Dantius

If this is what a post-rapture world is like, then wow, Left Behind got it wrong in addition to being a terrible book. I really should try and get my money back.

Eh, Risk tends to have far too little skill and far too much luck involved for me to enjoy. I have way more fun playing computer risk with dozens of armies per territory, as there's still chance involved, but less chance for random upsets/streaks of bad luck, and much more tactics and strategy. Or course, the best games are the ones with no random chance. Chess and Go have stayed popular all these years for a reason, people.

Yeah, the price is about half a top-of-the-line newly released game for the 360 or the PS3, and some of the older games take at least 50 hours to play through, plus a replay value that's rare outside Bioware or Bethesda or a handful of other companies. So you're basically paying half as much for twice the product- which IIRC is what Jeff tries to price them as.

Largest contiguous empire in history, conquered largely under the auspices of Genghis Khan, lost its impetus and eventually collapsed and was divided up by various warlords and sons when Genghis had the audacity to die of a heart attack when they were about to conquer Europe. Since I doubt you will actually read the Wikipedia article even when linked directly to it.

This happens to me too on my netbook. The first time I try to start up a scenario, the screen turns white and the program shuts down. When I restart BoA and try again spamming spacebar, it works fine. And to make it weirder, I can't duplicate it on my desktop, so I always presumed it was a computer issue rather than a software one.

Originally Posted By: Goldenking Originally Posted By: Dantius Edit Reason: Why is "islamist" not recognized by spellcheck? It really should be... Because, "Islamist" is not a word. Islam is a word in Arabic that means "submission," making Muslim translate roughly as "one who submits." Words like "Islamist" and "Islamic" are not actually words at all, just crude English adaptations to Arabic words. Um, yeah, it's totally a word. English frequently co-opts words from other languages and then alters their definition, and I'm sure the linguists here will back me up on this one. It's usually used by political scientists and politicians and occasionally the military to denote the set of beliefs usually involving advocation of Muslim rule, sharia law, and return to a caliphate. Essentially, radical political Islam. It's not to be confused with "Islamic", which just means of or pertaining to Islam.

Depending on how the AI was programmed, I'd say an average player would be better off playing a really simple defensive system, like the London or the Stonewall, since trying to get into a really tactical position like an Alekhine or a position where you're down material could go south very quickly. Furthermore, the game isn't really very fair for Black, since White can just aggressively develop strong pieces on the third rank, where Black can't see them or defend from them but White can threaten mate in a few moves. Personally, I'd probably play something along the lines of e3/e4, Qf3, Bc4, and then go for the mate on f6.Very strong and just about impossible to defend against. ...this is why I don't like chess variations. They tend to be more about gimmicks than about tactics and strategy, though Bughouse is pretty fun sometimes, even if it is frustrating to be annihilating your opponent and then get mated because your partner let you down.

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha Osama may be gone, but that doesnt mean the organization is. Al queada was it? You better expect some sort of retallitation. Its like a body without no head, The head may be gone, but the body is still standing tall. Not really, the organization itself will probably collapse without fairly strong central leadership. No matter how decentralized and organization is, it still needs a leader, and with Bin Laden dead and no clear chain of command, I think it's fairly clear that the organization will simply no longer be able to pose a threat to the US, especially considering the SEAL team also got tons of operational and organization data that should be quite enough to obliterate Al Qaeda permanently. That doesn't mean Islamist terrorism is finished, mind you. All it means is that the most powerful anti-US group is gone- plenty other powerful groups and plenty other anti US groups exist, it's just that the powerful ones have their attention focused elsewhere, like India and Israel and Chechnya (are they still focused on Chechnya? It's so hard to tell...). I don't expect retaliation. I do expect further attacks down the road, probably from a different organization, and probably even more devastating. But those are issues out of my control, so I see no reason to worry about them, that's the government's job.

Originally Posted By: Excalibur Originally Posted By: Death Knight Im glad osama is dead. He was almost our time's version of hitler. They should've posted that death picture in every major city of the world. That would show people what happens when you decide to be a nutcase. It may be brutal, but being nice sure isnt working with these people. Hitler? Sure, Osama Bin Laden caused the deaths of many people, but the number certainly isn't in the millions. Au contraire, it may be pushing the millions, just no on the US's side. Way more Iraqi civilians died during the US's occupation than were killed by every terrorist attack against the US and multiplied by a factor of 10. The occupational death toll usually gets pegged anywhere from 100,000 to over a million. Speaking from my "disinterested utilitarian" soapbox, 3,000 dead Americans don't mean jack compared to a million dead Iraqis. People really need to get 9/11 in perspective. More people die in drunk driving accidents every month, and yet you don't see much public outcry about that.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Originally Posted By: tridash Obi wan is gone. As is usually the case with internet satire, half the fun of that article was reading the comments section. Damn, all those comments were spot-on what reading the comments section an an actual news website would be like. Are they submitted by users, or written in as part of the article?

Did you read the essays? The essential logic behind both Hitler and Ender's actions are identical- both saw their race as being threaded by contamination or conflict with a race of degenerate subhumans controlled by a hive-mind bent on world/galactic domination, so they "heroically" shouldered the responsibility of eliminating that thereat, whether by gas chambers or by destroying a planet. Seeing as Hitler was fortunately unsuccessful in his goal, we have no idea what his actions would be post-completed Final Solution. For all we know, he could have been driven mad by the guilt now that he was no longer driven by his goal and recanted and sought redemption like Ender did. He almost certainly wouldn't have, but I'm sure the argument could be made that he might. Oh, and also a vast quantity of the biographical and psychological parallels between the two are so shocking similar that coincidence can be just about ruled out, since it's obvious that the person writing the book must have had a very firm grasp of Hitler's life and motives, and then clearly and consciously modeled Ender after him. Again, read the essays I linked under "stand-ins" and "Hitler" in the above post.

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus I'm not sure if you got the reference or not, but you certainly misunderstood it. I presumed you were discussing Peter Wiggin from the Ender's Game series, yes? You are aware that Orson Scott Card is a fundamentalist Mormon with views bordering on the neofascist who has come this close to calling for military dictatorship of the US in his books and has deliberately created sympathetic characters as stand-ins for Hitler. Since Peter is Ender's brother, and Ender is Card's stand-in for the Fuhrer, then my statement stands. If you were not referring to that series, my bad. It's just the only one that comes to my mind that involves a psychopathic squirrel-torturer growing up to be Hegemon of the world.

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus Originally Posted By: Spiders and Lies —Alorael, who does not recommend trying it. It is not a quick, clean, or pleasant way to kill a fish. It is, in fact, just a step from vivisecting squirrels in your yard. If you vivisect squirrels in your back yard, you will one day end up as Hegemon of the entire world though. No, that only happens if you vivisect animals in your backyard and your little brother is Hitler reincarnated. Then you get to be Hegemon of the world.

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha ...I have to try that some time. I also want to put a grenade in a fishes mouth and pull the pin just to see what happens. You just sitting there holding a fishing pole wih a grenade on it, a second string attached to the pin The fish: swims up and tries to eat the grenade You: pull the pin... Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha Animal Cruelity much?

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Does slaughtering a chicken nugget count? I can do that with no big grief, though I do feel some second order guilt at hastening the day on which vast nugget herds no longer roam the range. I'm also worried about how many fishsticks we can keep on taking out of the oceans of this planet. On the other hand, Richard Dawkins' arguments about the evolution of breading have always seemed a little forced to me. So maybe there'll always be more where the others came from. Breading chicken is obvious evidence of unintelligent design! Why would a human take perfectly good meat and surround it with breadcrumbs and eggs? Clearly only a massive corporation would be capable of such a feat of creation!

Originally Posted By: Denizen of Terrestia Originally Posted By: Dantius I'd recommend dropping a few hundred k a year on some good bodyguards. That should keep you safe from just about anything. That seems like a good idea, but seems expensive. You should ask the person who is attacking you if this is what they really want to do, as you have professional martial arts training, and then fight! He didn't mention budgetary concerns. I simply offered the optimal solution given sufficient resources.

I'd recommend dropping a few hundred k a year on some good bodyguards. That should keep you safe from just about anything.

Originally Posted By: Mod. As far as other endings, I can't tell you any, and as far as I know, there is no list. I think the text is not included in the graphics for the endgame. Essentially, the pattern of "canon" endings boil down to unaligned loyalist, possibly aligned loyalist, rebel, rebel non-Trakovite, no canon ending for 1-5 respectively.

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha Some people hunt just to put them heads or antlers on the wall. What do you think they do with the rest of the animal? The vast majority of the people who put trophies on walls also eat what they kill. It really shouldn't be that difficult of a concept to grasp, but I run into perfectly rational people all the time who for whatever reason think that their stereotype of hunters as callous murderers is totally accurate and refuse to change it. I blame Disney, and especially Bambi. [censored] Bambi.

One of the better Onion articles relevant to the subject.

Instantly lethal wounds on an animal at a long enough distance to avoid detection are pretty difficult. It usually takes one shot to cripple it and then another one while it's wounded to finish it off. And the point of hunting usually is to kill and eat it. Everyone I know who hunts does this, it's not like they're emotionless psychopaths who enjoy torturing deer or something. Besides, it's arguable hunting your own meat is more moral than the alternative- not only are you the one who saw the consequences of eating meat, but a deer you hunt almost certainly suffers less than the cow whose meat you buy prepackaged in your local Jewel, who can be forced to live in some pretty unbearable conditions in factory farms. And to clarify, I am in fact an avid meat-eater who used to hunt. But now that's too much time and effort so I now only use my guns for trap shooting and target practice and home defense and such.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity The great thing about that one is that it shows how smart Newton was. Because he was right. I'd have to say that my favorite quote about Newton is either that one, his epitaph, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants", or the entire rant by the drill instructor in Mass Effect 2.

Originally Posted By: Lilith otoh andy warhol was a pretty bad artist I agree with this statement. I've never understood how people were willing to pay millions of dollars for, say, a superimposed silkscreen of Elvis, or the same silkscreen over and over with color changes. It just doesn't make any sense! And it's not that the concept of spending massive sums of money on art is bad- If I were a billionaire, or even just a multimillionaire, I'd totally drop ten or twenty million on an original Rembrandt or Vermeer or David. But paint thrown haphazard on a canvas? You'd have to be brain damaged to spend $100,000,000 on it!

Yeah, Pythras was designed to be unkillable for people who entered with a default L1 party up through about a L10 party with non-broken items. I'm thinking some of the items from Tales of the Tabard Inn, combined with maybe a TM scenario or two, might be strong enough to successfully kill Pythras within the parameters of "not cheating".

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity I could see that being an interesting game for Jeff to make, once he's been away from vlish for a few years. Still a long shot, though. I don't understand what DV did to Jeff that was so terrible he swore off Geneforge for years...