213374U

n/m delete i'm an idiot etc

am gonna balk at "great," but that is a quibble. in any event, our issue is with using as a citation. HA! Good Fun! Article talk pages are often as informative as the articles themselves, and often illustrate editorial bias in the end product. They also shed light on how fickle, petty and random administrators can be—"anyone can edit Wikipedia", but your edits often can and will be insta-reverted by a recent changes patroller, and if you persist you will be accused of "edit warring" and promptly banned. WP has an... interesting ecology.

You do realize that the United States has the second largest manufacturing industry in the world, right? Differing from China's by a small percentage? Christ, you're not even looking up concrete data, are you, Sarex? The U.S. has been consistently developing its sector for the past forty years. The fact that some manufacturers have outsourced low complexity, cheap item manufacturing overseas doesn't mean that the U.S. has dismantled its manufacturing sector. As the statistics show, it did not. Neither did it dismantle its strategic military industries, such as tank plants, fighter assembly lines, shipyards, and other vital industrial centers. Oh, you want concrete data? Let's take a look at steel production, then. Industry doesn't get much heavier than that. In 1974, the US produced 136M tons. China produced an estimate 26M. Fast forward to 2013, the US production has shrunk to a still very respectable 87 million tons but, get this, China churned out an insane 779 mother****ing million tons of steel in 2013. Source Let's also take a look at cement. In 1994 (couldn't find earlier data), for the US and China respectively, the numbers are 78M and 400M tons. Jump to 2013, and while American production has remained at 77M tons, Chinese production has been cranked up to a whopping 2.3 bn tons. The US have actually been importing cement for consumption, and jobs in that sector have dwindled. Source This is the stuff things are built with, not paper money. It takes time to dismantle the world's once-largest industrial economy, but make no mistake, that's the end goal. The case study is the UK, the country that pioneered the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century and leading industrial power the next, and how it was largely de-industrialized in the 20th century chiefly thanks to the policies of Washington Consensus groupie Margaret Thatcher. That's where the US are heading.

Even if Hurlshot agreed with it, collective punishment is still against the Geneva Conventions. More seriously though, it's doubtful they would do anything that would antagonize the entire player base. The game is still pretty new, the economy can recover. Uber items that have been duped will be phased out as new content is added, etc. It's not even this sort of clear exploit that threatens MMO economy imbalances—stuff that is harder to fix such as runaway inflation is a bigger threat long term.

Agreed. But what I'm arguing is that you just don't kick your huge GDP into high gear with the flip of a switch. I've read that up to ~40% of the wheeled vehicles used by the Soviets were lend-lease. That's obviously nothing to scoff at. Lend-lease only started providing a substantial boost for the Soviets from 1942 on, while the decision to seriously prepare the US for war and seriously crank up production was made in 1940, when it was decided to increase the size of the USN. In addition, a non-trivial fraction of those US-manufactured tanks ended up in Soviet hands anyway via lend lease. American (and British) aid was very much a lifeline for the Soviet Union. I'm not sure how I'm underestimating anything, or how this goes contrary to what I said. Fair enough. Hopefully, the discussion of modern warfare will indeed be irrelevant and this won't escalate beyond a diplomatic clash. It's great fun to be an armchair general though, you won't deny that. Yeah, that's pretty much it if you look at the bottom line, i.e. that the US vastly outproduced everyone. But nobody is disputing that. The fact remains that it was at least two years and a half before the American economic mobilization was complete because in 1942 Soviet and American tank production was roughly equal and the gear up had begun in Spring 1940. So in a war that lasted six years, it took the US two years and a half to overtake the Soviet Union, with an economy that was twice the size in 1939 (the gap only grows bigger in later years). Yeah, that totally proves the point that you can simply "buy more material in no time", so long as you don't face material and workforce shortages and provided that someone else on the other side of the ocean does the dying for you. Only it really doesn't.

And the second part because the boards don't like the quote game (and neither do I). "The nuke is a defensive weapon"? Again with the fallacies: "MAD is a nuclear strategy, therefore MAD is the only nuclear strategy". Nukes are as offensive as they are defensive, if not more. They are deployed as close to their targets as possible to reduce enemy reaction times and minimize the damage caused by the counterattack after a first strike. The reason why the missile shield initiative exists is because if completed it could give the US decisive first strike advantage over Russia, and this is because nukes are the offensive weapon. Nukes have only ever been used in an offensive way, against a country that had no retaliation capability. MAD is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the only outcome and not all nuclear scenarios are based on MAD. And please, do elaborate on that list of prospective great powers and maybe we can actually talk about how feasible it would be for them to build a credible nuclear arsenal. Once again, circular logic. "X is a great power that doesn't have nuclear weapons. X therefore doesn't need nuclear weapons to be a great power because X is already a great power, without having needed nuclear weapons to become one". The obvious flaw is that you are still not giving a concrete definition of what makes a great power outside of GDP, and are not showing any evidence to back this point, instead expecting everyone to accept your assurances that you can buy credible force projection overnight. No, actually, this is where you are supposed to explain how a country with no previous domestic nuclear program, and no nuclear plants domestically built since the fall of the Soviet Union could develop a serious nuclear force element. Oh, right. The "buy nukes" button. Only that's not my suggestion, it's the Ukrainian navy's admission. Also I didn't say "forever", or magically. *THWEEEERP* Strawman alert. http://navaltoday.com/2012/03/21/ukraine-navy-admits-disability-to-man-submarine/ Do some fact checking, at least. Er, Germany and Japan were already dealt with previously... in the same paragraph. Political commitments and public opinion are also to be considered when discussing whether it's feasible for a country to embark on a nuclear program. Oh, I have a fairly good idea what your argument is. It's just that it's not a very good argument to begin with. What the hell are you babbling about? The Soviet Union disintegrated in a political crisis in the wake of a failed hardline coup, not as a result of the economic crisis. The theory that Reagan outspent the Soviet Union to oblivion in the 1980's is just another of those economic history myths that refuses to die, but it's not really supported by facts. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm "facepalm" indeed. Incredible way to miss the point, uncanny almost. I specifically made the comparison between the Soviet Union and the European members of NATO, excluding the US on purpose. That group of countries had a joint GDP of roughly 2.3x that of the Soviet Union. According to your GDP-means-power theory, Europe alone could have been more than enough of a counterweight for the Soviets, politically, militarily and especially economically. Only that doesn't reflect the historical reality of 1964 at all. You must be tired. Yeah, that must be it. It cannot possibly be that you missed the huge ass IF that made the whole sentence work as hypothetical and without me actually making a statement either way. Or maybe it is exactly that, and it is in fact you who needs to read more, in general.

LOL I like your Saudi Arabia-approach to modern warfare. It worked great for Iraq. "Buy moar guns, bigger tanks, fancier jets". Or build them under license. Only that doesn't work outside of Command & Conquer. Putting together, supplying and deploying a modern fighting force is not something you can simply purchase overnight, it is a focused effort that takes years, if not decades, for a developed economy. It involves multi-year training for literally hundreds of thousands of people, massive investment in the form of education, appropriation, and most of all, it requires the political will to keep the pressure when people figure they'd rather have the roads fixed, the taxes lowered or what have you. As for your prediction about what will decide the next "real" war (nice preemptive goal post shifting btw), I'm simply going to say [citation needed]. Again, gross simplification and more citations needed. The idea that you just "buy more warheads" is laughable enough, but buying more factories? You cannot do that even in most grand strategy games—are you really suggesting that's a viable course of action IRL? Who is going to put those factories together? What machinery is going to be used to manufacture the tools? We are talking wartime, remember? In wartime trade just doesn't flow freely, demand for essential materials and skills is extreme and now your bloated, financialized make-believe economy can only readily produce paper money. But no matter, because you can keep mashing the "buy missiles" button and you'll win in the end! Right? Also, it took the US from 1940 to 1942 to overtake the Soviet Union in tank production in WWII with an economy that was more than twice the size. But yeah, you can totally buy more military equipment in no time. If you are the single largest heavy industry-based economy in the world. And your production centers are safely away from the front lines. And you don't face material shortages. And... Yes, because history shows that crises are really easy to foresee, and the enemy is going to wait for you to have fully mobilized the economy and built as many ICBMs and stealth strategic bombers as you could possibly need to nuke them back to the stone age. If you ask nicely, they may even let you finish deploying that shiny missile shield! Please don't bother with the straw men. I never said military power is the way to measure power in the world. But it is a factor, and has always been. When forced to choose between historical correlation between military might and influence and your theory that GDP is the end all be all to determine weight in the international arena, I'm going with the established wisdom. Especially since apparently you live in Starcraft universe. Ah yes, of course. It's after all incredibly easy, quick and cheap to design and build complex systems such as the Typhoon and the Leopard. That's why everyone does it. All the time. Only (hello?) we are discussing Russia, in case you forgot. Russia doesn't have "a" nuclear bomb. They have several thousand warheads and the ability to deliver them anywhere in the world in short notice. You then went off on a tangent about how having "a" nuke doesn't really change the game, but that's a point that nobody made. Strawman. No, the one that went right over your head, see it yet? I'll break it down for you, even though I already did in the post you quoted. The point is moot because you don't build your own nuclear weapons from scratch if you already are a member of a major alliance with members that already have strategic arsenals in place. But this, in turn puts you in a position where you either follow the lead of those countries, or risk being left without a nuclear retaliation capability. This is most definitely not the mark of a great power in this day and age. Because you are building your whole argument from the basis that GDP is all that matters, and assuming that everyone else agrees—therefore so long as you can be relatively sure that nobody is going to rain down nukes on you first, you are a great power! But this is not a fact, it's simply a thesis of yours. This reasoning doesn't apply in the case that you want to pursue an independent international agenda that may conflict with that of someone else's. If you are an international yes-man, sure. Again, being a satellite state as far as foreign policy is concerned is simply incompatible with the status of great power. Basically you are using your own argument that only GDP matters as proof that countries with large GDPs could be great powers if they put a large fraction of their nominal economic output towards military spending, and therefore any other player with a lower relative GDP cannot be a great power... as its GDP shows. It's a poignant blend of circular logic and unsupported premises, but fallacious all the same.

It would be awful, but not necessarily inviable. The record for the longest spaceflight is ~14 months, and the dude didn't seem to suffer any long lasting health problems. Adults seem capable of supporting that, even if over time their ability to go back to higher gravity worlds could be lost. Now, pregnancy and delivery in microgravity, that's completely uncharted territory. But yeah, by the time the engineering kinks are ironed out (what with c being the absolute maximum speed in the universe and all), I'd expect genetic engineering to have advanced enough to render that a non-issue.

You mean tidally locked to Earth? I had never heard about the Moon being tidally locked to the Sun. How does that even work? And yeah, I hate windy days as it is. I don't think living in an area with permanent hurricane-level winds is up my alley.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH VOLOURN!? That sounds about right Heh, most of the comments seem to be from ME3MP board regulars. Not surprising, that crowd was always running afoul of the new BioWareBot# mods, but it was quite entertaining to read. People should have seen this coming I think, they started locking challenge threads for being "off topic" last year. I can understand not wanting the BSN to become an outpost of /b/, but shutting down groups for being off topic kinda defeats the whole point. I guess they really are committed to building a bright future for the "Bioware Socialist Network".

The "agreement" is one of bare minimums. There cannot be any dialogue between the authorities and other parties while the state monopoly on power is challenged, or rather, no dialogue will be considered. And while it may seem that the separatists aren't getting anything out of this, in fact their unofficial and decentralized nature is going to make them much harder to police than the actions of the Ukrainian government. If the Kiev government continues to execute their "anti-terror operations" regardless, they will be in clear violation of the terms of the deal, and this would be the second multi-party agreement they go back on. Russia will simply continue to do whatever they are or are not doing, they will continue to deny any involvement, and the back-and-forth of covert shenanigans will continue. But by backing this deal they can at least pretend they are trying to de-escalate the situation. I don't believe anyone actually expects these negotiations to go anywhere, because, from what I read, a serious constitutional reform for Ukraine wasn't on the table before the talks even begun, so the rebels have no reason to quit.

Oh, sure. The way he was forced down your throat was terrible. But by that point I was kinda used to the game doing that sort of thing. I just love his interjections and ship dialogue.

And more, increasingly violent clashes, as pro-Russian separatists attempt to storm a military base and are repelled by force, leaving several dead.

If what the video Valsuem posted checks out this isn't so much the government as corrupt officials utilizing the government to make their fortunes (although to be honest this isn't something new in the US) It seems that the levels of corruption and their blatant disregard for public opinion are beginning to anger people. Whether their fears jump to the irrational; and fear always does, its undeniable that the US government has been growing corrupt for a long time now and the public seem to be beginning to understand what this means. The fact that it was posted by an account called "StormCloudsGathering" should give you some clue as to their biases. As Wals put it, they're among those running around pretending that we're all just about to get stomped. I'm not sure what's the point you're trying to make here. Would it be more credible if the account was named "StarsAndStripes4Ever" or something? I'm not passing judgment on the video itself because I'm not informed enough to tell if their bias is actually distorting the *facts*. Is it the presentation or the tone that you feel make it worthless? Vexingly enough, the video has now been taken down. Please note that I'm genuinely interested; I respect your opinion and even if I don't necessarily agree with you on everything (and I'm terribly unqualified to even form an opinion with which agree or disagree in many topics), I value your input—but I think this dismissive attitude is quite close to what you accused Valsuelm of just a few posts ago.

In other news... I was reading up on this, and if the incident with the APCs described is the same, it seems the only player with any actual desire to use force (either to intimidate or outright resolve some of these standoffs) is the Kiev gov't. The army is certainly not big on cracking down on the pro-Russians, and these in turn don't seem to be interested in antagonizing the army directly: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10771420/Ukraines-humiliation-as-protesters-disarm-troops.html So an Ukrainian Army platoon is dispatched to break up a concentration of armed rebels or something along those lines... only to hand them their hardware and go back home in buses, perfectly unharmed. Ukrainian Army morale must be non existent at this point. So again I've been proven wrong and Putin has correctly surmised that he doesn't need to lift a finger for events to play right into his hands—though there's still the (slim) chance that Kiev will yield to demands to federalize the country rather than risk a total breakup or civil war. And just to please those dying to see Russian apologists everywhere, I'm going to let someone else's words do the talking for me:

I would suggest you don't waste your efforts trying so hard to get under my skin, but since that seems to be your sole reason for posting here, such advice is probably wasted. Bonus points for the "insecurities" remark, though that's pretty close to breaking character for you. You must be pretty butthurt that I (and others) unmasked you for the little cuddly, fluffy fascist troll you are to get so close to an actual direct personal attack. But please, try to take what I'm saying constructively. :)

Wow, that's some stamina you have. I couldn't bring myself to go through the planetary chains more than twice per side. As for Scourge, my opinion is the exact opposite, heh. I hated the character concept and integration (the mother****ing Emperor's Wrath? Sure, let him tag along, what could ever go wrong?), but I didn't feel the voice was a problem. Out of place at first, maybe, but not every Sith Lord needs to be Malgus. Some of my favorite Sith characters in TOR are Darth Jadus and Darth Gravus, arguably because of the voice direction too... And Gault was awesome.

Unfortunately, the devs decided to penalize players XP-wise for killing people. Even more so if you kill them from a distance instead of playing the Gray Fox (10XP per kill vs ~50 IIRC). Chances are you will be swimming in upgrade points by the end of the game regardless, but early to middle game, you will feel the difference, especially as a run-and-gun playthrough will necessitate that you invest in dermal armor and stuff, delaying upgrades to hacking, etc. Never thought of that tbh. Come think of it I never used explosives in that game.

Huh? I don't know what you've been reading but definitely not these boards. Maybe try posting your butthurt on RT.ru for effect? DOES NOT COMPUTE

Its better than it looks, you have the director's cut, I take it? I do indeed, any advice without spoiling the story? Remember that a headshot is a lethal takedown. Also, the ability to tear down walls could be said to... pay for itself.

I had to look that up. Another term for my e-lawyer dictionary, I'm sure it'll bring me many glorious victories in threads to come. My thanks.

This got me thinking. The reason why some risky and delicate stuff such as say, flying an airliner, has a great track record of safety is because part of the extensive training includes learning procedures that pilots must adhere to systematically, to minimize the possibility of judgment errors and improvisation. The way I understand it, the idea is to reduce the room for human error as much as possible, within reason. This is basically to account for the fact that people will be people in a situation where it's unacceptable to make preventable mistakes. You work in government. How closely is regulation observed? How is failure to act according to regulation punished? I live in a country with a huge problem of corruption and mismanagement, from the local up to the highest levels of government. The problem is accumulation: the few (high profile) public officials and servants that try to do the jobs they were appointed to as per the job description simply cannot turn the tide of incompetence, corruption, and sloth caused by a majority that is concerned only with getting their paycheck. What is the ability of government to police itself, and how effective is it at that?

If it ever comes to pass that the sacred poem to which both heaven and earth have set their hand, so as to have made me lean for many years, should overcome the cruelty that bars me from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb, an enemy to the wolves that make war on it, with another voice now and other fleece, I shall return a herald of difficult truths. Sire, you who dub yourself TooLeetForYou, have a journey of self-examination before you. It is full of hardships, where your perceived comforts of bombastic digital self-assertion gives way to humility and the ever so menacing contingencies of life and death. Or more succinctly put: You have a real life out there, live it for quite a while, and come back when you have some wisdom and patina to show for yourself. *** No worries, mate. I'm trolling a bit, but there are grains of truth in it as well, and hopefully most of you guys recognize it for what it is. >Implying that there is an end point or arbitrary threshold in the cycle of learning and self discovery and that one has reached it >Poking fun at someone for naming their internet persona "too elite for you" This is what happened when I asked Vegeta to measure the irony: As for the trolling, welcome. Trolling is to WoT what dressing is to salad. Enjoy your stay.

So you were born in 13th century England, then? What's your secret, Pilates? Think for just a second of what you really know about the snubby twats you are lambasting with such gleeful abandon—their life experiences, their backgrounds, their activities and involvements. Whatever mental image you have of "them", you might as well substitute it with a ****ing talking oven, because that's about as close as you are going to get at an accurate depiction. And hey, at least you'll get a chuckle each time you think of "them". P.S. No, really. What's your secret? I think she was trolling them, not 100% sure so don't take my word on it. I blame Bruce, he broke my troll-o-meter with his last few posts.

So you were born in 13th century England, then? What's your secret, Pilates? Think for just a second of what you really know about the snubby twats you are lambasting with such gleeful abandon—their life experiences, their backgrounds, their activities and involvements. Whatever mental image you have of "them", you might as well substitute it with a ****ing talking oven, because that's about as close as you are going to get at an accurate depiction. And hey, at least you'll get a chuckle each time you think of "them". P.S. No, really. What's your secret?