Aileron

Tolkein was inspired by Old English works like Beowulf and King Arther. Aragorn was probably based upon King Arther in that he was a king returning to unite his country, wielding a sword much like Excalibur (Tolkein didn't like to use "magic equipment" as much as in modern RPGs, so the swords wielded by Aragorn and Frodo were so because they were important plot devices.) Gollum was like Grendel, a monster living in darkness with simultaneous fear and jealously of the light, which emerges to cause problems, though it doesn't quite seem fair to simply just run him through with a blade. As for the Ring itself, it was probably inspired by the opera "The Ring of Nibelblum" (not Old English, but...), which featured a ring which would give the wielder great power at the cost of eventual misfortune. As for the boycot, society does need methods to stop radical speech from developing. Ultimately every person on Earth has an opinion, but it takes an intelligent person to state an intelligent opinion, and there needs to be a force seperating the idiot opinions from the intelligent opinions. In a Free Speech society, that force is the Freedom to Deny a Forum, or more simply put, the Freedom to Not Listen. This Freedom is as important as speech - infact it is the same, as the fault occurs when one person monopolizes all of the forums upon which speech is given. Boycotting is not censoring. Infact, it is the opposite of censoring. It is the way in which the masses can make their point upon the forum masters. For example, most people here would probably consider North Korea a dictatorship. As an example, PyungJung Ill has previously made a movie in that country. The movie generally sucked, but it was successfull because people had to watch the movie and couldn't boycott it. The small number of film critics in that country gave it high marks, probably because they were an arm of Pyungjung's organization, though any elitist organization has the potential to "run away" from the opinions of the masses, so it is enitrely possible for them to give the movie high marks anyway. Thus, if North Korea had any electricity, and PyungJung Ill had the free time, there would be no force stopping PyungJung Ill from creating an entire series of crappy movies. Another example is those crappy cable channels that come with bundled packages. While customers have the choice of which channels they watch, they have to either buy none or pay for all of them. Thus, the channels which nobody watches have a guarenteed, defacto unboycottable, forum, and thus they are free to get crappier, and crappier, and crappier. Overall, without boycotting, the media would become a group of elitist jerks, out of touch with the people they show their media to, aka "the customers", who would just generate their own opinion and between all of them, prop their opinion up with sufficient self-promotion. It actually sounds to me that we actually need more boycotting of the crap that comes out of Hollywood. As for the Golden compass its bland, trite, and not novel. It features mostly flat charaters and done-before villians. The biggest name actress in the movie is there because she received a recommendation from people whom she recommended a few years ago, who recommended her before that in return for her recommendation for them, and so on, in a process that started sometime in the 1970s. Overall, it never was a movie worth spending two hours of your life watching to begin with. Now add that it insults a very large portion of the customer base. It deserved to be boycotted. People need to learn that when people want to boycott something, its usually because its crap. Anti-boycotters (people who buy a product specifically because someone told them not to) are a factor. However, their reward is crap. In this case, the reward is sitting through a crappy movie, and getting two hours older. I'd wager the population of anti-boycotters is small as humans tend to learn from their mistakes.

This isn't as rebelious as one would think. The good companies have actually been encouraging this game to develop, because they are paying for those meetings, and if the meeting is nothing more than a string of buzz-words, it's useless. If employees are able to successfully play this game during a meeting, it's a sign that the meeting shouldn't have been held in the first place. I wouldn't be suprised if somewhere there aren't a few managers who had these things out once in a while. If I was a manager, I'd actually place a pot on the game which would come out of the speaker's salary.

Actually, it would be better to say that I cancelled out JDS, as he only scored a couple dozen more tallies than me last round while Dav blew by both of us. That is, ofcourse, if JDS had made a net positive impact, which he did and didn't do. His positive impact was in tally scoring and recruiting. Fair to sy, there would be no lollerskates clan were it not for JDS. However, he seriously hurt his clan with general management. They simply did not have the coordination they do now.

To further add to that, Romney actually did an attack ad on the subject, where he did a side-by-side comparison between Huckabee and Norris' reputation. I don't like Romney at all. He's too much of a politician. Keep in mind that in the end there will be two names on the ticket. The way I personally want it is Gulianni for President and Huckabee for Vice President. As for Obama, I think he would make a good president some day, but not in 2008. He shows a certain rashness in some of his decision making that is not appropriate for a leader. The Democratic party leaders probably nominated him as a potential running mate with the idea that he would look like a good choice for 2012.

Mercs already don't affect income. Also, I can't put a merc-pop cap in due to the core lacking that feature. If it was available I'd put it in immeadiately. Also, limits on transfer can't be put in either. tasta may have a point though...the game is getting old fast, and it might be better to screw transfer and spend my time worrying about the V RPG.

Wow, SeVeR and I agree on something...I have sudden desire to take a long shower and burn my clothes. Ofcourse, if one were to judge a man by his religion, one would probably be a baptist, and thus its somewhat hypocritical. Bak, by "Congress" you mean the Supreme Court, right? Really the opinions of the legislative bodies are nearly irrelevant on those two issues. What is important are the opinions of the Justices the President nominates. In those regards all Republicans and all Democrats are the same: Democrats will nominate some liberal nut judge, and Republicans will nominate an "unbiased" judge who turns around and becomes a liberal nut 5 minutes after taking the oath of office.

Rather than create a 10 question poll, I'm thinking its best to come up with a positive plan for next round, and then give a yes/no vote on it. The overall goal is this: To have transfer as an effective teamwork tool, but would not add an impetus to create super accounts. First off, Turn Transfer is going away, as it gives too much power to the super-raiders. Ofcourse, that would mean defense and covert specialists would once again have a ridiculous amount of turns with no use. My thought on the matter is to multiply everything related to turns by 100 or 200 or so, and adding a turn to untrained unit converter. Thus a defensive player would be devoting more resources to extra unit production. This would not change green-grab attacking at all, max turns per attack would also be multiplied, so it would take just as many hours to carry out the same attack as it does now. This would make it cheaper to carry out a 1-turn attack or m!@#$%^&* though, though the current turns costs of those actions is already insignificant. Secondly, I'm thinking of removing soldier transfer, but replacing it with mercenary transfer. Thus, it would still be possible to reinforce a friend by giving them weapons and mercs, though the giver cannot transfer his income, which means that doing so would leave a lot of greens open for attack. This would hinder the strategy of building a super-fortress with an inpregnable defense where all income is generated. Instead, the superfortress could be built, but doing so would create undefended farms which can be harvested by the other clan. As for dealing with the super-raider account in which the whole clan diverts the whole offense to one person. First off, this is already hindered by the lack of turn transfer. It is also hurt by switching to mercs, as offensive players tend to lack the UP to have soldiers for every weapon. Additionally it is hurt by the fact that not all of the other clan's income will be in a super-fortress. Still, I don't know if this enough. So, tell me what you think, and then I'll come up with the final plan.

Well, it was rude of me to post a video and not explain what's on it, because some ppl are on 56k. Point being, Chuck Norris is endorsing Huckabee, and Chuck Norris doesn't just endorse a candidate, he tells America how its gonna be...

There are two reasons I can figure for this change in events: 1) Myself leaving Last round I was about 1/3rd of the SSCentral God's tallies, with Dav being about 1/2. However, my bigger contribution was made by constantly sabbing the other clan. Doing so hurt you guys a lot, allowing my non-sabbed clan-mates to get ahead. I have never finished first place in any round of the SS RPG, but I am still the most hated player, because usually when I'm playing somebody else on my clan gets #1 while all compe!@#$%^&*ors get sabbed. This clearly isn't all me, because I've stayed out of rounds in the past and my clan did just fine. 2) JDS leaving (by 'leaving' I mean 'being banned') This may be rude, but the evidence states that JDS hurt your clan more than anything. Its apparent in the tallies, and its apparent to me in the logs. Granted, he did score tallies, and a lot of them, but while he was present, his clan performed as a group of individuals. JDS' tallies usually came at the expense of his clan-mates, who normally wouldn't need to worry about being attacked because the Gods were never offensive specialists. So what you had was JDS at the top and the rest of his clan straggling to keep up. But other than that, last round there was little to no strategy. The whole clan built offense, while Falco attempted to get both spy and sentry. You couldn't m!@#$%^&* because everyone had too big an offense, offerred no compe!@#$%^&*ion for Best Defense, and when your one and only spy specialist had to retire you lost those two catagories - until JDS managed to catch up in best sentry, but by doing so diverted funding from strike to sentry, allowing Dav's defense to grow way past his offense, and then Dav's income became untouchable. All the while the rest of the clan filled redundant roles as offensive specialists. Additionally, the entire clan changed ships at the same time. Overall, the clan needed two guys holding Best Strike and Best Sentry more than you needed 7 Oldskool Spiders. Now, with Falcoknight and rasta420 in charge you guys are looking like a team. Obviously Falcoknight is focusing on Defense and Sentry while rasta is focusing on Strike and Covert, after that are some generalists to go after the middle ranks, and a few service members to utilize transfer. You guys also seem to have two or three dedicated massers who massed Dav consistantly. In the meantime rasta built his Strike unhindered. Dav's massed defense couldn't keep up, and the Gods were denied their chief income supporter. rasta taking sentry away from Falco does raise some concerns, but I guess both of them need sentry for the practical purpose of saving their armories from sab. I'm also would be concerned, if Dav was still in this game, what would happen when sab starts working, whether or not rasta can simultaneously focus on Strike and Spy. He might have needed to relegate Strike to HoT dOg if that had become a problem. I said it before and I'll say it again: teamwork and role-playing wins this game. Yes, it doesn't seem like it; it seems like everyone is just building stats. But generally the best clans work together, and actually do have a loose plan. Generally the good clans build upon each other's strengths in order to create an environment where it is easy to build their stats. That's usually why losers claim "cheat" so often, because the observe correctly that the game has been set up so that it is impossible for them to get ahead. Usually however, that set-up is the result of good planning made on the part of the people on the other clan. (That being said I won't deny that Falco and rasta are ahead because of transfer - though, they still aren't getting as many freebies as one would like to believe)

Sorry folks, but the 2008 Presidential bid seems to be effectively over. Yeah, I know the vote is months away, but I don't see how the other candidates can possibly overcome this. Click Here I personally am afraid to vote for anyone else now.

Don't split hairs. Yes, Iraq started the war, but 90% of it was Iranian offensive. And how does students inspired by the Khomeni cause and endorsed by the Khomeni government not qualify as a Khomeni action? And what do actions taken in 1953 have to do with actions taken by Jimmy Carter close to two decades later? The arguement I am making is that given the choice between the Shah and the Khomenis, that Carter should have actively supported the Shah.

That may be true, but it isn't the biggest reason. It is a lesson we learned from history. In Jimmy Carter's presidency, Iran was similar to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are today. It was a brutal dictatorship, but it kept diplomatic ties open to western nations. Carter decided that because of their poor human rights record, he would withdraw support for Iran. Without US support, the dictatorship soon collapsed and was replaced by the Khomeni revolution. The Khomeni revolution quickly cut all ties with the US, and infact laid siege to the US Emb!@#$%^&*y in Iran. Furthermore, they proceeded to attempt imperialistic expansion by invading Iraq. Iraq in turn resorted to chemical weapons to fight off the Iranians, and after not receiving international outcry over it, felt they had international approval to invade Kuwait. Meanwhile, in Pakistan and Lebanon, groups received funding from the Khomeni for fighting Israel, and every time one of those groups signs a treaty with Israel, that funding is cut and transfered to whichever other movement is willing to continue the fight. I'd say that "No-one can argue that the Khomeni revolution made the world a worse place", but my experience on this forum tells me that there is always an idiot to argue against any statement, no matter how iron-clad, if it is made by a conservative. I'm sure if I said "fire is hot" someone would disagree with me. All I can say is that "If anyone thinks the Khomeni revolution made the world a better place, that person is an idiot." If Carter had supported the Iranian dictatorship however, the Iran-Iraq war would not have happened, Saddam Hussein would not have had reason to develop chemical weapons, Saddam Hussein probably would not have invaded Kuwait, Desert Storm would not have happened, and Israel and Pakistan would have a reasonable chance of writing a treaty worth more than the paper its written on. Certainly Carter has more to do with the current activity in Iraq than Bush does, as the effects of Carter's decision fed many problems, such as Saddam Hussein ever having WMDs (90% of Bush's arguement on that subject was that Hussein used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war), and fed the current hostilities between Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds. Overall, were it not for Carter's bungling, Bush never would have motivation for invading Iraq in the first place, and the three races would not have as much motivation for killing each other now. Granted I'm painting a rosy picture. I highly doubt that it would have made the Middle East a happy land of peace and harmony. However, the point is that in 30-year hindsight, the negatives of that decision are atrocious, and the only positive of that situation was short-term political. Long story short, the reason why the west sometimes supports dictatorships is because their replacements usually are even worse. The US strategy regarding Pakistan was correct. Support the Sharif, but also support Bhutto's replacement of the Sharif. The US strategy regarding Saudi Arabia is also correct. Support the Saudi monarchy, and hope that something better comes around to replace it, and when it does, support that. The nukes Pakistan has are a distraction. We want the next transition to be smooth anyway - nukes or not it would still be a disaster to just drop support. Really, I think that's why the Presidency has an age minimum, as acting rashly based upon what one "feels" is right usually does more harm than good.

Wow. There is a default image pack. The icons come from it. The reason I'm not using the default image pack, besides it not having anything to do with Subspace, is that all the images are blatant rip-offs of various things. The 'spells' come from Street Fighter and Dragonballz, the 'Pets' come from Digimon and Pokemon, one of the bot images is Gollum from Lord of the Rings, and everything else comes from miscellaneous animes not all of which I can identify, but some of which I can, and I am NOT much of an anime nut. (I recognize the irony of having an anime avatar and making that statement.) Hence, I didn't upload most of the default images. I didn't realize the icons were rip-offs too. Jeez, I'd bet the health/mp/xp bars are rip-offs as well, there are only three used while there are about 20 colors in the pack.

I've sort of made it a New Year's Resolution to get that VRG up and running. The problem is as an artist, I'm capable but I suck. I'd much rather be working with the numbers aspect of it. So, I'm making another call for volunteers to step foward and help with the V RPG. I don't really have a budget for this project, so the only reward I can offer is in-game perks for those who decide to help. One skill I will need is someone with experience with animated .gif files. Don't be scared if you don't know how to do that - there's plenty more stuff other than that. Still, sooner or later someone's going to have to do them

I'll fix the poll tomorrow. In the meantime...who was the idiot who voted "remove it now" for soldiers and weapons while voting to add transfer of mercs and covert units?

On the other hand, I do think limited transfer adds to the game... Clearly though the ability to transfer anything is too strong. One thing definitely staying on is the green transfer. (Because you can transfer greens to someone by letting them attack you anyway.) Editing polls to include more opinions. For reference, rasta is actually trading for the stuff he gets. The trick is that he's trading for turns, which gives him a lot of attacking possibility.

Here's a poll. I found I can remove sectional transfers.

Astro, we don't know if it was Sharif. It could have been Al Queda, or more likely than both simply some local nut who would benefit from Bhutto's removal. I was speaking widely though. The point being was all three are so disgusting that they don't deserve to be sharing oxygen with the rest of us. The tragedy here is that Sharif is treated as an "upstanding member of the international community", the local thugs who are the heirs to powerfull local families somehow qualify as local governments, and Al Queda, though given a lot of condemnation, still aren't getting everything they deserve. For instance, when he was asked what he thought about the label "Islamic Fascists" applied to Al Queda and other groups, a quoted response from former CIA director James Woolsey: "Well, to call Ahmadinejad and the Wahabists of Saudi Arabia and Al Queda Islamic Fascists is really quite an insult to Mussolini, because the Italian Fascists were not explicitly genocidal..." These people aren't merely totalitarian. They do not simply wish to rule a country or an empire as dictator. They also wish to spread death and hatred. Secondly, the US helped arm them for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but no nukes were involved with that. The Cold War, while helping to spread a lot of conventional weapons, did little to spread nuclear ones, as both sides quickly realised that lackies with nukes were more of a liability than anything. Going in to Pakistan is inadvisable. Relative to other Muslim countries in the area, Pakistan is stable.

Actually, it would be worse. Showing a m!@#$%^&* on TV is an act of Free Press. Any move to prevent that from happening would be anti-free press and would be wrong. Ofcourse, if it were limited to mere complaining it would also be free speech. Remember that there is a line between complaining and boycotting, both perfectly acceptable actions, and suing and censoring. The offense against the PC crowd is over being sued repeatedly, as if our judges either haven't read the Bill of Rights or just don't care. As far as I'm concerned, courts are for crimes. If your neighbor steals your TV, then you should take him to court. Courts shouldn't be used in the event you don't like whats on your neighbor's TV. Additionally, I for one have never been offended by "Happy Chanukah". In my opinion, if anyone is offended by persons of another religion practicing their religion, then those people are jerks, and that includes if its Christians celebrating Christm!@#$%^&*. PS - I will be jerk in the case of Kwanza. It is an artificial holiday for African Americans who didn't want to celebrate the "white man's Christm!@#$%^&*". Come on - I thought we were supposed to integrate our society rather than split it apart. Those who celebrate Kwanza are just racist.) PPS - Yes Sever, you had to include that, didn't you? Funny how you'll point out that early Christianity made many compromises with the pagans, and then you'll turn around and claim the Church doesn't compromise.

Well, you are not paranoid, though the article is. The fact of the matter is that our enemies are resourcefull enough. I have seen an at!@#$%^&*ude among people that because Al Queda lacks resources, that they somehow are harmless. Usually these people argue that as such it would be important to fight "clean" and maintain the moral high ground rather than fighting to win. While no one can disagree that having military hardware as well as an economy to support it is vital for a military operation, determination can forge ways to do it. Certain things in that article don't make sense...they would not use sleeper cells with a nuke - if they managed to get the thing into the country they would just deploy it immeadiately. Also, nuclear power plants wouldn't cause secondary atomic explosions. Additionally, Al Queda probably does not have getting revenge for Japan on their motivations list. They probably would count Japan as another one of their enemies. However, the important thing here is that something very similar to that could work. I think people should take scenarios like this into account, as well as the fact that these people are ruthless, when deciding whether or not we should water board these people.

Political !@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*inations have occured throughout history. The difference is before they couldn't be straight-up done like this. Usually such actions would mean severe political reprecussions. Now, however, we have organizations who basically have reached the lowest morality possible under current political correctness standards. Basically, whoever did this is an evil !@#$%^&*, and so much of an evil !@#$%^&* that he is free to do any evil act at will because by Earthly standards he can't possibly sink any lower. They know they will get a certain amout of mercy from the forces of civilization regardless of their actions, so they have no motivation to stop.

Let me re-direct your anger towards where it should be. Nothing is wrong with the Terrier. Infact, rasta pointed out to me that it is extremely strong if used properly. UP upgrades are expensive, but worth it. The problem is the transfer ASSS. Up until now the solution was simple: no transfer. But, events last round pointed out to me that it was only a matter of time for a workaround to be established regardless. My intention on this matter is the following: Allow people to transfer, but make it hurt. The problem is that it is simply too hard to hurt each other in this game without making it lame.

HOE was leading when I took scores. Whether or not he had it even one second afterwards is not my concern. Updating score for sound's absence.

The kids at Columbine did bring a makeshift bomb to the school if I recall. All of Canada's guns come from other countries; they have no weapons manufacturers. The whole arguement is that if no manufacturers of weapons existed, demand would suddenly go away, based on the logic that if you hold a dog's tail still, the tail will wag the dog. It started with cities who wanted to ban weapons. They do so, and it does nothing. To save face, they claim that the reason it failed was because guns were being imported from the state or province around the city, so then the province bans guns. It still doesn't work, and to save face they claim that the reason it failed was because guns were being imported from other provinces, so then they get the whole nation to ban guns. It still didn't work, and now the claim is that it is because guns are being imported from other countries. Look, there has been a demand for weapons since the dawn of time, and that demand will continue to exist until judgement day. Hate it if you want. Point out that said demand will interfere with your dreams of a utopian society, but note that the demand won't go away. The fiasco with prohibition, and the current problems with the War on Drugs should illustrate this. If the demand exists, the supply will find a way to meet it. Every civilized country in the world bans illegal drugs, but does that mean that no marijuanna farms exist? No! Suppliers found a way to operate, grow their crops, and smuggle them in to civilized countries. I didn't mention the mall shooting yet. Look, we all know that while tragic, in the grand scheme of things it is insignificant to the number of muggings, robberies, rapes, and murders that occur on a routine basis. Heck, the total of all coalition casualties from the War on Terror have been less than deaths caused by routine crime. Still, I say the problem here is that there was a lot of people in the same place without proper security protection. In my humble opinion, there should be two guns in the hands of security officers for every one AED on the premises, for any building with a large number of people in it. Training as to how to use the gun isn't as important as people make it out to be - If you matched a civilian off the street with no combat training, and gave him a semi-automatic handgun, and matched him up against an unarmed Navy Seal in an open and well lit area with no cover, the civilian would win.

attraction's post deleted for being off-topic. JDS' ban had nothing to do with the Forum Games. This thread is about his SS RPG account. Posts regarding JDS' ban should be done in the various threads on the subject which are in the Spam and Trash forums. However, to answer your question in as quick a manner as possible: JDS was banned by staff for continually spamming the forums, disregarding warnings, having a sig disrespectfull of the dead, and generally ticking everybody off.