[Princeton]

no that's not what I am saying...
threads will still be indexed; but, you are making it harder for people to find the page by using 'words' that are not relevant to the subject at hand

NOTE: when I say TITLE, I mean title="title of link or image" vs. alt="alternate text of image"

So, the TITLE value will usually be ignored by search engines while the ALT value will be parsed along with any other text on the page

To confuse you even more
ALT value are usually picked up by screen readers while the TITLE value is not
eg. A text reader would read "notepad Star Trek MMO Exclusive Interview" to the listener. I would think that would confuse the listener compared to "Star Trek MMO Exclusive Interview".

Search engines will completely ignore the below as code:

<img src="notepad.gif" alt="" title="Notepad icon" width="16" height="16" />

Search engines will read "notepad" as text:

<img src="notepad.gif" alt="notepad" width="16" height="16" />

Another tip:
always use width/height on all images -- your pages will display faster