Aileron

(OOC-Aw geez, I forgot to sign in. Sorry bout that. Besides, unlike some people, I have very good reason to be mysertious.) "Nothing much, I'm just a simple trader. You see, I have a shipment of medical supplies headed for the Ithkul colony of Antilles Sentile Minor coming from Terran League Space. I was passing through Alliance space, when I was attacked by two people. 'Lyta' and 'Swift' were their names I think - some kinda romantic couple being bandits. Even in my Nightwasp, I sustained decent damage and didn't even scratch either of their ships. I need you to escort my ship to the Alliance/Ithkul border, just to keep other bandits from going after me. I'm willing to pay about 1,000,000 for this job, but only was I've reached Ithkul space. If you have any questions, or would like to negotiate your fee, now is the time to do it. I'm not going to change your rate halfway through the trip." With that, the man in the trenchcoat ordered a beer. As the waitress gave him the beer, he reached underneath his coat, revealing a strange simple on his shirt - a two-bladed sword in black and red, not the emblem of any of the four factions. There was the sound of metal clicking, and he pulled out some money to pay for the beer. (OOC-No wallet this time, so you can't pick my pockets) Seeing that some people noticed the symbol on his shirt, he said: "Oh, thats just the logo for my trading guild."

This is nothing new. Almost everyone has a desire to reduce dependency on oil, and find alternative soucres for fuel. My opinion - nuclear power in general with hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, etc. where they can be applied for electricity. Hydrogen cells or pure alchohol for cars. (Although in the future we will all be flying helicopter-like things around) Akai, you are right in that we don't need as much energy as we are using, but everyone is reducing as much energy as is practical for them. Face it, the high electric and gas bill at the end of the month is (or will be when shortages appear) encouragement enough.

Actually, commenting on the postion of the ball from spec does affect the game very much if one team is full of n00blets who neither look at their map nor talk to each other.

So who won in your duel with yourself?

Nice try, but my family is Catholic. We don't believe in condoms, just producing some ridiculous number of children.

WTH revived this topic?

Fortunately, Aileron had picked up a shield green a moment before. Between the shield, the ship radius, and the Nightwasp's large energy reserve, the barrage barely showed up on Aileron's energy bar. Aileron then turned on his Y-Radar, and the blue dot showed brightly on his radar. He then sent a private message to his base on Earth. "Aileron to base. Aileron to base. I am under attack. It's nothing I can't handle myself, but I found the perfect test subject for the Arms of Justice." With that, Aileron sent his radar feed to the base. Moments later, he heard a response. "Feed recieved sir. Arms of Justice firing one L6 bomb at the Spider" "Fry that blue midget. He stole my wallet!" Out of nowhere, an L6 bomb was warped inside the Spider's -*BAD WORD*-pit, literally on top of the smurf's lap. The warp portal closed before the smurf could possibly react. "Standy to confirm." Ail turned his ship and prepared to fire in case the L6 didn't work. However, a split second later, the bomb detonated and the Spider was blasted apart from the inside out. "Aileron to base. The target has been destroyed." Ail then flew his ship to his secret laboratory on Earth. He then reinforced the security of the laboratory. The one single gate was guarded by 7 genetic golems, with a number of patrols inside the facility. Worse yet, this was Earth, which had been placed inside a gigantic safety zone since 2173. Only medieval weapons do damage here. Still, Aileron decided to double the guard at the door and increase patrols.

1) I didn't kill the topic 2) You are taking that "Uruk-hai" thing too seriously. I think we both can agree that it doesn't matter and we are probably better off ignoring it.

Aileron takes off his personal shield, which had automatically turned on when the bar went up. "Computer, status report" Ail thought to the nueral link he shared with his electronics. "Primary weapon damaged. Shields at 15% and recharging. All other systems nominal." Ail rolled up is sleeve, uncovering a robotic arm underneath. A quick scan was all it took to identify the problem, and fixing it took a moment. Ail then rolled his sleeve back down. Ail then looked around. A steel pilar had shielded him from most of the blast, and his shields from the rest. All of the furniture and such was destroyed, and the only survivors that were seen were Ail and his genetic golems. Ail then recieved a message from his nueral cybernetics. Warning, your wallet has been stolen. Lucky for him, that he learned from the last time. Since then, he installed a small portal device in the wallet. When it was taken, it dropped a portal in Ail's pocket. It then merely warped back into Ail's pocket. Ail then activated his personal port device to get back to his ship, a 5 tile wide Nightwasp that had been parked in a distant safety zone due to the parking spaces outside the bar being too small. Upon flying away from the station, Ail flew by Ricebowl's ship, and pmed him a message. "Here are the coords for the planet known as Smurftopia. If you want to help me get revenge on that @$$, meet my forces there on the southern continent at la!@#$%^&*ude 30S longitude 90W. Reports from the planet read that my army of genetic golems has already been smuggled past the outer defenses and have captured and secured the city of Whitehat located there. I advise that the anti-ship defenses have not been destroyed, so you will still face fire getting in. I will proceed to the planet Earth, because I have some business operations to conduct there. P.S. - they are spelled 'Urik-hai' P.P.S. - Sauron didn't summon any Urik-hai, Saruman did. "

First off, the media has been making that "decision" as you call it since the 80's (the 1880's), so I and most of the intelligent population have gotten used to it and have learned to take all information with a grain of salt. Secondly, you talk as if its in CBS's goal to push a political viewpoint. CBS is a company, and companies make money. There is probably no limit to the immoral things a company will do, but any action they take will lead to the ultimate goal of them making money. They do not purposely take sides in political battles, because there is no profit in that. As with all things, there are exceptions, but one can bank on the media not intentionally taking sides unless profit is involved. Ultimately, CBS decided it would be more profitable over the long term not to aire the commercial than to aire it. As a private company, they have the right to do this, and since this isn't a repeated pattern, there is no fear of one side not getting their message off. First off, this is not technically censoring. But secondly, you seem to not know where exactly the center is. Finding the exact center is difficult; everyone has their own personal bias one way or the other. The only way that one can be absolutely in the center is to not say anything. Thus, that's what they did. They didn't aire any anti-Bush commercials, but they didn't really aire any pro-Bush ones either, and wouldn't be able to justify it if they did. Thus, all CBS did was to make a rule "no politcal ads during the Superbowl". It is rather arbitrary, but it is a fair policy if not abused. If CBS decided to host a pro-Bush commercial, and then denied the anti-Bush commercial, it would be wrong. However, they didn't.

I didn't say the pub itself was unethical, I said taking a side was. To not take a side, one must try to either not advertise either candidate or advertise both at about the same amount. Usually however, a candidate's money is as good as anyones. However, in the case of the Superbowl - the most desired advertising time in the year, considerations like these must be made. You speak as if those numbers are hidden, and that the presence of numbers makes the advertisment impartial. What, do you think that the pro-Bush crowd don't have their own numbers to back their opinions up? The presence of supporting numbers do not make an opinion impartial, they merely make it logical.

Well, what people really want is one extra super-ship that you can only get under special cir-*BAD WORD*-stances. For example, say if you win some elim event, you get to fly the Nightwasp for 30 minutes.

Well, the profits go into the research, like you said. Its different in terms of where the money ends up, but doesn't really affect the educational aspect. I dunno, maybe a solution is to build more schools. Under basic economics, a high supply decreases demand. That still leaves the problem in terms of where to get the money to pay for the schools, but the solution is going to be in that general direction.

Um, equal time laws actually promote freedom of speech, preventing one candidate with a lot of money from dominating too much. It is not the duty of television networks to take sides. They are supposed to remain nuetral. While the actual nuetrality of the media is debatable if it exists (which it doesn't), the perfect media network should be completely nuetral on politics. Thus, refusing the advertisment was ethical, and putting the advertisment on the air would have been unethical. This is probably one of the few times in history where a large company made an unprofitable ethical decision over a profitable unethical one. Sorry, but you are simply wrong on this issue.

Aileron comes back into the bar, after waiting weeks for Greased to show up, accompanied by his usual array of mindless genetically modified mutant creatures. He then starts wandering around the room looking for a pilot. After being denied a few times, he walks up to Recoil and whispers: Are you for hire? I need somebody to transport a shipment to the Ithkul colony of Sentile Major - no questions asked.

Now that sounds somewhat intelligent. Face it, given how much college costs nowadays, there is no possible way a student could get his own job to pay for college up front. To go through it, one must either get money from their parents or pay for it after college. Neither path is desireable, but given how much college costs nowadays, one may not have an alternative. It seems to back up my last statement. This new law sucks, but there is no better alternative. The problem is college costs are rising. A politician can do whatever he wants with tuition, but the costs will continue to rise, and if one lowers tuition, one has to make up for it. The source of the problem lies elseware in economic and social factors. In my opinion, there never was a possiblity of a University making profits by charging students up front. Previously, they relied on the ultra-rich to give them a continuous supply of grants and donations. Think about it, many schools are actually named after previous rich guys, Vanderbilt University, Caregie Mellon, etc. The rich people, having nothing better to do with their money, decided to spend it on a cause that would both benefit the community and give them a measure of immortality. The donated money to the university, and the university passed it on by lowering tuition below natural levels. The problem is that that source of money dried up. It still happens though not as much. Rich guys care more about making more money than showing off their wealth. Since their absence a few alternatives came up. Governments and companies both started picking up the slack, because both benefit from and educated populace. However, the problem is that governments have to save their money to support the baby-boomers. As you can see, the doors are closing on this issue. Sources that previously were there have gone and dissappeared. The solution? Strangely enough governments have to do nothing. Since the baby-boomers are retiring, there will soon be a shortage of labor acrossed the board. Unskilled laborers are easy enough to replace, but what about educated ones? Businesses are going to get more and more desperate for somebody with a degree, and sooner or later are going to invest money in colleges just to get more available. Businesses are known to be frugal, so this is note going to be as nice to the lower class student. Thus, I really think Blair is doing all he can to help the issue. The problem is that he doesn't have many nice options to choose from.

Um, despite they way you worded it, that is a good thing. It is wise to listen to both sides of an arguement before coming up with your own opinion. A President should spend most of cabinet time listening to advisors, that is why they are there. Well, its tough to say who is going to win. I wouldn't assume anyone will not win the Democratic primaries, because the winds have already changed several times already. However, all of them except Lieberman have virtually no chance of beating Bush, and Lieberman has virtually no chance of winning the primaries. Kerry and Edwards might be able to compete with Bush somewhat, but won't appeal to the center enough. The problem with the Democrats can be summed up with Dean's embarrasing speech. The speech actually was very moving to all those in the room. Like all Democrats however, Dean forgot that he already has the vote of the people in the room, and that he has to appeal to the people out of the room. Its the same with the whole party. All of them try to be appealling to other Democrats, but forget that they should be trying to carry the swing voters and even a few Republicans.

So let me get this straight, the British parliament just raised the tution at all their public universities? It sounds like something that they HAD to do. Sometimes when one manages a budget, one has to do undesirable things to get it to turn out right. It seems that this is the case. Tuition bills are rising in both the public and private sector. The university I go to just raised their rates last year by something similar (4% I think). We all want college costs to be lower, but sometimes it cannot be done. What really needs to happen is that we need to change the reason why college costs are so high in the first place. Then, we will have more control to not raise them or even lower them.

Seriously, you don't realise the power lawyers have in our society and the lows they are willing to sink to. If lawyers really wanted to, they could stop crime on cyberspace. Forget the 1337 hackers and all that; lawyers have enough money to hire enough people to do the searching for them. The only reason crime on cyberspace exists is because they simply do not make enough money for lawyers to profit going after them.

I swear, in my opinion every player who plays Continuum should be made to play in T3 Gauntlet for a day. That way, after all of the linebombing, safe hugging, safe killing, name calling, teaming, and general lameness, no player would never whine again and I would be able to play in peace. (This is not an attempt to bash T3G. It really is just a different style of play.)

Its a capitalist economy. The government can't just "spend money" on it. It can only play with indirect variables such as interest and tax rates. Bush did all he could for the economy - cut taxes. Other than that, there isn't too much he can do. Besides, your tone implies that Bush is in trouble. His "mistakes" are only mistakes if one already does not support him in the first place. Those who support Bush don't count his actions as mistakes. Bush's political strategy is really a work of genius, if not completely insane. He pisses off every group that ultimately does't matter, in order to get his core supporters to love him all the more. He pisses off foreigners, but they don't get a vote. He pisses off liberals, but they are too small in number and would never vote for him anyway. On top of this, he makes the opposition angry. Anger is an emotion, thus being angry makes one emontional. Emotional people do not appeal to a rational thinking center. Thus, the next election is pretty much in the bag. By sacrificing his appeal to liberals, he builds his appeal to the right and center.

Thank you for turning this into a serious discussion.

So, you suggest we get two new parties? Most likely, they would just be identical to the two that we already have, except with a different name. Really, the only problem with the political parties is that too often people don't care about the primary elections, which under theory are supposed to be more important than the final one. That and mid-terms.

This is the internet, nobody reads anything anyonw else posts. We just type meaningless pieces of information just to feel important. That is true, there are a lot of people who whine about cloakers, but never played in a cloaking ship themselves. As suggested earlier, if somebody has a problem with cloakers either switch to a ship with X or switch to a ship with cloak. Usually when you deny the cloakers the advantage, they switch ships.

no, the Democrats suck. If the compe!@#$%^&*ion wasn't so sucky, Bush would have to improve.