BlueLancer

You're right, I did research on this out of interest both on and offline, the actual standing debt (including the amount owned to it's own citizens) of the USA seems to be closer to $15 trillion dollars. But the $9T can be used for sake of argument and to show people how much money the US is using that doesn't actually belong to it, nor is it likely to pay it back either (therefore discouraging countries from giving further loans)

I dunno' about 'nearly nobody'. I did, and most people I knew did, although since I was 7 at the time I didn't have much use for it. Your family must've been an innovating one then. :P In 2008,the world has about 1.5 billion internet users, approximately 1 in 4 citizens of the world use the internet. In 1997, the whole world had about 70 million internet users, i.e. about 1.7% of the world had internet access. And a lot of those were companies and corporations and their employees.

So what? The fact that they own gold is irrelevant. The Euro can buy gold, sure, but the Euro is not backed up by gold. It is a floating currency monitored by the European Central bank (In Munich I think, not sure). If the Euro was fixed, then everyone's cash would be redeemable for a certain amount of gold and the value of the euro would NEVER change (neither of these two things are true). I'm not sure what your sources are, but the Euro currency is backed up by all central banks in the EU represented by European Central Bank, and they have a joint gold agreement concerning the sales of gold and it's supply. Europe has $180+ billion worth of gold to support the $788bn. worth of bills and coins in circulation. You can't transfer euros into gold and forth literally at banks (which hasn't been possible in any country since 1971) but the currency itself is based on the gold worth of all EU countries together. One common denominator can be found between both countries though: That's incorrect, both the ECB and Fed literally create money out of thin air and pump it into the economy in forms of loans and credit to banks who then further can loan these to businesses/individuals/etc. When either of those central banks pumps, say, $200 billion or ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì200 billion on the markets; That money doesn't exist. The people simply believe those numbers have a value which provides goods, services, loans, and so forth. In reality, they are just digital numbers on bank accounts that are withdrawable against worthless pieces of paper (which, again, have their worth based on the faith that they will continue to be useful for exchange into materials, goods, services) That's the problem; It is relevant. If the general population stops believing the dollar or euro have any fiat value at all (since they are just pieces of paper), the government will still have something to circulate as a currency, such as printing notes which entitle you to withdraw gold at representative value If faith in the currency collapses, the issuer must have something to back up a new one without further breaking the trust of the citizens. Theoretically a country/union must have credible gold reserves to be a believeable issuer of currency. Amount of gold reserves is almost always linked to how appreciated the currency is (on the exception of the UK, and Kuwait which has a very highly appreciated currency due to it's oil wealth and economy): Sure, no currency is absolutely or directly backed by gold, but the stronger an economy is -> The more gold it can afford -> The more people believe in it's economy -> The more valuable the currency becomes. Gold reserves are directly linked to how powerful an economy is. The EU as a whole already does exceed the american economy (by nominal GDP as calculated by the IMF)

No European country (i'm not sure if any country does in fact) is on the gold standard whereby its currency is completely backed by gold reserves. Of all countries the US maintains the largest reserves of gold bullion. While it's true the Euro is only partially backed up by gold, Europe holds much more gold than the US. In fact, the EU owns about half of all the gold in the world. The EU has some 17,500 tons of gold ($184bn. worth), while USA itself has about 8,000 tons of gold ($100bn. worth), and nearly all of it's allies are sold out. All the significant european countries are already in the EU or in partnership with it (Norway and Switzerland remain nominally outside of the economic zone) Europe gold reserves [hide][/hide] USA gold reserves (includes it's allies as well) [hide][/hide] The world already has more euros than dollars in circulation, if the dollar keeps decreasing in appreciation, it's only a matter of time before countries start using the Euro as the sole reserve currency rather than the US dollar.

You don't need studies to tell you the sky is blue or the sun rises every morning. It's obvious people don't choose their sexuality, that has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with your brain chemistry and hormone levels. I'm more of a woman person. Someone can go for both genders. Someone exclusively likes his/her own gender. Did they choose it? If a person gravitates towards his or her own gender even since he/she is a child who barely is capable of cognitive thinking, it's a biological feature just like eye color, hair/skin color, voice, genes, it's not a "choice".

Or buy the proper game and get the real experience instead of kill a level 1 boar and get to level 70 and gt full T6 =/ Also, Private servers are illegal, so you shouldn't really be promoting them. You can't post private server links on tip.it, but yes it's a widely known fact the game probably has as many 'private' players as paying ones. Those are literally everywhere now. Honestly I don't see what's that good about WoW. I casually played one character to max level in 2006, raided a bit with my guild and friends, then quit out of boredom. Watching my character wack numbers on huge monsters or finishing yet another "bring character X item Y by killing monster Z to recieve experience bonus" quest isn't really all that entertaining. :? Without a doubt it's the most popular MMORPG though. If you want to play in a huge community, go for WoW.

Since you didn't add 'which' midi songs you'd like with just the background music, try this: http://www.freemidi.com/directory/Midi_Files/ That site lists tons of midi sites. They usually have a bias towards video game music since it's over-represented (due to popular demand) but you'll likely find 'real' songs there as well. That particular directory for example does seem to list lots of real songs too.

Extremely well written and logical article. I was going to point out the US dollar isn't soon even backed up by oil, since major oil countries and the OPEC are beginning to deal exclusively in Euros (and the japanese Yen occassionally), but the article covered that as well. The US can't remain an "empire", if it's currency keeps becoming less and less appreciated like it does now. The Euro is already worth ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì1.4 per $1 dollar (1 dollar is about ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì0.60 cents) USA keeps printing money, but it has nothing to back up it's value, unlike European countries which not only have growing economies, have their common currency backed up by gold. If all the main oil exporters start selling oil in Euros, the dollar will be worth about ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì0.05 cents per $1 and destroy american purchasing power from other nations.

Tell me about it... Last November 2 months ago I was at a casino on TX holdem tables, and I made a large bet with the obviously best hand (full house using pocket cards). A guy raised the bet to all-in with his short stack, I obviously called... He only had a jack high and a 3. It cost him the better part of $800, so I asked him why he did it... "I just wanted to see what the river [last card] would be". Go figure. :-s You just can't predict some people...

Don't get me started on that. I'd still type like one of those myspace reta....Nevermind. What did people do in, about 1997 when nearly nobody had an internet connection at home? Well... They did all the same stuff, except people were at other people's houses and outside more than now. In 2008, people rather challenge their friends to online poker, online strategy game... Read news online... Pretty much, outsource their life online. I don't mind, but nothing is more fun than playing an actual board game or poker game with friends/relatives :) Actually going to the movies instead of downloading new films from Bittorrent is also fun, so are newspapers (even though they are time consuming to read if you're on a schedule). Face it, the average modern people in western countries have found out they can do almost everything online that they can do in the real world, just faster and without having to move.. :lol: And people wonder where the fat everquest/RPG nerd stereotype comes from...

Love is just the Hormone oxytoxin level being increased in your brain, thus creating affection towards a person. Meh, I'd still take the brains. You can still care for your children without a hormone that temporarily lowers your testosterone levels and gets you affected to a person you'll break up with in 5-10 years. I only noticed that behavior in pubescent teenagers. Adults don't need to go nuts and mortgage their house to buy expensive gifts to their newfound love. You can still love someone and not be an idiot.

Norway has paid of all it's debt and it's one of the wealthiest countries in the world, plus it's the wealthiest nordic country and has extensive, free social security and healthcare for all citizens, has one of the longest life expectancies and GDP... It donates billions to foreign aid and charity as a state every year... Your theory of "if a government isn't in debt, it's doing bad" makes no economic sense. How the heck is a country better off if it loans money from others?

Not sure which part you find funny.. :? The US national debt IS around $9 trillion dollars. Or maybe you didn't know trillion is a real number as well... 9 trillion dollars= 9000 billion dollars. If that's still hard to grasp, americans owe over 9000000000 million dollars to other countries. Each citizen of the US is about $30,000 in debt to other nations. That's almost the amount the american economy is worth annually.

Old news really, but n_odie kindly supplied a thread on which you can read more about this.

Due to the WGA strike, Prison Break is being canceled on Season 3 and is not getting the full 22 episodes either, instead finishing at EP13 :wall: Dammit.. Agree with the salaries and provisions already!

Website design is a really oversaturated sector of commerce & business... But if you offer competitive prices over other companies, you can have plenty of paying customers. 8-) Good luck with it, hope you can earn a living off it (or even better)

Uh...It's GOING to happen, every competent analyst in the U.S. can confirm that. Fair enough, sorry. My understanding isn't really good enoough. I just can't understand how it can happen in the most powerful and richest country in the world. :? Um... You are aware we're talking about the US, right? It's probably not the most powerful and is definately not the richest country. It still has slightly more political influence & power than China and Russia, but it's total economy is now lagging behind the EU, and by PPP (purchasing power parity) it's now only the 10th richest country in the world (source: CIA world factbook). Also, in the US, the richest 1% of the population owns 38% of all the wealth and money, so you can barely even say the country itself is "rich"; It just has a large amount of plutocrats and corporate business owners compared to other western nations. The only thing still keeping the US a major power is it's huge annual investment in the military (The US spends more on it's army than the rest of the world's 200+ countries spend combined), which keeps it's political influence alive. Still, with that kind of military spending, it's sad the country has millions of people working on minimum wage, it has homeless people, inadequate healthcare for citizens... :?

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Is that real? If so jagex got their sense of solving problems with humor back Yes, Andrew exclusively uses smilies with a nose like that, ever since RSC days. Could be some other staff member though; But really looks like something A.Gower would write.

It could very well be the real logo, and probably is, since that script seems to auto-fetch images for skills from the hiscore server (like defense.jpeg, prayer.jpeg, etc... Same would be for summoning.jpeg) Still, post screens like this here next time: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=710789 (And any other game-related screenshots, be it logos or anything else)

Arguments and challenging are the very things that make you into who you are. You can't accept everything which is spoonfed to you like a baby, as an universal truth & correct thing to do. If you don't want to be argued with; Don't pick stances which are illogical or make no sense. You know, people in general tend to agree with opinions that make common sense. I could probably reason you out of most illogical stances such as racism, hatred towards minorities, contempt, narrow-mindedness... Ok, maybe meat eating... I can't justify that, and ethically, eating meat is illogical. :lol: I know it can be very cruel to the animals in some cases, they can live in cages with no freedom whatsoever, and it's very questionable compared to vegetarianism... But I like the taste and I'm sort of addicted to it. Who doesn't like a big steak with fries?!

I thought this movie was crappy and naive :mrgreen: But apparently some people do like this movie. Really predictable movie, but if you have a thing for fantasy movies with romantic twists, go see this.

Achmed, The dead terrorist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go One of the most popular vids on YouTube with about 24 million views... Funny as heck :lol:

Just to stop the reports... This video is 100% real. It is not a fake. It might be a potential bug, but it is now possible to summon the Karamthulhu. You don't gain any advantage by doing it though. :)

[/hide] Forum mods are basically power hungry tyrants they lock a lot of threads for simply not liking them so i have no problem beleiving that that mod may be wrong. No worry about that on tip.it ;) Nobody here will lock topics for the hell of it... You should see the tip.it staff pyramid... Mods are serving users so they can have a better forum experience, not the other way around. Also admins, crew, etc... Are here to help the users. But yes, use this topic on Karamthulhu: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=730963 As a personal comment, it does seem like a glitch. You'll see soon either way when the skill is released.