I think 9 is more than old enough, unless your daughter just doesn't handle anything scary well.

I personally started Doctor Who when I was around 8 years old (back in 1981). Doctor Who definitely gave me nightmares as a child (it was in some ways more and less "adult" than the current show), but I always loved being scared - nightmares or not.

In the UK many parents let them watch from toddler age on.

You are on the cusp of awesome!

I was pleasantly surprised. I expected a dud like last year's Black Spot episode, but this romp was more fun. The FX were very impressive IMO (the space stuff more than the dinosaurs). I liked it. Not as good as Asylum, but I tend to prefer the darker stuff...

My wife and I are basically Quentin whores. I only really consider "his" movies to be the ones he wrote and directed (the same way he enumerates them).

My least favorites in this category are Jackie brown and death proof, though I still enjoy both of them, with Jackie brown being my least favorite. My favorites are the kill bill movies (dreading the third). Pulp fiction also obviously rates very highly. I did love inglorious bastards. I watched that the other night on TNT too and found it holds up better than most of his movies to the censor stick.

I can't wait for Django unchained, I think it looks fantastic.

Great episode, with a nice (and confusing) surprise. Best dalek story in a while...

It is most definitely a drama about the creation of the series. It is not a drama on the origin of the Doctor.

Link

The BBC have confirmed that a special ninety minute drama has been commissioned to mark the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. An Adventure in Space and Time will explore the creation of the series in 1963, looking at all aspects of the process and the variety of personalities involved in bringing the longest running science fiction show to life.

Writer Mark Gattis:

This is the story of how an unlikely set of brilliant people created a true Television original. And how an actor - William Hartnell - stereotyped in hard-man roles became a hero to millions of children. I've wanted to tell this story this for more years than I can remember! To make it happen for 'Doctor Who's 50th birthday is quite simply a dream come true.

That should really be spoiler tagged. Funny though!

I agree completely. They will have to scramble to get windows 9 out because businesses will not touch it. It's vista all over again, but this may be even worse.

Currently using this. Mine tend to always be related to Doctor Who.

Thumbs up from me. I think it's merely very good, and not great like the first 2. I think it's at least 30 minutes too long. BUT, it has a fantastic ending. It also is the first time I have ever liked Catwoman. In fact, I would call her a highlight (if not THE highlight) of the movie. I have no doubt that the movie would have been better had Heath Ledger not died, but Nolan made the best out of a bad situation. It definitely finishes as one of the best movie trilogies ever.

I absolutely quit because of the fee, but then again I just wanted a single player KOTOR sequel in the first place. I will absolutely go back when it is free.

This sounds terrible and is only serving to increase my contempt for BiowarEA.

That's what I wound up doing.  The Envy has nice build quality (other laptops I checked out felt like they were built out of legos and scotch tape), it runs fairly fast (way faster than the old company Vaio), the screen is even more vibrant than expected, I get Office Professional for free through the University, and like you said, I also get the TV as well.  For my needs this was the ideal path.   

Glad you're experience is good so far! Have you tried any gaming on it yet?

The hookblade helps when I'm falling or jumping a long distance, but it seems to slow Ezio dramatically in his climbing.

Oh yes, I did like the hookblade, fair point.

Sorry you didn't get more enjoyment out of the ending than I did. I was groaning when I saw I had to play the chariot ramming game again. I almost quit the game forever back in February when I had to play the beginning chariot sequence over a dozen times to get by it. I didn't have nearly as hard a time when I replayed it in this play through, but it still wasn't any fun.

Restarted this a week or two ago, and finished it tonight. Definitely, meh. I did less side stuff than I ever had in the previous games. I really didn't like virtually every new feature they added to this game. I can't believe what the end sequence gameplay ended up being. How about we do assassin stuff at the end of an assassin game instead of tacked on cheesy action sequences?

I am ready for this storyline to end. I hope they do it in AC3 because I really don't give a shit about Desmond at this point. I also hope they stick to the core assassin gameplay mechanics and drop these silly action sequences.... Unless AC3 gets rave reviews, I'll probably wait for it to drop to bargain bin prices to pick it up.

Actually finally got FO:NV Ultimate for the price I thought I bought it for earlier in the week.

I actually didn't care for FO3 (well, I did like it until I got done with the first town), but I have heard this is better. $10 is the right price to try it.

Steam did add the $24 to my Steam wallet today. I just spent $6.74 on the Thief collection. Already have them, but a lot of those CDs are pretty old, so nice to have a backup. Hopefully FONV will be cheap again later in the sale.

One other thing Pete, since money is tight, don't waste any money on Office. Just download Open Office for free.

As a means of reference, I currently use my wife's company's Sony Vaio which is more than 7 years old.  It's heavy, runs hot, operates slowly, and feels like diesel smoke should be billowing out as exhaust.  Therefore given my current experience with a laptop, will the 5400 rpm drive at least run better than my current workhorse, or will I still inevitably be frustrated with what sounds to be an archaic technology?  To me, even my brother-in-law's budget Dell laptop looks like a substantial step up from what I currently use.  But, I've got a 4+ year commitment to graduate school (plus a likely residency in clinical oncology), so I want to make the right choice now and not regret my decision shortly following purchase.

I'm all for the new hotness, however my current position requires me to be reasonable in my purchase.  I'd love to get a $1200 ultrabook, a MacBook Pro, etc, but I'm quite limited by price and would still like to furnish my grad apartment with a TV.  However, if sacrificing the associated rebates with the Envy to make the right purchase may cause me to have to wait a bit on picking up a TV, or may force me to settle for a smaller TV (looking at 40-42" LGs or Vizios but could cope with something smaller and less expensive), I can live with that if an HP Ultrabook with 128SSD is my ideal choice given the parameters. 

Your 7 year old Vaio almost certainly has a 5400 rpm hard drive in it. I was pushing the Ultrabook over the other 2 choices since they both have 5400 rpm drives. You certainly don't have to buy an ultrabook to avoid the slower 5400 rpm drives. I'm just suggesting you avoid laptops with a 5400 rpm drive. This can be done by buying laptops with a 7200 rpm drive.

For example:
HP ProBook 6465b has a normal desktop speed 7200 rpm hard drive, and can be had for $618 ordered from Staples.

Of course, an ultrabook with a SSD drive will be even faster.

At the price you are spending, I wouldn't expect great performance for gaming.

I would go with the ultrabook over the Envy. You are trading a super fast SSD drive for a SLOW 5400 rpm hard drive. As someone who owns a laptop with such a drive and uses one occasionally at work, they drive me crazy. I won't buy a new laptop until mine dies, but I know for sure I will never get one with a 5400 rpm drive again. This is one of my personal pet peeves.

Well, Steam finally agreed to give me store credit (as a "one time" customer service gesture) back in lieu of a refund or the actual price their client told me I was buying the game for. Guess I'll wait and see if anything else tickles my fancy during the sale...

One more thing. Assuming you do start with series one, to truly give the show a chance you should watch at least the first 3 episodes. They will give you a good idea of the kind of thing you can expect from the show. Next, there is a two partner that tends to work more for the Brits than Americans. Episode 6 is the first truly great episode IMO. If you can hold out to episodes 9 and 10 and don't want to continue  then you have given the show more than a fair try.

Start with the reboot from 2005. Series One, starring Christopher Eccleston. No knowledge of the classic series is required. If you fall in love with the show and want to explore its earlier incarnation, then come back to this thread and we'll give you advice. If you have Netflix, nearly all of the new series is available for streaming. (One of the 2009 specials isn't.)

Keep in mind if you do this, your Steam account will be suspended and you'll lose access to all your games. You'll have to get a CS rep from Steam to fix this and remove the disputed game. I don't know if this is worth $14 of your time, but that's your call...

Thanks for the info. In light of said info, I probably won't dispute the charge. I don't care if they don't want to give me the $10 price, but I do want them to give me a refund if they won't. After I saw that I was actually charged $24, I even fully exited Steam and restarted it, and their front page still showed the price as $10. Then after I submitted my service request it had gone up to $24. I haven't heard back from them yet.

Yep, already sent. If they don't refund me I will just dispute the charge with the credit card.

WTF?! On the front page of Steam it says Fallout NV is $9.99. I bought it and got charged $23.99?! It STILL says it's $9.99 on the front page! What gives?!

Edit: Now it's gone up to $23.99. I swear it still said $9.99 for a good 5 minutes after I bought it... bastards.

If anything the new content has me even more disappointed.

Bring on free to play!

Finally finished Normal last night after a few hour marathon gaming session. I have only been playing one character (a barbarian). I finished at level 32 with 27 hours and 27 minutes time played.

Overall, I think the game is great. I think it is in nearly every way a great improvement over Diablo 2. All the little streamlining they did from the UI, inventory, skills, frequent checkpoints and waypoints, etc. has made my overall experience much better. I wasn't overly impressed with the graphics when I first played the game on open beta weekend, but they definitely grew on me.

I thought Act 3 in particular was a blast. Thank god they didn't make me go through that damned jungle again.

The big complaint for me is the way it's so deeply tied to a server like a MMO. Forgetting about issues about DRM or crappy launch issues, my main complaint is that of performance. Being shackled to the whims of a server creates real problems when playing the game. I experienced lots of rubber banding and issues with phantom enemies that I am swinging at and missing because they aren't there any more but I haven't caught up with that yet. These things really break immersion and irritate me. I really hope they can clean up the performance of their server(s) and these issues are temporary.

Anyway, thumbs way up. I think I'll dip my toe in Nightmare before starting an alt...

Edit: Forgot to mention my chief complaint about the game. I really wish this had come out 5-7 years ago. I would have been delirious over this game back then. I just don't understand why they had to wait 12 years to get this out. My interest in this genre has waned since 2000, and I know that while this game is far, far better than its predecessor, I will never come anywhere near to playing it as much.

I got kicked out after msgs saying the server was going down.

My free month is petering/has petered out while I am distracted with D3. I like the game, but again I played it as a single player game. I doubt I will return to it unless/until it goes F2P, and even then only if I can still experience the entire storyline for each class.

I liked the last episode. Better than some other final episodes I've seen....

I got on at around 6:40 PM (EDT) and had no issues (knocking on wood, fingers crossed). So far I am still in the stuff I played on closed beta weekend, so nothing new to report. I really hope there are some non-dark areas; this game really strains my eyes.

Gods curse you Blizzard! (Downloading the game now on my desktop and trying to focus on work on my laptop....)

I was asking about the existence of a (physical) user manual because I generally think Blizzard's are excellent and full of enough lore that they are entertaining in their own right. I know that I enjoyed reading the Starcraft (1) manual far more than I ever enjoyed playing Starcraft. So if the manual included in a boxed copy is of similar quality to their older games, then having a physical copy has an edge over just buying it digitally.

Odd how after the beta I thought I would wait a while, but I do find myself tempted to get this. I guess in the end - it's freaking Diablo!

Does anyone know if the normal boxed version of this comes with the usual high quality Blizzard user manual, or have they adopted the current trend of no printed manuals?

The actress playing Irene Adler (Lara Pulver) was also in season 4 of True Blood playing Claudine. Surprisingly, she was more clothed on True Blood!

I generally agree with your assessment, although I thought episode 2 of series 2 was better than episode 2 of series 1. I know for sure that there will be a series 3, but I am not sure if there will be more. Both of the stars love the show, but are both poised to become big stars.

I've been rewatching my favorite Star Trek series (DS9) for a month or so, and have decided to give this a try. (Downloading tonight will try to play some this weekend.) Anyone still playing this?  Is it solo friendly?

I finally officially bailed on this earlier in the week. I really had only played sparingly since I finished the Jedi Knight's final boss. I give kudos to this MMO for being the most solo friendly, story driven, least grind laden MMORPG ever (at least in my experience). But, I essentially just played this as a single player RPG, and frankly I would have just rather played a single player RPG. While it would have had 1 story instead of 8, it would have been a better, more rich story, and there would not have been as large a gap between key plot moments.

I guess I am saying what others did when this was first announced. I would have much rather they made a KOTOR 3 than this, despite the fact that I got a lot of hours of enjoyment from this. Sadly, I doubt a KOTOR 3 is coming any time soon, if at all.

Whining aside, this was a very solid B game, and it managed to entice me back into a genre I had sworn I would never revisit if a monthly fee was involved, so they must have done something right....