Reveilled

I always thought the world Lennon describes in imagine would be suicidally boring. "And now, the news at 6 'o' Clock: Nothing happened today. Here instead is some light piano music." "

Yes, but now that we're here in the middle of the game, the rules should not be changed, regardless of whether it was a rule change you would have put in at the start of the game or not. If I'm reading Eru/Flame's comments right, that makes myself, Jags, Skynet and Flame opposed to the change, making a majority of the players.

Go back and point out where I said "Elected Republic != Democracy." I, in fact, said Pure Democracy = Tyranny of the Majority. Yes, an elected republic is a form of democracy, where did I suggest otherwise? It isn't a pure "majority rules!" system. I was explaining the american process to Mothman, and why "because we outnumber you" isn't how the USA's system works. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Chalk it up to poor communication then. But using a term like "actually" generally implies that one clause is false and the other is true. Thus "I believe most nations which people call democratic are actually elected republics." certainly came across to me as you saying that the two were distinct. One can easily substitute the term "elected republics" with pretty much any other system of government ("I believe most nations which people call democratic are actually fascist dictatorships") and the sentence still makes sense and come across as a correction instead of a clarification. Something like "I believe most nations which people call democratic are more specifically elected republics." would have been more clear. I apologise for misinterpreting your meaning, but the assertion that Elected Republic != Democracy is a very common one, so you seemed from that sentence to be asserting the two as mutually exclusive. Again, I aplogise for misunderstanding you.

Am I missing something? All I see is the ESRB saying that they wish to include things that are already in the game but unplayable without a hack in the ratings system. Can't the developers just remove the chaff from the code to avoid it being included in the rating? Might even help with buggy PC games being released if there are fewer unecessary things in the code. I mean, it says it's concerned about purely third-party mods, but what it seems to be doing right now is something that seems to me to be wholely fixable by the developers. I mean, was there some reason why the developers couldn't delete Hot Coffee from the GTA disk rather than just disable access to it?

A lot of them weren't even right wing. Bellamy himself was a Socialist. I don't know enough about the period to say whether that was widespread, but lots of protestant faiths throught history have been socialist or even communist (though taking the ideology from the Bible rather than Das Kapital), so it wouldn't surprise me if the Baptist church was "left-wing" on the whole back then.

No. The Pledge of allegiance was not created by the Founding Fathers. It was written by a Baptist Minister by the name of Francis Bellamy in 1892 and originally read "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." "Under god", along with other religious items (like "In God We Trust" on money) were added in the McCarthy Era. Bellamy himself opposed the addition of "United States of America" into the pledge he wrote, so it is rather likely he would have opposed the "under god" one too.

Pure democracy = Tyranny of Majority The United States is an Elected Republic, I believe most nations which people call democratic are actually elected republics. If the majority's say was all that mattered black americans would still be "seperate but equal." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Must...not...nitpick... Ach. Can't help it. An elected republic is a form of democracy. Saying "most nations which people call democratic are actually elected republics," is like saying "most shapes which people call circles are actually red circles." Note that in Athens, the first "Democracy" (in the sense that since they invented the term we must accept the entity they applied it to as fitting the term, even if it does not fit the present definition of the term), many things were not decided purely by majority. The only public officals who were selected on the basis of the majority's say were Generals. Also, Athens too had a constitution, proctecting the rights of Athenians. So the term democracy as it was originally concieved meant something more complex than "purely majority rule". A few hundred years ago, that definition had changed to the one you seem to give, distinguishing between a democracy and an elected republic. But it has changed again such that a system of government involving fairly elected representatives is now considered to be a form of democracy. So, no, the United States is a Democracy. It is also a Representative Republic, and the two are not mutually exclusive.

I would say that the pledge of allegiance itself is rather contrary to the spirit in which the USA was founded. The Founding Fathers didn't appear to rate the idea of allegiance to a country particularly highly, what with the high treason and all. Why pledge allegiance to a flag or a state or a republic at all? Washington and Jefferson and the other leaders of the new republic didn't see fit to write a pledge. One might speculate that they thought the ideals on which they founded the United States sufficient to stand on their own. If one must have a pledge, wouldn't it be more in the spirit of America to make said pledge solely to Liberty and Justice, rather than a flag or a nationstate? "I pledge allegiance to the ideal of Liberty and Justice for all."

I don't expect for you to have predicted the event. What I did expect was that when the rules say that "Support is cut if the unit giving support is attacked from any province except the one where support is being given", that support would be cut under those circumstances. It makes sense to me that how the rules we agreed to use at the start of the game say things should function should be the way those things function.

It doesn't seem like a fitting change to me! You're admitting that the rules don't say that this is correct, but doing it anyway? The fact that this is the only exception they mention would seem to imply to me that it is the only exception. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> First of all, a lesson in life: trying to strongarm someone in a position of authority rarely works. Fortunately for you, I have not based my decision upon this. Nothing is static; all things change. Given your thorough knowledge of the rules, I would have thought you would understand this is true of Diplomacy as well. Do not try to deny it. There have been new strategies, new subtleties, even new updates. It makes sense, in these settings, that if a supporting unit is supported, it cannot be directly attacked. It merely requires a slight extension of existing rules in ways already applied to non-supporting units. Given that I am GM, the final decision is mine, unless you are able to present a majority vote of no confidence by the OBS-03 players. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It is one thing to change the rules. It is quite another to change them in the middle of the game, without any warning, in a manner which contradicts the rules, to the detriment of one of the game's players. The rules should be static once the game has started.

Mr. Grumpy Dark Eldar! The cashier called me that the time I bought a box of Dark Elves out of Games Workshop. Not that you're dark or grumpy, Mr. Eldar, I just think it's a good name.

So who won the bet?

Aeris' Theme from FFVII (which was released on Playstation and PC, if memory serves)

It doesn't seem like a fitting change to me! You're admitting that the rules don't say that this is correct, but doing it anyway? The rules list only one exception to the rule that support is cut by an attack on the supporter's province: when the attack comes from the province into which support is being provided. The fact that this is the only exception they mention would seem to imply to me that it is the only exception. It explicitly tells you that "Support is cut if the unit giving support is attacked from any province except the one where support is being given". The unit giving support was attacked from a province which wasn't the one where support was being given, therefore support is cut.

I can't find a place in the rules which says that support of a unit prevents its support being cut. From where do you draw this? "Support is cut if the unit giving support is attacked from any province except the one where support is being given. The support is cut whether this attack on the supporting unit is successful or not." Cutting support, p10

There's lots of games where you don't play a role, at least in real life. In games like Chess, or Backgammon, you're just yourself playing a game. When you play chess, you don't play the role of a Chess player, because you actually are a chess player, by virtue of playing chess. Unlike with, say, D&D where one would pretend to be a Wizard, rather than actually becoming one by virtue of playing the game. A term like Role Playing Game, at least with respect to its pen and paper versions, simply distinguishes those games where we act out a role from those games where we are simply being ourselves playing a game we are trying to win. The problem comes when we start including the other attributes of pen and paper role playing games, ones that have nothing to do with them actually being RPGs, and begin assigning them as the required attributes of a role playing game on the computer. The problem, of course is that using it's strict and literal definition, pretty much every computer game is a role playing game. Yet on the other hand, the definition of role playing game that many others advance has very little to do with playing a role. I would contend that the broad definition is the correct one, and that computer games from Mario to Zelda to GTA3 are role playing games. I would contend that if a game being part of the genre of computer games that we call role playing games has very little to do with actually playing a role, and is instead to do with something else such as statistic based gameplay, then the genre is misnamed. If a first person shooter revolves around shooting people from a first person view, and a turn based strategy revolves around enacting a strategy to win the game in a turn based environment, shouldn't a genre that is defined by stat-based gameplay be called statistic-based games? The term "roleplaying game", in my opinion, is not a genre of games, nor should it be. It is an umbrella as wide as computer game or board game, far larger than that of a simple genre. If the term roleplaying game is stretched so broad that it's a near tautology (at least in computer games, as the broad definition would still have use to distinguish real world games), and the genre defined by stat based gameplay is renamed something more precise (like Statistic based game, or Statistic Based Adventure), then discussion of what a roleplaying game is in computer games becomes unecessary, we can all smile and agree, we can stop arguing, and go have a nice cup of tea and some biscuits instead.

A Pic-Bel cuts the support of F Bel, thus F Lon-ENG is unsupported, thus F ENG is not dislodged, thus it is not destroyed.

Windmills of your Mind - Noel Harrison Round, Like a circle in a spiral, Like a wheel within a wheel, Never ending or beginning, On an ever-spinning reel, Like a snowball down a mountain, Or a carnival balloon, Like a carousel that's turning, Running rings around the moon, Like a clock whose hands are sweeping, Past the minutes on its face, And the world is like an apple, Spinning silently in space, Like the circles that you find, In the windmills of your mind! Like a tunnel that you follow, To a tunnel of its own, Down a hollow to a cavern, Where the sun has never shone, Like a door that keeps revolving, In a half-forgotten dream, Like the ripples from a pebble, Someone tosses in a stream, Like a clock whose hands are sweeping, Past the minutes on its face, And the world is like an apple, Spinning silently in space, Like the circles that you find, In the windmills of your mind! Keys that jingle in your pocket, Words that jangle in your head, Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that I said? Lovers walk along a shore, And leave their footprints in the sand, Was the sound of distant drumming, Just the fingers of your hand? Pictures hanging in a hallway, or the fragment of a song, half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong? When you knew that it was over, Were you suddenly aware, That the autumn leaves were turning, To the color of her hair? Like a circle in a spiral, Like a wheel within a wheel, Never ending or beginning, On an ever-spinning reel, As the images unwind, Like the circles that you find, In the windmills of your mind !

Liam Gallagher is of the Back of the Bus school of vocals. " In my rather snobbish and arrogant opinion, Oasis were the most overhyped Britpop act. But then, I'm a woefully middle class Brit who preferred Blur, so I might be just a tad biased. "

There are a few bands I like that run the full range of Genres (except for genres like punk and nu-metal, which suck "), everything from Country to Soft Rock to 90's Britpop to old-style singers like Sinatra or Billy Joel. Other than those specific bands, I tend to prefer specific songs over genres. Looking at my Mp3 collection, I've got Acapella songs about Physics, Songs about RPGs, Disney Songs, Corporate theme tunes, Weird Al and a ton of songs from TV adverts which I liked. A large portion of my music is comedy, satire, and parody, so if I had to pick a specific genre, that would be it. Oh, and I forgot, I listen to Japanese Pop music too. I can sing along to most of my collection.

It's no mistake. In the first few patches, there was a bug whereby the AI would always accept a deal which involved them giving you something like 999999999 gold per turn. For some reason, the game interpreted it as you asking for nothing.

Actually, from the sound of Fishboots post, the trading during wartime things sounds more like the fix to an exploit rather than an exploit itself.

Very true. There was a time where I blacked out and woke up with a shower cubical door on my head and it was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. Obviously, it was rather traumatic at the time, but the strange sort of half-awareness half-hallucination that went along with it was amazing, in hindsight. Having never been so much as drunk, auditory hallucinations, loss of sight and lack of control was almost thrilling. The fact that it miraculously didn't hurt might be a contributing factor to my favourable memory of it. I certainly don't harbour similar memories for when I ran down a hill spinning, became dizzy, fell down and whacked my head on the concrete. Losing all the other senses didn't make up for retaining pain. "

Didn't quite work out the way you thought it would did it? I actually got a message that England was about to stab me and I decided to stab him first. Don't know if it was true or not because that was the first time that he NMR'd so he hasn't moved since then. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley, An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!

Ah, well you'v just outlined the basic tenets of Existentialism and some more mainstream philosophies, as well. For instance, Ren