Tovarish

Well, it's "open" as long as you don't critisize the government, and praising the U.S. is not recommended either. The average Joe doesn't really live in direct fear of the government, most people just live their lives and follow the rules - corrupt authority? of course there is some of that. As for the taxicabs - no, I don't believe that to be true. It wasn't in '98.

Glad this was of interest to a few people . Well, what exactly would you like to know? I'm currently home sick with a lung infection, so I have plenty of time, but probably not the energy to write my entire life story . I can tell you that technology definitely seems to be finding it's way into Cuba more quickly these days. The last time I visited - much too long ago in late 98, the only person I knew who had a computer was my aunt, who was still a diplomat at the time, and she had a Pentium II running Windows 95, and I don't believe she had any access to the internet outside Cuba, such as e-mail. The best console that could be found was the SNES, and the people who had them would rent them to the rest of the neighborhood to make money. American movies have always been shown on Cuban TV as far as I can remember - so people do see a glimpse of how things are in the west and are fairly savvy of American pop culture, but as their experience of this comes only from movies, it's all somewhat surreal to them. The Beta format by the way, was (and likely still is) very much alive in Cuba The most important thing that's missing is hope for improvement. You can join the army, become a farmer, or do whatever else and get by on rations (if you're very lucky you can land a job in the tourist industry and do very well from tips and gifts from visitors) or you can lead a life of crime and live very well compared. Now to be fair, this is not too different from most latin american countries, and there are many less people starving or dying from disease in Cuba than in other latin american countries,but the only reason anyone would want to become a doctor or an architect is because that is what they love doing - it definitely would not be the salary - which would roughly be the same across all professions. There is some limited entrepreneurship springing up here and there - but all that is still strongly regulated by the government.

That's what they're afraid of. They have to pay to have access to it. Why? because the government controls internet access, and they can make it so.

*sigh* the moo cow beat me to it

Colbert Roasts President Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner

Bit contradictory there eh? Me, I can't play most of the types of games I'm interested in on a console. With the exception of sports games, i just need a mouse and keyboard, especially for FPS's - not to mention a joystick for flight sims. One thing I am interested in seeing though is the next generation of portable gaming platforms. I recently came across this supposed mockup of a "portable Xbox 360" http://mobilitytoday.com/news/006460/xbox_360_handheld

Been hearing some pretty good songs from Kelli Ali on pandora.com - Home Honey I'm High - Speakers - Ideal - Voyeur *edit* listen to the tracks here: http://www.last.fm/music/Kelli+Ali/Psychic+Cat+

I'm loving this game! Started the main quest and then steered way clear of it once I realized how quickly the game could be finished. Made myself a custom assasin-type class, wood-elf, became a vampire (Hunter's Eye rocks! ), and started just ripping through the Dark Brotherhood quests. My speed, agility, marksmanship, and sneak are insane. Up till recently, I used bow and arrows almost exclusively as my weapon (changing this now because I can do a crapload of damage by sneaking up and stabbing them). It's not perfect, and it has a few things that make me go - mainly the poorly done horseback, the fact that running doesn't <s>affect</s> decrease fatigue, and how the hell are "honest merchants" supposed to know about everything you've stolen anyway? . But damn it's addictive

Hey! That's pretty sweet, thanks

I know it's kind of the complete opposite of what this thread is about, but I just had to show off my latest adquisition: The Twins 19 inch flatscreen CRT's - completely identical except one is branded as a Mitsubishi and the other is an NEC .

Actually, this reminds me of a messed up temperature sensor I had to deal with for a college project. "Well, according to this....the water's boiling at -30 C"

Your beaches sound like they beat anything we have in Canada

A friend and co-worker of mine was practically foaming at the mouth when he read the first post. I almost had to restrain him from replying - long enough to read the second post and realize beyond the shadow of a doubt that this couldn't be serious

Dude....if the CPU is too cold....you aren't overclocking enough :P

You know, At first I thought "no one could be THIS stupid" and then I started thinking of some of the people I deal with at work every day...and I wasn't so sure....but when I read: Yeah...sure bud, thanks for the chuckle *edit* LMAO This is gold! Bonzi Buddy, Claria, and Comet Cursor mentioned as applications that make Windows shine above Linux

(In case anybody else was confused as to what this thread was about)

found some inspiration in this morning's hangover remedy *edit* and for the heck of it another:

very nice video starring the Mirage 2000: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkFrbaJRAo0&search=dassault

Thanks . I've already gotten myself a Radeon X700 pro for $199 CAD. (and that was $100 off regular price) . I've also gone and upped my ram to 1GB from 768mb, and a P4 3.0 Ghz is being shipped to me to replace my 2.6 Ghz celeron, but these two last items were purchased with "friend prices" .

Gonna be watching for this one...I'm not a big fan of RTS's, but if they put as much detail into the game as they have into the trailer, I'm buying.

Serbnews? I highly doubt the quote was referring to some obscure Serbian rocket launcher, I would be quite willing to bet however, it refers to this: although as has been mentioned before, the quote seems to be completely ficticious

Got a question myself- finally got tired of playing certain games on low settings (FEAR, Lo-mac, ect) and decided I need to replace my Radeon 9550. I need some suggestions...I'm not necessarily looking for a top of the line monster, just something that'll get me by for now with decent graphics and performance....and it needs to be AGP. I'm thinking I'll hold out until Vista comes out before I start spending oodles of cash on a computer. That said, I do have a good friend who works at a computer store, and who can sometimes get me parts at cost . I'm looking to spend about $200-250 CAD.

looking at those stats....will it run OFP...yes...on high settings? no way in hell. As for the video - it's integrated, and only 32/64MB...so it's definitely bad for gaming. I'm afraid you may have a hard time finding a rugged notebook that will serve as a gaming rig

Been very busy lately...so no new pictures in ages, but I get home today and I'm in the mood for some photo editing, so I went ahead and touched up some old rejects that had been sitting around my hardrive forever: Never been much into a lot of post-processing before, but I think I may just revisit some old favourite shots of mine