Timor Troubles, Linux News, Ratty Year
East Timor's President José Ramos-Horta was wounded today in a half-baked coup attempt led by criminal fugative Alfredo Reinhado. If memory serves me correctly this is Ramos-Horta's home where the attack occurred early this morning. Whilst on occassion he has been frustrating to me, I do hold the President in high regard, a friend even. I was very happy when last year he adopted a tax policy I had recommended to him some months prior (I also suggested that he get a second opinion - which evidently he did). José is apparently in a stable condition and I wish him the speediest recovery.
In Linux news there's a cool little exploit which has made sysadmins worldwide run around and patch the problem within hours. Which is an example par excellence of the ability of open source operating systems to find and repair problems. In other Linux news I presented an update last Tuesday at Linux Users Victoria, where Sarah Bond (Microsoft) spoke on their OpenXML standard and Damien Miller (Google) spoke on OpenSSH development. I had just purchased some fencing foils and suggested that they engage in a friendly duel for Yahoo! The gathering was quite polite although critical of Microsoft's previous actions and intentions, but it was friendly. In more trivial news I successfully googlwhacked "dispensationalists" and "ununoctium". But check the brilliant article.
Attended the Year of the Rat celebrations in the city on Sunday with
caseopaya,
ser_pounce and
hathhalla, which is very appropriate as Rogue Rat will be celebrating his third birthday in a couple of days (that's 90 in human scale). Like most mass entertainment events, the celebrations were loud, crowded an anonymous which is not to my liking. I managed however to find and secure a perfect spot in front of the Chinese Museum in Cohen Place, where the impressive 50+m dragon and assorted friends ventured from. After that made it to what will be my final ever AD&D1e game, running a necessarily modified version of module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
In Linux news there's a cool little exploit which has made sysadmins worldwide run around and patch the problem within hours. Which is an example par excellence of the ability of open source operating systems to find and repair problems. In other Linux news I presented an update last Tuesday at Linux Users Victoria, where Sarah Bond (Microsoft) spoke on their OpenXML standard and Damien Miller (Google) spoke on OpenSSH development. I had just purchased some fencing foils and suggested that they engage in a friendly duel for Yahoo! The gathering was quite polite although critical of Microsoft's previous actions and intentions, but it was friendly. In more trivial news I successfully googlwhacked "dispensationalists" and "ununoctium". But check the brilliant article.
Attended the Year of the Rat celebrations in the city on Sunday with
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Why's that then? I'm still extremely fond of first edition.
But I'm also fond of the Basic-Expert-GreenOneWhatEscapesMeChampion?-Master line.
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I've played it to death and am all too painfully aware of its many and numerous problems. I could houserule them or glibly overlook them, as I've done over the past 25 or so years or I could say "No, I'm finished with this. Time to play something else". I'm taking the latter path.
But I'm also fond of the Basic-Expert-GreenOneWhatEscapesMeChampi on?-Master line.
I think you're thinking of Companion. Actually a better game overall, if somewhat reduced in scope. - and don't forget the Immortals.
But as a whole, despite it's high levels of crunch, D&D 3.x is much better than both of these.
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As for GURPS 4e from what I've seen it's OK, but it really suffers from trying to put everything in the one book. At least with 3e 90% of your requirements were catered for in 90% of the text. The latest edition seems to give equal weight to marginal and core instances.
So I'm still sticking to 3e for now.