Balandar

SageMadHatter writes "After denying the possibility of three new Star Wars movies taking place after the original triology story line, it appears that the possibility has actually opened up."

Ant writes "The Register mentions a new Windows worm known as Rbot-GR that is currently circulating accross the net. It has the capability to spy on users using webcams. " I'm surprised that it took this long.

From slashdot. Dan Farina writes "The long awaited 'The Sims 2' has gone Gold, as seen on the latest posting on Maxis' The Sims 2 updates page. It appears that it will be on time after all, an unusual occurrence in this industry." I'm already having a strange obsessive twitching in my left leg. I think I might need to use up some vacation time in September.

Wow, great idea =)

I didn't know we could do that. >8]

heheh, I would love to play... but the lack of true powerful magic users as a class is a disappointment.

This was sent to me from a co-worker GET A BILL STARTED TO PLACE ALL POLITICIANS ON SOC. SEC. 2004 Election Issue!! This must be an issue in "2004". Please! Keep it going. ---------------------------------- SOCIAL SECURITY: (This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.) Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years. Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and,of course, they do not collect from it. You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons oftheir rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan. In more recent years, no congress person has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan. For all practical purposes their plan works like this: When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die. Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments. For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives. This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries. Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives. Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA....ZILCH... This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds; "OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"! From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, -every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)- we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement. Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley's benefits! Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made. That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us ... then sit back and watch how fast they would fix it. If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve. How many people can YOU send this to? Keep this going clear up thru the 2004 election!! We need to be heard

From slashdot. "It looks like Tolkien fans will get one of their biggest dreams with Turbine's Middle-Earth Online. Originally expected about November, we're now looking at a Northern Hemisphere Autumn release date. The New Zealand Herald has a good article."

Remember the whale movie? (My fav out of the old ones). From Slasdot. "Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. (link includes a picture of samples) Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides (see also: A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761). Scotty would be pleased." Read more here. Just incase they remove the article: Glass breakthrough 11 August 2004 Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides (A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761). Glass is formed when a molten material is cooled so quickly that its constituent atoms do not have time to align themselves into an ordered lattice. However, it is difficult to make glasses from most materials because they need to be cooled -- or quenched -- at rates of up to 10 million degrees per second. Silica is widely used in glass-making because the quenching rates are much lower, but researchers would like to make glass from alumina as well because of its superior mechanical and optical properties. Alumina can form glass if it is alloyed with calcium or rare-earth oxides, but the required quenching rate can be as high as 1000 degrees per second, which makes it difficult to produce bulk quantities. Rosenflanz and colleagues started by mixing around 80 mole % of powdered alumina with various rare-earth oxide powders -- including lanthanum, gadolinium and yttrium oxides. Next, they fed the powders into a high-temperature hydrogen-oxygen flame to produce molten particles that were then quenched in water. The resulting glass beads, which were less than 140 microns across, were then heat-treated -- or sintered -- at around 1000°C. This produced bulk glass samples in which nanocrystalline alumina-rich phases were dispersed throughout a glassy matrix. The new method avoids the need to apply pressures of 1 gigapascal or more, as is required in existing techniques. The 3M scientists characterised the glasses using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermal analysis, and tested the strength of the materials with hardness and fracture toughness tests. They found that their samples were much harder than conventional silica-based glasses and were almost as hard as pure polycrystalline alumina. Moreover, over 95% of the glasses were transparent (see figure) and had attractive optical properties. For example, fully crystallized alumina-rare earth oxide ceramics showed high refractive indices if the grains were kept below a certain size. Author Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb

Yup =) Read that on slashdot last week. heh. Pretty neat.

Bank gold will be transfered when I have time. Army system time will be lowered later.

This was posted awhile ago, but check out the history of world of warcraft. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/story/chapter1.shtml

Spys allow you to spy on people, find out what they have. They can also sabotage armor and weapons. I think sentries would protect against spies, at least that's my guess. >8] The store will take longer since I have to recreate every pet item and fix all of the old items. And the pet system is different now as well.

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Some information will be lost. There is a plague going around which will end up killing all of your pets. Sorry There are bugs in the new army system, store, and pets... but I'll install the new versions (since they are better than the old). We will not have an arcade, raffle, or lottery until someone creates one for the new forums. Sorry again. But... the new forums have better options and most of the old mods will no longer be supported when the new forums go gold.

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Bah! heheh. You didn't say that

What's interesting about it? Save more with Amazon. heheh. Plus 5% goes towards The Honor Empire website costs.

Star Wars Episodes IV, V, VI now on DVD!! Save $30 through our Amazon links below! (Widescreen) http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1' >http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/purpleguardianof' > (Full Screen) http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1' >http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/purpleguardianof' >

*still waiting on that other template...*

Skah! Tayk lats nub-green skin agh leeb!! Deddie panzie pugdug!!

Nope I am going to use the WoW template and tweak what they have for theirs. I hope it will not be too hard. Everything I am doing for the website now is being tested on the WoW section.. then once that is up and running, I'll work on the others.

http://wow.thehonorempire.net/gallery/index.php This will be the new gallery. Try rating images, posting comments on the ones you like, etc. Only members of these forums should be able to post. Templates will be updated later.