BlueLancer

You're grossly over-exaggerating the 'cost-increase effect' of socialist democracies like Finland. The only thing that makes things more expensive is taxation. Your scenario is so unrealistic I had to respond and do research on that. I browsed a few finnish computer retailers online now, such as this one since you mentioned that, the new computers in Euro prices are very near to those I see for sale in the US, in the 500-$1000 price range on average. Where exactly did you see a computer costing $900 in the US while costing $2,600 in Finland? That's not the only site I browsed. I can't find a single site selling an average home-user or gaming computer even over $2,000 equivalent in euros, if excluding overpriced Vaio laptops. The logic that "socialist welfare systems mean nobody can afford anything" has no justification. At most, costs can be slightly increased in nordic countries due to their geographical isolation from mainland Europe and shipping costs.

Haven't seen the movie, but I can tell you the healthcare in continental US (which excludes military bases or overseas facilities operated by US that get preferential treatment) sucks if you're poor. Healthcare should be available to any person regardless of their wealth, just like in most European countries. It's mind-blowingly bizarre and idiotic that some people in the US (which is the largest economy in the world) die because they are unable to get medical treatment, mainly because their healthcare provider found a loophole which denies care, or the person/family could not afford paying several hundred dollars a month on top of their other expenses for health insurance. What kind of a doctor can sleep with a clean conscience, knowing some patients which he turned away due to a lack of money will die while they did nothing wrong and wanted what is a basic right of a human in a developed country?

Way to make extremists blow up Nobel facilities and become a sworn enemy of Sweden.

Yeah, and people will think "England" when they hear 'Queen Elizabeth'. That's a neutral "generalization" which is true. Calling all 1.4 billion muslims in the world (or anyone who isn't muslim, but happens to look middle-eastern) a terrorist just because a few hundred fanatics blow up facilities, is a racist generalization which needs to get rid of. Terrorism happens in all troubled places. Why isn't the protestant christian IRA of Ireland almost never mentioned? They have even in recent years murdered innocent civilians, detonated car bombs & conducted suicide attacks, etc... The catholic basque ETA separatists in Spain have killed thousands of people in suicide bombings and remote detonations, etc... The German RAF terrorist organisation's structure was stunningly similar to that of an Al-Qaeda cell, or the Taleban (which also originally consisted of students) There are also american christian extremists (or terrorists as they're now called), such as Army of God, Phineas Priesthood etc... The point is not to get into a listing war of religious terrorist groups; The point is every religion has extremists. It's easy to blame someone else for all your troubles & problems when they're "different", and ignore the wrongdoes who are similar to you.

No offense, but those are some quite weird reactions. :lol: I never saw anyone laugh, if say, an old man or woman tripped or fell over in a shop, bus or whatever... Quite the opposite reaction. Same for football players, rather "ouch, that's gotta hurt". Comedy sketches on TV are not real life... But each to their own... Hopefully if you get in an accident people wont just laugh at you and leave you to bleed 8-)

Yep. Completely agree. Seriously, just lock this thread. What's the point in having it around? Despite his occassional foul mouth or un-constructiveness, his idea of raising money for charity by singing is plausible. Just because he's banned doesn't mean he didn't have a good cause with this particular thread. A "ban" doesn't automatically demonize a person, just like a "criminal" who gets jailed is not automatically a demon who has no emotions or heart for change. People do bad things for an endless amount of motives, reasons, or influences, or are forced to, etc, not just because they are social outcasts. (Not that Bubsa is comparable to a criminal, just using a real world comparison)

Yeah, especially in Lebanon there is a significant christian minority who gets to live in peace. Before the recent conflicts, Lebanon was viewed just as Turkey, a mostly free country where you can dress as you wish, eat and drink as you wish, etc. When those people insult you again, tell them you're actually a christian. To incompetent fools who don't know much about the surrounding world, it can be baffling to realize people might have genetic heritage from many countries, or an asian person can be muslim/christian/hindu/buddhist, a white person can be a buddhist, a middle-eastern person can be christian etc. It doesn't work for everyone, but a lot of people can realize how stupid their racist opinions are, if you explain them why they're wrong.

Hi :) Post this here: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=561170

Not that I necessarily support the reverting of the update - You're forgetting the customers make Jagex what it is. Without protesting things you and many other people see unfair or non-functional/improvable, no progress would've ever been made in the world.

Strict? I just see it as trying to raise their kids without rated M games, or blood, gore, and the f word every other second. Wow nice one, I've never played an M game in recent memory that even has the f word more then once, if at all. And in some games you can turn off the blood & gore. And he's in high school, I think he can handle it... Yeah, even crime games such as GTA which I played, don't use 'bad language'. The characters and criminals do make threats or call each other names, but I can barely remember even a few occassions of 'f' being used in that game. But other than that I would have to agree with Pirate_Steve; Why on earth would I want my kid to play, say GTA? :? I can have fun while playing it, but don't expect a 10-11 year old (or heaven forgive, younger than that) understanding the game, and the fact it's just entertainment, not something 'acceptable'...

The kids making those comments are dumb as hell. Ask them to watch 'Kingdom' and see the lenghts honest muslims go to in order to protect people from terrorism. Heck, they might be lured in just by the aspect of explosions and hollywood, and discreetly recieve an injection of anti-racism. But I'm amazed at the lenghts to which racism towards middle-easterns goes in the US. I don't see that in any other western country, not even Spain which had suffered terrorist bombings by delusional islamic fanatics (not to mention, most terrorist strikes in Spain are carried out by a catholic faction ETA which champions the forming of an independent basque state) It's weird how primarily English speaking countries, the US and UK, are the most racist towards middle-easterns in general. Those 2 countries also submitted the most soldiers to every operation in the middle and far east.

Lol, screw it. Accepting PM answers to 12 to continue this thing...

I read quite a few newspapers - I can assure you all the crazy news from India are real. :lol: Sure, it's developing fast, but there's all kinds of crazy stuff happening there, like trains colliding with tigers, people marrying animals to appease gods, etc... Well, maybe weird to us, but to them it's normal. Heck, they probably laugh at western countries for building animal shelter homes when there are real people here living without a home. Not sure if you've been to N.Y., you can find anything from a swiss business magazine to the latest news from Australia or North Korea there. The Sun isn't anything special. (Though, he might've read the online edition)

Post those here. :) http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=144061 (Since they're not videos)

Seeing as we're not talking about humans here really, but natural animal anatomy & biology taught in school at the age limit of this forum (about 13), I don't see how it's rulebreaking. ...As long as you people can post other interesting things as well, which you learned in class instead of commenting on his 'special' information :lol:

Of course you can have fun without the use of alcohol/drugs. :-s Take video games, for example. Many people say they play video games because it is "fun". That doesn't mean life isn't fun without video games, it simply means that video games can help you amplify your "fun". In the same way, life is fun without alcohol/drugs, but those substances, when used responsibly, can help amplify your fun. Hate to turn the discussion towards drugs, but sadly, only a few select, light drugs can even be used "moderately", like marijuana and other 'medical' plants. Harder drugs like LSD, extasy or heroin make you physically addicted to the substance by altering your brain chemistry permanently. I personally don't smoke, do drugs or drink at all (except if offered by an important host at a party etc.), but if you had to choose from those, you're better off experimenting with drinking than 'smoking' anything or taking stuff up your nose/in the veins.

A lot of artists upload music on their own MySpace site or 'accidentally' "leak" new albums to gain more popularity, even known and commercially succesful artists. Other than that, no idea :shock: Not having an account there, I don't visit MySpace really... But I remember nearly every front page being embedded with like 5 MP3's. Legal or not; You'd have to make your own judgement... If the artist hasn't chosen to freely distribute those MP3's, such as Radiohead, it's very likely to be illegal.

For the life of me I can't continue past level 12... :oops: I just don't know how to obtain the user/pass without any clue except the title (blocked out so as not to ruin the game for others)

My father is [nominally] islamic and he played the game for a while, and thought it was fun (but to be honest, his skills barely beat some levels on the lowest AI level :lol: ) Seems like your dad is grossly over-reacting. What about missions where marines go to Uzbekistan for example, and you can hear russian in the background? The militants are barely 'religious'... A lot of wars these days happen in desert environments, that's a fact and there's nothing "anti-anything" in it. Heck, there are WW2 games where you can play russians and kill europeans. It's just a game. Earlier, wars were in jungles, or poor continents such as Africa (1950-2000, and still ongoing wars). What's insulting muslims if there is a war in an islamic country? It's just a fact, and it's happening right now.

That's borderline flamebaiting, that's quite an insult to believers of other religions who make up most of the world's population (as opposed to about 20-25% of the world being christian). Atheism isn't even a religion, so that can be discarded as a discussable item... How exactly is christianity a more viable alternative than, say, Buddhism or Hinduism? The entire premise of christianity is based on Jesus being a divine person, prophet, messenger, instead of a normal human, just as believing Gautama Buddha became a God when he was enlightened by days of meditating starved in the wilderness (nice similarity to the Jesus in the desert story BTW) And your source for this is either the Talmud or the Bible, how are those any more reliable sources than the Koran? Assuming 'age' means truthfulness, why don't you accept the ancient Egyptian or Roman gods as true gods because they were worshipped thousands of years before judaism or christianity? According to your belief, God had "prophets" (that's assuming a God exists in the first place). Only your holy book says holy people were Israelites. How is it not just your word against his, when those books and "eyewitness" accounts were written by ordinary men? You're defeating your own logic, you stated this: Likewise, the Bible saying something is not proof. Proof requires reliable evidence and plausibility. Some hundreds of people 'apparently' having seen supernatural things performed by Jesus is barely "proof". Those events were recorded by humans, how can you know for sure they saw Jesus walking on water? People have lied about bigger things in history... Kings themselves have claimed to seen dragons, explorers have claimed to seen gigantic sea monsters, what's so spectacular about claiming a man could turn water into wine, heal sick people or walk on water?

Yeah. Tell that to Schmo0zle here. That's what he had been implying as well. If I knew any better you should have said the same thing to him in the first place. Talk about a one-sided Mod.... Since you ignored the rest of my post I'll reply anyways... Why is it one-sided? Isn't it correct to view every religion at least objectively, if not critically.. Since not all people have a similar religion? For example, it's quite correct to say both christianity and islam were spread by brutal violence. Regardless of their good messages or intentions, those religions were always spread by crusades against heathens in Europe/Middle East/slaughtering indigenous populations in the americas, jihads against leaders unwilling to embrace islam or sharia as a form of government... It's not "blasphemy", it's what historically happened. Perhaps the teachings in those religions prohibit the killing of civilians, looting cities or committing murder (actually, both the Bible and Koran have multiple verses supporting the killing of another person), but that's what those followers represented their religion with. Of course, muslims will often say "well that's just what people believed back then" and christians will say "that's not relevant anymore" or "that was in the Old Testament". But those things are in your holy books, and some people in the world are still using those verses to justify killing other human beings and every other barbaric act imaginable. Out of all world religions and sacred texts, the Bible and Qur'an are particularly, and exceptionally rich with rhetoric of killing 'infidels' or 'heathens', advocating death for crimes, using religion as law, etc.

Besides the US and Imdb.com, this movie actually got some pretty good reviews. Going to see it tonight with friends, I'll post back later. :)

Haha, not a big fan of pop/soft rock (which that would probably fall under), but that's not a bad song. Without the obnoxious crowd noises, I could imagine this to be a radio version of some known song. It's very professionally performed for a group of high school/college kids. You guys have potential, even for becoming commercial. I mean it. If you were crappy, I'd say it honestly, but you guys could probably sell albums/singles succesfully or tour places. And yes, consider checking your DNA, you might be Jack Black's lost brother. :lol:

Yes, post random-event related stuff in the above thread. :)

Sorcery.