Quote from voidone :

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Please don't call me naive. You really think I believe the official reasons for the war? It should be crystal that I take everything that comes out of DC with a massive grain of salt.

I know that George & Co. went ahead with the invasion despite knowing Saddam was disarmed. I'm saying the publicly-stated reasons for the war changed with the seasons and this alleged "liberal" media never picked the Whitehouse up on it once and said "hey, last week it was freedom. Week before that it was WMD. Now it's to stop the turrsts? Which is it, George? Come on already! What next? Saddam killed Kennedy?"

Quote :

Do you have any idea what that would do to Iraq? Once we leave al qaeda will take over and Iraq will be worse off than it was with Saddam. It doesn't matter if the majority of Iraq's people support the US. What mattered is that the people who hold or stands to hold the most power DOESN'T. Did you think Saddam was a popular figure in Iraq? People have always wanted to overthrow him but did that happen? No, in fact Saddam's hold on Iraq seemed to increase instead.

You misunderstood me. The majority of Iraqis polled support a US exit, ie they want the US to leave. What happens next will be up to Iraqis, as it should be and always shoud have been, which is the point. Al-Qaeda have their work cut out for them if they do want to take over Iraq, as Iraqi support for them is actually pretty low and they simply don't have the numbers. Bad as it was under Saddam, Iraqis had relative religious freedom and I can't see them allowing extremists to run their country - they know full well what happened to Afghanistan under the Taliban. Just because you've gone in and wrecked the place, it doesn't mean you should stay there. I'm not saying leave a lawless vaccuum, I'm saying remove US troops, who are the one thing everyone in Iraq can agree is making the situation worse. Troops from neutral countries or countries friendly to Iraq, UN peacekeepers, Iraqi soldiers etc. can deploy to help reconstruction (which the US should pay for, every last goddam dime). Remove the US troops and you eliminate the one thing that al-Qaeda and other opportunistic terrorists entered Iraq for in the first place, then Iraqis, with the help of the international community, can rebuild their country and hopefully end the Sunni/Shia madness.

Ah, the old chestnut about Ahmadinejad "wiping Israel off the map". Noone doubts he's something of an unknown quantity, but the realities about that supposed "quote" are twofold: first, he has virtually no power in that area as he does not make policy or command the armed forces. Iran's a theocracy and the mullahs have control over policy while Ahmadinejad is a figurehead who speaks for them (much like Dubya speaks for corporate America - Ahmadinejad also happens to have beady little eyes and a poor brain/mouth filter, just like Dubya). Secondly, that's a gross mistranslation which has been inflated and spread around the globe like wildfire. What he said amounts to a desire for removal of the regime that currently controls Israel, not a literal & physical destruction of that country. You can quote "wipe them off the map" all you want but it simply isn't the case. It's a small but very important difference. That's what happens when you take the mainstream media's word for it - you perpetuate false or misleading information. Again, if the media was as liberal as some people seem to think (across the world as well in the US), that misrepresentation of the facts would have been questioned and quashed. Unfortunately it's part of the discourse now. If the liberal media are out there, they sure how know to stay under the radar...

Last edited by Hankstar, Mon 25 Feb 2008, 04:04.

Quote from lizardfolk :

That's exactly my point. But if Bush didn't surround himself with all those hawks he may not have been so gong-ho about war as he was and is. He didn't really do the lying. His staff did the lying he was just regurgitating what his companions wanted. Which was war in the Iraq for oil.

The retarded part is that we could have just paid off Saddam. It worked in the Gulf War and it could have worked any time because Saddam was a corrupt islamic. But now since he's gone there's a very good chance that a extreme fundamentalist might take over Iraq (which is what we are there to prevent) and Obama wants to pull out in 16 months? Plus since we took Iraq out of the picture Iran is now focusing their attention on the US. I've always thought the war was a mistake. But it's A MISTAKE TO JUST CUT AND RUN from something we got ourselves in.

If the liberal media didn't focus so much on trying to bring up dirt about the Republicans we might shed some light on this very complicated subject...but noooooo.

No no no, you missed my point entirely! There is NO liberal media in the US and my point was that, if there truly was, they would be asking exactly the kind of questions most decent people want asked. Stupid muckraking articles like the one on McCain speak to that. If this alleged "liberal" media was on its toes, why the hell aren't they asking, for example, about McCain's stance on torture? A year ago he was almost alone in the Repub camp, speaking out against torture vigorously. Last week or so he did a complete 180 degree turn and now he's for it - and this is a guy who was a POW in Vietnam iirc and experienced mistreatment by his captors! You'd think any liberal media outlet worth the name "liberal" would be holding him up to the light and asking "you're for torture now, but you weren't last year? What happened for you to change your mind so dramatically? Who twisted your arm to make you sell out your values?" This muckraking infidelity accusation is a bullshit waste of time, regardless of its truth.

Saddam a "corrupt islamic"? Is that some kind of racial slur or or is the "islamic" part incidental? No doubt he was corrupt though, that's for sure, and we know who to thank for letting him get away with it. Regarding your point about preventing Iraq being taken over by extremists, the one thing that could have prevented the current sectarian fighting would have been to stay the hell out of another country's business! Yes, Saddam was a bastard and a Stalinist of the worst order, but you can't simply invade another country because you don't like how they operate. If that's the case, why leave Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabi & North Korea to continue their oppression and murder? Anyway, the original reason to invade Iraq was to find & destroy WMDs. After that was proved false it changed because Saddam apparently had links to al-Qaeda. After that, too, proved false, the rationale changed again to liberating Iraq and spreading democracy. All that's being spread right now is the blood of Iraqis, by each other and by Coalition troops. Now, after we see the sham of Iraqi democracy & freedom exposed, the US has to stay there for the good of the Iraqis because, lord knows, they can't look after themselves, the silly "islamics". Yet another rationale. How can you take seriously the word of a government which changes its tune on the war every year?

Obama would like to withdraw US troops in 18 months? Good! That's supporting the damn troops, not leaving them in harm's way when they shouldn't have been sent there in the first place. It may well leave a vaccuum in the country and sectarian strife may increase - but considering much of the sectarian fighting is based on which side is supporting the American troops, it may be more beneficial to leave than some would have you believe. In any event, every poll of the Iraqi people shows overwhelming support for a US exit.

I'm glad you mentioned Iran, there's a great example of this alleged "liberal" media doing its thing. Washington turned their attention to Iran, not the other way around. Iran started getting mentioned in Dubya's speeches as far back as 2004, it's no recent thing. What people don't (or choose not to) realise is that Iran has the right to pursue nuclear energy under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not weapons. That's not to say they aren't pursuing weapons, but noone's provided any proof that they have or even intend to. You can't invade someone because you think they might be thinking of attacking you somehow, but since when has the US needed an actual reason to waste a country? As for the NNPT, which allows nuclear power but not weapons research (it is significantly more difficult and expensive to weaponise uranium and Iran is years away, even if it is attempting it), the US and Israel are both signatories to it. Since they signed, they have increased their nuclear arsenals in violation of it. So have allies like India and Pakistan. If we should worried about anyone, we should be worried about nations who openly and demonstrably care nothing for international treaties restricting the most destructive technology known to man. It doesn't send a good message to say "Iran can't have nuclear weapons" when you're simultaneously saying "we ca, Israel can, Pakistan can and so can India. But not Iran because they're evil, because we said so."

Finally, if what you assume is true and George just allowed himself to be lied to (pretty easy when you're a fundie Xtian who doesn't read papers, watch the news and are accustomed to believing what you're told so that's quite plausible), that still doesn't let him off the hook. If he was just regurgitating what his rich buddies & handlers wanted him to say, that's his fault for not thinking about it. It's his fault for not giving a single thought to how the invasion would play out.

It's a sad indictment of the US and its electoral process that that halfwit was elected in the first place, especially considering he didn't win the popular vote and was appointed by the Supreme Court. Dubya might have been lied to by his advisors but, in the end, it was he who took their advice - and most of them are still employed, which says either he doesn't care how wrong every last one of them was, doesn't care how much they all lied to him or he doesn't care that he was wrong to listen to them in the first place. It's about time he took responsibility for his own actions, but I think we all can agree he's anything but responsible.

For "extreme" liberals to exist in the US you first have to have regular, moderate liberals. You really don't. In comparison to Australia, Europe & especially Latin America, America's supposed liberals really only come across to the rest of us in the worlds as "somewhat less conservative than neo-con Republicans". In America you may be moderate or centrist, but America's political climate is weighted so far toward to the right wing you really only qualify as normal old conservative

I find it funny (but not amusing) that FOX, ABCNNBCBS, Washington Post etc. can say basically whatever they want, for years on end, supporting wars & invasions, not asking the questions they should be asking and just taking the Whitehouse's word for it on everything and that's ok, but the minute one paper prints one (most likely wrong, perhaps even knowingly false) article about one Republican candidate, or about the loss of currency that simple intelligence is experiencing in that country, and bam - it's part of some extremist, liberal, America-hating agenda (which is rich coming from the people that fought tooth & nail to impeach Bubba Clinton for a blowjob while Bush Jr walks around scot-free after reaming the Constitution and lying the country into a trillion-dollar war of aggression in violation of the Nuremberg Charter as well Us domestic law!). What about the militarist, Consitution-hating, citizen-spying, suspect-torturing, economy-trashing rightwing agenda that's dominated for 8 years? Yep, thought so. No such thing, right?

What I want to know is: where was hell was this extremist liberal bias when George was blatantly & knowingly lying his arse off about mushroom clouds and yellowcake from Niger and Saddam's supposed links to Osama bin Laden? Bush's own family has stronger links to the bin Ladens than Saddam ever did FFS. It's worth remembering that Osama and Saddam got to where they are purely by US intervention: the CIA trained & equipped Osama and his mujahedin to fight the Soviets in the 80s; the US helped to install and later arm Saddam with WMD (Rumsfeld himself happily shook Saddam's hand shortly before Saddam used his new WMD against Iran - crimes which Saddam was not charged for before his hanging, lest they incriminate the US & UK). Not to harp on those points, but those are the things you would expect a liberal-biased media to bring up if they were worth their salt. Some bullshit piece about McCain having an affair with a lobbyist is nothing compared to what they should be talking about.

Quote from alland44 :

I don`t think you got the message.

Yoy should NOT be able to add parts, but just tune up the existing parts and bits of the engine.

Also been mentioned more than once (search for "tuning", you'll see it, although you've been around long enough to have seen just about every tuning thread in this section ) and it's also been met with the same sort of resistance.

Regardless of whether you're adding totally new parts or just tweaking existing parts (which is almost the same thing), tuning has never been viewed as a good idea for inclusion in LFS by anything close to the majority of LFS players. Even a quick glance at an existing thread about tuning should give a clear indication of the objections to it, not the least of which has to do with the time Scavier would need to design, test & implement any new parts or tuning options.

Trust me, everyone here has got the "message", and more than once too

(c) "Smashing into a wall repeatedly" server but, if forced, drifting

Drinking whilst in the bath: wine or scotch?

Many posts and interviews with the devs suggest to me that they like their current work method and don't wish to add anyone to their team. Because of that, I don't think paying more money would make development any faster.

I'm not into the idea of paying a subscription fee anyway. I like that I've paid once and can play LFS as much as I want (or as little as I want without feeling like I'm wasting money). Also, charging a subscription fee for a game that's still in development would be a little bit presumptuous and I think it would alienate many potential buyers.

-400 billion to this idea and to every other thread that's mentioned this very same idea over the past 4+ years while at the same time thinking it was the first time anyone had thought of it

This isn't Gran Turismo or NFS and I hope it never goes down the "win money = fastest car" route that those games own.

Quote from e2mustang :

every we see try not spam all over the forum,whats this b*******t about than? wtf is wrong with u ppl?

:geezer: Dang punk kids! Git off ma lawn!

^Recommended treatment: valium or bucket-bong?

Quote from aoun :

My nephews just go on the game whenever they want.. I come home with the pedals all the way close up and the wheel who knows where.. and who knows what they have done to my setups.. .

But i get into trouble because i told them not to touch it..

Why cant little kids just ask first?

Damn punk kids :geezer: Perhaps password your login and set another one up for kids with its own LFS folder? A friend of mine shared his PC in a house once and had to do something similar (he partitioned as well) to prevent everyone filling his HD with smileys, screensavers and pr0n (and of course the associated annoy-ware).

Aug 2006 to Feb 2008 = 18 months. Plenty of time to save around 60 AUD to get the XRT back (you only needed to put away $3.34 a month) I reckon in the short time Patch Y has been out you possibly could have saved that much anyway. But if you're in school and can't work full time there are still plenty of ways to make money. Just remember to stick to the legal ones

RacerX, forever flying the flag of reason :up:

Although, I guess if people try hard enough to remain uninformed, all your hard work will go unnoticed I encounter it all the time: a lot of people would take it as a slight on their ego or intelligence if they were to admit they may have been wrong or misled. I say there's no crime in being wrong as long as you can admit it - or just admit the possibility of it. There's certainly no crime in being misled by the most powerful concentration of political, media & corporate power money can buy either. The real crimes lie in (a) inexplicably choosing to stay misled when there are numerous other sources of reliable information and differing viewpoints available and (b) accepting the mainstream view that anything that isn't mainstream is a leftwing conspiracy theory that can't be trusted. If you're not going to trust non-mainstream sources, why is it any better to trust CNN/Washington Post/FOX/NBC? They've done nothing to earn it!

Last edited by Hankstar, Sun 24 Feb 2008, 00:10.

Jeez, there are some really high horses in this thread - in some cases they're so high you can only see the horse's arse. Better get yourself an umbrella Albieg

Bummer Bryan.

I don't know about Canadian law so I don't know what penalty you can expect, but you're a minor and (I assume) this is your first offence. Just be honest with your folks and the judge and don't try and defend what you did. A conviction, regardless of penalty, might see you expelled from school so perhaps prepare yourself for that possibility. Also, best thing to do would be to lay off the shit for a while and clear your head. That might sound utterly contrary to how you feel right now but a break from weed at any time is good for you. Hey, you might not have a choice in the matter anyway, I assume you'll be closely supervised But since you've got some free time, why don't you ask a bud to bring home some school work for you, or perhaps ask your folks to contact your teachers so they can arrange something. If you're getting good grades already, try and keep up! It's good for you (obviously) and will also show your folks, the school and the police that you're not a total loss and you're serious about your work. If you can, don't let your schoolwork slide. Even if your school does expel you, you're going to end up in another one and you want to be keeping up as much as you can. Main thing is: while you've got this time, don't be tempted to sit around and smoke all day. You've got something to prove now: you can be worthwhile despite making a bad choice.

I had a couple of legal issues (not drug-related) at school, so I know the alternating chills & numbness of cops and parents throwing the book at you. It was 15 years ago so I've got some perspective on it. The best thing you can do is man up, accept the consequences and remind yourself you're not a total loss and you're essentially a decent guy (if that's what you are ) who made a bad decision. It'll all be over in a coupla months and once it is you can stop dwelling, pick yourself up and get on with your life. As long as your folks don't hold a grudge and they love & support you (even if they do loathe what you've done!) you'll be fine. No way in hell they were perfect as kids right?

And don't buy all this reactionary bullshit about weed being a gateway drug (I'm sure you don't anyway). It's pure propaganda, going right back to the 1930s (with that awesome film "Reefer Madness" ). People who end up shooting up smack under a bridge and stealing TVs to pay for it (like a few former friends of mine) would have likely ended up doing it anway with the people they were hanging around with. Doesn't mean it won't happen to you - always be mindful of the people you hang with and what they do. Listen to any alarm bells in your head, they're worth paying attention to.

I started smoking in my teens and still smoke it here and there. It's never inspired me to get into anything harder, nor has it done the same with any of the many, many people I know who like a puff now and again. Those people I know who ended up addicted to smack were people who consistently made bad choices whatever the situation and had no self-control. Many all had drinking problems to start with, oddly enough, not weed habits. Most of the time it's the legal drugs you gotta watch out for - noone I ever heard of beat his wife & kids, lost his job and ended up living on the street because he liked the odd bong. I saw my uncle's family destroyed by his drinking and it wasn't overnight, it took years to slowly unravel everything that was good in his life. He stopped drinking a while back and everyone's forgiven him, but he still feels too ashamed to come to family gatherings - didn't even stay at his daughter's wedding for more than a half hour! That kinda thing's never happened to any smoker I know.

Hell, I took a legal, addictive drug myself for ten years, spent loads of money it (even stealing cash from my dad when I was 16, completely retarded) and quitting that stuff was the best thing I ever did! If you're gonna smoke something, stay the hell away from tobacco. Not only is it the worst possible thing you can do for your body and ferociously addictive, when you buy cigarettes (at those ridiculous prices) you're giving most of the money to the damn government in tax anyway.

I dunno, just remind yourself you're not a goddam criminal mastermind, trying to corrupt young minds as some people may have you believe. You're a normal kid (with a good playlist - add The Mars Volta to it !) who got busted doing something stupid (yep, taking the shit to school is, basically, stupid and I won't mince words about it) and now you've got to pay for it. But it won't ruin your life if you don't let it! Make people focus on the positive things about you, not this little speed-hump. It'll be a life lesson. Hell, not learning from this would be stupider than doing it in the first place

Good luck
H

Vid! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhdHkoal31o... and the quarterback is TOAST.

Great pics guys :up:

Just a quickie about the sat: it's got a half-tonne of frozen hydrazine in it, which is nasty, corrosive stuff which can potentially ruin your day. Linkage.

Of course, the fact that it's also a CIA mind-control satellite full of top-secret mind-controlling, p2p-monitoring and thought-reading technology (brought to you by Microsoft) may have something to do with the desire to destroy it. But yeah, mostly it's about the hydrazine.

Golden rule of forums I guess: re-post about a well-worn topic and, right or wrong and politely or not, people will ask why you're asking questions that could've been answered by having a look around for five minutes instead of starting a new thread whenever something occurs to you

There's a beginner forum for basic stuff, suggested improvement sticky thread, sections for skins, teams, servers, bugs, setups etc., the search function ... basically, this game's existed for nearly 6 years and this forum a large database of knowledge. If you can think of it, it's very likely it's been asked about and answered and it's easy to find stuff out.

Last edited by Hankstar, Fri 22 Feb 2008, 00:33.

Quote from flymike91 :

We came within a phone call from nuclear holocaust and that is "suposed" threat from Cuba and USSR? Well you're in Australia so maybe you just don't feel the heat down under.

Oh and racer X your New Zealand gov isn't blameless. remember when your government covered up all those people who were being poisoned by chemical plants near new plymouth? Your gov ignores that there are more retarded children now than ever before. Before you bash a country thats far away from you, look inward. http://www.safe2use.com/ca-ipm/01-05-16c.htm<-----you don't think im right? Also NZ fought in vietnam in very high numbers. don't give that holier than thou shit.

Might (or might not) interest you to know that one year before Kruschev opened up a missile base in Cuba, Washington made a phone call to the CIA and tried to mount a proxy invasion of Cuba using US-backed Cuban exiles to oust Castro (the infamous Bay of Pigs inavsion - look it up, it was a complete farce), so if you want to play the "who started it" game, start at square one.

Being "Down Under" (or anywhere other than the US, really) gives us a unique perspective of looking at history, unsullied by the flag-happy, nationalist US mainstream media that's so laughably labelled "liberal" by the very people & institutions it unquestioningly supports. Trust me, if the US media was anywhere near as "liberal" as FOX news etc. say it is, most of what the Bush team have got away with in the last 8 years would never have happened, or at least would been held up to something resembling close scrutiny (and arseclowns like Bill O'Reilly - even "moderates" like Katie Couric and Larry King - would be collecting welfare). Don't worry about us feeling the heat - we felt it when we got dragged into the disaster of Vietnam and we've been feeling it ever since.

The very reason people around the world are so interested in & concerned about US elections is because the actions of the US government directly affect the rest of the world like no other. A change in leadership in the most powerful nation in the world, the nation with the longest & most dubious record of overseas military interventions (both overt & covert) in modern history, is naturally going to attract some attention. The World is rightly concerned about who gains control of the most potentially destructive military on the planet.

You said "before you bash a country that's far away from you, look inward". Quite! If only Washington DC had pinned that motto up in the halls of Congress & the Whitehouse in about 1946. There'd be far fewer of these alleged "anti-Americans" lurking around.

What's an "anti-American" anyway? Someone who disagrees with aspects of US foreign policy? Well, that same logic would make me completely "anti-Vatican" and would have made me "anti-Australian" from 1996-2007 ...

Last edited by Hankstar, Fri 22 Feb 2008, 00:25.

Quote from xaotik :

Also, he helped people push the boundaries of seafaring endeavors by covering a 90 mile distance floating in an overinflated innertube.

Indeed, Fidel was a great, um, motivator to many Cubans. But, Fidel & communism aside, I like Cuba because of the fact that its very existence as an independent state (for better or worse) annoys the shit out of El Norte.

Considering what's happened in many other Latin American countries as a result of Northern internvention, I'm not quite sure a US-friendly democracy would have made things any better for your average Cuban.

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu 21 Feb 2008, 09:35.

Quote from scania :

What is Sprintcars ?

Not sure if it means the same elsewhere, but in Oz a sprintcar is designed for dirt speedway racing. It's specifically built only to run anti-clockwise, with a fat V8, giant wing on the roof and an oversized right rear tyre to keep it honest. Quite popular down here (and elsewhere too - there are frequent visits here by US teams) and they have some ridiculously good prangs My first motor racing outings were as a little kid, watching these psychos at our local speedway along with the bikes, bikes & sidecars, super sedans and of course the demolition derby

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu 21 Feb 2008, 05:05.

If given a 20-foot head start.

Body rub is standard at my place Woz.

This Agapanthus chap has turned into quite the troll. At first he just seemed like a guy who'd never heard of drifting and was asking honest questions to educate himself. Now, it seems, I stand corrected and the little chap's grown tusks, moved into a hole under a bridge and has started a diet based on small goats.

I won't bother re-telling you what you've been told about the sport of drifting, Spartacus, but I will quite happily tell you to pull your head in and stop being so purposely & bafflingly obtuse. You've been told what drifting's about more than once, so please either accept it, shut up and move on or, failing that (which seems likely) just shut up.

If you still don't "get" drifting that's not the fault of anyone here. If you don't understand drifting then in the same vein I'm equally sure you don't understand vert, flatland or freestyle BMX, figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, dressage, ballroom dancing or any other sport that's judged on subjective, stylistic criteria But I don't think that's the case. Rather, it seems you're into annoying people because you can. Very productive.

Epic fail.

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

... new features are being added specifically FOR cruise servers, such as the new filter.

From another perspective, you could say with just as much authority that the filter was added in order for racers to just find race servers. Indeed (IIRC) the first requests for a server category filter came from racers who wanted to filter out cruise/drift servers

You'd think if Scavier wanted to LFS to be a general driving sim (as opposed to a dedicated race sim) and cater to everyone with an interest in driving cars, they would've widened their focus by now (nearly six years into the project) and included things like in-built drift comp and cops n robbers features, free-roam city maps, fewer dedicated race cars and perhaps even the dreaded 900 billion degress of dorfito steering lock that some people can't seem to help but ask for repeatedly.

I know the fact that they haven't added things like that yet doesn't necessarily mean they won't, but adding such features now would dilute the game far too much for most racers and delay overall progress to a level a lot of people would find unacceptable (and lots of people already think it's too). That would alienate what can logically be assumed (going by previous developer posts, interviews, press releases and patches) is the target market of LFS: racing fans. Of course, I could be wrong. But I aint :]

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu 21 Feb 2008, 02:25.

The large numbers of cruise/drift/CnR/lolcatz/otherwise non-racing servers are down to the choices of users and are mostly run using external 3rd-party apps (afaik). It doesn't really reflect a change in Scavier's vision or focus imho, just a change in the proportions of the community. Who knows? Perhaps future changes in LFS' physics or other areas may render such non-race activities more difficult or just make the racing better, which would change the dynamic again