I wouldn't be jealous either. You have to consider what you are dealing with when talking to Americans. Its a country heading downhill at breakneck speed toward fascism. The 2012 elections here, provided we make it to them without imploding, will tell the tale of our future, which looks grim either way. We are an incredibly polarized country with a propensity towards violence which promises to be volatile in the near future.
Our trade policies, which the rich corporations have fostered through our corrupt politicians, have gutted our entire industry. The jobless are growing, tent cities are springing up outside of our cities and people are homeless. Yet we continue to whistle past the graveyard, ignoring it all. We just had a showdown in our congress where the rich won, badly needed social programs will be cut so that the rich can enjoy the lowest taxes in decades.
Why aren't we rioting in the streets? Chalk it up to weapons grade propaganda, a police state second to none, and an under educated population that worships the rich and corporations like a cargo cult.
If you think you are immune to our evils in Britain, you are dead wrong. From this madness, multinational corporations have grown to power that aren't content to suck the marrow from our bones, they want everyone's, including yours. Corporations have been allowed to grow into monsters here. We were their egg. They are beyond our control now, because they control us.
All in all, it was our ignorance and greed that took us down. If nothing, we are a cautionary tale. So, make a snack, and watch as we sink into oblivion. We are collapsing under our own weight while locked in a vice grip, strangled by those in power. My advice to your country; Burn every Wal-Mart you have to the ground. Hound those who run them down and hang them from light poles down town. Protect your jobs, protect your industry or bow to your Chinese Overlords, they are the real winner when the smoke has cleared.
I didn't play those games, so they could have went to hell for all I know. I just know they were pretty good about keeping Team Fortress cleaned up. Then Valve and VAC got involved and it went to shit, and I stopped playing.
I hate cheaters. If I was king of the world, cheating would be a capital offense. You and your whole family would be executed for it. This includes your dog, your cat, the house plants, would salt your lawn, chop down your trees, it would be scorched earth. In fact, your whole neighborhood would be executed, just for letting someone like you and your cheater mindset to exist. Two houses in each direction, executed. And your mail man as well, he should have known. Come to think of it, your doctor for delivering you, and all of your teachers. Even your librarian. Your barber as well. I would throw in some people passing by just for good measure.
I would name it; PunkBuster 2.0 We will kill your ass!
Me three! I was scanning down to find a like minded thread before I started my own. It's already formed, can I have a name tag and some cake? I will hand out the punch, and I brought chips.
Thanks for the encouragement. I guess I need to finish a story instead of plunking at one, then forgetting it. Writing is fun, it's like capturing a daydream, then tweaking it. I enjoy literature classes I take at our community college, and not only because they are teaming with women that can read and hold a conversation and I am the one oddity in the class; a straight man. But literature is amazing stuff to me. Except it's so damn dark. I was taking a class on "Short Stories" this summer and every tale in it was dark. I was asking "are we EVER going to read something that isn't macabre?"
It seems as if people have a fascination with dark insanities. I think it's voyeuristic, an intimate look into others thoughts, to see their dark secrets. Frankly, I have lived in Crazyville, and the grass isn't greener on the crazy side of the fence. Perhaps I am looking to be voyeuristic into "normal life" where people don't have problems driving them batshit insane. I want to see problems solved without lots of hair pulling. I want to see relationships that work. I want the antagonist to be mere crabgrass in the lawn of life. Bring on the mundane! I can see already I would be a tiny niche demographic to write for.
Now if I can just ignore/. and a few other Internet sites, I might get something done.
It doesn't end does it? We can spit and our saliva is used to digest foods, but it could reek serious havoc on many species and their biological technology. Word has it, one group abducted a tobacco chewing hillbilly, and once in his cell, he spit out some tobacco juice and it ate through the decks of the ship until it breached the hull. The organic units used for damage control came in contract with it and had cascading chemical failure in their structures, controls and logic functions. The crew panicked, tried to get to orbit so that zero G might slow the spit down, but it was too late, they made like a lawn dart into the ocean, where the salt water dissolved them. The hillbilly washed up in San Diego and everyone just thinks he's another crazy homeless person. In fact, he gets an SSI check now for being insane. He keeps spitting on things he doesn't like, still.
It's a complete laundry list of reason why we are what alien mothers frighten their offspring into behaving with threats of. If we only had a tiny unit of galactic money for every time some alien mother said "eat your compressed nutrient pellets or some Earthling is going to come eat you", we could afford a proper space program. If we could get someone to sell to us that is.
It's mine, I banged it out in a few minutes when I read the parent post. I thought about the perspective of "we are the bad guys" and ran with it. I wanted to apply some '"bad luck is universal" to it as well. We always think of aliens having it together, being so superior, but aren't they subject to the same flaws of life that we are as well?
Then you have to consider the possibilities of how life could form in the universe. There are so many variables to consider so diverse lifeforms sound logical. Sprinkle lots of my own hyperbolic insanity over the subject and "ta da!"
And do what to them? Hurt them? Kill them? Threaten them?
How about that isn't a good idea, because besides breaking the law, you just might target the wrong people to fuck with. What if you trigger vigilante retaliation in the form of hunting down looter punks and exterminating them? After enough of these punks get greased mysteriously, they will be whining for that "police state" to protect them. Oh the irony.
If society has collapsed and there will be no more ANYTHING, looting would be a necessity.
But to just be looting because I can get away with it, hell no. I look at people like that as animals that need gunned down in the streets. If it's political rioting, that is another issue. But just to be rioting for greed, crime and being a punk, again, hell no. Shooting looters should be a policy, it should be a mandate.
The recent "riots" were not political protests, just a load of smashing into shops and stealing goods. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth - white goods, food, alchohol, clothing, electronics. And the crime-spree was not limited to robbery, sadly: 3 men were murdered defending their property, police were deliberately run over, people's appartments were torched. Cars, busses and entire shops were burned out. No protest here, no message, no placard waving, just people acting like animals and grabbing whatever they could.
It's Britain not Briton btw.
That kind of insanity wouldn't fly here, they would simply be shot dead long before it got out of hand. Not by police necessarily either, but our citizens. You roll into some neighborhoods thinking you are going to riot there like that, you will probably come out in a body bag. Especially if they are torching things. I can't imagine punks surviving trying to torch things in my little town.
Aliens did land here to destroy us, but they were small and insect like and the bug exterminator guy killed their entire galactic fleet, thinking they were some "weirdo bug infestation". A second attempt was tried by another species, and aquatic one, but it got ate by sharks. A third one came, land based and they were bigger, but were ate by the wild life. A fourth came and the RF that we are immune to quickly burned out their brains, and they too were ate by wild life.
A mechanical race came and was destroyed by a thunderstorm, when a bolt of lightning struck their ship and it exploded. Of course there have been several small missions which end up in races being consumed by just the biological aspects of our planet. Germs, viruses, and an assortment of microbes tend to make short work of them if they don't use the proper environmental protocols.
Not to mention we are a biological weapon to 99.9999999% of the species in the known universe. Many in the galaxy speculate that the "creator" an extra dimensional entity that instilled the creation codes, was being some kind of a dickhead when he instilled the planetary creation code for this planet. Many speculate and fear that we are doomsday weapon made by said "creator", some want to destroy us, others think we have some special link with the "creator" and should just stay away at least.
Considering we breath poisoned gas, we are mostly water, which is a universal solvent that eats through many species on contact. We live near oceans of water which scare most species. We are larger than most species by far and are physically more capable. We have lived in a constant state of war with each other since before our history, hence we are really good at it and durable, some how we fight each other so hard, yet our species is over populated. Which is a terrifying aspect of us, we breed so fast compared to most species.
Most species pray that we will just kill ourselves off. Others are convinced we will achieve the technology to travel about the universe, hence over running it in a matter of eons. But it's galactic law that nobody gives us any aid, and any species that tries to cultivate us is punished. Often rich juveniles from a species will buzz Planet Earth to impress a mate or mates, only to get shot down, spotted or crash; many escape, but its still risky behavior that if caught gets severe punishments.
Mostly we are immune to solar radiation, in fact we bath in it to get a tan. Our Sun puts out enough EMP to burn up the nervous system of some delicate species before they even get near Earth. Our skin though we think it's thin in contrast to some of the beasts of the planet, is incredible to most species. It's chemical resistant, radiation resistant, and waterproof which baffles everyone. Shooting an Earthling with an alien water cannon only amuses them. They in fact stole several water cannons and reproduce them as toys under the "Super Soaker" line. An Earthling child with a water gun chills the bones of the hardiest of galactic warriors.
Lastly, what we can eat is frightening as well. What we eat and drink frightens most species away alone. Most of them would be on our dinner plate, as a delicacy. Not to mention our waste byproducts are the most foul bits of toxic waste in the universe. They have watched us poke and prod everything on our planet and try to eat it. We have even ate each other, which is a horror that most minds can't comprehend in the universe. Not to mention we skin other species and wear them as clothes and trophies.
Then some have tried to understand us, they have figured out that TV is some form of entertainment to us, not educational, not some history archive. This process drove many species insane. One species was found in some insane collective nightmare after watching Gilligan's Island episodes, they fell into some logic loop and have been catatonic as a species ever since. They have concluded that we as a species are quite insane and it's illegal to attempt to figure us out psychologically.
Divisive American politics will be the undoing of us all. We need research to keep us in the running. Or have you noticed, we shut down our Space Program and are hitching rides with the Russians to space? I am frankly embarrassed at where we are.
Let's look at what we have done. We are in wars with people that classically never give up, a literal quagmire like we got into in the Viet Nam era. What we did learn from Viet Nam was it was a great way to fund the war machine, and war profiteers. Terrorism is the perfect boogieman, you can scare the people with it into giving up anything, and you never have a "foe" that you defeat and end your precious war.
Don't think so? We have thug cops feeling up children and grandmothers for weapons in our Airports.
Our dollar is so inflated its sickening. How do I know? Check out gold prices. It's not that gold is going up in value, its the dollar dropping in value, and this causes a panic which places gold in more of a demand. Watch how this spirals out of control.
Now screaming "Socialism" because the rich need to pony up their fair share of taxes is the hallmark of a brainwashed lackey of the uber rich. Much worse are the trade polices that gut the American industries, forcing them to move production overseas to compete. Second is labor unions that gouge the manufacturer and put them out of the running due to previously mentioned trade policies. Thirdly are insane regulatory mandates piled up from decades of bureaucracy, that strangle American industry.
We need FAIR trade policies, not Free Trade policies. Free Trade is an oxymoron. These are two words that should NOT be put together. Trade is war, trade must be handled like a hostage negotiation. Trade is the only way our federal government was suppose to be able to raise money according to our founding fathers. Tariffs were what they were suppose to be funded from. Enter a World War to give us our current tax scheme. This Income Tax was never properly ratified as a Constitutional amendment if anyone is interested or cares, making it a dinosaur sized elephant in the room we have all been ignoring for decades.
We need unions to have a fair voice, but not the ability to extort their host business. We need regulations that make good green sense, but are workable and don't gut industry.
Let me bring this to a conclusion to prove relevance to the topic.
It's going to suck big time that we do research like this, but if we don't have our industry, who's going to build things resulting from our research? Who's going to build things HERE, hence we the public get paid back in the form of taxes gained, jobs gained and the benefits of said research? We need research and to never stop it, but we also need to tend to all the other mechanics of the nation.
I hear you, I just wanted to get my rogue or druid up to pvp par so I could be a pain in the ass with the other side in world pvp. World PvP was completely ignored I felt. Battlegrounds and Arenas were nothing but things I had to grind through so I could have my pvp gear so I could go pick a fight. I loved ganking in WoW, I know that makes me a tool to a majority of players, but it spices up the game and gives you someone to really hate.
I know I hate being ganked. I would be out minding my own business trying to get through some daily quests or farming materials and then *GANKED*!! At first it was annoying, then infuriating, then after a while I was reduced to some growling beast, snarling curses at somebody who was corpse camping me. You have to appreciate the level of gamer depravity to be so cruel. After a while I had my WoW Colonel Kurtz moment, where I finally snapped, then saw the brilliance of it "the horror, the horror". I was hooked, I had to gank back.
That is the problem with stealthers in games in general. Its hard not to make them OP considering they have the greatest power in the game to start with, they can turn invisible. It's like Nelfs, the racial to do a "ghetto vanish" and stay invisible? This is why Boomkins in the wrong hands are just plain wrong in World PvP. In World PvP there are no silly rules and you can easily exploit the layout of the land and the environment to your advantage.
Enter the Nelf Boomkin, they can drop out of combat with the racial and instantly go to bird and fly away, leaving you on the ground, running after them mashing buttons you know will not fire. They come back as a cat, (invisible) and wait for you to be at your worse moment and then start nuking you, rooting you in place, just generally blast you into the dirt. With nothing less than omfgwtfbbqlaserchicken attacks like Moonfire, which is annoying beyond words to be spammed with. And then they buffed it for Moonkins, were you on crack Blizzard? It's ok, you put out Deathknights.
Deathknights when they came out was a freebie for everyone to run around beating everyone up. When everyone got sick of being a DK chew toy and howled about them, they at last beat them into submission with the nerfbat.
Everything had it's day. Warlocks were OP as hell for the longest time, then got beat down with the nerfbat. The first OP class was Paladins. They used to be able to wtfpown on any Undead players, it was comical while it lasted. The Undead racial at the beginning was godlike though, it was a mad balance of power. Anyway, when it first started, Paladins were to be hated and feared by the other side. They whined in unison on 10 in the forums until the nerfbat was swinging not even a week after commercial release. What a week though..lol.
WoW was fun. But the mystery of it is gone for me. It's worse than drugs though, once you play it you are hooked. I am out for more than 6 months now, and loving it...I think. Getting over a wow addiction is tricky. I just substitute a FPS for it now, which I picked the worse one to play. It looks great, but has so many cheaters in it, you just want to scream. It does make you stay on your game, because if you can place in score in the top against hacked players, you simply kick ass at the game. What really sucks, is there are hacked players who make a sport out of how many they can kill. Or games boil down to "our hacker beat your hacker".
I think i will be weaned down to solitaire card games before long, then I will be game free. For a while.
WoW raiding. There is something I came to loathe. I seen the 40 man vanilla days at MC, it was sick. I would go along with a my guild if I had to, but I detested the need for massive socialization in order to feel like you done something in the game. WoW is like a hobby, a social life and sometimes a job all rolled up in one. They got enough money out of me, time to give gaming a break perhaps until something really impresses me. The whole MMO that consumes your time thing grates on my last nerve these days. As far as forcing me to socialize, forget it. That is why I play FPS's now. I just log in, blast people, and leave when I find it dull.
Cards are actually starting to interest me. WinAmp + Spider Solitaire = win. And I don't have to deal with people, just my evil possessed computer.
Yes, they have dual spec, and you can switch out pretty fast along with your gear. Most would do it like that..have a PVE/Raid spec/ and a pvp one. I thought by having two different aspects that you had to have different gear sets for was goofy. Just more "the content is the gear" from them.
Where they really jumped the shark tank was with heals. They put PvE healing in with PvP. They provide healing for tanks that are taking hits that would turn anyone but a tank into a greasy spot on the floor. But this is goofy in PvP, because who can out damage bosses? Nothing more annoying in WoW than a healing spec class in PvP, you can't kill them without help. Their heals are greater than your damage unless you have a bag of tricks up your sleeve.
I have better things to do than WoW, it's now in my past.
I played WoW since the first two open betas, and recently, the last 6 months left the game. Once you level cap, then it's about gear. It's about a grind for gear no mater what you do. Gear is the high level content. PvP was an afterthought for WoW. Blizzard stumbled with it for years, doing massive nerfs, causing players to adapt to "Flavor of the Month" type game play, where you would just work on whatever class suited the system the best.
Having two types of gear, PvP and PvE just made the game annoying at the end. I got sick of Blizzard messing the things, fumbling through patches with nerfs and buffs seemingly in all the worse places. One just dreaded new patch notes. Who was going to get fucked, and who was their flavor of the month? They never got the chinese gold farmers under control either, that was one annoying factor.
As a player, I hated Chinese gold farmers and what they did to the game economy. I thought that it was culturally insulting as well. It showed massive disrespect for us and our gaming culture. I felt that only by carpet bombing them with nukes would our solution be solved.
We are seeing the rise of Flash Robberies here in America. These are orchestrated robberies that involve a large amount of youths and converge all at once upon a location, rob it blind and exit just as quickly. Technology isn't turning out to be all wine and roses in these regards and like you, we have politicians that are probably not able to do their own email, let alone be at the top of the game to deal with these kinds of issues.
Besides, shutting it down is just silly. Why not just listen to what is being said over the network, flag the large groups of messages to the hots spots for trouble/evidence. Haul in EVERYONE who was broadcasting instructions to do violent things, or lead a rabble around doing violent things. Use the technology to fight this, not panic and fear bite the technology. This is a simple case of crime, arrest those who did it, making an example that it wasn't such a bright idea to riot.
On the other hand, if they are blitzing through London, burning it down, it might not be a bad idea.
Or just take hand out some jammers to your police. You can buy them off the Internet dirt cheap. Roll into the area and kill their communications on the spot with a jammer. This lets everyone have their cake and eat it too. If they need to broadcast, they will have to move along, out of jammer range.
Or get really hippie about it, take all the weed out of your evidence rooms, pile it up wind from any rioters. Light it and put giant fans to blowing the smoke from it their way. Note: Stay out of the smoke.
Or..follow the Iranian youth's lead and invite everyone to a giant water fight some place public. Cops versus rioters water fight. Make a holiday out of it. It's a way to let off some steam, pun intended. The bottom line is; don't freak out, it's not the end of the world yet, that comes sometime next year.
Come now, lets not make like we are naive about the atmosphere of fear permeating the halls of power. Face it, they have no idea how to shut any of it off without kicking the plug out of the whole Internet. This technology, this information age, is taking a "Frankenstein-ian-eskness" to it in perspective of those in the halls of government. Everyone needs to calm down, but is that going to happen? Hmm...
I believe a healthy government of a healthy nation should have respect for it's citizens and some fear as well. Riots are people trying to say something. Try giving them an ear before shooting them, or bashing their heads in with clubs, or tear gassing them. Or not.
Before you ski down the slippery slopes consider just how fragile this modern world is, we have climbed pretty high. If we fall, its a fast trip to the bottom with no clue how to get back up. The wrong match struck at the wrong time, in the wrong place, can burn the world down.
Please read the definition of fascism, it's the polar opposite of China, as in it's oppressive, but from the other direction.
But you are right, if China is applauding your direction in these regards, you should be very alarmed, and embarrassed. In fact, I would suggest a close reading of not only the definition of fascism, but of how it comes to power in history. Try not to be overly alarmed when it all soaks in.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't be jealous either. You have to consider what you are dealing with when talking to Americans. Its a country heading downhill at breakneck speed toward fascism. The 2012 elections here, provided we make it to them without imploding, will tell the tale of our future, which looks grim either way. We are an incredibly polarized country with a propensity towards violence which promises to be volatile in the near future.
Our trade policies, which the rich corporations have fostered through our corrupt politicians, have gutted our entire industry. The jobless are growing, tent cities are springing up outside of our cities and people are homeless. Yet we continue to whistle past the graveyard, ignoring it all. We just had a showdown in our congress where the rich won, badly needed social programs will be cut so that the rich can enjoy the lowest taxes in decades.
Why aren't we rioting in the streets? Chalk it up to weapons grade propaganda, a police state second to none, and an under educated population that worships the rich and corporations like a cargo cult.
If you think you are immune to our evils in Britain, you are dead wrong. From this madness, multinational corporations have grown to power that aren't content to suck the marrow from our bones, they want everyone's, including yours. Corporations have been allowed to grow into monsters here. We were their egg. They are beyond our control now, because they control us.
All in all, it was our ignorance and greed that took us down. If nothing, we are a cautionary tale. So, make a snack, and watch as we sink into oblivion. We are collapsing under our own weight while locked in a vice grip, strangled by those in power. My advice to your country; Burn every Wal-Mart you have to the ground. Hound those who run them down and hang them from light poles down town. Protect your jobs, protect your industry or bow to your Chinese Overlords, they are the real winner when the smoke has cleared.
I didn't play those games, so they could have went to hell for all I know. I just know they were pretty good about keeping Team Fortress cleaned up. Then Valve and VAC got involved and it went to shit, and I stopped playing.
I hate cheaters. If I was king of the world, cheating would be a capital offense. You and your whole family would be executed for it. This includes your dog, your cat, the house plants, would salt your lawn, chop down your trees, it would be scorched earth. In fact, your whole neighborhood would be executed, just for letting someone like you and your cheater mindset to exist. Two houses in each direction, executed. And your mail man as well, he should have known. Come to think of it, your doctor for delivering you, and all of your teachers. Even your librarian. Your barber as well. I would throw in some people passing by just for good measure.
I would name it; PunkBuster 2.0 We will kill your ass!
Me three! I was scanning down to find a like minded thread before I started my own. It's already formed, can I have a name tag and some cake? I will hand out the punch, and I brought chips.
Thanks for the encouragement. I guess I need to finish a story instead of plunking at one, then forgetting it. Writing is fun, it's like capturing a daydream, then tweaking it. I enjoy literature classes I take at our community college, and not only because they are teaming with women that can read and hold a conversation and I am the one oddity in the class; a straight man. But literature is amazing stuff to me. Except it's so damn dark. I was taking a class on "Short Stories" this summer and every tale in it was dark. I was asking "are we EVER going to read something that isn't macabre?"
It seems as if people have a fascination with dark insanities. I think it's voyeuristic, an intimate look into others thoughts, to see their dark secrets. Frankly, I have lived in Crazyville, and the grass isn't greener on the crazy side of the fence. Perhaps I am looking to be voyeuristic into "normal life" where people don't have problems driving them batshit insane. I want to see problems solved without lots of hair pulling. I want to see relationships that work. I want the antagonist to be mere crabgrass in the lawn of life. Bring on the mundane! I can see already I would be a tiny niche demographic to write for.
Now if I can just ignore /. and a few other Internet sites, I might get something done.
It doesn't end does it? We can spit and our saliva is used to digest foods, but it could reek serious havoc on many species and their biological technology. Word has it, one group abducted a tobacco chewing hillbilly, and once in his cell, he spit out some tobacco juice and it ate through the decks of the ship until it breached the hull. The organic units used for damage control came in contract with it and had cascading chemical failure in their structures, controls and logic functions. The crew panicked, tried to get to orbit so that zero G might slow the spit down, but it was too late, they made like a lawn dart into the ocean, where the salt water dissolved them. The hillbilly washed up in San Diego and everyone just thinks he's another crazy homeless person. In fact, he gets an SSI check now for being insane. He keeps spitting on things he doesn't like, still.
It's a complete laundry list of reason why we are what alien mothers frighten their offspring into behaving with threats of. If we only had a tiny unit of galactic money for every time some alien mother said "eat your compressed nutrient pellets or some Earthling is going to come eat you", we could afford a proper space program. If we could get someone to sell to us that is.
It's mine, I banged it out in a few minutes when I read the parent post. I thought about the perspective of "we are the bad guys" and ran with it. I wanted to apply some '"bad luck is universal" to it as well. We always think of aliens having it together, being so superior, but aren't they subject to the same flaws of life that we are as well?
Then you have to consider the possibilities of how life could form in the universe. There are so many variables to consider so diverse lifeforms sound logical. Sprinkle lots of my own hyperbolic insanity over the subject and "ta da!"
Thanks, by the way. It was fun writing it.
You are missing one part of the equation, space saved.
And do what to them? Hurt them? Kill them? Threaten them?
How about that isn't a good idea, because besides breaking the law, you just might target the wrong people to fuck with. What if you trigger vigilante retaliation in the form of hunting down looter punks and exterminating them? After enough of these punks get greased mysteriously, they will be whining for that "police state" to protect them. Oh the irony.
If society has collapsed and there will be no more ANYTHING, looting would be a necessity.
But to just be looting because I can get away with it, hell no. I look at people like that as animals that need gunned down in the streets. If it's political rioting, that is another issue. But just to be rioting for greed, crime and being a punk, again, hell no. Shooting looters should be a policy, it should be a mandate.
The recent "riots" were not political protests, just a load of smashing into shops and stealing goods. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth - white goods, food, alchohol, clothing, electronics. And the crime-spree was not limited to robbery, sadly: 3 men were murdered defending their property, police were deliberately run over, people's appartments were torched. Cars, busses and entire shops were burned out. No protest here, no message, no placard waving, just people acting like animals and grabbing whatever they could.
It's Britain not Briton btw.
That kind of insanity wouldn't fly here, they would simply be shot dead long before it got out of hand. Not by police necessarily either, but our citizens. You roll into some neighborhoods thinking you are going to riot there like that, you will probably come out in a body bag. Especially if they are torching things. I can't imagine punks surviving trying to torch things in my little town.
Aliens did land here to destroy us, but they were small and insect like and the bug exterminator guy killed their entire galactic fleet, thinking they were some "weirdo bug infestation". A second attempt was tried by another species, and aquatic one, but it got ate by sharks. A third one came, land based and they were bigger, but were ate by the wild life. A fourth came and the RF that we are immune to quickly burned out their brains, and they too were ate by wild life.
A mechanical race came and was destroyed by a thunderstorm, when a bolt of lightning struck their ship and it exploded. Of course there have been several small missions which end up in races being consumed by just the biological aspects of our planet. Germs, viruses, and an assortment of microbes tend to make short work of them if they don't use the proper environmental protocols.
Not to mention we are a biological weapon to 99.9999999% of the species in the known universe. Many in the galaxy speculate that the "creator" an extra dimensional entity that instilled the creation codes, was being some kind of a dickhead when he instilled the planetary creation code for this planet. Many speculate and fear that we are doomsday weapon made by said "creator", some want to destroy us, others think we have some special link with the "creator" and should just stay away at least.
Considering we breath poisoned gas, we are mostly water, which is a universal solvent that eats through many species on contact. We live near oceans of water which scare most species. We are larger than most species by far and are physically more capable. We have lived in a constant state of war with each other since before our history, hence we are really good at it and durable, some how we fight each other so hard, yet our species is over populated. Which is a terrifying aspect of us, we breed so fast compared to most species.
Most species pray that we will just kill ourselves off. Others are convinced we will achieve the technology to travel about the universe, hence over running it in a matter of eons. But it's galactic law that nobody gives us any aid, and any species that tries to cultivate us is punished. Often rich juveniles from a species will buzz Planet Earth to impress a mate or mates, only to get shot down, spotted or crash; many escape, but its still risky behavior that if caught gets severe punishments.
Mostly we are immune to solar radiation, in fact we bath in it to get a tan. Our Sun puts out enough EMP to burn up the nervous system of some delicate species before they even get near Earth. Our skin though we think it's thin in contrast to some of the beasts of the planet, is incredible to most species. It's chemical resistant, radiation resistant, and waterproof which baffles everyone. Shooting an Earthling with an alien water cannon only amuses them. They in fact stole several water cannons and reproduce them as toys under the "Super Soaker" line. An Earthling child with a water gun chills the bones of the hardiest of galactic warriors.
Lastly, what we can eat is frightening as well. What we eat and drink frightens most species away alone. Most of them would be on our dinner plate, as a delicacy. Not to mention our waste byproducts are the most foul bits of toxic waste in the universe. They have watched us poke and prod everything on our planet and try to eat it. We have even ate each other, which is a horror that most minds can't comprehend in the universe. Not to mention we skin other species and wear them as clothes and trophies.
Then some have tried to understand us, they have figured out that TV is some form of entertainment to us, not educational, not some history archive. This process drove many species insane. One species was found in some insane collective nightmare after watching Gilligan's Island episodes, they fell into some logic loop and have been catatonic as a species ever since. They have concluded that we as a species are quite insane and it's illegal to attempt to figure us out psychologically.
Its now
And cast Justin Bieber as Deckard?
Hysterical hyperbole never helps.
Divisive American politics will be the undoing of us all. We need research to keep us in the running. Or have you noticed, we shut down our Space Program and are hitching rides with the Russians to space? I am frankly embarrassed at where we are.
Let's look at what we have done. We are in wars with people that classically never give up, a literal quagmire like we got into in the Viet Nam era. What we did learn from Viet Nam was it was a great way to fund the war machine, and war profiteers. Terrorism is the perfect boogieman, you can scare the people with it into giving up anything, and you never have a "foe" that you defeat and end your precious war.
Don't think so? We have thug cops feeling up children and grandmothers for weapons in our Airports.
Our dollar is so inflated its sickening. How do I know? Check out gold prices. It's not that gold is going up in value, its the dollar dropping in value, and this causes a panic which places gold in more of a demand. Watch how this spirals out of control.
Now screaming "Socialism" because the rich need to pony up their fair share of taxes is the hallmark of a brainwashed lackey of the uber rich. Much worse are the trade polices that gut the American industries, forcing them to move production overseas to compete. Second is labor unions that gouge the manufacturer and put them out of the running due to previously mentioned trade policies. Thirdly are insane regulatory mandates piled up from decades of bureaucracy, that strangle American industry.
We need FAIR trade policies, not Free Trade policies. Free Trade is an oxymoron. These are two words that should NOT be put together. Trade is war, trade must be handled like a hostage negotiation. Trade is the only way our federal government was suppose to be able to raise money according to our founding fathers. Tariffs were what they were suppose to be funded from. Enter a World War to give us our current tax scheme. This Income Tax was never properly ratified as a Constitutional amendment if anyone is interested or cares, making it a dinosaur sized elephant in the room we have all been ignoring for decades.
We need unions to have a fair voice, but not the ability to extort their host business. We need regulations that make good green sense, but are workable and don't gut industry.
Let me bring this to a conclusion to prove relevance to the topic.
It's going to suck big time that we do research like this, but if we don't have our industry, who's going to build things resulting from our research? Who's going to build things HERE, hence we the public get paid back in the form of taxes gained, jobs gained and the benefits of said research? We need research and to never stop it, but we also need to tend to all the other mechanics of the nation.
Mod points were obviously spent by some ignoramus who scanned the first line.
This will get appealed and tossed out, but in the mean time, it might just be handy to keep people guessing before they go rioting.
"hey, let's have a riot!"
"no, we will get a billion years in prison just facebooking about it."
"ok lets go find some birds to shag"
Something to keep the tossers off balance.
I hear you, I just wanted to get my rogue or druid up to pvp par so I could be a pain in the ass with the other side in world pvp. World PvP was completely ignored I felt. Battlegrounds and Arenas were nothing but things I had to grind through so I could have my pvp gear so I could go pick a fight. I loved ganking in WoW, I know that makes me a tool to a majority of players, but it spices up the game and gives you someone to really hate.
I know I hate being ganked. I would be out minding my own business trying to get through some daily quests or farming materials and then *GANKED*!! At first it was annoying, then infuriating, then after a while I was reduced to some growling beast, snarling curses at somebody who was corpse camping me. You have to appreciate the level of gamer depravity to be so cruel. After a while I had my WoW Colonel Kurtz moment, where I finally snapped, then saw the brilliance of it "the horror, the horror". I was hooked, I had to gank back.
That is the problem with stealthers in games in general. Its hard not to make them OP considering they have the greatest power in the game to start with, they can turn invisible. It's like Nelfs, the racial to do a "ghetto vanish" and stay invisible? This is why Boomkins in the wrong hands are just plain wrong in World PvP. In World PvP there are no silly rules and you can easily exploit the layout of the land and the environment to your advantage.
Enter the Nelf Boomkin, they can drop out of combat with the racial and instantly go to bird and fly away, leaving you on the ground, running after them mashing buttons you know will not fire. They come back as a cat, (invisible) and wait for you to be at your worse moment and then start nuking you, rooting you in place, just generally blast you into the dirt. With nothing less than omfgwtfbbqlaserchicken attacks like Moonfire, which is annoying beyond words to be spammed with. And then they buffed it for Moonkins, were you on crack Blizzard? It's ok, you put out Deathknights.
Deathknights when they came out was a freebie for everyone to run around beating everyone up. When everyone got sick of being a DK chew toy and howled about them, they at last beat them into submission with the nerfbat.
Everything had it's day. Warlocks were OP as hell for the longest time, then got beat down with the nerfbat. The first OP class was Paladins. They used to be able to wtfpown on any Undead players, it was comical while it lasted. The Undead racial at the beginning was godlike though, it was a mad balance of power. Anyway, when it first started, Paladins were to be hated and feared by the other side. They whined in unison on 10 in the forums until the nerfbat was swinging not even a week after commercial release. What a week though..lol.
WoW was fun. But the mystery of it is gone for me. It's worse than drugs though, once you play it you are hooked. I am out for more than 6 months now, and loving it...I think. Getting over a wow addiction is tricky. I just substitute a FPS for it now, which I picked the worse one to play. It looks great, but has so many cheaters in it, you just want to scream. It does make you stay on your game, because if you can place in score in the top against hacked players, you simply kick ass at the game. What really sucks, is there are hacked players who make a sport out of how many they can kill. Or games boil down to "our hacker beat your hacker".
I think i will be weaned down to solitaire card games before long, then I will be game free. For a while.
WoW raiding. There is something I came to loathe. I seen the 40 man vanilla days at MC, it was sick. I would go along with a my guild if I had to, but I detested the need for massive socialization in order to feel like you done something in the game. WoW is like a hobby, a social life and sometimes a job all rolled up in one. They got enough money out of me, time to give gaming a break perhaps until something really impresses me. The whole MMO that consumes your time thing grates on my last nerve these days. As far as forcing me to socialize, forget it. That is why I play FPS's now. I just log in, blast people, and leave when I find it dull.
Cards are actually starting to interest me. WinAmp + Spider Solitaire = win. And I don't have to deal with people, just my evil possessed computer.
Yes, they have dual spec, and you can switch out pretty fast along with your gear. Most would do it like that..have a PVE/Raid spec/ and a pvp one. I thought by having two different aspects that you had to have different gear sets for was goofy. Just more "the content is the gear" from them.
Where they really jumped the shark tank was with heals. They put PvE healing in with PvP. They provide healing for tanks that are taking hits that would turn anyone but a tank into a greasy spot on the floor. But this is goofy in PvP, because who can out damage bosses? Nothing more annoying in WoW than a healing spec class in PvP, you can't kill them without help. Their heals are greater than your damage unless you have a bag of tricks up your sleeve.
I have better things to do than WoW, it's now in my past.
Look, if criminals were smart enough to be good criminals, they wouldn't be criminals to begin with, they would do something else. Right?
Here's to hoping.
I played WoW since the first two open betas, and recently, the last 6 months left the game. Once you level cap, then it's about gear. It's about a grind for gear no mater what you do. Gear is the high level content. PvP was an afterthought for WoW. Blizzard stumbled with it for years, doing massive nerfs, causing players to adapt to "Flavor of the Month" type game play, where you would just work on whatever class suited the system the best.
Having two types of gear, PvP and PvE just made the game annoying at the end. I got sick of Blizzard messing the things, fumbling through patches with nerfs and buffs seemingly in all the worse places. One just dreaded new patch notes. Who was going to get fucked, and who was their flavor of the month? They never got the chinese gold farmers under control either, that was one annoying factor.
As a player, I hated Chinese gold farmers and what they did to the game economy. I thought that it was culturally insulting as well. It showed massive disrespect for us and our gaming culture. I felt that only by carpet bombing them with nukes would our solution be solved.
Think we could do it right this time?
This reminds me of the old saying; "Buy real estate, God isn't making any more of it."
If I may play the Devil's Advocate here.
We are seeing the rise of Flash Robberies here in America. These are orchestrated robberies that involve a large amount of youths and converge all at once upon a location, rob it blind and exit just as quickly. Technology isn't turning out to be all wine and roses in these regards and like you, we have politicians that are probably not able to do their own email, let alone be at the top of the game to deal with these kinds of issues.
Besides, shutting it down is just silly. Why not just listen to what is being said over the network, flag the large groups of messages to the hots spots for trouble/evidence. Haul in EVERYONE who was broadcasting instructions to do violent things, or lead a rabble around doing violent things. Use the technology to fight this, not panic and fear bite the technology. This is a simple case of crime, arrest those who did it, making an example that it wasn't such a bright idea to riot.
On the other hand, if they are blitzing through London, burning it down, it might not be a bad idea.
Or just take hand out some jammers to your police. You can buy them off the Internet dirt cheap. Roll into the area and kill their communications on the spot with a jammer. This lets everyone have their cake and eat it too. If they need to broadcast, they will have to move along, out of jammer range.
Or get really hippie about it, take all the weed out of your evidence rooms, pile it up wind from any rioters. Light it and put giant fans to blowing the smoke from it their way. Note: Stay out of the smoke.
Or..follow the Iranian youth's lead and invite everyone to a giant water fight some place public. Cops versus rioters water fight. Make a holiday out of it. It's a way to let off some steam, pun intended. The bottom line is; don't freak out, it's not the end of the world yet, that comes sometime next year.
Come now, lets not make like we are naive about the atmosphere of fear permeating the halls of power. Face it, they have no idea how to shut any of it off without kicking the plug out of the whole Internet. This technology, this information age, is taking a "Frankenstein-ian-eskness" to it in perspective of those in the halls of government. Everyone needs to calm down, but is that going to happen? Hmm...
I believe a healthy government of a healthy nation should have respect for it's citizens and some fear as well. Riots are people trying to say something. Try giving them an ear before shooting them, or bashing their heads in with clubs, or tear gassing them. Or not.
Before you ski down the slippery slopes consider just how fragile this modern world is, we have climbed pretty high. If we fall, its a fast trip to the bottom with no clue how to get back up. The wrong match struck at the wrong time, in the wrong place, can burn the world down.
Please read the definition of fascism, it's the polar opposite of China, as in it's oppressive, but from the other direction.
But you are right, if China is applauding your direction in these regards, you should be very alarmed, and embarrassed. In fact, I would suggest a close reading of not only the definition of fascism, but of how it comes to power in history. Try not to be overly alarmed when it all soaks in.
We have a lot of murder period. I wonder how America stacks up against the rest of the world in garden variety murders?
Rioters in the US have been peaceful so far. It sounds like an oxymoron doesn't it? Peaceful rioters.