Aileron

Oh, they won't violate their religion en masse, but they will find a way around it. My bet is that they'll recruit non Hindus or animals to do the job for them. Jeez, if ppl only drilled a pressurized insulated vacuated tunnel through the Earth we could send them several litters of stray cats to solve that problem which would arrive in 42 minutes at no cost of fuel, and only sacrificing one of the cats' nine lives. Ur right in that we are screwing ourselves with outsourcing and education, but I'd say we'll eventually stop. Those problems are certainly less daunting than Europe's unification needs or China's social problems.

Letting Gays marry is only progressive if its a good idea that will be done in the future. That arguement !@#$%^&*umes a viewpoint is correct in order to prove its correctness. Rebublicans came to power in the 90s by being the opposite of authoritarian. Apparently authoritarianism just comes from being in power too long rather than political viewpoint. As for abortion...I for one don't like the way that came to pass The way our government is supposed to work, getting a cons!@#$%^&*utional right or ban installed should take an overwhelming 2/3rds majority from Congress. That's almost 400 congressmen and the support of the millions of people who voted for those congressmen. Instead, we had something added onto a bill of rights by half a dozen judges who nobody voted for using a very long stretch of the Search and Seizure amendment. As for "Stay the Course", the dynamic strategizing is the job of the military officers. That message was intended for the civilians both in government and at the polls. Well, if you look over LONG history, science didn't really start advancing until the Christians took over, so we must have done something right. I mean, sure, one can come up with several examples where Christians hindered progress but at the same time Christianity didn't completely stop progress in its tracks for tens of thousands of years like most of the preceeding religions, so it is possible to be both Christian and progressive. Communism didn't fail because of its extremism. It fell because it was an unstable idea. I don't know who wrote this, but statistically every person on Earth is connected to every other by no more than 6 contacts. Communism is really the same thing as tribalism, which actually worked in pre-historic times when everyone was connected by 2 contacts. Monarchy also worked at its time when everyone was connected by 3 or 4 contacts. Generally when the population increases certain problems start showing up, which Marx's manifesto didn't address. The Democrats are far from communistic, but many of their ideas still have been tried by the communists. Keep in mind, that authoriatarianism isn't a real political viewpoint, only a side-effect from having power. As for classism, there's a very simple solution...stop promoting the arts and start promoting the sciences. Too many of our students want to be either musicians or actors and not enough of them want to be engineers or medical personnel. The former is always rich or poor, whereas the latter are usually solidly middle class. Both parties have strength in the sciences: the Democrats have the researchers (Professors, higher level students) and the Republicans have the implimentors (most professional jobs).

I'm sorry, but a citizen must be a level 5 member before being eligable for SSforum housing. Ofcourse, the finest palaces are reserved for the Komrade Administrators and the lesser mansions are reserved for the Komrade Moderators in any case. However, there is a job opening you could apply for to live at one of Komrade Administrator Polix's many palaces. All you have to do is taste his food, check his bedroom for traps, and pose as Polix for the occasional public address in high security risk areas. To apply for the job contact the SSforum Democratic People's Office of Jobs at (555) 555-5555 between the hours of 11:59 PM and 1:00 AM on the day they turn the clocks ahead one hour.

Actually the massive changing event already occured...the fall of communism. That suddenly changed a lot of new progressive ideas into old attempted anti-progressive ideas. Strangely enough the Republicans have become the new progressive party, and the Democrats are stuck trying old ideas that were tried by the communists and proven as failed ideas. The Democrats need moderates to pick up the slack, and still any face-off between two moderate candidates ends favorably for the Republican, because the moderates get split and the extremists pick the moderate who is closest to their ideals.

China's social problems cannot be swept under a rug in terms of economics. They live in a classist system, that alone limits the heights their economy can reach. Sweeping it under the rug can make them stable, but that fundimental truth will still be there and still hold them back. We do have a problem in that few people are willing to work in technical fields. Simply put, that part of the workforce is paid less than what they are worth, and accountants are paid far more than they are worth. But, that problem is like India's rat problem, its there but its so easy to solve that it will be solved in the future. I forget where I read about India's rodent problem, maybe a Time magazine a few years back. It stems from them being Hindu, believing in reincarnation, and being forbidden to kill any animal. I really shouldn't have mentioned it at all, its not a critical problem. As I said, they will solve it soon enough anyway.

Well, the reason ppl aren't trusting the wii is because Nintendo has been sucking it up in terms of commissioning games. The reason why people stand in line for hours upon end is because they want to. It's likely the only fresh air and social interaction those type of ppl get anyways.

Why not? I mean in the 1860s the Republicans were the leaders in civil rights and in the 1960s the Democrats were the leaders. I was born in the 1980s so both cases are history to me. One was more recent the the other was more important, so as far as I'm concerned both parties have equal weight in the civil rights department, though I would understand why someone who lived throught the 60s would feel otherwise. Really the modern GOP has no racism outside of Strom Thurmond. Before 2000 their number one choice for president was Colin Powell, who simply would rather have retired than become president. The GOP would gladly nominate Rice. The problem is that she doesn't want to run for president either. I say draft her. As much as I like Bush we would've been better off under Powell. Lets not make the same mistake twice.

China will have to deal with their social problems sooner or later. India's current food supply is already under threat from the vermin, and keep in mind that rats reproduce faster than humans, so until something changes it will only get worse. That being said, historically when people need to decide between a better way of life and tradition, way of life always wins because the whole purpose of starting the tradition in the first place was to improve the way of life. India's rat problem will get worse and worse, but when it reaches a certain threshold they will find a way to kill the rats. Keep in mind that the US's primary education is failing, and by failing I mean "not doing as good as Europe" which really means that ours is sufficient, it just happens to be that theirs is better. Furthermore that's in terms of taking tests on textbook topics, not real world training and skills. Our Colleges and Universities on the other hand are generally the best and our scientific and engineering workforce still rivals Germany and Japan, with particular dominance in the aviation industry. India's economy however consists of sending students to the US to get educated and then having them return to India to do lower-end technical jobs for lower wages than US technicians and engineers. As the Indian economy grows, they will need to build up their own educational system and they won't be able to rely on their engineers being willing to work cheaper than US, Japanese, and German engineers. They are doing good, and its clear they are going to become an economic power within the next hundred years. I just wouldn't count on them being the next superpower yet.

I think somebody needs to be sent back to the gulags for accussing our dear and beloved leader of such a thing. Now shutup and get in the back of the truck or I'll use my electric whip on you.

Neither. Both of their economies are based upon cheap labor. When their economy grows, their people will be richer, and labor won't be as cheap. Besides, China has a lot of social problems to solve and India has food-supply problems caused by vermin they can't kill for religious reasons.

I thought I started a topic like this last week. Well, sorry people, but I have some serious ranting that needs to be done: I don't have that much money to spend. Sure I'm American and thus my income is still in the top 10% of the world, but I simply can't afford to spend a hundred or so dollars on a video game system, so I usually like to stay a few years out of date. I only got a GameCube a month ago. This makes me favor Nintendo products because of their policy of low prices, attracting new gamers, and keeping games non-violent. But, as I was browsing for GameCube games in the store last week, I wsa dissappointed. "Cheap, Attracts Newbs, and non-violent" does not necessarily mean "sucks !@#$%^&*". I mean, back in the old skool days when technology was limited, virtually all the games were like that. Pac-Man, Pong, Frogger, Missile Command, Asteroids and Tetris were all good at attracting new players and were all pretty non-violent. (Infact, Tetris and Bakliava are the only things Middle Eastern and non-violent that I can think of.) Couple this with the fact that there was not a G-rated movie produced in the GameCube times that didn't have a GameCube game for it. What the heck? Its like an unwritten rule that all video games based upon movies suck and all movies based upon video games also suck. The only exception I can think of was GoldenEye. To base your product line on movie games is a recipe for disaster, especially if the movie the game is based upon ALSO sucked, which sadly is the typical case today. But Nintendo isn't the only company that suffers from a lack of creative juices. Its amazing that the only genre you can buy for the PC is Roleplaying Games, and the only thing you can buy for the console is first person shooters. I've had my fill of so-called "roleplaying" games. Doesn't the name imply that you should be playing some sort of role? The only role they ever have you play is that of a homicidal monster-killing "adventurer" trying to increase his or her stats. If that's the objective why not call them "stats-building" games? And while building stats is addictive, there is little point. When playing an rpg, you aren't getting any better at it, your character is getting better. In your typical RPG you could take the most experienced player in the world, have him start with a new character and he'd still get his !@#$%^&* kicked by any newb who has a mid-level character. First person shooters are tiresome too. Don't get me wrong, its a pretty solid genre, but people should be able to avoid them if they wish. Especially the World War II shooters. How many games are there going to be about World War II? And when so why is it always the European front? If I recall in WWII there was a front in the Pacific too, as well as fronts in Russia, Africa and Italy. But even if its not about WWII, the 1st person shooter is really designed because video game makers can't come up with any new ideas and instead when they are given SOOOOO much graphics and memory to work with, they decide to make what is essentially a modernized version of Wolfenstein over and over and over again. As much as modern technology has improved video games, it has hurt them too. Gamemakers spend all their time trying to create the best graphical experience and not worrying enough about making a better game though to be fair there still are a few good ones that pop up once in a while. In lieu of origional ideas, how about showing a little balance in the old ideas? Whatever happened to the space-fighter genre? I haven't seen a big name one of those since Descent II, and that game was pretty good. I mean, I've played Freelancer and that was good, but that's one modern space-flight game with very little company compaired to dozens of 1st person shooters and RPGs. What about strategy games? I mean strategy as in "uses tactics and planning to make the most out of the forces you have" rather than "building an army thats twice the size of your opponant's and running him over". I guess if you are a Chinese general that's your battle plan, but for the rest of the world "strategy" means managing forces, not simply conjuring up more of them. It would be niced to play a new one of those, but I have to settle with chess if I want strategy. This latest PS3 is just a prime example. Tons of graphics, but nothing really new about it. It has so much graphics that it takes a $2k TV to even show them and consumes tons of electricity. I mean a lot of electricity, like "this systems helps the terrorists" or "this system is speeding up global warming" type of energy consumption. I'm not holding my breath for the wii either. It does have that motion sensing controller, which is a powerfull improvement. However, so was the touchscreen on the DS and they have yet to use that right. If the Nintendo people were smart, they'd be begging Bethesda to make Oblivion for wii. (Which would cause a running riot at the game stores.) The ball is in Nintendo's court right now, and if the defeater of Atari and Sega can't slam dunk this time there will be no hope for them.

uh?

Its actually a misconception that cons!@#$%^&*utional bans against torture were put in place because "No matter what somebody's crimes are, no one deserves torture." Believe me when I say that there are quite a few people in this world that do indeed do things heinous enough that they deserve it. The reasons why torture is forbidden are: 1) It's a favorite tool used by tyrants to put fear into the populace by publically torturing dissidents. 2) It often results in innocent people confessing falsely. Torture doesn't extract the truth, torture extracts what the torterer wants to hear. As for proof of my statement, all one has to do is examine the context in the Bill of Rights. Banning weapons, stationing troops in homes, and suprise inspections are common tyrannical practices and are all banned by the cons!@#$%^&*ution to prevent tyranny from developing. As for ex-tyrants themselves, there is no humanist reason why ex-tyrants cannot be treated the way in which they have treated others save for the fact that laws and laws upon laws must apply to everyone. To this I say that Hussein deserves worse than he's getting, though the Iraqis shouldn't punish him as he deserves because it sets a bad legal precedent.

First off it's a tradition of this forum to pick apart what the other guy said in a literalist fashion while ignoring the overall point. Now you know how it feels like. I know that particular batch wasn't under development, but I doubt they were "forgotten about", though I guess it's true that any battle-ready munitions would've been used during the invasion. WMDs were still only one out of half a dozen reasons for going into Iraq. As a matter of fact that reason wasn't used as a reason why the US should go into Iraq, but why the UN should've helped, and indeed the UN didn't get involved. Its only fair that since the UN didn't get involved, that any arguements Bush used strictly to try to get UN support not be held over his head.

Well, it coincidentally seems that I am actually more active on the forums now that my comp is broke. I could un-step down if necessary.

Weapons that could be used any second to destroy humanity? There is no such weapon!!! Even an H-bomb can only take out a single city. Sure it also creates fall out and a dust cloud which would up the casualty rate eventually, but not in a "second" as you require. (Besides, radiation's deadliness is overrated, and I'd think people would start erecting giant ionization based air filters to create pockets of area to grow crops.) Are we to take it that after ten years a poisonous chemical is no longer poisonous, so therefore as long a chemical weapon is old it is harmless? Yeah, so we didn't find Hussein riding an H-bomb, but keep in mind that one of those "old derelict weapons" could still get a 10 million + casualty rate easy if it hit the right place. As a matter of fact we saw evidence of these weapons being used, so those chemical weapons were exactly what we were looking for.

Well, Saudi Arabia is attempting to go after the Al Queda guys in their country...they just suck at it, so what can we do? We can't just up and decide to take out our ally. BTW, they DID find some old chemical weapons in Iraq. It took a long time and the weapons were really old, but we still have confirmation that Iraq DID have WMDs, so Bush was right about that one. You are correct in that they never were a direct threat to us, and in reality everyone knew that Iraq's connection to Al Queda was tenuous at best. I'd say the 40% of us are thinking "What's it going to be like 50+ years from now?" By that time, we are no doubt going to have a stabile democracy in Iraq. That would provide a window between the western world and the Islamic world. That window wouldn't solve all the problems nor would it make use entirely understand one another, but it would end the isolation and thus cause us to move towards each other idealogically rather than away from each other. If we didn't, no doubt Hussein would've been able to keep the reigns of power, and no doubt when he died he would have passed them on to someone same minded as him. It would have gone on like that for hundreds of years and only have collapsed when an idiot was put in charge. Now is where one enters WMDs. If isolation continued for that long and it continued to be that one individual wields supreme power in each middle eastern country, it would only be a matter of time for them to acquire the technology, and then suddenly we'd have a WMD in the hands of a nut. As a matter of fact we should probably be invading North Korea right now. They have a nuke, they have a missle, and they have a nut. All they need now is to figure out how to put the nuke on the missle and BOOM-there goes Sheol. I know its desirable to save war as the last option, but the other option risks nuclear war.

No, Hussein ruled by force and by giving favors to elites. If non-elites respected his rule it was only because of the military firepower behind it. Now it happens that we are the ones with the military firepower, so we now have Hussein's claim to leadership. The current fighting is a cultural thing in Iraq. The best way to compaire how this works is how organized crime works. You have mob bosses, who controll lesser !@#$%^&*ociates, who in turn have limited controll over various street gangs. The ranks of the mob bosses is controlled like a traditional beurocracy, but the power and territory the gangs hold is determined by their ability to engage in violence with their rivals. Generally, the mob bosses can't keep the gang members from killing each other, but at the same time the gangs are expected to leave the mob bosses alone and engage only each other. This development is an ancient tradition based on Iraq's geography. While the stereotypical view of the Middle East is a desert, most of Iraq is infact rich farmland. Infact, as far as we can tell this area was the first instance of large scale farming. They can do this by irrigating water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This is similar to Egypt, except in Iraq the rivers don't flood annually. In order to get the water to the fields centrally managed canals are needed. Combine this with other factors such as half a million years worth of soil degragation, and basically you have a society that historically in order to feed itself needed the central government to be intact in order to manage the agriculture. Thus, most disputes worth killing people over was settled with small scale fighting between tribes, each having an unwritten rule so as not to bring the greater government into the fight. The exception to "don't go after the government" rule was foreigners whose wealth did not come from agriculture and thus did not care about managing it as much. Ofcourse, Iraq has reached its second-agricultural revolution by now, so this whole cultural quirck is obsolete. However, tens of thousands of years of tradition are not forgotten easily. The problem here is that when we saw Sunnis and Shi'ites fighting each other we thought immeadiately "destablization". In reality this is how Iraqis restabilize. The tribes now realize that the Baathists are truly gone and are determining now which tribes control which turf. What we should do is just set a few ground rules for allowed targets of this fighting: 1) No foreigners 2) No members of the democratic government 3) No women 4) No children Attacking members of one of these groups results in the tribe being considered enemies of the state as a whole, and if tribe A uses one of the four groups to attack tribe B, then tribe B is allowed to attack those members of tribe A so far as the initial violation was.

I think we do have quite a few multiship events...they just never caught on. The 4mt idea I had a while back was explicitly designed for the purpose, it just never caught on because there never seemed to be time to get it hosted even once. And yeah, sure other ppl want that harddrive, but not as much as I do because without it I don't have a computer. Well, after a while TW newbs do try to learn more skilled settings. The problem is that choice is usually an SVS zone. Its not really fair because contrary to popular opinion, SVS settings are A:Lame and B:can damage your hard drive, which coincidentally is why I happen to need a new one.

Um, Inc, if a person need computer parts wouldn't they be unable to play subspace due to broken computer. Speaking of which if your harddrive can work with my Dell Ispiron 1100 laptop, I'll take it. PLLLZZZZZ?? 17th's problem with attracting new members is as follows: 17th takes skill to play. You can't get a kill with one shot. You can't ignore your energy meter. You can't be blissfully unaware that your opponants might use cloak, stealth, mines, specials, etc, yet on the other hand you can't use said specials to lame people over and over for huge ratios. Furthermore, we are not SVS. Thus if one wants to spend time learning skills in order to play, he might as well learn SVS settings so as to have the "official" skill set. Worst of all, pub is a different skill set than our leagues. If you want to play in leagues, you learn how to play in an all-jav environment, which is not pub. The principle problem here is that the single ship leagues remove any incentive for players to learn the pub skill set. Also enter the fact that we really have no special draw, not a critical fact in and of itself, and boom...no niche, no new players. And keep in mind text based MMORPGs are still being played, so as bad as our graphics and 2Dness is, there's probably still going to be room for subspace for a while. That being said, what we probably should do is just keep the zone on life support until that Continuum 3D comes out and then make sure 17th3D is one of the first zones there, and when we do either have multi-ship leagues or make pub the same as the league is.

Oh, speeding in Washington State. Jeez, other than around Seattle I don't think they even bother putting speed limit signs less than 85 mph out there. On a completely different note, rootbear, your signature is flawed...if a = 1 and b = 1 then a - b = 0, and thus when you divide by ( a - b ) you are really dividing by zero which makes the values undefined. Nice try.

Incomplete isn't that sadistic. I personally say multiple homicides should be electrocuted then resuscitated once for every person he killed. If Saddam killed millions, then he should be killed an rescutated a million times.

This whole situation sickens me. At the start of this War in Iraq 70% approved and 30% were against it. Now its 30% are for it and 70% are against it. !@#$%^&*uming the least number of people changed their minds as possible, we have 30% of people who always supported it, 30% of people who always were against it, and 40% of people who changed their minds. I am one of the 30% who approve of it. We think the benefits outweigh the cost. However, I can also understand the 30% who were always against it. They think the costs outweigh the benefits. Its the remaining 40% that scare me. I guess they thought that we could reap the benefits without paying any price for it. I guess their claim is that they were somehow tricked into thinking the benefit-cost ratio wasn't what it is. So apparantly they got duped by the "Master of Deception" that is George W. Bush. I just never thought that so many people could be so good at lying to themselves. Bush is not a skilled liar. People don't get honestly tricked by people like Bush. Instead, they "let themselves be tricked" because deep down they agree with the person but have some sort of issue in their higher concious with the action. Here, the issue is imperialism. A lot of people outright dismiss any act of imperialism as wrong, when in reality sometimes imperialist actions are right and even necessary. If lions didn't kill and eat zebras once in a while, the African ecosystem would be damaged. Truth be told, after spending a few decades watching our enemies gather in Afghanistan, but doing nothing about it because such an action would have violated another nation's sovereignty and because the international community would have dissapproved. After watching them gather, those enemies struck at us, and then we struck back at Afghanistan, but we knew that wasn't enough. We needed to show other nations that would consider being the next Afghanistan that we were now willing to violate sovereignty and defy the international community in order to defeat our enemies. So, we picked out an enemy and defyed the international community in an act of destroying him. Sure, there were other reasons, but this was the one that changed it from "There is a lot of good reasons, but not quite enough" to "Okay, now we have enough reasons." Slowly as this war went on, people realized that this was their motivation for their support of the war, but because this reason is imperialistic and because such people cannot admit their own sins, thinking themselves so righteous to be above such actions, they choose a fall guy - namely the Bush Administration. Bush did what the people wanted. Rumsfeld did what the people wanted. The problem is that 40% of the people are hypocrites, who rather than admit their own faults decided to blame Bush and Rumsfeld, claiming to be "tricked" by Bush when in reality Bush doesn't know how to tell a believable lie. (I mean this as a compliment, as lying is a skill like any other that requires practice.) Now Rumsfeld is being used as the fallguy for their hypocrisy.

Well, it helps Turkey because they get free perks, its helps the US because it would drag Europe into wars that we would otherwise have to fight ourselves, it helps Asians because they would'nt have to compete with as powerfull of an economic compe!@#$%^&*ion from Europe, it helps Islamic Terrorists because it would make their goal of attacking "infidels" in Europe a lot easier and it would help clowns out because it would offer a good punch line. I'm just being a literary !@#$%^&* and pointing out that the way you wrote the question technically didn't specify who was making the decision, making it a call from someone under "veil of ignorance". (In which somehow the decider didn't know which party he or she was a member of.) Similarly I could ask "Should half of Bill Gate's money be given to me?", which is a different question than "Should Bill Gates give me half his money?". The answer to the first question is "yes" and to the second one "no". The first question doesn't specify point of view of the decider, so the decider is in the theorhetical position of having a 50% chance of being me and a 50% chance of being Bill Gates, making the correct answer "yes" because of the Law of Diminishing Returns. However, the second question states the decider's position to be that of Bill Gates and thus to correct answer is "no".

Astro, by "everyone" I mean the sum total of the desires Europe, Turkey, the US, Middle Easterns, Africans, Asians, Islamic terrorists, and the International Society of Clowns. Only one of those groups would actually be hurt if Turkey was admitted in the EU. Ofcourse, the one group hurt would be Europeans, and its their decision. In an idealistic world where everyone did everything based upon a strictly nuetral position, should Turkey be allowed in the EU? Yes Should Europeans from a European perspective allow Turkey into the EU given that the EU's mission statement involves doing what is best for Europeans? No