Grand_Admiral_Thrawn

Honestly, the whole thing's a farce. Yes they both needed to be killed, but Saddam's execution was a pathetic media move, and could have been performed in a far more professional manner. And this other fellow being decapitated? How badly do you have to botch a hanging to take the guy's head off? Pathetic...

Why do we have to vote for new ones? The existing ones are no less impressive (though some of them haven't existed for thousands of years). Why don't we just add to the list? Who ever said there could only be seven?

There are some Linux based Windows emulators that are capable of simulating DirectX, but they tend to be glitchy. Linux tends to focus on OpenGL which, sadly, is on it's way out. Most Linux distros aren't intended for gaming, so don't expect an improvement in this any time soon. In other words... it might be impossible.

My name just came to me one night in a dream. I thought it was really original and decided to develop a character around it... no? No one is buying it? Ok I stole it.

It's OK Mad, it's hardly noticeable. That seems to be a growing past time here at SWR. Personally the last thing that comes to mind for me when I'm overly inebriated is getting onto a computer and typing my drunken thoughts to the world... I prefer to sing them

I was born in the 80's, so I lived through half of them... I just didn't know that anthrax was so popular.

Lots of friends, lots of alcohol and some sort of music (sadly, due to some of my friends, country is often played). Then again, we generally don't party at someone's home. We start there for "pre-drinking" then head out to our favorite bar... then we usually end up dancing like mad, or singing karaoke.

You get "hicks" everywhere. I believe that they're generally called lower-class, and this only refers to their financial status. We have them here as well. Not to far away from me is a little place called Kinmount...yes, let that name soak in and ponder the images associated with it. We have cowboys here too, though no the confederate sort. They tend to live in Calgary, but being one isn't a bad thing. I've heard that there are some people in California that aren't the nicest people in the world, but it's not a good idea to generalize. Flamers... if you're talking about who I think you are, I've got some friends who are classified as this and we clearly have different opinions on the matter. Movie stars.. well some of them do odd things, but again you can't generalize. Also, we have them here, and most other countries have them. Gangsters/wackos are also prevalent everywhere. Again, they're all over the world, just like the racists and bigots. They just call themselves something different (martyrs, crusaders etc.). Well there are some places in Africa I'm sure you've heard of. They're having all these cute little conflicts. It's just adorable how they fight like us big countries do. But seriously, to complain about living in America, or any other country that has, oh I don't know, an economy, peace, freedom, McDonald's, is just absurd. Sure there are idiots, but there are just as many great people.

Just a quick question while we're on the topic. When you said that ANH was almost banned due to the similarities of the Imperial uniforms to "Nazi uniforms", were you talking the SS or the Wermarch? Or, perhaps a better question, with regards to a sensitive government, does the German government differentiate between the two? I know that generally when WWII history is taught here our teachers emphasize that "Not all Nazis were German", and tend to imply that the Wermarch represented Germany and the SS was the Nazis. (always wondered this, but I really don't know how touchy the subject is).

Wow, I just loaded the page in IE for the first time... I didn't even know those dividers were there! I think that IE7 is a great improvement over its predecessors. The only reason I use Firefox is for security.

If you type "Make Firefox Faster" into Google you'll find an article on some simple modifications you can make with the Firefox config to make it run faster on broadband. Here's it is:

I have yet to find someone who has gotten a death song that fits the scene. Your's, however, probably the funniest.

I saw this in the notes of one of my friends on Facebook and thought it was an interesting idea. Basically this is how it works: 1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) 2. Put it on shuffle 3. Press play 4. For every question, type the song that's playing 5. When you go to a new question, press the next button 6. DON'T LIE! That's not cool! Grand Admiral Thrawn's Soudtrack: Opening Credits: Enterlude - The Killers Waking Up: Salvation Army Love - James McKenty and the Spades First Day of School: The Scientist - Coldplay Falling in Love: Look What You've Done - Jet Fight Song: Heart in a Cage - The Strokes Breaking Up: Joints and Cigarettes - James McKenty and the Spades Prom: Where the White Boys Dance - The Killers Life: On Top - The Killers Mental Breakdown: Move Along - All American Rejects Driving: Hips Don't Lie (FIFA Remix) - Shakira Flashback: Fine Story - Nizlopi Getting Back Together: An Honest Mistake - The Bravery Wedding: Sing Around it - Nizlopi Birth of Child: Sex Bomb - Tom Jones (oh my...) Final Battle: Mashup: Greenday vs Oasis Death Scene: Gold Digger - Kanye West Funeral: Come Fly With Me - Michael Buble End Credits: The Names Bond... James Bond - David Arnold I was lucky that the countless soundtracks I own only came up once (at the end there). I was afraid I'd have a far stranger soundtrack... though Sex Bomb for the birth of my child... appropriate, yet not.

Indeed it was. The actual number was closer to $100 million.

Fortunately my dad just replaced his old big screen with an LCD big screen... sadly I now have to find time to pay him a visit to take advantage of it.

I'm somewhat relieved that Dion won. Ignatieff... well, there was something about him. He just didn't seem trustworthy to me. I always had the impression that he wasn't being honest (or as honest as politicians are) or that he wasn't genuine. He also looked creepy . I have yet to find a Prime Minister from Quebec (surprisingly) that hasn't been good at what he was elected to do. Sure there was the sponsorship scandal, but I mean.. come one, it was only $30 million! That's a lot to one man, but to the Government?? (yes, it's STILL wrong... but worse thing have been done).

My friends have been doing Festivus for some time now, though I have never participated. I'm somewhat of a holiday Scrooge.

One thing I learned while I was in Highschool was that an appalling number of my fellow students had no idea what the basic principles were that our nation is founded upon. Back to Quebec being independent, I think the biggest qualm most people I have talked to have with the idea of Quebec becoming its own country (not what has happened, but what the referendum was about) is that they don't want to be part of Canada, but they want to share the Canadian economy. So basically, they don't want to be Canadian, but they don't want to do all the work it would take to support themselves financially...

The next Gran Tourismo is the HD version titled (quite orignially) Gran Tourismo HD. If you're looking to save a little money, you can always get the PS3 that has the 20Gb HDD and no WiFi. I believe it retails for around $499.

Very cool Mad, though I must admit I'd be waiting for a nice holo image of the Death Star II to pop from it and Ackbar to start giving me a briefing.

I think I can now officially put my two cents in on this situation. I now own all three of the aforementioned consoles. The Wii is fun, but don't go looking for excellent, or even good, graphics. It's banking heavily on it's control system to lure people in. I'm not 100% sure this will work, but we'll see. The PS3, at the moment, is equal to the XBox 360. Both have comparable graphics, load times, controls etc. The down side to the PS3 is that it currently doesn't have the number of titles available that the 360 does. It also lacks a rumble feature, which isn't really a big deal, and will be less so once developers start using the tilt controls. The one thing I am quite happy about with my PS3 is that I don't have to pay to play games online (It gets a little tiring paying $39.99 every two months for XBox LIVE), and I can also brows the internet on my TV. I know, get a laptop, but sometimes it's the little things that count. So really, if you add it all up, I'll end up having paid more for my 360 than I have for the PS3 (In about two months). I will warn folks not to trust what you can read online right now. Most of the comparisons of the 360 to the PS3 are being unfair to to Sony simply because they're the new biggie. You simply can't compare what three cores can do versus seven (I won't even get into the other specs). So basically, I'm quite happy with all three, they each give something new to consoles and I look forward to seeing what developers can do with each now that there is some competition.

Just remember that while Quebec speaks French... it's not French French. The people of France speak a more refined version of the language, or perhaps more accurately, the people of Quebec speak a bastardized version of the language. There really isn't any correlation between Quebec and France except that the former was once a colony of the latter.

Oh, I know we did a little conquering, but it wasn't to the extent that the Americans. In the end we chose a slightly more "civil" resolution. They tried that. We won .

I'm not sure how much news from Canada filters onto the international scene, but something sort of snuck up on me yesterday and I wanted to get everyone's opinion . I'm not making this a pole since there could be many positions on the matter. Yesterday Parliament passed a bill that would recognize the province of Quebec as a state within Canada. So basically, French Canada is held on par with the Native part of Canada. This has been a contentious issue in Canada for many years, and was even the topic of a referendum which could have resulted in Quebec becoming an independent country. Now, what bothers me about this is as follows: First, the reason Quebec is part of Canada is because the British conquered it. They took it from the French, and it was theirs. I liken this to the differences between Natives in America and Canada. In Canada we made treaties with them, made peace, and we have to live by those rules. In America the Natives were conquered with brute force. I don't agree with it, but there you have it. I think that if you're conquered, you suck it up and deal with the fact that you're now part of a bigger country (in cases like this. Let's not get into WWII Germany and whatnot). Secondly, even the Government isn't clear on how this effects things. In one instance, when asked if even the English speaking residents of Quebec would be considered "Quebecois" they said no. When questioned again later if English speaking residence of Quebec would not be permitted to be "Quebecois", they said that that's not what they had said... So, I suppose I'm wondering how other's feel about this situation, and how they would feel if something similar happened in their nation (I suppose anyone in the UK will have an opinion on this from the perspective of Ireland).

I would have to agree that Picard is the better of the two captains. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up with TNG... or the fact that I simply can't stand TOS.