Komag

$2000 for helmet, leathers, boots, and gloves?! Mine will be more like $300 to $500 altogether. Everything else on your list as well, I will do just fine (not stupid or risky) spending 1/2 what you say or less. Nothing personal, if you want to spend a lot on the best stuff that's fine, but I don't think that type of spending is required fare. An $80-$120 helmet protects as well as a $400 helmet, it just doesn't have the nice designer label or the advance air flow ventelation. My $35 boots will hold up well enough. Etc. Maybe everything just costs 2x-5x more in Australia!

Older bikes are like that, over 10 years old, but if it's just a few years old there is no real maintenance (other than oil change, etc). As for cost, only larger bikes cost a lot. I can get a nice little Honda 250 brand new for $3500, or used a couple years for $2500. On the other hand, I wouldn't spend less than $8k - $10k on a car, and the motorcycle gets about 3-5 times the gas mileage too, so bikes are a whole lot cheaper.

Gildoran - I don't know how many have training in the US, but I see your point. If 10% of everyone has training, and 10% of crashes were riders with training, then it doesn't show any affect of training! So you're right, without that info, the training affect on safety can't be calculated into the equation. But from what I learned in the class and how well it worked, I'm confident that I will be safer because of my training, so I guess that's the most important part to me personally. I'm careful and defensive, but I suppose some with training might just get cockier and end up taking on MORE risk than they might have otherwise. --------------- Now I just have to wait a week or two for my updated drivers license to arrive in the mail, woohoo! I've been looking to get a small bike, probably a 250cc (maybe up to 500 or 750, but that would be tops). Since I live in a densely populated area nothing is very far away and I almost never use highways anyway, so a small motorcycle would be great (and easy to find parking for!). I'll probably spend between $1500 and $2500 for a used bike, hopefully less than 5 or 6 years old and under 5 or 6k miles on it.

I'm in favor of gun ownership and carry rights with few restrictions, but I don't want to argue about it or type long essays to expain why. I just thought it was worth mentioning, to show that not everyone online is against guns. But I can respect and mostly understand the other side.

Everyone knows that motorcycle riding is very dangerous, but once you study some real statistics you learn that it's not nearly as dangerous as everyone thinks. For instance, in 2004 (or 05, can't remember), almost 50% of all motorcycle fatalities were impaired with alcohol (something like 30% legally intoxicated). More significant, however, is the fact that over the past many years, over 90% of all motorcycle accidents (fatal and non-fatal) were riders with no formal training! I can really believe it, because in the class (which finished just a few hours ago) I learned and practiced a lot of very useful techniques that I just had no idea about before. Other statistics are important as well, such as how many fatalities caused by lack of helmet, riding without a license, speeding over 20 mph over the limit, etc. So if you are going to be a good rider, have training, be licenced, don't speed (much), wear a helmet, don't drink, etc, then your danger level can drops over 95%! It's still more dangerous than auto driving, but not a whole lot at that point.

I've watched a couple events on TV, sort of reminds me of a western cowboy rodeo with trucks instead of horses/bulls.

Yeah, trying to manage that would take very advanced scripting and still could never be fully accurate I think

So yesterday and today I've been taking this all-weekend motorcycle class (today was from 6:45am to 6pm!) and I really am amazed at how much I didn't know before! I had a permit a few years ago and had my own bike for around a year, but I've learned more in one day than I did all that year! So how many of you ride? Did you know about countersteering? I had NO IDEA! Here's a pic of what I mean: You can see his wheel is not turned the direction he's turning, but is even slightly the other way! This isn't the normal thing that happens, but at super high speeds it can. The effect can also sometimes look quite exaggerated if the guy is actually sliding the rear around some. Normally the wheel will be turned slightly the turn direction, but it's not because you turned it that way. In fact, you push out the handlebar in the opposite way you think you should to turn, and this makes the lean tighter, making the turn tighter! It really works, I was doing it today and it sharpened up my turns like nothing else! Crazy!

You can also open up that mission in Dromed and see how he did it there

I just want to second the request for the advanced texture controls, they would really help the precise texturing and save a lot of time and frustration

I haven't read all this thread, but I just wanted to say that I'm Christian and I believe faith and science can co-exist just fine

All I know is there are a LOT of barking spiders in my apartment

I also thought that line meant someone was leaving the team right now! I think "At this point" would be more clear if it was "At that point" instead. Not a big deal though, at all. What if that first version was a "beta version 0.90" so that the call to the community to help with textures/models/etc can be a "Help make the full 1.0 version, be a part of history!" type thing? Just a brainstorm

But the point is that you need both P AND ~P (not an OR), hence the seeming paradox

If you can't turn off that retarded glowing I won't play it. Otherwise it looks great!

The Mithycal cure?

I guess I should have hired a professional to put in those custom shelves! Rob scores a 6.7 in the regional zombie diving contest

lots of Word!

I learned somewhere that humans have six basic needs that break down into somewhat paradoxical pairs, one of which is the need to be accepted socially as part of a larger group paired with the need to be different and individualistic. If that's true, then conforming for the sake of conforming may be legitimate, at least temporarily, until you are ready to be more individualistic. For me (and probably most of us) there are some things that I am similar to many other people and I like it that way (such as liking pizza or liking Thief!), and then there are things that I always want to be different from everyone to make myself feel cool or whatever, such as my "sock code" I use to keep track of my pairs of socks in my dresser. (Then again there may be 1000 other people using the same sock code and I just don't know it)

Forget about Stalker, then a long time from now when it comes out you'll be pleasantly surprised! At this point, I never even HEARD of Duke Nukem Forever

Well, the HDR in the REALITY engine is only about 1/5 what you get in other games (same with motion blur).

A big desk could be good for those crazy "gotta have you NOW!" moments

I'm sure you're not the only one who thought that's what the thread was about at first!

Looking great, it already has a good dank atmosphere

I get a little freaked out by spiders, but not by daddy long legs because they were so freakin common in my house growing up that I just got used to them. To me it's like they're one thing, and all other spiders are another thing.