LadyCrimson

So only certain people are worth the cost of protecting against death by disease?

I'ts my understanding that it'll only work in someone if they have not yet been infected with the virus - since it's easy to get HPV and it often has no symptoms to let a person know they've contracted it, the obvious "target" of vaccines are young children before they've ever had any sex. Regardless of how one may morally feel about it, in this day and age, and in some cultures, that typically means the very young.

Areas in California are also beginning to discuss or pass ordinaces/laws/whatever about not allowing many "bad" foods to be sold in schools, as well, particularly vending machines.

That surprised me not at all. I had a hunch they were going to change actors as soon as Octavian became "grown up" or a battle-leader or what have you. They didn't do too bad a job picking the new actor physically, and his voice seems pretty similar, but the original guy had a better screen presence. We'll see. I think they should just kill off those two bitter and arrogant rich-women characters and have done with it. I miss Niobe. I'm still lovin' the show, tho - especially some of the more minor characters with a few great lines now and then, like a couple of the Senators. Roman soap opera was never so entertaining.

I have the feeling my warped sense of humor caused me to read this really wrong, but it sure made me LOL. I love pets but if I had kids I probably wouldn't let them have one until they were fairly old. Well, maybe a hamster...

I still disagree with this, a lot. Sure cat litter smells, because it's, y'know, crap and urine and all that - but to my nose, cat fur itself doesn't stink. I can't stand the musk-oil dog smell that's dog fur, and can smell it on people's clothing from 6-10 feet away. If you bathe your dog every day, sometimes that helps minimize it to where it doesn't bother me, but beyond that...*holds nose* Rewards of a pet are in the eye of the beholder. With indoor-only cats, you notice a lot more of a cats personality/devotion, I think. At least I have. Dogs are definitely more/easily trainable tho. "get off the couch, cat!" "Stop that!" "Where's the waterpistol?" "Get off my sweater!" "Argh!!!"

Bold emphasis mine. I don't know about zero effect, but I agree with mkreku's point. The USA has so many guns (and weapons in general) floating around already - unless people voluntarily give the vast majority of them up, it's pretty hard to control who has them, where they are, etc, no matter what laws you pass. There are occasionally towns that give up their guns like that, but it's not common. Is the USA "really that bad?" Since I've never lived anywhere else, I couldn't say. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as some think it is or try to paint it out to be, certainly. Stats can never tell you what it's like to actually live in a specific place. But fear has become a saleable product in the US. The odds of the average US citizen encountering a really "deadly" situation or a gun in their face is still fairly damn low overall I think, but it depends a lot on where you live...the coastal or other large city areas are very different than the more rural or mid-West areas - a rich suburb on one side of the freeway much different than the lower-middle class on the other side of the same freeway - micro-city environments within the main city and all that. But of course the news media pumps up every violent crime to the point where citizens live in fear of being the victim.

Weapons themselves have never given me a buzz. I do, however, find it fascinating how much energy and...um...intelligent thought goes into the creation and escalation of weapons in order to maintain balances of "power" or defend populations, as well as the tactics of how to defend/attack against such flucuations as they occur. That leads to admiration of the technical building of the machines of war, so to speak. Perhaps in an ideal world I'd rather such energy was turned to other things instead, but...humans are interesting creatures and I think study of all it's aspects, behaviour patterns & inventions equally revealing/interesting, whether they're "good" or "bad".

Being into warfare strategies/tactics/history of development of all major periods, weapons have always fascinated me on an intellectual level. Occasionally I've even thought of buying some, from historical sword models to bows to handguns. But I'm too lazy to be skilled w/a bow, say, and have no use for weapons beyond mounting them on my wall, thus my interest remains intellectual. Machine wise, it's a nice piece of hardware, certainly. Ethics - eh...If there were no guns, there'd be no gun-related crimes/accidents and less actual fatal situations/accidents, sure, but it's not the guns...it's weapons in general, including sticks and rocks, combined with humans violent tendencies. ie, it all depends on the individuals. Unfortunately it's hard to regulate and control via individuals, thus we have laws. which in the US is admittedly rather lacking compared to some other areas. I have no problem with people wanting to own/target practice a handgun or a big nasty bow. People who have basements full of weaponry or want to possess aresenals of automatic weapons in the name of "home safety" could probably use a little...uh...help, imo.

It's a battlecry - it doesn't have to "fit." I'd use it to replace "charrrrrge." :D Make it so sounds too....polite.

I'm still partial to "Khaaaan" as a battlecry.

I understand the feeling tho...I often enjoy the company of animals more than people. I'm interested in trying to keep all life from undue mistreatment or extinction, even humans. Tho I might make an exception for fleas and the mosquito.

I thought Fio was a green dragon?... I'm also a Dragon....I choose to think I'm the blue one.

Assuming this vaccination has been tested long enough or otherwise decided to have low risk of possible negative short/long-term side effects, then I have nothing against such a policy for any vaccination against communicable and/or life threatening diseases. Would they object as much if they came up with a working vaccine for ebola, or alzheimers, or....? Perhaps illogically tho, I consider the seatbelt issue (for adults) irritating and still object to it... :bunny:

The enemy strength of a "new area" is set and based on your level when you first arrive somewhere, so I'd also say yes. Typically it seems people are 23-30 when they finish the first time, so I think you're doing just fine.

About to eat pizza and watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Then is that what you're sort of thinking of, LordKun? As to will it succeed - I couldn't guess. I suppose the shows willl get high ratings at first out of curiousity, but the rest is up to quality, as always.

Sure. Sent. I was lazy this time and they're a little fuzzy for light backgrounds, just fyi.

Wistrik - for SP? Going to make a mod or just items for your personal use? I've seen some rebalance mods but they usually focus more on skills and monster strengths. Ever since LOD the sets and rares have been largely useless (at least past Normal or Nightmare diff), making the game rather...dull, imo. Such an item rebalance would be nice. If you make a mod, let me know where to get it. :D I usually use the SP editor just when bored to do silly things for laughs like give my sorceror summon skeleton or my hireling the speed of the Flash... "

Yes, Fio. Readjusted versions.

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Wasn't there a SW series in the works or on the drawing board or something?...

jorian, the player is controlled by a code that you insert into your webpage document. If you don't demand streaming audio and have upload permissions to your webserver, you don't need a secondary website to achieve what you want. Just upload the file to your server and use the simple embed command to insert the WMplayer. Have the code point to your file location and use it to control the players size and auto-play functions etc. You can Google the embed command, there's all kinds of yakkity yak about it. Example: <embed type="application/x-mplayer2" src="http://your/file/address" name="MediaPlayer" height="42" width="300" ShowControls=1 ShowDisplay=0 ShowStatusBar=0 autostart=0 autorewind=0 ShowPositionControls=1></embed> Notice the height parameter is set small enough to only show the controls, not the whole video box of WMP, since you only want to play audio files. This generally works for IE and Firefox, but as always, maybe not 100% all users depending on what they're using etc. If you want a fancier more modern player, ala Flash or something, or streaming audio, that's something different, isn't always free or simple, and I can't help you there, as I'm cheap & lazy and haven't yet bothered to go beyond basic embedding beyond a little research. " A secondary-site's player code may be less user-flexible options wise than what you could do yourself - that's up to the website, what player they use, and how they've arranged things. If you have a choice, IMO it's always better to do it yourself/be in control. I don't know of any music sites ala Youtube...sorry.

Well, since you re-opened it... If you want music to play when people look at your webpage, the simplest way is to just upload a song (any file host will do) and use html coding in your webpages to embed a simple player and set it to repeat/loop the song. When people hit your page, the song will start to download - when it's finished, it'll play & repeat. Or if you know how, you can go the streaming route and it'll only download a buffer before playing, meaning less delay time. If you're asking whether people can listen to songs without having to spend the time waiting for a file to download at all, there's no way to do that.

It's been so long since I've hung out on b.net that I've forgtten why those amazons have red swirlies around them.