You are an alarmist... Looking at your diatribe here, your day seems to be filled with shadows that scare you witless. I prefer not to live like that. If by some freak accident I do end up in front of a bullet speeding towards my head, in that last moment I'll at least know I haven't lived in a state of fear and suspicion.
That's a life worth living and I'll take the end whenever it comes.
Oh, and by the way its law abiding citizens who end up going postal. Have you not even begun to understand that its the alienation, the solitude, the loneliness, and the general fear of both strangers and the strange that is at the root of killing sprees like this one?
Nice edit - like it. But can I dissent on the music? More saccharine than being force fed sugar by a barbie doll.... truly tooth rotting... I had to turn it off (ran it with This is the Kit instead... worked better for me...)
Oh lordy... Remember "Never get off the boat!" from Apocalypse Now? On Youtube, its "All I wanted was some ****ing mangos man! Never Scroll down! Never scroll down!!"
LOL - having grown up with guns in the Essex countryside, I kind of understand what you're saying, but to make the argument that guns aren't to be feared because most people are lousy shots is.... Sorry there's no polite way to put this.... desperate. Desperately stupid.
He's certainly lucky to have a father who, if you believe the press, was willing to work three jobs to bring him and his brother up singlehandedly. I don't know, his dad seems really amiable in interviews. For the moment I just like to think he's a bloke who loves the sport and was really happy to see his son had a gift for it. Hopefully he won't turn out to be another tyrant of a sporting parent!
Is there any reason why the layouts available for any particular circuit configuration can't be shown in the track selection screen? Unless, I'm missing something obvious, it seems really clunky having to open the editor just to load a layout and it would be more logical to deal with the selection process all in one screen.
Was reading about this in the papers yesterday - saddest thing was that everyone now claims to have known there was a problem with the student, that he was emotionally unbalanced. His room mate said that they rarely even spoke, even when in the same room together.
Thats chilling. There are some events that are simply inevitable. You can't stand in front of a tidal wave and counsel it to stop travelling forward; you can't pass a law that will prevent it from capsizing ships. But you can look to the horizon and watch the weather.
I'm not sure however that this boy was really that strong. How is it that someone can be left to consume themselves in solitude like that? Like I said, its a cultural problem.
Well, I can agree to differ on everything else, but on this point I'm with you all the way Same with looking down your bonnet to the car in front - the quick road to 'target fixation'.
@Dajmin - very thorough, very eloquent. I just wish that people wouldn't confuse realism with the photographic image.
No, I probably wouldn't notice, but it is beyond my ken why you lot obsess about it. Its just not rational....
EDIT:
Maybe its something to do with the way I perceive things, but there is no middle distance. Its all on the same plane.... Its a screen. What you mean is that you are concentrating on a small part of the centre of the screen. So why surround it with crap? My point is exactly that there is no reason to see more!
seeing the wheels compensates for not having a forcefeedback wheel, as well as for the many shortcomings of viewing the world as a limited, two-dimensional image that has zero (or near to zero...) gravitational effect on my body
I also hate the fact that the cockpits reduce the useable space on my screen to about a third, filling up the rest of the space with useless, decorative graphics. Yes, this is a simulation and what I want from the screen is feedback about the car and the environment that its in. Anything else isn't necessary.
At the LFS meet last weekend, I got to drive in front of a big screen (about six feet wide) for once and, tbh, I wasn't so bothered by the last point. Driving with the cockpit detail in place, I was just as fast (alright, no s******ing at the back, just as slow...) as I am with wheels view. So probably with a ffb wheel, I wouldn't be bothered about which view.
What does annoy me about this subject is the "anything else is not real" attitude. None of it is real....
It is all representation. Which is more real: Mont Sainte-Victoire painted by Cezanne; Mont Sainte-Victoire photographed by a tourist; or a topographical view of said mountain? Answer: none of them, but they all serve a purpose at different times.
Same for driving. In the real world I have a sense of the car that cannot be replicated by a camera. Never. What you see on screen is just information and to me, it doesn't really matter how that information is conveyed. I know that using a raised view, for instance, will give you a better view of the line through a corner, but lets be honest... Its no greater advantage than having the track available for your own personal use 24/7. If Aston was real, how many of you could afford to clock up thousands of laps each year to learn the ideal line in a GTR? That's not very realistic either is it?
EDIT: S******ING? FFS... alright... no laughing...
At heart, I'm a libertarian, so have a bit (only a bit...) of sympathy with the American attitude to gun ownership. But its a tough stance to live with. Sorry America, but if you want to argue that prohibition is not the way, then you've got to go the full stretch. Ditch your moralistic sexual laws; kick the god botherers into touch over abortion; start dealing with recreational drug use as a market, not as a "war".
Its not a question of access. The death rate in the USA is a cultural problem: just like alcohol only becomes a killer when people use it to "solve" the dilemmas of life, America has become dependent on killing to sort out its issues.
Unfortunately, a growing, general impoverishment of life in the UK means we're seeing something similar start to happen here.
There's no question he's a fine driver - he's already spent years demonstrating that. Its really a question of whether he can survive all the other F1 shite. As you so rightly put it in relation to Button, its about whether he can retain his humanity and not be turned completely into a human billboard for various vested interests.
One of the problems with popular culture generally, is the degree of identification deemed necessary to enjoy it. I have short-cropped hair, think Tolkien was a tosser, and have no faith of any description (much less Wiccan, or any other new age tripe...)...
But I really like Black Sabbath, Gore Beyond Necropsy, Brujeria, and Abruptum. I know these bands are vastly different once you start the looking at the genre rules that produce them, but I don't care.... I mean, you don't have to be a neo-fascist, anti-semite to like Wagner...
LOL - I just followed a google trail through more sub-species of metal than I thought could exist. Elvenking are a power/folkmetal band apparently, and as well as Viking metal, there's Mittelalter Rock (medieval metal).
The stuff I like is apparently known as drone metal: SunnO))), Boris...
The way that weight shifts is more crucial in a rwd car. Rather than thinking about how much faster or slower you will go by adjusting the throttle or putting on the brakes, think about where the weight will shift on the car, and consequently how that is going to affect grip.
Same with the steering. Stop thinking of your wheel (or whatever) as the device which points you in a certain direction. In a rwd race car, the steering wheel is a corrective device. Use your brakes and throttle to steer - and then use the steering wheel to adjust the direction.
You don't have to be gentle, but you do have to be smooth. When you accelerate out of a corner, squeeze the throttle (its like the trigger on a gun - pull it and you'll just pull the barrel away from the target).... And as you squeeze the throttle, unwind the steering wheel at the same rate.
Cheers That's the Birmingham Superprix - so from '86 to '89. Well, '87 to '89, I guess, since it seems to be a beautifully sunny, brum day and acccording to silhouet, it pissed down in '86!