Aran

Until recently I didn't even know "cider" could mean just juice. I thought that was just called apple juice (clear or natural), cider was fermented juice, and "hard cider" was some kind of distilled apple brandy in the same vein as "hard liquor".

Happy birthday, Sylae!

Extermination has never looked more adorable. Happy birthday, Sylae!

So did I for that matter, but it is certainly an incentive now. I actually still pay. Partly to support SW and partly to feel less guilty about going on hiatus for months ever so often and abandoning my post in the line of duty.

Full circle. I'm fairly sure I got linked to Nationstates from either Spiderweb or Desperance back in 2003.

You could email him. But it's well established, I think, that "Nephilim" was essentially cribbed from religious texts (books of Moses, specifically, according to Wikipedia). Since biblical Nephilim are generally interpreted as giants or titans and there is no mention of cats at all, the name is apparently the only thing they have in common. Edit: Whoops, Google sent me to some aggregated copy-pasta on Yahoo Answers containing the unsourced claim that If you do email him and get an answer, please do post it to settle the matter.

"Help, I'm trapped in a PDN factory!" (but I'm fairly sure you did that one.)

Part of it is that there is only a small number of people who are aware of the issue, have the political clout to make others aware, and want to make others aware of it. Obviously, most authorities (eg. law enforcement, national intelligence) don't want encryption to become too ubiquitous lest criminals become too hard to catch. (Actual criminals, even, not just dissidents.) Even people mindful of their own privacy might fear that ubiquitous encryption could lead to a government crack-down. But I think that's bad reasoning. Everyone who has secrets to protect would profit from ubiquitous encryption, because their use of it will stand out less. And the more people use it, the more political resistance a government would face when trying to stamp it out.

I read about it. Pretty cool! The best "good" news I read lately are actually part of something awful, but here we go: About seven weeks ago, this girl in Pakistan got shot in the head for her political activism promoting education for girls. The good news is that she survived and is making a full recovery.

"Turn-ons: Ponies, webs, pedipalps. Turn-offs: Getting head bitten off. No arachnophobes."

I agree, but I have a theory that separating the OOC archival of roleplays from an IC perspective on the world (ie, traveler's reports, historical accounts, etc.) might avoid some of the pitfalls I've noticed on the EE.

Mmmh, those spreadsheets and bank statements are baring it all.

So... Yes, No and No.

I don't, actually. I project my posts onto this forum by sheer force of will. But no worries; it's a common misconception. I use passwords on all devices, of course, and I make an effort to use secure ones too. But I have no illusions that my data would be protected against someone who had physical access to my devices for more than ten minutes (two minutes if they're one of my CS classmates). I'm not even particularly good at this, and just yesterday I taught my dad how to reset his root password using an unprotected bootloader in under a minute. You can't plan for security until you know what kind of attacks you expect and want to prevent. Physical access is just about the hardest to protect from, and the only thing that can protect against that is drive encryption. A far more likely threat is malware or a remote attack (particularly of your accounts on web services). Those are the passwords that matter. I use this method for my passwords.

Plus one on collaborative world-building. A framework and style should be agreed on before-hand, of course, because otherwise you might end up with snarls. One popular choice for a framework is an in-universe compendium or encyclopedia. (See Santharia or, for that matter, EE - though it later became repurposed as a collection of mostly canon information rather than a creative effort).

As the local get-offa-my-lawn roleplayer, I need to point out we didn't put our settings up to vote back in my day, no sir. We wrote up the lead-in and posted it, and by goldang people played in the setting that they got and they ruddy well liked it! *shakes stick* Of course, people do have some preferences. But my participation in the next RP won't be influenced by how magical the setting is or what the genre is. Original setting, Spiderweb game setting, hell, Myst/Doctor Who/Ermarian crossover setting (add dinosaurs and ponies to taste)*. If I have time, I'm in. The mechanics question makes much more sense. I adore faction RPs. But the synchronization can become ridiculously complicated. At least individual characters act in real time. On the other hand, one of the best RPs we ever completed - and there was only a handful - was a faction/character mixed RP.

Arancaytar is putting the final touches on his bloody thesis which is due on Monday. After that, he may resurface in the RP, and is interested in joining the plot-planning. (RP CONSPIRACEY! It'll be just like old times.)

My French is very purple? ... oh!

Google Translate is your less-than-cherished and only marginally trustworthy acquaintance, but it beats a Hungarian phrasebook. 我的气垫船的鳗鱼。我是不会买这个纪录被划伤。

Related news: The European Union's resolution regarding the International Telecommunications Union, and also EU MP Amelia Andersdotter's . Also, regarding matters of good and evil: Keep in mind that the UN is a vast and chaotic collection of bureaucracies, and this issue concerns particular ones like the ITU and the WIPO. To have an evil world government agenda (or a good agenda for world peace and sunshine and rainbows), the UN would first need to have an agenda at all. Something similar goes for Google. Google is interested in making a profit. If this goal is served by defending the internet against regulations that would harm both Google and us, all the better. If it is served by fighting regulations that would protect our privacy from companies like Google, less so. That's neither good nor evil. We just have some enemies in common. Oppressive network regulation is one of them.

Lots of arguments for all trilogies, but castable Quickfire is what makes the Exile series the unsurpassed champion.

Avatar x6, Divine Thud x6. End combat. Nobody expects the Anama Inquisition.

אראנכאיתאר hops on the right-to-left bandwagon. (But I cobbled the transliteration together with Wikipedia and Google, so I'm not sure if that makes any sense.)

All assembled are reminded to keep it family-friendly in every language.

argh too many tyrans RUN