madhaha

Dav: Repeating every news article you've heard and read the last few months does not increase understanding and knowledge nor does it encourage progressive discussion. Please go one main point a post, take a deep breath and don't type anything until you're looking at it objectively.

Zig: That is a complex question. I think that the Stanford Experiment and Milgram's experiments on the influence of peer pressure and authority figures show that normal, intelligent people can be lead through the crudest of methods to commit attrocities. It is in our nature to "follow the herd". What's more, this is re-inforced by clear and present danger in the form of beatings, kidknappings, murders, torture etc. And even then there are resistances which we help crush by supplying these regimes with armanents and occasionally training. The term "poll rigging" also come to mind. You may remember that even your own enlightened country suffers from this. How can you resist when your enemy claims support from everybody, is better manned, better armed, better trained, better educated and more ruthless than you are? It is extremely difficult to lead an uprising on desperation alone. Also remember that education is controlled by the wealthy and the state. In almost Any country, state policy and social bias is indoctrinated into children. Many of our racist and otherwise politically incorrect nursery rhymes and playground slang have been discretely removed but even now I'm sure you can name half a dozen examples. In North Korea the children sing their praises to their Great Leader as we once did about Jesus (regardless of personal beliefs). In China children are taught to adore the fact that they're an only child. If you were raised from childhood worshipping the great warhero Saddam and the daily news reinforces what you already know (and "bad people" routinely get dissapeared), do you thing its fair when ZiGNoTZaG says that you deserve getting the -*BAD WORD*- bombed out of you for not overthrowing Saddam?

Humans can not be trusted to even Try to do the best for the community or even their species. The difference between the sociopolitical systems are largely irrelevant until you can instil a strong sense of justice and morality in the country. Whatever system you use, people will never be happy when they're abused be it via the state, via corporations or just good old fashioned family to family bullying. Anarchy, democracy, socialism, capitalism, communism, no-one cares so long as things appear to be fair. But justice and morality are not simple issues that can be fixed and the few in power that genuinely want to confront these issues are overwhelmed by the mul!@#$%^&*ude. In my own personal view, I belief our only hope is that a just system emerges by chance and that we enjoy it while it lasts. In all probability none of us will ever see it.

Doesn't anyone here understand what a joke is?

http://kirk.sscentral.com/ But You won't be able to use it anyway...

Catid says he's waiting for people to tell him which of the links are broken. I'll run a check and tell you when the issue is fixed.

Why 98?

Repost this under "Game development".

massively off topic, and on such a serious topic too... Someone please provide me with the link.

He hasn't finished has he?

Dav & Scruff + other jingoist "patriotic" types from either side of the Alantic please keep your views and at!@#$%^&*udes to yourself. You're not doing anyone any favours. Aileron: Health concerns and humanitarian considerations are extremely important when designing weapons, especially ones that are likely to have longterm effects. This is why there is now a worldwide ban on laying new landmines. It is also the main reason why chemical, biological and nuclear warfare are banned along with other weapons that cause unneccessary suffering such as dum dum bullets, explosive rounds and weapons designed chiefly to maim but not kill the target under the Hague Convention. You sound like you are ADVOCATING these weapons. The purpose of modern warfare is not to kill your enemy but to render him incapable of fighting a war against you with emphasis on taking out production and communication/command structure, limiting his intelligence sources (rounding up scouts/spies and destroying radars) and causing them to doubt their ideology/leadership. Killing and destroying as much as you can is easy but futile as the population will continue to resist you. The main aim is to stop the escalation of war as this is bad for both sides. A quick transition is preferable to a prolonged game of hide and seek where you aim to exterminate every last tank and soldier by supremacy of weaponary. Its also less expensive. It is interesting that you consider a single throwaway factiod concerning a possible conspiracy theory to be worthy of so much of your discussion. It is irrelevant. However I thought you might find this article amusing/interesting http://www.inebriantia.org/2003/07/the_topsecret_j.html . Many strange things are classified but when confronted by a direct challenge, officials often admit to facts. What I suspect in this particular case is someone leaked the snippet of information the media and when directly confronted, an official let slip that the material has "gone missing". Most probably there was a -*BAD WORD*--up in the recording of data and the information was never recorded in the first place (even though it should have been) and the official was trying to cover for these mistakes and in doing so looking extremely suspicious. It has been proven that DU weapons can have strong secondary effects yet they are still actively used in warfare because we don't currently know the true extent of how big these longterm effects are. This strikes me as extremely insensative. Similarly the fallout of nuclear weapons are not treated as an unfortunate byproduct of an extremely big explosion but an interesting bonus which the military have looked at increasing by lacing hydrogen bombs with additional radioactive material to actively increase the radioactive fallout. It is also alarming that there are new weapons are under development based on these technologies designed for use in the near term, despite the fact their use would contravene international treaty with terrorism being given as the excuse.

Why doesn't it just take the local MachineID?

You have the access rights to run a MERV and you never considered just using /*warpto to exit the map?

Are you suggesting that the llama holds still whenever you bump it?

Its the return of political correctness (the original meaning).

A simple toggle via the menu (something like Esc + T) would work the best. Asking on a case by case basis would slow gameplay down and you'd have to keep reviewing who wanted to attach.

I wish someone tried doing it from scratch anyway...

The DU issue is a contentious one. Please refrain from statements such as: as they are both extremely misleading and presumptious. DU or U238 produces 0.7 times the amount of radiation as natural uranium with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The human body is usually capable of passing the material out before it can cause any damage if it is ingested. The same does not apply if you've got some embedded in your body (the most potentially damaging sources being shrapnel wounds) or if you're in constant physical contact with it. The exact risks are unknown with some claiming that DU radiation is harmless while others claim it is the cause of Gulf War and Balkan syndrome. Both sides have conducted studies and presented plausible evidence. What IS known is that DU is chemically rather unhealthy. It is a known carcinogen (even department of defense studies agree), as are its compounds (which is important considering much of the s-*BAD WORD*- burns up on impact). Uranium oxide dust has been identified as a possible neurotoxin (again the department of defense is conducting a study after much prompting). DU is a heavy metal like mecury or arsenic. Water soluable compounds can contaminate the water supply. To conclude, the exact effects of DU radiation are unknown and contentious, hence we can not declare it "safe" with any certainty, especially in the face of mystery illnesses a la Gulf War syndrome which have strong physical symptoms. At the same time we have no conclusive evidence linking DU with symptoms normally !@#$%^&*ociated with radiation poisining. However, we do know that DU has extremely nasty chemical effects. Would that make you happier? Random conspiracy theory material thrown in for those interested: On February 27, 1997, the Pentagon admitted that eight days of logs do-*BAD WORD*-enting chemical exposure have "disappeared." These logs were stored on disc and hard copy in different places. All of this is pretty irrelevant seeing as we were on the brink of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, North Korea has been dropping threats and conducting nuclear tests of its own while the US has openly re-openned its own nuclear research. Nuclear warfare is viable or else people wouldn't be spending big money on it to build better ones.

I repeat: They were used in world war 2, but people keep on ignoring the biggest war of all time. Also other wars if you count DU.

Full details wanted. You might as well post them here... Please indicate: Hardware setup Connection type/speed/utilisation Other methods of accessing the server (FTP availible?) Who is running it etc.

Er... Are you people completely re-*BAD WORD*-ed? Completely re-*BAD WORD*-ed incorrect statement: nuclear weapons have never been used in a real war! They're too powerful. No-one will ever use them! Thats what they said when they were first invented. They were first used in actual warfare in world war 2. Hiroshima and Nagasaki both got levelled in case you STILL don't remember. Low yield nuclear weapons have undergone major rearch and development throughout and beyond the Cold War. Remember the talk about new underground bunker busting bombs during the Afghanistan war? Among the designs were what are in essence small underground nuclear bombs. Similarly, low yield nuclear warheads have also been tested as an alternative to conventional explosive with a very small fallout and decay time (a couple of weeks to reach "safe" levels) although these have not officially been used in war yet (how could you tell without actually being there?). Depleted Uranium rounds are basically nuclear weapons in that you're releasing radioactive dust into the environment. It mainly causes cancer and leukemia although it has also been linked to respiratory diseases. They are used because of their high m!@#$%^&* (adding weight behind the impact) and the extremely hot sparks which can burn through considerable thickness of steel. These properties are not found from any other readily availible source which is why the military are unwilling to part with them. Its cheaper, more certain to destroy a target and no-one can prove the effects are caused by DU. America has officially relaunched its program on low yield weapons recently is publicly funding it: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...MNG5Q3GH941.DTL The British also continue their own research as you can see from the MoD website: http://www.mod.uk/issues/nucwhead/

How about you just record what decisions are made whenever someone is banned/*killed/staff suspensions/staff termination with a log/good summary of what they were doing. That way, you could use old cases as legal precedent and ameliorate the rules to make things clearer. Or would that make too much sense? On to the next thing that needs changing. Please ARCHIVE the news and make it publicly availible. Especially since important things (the changes to the score system for instance) are not being permanently recorded or displayed. I am happy to help sort the news and format it for the web but I need the source.

Aileron: Virutual Jerusalum (the site the excerpt is from) is not what I would classify as "brainwashing from European media and conspiracy theorists". It gave sources and the source given has a clear personal involvment with the issue. Nevertheless, it does raise an interesting question. Here is a followup from Aljazeerah (also NOT a european brainwashing m!@#$%^&* media etc. etc.) http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives...f%20Destiny.htm Which gives us a nice clear picture (no tinting or other rationalisations). The counterargument given is that the tree is a Hilali date tree which fruits later in the year. Further research shows that young/fresh Hilali dates are indeed yellow, fruit later in the season and are indigenous to the region (although ripe Hilali dates are purplish as you can see from this site http://www.theproducehunter.com/productdisplay.asp?ID=1998) . Also from the Aljazeerah picture, we can see that the soldier is clearly dressed in winter garb which collapses the conspiracy theory somewhat. This doesn't mean the time of capture is unquestionable as our media sources are very limited and controlled, but it does tell us the window between Saddam's capture and the time the news was made public is small (no more than a month). This is completely unconnected to conspiracy theories regarding the possible use of nerve agents. The hideaway was perfectly ventilated but then again the lack of natural lighting can lead to disorientation. Again there are discreprencies in our reports as the official story says that Saddam heard the soldiers comming and hid in the hole but the availibility of provisions, changes of clothing, weapons and other basic ammenities suggest that he Could have been down there for quite a length of time. We are not even certain that the images shown are the actual place the Saddam was captured. If we want to go the conspiracy theory route we can say that the whole thing was faked and that Saddam was captured long ago and brainwashed. We simply have no way of knowing and it would appear from reports that the locals have no idea of what is going on either. I'll try and get in contact with some. The fall of the statue is completely staged. I've seen footage from another camera further back from the action and it is very clearly organised. The pedestrians in the area are showing slight signs of interest and concern. Surrounding the statue is a massive crowd of journalists, all armed with cameras (they were tipped off a couple of minutes before). We see a tank arrive with some American soldiers (this is where the footage is cut). They produce the flag which was supposedly from the WTC at 9/11, drape it on the statue and take some photographs before removing it. They then found some eager troublemakers (a small group that cheered the arrival of the tank with much jumping, screaming and firing of bullets into the air) and asked them to basically pose for the camera as they got a crane ready to topple the statue. The statue is pulled down, we see the fanatics doing their dance on top of the statue in the midst of a crowd (of journalists all with cameras) and we are told that America was welcomed with open arms and there was dancing in the street yadayadayada spontaneous outpouring of hatred etc.etc. -*BAD WORD*-. This is very clear misinformation. A direct lie and perversion of events. Then there was the whole Jessica Lynch affair which also had lots of highly suspicious elements. In my view, many of the conspiracy theories work because they are plausible and there is no way of proving/disproving them. I have not yet drawn my conclusions unlike Mr. Scruff here and I DO follow up on my sources. Please do not lump me in the same group.

Its redundant. We've gone over this before. It can and has been implemented. You can go download the files and have a celabration party. Now go pe!@#$%^&*ion for the SSC to use the new biller software and you can use the feature in the important zones. Job done.

Maybe. But what is the longterm goal of this strategy? If the war was a sophisticated illusion from the outset, what was the chief purpose of the war? Offtopic: BSE is no biggie. There is no proven link between BSE and Scrapie. There is no proven link between BSE and new varient CJD. New varient CJD has killed a couple of hundred people over the decades we've been studying it. SARS has done more real damage in a single year. Which is why I'm surprised that BSE is such an economic bombs-*BAD WORD*-. Another illusion?