lordhathor

Didn't say it was a bad thing. ;) I would love to be a servermonk. (new life goal)

:P Glad you found it... interesting. :P

There are more people playing World of Warcraft in the U.S. today (two million) than had indoor plumbing 100 years ago. There are more people with blogs today (31 million) than had internet connections ten years ago. Thomas Edison said it best: "Change happens with ball-flattening speed." MMORPG - It's a geek term, like "e-mail" used to be a geek term. For now let's just say it's the most instantly gripping, involving and demanding entertainment technology ever invented. The addiction rate appears to be about twice that of crack Cocaine. There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world and their population is doubling every two years. "Hold your hand about three feet above your monitor. That's where the graph will be in 2010. It's an infection, it's a tsunami, it's a volcanic eruption. All at the same time, waiting, like a nest of plague-infested rats next to a ticking hydrogen bomb in an underwater volcano. Or something. What I'm trying to say is, it's The Next Big Thing. Some of what you're about to read will sound like science fiction. You'll be tempted to dismiss me along with those who for decades have been predicting sentient robot maids and hotels on the moon. But for every delayed technology there is another sudden, completely unexpected advance that jumps us from the shadows. For instance, none of the illustrations used in the article below were done with human hands. Each was rendered automatically by a remarkable piece of software called Nedroid, which can scan any piece of text, "read" it for comprehension and, incredibly, render artwork to match the context. Did you even know that was possible before now? Truly, this morning's science fiction is this afternoon's science not-fiction. So where will MMORPGs will take us? In your lifetime...* 1. Everyone will look like a Greek god or goddess. If you don't understand the gravitational pull of an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), I'm going to enlighten you with just a dozen words: you get to pick what you look like and what your talents are. That's the real beauty of it. The first thing you do in the MMORPG World of Warcraft is design your own body and decide what your strengths will be. You pick your race. What could be more seductive than that, the ability to turn in all of the cards you were dealt at birth and draw new ones from a face-up deck? If you have friends who've gotten sucked into the WoW black hole and you don't understand why they never talk to you any more, this is it. I remember being a chubby teenager with bad skin and astigmatism and pants that didn't fit quite right. What would I have given to be reborn as a strapping warrior with rippling pecs and armor of hammered silver? " On that kid's screen now is a dozen noble warriors of exotic races, brandishing elaborate weapons and charging a gigantic demon across a fire-scarred mountaintop. The dwarf next to him is controlled by an accountant planted at his own computer in Cleveland, two babies sleeping in the next room and his pregnant wife on the sofa. The robed priest in the back casting healing spells is actually a 250-lb. ex-gangster, playing from the computer lab of a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania. The elf on his left, sprinting and drawing his mighty magical bow, is the digital body of a wheelchair-bound 12 year-old girl in Miami. It's not just for fantasy geeks, of course. Even The Sims lets you pick a version of yourself with low body fat and cool hair. And this idea is what's going to push the expansion of MMORPG technology in the way that porn pushed the expansion of the internet, the desperate-but-untapped desire to interact with others without the bothersome interference of genetic flaws and poor diet and exercise habits. But it's not just the physical image that changes. In that world, I am a dragon slayer. There, my reptutation and history are just as awe-inspiring as my look. Even now, much of the satisfaction for WoW gamers is in the very real sense of accomplishment they get, a person glowing with a burst of golden light when they gain a level in experience and strength. How can the real world compete with that? Wouldn't those long Calculus lectures have been easier to sit through if, every time you learned something important, gold light shot out from your body? In the future, long after World of Warcraft has gone the way of ARPANET, everyone will have a virtual-world twin. An upgraded, digital representative of yourself which I'll henceforth refer to as Awesome You. And you'll see a time in your life when more people know Awesome You than know the real you. Some people live like that already. 2. All will play in the same virtual world. Gamers rejoiced back in April when it was announced that Blizzard, Square/Enix and Sony were merging their virtual worlds so that online characters from one game could stride seamlessly into another. It made perfect business sense and I was the first to say I wasn't at all surprised by the news. I had been predicting it for months. The fact that it turned out to be an April Fool's joke and entirely false only proves my point. Ahem. As this kind of community gaming becomes the nation's pasttime, convenience will demand that some day each person's online identity be able to move from one realm to the next, from the suburbs of the next Sims Online game to WoW's Spiderskull Mountain. And with that convergence of virtual worlds we'll have the first real, primitive incarnation of something not unlike the matrix, or what old science fiction authors called the metaverse. A simulated, virtual world. You won't have to be into fantasy to participate. You can spend your gaming time in a virtual suburb and build a virtual family and enjoy growing a virtual garden, while your best friend goes off to fight the Orcs of Thunderclaw Valley. Your cousin can go re-fight World War 2 every day. It will still be mainly a game at this stage of its evolution, but as the experience is tailored to every single taste (all under one virtual roof) more and more people will participate. And once everybody's there, why not do all of your chatting and text messaging there? Half of the WoW experience seems to be just a beautifully-rendered and animated chat interface anyway. The first steps will likely come with the next game consoles, expanding the pool of gamers beyond those with pimped-out gaming PC's. The Playstation 3 will have at least one huge MMORPG on it (Final Fantasy VII). The XBox 360 should have World of Warcraft. And then if you get the console users hooked, and if the the console makers succeed in their plan to get a box in every single house in the civilized world, and then if they expand the interface so you can use your cell phone to check in on your game... You get the idea. 3. Someone will go to jail for stealing a Bonebiter. You may have heard about a guy who recently was convicted of murdering a man during a dispute over a rare, valuable sword. (will not open in new window. you will lose your place if you dont open ti in a new window manually) That sword that was not made of metal or anything solid, but rather of 1's and 0's inside a computer hundreds of miles away. It was a sword he had won in the MMORPG Legend of Mir 3. Insane, right? I mean, let's say our friend John has his Bonebiter (one of countless powerful weapons in WoW) and a man steals it somehow. Should the thief be convicted of a crime and punished in the real world? Did you snort with laughter at that question? Why? The victim worked many hours to "earn" the object. The victim used it daily and depended on it. He derived happiness and satisfaction from it. So why shouldn't depriving him of it be punishable by law? If you say, "but it's just something he used in a game," I'll say that golf is also just a game. Want to see what happens to me when I steal a new set of golf clubs? If you say, "but the Bonebiter doesn't even exist," I'll say it exists in exactly the same way that the songs and software I download off Bittorrent exist. And yet stealing them is a crime. The only difference is that when I steal a song, nobody else is deprived of the song. When that guy stole John's Bonebiter, he was left unarmed and forced to go find a replacement. That theft actually hurts more, not less. So when will we start to see laws prohibiting the theft and misuse of game-world objects? As soon as members of the gaming generation become lawmakers, that's when. 4. You'll meet someone who plays an MMORPG for a living. Let's take this a little bit further. You earn gold in World of Warcraft, gold with which you can buy these in-game objects. If this game gold is truly valuable to my life, if it lets me get more value out of the pasttime I already pay real-world money for, what's to stop me from paying real money for game money? Nothing. Go to Ebay and do a search for World of Warcraft Gold and let your jaw drop open. Here we have game currency being traded for real currency, and at a better exchange rate than the Iraqi Dinar. If we go further still, we can imagine a person winning rare weapons and selling them on auction sites or directly to other players they meet. We can imagine somebody working full-time to gather in-game gold by slaying gold-[cabbage]ting squirrels (or whatever you do to get gold in the game) and then exchanging it for real dollars to pay the real rent with. Sure, it may be decades before you see this kind of- Oh, wait. There are people doing that right now. (I [Thor] did it for a couple months and made hella mulah) And if you're chuckling and shaking your head at the glazed-eyed geeks who can't tell the difference between game money and real money, let me ask you something: when Square bought Enix for $727 million two years ago, do you think they they actually stacked crate after crate of cash on a flatbed truck and then drove the $727 million over to their offices? No. That money only existed as numbers in a computer. In fact, not even 10% of the money in the American economy exists as physical, printed currency. All of the rest exists on servers and hard drives and in the imaginations of the people. It has value for the exact same reason WoW gold has value: because people think it has value. I'm guessing that if you started this article thinking it was a joke, this is the point when you sobered up and realized that, as author H.G. Wells predicted, "the future will accost us with boob-slapping ferocity." 5. They'll take the "G" out of "MMORPG." We'll stop thinking of the online world as a game right around the time you find yourself strolling through Witchblade Village, or some such fictional online town, and see a Target store open there. You'll enter it just like you do the in-game stores, and you'll be able to view the merchandise in realtime 3D, pick up objects and turn them over in your virtual hands, and buy them the same as if you did it on Amazon.com. So now our fledgling metaverse isn't just a place to slay computer-generated dragons and nazis. Now it's where you go to shop, to chat, to have cybersex with actual nudity and everything. Just think of how porn changes when the user also gets to go in with the toned body of an underwear model. It'll make our current online porn look like just the tip of the assberg. The joy of experiencing life as Awesome You, as the stronger, handsomer avatar of yourself, will take all of those activities to another plane of cool. The casinos will be there, the movies will play there, concerts will be performed there. The metaverse will stop being a playhouse and will start becoming the interface through which we interact with reality. And every step you take will be as Awesome You. Cool, beautiful, confident. Nothing invented yet has had such universal appeal. 6. You will find yourself momentarily forgetting whether you're in the real or virtual world. Fans were astonished when a leaked video depicted a Nintendo virtual reality headset intended for its upcoming system, complete with high-resolution 3D screens and surround-sound earpieces. That it turned out to be a hoax put forth by a lonely, psychotic fan should not detract from the amazement. Today's hoax is always tomorrow's reality (except for that fake picture of the guy holding a huge cat.) What is not a hoax is this machine somebody invented that operates on the user's thoughts. Yeah, that's right. You think it, the machine does it. That machine exists right now, as you're reading this. Total immersion, the kind that could really fool you, won't happen tomorrow. But as time goes on it is absolutely inevitable that the graphics will become life quality, that visual displays light years beyond monitors or cumbersome headsets will hit the market. The keyboard and mouse will be long gone, everything done by thought and voice. It is the logical end of everything game developers and console makers are trying to do today and they will not stop until they have it. And that, my friends, will be a watershed moment in human history. The point where we can trick the senses into thinking a piece of software is real, thinking a real supermodel is in our bed or a dragon is in our front yard or our dead mother has come back to give us advice, that's when everything changes. The metaverse will still be less important in many fundamental ways. Goods won't be produced there, food won't be grown there, babies won't be born there. But in the minds of a whole lot o' people, visits to the physical world will be just brief interruptions to the "real" world as they live it, the world where all of their friends and hobbies and ambitions are. 7. You'll meet a couple who have been married for years and have never seen each other's real-life faces. If the metaverse interface is good enough, why not? You have a woman who, in real life, weighs 400 pounds and has a thick, neatly-trimmed beard. But she has a heart of gold. A thousand miles away you have a guy with three eyebrows and a hairlip. In reality he lives in a trailer with his 14 cats. In the metaverse he lives in a stone palace with 14 magical flying cats. They marry, the woman showing herself as a beautiful princess, the man a handsome prince. What do they lose by not meeting in the flesh (or "meating" as they will call it)? If you're one of the thousands of people I just heard shout, "sex!" you're being naive. If you think the interface technology will go this far without developing a damned good and convincing sexual intercourse device, then you understand nothing about the world. Hell, if you Google it you'll probably find one for sale already. (no, really, I just did google it... I found 4 fully functional [very expensive] products that do just that) Can anyone prove that such a marriage would be less "real" than the ones we have now? Are not economic hardship and increasingly unattractive, flabby bodies the main (though often unspoken) reason couples spend more and more time badgering each other as the years wear on? Neither, in a perfect world, should be valid reasons to kill off the flower of romantic love. So doesn't the metaverse actually remove a layer of [cabbage] in that case? Doesn't the symbolic princess with her fair skin and spill of blonde hair more accurately represent the kindness of the aforementioned woman than the bloated body life really gave her? So why not use it instead? Once again, if this seems ridiculous and alien, remember how many societies had (hell, still have) arranged marriages, often where the groom didn't see the bride's face until their wedding night. Wasn't the change from that to the modern method of getting matched up with girls by internet dating sites just as strange? Aristotle said it best: "society is a house, change is a tornado full of woodpeckers." 8. There will be a branch of government to rule the virtual world. If we're going to make theft illegal in the metaverse (and hackers will always devise ways to steal, or at least vandalize, digital goods) someone has to make and enforce those laws. Obviously no team of IT guys or game moderators will get to decide how the everyday lives of billions are lived, arbitrarily giving and taking goods and abilities as they see fit (would not a common punishment in the virtual world be to shave a foot off a person's height and add 150 pounds to their weight?) But this raises an avalanche of questions. First, do you limit the amount of "gold" available in the game? You'd have to, once real-world goods can be purchased by metaverse gold (or whatever is used for currency in the virtual world). The exchange rate with real currency and the inflation rate of the virtual currency both become key as corporations depend on both for their profit. If you don't understand the complication here, remember that in the metaverse if you want a 36-room mansion with a giant guitar-shaped pool, you can have it for free. No construction crew needs to be paid to build it, no materials have to be bought, no piece of real property had to be bought or paid for. It's just bits and bytes. So do you even have "gold" in the metaverse at all? How would it have any value if goods can be created from thin air, for free? What if I'm an interior decorator in the metaverse, going around and using my creativity to dress up their virtual homes for pay? How do they pay me for my effort and time? How do I, in turn, pay for porn? If you say, fine, we'll just have to go back to using real money to pay for things, remember that real money means nothing to me because I don't spend any time in the real world. What am I going to do, buy a real metal-and-rubber car? For what? Where do I drive? It'd be like Monopoly money to me. But wait, there's more. What about those who live in different countries in the real world - and under different laws - but who inhabit the same household in the metaverse? Which laws apply? Are metaverse laws universal? How could you get everyone from different cultures to agree to the same set of metaverse laws? Would prostitution be legal? Especially if there is no real body-on-body contact with the real hooker? If not, what if the prostitute isn't even controlled by a real woman but is just a bot program meant to simulate one? What about the customers who want to simulate sex with a bot who looks like a six year-old? Legal? Illegal? No real child is being harmed. And just how do you punish a rape committed by one virtual character on another, if the real person's body is left untouched? The answers are numerous, to all these questions, but I'm going to let you concaucht your own for now. I'd be happy to give some examples, if asked. [Thor] 9. There will be a whole class of wealthy people without a dime to their name. The trailer park guy I mentioned before, the one with a virtual world palace, brings us to yet a new plane of strangeness to consider. In the metaverse, unlike real life, everyone can be wealthy. It doesn't matter if you have actually invented anything or held a job of great responsibility or even came from a family of great wealth. Metaverse wealth has nothing to do with life achievement because there is no reason every man can't be a king there. As I said, it doesn't cost the metaverse servers any more effort or resources to render you a sprawling estate than it does to give you a one-bedroom efficiency apartment in the basement. You get to live a king's lifestyle, without a king's responsibilities. This is another reason the real world won't be able to keep up with the virtual world once it takes hold. Imagine an unskilled kid, doing a minimum-wage job like data entry from home. The job pays poverty-level money in the real world, but pays a fortune in virtual gold. For the guy, his smelly one-bedroom apartment is nothing but a storage area for food. It needs only three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, and then a little room with a comfy chair he uses to jack into the metaverse. The real apartment becomes only an unpleasant little commute on the way to his "real" life. Hell, you could even sleep in the metaverse, the interface tricking you into thinking you're lounging on a king-size bed with sheets of silk. This works out wonderfully for society, as you now have entire classes of the population who live in what used to be considered abject poverty, and are thrilled with it. You can give them everything they want and need with 200 square feet of apartment and enough electricity to run the metaverse interface. Their food can be chewy protein bars that the interface will convince them is a 5-course meal. Most jobs will be online and can be done from within the metaverse (most manufacturing and farming and manual labor will be done with robots at this point, or, as I predict, genetically-engineered land dolphins). If you work the complaint counter at a government office, the office will exist only in the metaverse and thus neither the worker nor the complainer need leave their homes. And get this: if the complainer explodes in rage and tries to attack the guy behind the counter, no one is harmed. You can't really hurt anyone from within the metaverse. 10. The rise of the metaverse will go almost completely unopposed. You won't have to trick people into jacking themselves into this one. It legitimately makes their lives better. Everything we've done a as a civilization from the caves until now has been about making a better world. Well, the metaverse will just be a shortcut, won't it? We'll have our Utopia of unlimited wealth and friction-free homogeny. Population growth will be kept easily under control, since most sexual partners will live separately and won't be having meat sex at all (a guy can't get a girl pregnant from 100 miles away unless he's, you know, me). To have an actual baby will take so much effort and planning that only those who really want one will get one. That would have to be a change for the better, right? The people are ripe for it. You've heard stories about how ticket sales are plummeting at movie theaters, in favor of home DVD viewing. Why? Why do so many people want to work from home now? Because we're sick of having to sit with other people. We want that extra layer of control that meat interaction will never give us. We want a world without the unpredictability of real, unrestrained humanity. This could not have been attempted say, 100 years ago, even if the technology had been around. Back then people believed in all sorts of unchangeable gods and spirits and philosophies that live beyond what a person can see and smell and taste in front of them. But the Age of Reason did away with all of that, taught everyone to believe in nothing but the real, physical world. And if the stream of sense data we call "the real, physical world" can be altered to display a superior world, then it's impossible to say with any conviction that anything has really been lost in the transition. The modern "I believe it when I see it" religion will be satisfied by simply giving them something new to see. It was only a matter of time. Humans got fed up with this world, and so we invented a new one. I suspect some theologian will come forward in the future to suggest that, in fact, our world was created in the same way. The gods got sick of their boring spiritual realm and made a more exciting, physical one to replace it. You shouldn't be disturbed by this. Jules Verne was wrong when he said, "the future is a jockstrap made of bees." Anything manufactured by machine is destined to be better and more free of defect than anything created with human hands. Why not extend this idea to reality itself? It's the end of evolution, and I welcome it. There is nothing to fear, and it will happen in your lifetime.* * Unless you're already old or have a terminal disease. After reading this, I decided to steal and manipulate several ideas. 1) Open a shop in runescape. Sell high-value items, earn loads of cash. Sell it on Ebay. Use that money to buy items from people using rl cash (items are worth less in cash than their gp value is) then liquidate that item, and sell it for more. (profit) a) have people going around (paid 10% of the profit they earn) buying up extremely high-value items (all of them) using the money YOU earned (something they couldn't do anyway, so they have no claim to the money, and will have to sign a virtual contract including irl obligations) and then you hold onto them for 6 months each, sell, make a profit, pay the finder his fee, and sell the gp on Ebay. Each item you buy, you will have increased the value by decreasing the number of that item by one. (particularly with rare items and discontinued items) 2) Target in RuneScape? Almost. DOOnline.com you can BUY game items with rl cash. same with this new game I introduced everyone to, called Conquer. Buy "dragonballs", sell them in the game, take the money, and sell it on Ebay. Earn cash, buy 2 dballs, lather, rinse, repeat. a) do the same on every game that allows it. Buy (as in Conq) expensive fireworks to advertise your business. etc. etc. hire more people, make more money. 3) The online philosophy. Yes, in addition to the two websites I'm coding now, I'm considering making another website, for an online religion. Well, a religion in the sense that buddhism is a religion. Really, more of a set of guidelines to peace and respect. Groups will follow the guidelines, and make the world a better place. (the metaworld, that is) in the same way christianity, aside from the lie, made the world a more peaceful place to live in by giving someone to believe in. It will have a few "laws" of moral guideline, and so on and so forth. (no gods or anything, just guidelines to being a good metaperson.) |I'm sure nobody read all that, but of what you did read, WHAT DID YOU THINK!? Blew my mind.

yeah, okay, you don't like 'em. Nobody cares. Just because you haven't grown a sense of humor doens't mean we can't enjoy them. Sheddup.

mah fayverit. :P lol

Come on, try not to flame, please. Let's get back on the topic of how neat-o this stuff is. :P

And you're entitled to that opinion, but I disagree. even if nobody else thinks they're funny, I'll crack up every time I look in the mirror. :P Difference of opinion though. That's fine. :) Not everyone has to think the way I do. :P

well, I post a lot of information and important news about a bit o' the underground society, and some stuff about the government; mostly serious stuff. I thought today, I might go with a story about something a little more "on-the-light-side". This is sort of an advertisement, but not to worry, I'm not a sellout.... because I'm not getting paid. :P This is just a few websites I've put together that have what I think are the best T-shirts (and other things, such as bumper-stickers) for the average hacker/gamer/geek; and don't deny it... all of you are at least one of those. :P The first site I'd like to mention is called "Jinx" http://www.jinx.com I heard about this site first, on an episode of Systm (a great source for hacker, gamer, and modder info. google it.) Jinx is basicaly just a geekwear company. It's got things such as the silicone "GEEK" bracelet, the "owned dog" dog-shirt. and one of my favorites, the "n00bl3t" infant t-shirt. Also, for you runescapers who are proud of your geekyness, there are tees that say "NPC", "PWN", one with a nice graphic that says "I eat noobs" over a godzilla like thing, one that says "y cant ppl settle for not black? i mean mix it up i mean sure u gota love black shirts 3/4 my stuff is but a little color is good 2 u kno o course there could be an option for all the GOTHS out there j!nx dont discriminate" and so on, in a neverending list of hilarious geekwear. Possibly the best part about this particular site, is that not only are the prices cheap as hell to begin with, but if you enter the code "systm3". you get either 5%, or 15% off (I forget). I currently have the dog tee, the infant tee, and a few that have noob on them on order. Got 'em all hella cheap. :P I strongly suggest you check this site out. Here are some images of the products I mentioned above: "Put this canine cozy on your pup and let them know who's boss! Yeah, sure, you destroy them in every console fighter you play (due to the lack of opposable thumbs). You consistently crush them 10 frags to nada in your favorite FPS. But don't forget, you also actually own them. Now THAT is pure ownage." "Mommy? Where do noobs come from? The lifecycle of a noob is a complex, beautiful miracle. Fledgling noobs gestate inside small, biometric pods through a series of complicated photosynthetic processes. Once a budding noob has matured through gestation, they climb out of their pod, sit down at a PC, ask a bunch of questions that are clearly in the FAQ, and voila! The Nooblet is born!" "You know that guy that gets so good at games that no one wants to play with him anymore? That's the pownstar. However, trash-talking eminates from players of virtually every skill level. Never let your n00bish tendencies stop you from running your mouth. Sometimes intimidation gives you the small advantage you need to take out Johnny Wins-a-lot." "This shirt may confuse RPG fanatics between their gaming life and RL. Furthermore, it may prompt them to ask you which quests you have to offer. Simply respond by telling them they have not met the level requirements. If that does not send them on their way, tell them their princess is in another castle. Warning: Side effects of wearing this shirt may include a glowing, yellow exclamation point appearing over your head." "This silicone bracelet is a safe and painless replacement for our last idea that didn't go over so hot: The "Geek" branding iron." "It's something you were trained to be proud of as mini humans. Why abandon that pride? You "made", good for you! Now, the kind, sanitary folks at J!NX are giving you a way to express your wonderful accomplishment under the clever guise of a popular music trend." The second site is the ultimate in geek jewelery. It's called "ELSEWARES" http://www.elsewares.com/commerce/index.php?cPath=2_191 This isn't entirely for men, to say the least, but there is some great dude-wear there too. The basis of this company is that the jewelery is made entirely out of computer parts. The diode bracelet, the capacitor necklace, and the Cat5 choker just to name a few. This is also home to such ingenius works of "art" as the hex-ferrite bracelet, and the IDE belt (as in a belt you would hold up your pants with, made from IDE cable). This is a great place to get your geek jerelery needs filled. Here are some images to go along with the aforementioned products. Another site I'd like to mention is another T-shirt company. It's called "Busted Tees" http://www.bustedtees.com/ To put it simply (and to copy their slogan), these are "Jokes you can wear". There are far far too many hilarious shirts for me to choose a few to mention specifically, but I'll do so anyway. There are great worn works of art, such as... , and ingdogs] (Click images, to see their pages on the site) This doesn't come close to showing even the best ones, but I strongly suggest you have a look. The last page I want to mention is called "Landover Baptist Store" http://www.cafepress.com/landoverbaptist/52680 This is a bumpersticker store. The prices are very good, and the bumperstickers are [bleep]ing hilarious. Here are a few examples. (Click images to be taken to that bumperstickers' page) freakin hilarious. All the bumperstickers there come in either magnetic or sticky, and can come in different sizes. they are high-quality vinyl, and very well made. Anyway, those are "Thor's Picks". If you're interested, check 'em out! :P [mod edit - removed the inappropriate images. Keep it clean please. - Phil]

I think even Microsoft isn't that stupid. Probably heard that from someone making a half-sarcastic comment about microsoft's money-grubberisming.

The name for the new version, CODEnamed "LongHorn" will be "Vista".

I am an athiest too, but both you and him are confusing me now lol. BTW, if your an atheist, you should definitly be following gramaticl rules and be calling god "it", and not giving 'god' a capitla G. Errors in bold. :P lol Just found that funny.

So just because God's laws dont make sense to you, you wouldnt follow them? God doesnt make sense to anyone, he's works in, what we would think of, mysterious ways. If you knew God was real and everything about him was true I dont see why you wouldnt want to follow his rules, because it just doesnt make sense to me to disobey GOD. Yes, let's all follow rules that we don't understand. Great idea. While we're at it, let's follow blindly along with something we have never seen or heard or viewed any evidence, direct or indirect, toward the existence of. And don't forget, if you fail to do all these ridiculous things, most of which you don't understand, you go to hell for all eternity. Gee, why can't everyone just do that!?

Good to hear! :D

Thats a equation used in nuclear chemistry to find out how much energy is given off by the fission of atoms. The protons and neutrons themselves are not destroyed, and they cannot be. Even if you removed all the energy in the unverse the matter would still be there. You cannot destroy matter. Period. I meant without useable energy. Entropy isn't something that can support life. You can't destroy matter, but I never said you could. I said matter was a form of energy, which, according to that equation, it is. It doesn't matter what it's used for, the facts remain true. Matter doesn'thave to be destroyed to be converted into something else. Another form of energy.

I'm amazed nobody has flamed in my general direction for this yet. Thanks for keeping it so civil, even when you disagree, guys. I find that's fairly rare in posts like these. As for the whole cheeseburger thing, I kinda worded that poorly, but nothing else seemed to fit there. It was meant to represent the ominous "nagging girlfriend" or something. It's important to consider the future when you choose happiness in the present (hell, I could write up a whole inspirational speech with that one line). If you do something now, that seems quite pleasureable, you have to consider wether or not you'll be happy 10 years from now. Life is a series of equations, and the one we're talking about now is the happiness variable (H). At various times throughout your life, you're going to have to build an equation, where one of the vaiables is H. In that equation, you have to consider the long-term effects. If the equation that would allow you to go bungee jumping (something you may really wnat to do) would raise your H variable, you have to consider beforehand, 'CAN I do this?' If you ate too many chesseburgers, and now you can't do it, because the cord would snap or something, then you decrease the value of H, but if you ate a few, and found them enjoyable, but didn't eat too many, then you can do both, and have an overall greater value of H. That's not too great of an example, but sufficive to say, you must look at the "big picture" whenever you decide to do anything that could sacrifice your health, or long life. If you do something that shortens your life span by a year, it's not a HUGE deal, as you'll probably be dropping off the last, boring, old, slow-driving years of your life. No bungee-jumping going on then. But if you do something that could knock off the last ten years, or that makes you less able to do some of the thing syou'd enjoy, it's just bad math. The bank fund analogy was probably best. If you give up 50 grand now, and throw it in a fund, or the stock market, or whatever, and end up with 60 grand later, you can spend that on something better than before! If you NEEDED the 50 grand then, but didn't need the 60 grand later, it's a bad idea, but if you can sacrifice that ammount, and know that the extra oney later on will do you better than the current ammoutn will now, it's a good investment. that's good math, and it increases your H value. :P As for me, in case you're wondering, I had a job working in a call center, making calls to people during dinner, trying to get them to do telephone surveys. This... did not please me. :P When I finally realized I was wasting not only my life, but my happiness, I just quit. I quickly got a job working on computers. I LOVE working on computers. I'd do it for free if I had to, but it makes me loads of money now. I'm happy, and I have the finances to be happier later on, saving up money, and using it for something pleasureable, like a plane-trip out to a deserted island. :P Anyway, I just woke up, and tend to ramble, but there's what I was thinking in my coffeeless mind.

Oh, yeah, I'm not saying we should invoke chaos in teh streets, and say to hell with the next generation of humanity, I'm just saying that you should be able to do what you want to do, to be happy. If you want somthing, take it (meaning a goal, not like stealing gum or something). Obviously other people have ot be considered, because to get something, you have to earn it, so earn what you want, and then just take it. don't worry about what you might look like to people walking down the stret, if you dance around naked slathered in purple jelly, if you feel the need, go ahead and do it! It's your right as a human to be happy,and you owe it to your ineternal self to do so.

This is just a little thing I wrote up, in response to a religious discussion that went way off-topic on the "meaning of life". I just thought I'd share it, because I have nothing better to do with my time, and I'm sure you're all eager to hear what I have to say............... wait, no... no, you're not. Oh well. Please try not to flame over this, if your religion has anything to do with the meaning of life. If you have something to say, that's more than "nuh-uh! douche!", I am way more than open to new information. If you expect to be heard out, then clechets, and verses from the bible are not the things you'll be wanting to rely on. Elegant words, with no factual backup, or evidence of any kind to support them don't hold much weight in a discussion based on science and fact. All I know is what I've learned, and fancy words with an E slapped on the end aren't going to sway me or anyone else with a strong mind more than an axiom will. Here it is: The way I see it... When you are born... at that moment, your world begins. You have effects on everything around you. Simply breathing creates life, not only in you, but in the trees and other plants and animals, and you in essence become a source of life for everything around you. In some small way, you are feeding the planet. You give life to the trees and they recycle it and give life to the animals, which recycle that and give life to more trees and plants and animals, all using what you provided when you recycled the oxygen into carbon-dioxide. As we breathe life into the world, some of the organisms die, and the life you gave to them and that they used to survive as long as they did is recycled in the form of proteins and basically fertilizer. Their body feeds the earth which feeds the trees and bushes which provide food and oxygen, and you become part of everything around you. The world is part of you, and you are part of the world. It's all an extension of you. When you die, other organisms and life-forms carry on, and continue to live through the chemical energy you provided or helped create, but eventually those plants and animals die as well, but the stored chemical and heat energy they provided and helped create also lives on, in a sense, as a further extension of you. The plants and animals in the third generation of recycling also die, and are recycled, and so on and so forth, but eventually... when all things end, and there is no more life... our atmosphere decays, or we are destroyed by a meteor... no matter how long you sustained life through your actions and just existing, and no matter how many lives you touched, it all ends up as mulch, which at some point along the line all ends up as inanimate matter, decaying, and worthless. Entropy is a harsh reality. Everything we did and said and everything and everyone we touched becomes rubble. It becomes inanimate trash, if even that. Life has no point when you look at the big picture. Nothing you say or do is permanent. I would say nothing is written in stone, but then, even stone isnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t permanent. If nothing lasts forever, not even the effects it has on its surroundings; if nothing is eternal, how can anything we do have a ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬ÅpointÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

Bullies are tough. Generaly, the best way to get them to stop, aside from the obvious (which obviously doesn't usualy work) is to beat the holy hell out of them. The tricky part is that if you lose, and if you're being bullied in the first place, you were probably chosen as one who won't fight back because you'll lose anyway, then it'll get worse for you. they'll see that not only can you not effectively defend yourself, but they'll have a good reason to bully you later on. If you win, and that's unlikely, you'll get in serious trouble. Another way is to simply tell on them, but assuming anone in the school gives a damn (unlikely), they'll get a 2-day suspention max. After 2 days, you can expect more of the same, only worse. the best thing to do is repetition. If you keep fighting back, and make sure you whack 'em good, at least once each time, eventualy they'll just find an easier target where they don't go home with a bloody nose, black eye, or bruise. If you can hit 'em once each time, they'll get sick of it. Telling on them over and over and over won't do much good at first, and might make things worse to begin with, but the more they do it, the more trouble they get in. They'll eventualy get that "last warning" where if they mess with you again, they're expelled, in which case you can take it to the police if they try anything out of school. There are no good solutions to bullying, but there are options. Personaly, I'd suggest getting in their face whenever they pick a fight with you, make them hit you first, hten go ape[cabbage], and make sure you lose. That way, they get hurt, you don't get in trouble, and they know you'll defend yourself later. I think that would solve the problem more quickly than other solutions, but there is a risk it would continue to get worse. At the very worst, you BOTH get in trouble, even if you lose, in which case, you get the final warning the same time they do, so just make sure you don't fight back the last time (if it gets that far) and then it's solved. Anyway, I'm sure that doesn't help, and has nothing to do with what was said before, but I like to rable, so there it is. 8) lol

Not one single person in this thread has given a reason for disbelieving in bigfoot, aliens, or ghosts (for those of you that don't believe), but that doesn't make them wrong. We don't need to come up with a reason for not believing.. God needs to give us a reason TO believe. I am not going to take the word of a man who claims to know god over my own experiences which tell me he doesn't exist.

I believe you are talking about the Christian God. There's a verse, can't exactly remember the place or the exact wording, but it goes something along the line of "Blessed are those who believe without seeing". Sometimes He won't answer us, because what we ask is not in His will. Right, the christian god. I was christian for a few years. As for believing without seeing... I am God... and if you question me, you'll go to hell. Look, all these other dead people went to hell, you can ask them.... but not until you're dead... I believe nothing without seeing. (whether directly or indirectly.) As for "because what we ask is not in His will." all I ever asked was for a reason to believe. If my not believing is part of his will, or if my disbelieving IS part of it, then so be it. I will go to hell knowing that I could have done nothing different and ever truly believed it. There would always be a question in my mind. "I've never seen, heard, or even smelled him... How do I know he's there? He's never answered my brother, and I've never seen him directly "do" anything." "But until then i have no reason to"? no reason? what about Him making you? What about Him forgiving all your sins? What about that Jesus died on the cross for you? I believe there are plenty of reasons to worship Him. My mother made me, not him, and I definitely don't worship here. Remember, I never asked to be made. I'd much rather be unmade, and would ahve done so myself a long time ago, had I not the waning hope that there may possibly be a God (thinking of the christian god) and knowing if I was wrong, I woudl go to hell. Forgiving my sins? I don't need him to forgive my sins. Even if I think it was necessary for any of my "sins" to be forgiven, I am certain I don't need HIM to be the one to forgive them. If I think I need to be forgiven, I will ask it of the person whom my sin was directed toward. Jesus did not die on the cross for me. If that is the case, he died for the people who lived then. We are god's forgotten or unwanted children. If he died for us, he died in vain. Jesus died at the hands of peple he couldn't fight. He (a mere man) used the whole "dying for you" thing to make them all feel guilty later on. That's my belief anyway, and if any evidence to the contrary aside from what some dilusional prisoner wrote down is presented to me, I'll happily reverse any or all of my beliefs, or at least be open to further study and research of my own.

There's a whole country to search, and one guy in a turban protected by thousand of others. It's a bit difficult. :P We are still looking for him though. You just never hear about it because nobody wants to comment until we've done it.

They introduced tabbed browsing in IE7 (not yet released) because so many people were choosing firefox over windows IE, because FireFox r0x microsoft's s0x.

Pictures can be edited - Yes, but obviously, at least some of these weren't. It's sad to admit, but some people would manufacture photos just to sway public views, and some would be weak-minded enough to see a photo of one man doing one good thing, and change their opinion entirely. Everyone is entitled tot heir own opinion, wether it's popular or not... Even the weak-minded ones. As for my opinion, I support the "war" - but I really don't think of it as a war anymore. It's really more like a policing action. (nobody bring up vietnham :lol:) I see that some are still forced to fight, but the same is true in America. We are trying to do what we think is best, and trying to help people who were opressed and raped and murdered horribly, be free. I admit, I only heard about the terrible things Saddam has done on the news, I don't have much in the way of sources outside of that, but I believe he was a very bad man, and at the very least, not fit to lead because of the terrble things he's done. I don't support every single action we've taken, but no action can ever be supported by 100% of the population. Even an effort to "Not burn baby kittens" or something would find the odd protester. I do know, however, that at the time we egan the "war" (which was, at that point, still a war) over 60% of the country had supported it. The president and congress would not have done it if less than half the population supported it - and it's important to point out that the war is still supported by over half the population. (of america) It's also important to keep in mind that the president was not the one who said "let's go to war, mm'kay?" - He went to CONGRESS and said "can go go to war plx!?" and THEY voted, and decided to. All the budget, and resources, and the decision to go to war in the first place - It was all congress. Bush can only make suggestions in that area. If anyone is to be blamed, it is congress, and in that case, everyone who supported the war (still over half of the US) is just as "guilty". Anyway, the purpose of this post, was to show that we're not roaming around, beating people up and yelling at them "get back in yo' cage, y'hear!?" We're there trying to do good - and good, we are doing. The people are more protected, and more free now, and will be much more so once we leave and they're able to protect their own citizens with the police force we're trying to help them set up. The things you hear in the news, are never like "Ten people were saved today, when a car bombing was stopped by a US military officer. They were 9 children on the way to their school with packages of supplies that the US army provided for them, and one busdriver who had just been hired out of poverty, and given a job with which he can support his family". Those things happen every day, but you never hear about them. I just thought it was important to remind everyone, though you all already know it in the back (or front) of your minds, that we are still doing good, or at the very least, trying to. Ten people may have died that day, but another ten were saved. What more can we ask for? We can't be everywhere at once, and not everyone can be saved.

I did ask, I did have faith, and he didn't answer. I gave up 6 years of my life for him, and he wouldn't even acknowledge my existence. Still though, if I know he's real at any point, I can just assume that he's got some sort of plan, or that he had some reason, as an omnipotent being, to have ignored me. I would worship and love him, of I knew he were real, but I'm not wasting another moment of my life in prayer aimed at someone who isn't even there, by all that I know.

This wasn't actualy from the beta version, it was one of the people testing the newer version, after the beta. and you're right, from what I see, it's not that different. A bit more graphic-intensive (Oh, my poor graphics card!) and not much else. Oh, and they removed all the "my" prefixes.