Shadow Assassin

Not too bad, though I wish I had a better connection. It's stable, though, which is what's important. To LA, pretty good, sub-200ms ping to the US from Australia is considered very good. To New York... Seems that I lose about 50ms from travelling from LA to NY (which is the way the cable goes). [edit] needed to fix first image link

No, they wouldn't be. Lesbians (and same goes for gays, and any sexuality you care to name, for that matter) have a ridiculous spectrum of how they dress, how they act, etc, starting from the "lipstick lesbians" - the feminine ones, going all the way to the opposite end - the masculine ones, the ones who often cross-dress as men (not limited to drag kings, mind you)... you gotta think outside the square a little bit when it comes to quantifying people. Duke (to my knowledge, unless he's hiding something from us all ) doesn't cross-dress... That's the funny thing about sexuality, it's like say, the equivalent to your favourite pair of shoes, even though there are other pairs out there that look the same as yours, they're not quite the same...say, the sole at the heels is thinner than on another person's pair because you put more weight on them when you walk, etc. I feel like we've had this general sort of conversation (metaphor about shoes included) a while back, though... For some reason I read that as "bromosexuality". Guess I'm tired tonight. EDIT: Just saw the link in Duke's post... The picture they chose does not help matters either.

I'm sure there's someone out there with an almost-masochistic attention to detail. It is an excellent idea and would make the STEX search a bit more user-friendly, and would definitely make it seem less intimidating to the average newcomer.

It looks like that FSH material ID ordering has somehow screwed up; the only way to fix this is to re-assign material IDs using ilives' reader manually.

Or a hand that you would get in some form of card game.

Aww, that brings a tear to my eye. No, really, it did. Anyway. I know I said earlier that I came out to my parents (effectively) some time last year... but for real (rather than just alluding to it), I did it last weekend. She was very supportive. And her initial reaction was something rather interesting: *whack to back of head* "Why didn't you tell me earlier?!". That's one less thing I have to worry about.

Generally it helps to provide more detail about why it isn't realistic. For instance... Where are the trains, for instance? Why not use northcountydude's railyard lots, for example? It'd provide a lot more detail and it would make the railyard look a lot more alive. As for the Maxis highway glitch... yes I prefer RHW, but in this case I'm not going to bother pushing RHW. However, you need to reinstall your Maxis highway mod to fix the glitched curves. Make sure these files load after the NAM. Hopefully this helps a little with constructive criticism.

The whole _____ of Shannara thing that Terry Brooks does is probably what makes it sound so familiar.

They maybe don't have the clout there that the CRTC has here. However, it is a non-issue in Canada because our 4G is the same as the U.S. After all, these gadgets take up some of the public bandwidth, and the regulator and the consumer watchdog should jump on them. The ACCC are often seen as weak, but it's usually because the law often ties their hands together in many cases, which is the flip side of having the strictest consumer protection laws in the world... there really are very few loopholes and most companies tend to follow them. It's just actually chasing them down and giving them an appropriate penalty that's the problem. I mean, all Apple will get is a slap on the wrist. On the 4G note...in most cities in the US, 4G is really just HSDPA+, which is referred to as 3.5G elsewhere. The definition of what makes 4G has been degraded so much in continental America by marketing just so they can get a foot up on the competition. There is actually very limited true 4G coverage. Though... Both Australia's networks and the US's networks are vastly different in terms of how they serve the populace. In the US: 3G+ coverage is limited (generally) to cities and large towns, but in Australia, 3G+ is far more widespread... HSDPA+ (or NextG for the 850MHz network owned by Telstra) covers about 97% of the population. I think that's due to different attitudes and whatnot... also, the fact that the general make-up of the telco landscape in the US can often result in a distressing lack of choice for consumers (depending on where they live), whereas in Australia, there are three telco network operators that service the entire country (with the possible exception of Vodafone because their network just plain sucks). I guess I haven't really explained my point, so here it is: while Australian telecommunications has far more widespread coverage... on the flip side, because the US telcos cherry-pick so heavily, the average speeds across their networks are much higher. And I have absolutely no idea why it's relevant to this

Duke... erm... there's absolutely no surprise that Scandinavia leads the pack (for me anyway)... after all... they're the Vikings. They like singing about blood, violence and guts. Also, I find screaming (in the growly sense, ie. metal) to be quite therapeutic and relaxing.

My avatar is actually from the Ctrl+Alt+Del Sillies comics. I liked the look of the Death that the author drew so I set it as my avatar. Since then, I've changed it many times, based on a theme, comments, chat memes or even just sheer boredom. To date... all these avatars have appeared on ST at some point, not necessarily in the order I've put them in: And of course, my custom title (Funny Bones) came from an old, old avatar, way before ST6 (more than six years ago, actually): So yeah. That's about it really.

Apple and the ACCC still won't see eye-to-eye The sooner this little catfight is over, the happier everyone will be. The ACCC really need to bring out the claws, it's something they don't do nearly often enough.

Speaking of Indonesia, Aceh province experienced an 8.6 quake last night and a 8.2 aftershock this morning. No tsunami, mercifully, apparently the nature of the quake was completely different (horizontal shifting rather than vertical like the '06 Boxing Day quake). Australia's had a lot of quake activity too in recent times, which is VERY unusual, and the bulk of them happened in far north South Australia, which is even more unusual... A 5.7 happened this morning, and the fault that caused it actually got exposed by scientists who decided to dig around on the surface where it occurred.

Sign itself is quite nice, but you're using the old RHW texture. It needs updating.

New dual-screen layout means I get a new desktop.

Actually, no, it wasn't a QA issue. It was more the fact that Apple went: "oh, shame. Australia doesn't use 700MHz for 4G. Oh well, we won't bother fixing it, and we won't even bother fixing the packaging either!" And even if we did use 700MHz, it would be technically different to the US standard, so it wouldn't work either anyway. Thing about Australia's telco networks is that we tend to follow the European standards, which is why it tends to be a better choice to grey-import devices from Europe than it is from the US. Sure, the US devices would still work, but they wouldn't work as well on Australian networks. The only exception to this rule is Telstra, as they use 850MHz for their NextG network. Oh, and the ACCC had a reasonable demand at first: all Apple needed to do was put a sticker on the packaging saying "the iPad's 4G feature is not currently supported in Australia and New Zealand". But no, they didn't want to ruin their lovely packaging.

And this sort of thing is why the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

It probably is, knowing him. Anyway, congratulations, Zel - will your dolls be guests at the wedding?

I don't see a problem with the black bar, it's not as bad as Facebook's implementation - and most of the time it tends not to be noticed anyway.

Earth Hour is one of those things that give people a nice warm feeling in their hearts because they think they're actually doing something, but they're not making a difference. I mean, most power plants can't even adjust the amount of power they put out anyway so all that extra electricity kind of goes to waste.

PCGamer explains a little about the Glassbox engine, which was demonstrated at the GDC conference earlier today (videos are linked to here). It seems that Maxis are taking a slightly different approach than previous iterations of SimCity - looking at the details in order to construct the big picture.