Gorth

But the 5 military groups listed were definitely world powers. They created empires. Not that they weren't impressive achievements for their time, but only the Roman empire lasted more than 20 years. True dat. (Mongols can make a case for a bit longer, but not by much.) Touching one of my favourite subjects listed previously, the descendants of Timur. The Mughal Empire actually lasted until the 19th century, so I guess I was wrong about that one, making it one more lasting for lots of centuries

But the 5 military groups listed were definitely world powers. They created empires. Not that they weren't impressive achievements for their time, but only the Roman empire lasted more than 20 years.

I suspect they are "westerners". Personally I would attribute the rise to major power to Ivan the Terrible in late 1500's, even if in the end of his reign he got his nose bloodied by the Swedish and Lithuanian armies. Moving the goal line isn't fair... we were talking military powers, not world powers

I hope you are not teaching history It's military history goes back to the 13th century. Most of those on that list didn't last for 900 years.

I'm normally not a fan of the flashmob "phenomena" as most of them aren't funny or particular entertaining, but the few that are, are very much so. One of the more fun ones I remember seeing on youtube was these Aussie guys (I posted another video with them previously in the music thread) who after a concert at an English festival gathered hundreds of followers, tought them the verses and then marched around terrorising a small town singing Slavonic warsongs.

By what criteria would you measure "greatness" of an army anyway? Unless agreed upon, it will always be an opinion piece. Try mentioning the 3 "greatest" offensives offensives in WWII. If you measure them by popularity and number of pop culture references, you get a different list from when you order them by sheer scope, resources involved and ground covered. The latter being Barbarossa, The Great Manchuria offensive (Russians don't seem to make catchy names for their campaigns) and Zitadelle. Yet in western culture, things like the Africa campaigns and D-Day figures prominently instead.

Are there any Stuarts left? You never know, if the Scots vote for independence they may need a new monarch.

I had a similar experience a couple of years ago. I have a credit card for one of my overseas bank accounts that I never use (normally), which I used as you normally would do when you check in at a hotel reception (this one in Sydney). We just need to make an imprint of your card Sir... sure. 2 weeks later I got a phone call from my bank overseas, checking if I by any chance were in the US and Canada right now? Nope. Strange, somebody just spent $6000 on rental car, travel and vacation I filled out some kind of fraudulent use form sent by Visa and I got every cent back again. Gave them the name of the Hotel in Sydney too. Since it was the one and only time that Visa card saw action in 18 months, it was sort of easy to narrow down who had abused the information. It's still a rather bad way to start a Monday though.

I've installed it and added an MSN account. I might as well try adding my Google account to it. It's a bit trickier to convince family and friends to switch from the old and familiar to Google Talk though, although the new MSN Social network thing seems to have alienated most of them too.

Well, the forest in chapter 1 comes close. Also.. I might be a weird guy, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the swamps in the original Witcher, it had quite a few interesting critters. In general, I kinda miss the dark satire and thematic poignancy of the original title, although the actual writing in the second game is much better and discarded a lot of the (I'd have to guess unintentional) most unfortunate subtext in favor of better dialogue, more nuanced characters and a more intricate and political plot. I can't really put my finger on it, but "something" is missing from the first game. I'll be damned if I can identify it and just say "that's what I would have liked to see". Never mind my swamp fetish, I've always had a thing for swamps and sewers, probably dating back to when Ultima IV was released. I know, it didn't have a lot of sewers, but it had underground tunnels and waterways besides the wetlands.

Does that mean the game really doesn't have any swamps worth mentioning?

Since this seems to be your level of debate, I can only conclude you have no interest in being serious, ranting and raging against the injustice of the universe being the extent of your attention span.

I don't think anyone (in their right mind anyway) really think every unauthorized sale of somebody's work equals a lost sale. Equally, I don't think anybody believes it comes at no impact whatsoever to those deprived of their payment. The "loss" is a group of potential customers that gets tempted by free alternatives with no discernible consequences and says what the heck, everybody else does it. The size of that group is what is relevant when trying to estimate losses. So far nobody has come up with a way of doing that, which makes the Dutch report utterly ridiculous (not that I would trust the selective quoting being in anyway objectively done on a site with 'torrent' as part its name). As for my "funny" question about your employer paying you are not, I was genuinely interested in gauging your response, even if the questions sounds facetious. Of course people wants to get paid for their work (duh), but that applies to those who make a living of offering services that can be converted and distributed through channels they weren't intended for too. If we for arguments sake agree (whether we agree or not) that not paying for a service isn't the right thing to do, what are the alternatives to the current model? Do like the Swiss government and just tell the entertainment industry to roll over and die then get "real" jobs? @Delfosse: Not sure what you are trying to say really. Aussies are good swimmers, but Europe is a long way from here. Not sure they would have left home anyway as they were busy fighting and dieing against the Japanese who were amassing troops across the Torres Strait for invasion of Australia. Mind you, the total Aussie population at the time was smaller than the Belgian. Go rant at them instead for not putting up a better fight... Is it a ridiculous statement? It is.

Scientific research mode: Which side landed up?

Um, it's THEIR money. Where the smeg else are they going to build it? In Australia for all the Australians to enjoy? :headbang: "Naaah, we can't try to make this a great place to be, because this is a bad place to be!" Well, frankly, yes. Might just as well build a massive butter palace on the slopes of Montserrat. Maybe Britain should just let itself devolve into ghettos, in case you get too prosperous and Portugal invades. Unlikely to happen. The treaty of Windsor is still in effect (has been since 1386).

Yeah, I could have said no, but that would be like shooting myself in the foot Funny how training always feels like it comes after the point where you needed it the most. It's been a recurring experience the last 15 years. Still, it's nice to catch up on some things and see if you did figure out most of the worthwhile stuff or if there was still room for improvement.

I somehow doubt they would sit around and play those games they downloaded

That sounds like Kaspersky support... Tomorrow is going to be one of those days where I wish public holidays were the same countrywide. Microsoft is doing a training course online out of Singapore tomorrow and that means i have to go to work, even though it is a public holiday here (but not in the rest of Australia). Bye bye long weekend.

I think people who download stuff without paying for it are THAT hypocritical. As I said before, no problem with people boycotting a publisher if they don't like their conduct. The very moment they pirate their products, they lose any moral high ground by proving themselves to be hypocrites. They want their products, just don't want to pay if they can weasel their way out of it somehow.

I know it's a game, but Europa Universalis III is a very bad influence, giving you all sorts of obscure, interesting, distant and sometimes unheard of cultures and conflicts as inspiration for searches on the net. While outside my normal "time zone" of interest, it was very interesting checking out the history of the Timurids and their successor state, the Mughal Empire. Much, if not most of Europe (and by extension the "western world") is actually shaped by events in the Transoxiana region. The great migrations had a lot of impact on current demographics.

Seriously, I know you are smarter than this. In a transaction between two individuals, where tangible goods -or services- are being exchanged it makes sense to talk of thievery. Do not equivocate the issue. This is not thievery, it's freeloading. It's just a tad more complicated. So can we just call things by their names and leave corny appeals to emotion out of it, pretty please? At least I'm not referring to Somali pirates to make digital pirates look less bad

I wonder if you would take the same stance towards your employer the day he decides not to pay you, because he didn't really take any goods off your hands, only the time invested in performing your job?

Of course. If they check the Internet, how can they possibly not change their wicked ways?

Now I'm curious... is there even such a thing as 'A Swiss'? I thought they were ethnic Germans, Italians and French living together.

And this makes a sweeping, evidently racist comment okay? No, tell you what, it doesn't. It's an insult to my family in the first place, so, yeah, I'll take it personally. Well, I hope you'll bring your family my apology if they feel offended then, but the Swiss state has had some rather dubious practices for a long time. From protecting organised crime and the being the piggy bank of the Nazis to being one of the more overtly xenophobic (sounds nicer than racist) countries in Europe. Whatever the Swiss government says regarding ethics is going to met with a raised eyebrow and an 'uh-huh?'