centre, the centre of a group of objects or an arbitrary point specified by the user. Imagine being able to arrange pillars in a circle by duplicating one and rotating around the centre of the room.

Is the EOS 350D the one with about 16.7 megapixels? I made do with a simple point and shoot for my last holiday (Minolta Z3), but the experience is the same regarding taking loads and loads of shots and then deleting the bad ones.

The thing that amuses me about that film is that even with all the complex arm-controlled technology, they still have to copy stuff onto a glass plate and carry it across the room in order for one guy to pass data to another. Apparently in the rush to invent motion capture systems they have forgotten how Ethernets work.

Yes, a func_static is removed from the BSP tree and treated like an instantiated model. It has the advantage of not carving surfaces, which reduces polycount (but may increase lightcount), but the small disadvantage of adding another entity to the list. I have also had problems with texture alignment on func_statics. I don't think converting stuff to func_statics will have much of an effect on framerates, but if you are seeing sparklies or the triangle arrangement with r_showTris looks excessive it may be worth a try. Patches do cut the BSP by the way, you might expect them not to but they do.

Edge editing (with the E key) is fine, as this keeps pairs of vertices aligned. Using the V key with brushes (not patches) MAY cause problems if done wildly. It is often a good idea to change small pieces of complex brushwork into func_statics to keep the polycount down. Don't worry though, although there may be some situations where holes occur, this is not T3Ed and you do not need to break into a 3D app to add every detail item.

Please do. As I said in my follow-up to the earlier comment, everthing should always be aligned to the grid. Otherwise you get floating point errors which result in sparklies (which I guess could be seen as very small BSP holes). No problem. I've never seen one in ordinary mapping, although as I mentioned I did get something like that when using the vertex editing tool to make a brush into a weird shape. Maybe yours is a similar situation.