Yeah I've heard the conversion is not that difficult to do. I should learn how to do it to be prepared for the inevitable zombie swarm. Just remember though: in a pinch, you don't have to reload a bat.
Sheeeesus Rappa :eek: After that many I'd definitely contemplate revising my "no guns in the house" rule ...
Squidhead: google "Second Amendment." Weapons laws in the US are very relaxed compared to a lot of places. I don't know about all parts of the country but assault weapons are widely permitted.
If the guy was using the AK on full-automatic and just held the trigger down, it maybe would've taken 10 seconds to empty the 30-round magazine (I think my maths is right, an AK's firing rate is about 600 rounds per minute). If that was the case, that's some seriously panicked & paranoid firing right there.
The article mentions the guy was suffering post-traumatic stress as a result of being robbed previously. Clearly he wasn't rational: a rational person knows that if someone's going to rob you they're not going to stand on the front step and knock politely on the door ...
If the guy was using the AK on full-automatic and just held the trigger down, it maybe would've taken 10 seconds to empty the 30-round magazine (I think my maths is right, an AK's firing rate is about 600 rounds per minute). If that was the case, that's some seriously panicked & paranoid firing right there.
The article mentions the guy was suffering post-traumatic stress as a result of being robbed previously. Clearly he wasn't rational: a rational person knows that if someone's going to rob you they're not going to stand on the front step and knock politely on the door ...
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I hear ya. In recent years the kids down here in Oz have been aping the US trick-or-treat tradition as well. They don't entirely understand why they're doing it, they just like getting dressed up like Harry Potter and begging strangers for sugar.
The most disappointing part: I never give anyone any treats, but none of the little bastards have the balls to trick me! They're as soft as warm shit.
AK's are cheap and effective
Also, Google "Second Amendment" (to the US Constitution).
Guns don't kill people ...
Shit, if you thought that was a worked-up bash, you're greener that I thought you were. I don't hate you (paranoid much?) or conservatives (how can I hate you? I don't know you from a bar o' yellow soap). My post was a general blurgh, a disagreement with the sentiments you expressed. If you took it personally, whatever...but it aint about you.
But I need to "calm down"? Don't condescend to me, if you please. You need to "calm down" and give people some bloody credit. People will always be free to teach their children what they feel is right and Prop 8, yes or no, won't change that. But any point of view which views homosexuality as some sort of threat to something-or-other isn't a point of view I can't possibly respect, because it simply isn't based on the facts. Jeez, noone's going to be giving "gay lessons" or whatever the hell these lackwit BAWW-heads are afraid of.
Aside: it might be useful bear in mind a lot of the Yes on Prop 8 funding isn't even coming from Californians, it's from well-funded, mostly religious groups from out of state who subscribe to exactly the same kind of paranoid & ridiculous "slippery slope to gaydom and repression of heteros" point of view that I outlined. You really want out of state theocrat fundamentalists affecting your political process or do you want democracy in California to be respected, whatever the result?
Trouble is, these Prop 8'ers are fighting a losing battle and delaying the inevitable. Even if Prop 8 is passed, any prohibitions on gay marriage will be fought again and they'll just be defeated. It might not happen straight away, or even in CA, but it'll just keep happening and keep happening until it's recognised as the retarded waste of time & lost cause that it is. But then I guess the wackos will find something else they want to ban, like Harry Potter (again) or Isaac Asimov books or cotton candy (pink turns kids into GAYS!1).
Instead of directing their effort and money toward issues that actually have an impact on peoples' lives, these (mostly) bible-thumping clowns are trying to repeal a law that simply recognises that gay people are people with the same rights as any citizen - nothing more. Gay marriage isn't about special treatment, it's about EQUAL treatment. That's what this issue is about. Civil rights, liberty & justice for all. If a gay person has to pay tax, obey the law and work for a living and can have their vote counted, why the hell shouldn't they be able to get married and have spousal rights like their neighbours? All this other paranoid bullshit, whipped up by the far right, is red herring after red herring and simply clouds the issue. As we've seen right here.
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TL;DR version: I get passionate about this because I have friends in exactly the situation that's on the table. We were all born with the same rights under the law. However, as soon as they realised they were gay, a big chunk of their rights simply vanished and they immediately got treated like second-class citizens or perverts or people out to "convert" other peoples' children. That's the issue - the fact that you can be born with the same rights as your brother but have them taken from you because of who you love (and nothing else) is not fair, it's not just and it's not right. Prop 8 is discriminatory, bigoted, ignorant, paranoid, anti-human, anti-civil rights and I hope it gets squashed.
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@ wheel4hummer: "apply liberally" means that you rub lotion on while quoting George Carlin stand-up routines or watching Stephen Colbert.
How exactly is this going to be accomplished - gay thought police busting in on homes and forcing kids to read Amistead Maupin's "Tales Of The City"?
Even if your claims of being "forced" to watch "liberal" documentaries and attend global warming rallies (is the trouble our environment is in is some kooky hippy hoax - wtf?) and your other paranoid-sounding claims of leftiness hold up to scrutiny, NOONE is forcing you to believe anything or think a certain way. Perhaps if you quit reading World Net Daily you'd realise you have the right to disagree with your teachers and voice your opinion and noone is going to take that away from you - not the Democrats, not your teachers, not the entire population of the Castro district. A "No" vote on Prop 8 will not be the start of some lefty/gay/hippie slippery slope to Democrat-led fascism. Seriously, get a grip - in the last 8 years your beloved conservatives have done more to harm the rights of the US population than any president in the preceding 230+ years (PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, constant illegal surveillance to name but a handful)! But as usual, the American right is trying its level best to scare the absolute crap out of everyone in an attempt to make them vote Republican.
Hell, when you've destroyed the economy, abandoned critical infrastructure, dissolved pretty much all international goodwill, allowed millions of jobs to be outsourced overseas and made your country both an international pariah & a laughing stock (no mean feat - heckuva job, Bushie/Palin) and then chosen some halfwit anti-science, anti-FACT You-betcha Barbie as your Vice Presidential nominee, I guess all you can do is ramp up the paranoia and scare up some votes. "The terrorists/gays/liberals/black supremacists are coming! Only if you vote Republican will you be saved!" Humbug.
By the way, the phrase "liberal arts" does NOT mean politically liberal, like the whole college is one big year-long naked gay Woodstock. "Liberal arts" is just a collective term meaning areas of social & natural sciences, fine arts, literature, languages, history, philosophy and the humanities, as opposed to something like a law, med or business school. That is, generally, their focus is less on occupational & professional skills and more on intellectual skills. I see the term "liberal arts" frequently used, through ignorance more than anything, as disparaging or even insulting. "Liberal" does not necessarily mean left-wing, in the context of liberal arts it simply means "broad". It's apolitical. I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives studying the humanities, physics, biology, history, French. Well, maybe not French ...
But hey, it's California. Of course, given CA's reputation, you'd expect teachers there to encourage a broader intellectual education to school-leavers before encouraging them to hit business school straight after graduation. But still, noone says you have to agree with them. They're not the freaking Thought Police and you can do what you want! Enough with the paranoid hysteria from the GOP. The Democrats aren't going to force you to get gay-married, listen to Hendrix, wear rainbow kaftans and go to Brown to study "Life-Drawing & Recruiting 1st Graders To The Gay Army 101". You wanna go to Harvard, go to freakin Harvard. Or Jerry Falwell's laughable Liberty "University" if that floats your Ark ...
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Sonic Youth. Awesome. I caught Smashing Pumpkins at the Melbourne V Festival earlier this year too, speaking of that era. One of the best damn gigs I've ever seen. Increasingly odd-looking Billy Corgan still rules. A lot.
Didn't really dig NAD, Wonder Stuff, Blur etc at all) until Radiohead released The Bends in '95 (96?), which eventually led me to OK Computer and my current tragic Radiohead fanboyness. I was still blasting Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Corrosion of Conformity, Fear Factory, Stone Temple Pilots among others at that time.
These days the heaviest stuff in my collection is Muse, Opeth (awesome but I rarely listen to it) and The Mars Volta (intensely heavy but without being even a tiny bit metal, it's more like devastatingly intense latino jazz-fusion prog-rock and it's listened to rather frequently).
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Didn't really dig NAD, Wonder Stuff, Blur etc at all) until Radiohead released The Bends in '95 (96?), which eventually led me to OK Computer and my current tragic Radiohead fanboyness. I was still blasting Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Corrosion of Conformity, Fear Factory, Stone Temple Pilots among others at that time.
These days the heaviest stuff in my collection is Muse, Opeth (awesome but I rarely listen to it) and The Mars Volta (intensely heavy but without being even a tiny bit metal, it's more like devastatingly intense latino jazz-fusion prog-rock and it's listened to rather frequently).
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Gosh, the Muse! Well, that endorsement warrants some research. I was just too metal in the '90s to care about anything non-metal (except the Chilli Peppers, who as yet hadn't started to suck, and killer pre-1980s Pink Floyd).
RETRY_
RETRY_
Never heard of Katie-Jane or her band before Kevin ... but good gosh do I appreciate any bright young thing for whom clothing is an afterthought.
In 1992 in Oz, every red-blooded 16-year old lad was all about Christina Applegate (still gorgeous, thanks for asking), local gal Elle Macpherson (see previous) or one of several blonde soapie starlets named Melissa. Being pre-internet, it was a time when one's art folder, carefully decoupaged to within an inch of structural failure with pics of GN'R, Metallica & RHCP (this was when all those bands still ruled) as well as the obligatory borderline-illegal babe shots, was the window to one's soul & not one's tastelessly decorated, epilepsy-inducing, un-spellchecked myspace page
Threadjack in three, two ...
In 1992 in Oz, every red-blooded 16-year old lad was all about Christina Applegate (still gorgeous, thanks for asking), local gal Elle Macpherson (see previous) or one of several blonde soapie starlets named Melissa. Being pre-internet, it was a time when one's art folder, carefully decoupaged to within an inch of structural failure with pics of GN'R, Metallica & RHCP (this was when all those bands still ruled) as well as the obligatory borderline-illegal babe shots, was the window to one's soul & not one's tastelessly decorated, epilepsy-inducing, un-spellchecked myspace page
Threadjack in three, two ...
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Kev: Susanna Hoffs. Outstanding :up:
If you don't have to answer the door to the bloody JWs, you don't have to sit there and watch Dawkins or stories about buses on TV. Noone's forcing you. Change the channel or look it up on the web! Your whinge is redundant and your problems are solved by a tiny movement of your arm.
Bloody hell Quicky, every time anything happens in this world we have some quiet-voiced bespectacled bloke in a robe piping up on the news, telling everyone how to behave. I've lost count of the times I've seen bishops or cardinals or pastors pop up on the news to give their apparent "expert" soundbytes on any & every social or moral or legal issue; the Pope sticks his frigging oar in whenever anything happens (and frequently when it doesn't), and shares with us his vast wisdom on the subject of "sweet **** all". The fact is, we hear from religious people so bloody often they're like background noise, constantly poking their heads into the public arena to justify their continued existence & special status. Now one, ONE guy like Dawkins makes some (easily-aviodable!) TV shows and ONE group buys some space on a bus and all of a sudden it's "NOO THEY BE STEALIN MA TV".
A bit of perspective would be good here I think.
Thanks Racer X (I always take "scary" as a compliment )
Well, obviously there's a lot about nerdbook and emospace that suck balls. Massive ones.
However, it was through emospace that my band (linkage) found an outstanding, world-class producer who put our debut album together for a bargain. His girl saw our page, worded him up, he loved it and bingo. A year later and we have an independently made, sick sounding LP - 100% owned by us - ready & waiting to be leaked onto the net and "shared". Emospace been very useful to us in attracting fans & keeping them up to date on recording and gigs as well. However, the fact that it's been useful doesn't change the fact that myspace is a visual abortion, (still!) has a retarded UI and (still!) behaves as if it were coded by two chimps between hits on their bucket bong.
Conclusion: myspace, though ugly & clunky, is useful if you have something to sell or promote; it's a pointless & ugly billboard-y bucket of shit otherwise.
Nerdbook...well, that's kind of been useful for arranging social events & keeping in touch because all my old friends are either hundreds of miles away back in our home town, or overseas. But we also have our own private forum to keep in touch, so I guess nerdbook is kind of redundant. It's very spammy and the ads are constant, but it least it's easy to use and easy to look at. Meh. I could do without it though, some of my friends are a bit too spammy...
Conclusion: nerdbook is decent visually, useful if your friends are all over the place; however it's also prime marketing turf so you'll be bombarded with ads and there will be constant invitations to play retarded games, join pointless clubs and constant notifications of every pointless thing your friends get up to.
Overall conclusion: if you already have friends - hell, do what you want. Nerdbook's useful for keeping tabs on existing friends. If you want new friends, what the **** are you doing looking on the internet? Go get drunk and buy a stranger a beer. Join a band/chess club/football club/get a freaking job. Meet actual humans.
)Well, obviously there's a lot about nerdbook and emospace that suck balls. Massive ones.
However, it was through emospace that my band (linkage) found an outstanding, world-class producer who put our debut album together for a bargain. His girl saw our page, worded him up, he loved it and bingo. A year later and we have an independently made, sick sounding LP - 100% owned by us - ready & waiting to be leaked onto the net and "shared". Emospace been very useful to us in attracting fans & keeping them up to date on recording and gigs as well. However, the fact that it's been useful doesn't change the fact that myspace is a visual abortion, (still!) has a retarded UI and (still!) behaves as if it were coded by two chimps between hits on their bucket bong.
Conclusion: myspace, though ugly & clunky, is useful if you have something to sell or promote; it's a pointless & ugly billboard-y bucket of shit otherwise.
Nerdbook...well, that's kind of been useful for arranging social events & keeping in touch because all my old friends are either hundreds of miles away back in our home town, or overseas. But we also have our own private forum to keep in touch, so I guess nerdbook is kind of redundant. It's very spammy and the ads are constant, but it least it's easy to use and easy to look at. Meh. I could do without it though, some of my friends are a bit too spammy...
Conclusion: nerdbook is decent visually, useful if your friends are all over the place; however it's also prime marketing turf so you'll be bombarded with ads and there will be constant invitations to play retarded games, join pointless clubs and constant notifications of every pointless thing your friends get up to.
Overall conclusion: if you already have friends - hell, do what you want. Nerdbook's useful for keeping tabs on existing friends. If you want new friends, what the **** are you doing looking on the internet? Go get drunk and buy a stranger a beer. Join a band/chess club/football club/get a freaking job. Meet actual humans.
Just to poke my tentacle in, the word people keep misfreakingspelling here is spelled "atheist". Opposite of "theist" which means "somebody who believes in god(s)." An atheist, in general, sees no reason to believe gods exist.
Now that we've got that out of the way...
First question, what the hell is a "Grip Driver"?
Next: why should atheists be ashamed and what exactly should we be ashamed of? I refuse to feel any shame on account of someone else's standards. To paraphrase pinoykid, yours is not a very Christian attitude.
And what's that about getting shot? You seem to have an oddly paranoid view of people who might disagree with you.
That sounds more like heaven for you sonny jim, and I think you're alrady there. It seems the divine Miss Carlisle was right - ooh, heaven is a place on Earth.
Now that we've got that out of the way...
First question, what the hell is a "Grip Driver"?
Next: why should atheists be ashamed and what exactly should we be ashamed of? I refuse to feel any shame on account of someone else's standards. To paraphrase pinoykid, yours is not a very Christian attitude.
And what's that about getting shot? You seem to have an oddly paranoid view of people who might disagree with you.
That sounds more like heaven for you sonny jim, and I think you're alrady there. It seems the divine Miss Carlisle was right - ooh, heaven is a place on Earth.
Dude, if you pay for intertube porn UR DOIN IT RONG
Do something smart, invest in your future: buy some cannabis seeds.
Totally. Any scientist (or even a layman, unskilled science-nerd) will be the first to tell you that science doesn't know everything, doesn't claim to know everything and doesn't even claim that science will or even CAN know everything. Even when something is basically accepted as a "fact" (such as gravity or evolution), it's still called a "Theory" because science accepts that it might have missed something (even if that's highly unlikely - but that's why you don't just perform experiments just once).
I think there's a misconception of science causes a lot of confusion among some religious people. They have an absolute, clear-cut idea of how everything began and scriptures that tell them exactly what to do, what to think, what to wear, eat, how to have sex and with whom among other things; therefore they think science is the same: a rigid & dogmatic set of instructions on a par with their religion. Some even talk about "the religion of science". Nothing could be further from the truth. Science, at any given point in history, is humanity's best guess (for want of a better word) at objective fact, given the observations & evidence available. That's it. Some guesses are obviously better than others and get incorporated into our body of knowledge, while the ones that aren't that great are discarded.
There's a fundamental difference between most religions and science: putting it simply, science is happy to admit when it's wrong about something and take on new evidence because that adds to the body of knowledge. Religion starts out "knowing" everything already, often attempting through mad mental contortions to incorporate new knowledge into its ever-more incompatible philosophical worldview. Change in religion is slow, often reluctant and often violently opposed; change in science is rapid & dynamic - change in science is basically the norm.
Religion tells you what to think,
Science teaches you how.
I think there's a misconception of science causes a lot of confusion among some religious people. They have an absolute, clear-cut idea of how everything began and scriptures that tell them exactly what to do, what to think, what to wear, eat, how to have sex and with whom among other things; therefore they think science is the same: a rigid & dogmatic set of instructions on a par with their religion. Some even talk about "the religion of science". Nothing could be further from the truth. Science, at any given point in history, is humanity's best guess (for want of a better word) at objective fact, given the observations & evidence available. That's it. Some guesses are obviously better than others and get incorporated into our body of knowledge, while the ones that aren't that great are discarded.
There's a fundamental difference between most religions and science: putting it simply, science is happy to admit when it's wrong about something and take on new evidence because that adds to the body of knowledge. Religion starts out "knowing" everything already, often attempting through mad mental contortions to incorporate new knowledge into its ever-more incompatible philosophical worldview. Change in religion is slow, often reluctant and often violently opposed; change in science is rapid & dynamic - change in science is basically the norm.
Religion tells you what to think,
Science teaches you how.
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Islam actually followed Judaism and Christianity. Judaism predates Jesus (obviously) but it's unclear by exactly how long (some estimates say up to 2000 years). Jesus arrived in the year Zero, apparently, and people started following him around a bit. The four Gospels that we know (and a bunch we don't) were written several decades (again unclear how many) after Jesus' alleged visit and, after a lot of arguing and biffo and selective editing and omission of several competing Gospels, the religion of Christianity (as we know it) was formulated & codified in the 4th century. Mohammed, seeing a gap in the Middle Eastern market, built on the foundations of both & kicked off his competing franchise in about the 7th century (possibly while high). It's done pretty well for itself, but unfortunately seems to attract more than its fair share of backward, misogynistic, lackwitted murderous loons. But hey, so do many franchises of this kind. Tell two people they're in possession of the Ultimate Truth, but make one guy's Truth a bit different to the other guy's Truth, and watch the freakin sparks fly!
Look, all religions have a fascinating history - but they're all lies.
Those who do not bow to the Great Galactic Squid (blessed be His inky discharge) will have their souls eaten by sperm whales, excreted, finished off by tiny annyoing crabs, re-animated and then eaten by whales again. However, if you raise your voices in praise, the Great Galactic Squid (hallowed be His all-seeing giant staring lidless eyeballs) will enfold you in his infinite tentacles of love.
I don't need to fraternise with teenage girls. Notwithstanding the creepy illegality of such liaisons, this is what I prefer to have waiting for me at home:
Cuddly.
Cuddly.
Contribute to relevant, adult conversations, debate actual grownups, experience the joys of adequate grammar & spelling 
Basically, what I always do when I'm not here. Which is most of the time.
Basically, what I always do when I'm not here. Which is most of the time.
Fair enough in spirit, but technically bollocks. Free speech only exists in real-life liberal democracies, or other government/societal systems where freedom of speech is deemed an appropriate human right. The internet is no such democracy or system, especially privately-owned bits of it like lfsforum.net. The owners of lfsforum.net set their own rules and appoint people to enforce them. But hey, I'm just riffin' on semantics here.
Still, using your "free speech" rationale, people with strong opinions about Lerts's posting should be allowed to voice them, just as much as Lerts himself is obviously free to post ... well ... whatever world-changing, paradigm-shifting discovery he's made that day. Only when peoples' opinions are inappropriately translated to actions which contravene a person's rights under the LFS forum rules (set by our benevolent dictators
) would there be a censorhip issue. Lerts is permitted to post whatever he wants (provided it's in the appropriate section and conforms to the forum rules), but he does not have the right to not be disagreed with, argued against or simply told to shut up & bugger off. Similarly, people reading Lerts's verbal ejaculations can respond to him in any way they see fit (presuming they're aware of the potential consequences of illegal behaviour) or to simply ignore him.
For the record: I've seen, and been a member of, plenty of other forums which don't tolerate even half the random, off-topic, space-wasting bullsh|t that goes on here and they function just as well, if not a lot better ...
S14 - stop reading his fracking threads and put him on your ignore list to avoid accidentally spotting him in someone else's. Clearly noone's about to ban the guy until he does something completely against the rules, so continually responding to the dribble you see is like beating your head against a wall. That's the real source of your brayne-hurt 
Heh, I'm aware of that (who do you think keeps voting Republican, apart from all the rich guys in the cities?
). I grew up in the country in part which is very vulnerable to bushfires and it's all volunteer firefighters out there. I think volunteer firefighters illustrate very well that people who do care will do good things for nothing at all, let alone for little pay.Flymike, I was making a general point about public servants. Your fireys might indeed get a better deal than ours in Oz. But here in Melbourne, our cops almost went on strike not so long ago (because they're overstretched and underpaid), our nurses actually did strike (and won themselves better pay & conditions) and our public school teachers nation-wde are fighting a near-constant battle for better pay - the ones in my state aren't paid at the same level as the other states.
Yeah aoun, because the Ferrari system works so damn well
Really though, it'd be nice to have an idea exactly where your garage is, whether a lollipop man or just your name floating there at the end of your spot (as it does above your car).
You always return to the same one when you shift+P from the track and it would add a little to the realism. At the moment, you have to just pick a spot, any spot. Not only that but there's no indication where to stop the car. Many times I've come in to pit, parked in whatever spot (after some guesswork), only to be honked at or just punked out the way by someone leaving their garage. Just having your name at the end of your own pit-spot would be fine. You'd have a definite place to stop your car every time, eliminating the guesswork we currently have to use: stop, inch forward, stop.
In Grand Prix Legends, there's just a little black board with your name on it at the end of your pit spot. Easy to see and provides a definite place to stop. GPL's a ten-year old game too, so you'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to include something similar into LFS. Also in GPL, only your pit board is visible to you so there's no confusion as to who goes where.
Really though, it'd be nice to have an idea exactly where your garage is, whether a lollipop man or just your name floating there at the end of your spot (as it does above your car).
You always return to the same one when you shift+P from the track and it would add a little to the realism. At the moment, you have to just pick a spot, any spot. Not only that but there's no indication where to stop the car. Many times I've come in to pit, parked in whatever spot (after some guesswork), only to be honked at or just punked out the way by someone leaving their garage. Just having your name at the end of your own pit-spot would be fine. You'd have a definite place to stop your car every time, eliminating the guesswork we currently have to use: stop, inch forward, stop.
In Grand Prix Legends, there's just a little black board with your name on it at the end of your pit spot. Easy to see and provides a definite place to stop. GPL's a ten-year old game too, so you'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to include something similar into LFS. Also in GPL, only your pit board is visible to you so there's no confusion as to who goes where.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG