Drowsy Emperor

I hope you fail. I hope you turn 18 someday and realize how stupid that comment was. Yours too. The only style that can be attributed to PST is part of a setting that won't be featured in this game. As for making a "philosophical" game in the vein of PST, I can only laugh at that. PST's philosophical bent isn't something that can be imitated deliberately. Besides that wasn't the point. Anyone can claim to make a game inspired by PST. There's nothing wrong with that. But to call the game TORMENT and to write 10 pages stressing how similar the game is going to be to something that's totally unrelated to it is just pathetic.

I just had to log on and post regarding this. Its beyond shameful. A bunch of dudes that worked on PST are making a new game that has absolutely nothing to do with any PST character, setting or story but they're using the name and reputation of a fourteen year old game to sell their product, because they didn't have the balls (or the faith in their project?) to sell it as something completely distinct. I won't be buying it and I sincerely hope it fails.

Conclusion: Pac-man invented nightclubs.

The grand handicap imposed on the next school shooter will be carrying additional magazines. So that will set him back about 50+$ for the magazines and a tactical vest. Might as well call this the 50$ bill. Of course, the only point of this is so that the politicians can make a show of doing something while the weapons industry gets to enjoy the spoils of the pre-ban shopping frenzy. And the black market and collectors will get a nice increase in value for their pieces due to rarity. I guess increasing funds for the school system and therapy for troubled children was too un-american to be considered.

I agree that there are some prognosis which are either misdiagnosed or complete hoaxes, yet even if they weren't the correct approach to medication in psychology is to manage a condition, not treat it. Pills are merely a crutch to help with treating the actual cause, unless that is an extreme case where there is an actual physical cause, either hormonal or neurological. There may a societal angle here, it seems that nowadays treatment for an unfulfilled life is a happy pill rather than a life. I agree, although I think its a valid question to ask if some of the pills are indeed treating the condition or making it worse. The Generation RX documentary alleges that Lilly, the maker of the original Prozac knew, from their trials, that the drug can cause suicidal tendencies, and suicide, particularly in children and teens. Looking over the wikipedia article, it appears that its now common knowledge and part of the warning contained in the drug packaging. Subsequent documented cases of suicide of teens (and one school shooting commited by a teen using Prozac), beg the question how it happened that an anti depressant that makes people kill themselves (?) got onto the market in the first place.

When imposing a tyranny of sorts over people, the standard instruments most governments use is the police and secret services - not the military. The military is usually fairly patriotic and too powerful and self sufficient to be a dependable tool. Its also more distant from the political centers and consequently less corrupted by them. Of course, there are military juntas with strong armies and weak police, but in western states and the former soviet union, the opposite is the norm. The scenario of a government declaring war on the general populace is unlikely because it makes it impossible to regain legitimacy afterwards, which is still a fairly important component of rule in the west. What is entirely more possible is a slow decline into authoritarianism, not through force but through the growth of surveillance and media manipulation a la Orwell's 1984. Today's citizens are entirely dependent on those sources of information that can be controlled and channeled - the average city dweller wouldn't know if a war erupted two blocks down from his apartment if the evening news don't mention it. So, to cut the long story short, this is already happening.

I can imagine its horrible, but some stats say 30 million people in the US alone use anti-depressants. I seriously doubt there are 30 million cases of clinical depression, in any society. Holy **** http://thechart.blog...ntidepressants/ Yep They should just try heroin. Well the kids get Ritalin and it apparently has a similar pharmacological effect to cocaine and meth (being a form of amphetamine). So, they're sort of halfway there.

Everything is "intrinsic" to the human race. Acid reflux, indigestion, and headaches are. Doesn't mean people shouldn't take pepto bismol and pain relievers. Allergies are part of the human condition, as well, but if you try to tell me I shouldn't take allergy relief, whether it be loratadine or diphenhydramine, I'll laugh in your face. Your stigmatization of diagnosis and treatment strikes me as bizarre. Diagnosis and treatment in psychiatry isn't based on demonstrable, hard facts like in most other branches of medicine. While this is a moot point when someone appears to be truly insane, it raises questions with the now popular (but previously totally ignored) diagnoses like ADHD, depression etc. Its the same branch of medicine that propagated lobotomy, essentially zombie making, as a good form of treatment. That was a mere sixty years ago. I take aspirin and antibiotics and whatever else necessary like any other individual, but when I see 30 million doped up people I see bull**** written all over it.

I can imagine its horrible, but some stats say 30 million people in the US alone use anti-depressants. I seriously doubt there are 30 million cases of clinical depression, in any society. Holy **** http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/19/more-than-1-in-10-in-u-s-take-antidepressants/ Yep

I found the comments under the article hilarious http://shopping.yahoo.com/blogs/digital-crave/most-anticipated-tech-products-2013-011455921.html

I can imagine its horrible, but some stats say 30 million people in the US alone use anti-depressants. I seriously doubt there are 30 million cases of clinical depression, in any society.

You mean a ton of common behaviors intrinsic to the human race have been categorized as illnesses, very likely for the sole purpose of selling medication. The more you think about it, the more its obvious how perfect a product anti-depressants and the like are. When a normal person has a headache they take an aspirin and the headache, in the normal scenario, goes away. When a person is suffering from "depression", a subjective state that's impossible to describe in a definite way you can sell them medicine indefinitely, because you can never really say that the person is cured (especially as people tend to trust medical practitioners more than they trust themselves and easily grow dependent on medication).

Yeah, but the typical consumer of psychiatric medicaton has expanded far beyond the type of cases seen in wards. I ran across the information that in Atlanta university a third of the student population uses Ritalin daily (amongst other things), which they get by simply following the extremely vague checklist for ADHD during a token exam (like tapping their feet impatiently). By now even the dumbest psychiatrists should have caught on to this simple deception - if they care enough to do it.

Thanks for the recommendation. I just watched it and it pretty much confirms my suspicions.

That's what I suspected. The number of real patients in need of care is a relative constant (in every society), but there seems to be a whole influx of newly "created" patients dependent on "treatment" in the same way junkies are dependent on dope. Its the easy way out, dumping problems on others and avoiding responsibility. Another question is if the drugs actually do more harm then good in the long run.

I busted my balls to get the new Wiimote Plus to work on my netbook over bluetooth. The sly buggers in Nintendo changed something so the remote is a royal pain in the ass to set up now. I also screwed up my integrated camera - it stopped working when I installed new bluetooth stack for the remote.

And yet, the USA still has markedly more societal violence than other western states (or indeed most states, worldwide) and more random killings. Obviously there is something wrong with the current approach to psychiatry, the free for all approach to psychiatric medication is either making things worse or not helping at all.

That basically supports my argument. The citizens wouldn't need to be armed because the army wouldn't mobilize against them. I'm not actually against gun ownership, but I think gun ownership to protect yourself from the government makes little sense in our modern society. Its the principle of the thing that's worth upholding. There is no real reason citizens shouldn't be armed. The few moronic accidents do not disqualify thousands of responsible gun owners from ownership. I consider disarming people suspicious, and voluntary abandonment of the privileges of owning a weapon disappointing. Most people are likely to go through their whole life without ever needing one, but if circumstances should arise that they need a weapon and they don't have one because they willingly discarded their right to it* - then they deserve whatever happens to them. *That is the current sad state of affairs throughout most of Europe, and the right to bear arms is one thing I admire about the US, even if the climate there leans dangerously towards worshiping guns as a panacea instead of merely treating them as the tools they are.

Lol, tell that to the hundreds of american farmers who were systematically bullied, threatened, sued and ultimately destroyed by Monsanto using legal and illegal (or borderline illegal, like terrorizing people in the middle of the night by hired goons) methods.

I don't understand people like you. You treat the world like an aquarium that only goldfish swim in. When a barracuda comes you can only gape in horror as it chews you up. And yet you still continue to argue that we should all be goldfish as though that would make the barracuda go away. If there was but one more armed person in Norway they might not have had a Breivik. Is that an excuse to arm everyone to the teeth? No. But start living in the real world please. If self defense wasn't a necessity, guns would not exist in the first place.

Upgraded my netbook to Windows 7. It originally came with Win7 but I was appalled at its performance, and the lack of customization options in the starter edition so I downgraded to XP Pro 32bit. Now its running Win7 Ultimate at approximately the same level of performance as XP except its a bit faster.

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. I don't know what to make of it yet.

The weapons you should really be against (if the whole issue is worth it) are those like Mac-10, MP5 etc. Compact sub-machine guns whose only purpose is to unload a lot of bullets into the target as fast as possible. They really are worthless to anyone who is not a gangbanger. Not that its going to stop gangbangers using them. If you really need another example, after the wars in these parts practically every household had a gun of some sort. From handguns to AK's, from hand grenades to RPG's. I kid you not (I vaguely remember toying around with a deactivated hand grenade). And these are not households on the front lines of the war, no these are cities and villages that haven't seen any combat at all. War veterans brought a ton of that stuff back. And you know what happened? Nothing. Many people either kept that stuff in the attic, or gave it to the police for storage/melting down. No massacres, school shootings or anything of the sort. Some of those weapons were used in typical crimes, some of them were the cause of minor accidents but that's the nature of the black market and weapons in general (when combined with human carelessness). Yet another proof that having heavily armed citizens (even with military grade weapons) doesn't equate to an anarchic society. Its all in the upbringing.

Honestly it sounds like there is much more to their dislike for your wife than they're ready to admit. Many of the issues seem superficial, so they're most likely not the real reasons for the existing friction. Either that, or those are simply the sort of complaints people draw up when they don't like someone in general, but have nothing concrete to hold against them. Most likely both parties have an instinctive dislike and distrust of each other, but since they're not going to verbalize it, its grows the existing rift and makes social gatherings awkward. Its hard to see why they wouldn't all be able to get along if that was the totality of their complaints toward her. It would be unwise for this situation to back you into having to make choices, when for your sake, both parties owe it to you to keep their relationships civil. You should remind them of that and refrain from hasty decisions, if they managed 10 years they can do another 10 just as easy. And don't get defensive about your wife just because she's your wife and you love her. She should be able to resolve the matter herself in a frank and open conversation, (as should they) so the actual parties can settle their differences between themselves and not use you as a place to vent their frustration. A private lunch with you as the mediator should sort those differences out. Although if you're going to get so uptight about a few complaints and are unable to keep a cool head that might not be the best choice. The "meeting" should not be held now when everyone is uptight, but after a little while. The potential for it to blow up in everyone's face is at its highest at the moment.

While close range negates a lot of advantages of a rifle over a pistol it doesn't negate all of them. A pistol round is typically lighter and slower than a(n assault) rifle round and (all other things being equal) is far less damaging, at any range. Even limited to just handguns there's huge variation in survivability, eg a .44 magnum is far more deadly than a 9mm round. In the particular circumstances of this incident there might not be much difference, but if he had been interrupted there'd be more chance of surviving if hit by a 9mm glock bullet than by an AK round. I've fired a .22, a .223NATO and a .303 (? Lee Enfield from WW2 anyway) and I have no doubt whatsoever that were I ever to be unfortunate enough to get shot I'd prefer the .22, at any range under the sun. Personally I don't see any reason at all why any civilian should own an automatic weapon. They're inherently less controllable and more dangerous to bystanders whatever the context. I also have no problem whatsoever with handguns being banned though that is practically impossible in the US. I'm pretty comfortable overall with the situation here where it's reasonably easy to get a rifle if you have a good reason (hunting qualifies) and can pass the licence for it (basically have people willing to say you aren't bonkers, do not have a drug or alcohol problem and do not have criminal convictions) and have good security such as a trigger lock/ safe/ rack plus keep ammo/ bolt separate from the gun. From what I know of automatic weapons in the US, they were banned, and the only legal ones on the market are those pre-ban ones which are essentially collectors pieces that fetch high prices. At least that's how it used to be at some point. While there is no real reason for a civilian to own an automatic weapon, all of them require a person a to pull the trigger, and if that person is an idiot then its equally dangerous whatever he/she is holding. Besides, in Switzerland everyone who has passed army duty gets one of the best assault rifles in the world to keep at home. I dont see the Swiss dying in droves because of it. So, one could argue that Switzerland is the most militarized country in the world... and one of the most peaceful at the same time. I don't think its peaceful because everyone house has a rife, but it definitely proves that gun ownership doesn't correlate directly to violence and crime.