Chat/Comment thread

Not so; its actually true that the rates of unemployment are higher among African-Americans than among American whites. It's certainly the case that if you're looking at a black man, you're looking at a man who is less likely to be employed and more likely to have a criminal record than if you're looking at a white man.But its no more true that you can look at the color of a man's skin and determine his employment history than you can look at a person and determine their BMI and their overall level of health. I'm aware. It's nevertheless true. I never told you that he was healthy. It's not my position that he's healthy. What I'm telling you is very simple and I wonder why you keep ignoring it: you can't tell someone's activity level and health just by looking at them. Some healthy, very active people are going to enjoy long, healthy lives and never experience any of the conditions you've referred to and they're going to do it all while being medically obese. Even morbidly obese.High blood cholesterol? High blood triglicerides? Those are a function of diet, not weight. Now, they may very well be a function of the diet that made you fat in the first place - although we're finding that diet doesn't have much of an effect on obesity, since obese people actually consume less calories than the non-obese - but a fat person who eats a diet of mostly vegetables and lean meats (and if you read that NYT story I linked, you'll find the story of a woman who can't lose any weight on an 800-calorie diet of vegetables and one grilled chicken breast a day) isn't going to have any higher risk of those conditions than a thin person on the same diet. And conversely, someone thin may have incredibly high blood cholesterol as a function of a bad diet and bad genetics and they may simply be active enough to keep the pounds off.Weight isn't a proxy for health. It's just not that simple. You can't look at someone and tell how healthy they are. Like this kid:Hey, maybe the doctors are wrong and this kid is perfectly fine. Like I say, you can't tell just by looking at someone. Still, though, when you hear statistics about the US (or the UK) and its prevalence of obesity and the "health crisis" that is the direct result, keep in mind that those statistics are based on classifying people like Cian Atwood as "obese."

Ah, well I bet that still helped you level faster this time around. Well done, sir! I did get to level 10 at my first sitting in the game - which was, like, 6 hours straight Do they have any healing? I suppose I could just look that up... I did want my crew skills to compliment each other, so that I was gathering stuff I could craft with, but yeah, now that my guildmates are getting up there, its really easy to have someone craft something for you. Oh, I'm on a different server.

The dude ran out of breath and broke a sweat from yelling at a webcam... that's not healthy.

Nope.
Commando has healing/dps - Vanguard has tanking/dps.

The Telegraph article is, I agree madness.But to be fair you said A quick browse of google scholar brings up this: http://www.sciencedirect.com/...rticle/pii/S0140673605676635What do you think that guys hip to waist ratio is and how do you think it correlates with that guys health? Could we tell from looking at him? What would you say? I'm aware it is an association but to say there is no evidence is a bit much.From my reading over our discussion I do now see that BMI is not useful in any but the broadest strokes for predicting health.

Yeah, now I remember my rational: Since they both wear the heavy armor, the defense increase from the Vanguard's defense abilities would be somewhat marginal, at least compared to the benefit of having the healing abilities of the Commando (assume you're not going strictly tanking).

What kind of PC specs does it require?My laptop can run Far Cry at low to moderate settings. Should I have a punt?

quote:

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What are the system requirements for the game?
Processor:

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AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better
Operating System:
Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later
RAM:

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Windows XP: 1.5GB RAM
Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB RAM
Note: PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2GB of RAM.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better. Examples include:

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ATI X1800 or better
nVidia 7800 or better
Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better
DVD-ROM drive — 8x speed or better (required for installation from physical editions only) Internet connection required to play.

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Its not too bad. The graphics aren't really ridiculous, like Battlefield 3, or anything. But they're difinately good, and spot on Star Wars looking (which is more important to me).If you can run it, you should give it a shot.

Thinking about playing someone who has the opportunity to kill goody two shoes Jedi is sounding better and better.

What makes you say that? What other MMO's that initially came out with monthly fees are now free to play? Eve is still pay to play, Guild Wars is still pay to play, WoW is very much pay to play. Perhaps you've some knowledge unbeknownst to me, but any strictly MMO that comes out as pay to play doesn't stand to go free to play.

As I recall Guild Wars was free.Guild Wars 1, that is.

Ah... so a Mary Sue Sith Those are KOS for me I made a dark side guy... the story was way crazier. For the good side, you can just get your orders from the commanders and do the obviously right thing (well not always so obvious, e.g. do you return the stolen med packs to the republic or let the lady who stole them for the injured orphans use them?-tangent here: The story lines are great in this game in that your decisions actually matter and affect it. After you find those stolen med packs back, you literally have two people you can turn that quest in to - the rebuplic guy or the orphan lady. And that changes what happens next in the story.Anyways, for the dark side, Guy A says lets go fuck over Guy B, Guy B says 'no, you should join me and we'll fuck him over'. Then Guy C says, you should join me and then we'll take out Guy A's boss and secure all the power! I'm all: I don't know what to do and I can't trust any of these guys. Its cool but a little to complicated to be a content tourist and just breeze through it. (not a bad thing unless that's your bag).

Dungeons and Dragons Online. Everquest 1 & 2. DC Universe Online. etc.

Champions Online (kinda fun), LotR Online, Age of Conan (pretty, but not as fun as I'd hoped), City of Heroes/Villains, Aeon (not sure if it happened yet, might be later this month)...Really, it's etting easier to list the ones that aren't F2P. Those would be WoW, Rift, and SWTOR. I'm sure there are a few others too.

CS already mentioned some but here's a few more: City of Heroes/City of Villians, Champions Online. For that matter World of Warcraft did actually go free-to-play, on a limited basis: the free-to-play part is the "vanilla" WoW, the 1-60 areas of the "original" game before the "Burning Legion" expansion."Freemium" is probably a better term for these games; there's a "core game" that is free to play, and then a whole host of premium content that you either buy piecemeal or pay a monthly subscription for. As I say, I think SWTOR will move to the same model; if even World of Warcraft has free to play content, there's just no long-term hope for a subscription-model MMO anymore. I think EVE Online is the only subscription holdout (but you can play it for free, sort of, by buying subscription cards with the in-game ISK currency.)