Sheaf Saint

I've not seen anything more about this, but it has been confirmed by Egosoft that the latest chapter in their X universe series will be released in 2013 (no actual date yet)....

What if we are not the first level though? Think about it... If we are living in a simulation, and we are close to discovering how to generate our own simulations, how many layers back does this go? We could be living in a simulation of a simulation of a simulation... ad infinitum. Neuroscientists have identified areas of the brain that fire a tiny fraction of a second before we make conscious decisions, which brings into question the whole idea of free will. Do you think I could successfully argue against a speeding ticket if I can demonstrate that my car doesn't actually exist as matter and is in fact just pixels in a computer program over which I have no control?

http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/12/10/do-we-live-in-a-computer-simulation-uw-researchers-say-idea-can-be-tested/ The matrix has you

I was listening on Solent (before the days of live commentary and they would interrupt the music with that jingle that made you sh1t yourself in anticipation of which way the goal had gone!) and I honestly thought Grant Coleman had made a mistake when he announced the goalscorer.

Oh dear. Album sales dropping again are they Morrissey? I've never made any secret of my distaste for the concept of monarchy, but he is catastrophically off the mark with this one. Still, gotta hand it to him... he knows how to get people talking about him despite not being musically relevant any more.

This cartoon sums up this thread perfectly...

I was actually reading this somewhere very recently and can't find the exact source I was looking at. But climatologists (in many cases volunteers) have gone to great lengths to ensure an even distribution of recording stations all over the globe - from the deserts of Africa, to the rainforests of South America and even the frozen wastelands of the Arctic / Antarctic.

By taking monthly readings from thousands of recording stations all over the world, in all different kinds of environments, and taking into account external factors such as the urban heat island effect... http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

I'm still not convinced it is. Other members of the cast have publicly said it they can't say who it is but it definitely isn't Khan, and it seems to me like the Mail have just picked up some rumours from somewhere and printed it as fact (Not like them at all - I know)

Or perhaps we could just ditch all of the religious aspects altogether and go with LGTL's suggestion of using the solstice as a reason to spend some quality time with family and friends.

I'm all for this idea actually, and I've been trying to convince my family and friends over the last few years that we should make an effort seeing as most people are off work for it anyway. I'm all in favour of sticking two fingers up to the Catholic Church and their over-inflated claims about a Jewish kid who (if he even existed) wasn't born in December, and reclaim the old pagan winter solstice festival to celebrate the returning of the sun and the start of longer days.

I think they are both still a little out of my price range. I'm looking to spend no more than about £150 really. Might wait til january to see if there are any good deals on, but just really want to know whether a AMD or NVIDIA card will be better with my existing setup.

I'm thinking of treating myself to an upgrade cos the one I have, although not that old, isn't very high spec and I really want to be able to enjoy Far Cry 3 to it's absolute best. I have a ASrock n68 c-s mobo, that uses an NVIDIA chipset, with AMD Phenom II quad core processor, and I was wondering if anyone can tell me whether I would be better off getting an AMD or a NVIDIA graphics card to compliment it. I'm currently using an ATI Radeon HD5670 which was about the best I could afford at the time, but my system struggles with the really resource-hungry games like Crysis 2.

Yeah, agree with this. Far too many episodes in the early series seemed like it was just another soap opera that happened to be set on a space station in the future. But as it got going and the ongoing story arc of the war with the Dominion became the predominant aspect, it improved a great deal. Would have been so much better without the self-righteous, whiny and generally irritating Captain Janeway.

Lucky it wasn't more than 1-0 in the end. Players looked very tired and weary from our recent run of games. Poor concentration, and totally devoid of any ideas or quality. When you're not playing well you rely on a little bit of luck, but nothing ran for us today either. Every 50-50 always seemed to somehow land at the feet of a Liverpool player. Oh well - I didn't expect us to get anything out of this game, but we did improve a little in the second half and contain them a bit better, and our last-ditch defending was good enough today - and it took a top-quality header to breach the goal. Looking at the table, we are still only one win away from 14th, so onwards and upwards hopefully.

Cos the guy who's coming on instead cost £7m, perhaps?

Great defensive work from Morgan there

That's surprising. Cork has been one of our best players so far today.

I understand Lambert is obviously desperate to get a goal against Liverpool, but he needs to be a bit less greedy. OK we got a corner out of that long range one just now, but he had better options, just like he did when he hit that fee kick earlier.

Went to see Sightseers last night... utterly bizarre black comedy from Ben Wheatley and Edgar Wright about a couple from the midlands who go on a caravan holiday together and end up going on a killing spree. Dark, twisted and completely unpredictable; it fuses the gritty realism of a Shane Meadows film with the off-the-wall humour of comedies such as Julia Davis' Nighty Night, and does it to absolute perfection. Well recommended.

Then the entire system is catastrophically flawed. Hardly surprising, considering the entire world economy is based on the principle of using flashy marketing to convince people to spend money they don't have on sh1t they don't need. The reason that the recovery is spluttering all over the world is that a huge number of people, since the economic crash of 2008, have wised up to this fact and adapted their lifestyles to a more need-based approach.

Yeah it's disappointing not to win at home, given how good our home record was last season. But overall I thought both teams defended very well and cancelled each other out. So considering how our form was prior to this little run, two wins and two draws from our last four games is encouraging. It's true that Norwich can count themselves lucky to have got an equaliser, but there was a massive slice of luck about our opening goal as well. So it's no good blaming Gazza for not winning - the attackers have to take responsibility and score more goals as well. One fairly fortunate goal will not be enough for us at this level. Don't know if it was the cold weather or just fatigue from putting in so much effort in our last couple of games, but the whole team seemed to lack a bit of sharpness tonight. A better team might have punished that, so I'm actually quite happy with a draw.

Maybe so. But the defence appears to be a lot less panicky since he has been in the team, and the fact that we are not leaking goals left, right and centre any more clearly proves that. I would rather have a keeper that makes the occasional mistake than one that makes our entire back line look like a bunch of startled rabbits.

Again, perhaps you should re-watch the highlights of the West Ham game. The error he made for their fist goal was unforgivable. What if he starts doing that every game... will you then be calling for Gazza to start again?