Aileron

Yeah, one thing I didn't put in the tutorial is how to avoid sabotage. To avoid getting your weapons sabbed, you have to do two things: 1) Don't join 1337 Soldiers 2) Don't make me angry 2 1/2) Attacking me every day will make me angry Otherwise, you'll pretty much lose half your armory every day until you get your sentry around 2 bil in strength.

Well, Iran is still a bunch of fundimentalists Shi'ites who are also meddling with Iraq and are the force behind the attacks on Israel. I would say that Israel is still more usefull than Iran. Dropping Saudi Arabia and Turkey only to pick up Syria and Iran would not be an improvement. I wouldn't entirely say that we should drop Saudi Arabia either. Yes, they are the most backwards nation in the Middle East, possibly the world. However, domestically they are torn between pro-west and anti-west factions, the latter of which is responsible for the more fundimentalist domestic policies. If we dropped support, the pro-west factions would die out, and the anti-west factions would just get worse. I can't say I like the status quo, but dropping support for Saudi Arabia is not a solution. Fundimentally, the choice of allies involves which allies would serve our interests the best. If our interests were to bring about 'stability', pull all support out of the Middle East as soon as possible, and pretend their historical streak of violence won't happen again and won't spread, then Iran would be a good choice. However, I believe our goal isn't to bring 'stability', but to destabilize a system that will routinely rage war in its stable state, and replace it with a system that has balance and democracy, and that's where we wouldn't want Iran as an ally. Yes, Iran wants short-term peace, but they will always want their neighbors to convert to Shi'ite Islam. Its good to see people thinking about this. JDS' rash comments on the subject scare me.

That's the other thing...quit selling humanity so short. If the cure was perfected and the only thing holding us back were funding, somebody would find a way.

Dav, first off I thought you were way too mature to resort to such hate. Secondly, last I checked it was 'birth controll = !@#$%^&*' and birth controll pills don't stop the spread of STDs. Third of all I wouldn't recommend counting on a condom to prevent one from catching HIV either. I'd rather try the "don't sleep with someone that has HIV" approach. I mean, blaming HIV on the Church goes beyond all levels of ridiculous. Previously people pretty much obeyed the Church's ideas on abstenance, STDs didn't spread much, and HIV was non-existent. HIV has probably been around a long time, but the Church's 'narrow dogmatic views against sexual expression' had kept the disease confined to the jungle. The Church has prevented the spread of HIV for 1900 years. However, suddenly some hippies decide to start a "sexual revolution" and these diseases spread all over the place. Now, if the Church were a much of jerks, we'd all be saying "I told you so", but that kind of rash stupidity is for the intellectual immature. However, what I would say is that it is pure foolishness to turn around and blame the Church for a problem caused by secularists.

Not to be a jerk, but most of this stuff is covered in the tutorial. I spent a lot of time on that, you know.

!@#$%^&* you're a pessimist. Its one thing to say the gl!@#$%^&* is half empty, but you are calling it half-empty while its under the faucet. When the prototype is perfected and distributed properly, then we might very well wipe this disease out.

Currently, money gain per hour is: 200 * (soldiers) + 150 * (covert) - 150 * (mercenaries), where (soldiers) is the sum of all Untrained Soldiers, Offensive Specialists, and Defensive Specialists, (covert) is the sum of all Spies and Sentries, and (mercenaries) is the sum of all Offensive Mercenaries, Defensive Mercenaries, and Untrained Mercenaries. You increase money gain per hour by increasing your number of soldiers. Soldiers are primarily gained hourly at a rate which is called "Unit Production". You can increase Unit Production on the "Training" page.

That's irrelevent as of yet...players aren't put on the board until they score tallies. When they are, their clan is checked and updated.

Truth be told everyone could use more money, and every product which can be bought by money is always cheaper with the five-finger discount. "Tough times" arguements only apply when the object in question is a 'need'. Sorry, but X-box games don't qualify. I for one can't afford an X-box 360 either, so I ended up sticking with a Gamecube. The way I figure it, Microsoft is building a product that their customers can't afford, while Nintendo is. If Nintendo sells more of their products, both companies would know that their customers would be in demand for cheaper products and would sell them at a lower price. Don't get me started about Europe... ....I mean seriously....PLEASE don't get me started about Europe....

The Democrats can't have president because they have no platform. All they are currently is simply anti-Republican. The Democrating Congress is doing nothing because without Republicans to criticise they have no idea what to do. For the same reason I wouldn't vote for any of the Democratic candidates for president, because when Bush is gone, they won't have anybody to be against and will be at a loss for what to do. mass if you haven't figured it out yet, Bush Jr. is a much more powerfull figure than his father was. Face it, Bush Sr. was a whishy-washy vice president whe never really got beyond Reagan's shadow. If by 'finished his daddy's war' you mean 'Nuetralized a hostile en!@#$%^&*y that his two predecessors failed to deal with', then you would be correct. Turkey isn't really 'protecting their borders' as much as 'stopping a revolution'. The major meat of the organization opposing them comes from their own Kurdish citizens. Still, those organizations use Iraq as a safe haven to get supplies from. I do view that Turkey is taking the appropriate action by pursuing the rebels into Iraq. It has been proven enough times in history to show that proper defense against guerilla warfare does involve crossing some line on a map once in a while. However, my point is: we should want the rebels to win. I don't stand for invasion of Iran; I stand for diplomacy with Iran. However, in real life, fuctional diplomacy between half-hostile parties has little to do with sitting at tables and creating idle chatter and more to do with threats and blackmail. The Kurds can become a threat to Iran. Alternate ideas are very dangerous to a theocracy. If we support the Kurds now, they would support us later when we need to talk to Iran.

fixed

Well, it's a tough call. I mean from the other perspective, the people who are making the product deserve to make money too. Put yourself in the position of one of the game coders working for Microsoft Xbox products. You've worked your !@#$%^&* off getting through college, a feat that wasn't easy and which you are proud of. Financially, you have college loans, an appartment, and car payments. You work forty hours a week in an office staring at a computer screen, putting up with your boss and co-workers. Now, would you want to get paid for your work, or would you rather write computer code for free and take a second job at McDonalds to pay your bills? People tend to want the wage they deserve. Ofcourse, the companies who make the products are out for profit themselves, so they won't hire the programmer in the first place if there is no profit to be had. So you have to ensure that they get the proper money for the work they have done. So the legitimate business, including all of the employees who work for the business, should suffer losses for some lazy tech junkie doesn't have to get a real job? Good lord, the man is 38 years old and living with his parents! He should have gotten a job and earned his money that way. As for the customers, if you have enough free time to play X-box games but no money to pay for them, getting a job will solve both of those problems. Granted the government is overrun by lawyers who do a lot of stupid things - this specific case isn't one of them.

Yes and no. Yes, under present cir!@#$%^&*stances that's all you need, but it wouldn't be true if they developed the proper technology. All they would need is a program that would scan the contents of random files as they p!@#$%^&* through the major routers. However, with current technology that would be impossible without slowing the internet down to a crawl. Still, all it would take is somebody to come up with some clever idea, so really the only reason that works is because nobody set about trying to make it not work.

Hmmm...there's an example of the point I'm trying to make, because the government has set standards for automobiles which are enforced without having to resort to socialism. The government doesn't regulate cars; they regulate roads. If indeed they regulated cars by looking into people's garages, they could never get it done, but they don't that way - they have police patrol the roads looking for people without inspection stickers. Auto manufacturers comply with what is street legal because if they didn't the car could not be driven on a road and few customers would have need of it. The internet works very much like the interstate system. Yes, it is as impossible to regulate the populace's connections to their ISP as it would be to regulate their driveways. However, what is possible is to regulate the ISPs and routers themselves. For instance, they could fine AOL for every illegal item they catch going through one of their servers.

There has been news recently of Turkey starting to pursue "Kurdish rebels" into Iraq. They have come up short of a ground invasion, but are still behaving aggressively. My two cents: As an American, I think Turkey has finally reached the status of "liability". Throughout Operation Iraqi Freedom the Kurds have represented the most stabilizing force in Iraq. While the Sunnis and Shi'ites want some kind of Islamic revolution, the Kurd's goal wherever they are geographically is simply equal citizenship. The Kurdish population has been divided between Iraq, Iran and Turkey. For thousands of years they have been fighting whichever authority was present because they all wanted the Kurds to convert to either Sunni or Shi'ite Islam depending upon the religion of the authority. Because of their goals, they've been extremely pro-coalition, and have a big interest in true Iraqi democracy. There hasn't been any instances of Kurdish based violence in Iraq post-Saddam, and those populations have generated the least corrupt and most sane soldiers for the new Iraqi military. Their only weakness is a higher than average female population because Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMDs have wiped out most of the men in the early 90s. Turkey did not offer any support for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Their concern was that if the Kurds in Iraq were ever let out from under Hussein's thumb, that the Kurds in Turkey might want equal rights as well. That prediction was correct. I'd say we should support Iraq in this case. With the Cold War over, we have little benefit in maintaining the alliance with Turkey, but many reasons to support the Kurds. First off, as stated above they are very supportive of a democratic Iraq. Secondly, they also have a large population in Iran, that are also on the brink of demanding equal rights and could prove very usefull when trying to stop Iran from developing its nuclear program. Finally, its a long shot but if all of the Iraqis started viewing themselves as Iraqis repelling a Turkish threat rather than squabbling gangs, then they might unite together against it.

Anyone who stands for piracy needs to watch "the Untouchables" sometime, or take out a history textbook and look up the roaring 20s. Yes, sometimes laws are written for bad reasons in an overzealous attempt to tell people what to do, but nevertheless it is still arrogant to feel that because one thinks the law is wrong, that one feels he has a right to violate the law freely. History has shown that if we allow "harmless" criminals to operate, they eventually start to work together, and after that they start to get violent. They begin to fight over territory and customers. You people see a way to get cheap music and video games; I see the formation of an internet mafia. They can easily "crack down" on internet piracy. There is an old naval saying on dealing with the ship-sailing variety of pirates: "The best way to defeat pirates is not by sea, but by land." The ship sailing pirates, like any operation, needed an infrastructure. They needed ports to buy supplies and repair their ships. They needed an intelligence network to find out where merchant traffic was going. They needed a market at which to sell their goods, and that market in turn needed customers. All of those things by their nature existed on land, in a world where ship-sailing pirates were not very adept at. Piracy pretty much stopped as soon as all the ports wouldn't harbor them. Internet piracy can be stopped the same way, and this case is an example. The guy needed chips from a place that can manufacture them, shipping from Hong Kong to England, a location at which to store the chips, and a method to ship the chips to the customer - none of those things can be done over the internet. There needs to be real infrastructure in place. As for the downloading of songs, it is more difficult but there are still things in reality. There are servers which in turn need communication lines with other servers, and there are ISPs which connect those servers to the consumer. They could easily stop illegal downloading with the proper controls on routers and ISPs. It wouldn't be usefull for catching the perpetrators, but it would seperate them from their customers. As for those who hate the music industry, please reconsider your decision to download illegal songs. There are likely legal alternatives to the big record labels, and if they had a large customer base they could either put the big companies out of business or force them to make a better product. However, that isn't going to happen if those legal alternatives can't turn a profit because all of the customers they should have are downloading pirated material.

The infidel Static Burn got what was coming to him today. Ailestani raids on his supply lines have forced him to stop his constant raids and regroup for a while. While the government does not believe his !@#$%^&*ets have been truly destroyed, it is suspected that with the newer more complicated attack plan, Static Burn is much more likely to make a critical and fatal mistake. This is timely because Davantis has been making calls for help today against the infidels JDS and rasta420. While Dav's forces have been holding the infidel armies at bay, he will require aid to caste them down to the painfull humiliation they deserve. The international community has called off their diplomatic efforts to retrieve some protestors today. The protestors had smuggled themselves into our country to protest the Ailestani general way of life. However, upon further investigation authorities had found illegal BLT's packed in their fannypacks. The protesters were rounded up and deported to rasta420 in accordance with Ailstani law, specifically to the location of rasta's weapons' cache. The infidel rasta420 caught them and had them executed. The Ailestani authorities have joined the international community in criticism of rasta420's treatment of the protesters.

Okay, fine. I'll post the time.

Sorry if I made it sound like that, but I don't post any information regarding soldiers or weapons. To give an appraisal of how much damage was actually done would give everybody a partial recon on a player who currently is unreconable.

no one is laughing....

Well, to be honest I wasn't really carried away with the "SS Wars" idea...the SS RPG has been going on for the better part of a year now, and we have finally reached the point where people are ~mostly~ happy with the settings and the gameplay. To be honest, I didn't feel it was appropriate to start changing anything other than names at this point. The results speak for themselves. Currently we have two clans with over 1400 tallies each, and they are within 27 tallies of each other. For over two months this round has been going on, and the two leading clans are within 8 hour's worth of tallies of each other. It can't get more compe!@#$%^&*ive than that. We have a very rare system in place - an MMORPG with settings that promote even compe!@#$%^&*ion - most MMORPGs seemed destined to get one very old major clan that keeps destroying the latest round of newbies. Granted, the Gods have been around since this thing started and have been winning a lot of rounds, but its always by a nose, never by clear-cut, overstacked, why-did-I-ever-bother-to-start-playing kind of mismatches. However, the other results say that the critical m!@#$%^&* of the SS RPG seems to be around 20 players, and frankly the core isn't built in such a way that can handle more than that. For instance, there's no limit on the sabber's end of sabotage, so if all our dreams came true and there was 1000 players, the one person could sab 999 people daily. There's no cap on mercs, so if mercs could have any kind of sane price on person could buy all of them. Thus, I am into this new one because it probably will have more capacity, and its something different. I doubt we would be able to attach a Subspace theme to it though. The major thing I'd like to see is a demo from the admin side of things. I'd like to know if classes, weapons, spells, etc. can be customized. I mean, I for one don't want this to end up like Diablo II where the only strategy is choosing "Barbarian" as your class, being a lucky sob who wins the .001% chance of finding a high-quality item, and whirlwinding everything in sight. I for one would insist that the classes are balanced, the items don't get insanely powerfull (or the insanely powerfull ones have nasty side-effects), and each class would have several styles of play in and of itself. Futhermore, I'd also insist that the spell lists would include some comic relief spells. I mean, the classic thing evil mages do to people is turn them into various furry animals.

Well, you guys have been getting 34 exactly for the past few days solid, so if you guys want to get 30 instead of 34, I'll be happy to oblige...

And it is also historically known that many of the "Renaissance Men" like Michelangelo were gay, and apparently Michelangelo was not hunted down and killed before he was commissioned to paint a famous church. Generally I'd assume that being dead would be a great hinderance to one's painting ability. I mean, I could be wrong. There very well could be lots of undead artists in the world...they seem to be voting once in a while. However, if I'm right either the "gay-hunters" missed a famous person that we know the private details about 400 years later or they ~gasp~ didn't care back then either!! Believe it or not, there is a passage in the Bible about "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.", and as long as the sinner isn't hurting anyone else, Christians throughout history usually stuck to it. And Michelangelo is not an exception to the rule; There were lots of homosexual artists and nobles in Christian Europe who weren't hunted down and eliminated. De Vinci is suspected. Heck, Queen Elizabeth almost married one, but called it off for that reason (note that the man wasn't killed after being found out). Generally, the only case in history of people hunting down homosexuals and killing them was when somebody took Darwin's ideas and tried to evolve humankind into a more "evolved" race. You are citing the existance of homosexuality in many places and times, but you didn't make a move towards claiming that it was generally accepted. Pros!@#$%^&*ution, for example, is the "world's oldest profession". It was never accepted in any culture, but it existed. There are countless examples of !@#$%^&*houses and red light districts in every civilization in history, and plenty of powerfull leaders, powerfull enough to literally get away with murder, who would set up harams. However, in NONE of those cases was pros!@#$%^&*ution regarded as a virtue among the populace. Either it was turned a blind eye to, ignored, or the participants were powerfull enough to be beyond reproach. Homosexuality was the same way. It was practiced, sure. However, it was never encouraged, and certainly never was a subs!@#$%^&*ution for heterosexual relations, not even among the Greeks or Romans...because at the end of the day, the Emperors needed to produce an heir, and homosexuality can't do that. That's a biolgical fact that was constant throughout every culture, so thus no culture could have put homosexuality one the same pedestal liberals want it to be on today. As for a gay gene, I'll actually use evolution for this one so you can't argue about it. If there was a gene for pure homosexuality and the obvious genes for heterosexuality, over time the species would evolve towards heterosexuals because the homosexuals would spend less time searching for a mate that would produce offspring. Now a pure Darwinist would claim that the "gay gene" would be some relic of single sex creatures...however, according to even the most modest estimates, that would have been a LONG time ago and any genetic relic from that time would be long gone.

So, out of a world of 5 billion people and in a nation of 300million people, "hundreds" of people, most of them college professors, doubt the truthfullness of 9/11. I could find a few hundred people who honestly believe the world is flat.

I was exaggerating, though beating the CIA in terms of competency isn't really that difficult, the organization has a history of bungles from the U2 and The Bay of Pigs in the 50s to the fact that they can neither find Osama Bin Laden nor most of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons which he has used to commit genocide half a century later. Still the Church is good at gathering information due to the heirarchy. Every Church going Catholic is linked to atleast an arch-bishop by only three degrees. Thus, if a layman sees a miracle and immeadiately calls his priest, then the priest calls his bishop, then the bishop calls his arch-bishop, and the arch-bishop calls the Vatican, the Pope could learn about an event occuring on the other side of the world before the local news does. Granted most Catholics don't spend all day standing next to the telephone, but...