xanas3712

I'm here because I liked NWN1, but thought it had a few ... lacking areas that need to be improved. My main interests in the second game just as for the first was PW development and play. I like playing on pws, and I like building them more than just about anything else. I spent many hundreds of hours doing this, and I would love to have more tools to do it with and do it better I like good SP mods as well, so I hope for a good campaign and all that but it's not what draws me to want to comment and pay attention to these forums.

No one could say paganism isn't a real religion by definition. It certainly is. However, the fact is agree with it or not it's fundamental to the doctrines of Christianity that the religion is exclusive to others. You can insult the people with intolerance or anything you like but it's very silly to do so, because your definitions are inaccurate. For one thing, Christianity doesn't teach to acknowledge the truth of other religions, but neither do you really acknowledge it's truth (or you'd have to acknowledge it's exclusivity as being accurate). The fact is mutually exclusive things cannot be concurrently correct and you have to choose. Now you may not choose Christianity, and that's fine. Tolerance is being willing to accept that there are people who have other beliefs and to "live and let live" But it is certainly not to say that their views are equally valid. I don't know of any human being that honestly believes the views of another or equally valid, and I certainly don't believe that of you. You make a point to argue your own perspective on many issues, so how you can claim to possess this kind of "tolerance" is beyond me. Not that I do any "better" but at least I don't claim to possess this. I realize that my views are exclusive and I make no claims to not think my views better than those of others. But for you to push your views and then say you see others points as equally valid doesn't make a lot of sense. Hades, I'd say your comments are an oversimplication of the theology, and though some probably believe them in that manner, I don't agree with that or think the text supports it. But it's kind of pointless to go into specifics with someone who doesn't believe Christianity anyway, especially in a topic that's already off it's intended direction.

There is also Wings3D and Blender which are opensource. I know a few who use Wings for the basic modeling and then do everything else in Max. It's supposed to be good at that one thing.

I don't know that I think Robertson is a nut, but I don't have a lot of respect for him or the others. I never take televangelists seriously, and I am a conservative evangelical. Most conservatives that I know who are Christian don't take them seriously either. There are a few, but by and large we don't follow those people. I could care less what these organizations say about candidates or what-not. I'll make my own decisions on the matter. I know this is what most others that I know well will do as well, and I went to a Christian college for 4 years so I think I have an idea of what those kind of people think. The root motivations are hatred/bigotry/greed and those things exist apart from religion. Most religions provide the opposite of justification for these actions. Christianity condemns hatred, unforgiveness, and the love of money. I don't know how you could possibly say it's justified by the doctrine. It is clearly not.

Their governments give more but their people give less per capita. It's wrong to only include the one, when the fundamental philosophy of conservatives is to let people manage their own money and give as they want rather than having the government control it. I don't think the UN is the most effective aid organization, so I would rather my money go elsewhere. I imagine there are many others who think so as well. But when government is the one giving the people don't have nearly as much choice. http://www.usaid.gov/fani/Chapter_6--Forei...al_Interest.pdf <-- is a pdf about this that considers both the oda and private assistance along with various other forms of government assistance.

Refresh my memory on what we've done for the Sudan? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A lot unless you are just talking about the government. Christian evangelicals have given a lot of money to help the people of Sudan. I've seen several calls for donations to the Sudan in my own area.

I think there are some violent Buddhist sects, they are just more rare because the religion in general isn't as large. I'll have to look into it but I think I'd heard of some groups before. Regardless, fundamentalists is the wrong term here. Those who are "fundamentalist" in regard to Christianity literally interpret the Bible, but if they do so they would have to know of verses like "overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21) Those you are referring to clearly rate other principles higher. This has everything to do with the people and their hatreds than anything that the Bible or Christ told them to do. And considering you aren't really aware of the good that Religion does, you really cannot speak on that, because it has as much to do with internals of a person as it has to do with how they relate to others. Considering most religious principles are good I find it very difficult to believe that it's primarily a harmful force, and I place the blame of harm on people.

Rhomal, the reason I can support them is I don't immediately believe some guy who was fired and is probably whining to the DNC to get himself attention. Who am I going to believe is the bad guy? All the officials there or this one man? Come on. Furthermore, even if I thought it were accurate I would think that it's restricted to this area. I simply don't believe the spin your party puts out. Maybe we could talk about the fact the Democrats are well known for winning elections through "other" means. One might forget that the reason Nixon did what he did is that he lost to Kennedy because of "mob connections." So even if I believed this I would say there is just as much going on the other side that's deplorable, we just don't have the media to play our spin like you guys do. Instead, they like to play attempts to get rid of fradulent voters as getting rid of "legitimate democrats." But there is so little proof for either situation so many times it's best to assume some disgruntled employee is going off. Did you know out of all the cases the Democrats have filed so far this election that they have lost every single one? Or maybe you just chalk that up to conservative activist judges. Not really, the european operation could have been delayed after the "real war" was over with Japan. Of course I would have disagreed with that. Also, we were arming the British (Roosevelt) and other various things that people could get away with. You can't exactly blame this on the politicians as this was the isolationists fault. The same kind of Isolationists (people like HadesOne) who agree with you now about Iraq. Give the statistics to back this up please. That there were only a "handful" left after Russia destroyed so many. I know Russia lost a hell of a lot more than we did, but I don't think their effectiveness per man was that great at all. Anyway I haven't seen a list of casualties caused by specific allied groups against the Axis, and it probably doesn't exist. So without that this is just a battle of opinion over who killed more. Yet you had no problem citing principles to use them against the guy earlier. This leads me to believe that your hatred has a lot more to do with people than anything.

It is much more likely to believe the data here is fabricated than to think anything else. The simpler conspiracy is the more likely one. I didn't see a source for all the passenger claims, some of which is available on other websites I found myself, some of which is only found on websites I don't find to be incredibly reputable. The information I don't know enough about. However, the idea that what would have to be several hundred thousand people are hiding something like you say is completely and totally preposterous.

I think the website is a concoction of materials I cannot currently verify from other sources. Also, I think the information presented is done such in a manner as to provide people with evidence to support already inspired conclusions. However, the idea that this could have been done, that a plane could be made smaller than an AA airliner and with smaller letters, etc. just seems insane to me. The site also gives weight to the argument that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor and allowed that to happen as well. It would take an incredible amount of time for me to research everything they present. No doubt the amount of "evidence" there is substantial, I just don't trust the authenticity of any of what they possess, and I certainly don't trust their explanations. I'll leave the science to those who know about it directly, but honestly the conspiracy itself doesn't make sense. I don't think something of that level would have been required to produce the result (if the pentagon hadn't been hit and just the WTC had been I doubt anyone would have changed their mind). Furthermore, just the difficulty of hiding something like that from government officials, the idea that everyone at the top is some radically evil person, etc. It's not realistic. I don't have such a pessimistic worldview that I think everyone is out to get me, and unless I start putting a tinfoil hat on my head I don't see that occuring anytime soon. And why bother debunking something or spending time on it if it doesn't make sense from that perspective?

Ok, we know that Iraq was shooting at the US planes before the war. Doesn't that qualify as an act of war? I don't see how it's pre-emptive if you count that, but I'm not necessarily saying I disagreed even if that wasn't going on.

LOL, did he do these things? Actually the investigation on the millenium plot has discovered they got lucky more than anything else. This had much more to do with officials in the FBI than anything to do with Clinton or his administration directly. And btw, the same is true with the Bush admin. They are hardly directly responsible for most of the good or bad that happens under them. Ok, so the LA times (an outfit I've never respected) goes and says something about an unreleased document, as if they know exactly what's contained in it. Hmm. Who gave them the information, I don't see their source for it? Maybe it's Charlie Rangel Oh, the ME moderates would have done something about him. You realize that Saddam had a large military than all of them right? Or maybe you don't. Believe it or not, even though we smashed Iraq in a short time it wasn't because his military was insignificant. There is no way that any one nation could have handled it on their own, and while Israel is in the region you know that their work would have been rejected. And they have enough problems to deal with on their own as it is. Not end of story, the fact you could care less about the people over there does not make it the end of the story. You may want it to be but I think those things are important, as do many other Americans. Congress had access to the same intelligence information and came to the same, if not more severe conclusions. If you need me to fish out Senator Kerry's remarks, such as "If you don't think Saddam is a threat with nuclear weapons don't vote for me" then I'll get you some with sources on the matter. Oh he was told that by Bush right? Hardly, because Bush or his officials never went that far, and Kerry was on the intelligence committee. I have taken Economics. The meaning of surplus is "more than is required to be balanced" If you have a surplus for the month, that's money you get to spend as you want. It is overtaxation. There is no getting away from that. It's not the largest deficit in history. That was at the end of Reagan's administration. You are speaking purely in nominal (ie: meaningless) terms. You have to account for inflation for nearly any figure to mean anything. Otherwise it's just a nice talking point from your favorite democrat. Only it didn't happen until the Republican congress was in at 94 for this to occur. It didn't happen in 92. Well, liberals thing being pro-choice is a traditional value. Too bad that you think supporting that and partial birth abortion is "traditional values" Contras were fighting against the Sandanista Communists. It was good that happened regardless of the fact it was illegal. And before you mention how evil it is for a president to go against Congress lets not forget that Roosevelt wasn't beyond doing that himself when he found loopholes to send arms to the Brits in WWII before Dec 7 1942. They both escalated Vietnam, and the bay of pigs was on JFKs watch. Though, I'll admit of the 2 that LBJ was worse. But lets not forget that he was also a liberal democrat, and though Nixon is now blamed for what happened in Vietnam (which was ridiculous since he was withdrawing troops) it's actually LBJ and Kennedy who put most of them in there in the first place. Actually, I mention that only as a failure because you think it is. I actually believe we should have won that war the way it was planned. If we had continued funding SV as NV was funded by other communists it would have been possible for them to have held off invasions on their own. Their military had proven it's ability to defend in the past. They just ran out of supplies thanks to congress here cutting off the help. You certainly haven't been listening if you say I haven't said anything good about Clinton. I said he was an average president, not the worst in history or anything stupid like that. He managed to pass the balanced budget, so he deserves some credit for that as well as some credit for helping in Bosnia, etc. The fact that I was responding to an overtly positive report by you on Clinton in no way says I have nothing good to say about the guy. I think you went too far and said so, no way I can be positive in doing that. LOL, it is a talking point. You say you don't blame him and then you bring up that line. I don't look away from the line, I think you underrate the effect of the Stock Markets failures with Enron and Worldcom, as well as 9/11. The worst terrorist attack in the nations history and you think, oh, it doesn't amount to anything. Great. Regardless, as to Clinton's budget, taxes, and various policies/initiatives that's not very speicific. The budget is set by congress, and taxes were raised. Now if you can explain to me how raising taxes makes the economy better I'd like to hear that, but honestly I think the economy got better because that's what the economy was already doing. It was already improving and had improved significantly as of his first 90 days (when he had yet to pass any of his agenda in congress)> Anyway, also if you like talking points, here is one. The current rate of unemployment is below the Clinton Administration's average. Since you talked to me about taking economics I'll point you to the concept of minimum unemployment. I think we had a period where the economy was actually in "overemployment" and that is another reason that jobs fell. Most economists in the past thought that the rate is somewhere around 5.5% (some higher some less) and when it was below 5 I think many would say that it couldn't stay at that level.

This is funny. And I do agree with the above lol.

This is a completely false. The US never ever armed Iraq with weapons of mass destruction. Even at the most severe the most you could ever say we did as concerns this was provide Iraq with intelligence that allowed them to use the weapons they had developed on their own, and personally, I know that this intelligence was given more for the purposes of general conflict and not said to use specific weapons. In fact, if you look at the infamous "Rumsfeld photo" where hs shakes Saddams hand that was one of the visits he went on partially to say not to use such weapons. Secondarily, a lot of the weapons were produced using dual use chemicals. It really shouldn't be surprising that these weapons use much of the same chemicals as are required for pest control, and things like that. They are not some mysterious thing to develop. Now, they take a lot of refining to get the proper concentrations and they are expensive, but they are certainly nothing magical. They use chemicals that are obtained from sources that can be quite legitimate. The US also, through the CDC had given Iraq samples of Anthrax. Now, if you know anything at all about the weaponization process for Anthrax you know that it's also expensive, and not the easiest thing to accomplish in a fashion that works well. Also, Anthrax is given to many nations for research purposes, and Iraq being an ally at the time and a country that was one of the more developed scientifically in the region had legitimate purposes for that. The fact it could have been used other ways is bad, and we should have kept better track but hardly anything devious. So, we never had any part in arming Saddam with WMD. That is simply and totally untrue. As far as his conventional arsenal goes, any soldier over there now will teill you that the majority of their military technology is French and Russian. I'll have to go search for them, but there is documented evidence to show what different countries had sold, and the US was very insignificant. We didn't even provide weapons but a few police-style helicopters and such. That, intel, and connections was our main involvement. Now, I don't think that's a good thing btw. We supported Saddam far too long, especially once he gassed the Kurds in like 88 sanctions should have been declared. It didn't get through congress, and that is a shame. And how will you know if the US does? The problem with this, is if we do find WMD this is what you are going to think. You have a pre-conclusion about the evidence we would find. You know, before the war started a lot of websites were saying that the US would plant WMD to show that it was there. They were wrong of course, but how can this still reasonably be a fear? What could possibly be gained now that couldn't have been better served earlier? This is the same as that really great Bin Laden conspiracy that Bush is going to pull him out right before the election. There is no reason to even bring it up unless there is proof that it occured, because beyond that I think people should start wearing tin foil hats and I don't take them very seriously once this is the first thing they think. Ok, it depends entirely on what "they had" meant. FIrst of all, we know that Iraq had WMDS at one time. And I KNOW that for a fact because he used them. He had them as late as the gulf war, and after. We know this because the inspection process had a part in destroying much of them early on, as well as the 91 gulf war. Now, that being said, we do know that many of the stocks he had that we were aware of in the 80s/90s were unaccounted for, and we were relatively sure that they weren't destroyed. There were also several occasions were the regime was told by the inspectors to dispose of their weapons with inspectors on site during the disposal, and they did not comply. They "disposed" of them without anyone there to verify the quantity, and though the inspectors could come through and verify that something had been done, they had no way of knowing how much. Now sure, maybe they got rid of everything, but why would they be hiding the diposal operations? Why did they not even attempt to show where they had disposed of many of these weapons when they sent the documents to the UN for reviewal of their weapons program. They just left them out with no explanation. Were inspections working? Well sure, to some extent they were, but they never dealt with the inspections process as they had agreed to. It was up to them to give up everything, not to force us to search for what they may have done. And it's only logical to assume that someone who is hiding something actually HAS something to hide. Now, some have rightly said maybe they were pretending to hide so that they could keep us from attacking them. All I can say is, that would be pretty stupid if true, but I think Saddam is a nut so maybe. Regardless, it's also possible that the weapons just haven't been found because of the fact they wouldn't be that difficult to hide. And it's possible that they were moved to Syria, etc. This is hardly vindication for what we have said would be there, but given the actions of the regime it was reasonable to assume, since all major intelligence agencies were confirming it, that there were still some WMD in Iraq. There were certainly still programs that were being held back for a time till the sanctions were pulled back a bit. I really don't think that would have gone forever. Of those who say they wanted "more time" I only ask this. If more time had been taken, it's no trouble for me to note that the inspectors would have found nothing. Then the world would have said.. why attack Iraq? It would have been even more difficult for the US to gather support, because the same reasons for denial would be there. Inevitably, since some countries were already violating the sanctions, it would be wondered why they were still there at all. With the inspection process ended and sanctions removed the weapons would have started to develop again. I have absolutely no doubt of this. The amount of time it would have taken to develop chemical weapons from that point would only have been about 6 months (according to the estimates I've heard). All of this is hypothetical, but reasonable IMO. And that coupled with the fact that the sanctions were responsible for the deaths of so many, along with Saddam in my mind was all the reason to get rid of him. I just wish we had done it in 92.

Ok what was the right time? Lets agree that there was no WMD, since you said that doesn't matter. When was the right time without that consideration? The major connection with the war on terror here was WMD and the possibility of them being passed off to terrorists. As we know there are other regimes that could do this as well, that we could have dealt with. It's fairly easy for me to list off the differences between them and Iraq however, notwithstanding that we possessed an agreement with Iraq that we did not with the other nations. But anyway, if we grant that there was still a time to go in, and I think we should have done it earlier if anything (for humanitarian reasons). There are certainly other countries I think we should help as well, but this one was convenient for the time. I wish that we were more proactive in helping the Iranians with their transistion, but we have to be careful because of past screwups there obviously. Ok, first of all, it cannot be won insofar as you can never get rid of everyone who might blow themselves up. We have murderers, problems in free societies no doubt. But we don't breed terrorism. So I do think insofar as there are countries and societies that do contribute to this, we can defeat (severely limiit) the practice of terrorism by dealing with it's root causes. Unlike others, I do not believe that the root causes are anything that the US has done ultimately, but the way we are scapegoated (along with Israel) as the problem of the region. The truth is their governments are the problem. I believe Democratic arab states will have a better future. Now, we have allies that aren't perfect (The Saudis) but I do believe are getting better. Everything now is a question of time, but I think we are going in the right direction. It is a long run strategy, and much in the same way that the Soviet Union did not fall in a day this will take awhile. I don't think that pre-emptive strikes are absolutely wrong. If we had known a couple days before that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor should we have done nothing? I don't think so. If there is a threat, you should pursue it. Regardless, the situation in Iraq was hardly pre-emption whether you believe in it or not. For one thing, there was no immediate threat to the United States from the country directly. Even if there was WMD that was unlikely, and there was certainly no evidence of impending attack. (No one said this, and when words were used that might make it appear to be so, the time period was always given in multiple years, not days or hours). Iraq was different in that we were attacking a country that had violated a myriad of resolutions, as well as violated a cease fire agreement from a previous conflict that the United States was the involved in. It was contingent upon the Inspectors being allowed complete rights, and the Iraqis to be forthcoming with ALL evidence that they were dismantling their programs, etc. On the contrary this did not occur. Furthermore, the sanctions were weakening, and the money stolen from the programs that were intended for the people were going for the purpose of bribes/military expenditures. This was hardly a good situation. And if we are going to go to consistency, insofar as the logistics work, I think the same considerations are valid in Iran/North Korea as well. Ok, there is an inconsistency here but I think for good reason. North Korea is considered a rogue nation. I didn't hear many complaints when India developed nuclear weapons from us. We never sought to prevent them from doing so, but it's a different situation entirely. So while we are inconsistent in what we expect other nations to do, it's based on knowledge of what the leaders/government is like. And, honestly, I don't see France giving up their WMDs, or any other nations whose citizens like to mention that we also have them. There are some we can trust with things and some we cannot. I usually think of myself as somewhat pessimistic, but this statement trumps me

He didn't do nothing. He did very little. A difference, but a minor one. No one said he had the technology to launch a missle. What has always been postulated is that if he had the weapons he'd hand them off to others to do the job. The only people he could attack in the regoin would be the Israeli's, Kuwait, or his own people. The UN was doing it's job so well wasn't it. Do you know how many Billions of dollars (since you love talking about that on Bush's buddies) that were stolen by Hussein and sent in bribes to the officials in the UN? We had at least France and Russia violating the provisions of the sanctions, the Russians having sold a few missles to them, etc. You my choose not to believe it, but there was even an Iraqi intelligence agent who wrote that French officials had assured him that they would vote against us. Now, what would have occurred had the inspectors wen't back in and found nothing. Nothing. That's right. Nothing. We would not have gone to war, Saddam would still be in power, and the inspection process would probably have been shut down. Countries would start saying.. why do we need sanctions? They were already being broken and programs were being stolen from. The programs would have restarted, Saddam kept the documents and the ability to do so. He was biding his time. Sanctions would not have lasted forever. Second, I'd contest that sanctions are better than war. Considering how screwed up oil for food was, and how many people there died from it I contest that it's better for the Iraqi people in the long run (or even the short run for that matter) to stick with that. Even going with IBCs bloated body count figures for civilians there are more who died because of Saddam by far especially when you include those who just weren't taken care of by that wonderful "oil for food" program. Don't get me wrong, we made mistakes. Our mistake was to agree not to finish the job the first time around, and allowing the Iraqi people to revolt on their own without our help. How many died under Saddam while he was "contained." And lets not forget that containment didn't prevent Iraq from shooting at our planes now and then just for fun. Hardly on good terms. Not sure what you are referring to here? I didn't read this other post. So assuming you are referring to Iraq the congressional inquiry has already determined that the intelligence agencies were largely at fault for that. You can pass that off to Bush as you like. Surpluses are not good, they are sign of overtaxation. But the balanced budget itself was done because of the Republican congress. Clinton didn't stand in the way, however, but he deserves no credit for creating that agenda. He did not. Modern liberals can hardly be easily compared to some of those you reference. Yes they created welfare programs but they certainly were not all against traditional values, etc. Reagan was a great president in his own right, but sadly even at this point still too controversial I doubt you'd admit any of his successes yourself. Closer to the time period there were those who did not like Roosevelt and Kennedy over many things. Lets not forget that Kennedy is to blame for escalating the Vietnam war to some extent as well, and the whole bay of pigs situation. All presidents have their successes and failures. What aspects of the economy does a president have control over? You say you don't count everything against Bush and then you use that liberal talking point about lost jobs. I credit no president with losses or increases in jobs, unless they entired in a time when the economy was clearly trending in the opposite direction and it can be shown specific things they did to encourage growth. If someone can't explain what they did to increase jobs, and they increased, it is just the economy doing what it does. I don't think Presidents are gods, regardless of how they might like to think of themselves. Ultimately very little that occurs has much to do with them at all.

Inappropriate yes, illegal no. However, you are correct in that is what Republicans were bothered about (the lying under oath) however, the lie was to cover up something that should never have been investigated in the first place, so I find it to be a somewhat lacking point. Sure, technically he was guilty of a crime, but over something that I can't believe was ever put forward in the first place. And, I am hardly a pro-Clinton guy. On the contrary I would have voted for Dole had I been old enough and Bush 41 before that. I just don't think that everything that happened during that time was a good thing, and because of the pettiness it really hurts the Republican cause IMO. Many people may see some legitimacy to it because of their morality, but by and large while people may see Clinton as an adulterer, that's not going to change their view on him as president, and the purient interests served by the scandal were really overall counter productive. Much like the statements of "wagging the dog" and "Clinton's War" I think this is something that perhaps makes us deserve what we are getting now with Bush. I wish that were not true, but I am no politician, and I have no qualms saying that many went too far. This is not to say I don't think Clinton's character was an important issue. There were many things about that and other women that make me think the guy was bad news. I just don't think that specific event warranted the inquiry. But a better man would have simply refused to answer rather than lying.

I don't care about that stuff, but even barring that his administration had many major failures that make it impossible for me to call him "awesome" When it comes down to it, the president doesn't control the economy, so the job growth had nothing to do with him, though he gets the praise for it. I also don't blame Hoover for the losses of jobs when the Depression started. These things have much more to do with congressional policy than anything the president does, and while he can stand in the way of good or bad policy that's about it. In the case of Clinton it's hard to say anything that he pushed for himself that wasn't forced on him that ended up resulting in the benefits everyone remembers. The balanced budget was congress, the economy was businesses/corporations doing well. And one must remember, when the economy started on a downtrend in early 2001 that the main reason for this was many companies that had inflated stock values from bad practices. I could just as easily blame Clinton for those problems since they happened on his watch, but that's ridiculous. He doesn't control Enron or Worldcom, just as the current administration does not. A president's main job is foreign policy, and there were no moves forward during Clinton's administration (notably a "failure" of Bush as well, however I would say that neither can be blamed for this because it's no easy situation that can really be corrected by American intervention). Then there was the debacle in Somalia, where that whole option was screwed up. I agreed with Clinton on Bosnia, but he was entirely weak on terrorism. When given the opportunity to take out Bin Laden he decided not to, and his responses to many acts were clearly not enough to do anything. At the same time, while I agree with Bob Kerry (democrat on the 9/11 commission) that we probably should have went after Bin Laden in Afghanistan earlier, this is something that never would have happened under Clinton, but I will admit that if he tried that Republicans would have been stupid like Dems are with Iraq now. Clinton was also probably the biggest panderer in the world, with the constant focus groups and polling to find out what his position for the day should be. Yeah yeah, every president changes his mind. I don't deny that. But I think he really had no solid base on which he made decisions beyond trying to please anyone. This made him popular, but it also made him somewhat impotent towards making changes. I think the best thing about Clinton, was that when the Republican congress was elected he did actually manage to work with them, much as Reagan was able to work with the Democrat congress when he was president. Overall though, I'd say Clinton was an average president.

Perhaps. I did disagree with Republicans on calling it that, as well as being against Bosnia, etc. There were a lot of ridiculous statements made at that time that were out of line on "my side" and frankly I have to admit to deserving at least some of the backlash this tiime around. I think overall that it's worse now, because I don't remember too much "Clinton lied" statements going around concerning this particular issue but there were certainly things said that I didn't respect. It's worth noting, that as a Republican I wasn't very impressed with Clinton's performance or the way in which he carried out things. Somalia was not handled well, and I blame that on him and the UN primarily (I have a good friend who served in Somalia). Somalia is probably the biggest reason Bush came out against "nation building" before he was president. I actually disagreed with him on that then, so his "flip-flop" on that issue was for the better IMO. Those are no doubt difficult situations however, just like the ones were are in now. I think Iraq, though, is a much more educated and modern country than Somalia though, and I can see from Sistani and some of the other moderates that Democracy can be had. It just will be dicey for awhiile. But it wasn't any different elsewhere. There have always been issues with those kinds of transistions.

The thing is Clinton and his fans didn't invade the country. Bush did. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> So what? They had sanctions on the country which probably killed as many people for that reason, etc. The bill where we clarified our policy of regime change was in 98 and for these reasons as well, among others that apply regardless of WMD. I really don't know how anyone could support Saddam staying in power. Even if he didn't have WMD the facts are that he did plan to reconstitute programs, was bribing officials of other nations with money stolen from a program intended to feed and help his own people, etc. He was a viscious, horrible man and deserves everything that he gets. Oh yeah yeah, I'm sure we'll get clarification how all the others who don't like Bush don't like Saddam either, but you wouldn't do anything about him. In the long run that country will be better off because we went in. You probably don't believe that, but I do, and I see a country moving forward, with trouble yes, but moving forward and the polls of the Iraqi people show that they see the same thing (I've also seen some anecdotal evidence of this from some of the Iraqi blogs online). In truth, I would have preferred us to go in in 92 during the revolution that Bush Sr. called for. But we let our hands be tied by the international community then and by the fact that we knew it would be difficult work. But at that time we didn't have some of the disadvantages we do now, and I think it would have overall been an easier operation then. Nothing we can do about that now. Anyway.. in regards to the poll, I have to say I'm surprised that Bush got as many as he did (I'm one of them obviously). Normally on polls in forums such as this, especially ones in which nader gets more than the national percentage, you'd see Bush with maybe 20% to Kerry and it's somewhat more equal here. Which is interesting.

Well, from my experience my degree was 128 hours or something, but the education degrees at my school were like 148 or something like that. So I don't think you were worked over based on that hehe.. 120$ an hour is pretty cheap. That's a little less than I was paying at the school a few years ago, but they've recently uped it there to like 235$ so.. heh. I think the community college is about 60$ a credit hour though, and if I could find something at around 100-150$ to take a few courses here and there that'd be good. But obviously I need a distance program for that.

Oh, I never noticed there was anything like this in the first place, lol.

Just for the sake of argument, how many hours is a Bachelor's CompSci program? As I said, I already have a degree and that's one of the barriers is not wanting to add more loans so I do need to know a few things. It was from an accredited school so my basics should transfer, though I didn't have any math courses because I used my rather low (3) AP exam score in Calc to take care of basic math. Thing is, I'd really need to take math anyway, since it's been way too long since I've used anything more advanced than basic algebra/geometry. Any ideas about current tuition at schools? As far as scholarships goes, not sure how I'd be there. My HS GPA was a 3.88 but I took the ACT rather than the SAT. My score on that was a 30 or 31, something like that. When I had taken the PSAT I think I made like a 1280, which is mediocre.

You are right to be confused, but I didn't really want to elaborate on that. It isn't legitimate to obtain corporate and the license for standard professional most likely does not apply, though I'd be interested in seeing if they could sue on that basis or not. However, no, to be clear I'm not referring to anything technically legitimate, but that might be a loophole if anything. Though, I'm not absolutely certain that the Professional Keys work on corporate. I know that the Home Edition Keys do not. Anyway, I didn't want to answer that question because I don't really think that kind of discussion is something that needs to be on this forum. So I'll end there.

Wow, this thread went forever without a response and then it gets 7 Well anyway, I didn't know a ton of C++ when I wrote this. I'd done enough to write a simple app, then I'd get confused by something I didn't understand, etc. and back off for a bit.. Anyway, right now I'm going through Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++ (available at http://www.mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html ) to really learn all the major stuff. After that I plan to go through one of Bjarne Strousup's books. For one thing, I don't have a lot of money so I'm trying to stick to things I can do with linux tools for the most part. I'm trying to avoid the IDE's because I know from experience you can learn how to use an IDE and still not really know what you are doing when creating something more complex. Now, there were a few things mentioned here I'm interested in that you guys were talking about that are taught in CS courses. I'm really curious if I can get any of that knowledge elsewhere in a book or something, if you have recommendations, specifically in regard to algorithms I'm going to want to know well. If the degree option were available to me at this point (it's not financially viable now) I'd go for that, and I do plan to at some point but I need to get far enough that I know for certain it's going to be worth it. I already have one degree that I'm not using and I don't need to spend more money on another one, lol. Another question is on books, if anyone can give me a good list that would go from beginning -> intermediate level game programming. I can use my time to go through those after I'm done with what I'm doing. Just to get an idea of how I go, so far I've moved through 12 chapters of the book I'm on in about 5 days (exercises included, not just the reading). That's basically from learning what objects are (which I already knew) up to where I'm doing operator overloading and such now. As far as techniques goes, I haven't learned a lot except for how to create basic containers, linked list data structures, etc.