I'd like it if you'd point me at the UN Resolution, Treaty, or any international law document at all that says taking territory from your enemies in a defensive war is "illegal" in any way, shape, or form.
Iraq: Potential but unconfirmed weapons of mass destruction, no military capacity to speak of, potentially rebellious populace has attempted to oust government in the past.
North Korea: Potential but unconfirmed weapons of mass destruction, incredibly large standing military and reserves, artillery emplaced within range of friendly capitol city, populace so brainwashed that even defectors need therapy to function in a free society.
Even considering the relative likelihood of the existence of said WMDs, Iraq is a sane target. I'd bet the US doesn't have the political will to commit sufficient forces to take North Korea. And if they did, China and Russia would violently protest (due to actually bordering Korea) as well as Japan and South Korea (both of whom are friendly governments whose major cities are at risk from existing NK weaponry.)
"Wicca" was founded in the 1950s by a British writer. Please do not confuse proper Wiccanism or craptastic fluffy new-age-psuedo-Wiccanism with ANYTHING that might have existed before the 1950s.
I learned in college econ that national policy takes about four years to have visible effects on the economy. Therefore the economy of the first four years of clinton's administration (good) was the result of Bush Sr. (and his courageous decision to raise taxes to cover the deficit, which was political suicide for a republican at that time), and the economy of the last four years of clinton's administration (starting to slide downwards) were the result of Clinton's policies.
Clinton is a middle-of-the-road prez, at best. Scandals relating to both him (monica) and his wife/advisors (the cattle futures crap etc), and a disquieting habit of randomly bombing small countries (sudan, the balkans) every time some scandal came up in the news.
Reagan is pretty bad. Bush Sr. is one of the best. Bush Jr. is right there with Lincoln and FDR in the worst five ever.
Speaking as a guy who was falsely accused of rape in the past (and said accuser still trots it out with mutual acquaintances despite never pressing charges, just to be a bitch), you'll forgive me if your statistics don't give me much comfort.
Heh, I was speaking from a player standpoint. Vryce, of course, can deal with the problem you linked (or not). I heartily don't care mostly because I don't play it. =P
The only major problem with medievia is the perpetual big-mud problem--if you don't know someone who's been around from the beginning, it's nigh-impossible to get into a good clan. Without a good clan, the game becomes a grind instead of fun.
Okay, Iraq is NOT a "gigantic" war, nor is it "money-draining". US$87bil is about one-tenth-of-one-percent of the US yearly budget. (which is US$1.2tril, IIRC)
As for "gigantic", World War Two was gigantic. Iraq is a brushfire war. Nothing less, nothing more.
Let's not get too hyperbolic in our rhetoric, shall we?
(in addition, you had to have opted in directly to have received it to begin with)
Unless I tell you "hey, send me email" by default I am BORN as Opted-Out.
I think you have a fundamental disconnect here--he said, "we dont' send to people who don't request it" and you said "*froth* BY GOD IF I DON'T REQUEST IT DON'T SEND IT"....where's the problem?
What he meant was that +1 degree C is a larger temperature change than +1 degree F, so if you're constraining yourself to the integers (as most people do in conversation) you can talk about slightly more accurate (F degrees are about half as "big" as C degrees) temperature differentials.
Slashdot's character set is extraordinarily limited, but I do believe he was trying to list the EU's figures in Euros. I think the Euro is a bit stronger than the dollar right now, but by how much, I'm uncertain.
The trick with homeworld 2 is that mission objectives tend to have a lot more HP than you think they do, so what you really have to concentrate on is conserving your own forces--wait until you can attack in bulk, repair your fighters (by docking them) every time you get a chance, etc.
Then in the level with the first shipyard, you start doing nasty things like using a marine frigate to capture an enemy infiltrator instead of reserving it to recap the shipyard instead. Then you use your new infiltrator and the marine frigate to catch two enemy infiltrators, and so on--pretty soon you're capturing every enemy frigate you see, you don't have to worry about losing infiltrators/marines to enemy gun frigates because you've got a dozen, and you can concentrate on building your fighters and gunships up to wipe the enemy carriers. After the shipyard level, it gets significantly easier provided you managed to escape the level with a decent number of ships (maybe three-four each of fighters, gunships, and frigates).
And Homeworld 2 is exactly opposed to your main gripe--you start every scenario with the exact fleet you left the last one with, and it even harvests all the resources for you after you finish the map and gives them to you. It doesn't get much more fair than that--aside from those first three levels.
They're not big. They're not bad. And they're not a problem to compile unless you don't know anything about your Linux box. And if you don't, get a friend who does--just like you do when your Windows machine won't boot because there's a remote-exploit worm out (again).
It seems that everyone who's mentioned a specific movie title has been busted for downloading a cam/screener of something that's currently in theaters. While (insert standard anti-MPAA/RIAA rant), we did know that the MPAA is getting more concerned with cam/screener piracy than anything else, and I wouldn't be surprised if they continue to leave casual infringers of films that are out on DVD/VHS pretty much alone.
By your logic, jaywalking also ought have a prison term associated with it--after all, in 90% of the places I've lived, you can get ticketed for crossing a public road anywhere but a crosswalk.
But according to geckofiend, if it's important that people think twice about doing it, jaywalking should land me jail time....brilliant idea, kid. We're in awe of your intellectual and social prowess.
Just a nitpick, but "good AI" doesn't necessarily imply "skilled AI", after all--a "good" AI might be one that makes sure the player is always "challenged" without being overwhelmed. A "good" AI makes decisions that make sense without having to "cheat" by getting more resources etc. to make up for its tiny brain (like in most old-school RTS games). A "good" AI doesn't take up enough processor time to interfere with the game's smoothness. Finally, you might be surprised at how hard it is to design an unbeatable FPS/RTS AI without having it cheat (by moving faster than the human, for example). Even more recent RTS games annoy me because their AI gets a lot of mileage out of the fact it can issue orders to multiple units pretty much simultaneously, wheras I'm stuck with the mouse.
Cold fusion, by it's very nature, is unsuitable for a weapon of any kind. The destructive nature of fusion weapons is not their radiation (which is vastly less than similarly-sized fission weapons) but the gratuitously large thermal pulse you get from hot fusion.
Cold fusion = COLD = no uncontrolled thermal pulse = no "boom".
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like it if you'd point me at the UN Resolution, Treaty, or any international law document at all that says taking territory from your enemies in a defensive war is "illegal" in any way, shape, or form.
You mean like the UN resolution that CREATED Israel in the first place?
Face, rookie.
Iraq: Potential but unconfirmed weapons of mass destruction, no military capacity to speak of, potentially rebellious populace has attempted to oust government in the past.
North Korea: Potential but unconfirmed weapons of mass destruction, incredibly large standing military and reserves, artillery emplaced within range of friendly capitol city, populace so brainwashed that even defectors need therapy to function in a free society.
Even considering the relative likelihood of the existence of said WMDs, Iraq is a sane target. I'd bet the US doesn't have the political will to commit sufficient forces to take North Korea. And if they did, China and Russia would violently protest (due to actually bordering Korea) as well as Japan and South Korea (both of whom are friendly governments whose major cities are at risk from existing NK weaponry.)
Didn't Jane's cover that in one of their flight sims?
"Wicca" was founded in the 1950s by a British writer. Please do not confuse proper Wiccanism or craptastic fluffy new-age-psuedo-Wiccanism with ANYTHING that might have existed before the 1950s.
I learned in college econ that national policy takes about four years to have visible effects on the economy. Therefore the economy of the first four years of clinton's administration (good) was the result of Bush Sr. (and his courageous decision to raise taxes to cover the deficit, which was political suicide for a republican at that time), and the economy of the last four years of clinton's administration (starting to slide downwards) were the result of Clinton's policies.
Clinton is a middle-of-the-road prez, at best. Scandals relating to both him (monica) and his wife/advisors (the cattle futures crap etc), and a disquieting habit of randomly bombing small countries (sudan, the balkans) every time some scandal came up in the news.
Reagan is pretty bad. Bush Sr. is one of the best. Bush Jr. is right there with Lincoln and FDR in the worst five ever.
Speaking as a guy who was falsely accused of rape in the past (and said accuser still trots it out with mutual acquaintances despite never pressing charges, just to be a bitch), you'll forgive me if your statistics don't give me much comfort.
Heh, I was speaking from a player standpoint. Vryce, of course, can deal with the problem you linked (or not). I heartily don't care mostly because I don't play it. =P
The only major problem with medievia is the perpetual big-mud problem--if you don't know someone who's been around from the beginning, it's nigh-impossible to get into a good clan. Without a good clan, the game becomes a grind instead of fun.
I have a concept of the varied environments: hence, I KNOW they're unstable by default.
I've also seen plenty of "ready-to-ship" code. Hence, I know that there's a lot of bad programming (and arrogant programmers) out there.
First off, servers take SATA or SCSI, not the cheepy IDE drives you find on the net.
Hitachi 160GB SATA drives are ~$105. Pretty damn cheap.
Yeah, it's only 7200rpm. It's a freakin' 1000-user mail server, if you're hitting those drives hard you need some serious help.
Okay, Iraq is NOT a "gigantic" war, nor is it "money-draining". US$87bil is about one-tenth-of-one-percent of the US yearly budget. (which is US$1.2tril, IIRC)
As for "gigantic", World War Two was gigantic. Iraq is a brushfire war. Nothing less, nothing more.
Let's not get too hyperbolic in our rhetoric, shall we?
See also Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky".
(in addition, you had to have opted in directly to have received it to begin with)
...where's the problem?
Unless I tell you "hey, send me email" by default I am BORN as Opted-Out.
I think you have a fundamental disconnect here--he said, "we dont' send to people who don't request it" and you said "*froth* BY GOD IF I DON'T REQUEST IT DON'T SEND IT".
What he meant was that +1 degree C is a larger temperature change than +1 degree F, so if you're constraining yourself to the integers (as most people do in conversation) you can talk about slightly more accurate (F degrees are about half as "big" as C degrees) temperature differentials.
Slashdot's character set is extraordinarily limited, but I do believe he was trying to list the EU's figures in Euros. I think the Euro is a bit stronger than the dollar right now, but by how much, I'm uncertain.
The trick with homeworld 2 is that mission objectives tend to have a lot more HP than you think they do, so what you really have to concentrate on is conserving your own forces--wait until you can attack in bulk, repair your fighters (by docking them) every time you get a chance, etc.
Then in the level with the first shipyard, you start doing nasty things like using a marine frigate to capture an enemy infiltrator instead of reserving it to recap the shipyard instead. Then you use your new infiltrator and the marine frigate to catch two enemy infiltrators, and so on--pretty soon you're capturing every enemy frigate you see, you don't have to worry about losing infiltrators/marines to enemy gun frigates because you've got a dozen, and you can concentrate on building your fighters and gunships up to wipe the enemy carriers.
After the shipyard level, it gets significantly easier provided you managed to escape the level with a decent number of ships (maybe three-four each of fighters, gunships, and frigates).
And Homeworld 2 is exactly opposed to your main gripe--you start every scenario with the exact fleet you left the last one with, and it even harvests all the resources for you after you finish the map and gives them to you. It doesn't get much more fair than that--aside from those first three levels.
Three words: Source. Code. Patch.
They're not big. They're not bad. And they're not a problem to compile unless you don't know anything about your Linux box. And if you don't, get a friend who does--just like you do when your Windows machine won't boot because there's a remote-exploit worm out (again).
Well, obviously you don't know what you're doing, then, 'cause I've got a rack with three.
Gonna spring for opteron, soon, but no way Win2k/2k3 is touching that baby.
It seems that everyone who's mentioned a specific movie title has been busted for downloading a cam/screener of something that's currently in theaters.
While (insert standard anti-MPAA/RIAA rant), we did know that the MPAA is getting more concerned with cam/screener piracy than anything else, and I wouldn't be surprised if they continue to leave casual infringers of films that are out on DVD/VHS pretty much alone.
Anyone got a counterexample?
By your logic, jaywalking also ought have a prison term associated with it--after all, in 90% of the places I've lived, you can get ticketed for crossing a public road anywhere but a crosswalk.
...brilliant idea, kid. We're in awe of your intellectual and social prowess.
But according to geckofiend, if it's important that people think twice about doing it, jaywalking should land me jail time.
You know that the current published minimum sysreqs from Valve for HL2 are something like 700Mhz/DirectX6 Video card, right?
He might not get the full experience, but its not going to be unplayable either.
Just a nitpick, but "good AI" doesn't necessarily imply "skilled AI", after all--a "good" AI might be one that makes sure the player is always "challenged" without being overwhelmed.
A "good" AI makes decisions that make sense without having to "cheat" by getting more resources etc. to make up for its tiny brain (like in most old-school RTS games).
A "good" AI doesn't take up enough processor time to interfere with the game's smoothness.
Finally, you might be surprised at how hard it is to design an unbeatable FPS/RTS AI without having it cheat (by moving faster than the human, for example). Even more recent RTS games annoy me because their AI gets a lot of mileage out of the fact it can issue orders to multiple units pretty much simultaneously, wheras I'm stuck with the mouse.
Eh, I take that attitude, and my fiancee is wearing a $40 garnet-in-silver-setting (it's a claddaugh, very nice) that we picked out together.
She, needless to say, takes that attitude too. She values my time (and sacrifice thereof) a lot more than she values my money.
Bzzt! Wrong:
Cold fusion, by it's very nature, is unsuitable for a weapon of any kind. The destructive nature of fusion weapons is not their radiation (which is vastly less than similarly-sized fission weapons) but the gratuitously large thermal pulse you get from hot fusion.
Cold fusion = COLD = no uncontrolled thermal pulse = no "boom".