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Heh, my computer has none of that stuff. I guess thats partly because i didnt have to live thru all the crazy weather you get over there...

Aren't there blizzards where you live? We get three inches of snow a year on average, I'm sure Darth gets next to none.

The only way they can prove the dB output is to set up special sensory devices that can measure each car that passes.

Actually it's being left up entirely to a cop's descetion (which I say bravo too!) and requires no measuring equipment.  If he can hear your stereo from more than 25 feet away, you lose.

The old "your word against the cop" argument is just a scare tactic too. If someone acctually gets a ticket for this all you have to do is go to the courthouse and dispute it. A majority of the time it will be dropped simply cause the cop won't want to spend time to fight it.

I'm trying to find what the "victim's" rights are after the ticket is issued ... I believe, from what I've heard on the news, that it's not something you can contest.  You simply have to pay it.  But I doubt that's the case (I sure hope it is though)

Speed tickets are left to a cop's discretion too, but that's not his point, the point is that if they can't prove something and provide measurable evidence then it's simply hearsay and most of the time if you go to court to contest it the ticket will be thrown out or at least reduced. Many, many municipalities have laws like this, including my hometown, and they are simply not enforcable.

I don't ever hope for a law that is entirely up to a cop's word against someone else's, if you've ever been pulled over by a cop having a bad day you'd know what I mean. Going 5 mph over the speed limit (like everyone else on the road) and have a look of youth about you that the cop doesn't take to? Get prepared for a bogus ticket on how loud your exhaust is (happened to an older brother) which you will need to go to court to contest and have revoked (in case someone wants to argue with this, he had paperwork proving it was legal).

I don't like listening to it either, but the law is unenforcable and may allow for harrassment.

A guy I work with told me a weird fact about vasectomys today. He said that he had one and the doctor told him that even though they cut the cord in two, tie off both ends, and put them in separate sections of wherever, they will grow several little tendrils to search for the other part of the tube and actually grow back together in order to re-instate the ability to procreate. He said that most of the time not enough sperm gets through the tiny tendrils to do anything but sometimes it does. Weird, right?

Blink 182 rules!  Anything by them would just have to be the best rock song.  Or Sum 41.

Silly Darth, it's clearly Avril Lavigne - Sk8er B0i

Ironically, Avril Lavigne and the lead singer of Sum 41 are getting married. It was just announced.

Beliefs and mysteries are not one and the same. You can believe that a mystery has a certain truth to it, but the mystery itself is something that can't yet be explained.

By "reliable" I believe he was referring to the sources which are quoted and the conclusions that are reached without any real evidence. The listing of sources is kind of vague and poor.

The C-word is generally considered to be the most offensive word in the English language...

Pfft, maybe for English people, in America we say that to our mothers over breakfast.

Reversible? I never knew that!? That's kind of...unfair.

If it's any consolation, it's kind of expensive to reverse it?

After that I intend on getting snipped.

It's not a snipping, it's a tying. That's why it's reversible, you won't lose your testicles or anything, they'll just cut off the sperm flow to the ejaculate. Hormone production and all other bodily functions remain the same, except no sperm makes it through.

The Catholic church, of which I'm sure you're all well aware, doesn't condone the use of contraceptives. Having been raised Catholic I'm vaguely familiar with the "natural" pregnancy avoidance methods which were narrarated to me by my uncle after two beers when I was 14. Man he was a lightweight. Anyway, basically there were four or five methods but the guy who was teaching the class on this subject had six children, so I suspect you do not want to go the "natural" or "porno" routes.

A vescectomy is reversible in the unexpected circumstance that he should change his mind, I'd talk to him about it. My uncle (the afforementioned) had his reversed.

Apparently the girl who won only lives 60 or so miles away from me (which is close in the plains of America) so people all over Oklahoma are ecstatic over the publicity being brought to this otherwise boring unknown state, without even needing another terrorist action!

I don't watch TV, and on the rare occasions when I break that rule I definately don't watch reality shows. I feel like they're a monumental waste of time. There's about 5 minutes of beef in any show and the rest is filled with slurry to keep you watching.

Besides, I like rock 'n roll..

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5

Absolutely hilarious.

Mac G5 computer running Xbox 360 kiosks.

Didn't work. Twice.

C# is not constrained to Windows either nowadays, since there are open-source .NET frameworks for linux such as Mono.

Interesting, anything for OSX?

Nevermind the bandwidth cost.

It seems most University's will be teaching you C first anyway.

Not true - in order to force object-oriented programming but not get too easy like Basic most use Java (including mine).

My instructors all shrugged off J# and C# as petty attempts to control programming standards and OS compatibility. Am I missing something?

Seriously though, are we going to make good use of this time and actually have an insightful discussion about game development? Rather than discuss the secret of Monkey Island?

BORING.

Anyone who wants to come to Oklahoma can meet me, though.

Just curious: can you use 4 views in Blender?

To use multiple views you split the main viewport by right clicking on the dividers on the top and right sides and choosing "Split." You can do this as many times as you want with any of the viewports.

Oh, man, thanks, I couldn't figure this out! I didn't see a menu item anywhere in Blender that would suggest that it is capable of having multiple views. I tried resizing the one view and other windows but didn't think of right-clicking the divider. Thanks once more, I'll give it another shot.

Just pop into elysiun.com forums/blender general any time you have a question, people are quick to respond.

Just curious: can you use 4 views in Blender?

To use multiple views you split the main viewport by right clicking on the dividers on the top and right sides and choosing "Split." You can do this as many times as you want with any of the viewports.

One thing I will say for Blender is that I've heard good things about the LSCM mapping capability.  Since Blender is free, that makes it a potetial reason to use it...simply for setting mapping coords.  I downloaded it but could not figure out how in the heck to use the LSCM tool...I messed around with it for a few hours and finally gave up.

Select faces (easiest using face select tool), press U, select LSCM. Full release log of the modern UV features is here and specifically LSCM here. It also has texture baking, which is relatively new.

1. Dynamics
a. can you do basic physical simulations, aka a bowling all knocking over pins?
b. does it have built in hair dynamics, or plugins that do a good job?
c. does it have built in cloth dynamics, or plugins that do a good job?
d. does it have a good particle system?
e. support soft bodies?

No to a, b, c. Yes to d,e. Softbodies are actually going to be fully released in the next version but have been around in Tohuppu Blender for a long time. The particle system will animate for fur, look through the release logs for something on that.

2. Characters & Rigging
a. can you build a full FK/IK rig thats practical to use?
b. how is skin weighting assigned?

Yes.. skin weighting is assigned to verteces either in groups or one by one.

3. Compatibility
a. can you import/export fbx?
b. can you export rib?
c. can you model with subdiv surfaces?

No a,b.. and to c, WTF, have you ever downloaded it?

4. Rendering
a. SSS?
b. efficient hair shader support?
c. radiosity?
d. global illumination?
e. support subdiv surfaces?
f. how well does it support displacement mapping?
g. can you batch render in the background?

New Python scripts for a but not implemented into BF Blender yet. Radiosity has been there ever since I've used it, which was years ago. GI is accomplished using a sphere with lamps particle emitted from its verteces according to its normals. With subdiv surfaces, again, wtf? Have you seen the galleries, or.. I just don't know why you would ask that. Displacement mapping sucks. No batch rendering since Blender is so light on memory, if I need to do more than one render at once and it's not an animation I just open two instances. No hair shader support, people have just started bitching about the lack of modern shaders lately.

5. Material editor
a. layer based or node based?
b. generate procedurals?
c. animated textures?

Yeah to all of those.. you really haven't made a qualified effort to use this program before, have you? I mean, subsurfaces and procedurals are so basic and necessary for any 3d program that I don't know how you would have missed them if you tryed to do anything significant. If you want to learn to use it, go here, but if you just want to continue badmouthing it for years like it's a piece of trash at least do it on the premise that you've never genuinely tryed to do anything with it. I hear people all of the time saying, "I couldn't make a cube, so I closed it." Well I really have to wonder if using any 3d program was ever that easy, it certainly wasn't any easier for me with other new programs like Lightwave and AutoCAD. Sometimes people need to just get off of their high horses and pick up the manual or a tutorial.

but blender has no ZVarily.. always keep that in mind!

I think you guys are just making up features to make Blender look bad. Does 3DS have a monkey primitive? Blender does. 

But since there's no ways to keep lower polycount and export 3D into something useful, such as... ...games!, this has no much use.

Wrong, in addition to making good displacement maps it also exports normal maps, for games. Because it is so easy and fast to manipulate a low-poly object into a hi-poly detailed object it's more preferable to use Zbrush for normal maps.