Bartimaeus

The little* UDFA guys that make it (and sometimes make it big!) are my favorites...but I am a Packers fan (where, according to statistics I heard last season, UDFAs have had the best starting opportunities since our current GM got the job in the league), so I guess that's only natural... *Okay, maybe "little" is the wrong word...

Yeah, these forums are a complete and total garbage hole when people are actually getting upset at each other*, and moderation, administration, ownership et. al. doesn't seem to care one bit. Why have rules against flaming and trolling when you can have rules against criticism of other companies? ... *Not that I haven't contributed to it being so...but hey, if the rules weren't such trash, it wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

It's just becoming pretty painful to sit through most of these threads, where it seems like discussion has gotten especially repetitive and boneheaded lately. I especially get annoyed anytime people start doing those idiotic "gotcha"s people have been posting lately every time they reply and "prove" the other person wrong. Gettin' old.

You know, this is kind of have I've been feeling about most of the "serious discussion" threads lately...

Billings has fallen like a rock down a well. Everyone made fun of the Packers for not picking him when he "fell" to them, but he literally has not been picked in the first three rounds yet...

Well, the Buccaneers took a kicker with their second round pick - would you have preferred that?

Yeah, good luck with that. Could turn out good...but I know if the Packers had taken him, he would've never turned out never because the injury risk players we take always do.

What a weird draft. But they usually are.

Titanite/Prowling Demons are jerks, yes. Bed of Chaos is just bad, and it's, from what I've heard, one of the bosses designed as development time was running out. It sucks.

Was she supposed to look different? I mean, I didn't imagine her skin would suddenly look 20 years younger because of additional protection of the DNA. I thought the idea was just to protect the DNA from random damage/mutations.

Why? If the commissioner "then used the power to discipline" poorly, bad terrible awfully and inappropriately, of course I expect the NFLPA (and other fans of football) to complain. I would say most of us, assuming Hurlshot wasn't the one to personally negotiate the terrible deal himself, or assuming that the Teachers Union was unaware of how poorly the school would handle their responsibilities. I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that there should be no reasonable expectations of competency or fairness. That's generally not how a good working relationship (business or otherwise) works. By my estimation, the commissioner is clearly not performing that part of the job with either of those.

Because they didn't know for sure what their "king" would do with the power given entrusted to him. In most avenues of life, each of us are entrusted with certain responsibilities and abilities: that does not give us license to use those powers how we wish with no regard for the wishes of our inferiors, peers, and superiors. If the way Goodell is handling these scandals is not how the NFLPA expected him to (and I don't believe it is), then I absolutely do sympathize with them and expect there to be some blowback when the renegotiation comes. A better analogy, perhaps, would've been our Congress and the President: if Congress gives the President some powers they did not previously have (or the President becomes aware of powers that they, and/or former presidents, did not previously use), and the President uses those powers in a way that the majority of Congress does not approve of, then of course I expect it to be an issue between the two groups. Depending on the exact powers and how they're being (mis)used, I may sympathize with either Congress or the President - in this particular case, it's Congress.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. When you frame it that way, I can't help but think of a newly-crowned king...with the powers granted to him by his position, he might make a great king, even if he does wield absolute power and authority. He might also make a truly terrible one. The nonsense that was "Spygate" should've been warning enough to the NFLPA, I agree, but the following baloney that have been Bountygate, Deflategate, Noisegate, the Ray Rice scandal, et cetera...have illuminated more than enough about the "greatness" of Goodell in this regard.

Man, I am so tired of seeing Prince garbage. Living in Minnesota, you'd think he was the (previously) living reincarnation of Jesus or something - it just never ends.

Yeah, it sucks. I imagine this will be an issue when they renegotiate the players association union agreement with the NFL in 2020.

In the sense I was using it, as in a "get to the point" sort of way, Bruce absolutely has points. Hillary is a great presidential candidate, romance in video games are great, there's absolutely nothing weird about a 40+ year old man hanging out with teenage girls, etc. Those are some of his points. Are they points I agree with, or think he's able to support in a sufficient manner? Well, we already know the answer to that, don't we? Yes, well, the 3 or 4 friends I have that are Germans and that live in Germany do not share your posting mannerisms...and the needless thoroughness and redundancy is making it impossible for the rest of us to read your posts. Your choice, though. As much as I hate to say it, I wasn't even really trying to offend you, Bruce: in a technical sense, you write horrifically. You use punctuation wrong more than you use it right (when you use it at all), you often erroneously place spaces where they should not be, your sentence structure generally leaves much to be desired, your word usage is...actually, pretty much just fine. What I said had no bearing upon the quality of your arguments or your thoughts (though I routinely have very negative feelings about both of those as well, but it is a separate matter) - merely the quality of your writing. I also did not say it with the expectation that you'd like, magically get any better or anything - I don't expect anyone to understand English to any great degree at all, as a matter of fact. So, my apologies for you using as an example - you're just what came to mind.

It's super annoying because you otherwise write superbly in a technical sense (as an aside, it's hilarious to me and also ironic that the "technical writing" class I mentioned earlier is actually the opposite of what I mean when I say it here, even though I'm correct in both cases). In contrast, Bruce writes like complete and utter garbage in so many different aspects of his posts (but generally manages to get his point across clearly, albeit almost always poorly supported and not always as concise as it could be) - you, on other hand, write near perfectly in a technical sense (with that one exception of having 2-4 returns seemingly randomly in between paragraphs), but you are literally probably the absolute worst I've met at getting across your point, nevermind writing it in a concise manner. So really, you've got worse things to worry about than the random returns...but they're still annoying to me, yes.

I'm sorry, Longknife, I really am: I just can't do it anymore. The painful and pointlessly long length and rambling nature of way too large a percentage of your posts aside (I think it was Hurlshot* who said "why write a paragraph(s) when a single sentence will suffice" or something along those lines - maybe it wasn't Hurlshot, but it was somebody), ya' randomly stick extra returns in between paragraphs for no reason and that, above everything else, drives me crazy. Like, I'm not trying to be mean - even though I know I am actually being mean - but please take a technical writing class to more concisely write your thoughts, for your own sake for communicating with others. I just can't bother myself to read these short papers anymore when they could be written in half the length or less. (e): *It was Zoraptor: "No need for an essay when a clause will do. Succinct, to the point and gets the important take home message across as quickly and easily as possible." Also, changed "literally almost every" to "way too large a percentage", since it wasn't quite actually literally almost every post - just way too many as it is.

AMD would be fantastic for gaming if, you know, games actually supported that many threads. So if that situation improves (the process has been absolute molasses since the introduction of consumer-grade quadcores about a decade ago), then of course their fortunes will turn there - Intel may whoop them for single-thread performance still, but the price-to-performance ratio would greatly swing in AMD's favor. But...like I said, it's been sooo slow for games to actually start taking advantage of quadcores (hardly any games even do still...). Hope that changes soon with DX12...but I won't be holding my breath.

I hate to say it - to specifically you, that is - but Meshugger is trolling you. A single parent (mother or father) does not a person define. Don't feed the trolls - at least, not when they're actually trolling. P.S. I'm probably only obligated to say this because I was raised by only my mother, too.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that, in the case of self-defense, I would necessarily actually be more safe on average in most situations - I don't think I actually did, to be fair to myself, but the connotation is unfortunately there (as it's a popular argument by pro-firearms folks). That is not the argument I'm trying to make (and based on your statistics you listed, it isn't likely to be a great one anyways in most cases). That's sort of...besides the point, in my mind, particularly seeing as statistics are based on the general population, rather than, you know, particular situations and individuals - some of whom do (based on your statistics) use firearms correctly, and do not cause accidental firearm killings. Rather, for me personally, it's more about simply the right to retain it as a sort of last resort option in cases where it *is* a requirement - the only case I would ever use it. Why do I feel this way? Well...I'll use an example: when my aunt was a young adult (around 19-20), she was still living with her parents (my grandparents). They were a victim of a home invasion in the middle of the night by a man who was, if I recall correctly, drunk and/or high, and who attempted to rape my aunt. She did not have a weapon, firearm or not, and it would've been...difficult for her to resolve the situation in a ideal manner by herself with what means she currently had at her disposal. My grandpa, however, woke up and quickly became aware of the situation, and quickly got his gun and confronted the man. Without the gun, my grandpa may not have been able to stop/overpower him. Even if he could've without it, what if he wasn't there? I believe my aunt should've had the ability to at least try to resolve the situation herself in regards to her own well-being (being the victim of a home invasion, after all), and to me, that's what firearms represent: they can be a sort of "great equalizer" between those more physically capable, and those not. If my aunt had had a gun, she would've at least had the capability (perhaps not the will, but the capability) to shoot that man and physically disable him - whether in severe injury or death: his well-being comes second as the one who's breaking the law and doing harm - in the event of there being no other way to handle the situation in an ideal manner. So combine this (the fact that I consider the ability to not be able to defend yourself with guns to be non-ideal) with the problem of gun control just...not going to be effective or make hardly any difference at all for likely the rest of my life, and I just...I just can't get behind it. It's something that I just don't feel like I could ever persuaded differently in regards to - I'll certainly listen to other people's reasons for being pro-gun control, and I may agree that some of them are good...but I don't think I'll agree that they outweigh my own reasons and change my own opinion on the matter. (e): Also, for what it's worth, I do not actually own any guns myself (and do not currently plan on obtaining any any time soon), and I did not grow up in a family that had any guns. Guns actually quite terrify me...but that doesn't mean I want to demonize them and for there to be no possibility of being able to obtain one in the event I feel like I need one, y'know?

I personally like the self-defense and the "people who don't care about the law in general won't care about another law" angles better, rather than the anti-government stuff. Personally, I do believe it's almost entirely about public safety. I just think it's really, really, entirely, the 100% wrong way to go about trying to fix the problem (in terms of what is right and ideal), and it wouldn't even fix the problem at this point (at least, not without disregarding the current rule of law and searching the entire populace for weapons and seizing them - there are just way, way too many guns already that it would be nearly useless; this also doesn't even take into account that, what, roughly half of the population is against further gun control? We've already tried the Noble Experiment: it didn't work, and it actually made things much, so much worse. Maybe it would start to become more effective after a significant amount of time...probably 50-100 years at the very least - but even so, I don't regard it as the correct course of action), and they should really stop trying.

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking. There are a lot of things that I would personally evaluate to be "bad", but something I still like. Video games, books, movies, TV shows...even stuff like card games and the such. Above all else, boring is not something I generally ever want something I'm trying to enjoy to be.

But that isn't what Guard Dog asked, or really even hinted at, at all. If it's not for public safety/crime control, what reason does the government have for disarming its citizenry? Guard Dog might have his reasons for not wanting the government to disarm him and the rest of the U.S., sure, but that has no relevancy to why certain members of the government do want to disarm him and the rest of the U.S. - unless those reasons are why the government want to disarm him and the rest of the U.S. in the first place, which you're saying they're not, anyways. So why do it?

Or...in other words, bad.