BlueLancer
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Meeting with muslims is neither random nor 'butt kissing'. It's a cold, calculated move that his chief advisors have suggested him to act on. He doesn't likely care about them any more than he does about any other group. The president likely didn't even set up the meeting; His political advisors did. Bush met jewish leaders at a chanukah reception in 2007. Why is there no outcry? Because it's purely political. Jews are significant campaign donors and own substantial shares in media corporations. It doesn't mean he was placing anyone on a pedestal. Lack of political understanding makes people think that if the president meets with any group, he instantly thinks they are better than the rest. Politicians have to meet with the different voting blocks that supported them in the election and give them some support back. If they don't, the competing politician will have field day with easy votes from dissatisfied people of that voting block. Obama has also visited the Pope. He has had private meetings with christian leaders. These are political gestures. There is absolutely nothing strange with it.
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There is a significant portion of muslims who have lived in the US for generations longer than many white and hispanic christians. I don't see how you can say they don't "come from the US" since most of them have lived in America for decades. If we go down that path, christians come from Europe and all other continents as well. Only native american religious practitioners "come" from America. Up to definition of how long someone should stay in a country to be deemed 'American'. If you have citizenship and your grandparents did too, I see no reason why these people wouldn't be american.. Also, it seems many people didn't read Zonorhc's post on first page. This is the reality of the situation. Politicians don't do anything out of good will. Everything from the way you shake a hand with a certain person to which words you use in a speech, has implications and bell curve effects for future votes. His appreciation for the muslims is pure politics. They represent a voter block that wants to be assured the state will not discriminate against them or limit their freedoms. Before judging someone so fast, read up on political theory. Nothing is random or '[wagon] kissing'. Everything is about staying in power, maintaining popularity levels and securing the next vote.
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I don't think Brosnan is a particularly good actor, but he's closest to the character Ian Fleming originally created, both personality and appearance wise. Craig also looks somewhat like Fleming's original Bond, though way younger and his hair is lighter.
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Do you prefer large forum communities or small ones?
BlueLancer replied to Princess Viola's topic in Off-Topic
Smaller ones, both from a user and mod perspective. I quit using forums that became gigantic like IGN, well that plus they kicked out us ordinary mods after they went commercial years ago & hired lots of new ones. In a forum where you don't know 99.9% of the people posting, a topic sinks to page 3 within 60 seconds, there are literally thousands of mods.. I find no enjoyment. Tip.it is pretty good, it's not overactive but far from dead. Haven't been interested in RS for ages, just keep coming back here mostly for the good OT section. Looking at colossal forums like Gaia online they have topics with up to 30,000 pages on the front section of some boards. It must be such a headache. Or the biggest Diablo trading forum. Just the sports section of off topic has more posts than all of tip.it put together. They have to place a lot of trust in the community policing itself, due to the volume of posts. -
Can't argue about quality, but in terms of popularity and finances Marvel is anything but dead in the film department. They are probably the single post profitable entertainment brand that can easily triple or better any investment the producers put in a movie project, every single time. Very few people are probably interested, but thought to note from a day-trading perspective, that Marvel has been a goldmine stockwise for ~9 months and has good long term prospects, just as DC Comics to a lesser extent (time warner's stock). It's a very successful company, it's definitely not going to die despite Disney.
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35% of a $12000 salary that also goes into raising two kids, is overkill for a single mother living in the suburbs. 35% of a $300,000 salary is normal because you still get all the benefits of society around you while being practically 'rich'. You will have no problem raising two kids even if you're left with ~$200,000 (which is almost 20x the salary of the typical single mother) I don't know how much you've read up on income taxing and social equity theory, but your model is horrible. If you levied the same income tax on the poor suburban as the rich businessman, the poor person loses motivation to work, and will either turn to welfare checks or criminal activity. Almost all developed nations have progressive taxation for a reason, which is to encourage working at the lower echelons of society. Of a $1,000 monthly salary, paying $350 in taxes means the world. It means multiple sanitation, food, clothing and other items you may not be able to afford as a result of steep taxation. Add rent and utility bills & that person is left with literally nothing after taxes. Of a $10,000 monthly salary, $3500 is less severe because $6,500 buys all possible necessities a family can possibly need in a month, with massive surplus (even if you only buy the best luxury clothing and foods, down payments on a mansion etc.).
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More than physical characteristics, I value genuinity. If she has to do anything 'out of character' just to appear tough to her friends or parents/whoever, she's probably not worth it. That rules out a lot of girls in some parts of the world. If you have to smoke, artificially insult older people/cripples/races/anyone (just because your friends do as well), chances are you're just an airhead who is probably good for a night in bed and some dead-end job but nothing else in life. I don't care if she does those things because it's her true belief or habit (like smoking, I have nothing against smokers). People who have to play they're something they're not usually break up very fast or get divorced. I'm not even remotely amazed at why the US has such a high divorce rate (roughly 50%), there are a *lot* of posers and people living 'fronts' and 'appearances' only.
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:lol: Unless your father works for Coke as well chances are pretty slim you'll be even getting the grill
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Wisdom has nothing to do with honor. They are two absolutely different concepts. Even a dumb, immoral fool without a hint of wisdom can have honor. Just as a wise man can be a completele coward and traitor.
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Rate my small collection?
BlueLancer replied to Boris5000's topic in Achievements (Drops, Bank Pictures and Levels)
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Hawk's Graphics Shop (MODS Please lock, in new shared shop)
BlueLancer replied to Hawks's topic in The Art Bazaar
Lock based on authors request -
You described Family Guy last to the finest detail :lol: (It has everything you listed including the talking dog) But it does parody american sitcoms and their lameness.
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Not worth it, the last companies that actually gave out gifts for reasonable amount of work went offline in like 2005. Sure there are still some around, but like said above you'll either 1. Spend a ridiculous amount of time to get something of relative cheapness 2. Have to recruit 30 other people through your link To get the desired item, such as a 500GB external HD, etc. It's so much easier working in real life and getting that item within a day, unless you're underage and simply can't get even part-time jobs where you live at.
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Fantastic show, has been one of my favourites since it started airing, watched all 3 seasons. A bit disappointed about the gap between 3rd and 4th, going to air in a month or so (and it's been like a year since S3 ended). Can't wait to see the new seasons though. This is one of the few TV shows I could recommend to anyone who likes intelligent pieces of TV drama.
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The writers are intelligent, in the sense that every film has been made with the current era in mind. Brosnan was a great actor for his time. Craig's character represents what modern espionage could be like; Stripped to it's bare essentials for what it is without the glamour. Like a brutal gangster or mafioso, but with enough sophistication to have manners and use real technology to his advantage (unlike the previous 'gadgets'). But he does it to save human lives or end atrocities. The new character is shown as vulnerable just as any other human being, unlike the older versions.
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There is only one 'famous' RS player that most players know, which is Zezima. He's even had a popular urbandictionary entry for 3 years & people constantly make new ones. Back in the day, comparable figures would've been either Zonghui, BlueRose13x, Alchemon, etc... But even then, todays players aren't familiar with what those people did or why they were famous. The hiscores don't mean anything now, because people don't care who is #1 in any particular field. It's been made too easy to get 99 in any skill. There are even skills where dozens of people gained the maximum experience (200 million), which equals maxing out that skill 15 times to level 99. Back when people cared about hiscores, it would take even over a year to gain just 13 million XP. Nobody had even near to 20 million XP in a skill let alone 200 million. Write 'zezima runescape' and 'gertjaars runescape' in google to get an idea about the situation. http://users.rcn.com/yankscrew/cgi-bin/ ... /fight.txt for an example why the hiscores meant more before.
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Advertise at viewtopic.php?f=10&t=144061 p.s. voted
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Fiji water: so good, so cool, so bad for the environment?
BlueLancer replied to sarg1010's topic in Off-Topic
Best part of the article. And yes, it's one of the few things I'm ashamed of while living in 'modern' civilization. What's beyond my comprehension is why, IF your country already has clean tap water, you would buy into the marketing of spring water and spend $2+ per bottle for something which costs nothing (except the marginal water bill) at your home, school, work, etc. It's really true, with correct marketing, you can get suckers to buy anything. I understand buying water if you have limited options and just need a quick refreshment, like while driving a car for hundreds of miles. As for daily usage and nutrition at home if you already have clean tap water.. It's almost as ridiculous as buying a huge oxygen container and releasing 'fresh' air to your home. There is no logic and the ecological footprint of millions of people buying plastic wrapped free commodity is absurd. -
Illegally. Most common method is joining into a swarm and acting like a peer and then logging the IP addresses and date/time. Then they tell ISPs to hand over the information of the person who had the IP at the date and time that they recorded the person being part of the swarm. IIRC they aren't allowed to do this yet they still do. MediaSentry got owned because courts ruled against them for using illegal methods to obtain IP addresses. So what, nobody ends up getting "caught" because they're among 700,000 others on TPB? No, because maintaining a continuous connection to all Torrents 24/7 is going to be near impossible, and then if you do people figure out what the IPs are and then permaban them from connecting. I never download new release stuff anyway, so I am not that worried. Peerguardian already blocks most RIAA and other 'suspicious' IP's. They on the other hand can never ban all BT users' IP's from connecting to each other, or persuading ISP's to throttle BT traffic to zero. There are legitimate companies using BitTorrent technology for legal distribution of files. It's not a sham, many large legit files such as .iso copies of very popular Linux distributions, open source movie projects like Peach, etc.. are shared through BT because there are zero hosting costs for the file. Even Blizzard's game patcher connects to other peers for downloading parts of updates due to their massive customer base, this in effect cuts their bandwidth bill by millions of dollars every month. "Torrent" is not a synonym for "illegal". Hope that's going to become more of a known fact in the future.
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Tbh if you can't strip a gun, clean it, know how to use the safety and properly aim, or even eject a stuck round, you have no business owning one. It's like giving a car to someone who never even heard of a driver's license. You're at a much bigger risk of ruining the item, failing to maintain it, causing a fatal accident etc. Even kids in African countries can be taught how to handle various weapons (sorry to use such an unfortunate analogy) in a matter of weeks & proper shooting techniques in a matter of months so ignorance isn't an excuse
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Also being 'caught' is an American/Canadian phenomena for the most part. European countries have different legislation, and there are practically no (if not zero) people who have been arrested for downloading any kind of digital files. Uploading is another matter, even then if you use exclusive or very private trackers with encrypted traffic, there is a 0% chance of 'getting caught'. Uploading without encrypted SSH tunnel servers is extemely readable by the ISP and law enforcement. The only concern would be that the ISP will complain about overconsumption of traffic even in the EU. I'd say at about 800GB/month sustained for a couple of years they would send offers that you either cut down on bandwidth or they'll lower your speed/increase your fee. Not only would you need to spend significant amounts of $$ on external harddrives, I don't see how anybody could need multiple dozens of terabytes of entertainment. Even with 2-3TB you will have nearly all the worthwhile movies in existence in full hd 1080p, or all songs of any genre you ever listen to, all worthwhile games ever made for PC, you get the point.. The ISP has very real reasons to doubt that you 'hoard' files merely for future upload distribution if your annual dl traffic is ridiculously high such as 100+ terabytes. I wouldn't recommend going that far if you ever want to DL things legally or otherwise.
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Competition has already done the damage. It can't be reversed. If company X starts using 'natural' looking models, their sales will drop when compared to a company using 'pretty' looking models who look more artificial than human with impossible-to-have skin textures. It makes no business sense, except for the companies that build their brand on 'naturality' such as Dove. For other companies it's financial suicide to start using model pictures which haven't been modified to perfection. Marketing is deception. Nobody wants to look ordinary by using a product. They want to believe they can achieve the perfection the model achieved in that picture. The average customer will buy the product advertised by a perfect face rather than one photographed naturally with no post-shoot improvements.
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http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/23/new-s ... consumers/ Most video game players especially when it comes to consoles are middle aged, 25 to 45 year olds, not teens. Kids aged under 18 are a significant marketing segment in the video game industry but by no means the largest.
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I have many more examples. There are too many people who got through the sorting process that don't deserve to be p-mods. They are supposed to be role models to the community and especially the younger players. It's a good step forward that there are more factors being considered than just sheer volume of reports, so that people like this fellow will automatically become player mods
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Not a vid, but... Lol. (It's not fake)