Kwisatz

And I quote: You object to my saying that everyone is a fundamentalist. That means that you interpreted my post as me saying that everyone is a fundamentalist. That is a misinterpretation to the nth degree. Everybody else was able to pick up on the fact that it was not meant literally. You didn't, despite the display of the bleeding obvious nature of my post. I didn't even mean the majority of people, I meant . I identified this some time ago. Stop trying to misconstrue everything. If it makes you feel any better, you win. I believe everybody is fundamentalist. You, Captain Obvious, have pointed out that not everybody is. I am vastly incorrect in calling what is, in my opinion, your sweeping, presumptuous replies. Congratulations. Now, rather than double-posting or spamming up the thread, I would also like to note that the postwe who brought up God's inaction on the part of all the tragedy in the world today. Surely, if there was a God, would he help people? After all, since he created the matter, can he not manipulate it? Then again, who did create the world, if he didn't? There is no evidence either way, and trying to concretely postulate it to any end seems rather pointless.

Eh, way to pull that out of thin air. On the contrary, I rather like Astralinre and Insane's viewpoints, because they calmly justify themselves rather than launching into a whole long thing. However, I do see how people joke about you getting into flame wars. I believe you have no right to call anybody on logic when you make bold implications such as you did. On topic, when I say that "everybody has to..." I really mean "it seems as though you primarily run across..." It's a hyperbole. Perhaps my last line did not convey the rhetoric nature of my question. I realize that there are agnostics, but it SEEMS that so many people must be to one extreme or another, and feel the need to get intensely defensive when somebody brings the simple question of spirituality up, as exhibited above. Let's please try not to turn this into another "is there a God?" thread; please stick to your personal reasons and observations regarding my original question. Personally, I sometimes look at it this way: If there isn't a god when you die and you believed in one while you were alive, then the worst that could happen is that some intolerant people thought you crazy. Big deal. But, if there IS a god when you die, you get a ticket to the afterlife. Like insurance. The whole "fear of the wrath of God" seems to be a motivating factor for some people, but not so many as I thought. 1. You said: Now, you have since redefined your question, but I was answering your original question by showing you that everyone is not one or the other and that there is a middle ground. I gave you three examples of people who are in the middle ground on the side of religion. It is your fault for phrasing your question incorrectly - because I answered your question by showing you how your initial assumption is wrong. 2. You persist in saying I should not turn it into a thread about God and I should give my personal observations about your question. This is another ridiculous statement. First off, I never brought up the validity of God - you did. Second off, I gave my personal observation that not everyone who is religious is a fundamentalist. That IS my personal observation on your question - so I gave what you asked for. Please don't try and misrepresent what I say next time. It's rude. Eh, I didn't redefine the question, I clarified it for you, who obviously has the inability to read between the lines. Let us examine what I said and use pompous bold text: It's like somebody telling you about something bad happening and then you saying "Oh, great." It's sarcastic irony. Notice how the posters above you did not take it as you did - they all realized the true meaning of my question. You, on the other hand, obviously did not pick up on this. I'm guilty of doing it myself from time to time, but at the very least I had the balls to admit I was wrong. Unfortunately I can't find the thread, but it was about how some guy was talking about smoking and sarcastically said how it was good for him. Additionally, notice the on topic. That indicates that the part prior was off-topic, or at the very least of a different nature than all of the words following it. You also did not pick up on this. That is, the whole bit around being on topic was not directed at you, but rather at the posters who began turning this into a deep theological discussion about life and death. Read for comprehension. I used to think that the public school system stressed this far too much, but it seems that they have reason to do so. I'm also guilty of not doing this - in fact, I also wrote a bit about Merc and how he shouldn't take all religious peoples to be fanatic zealots. But, then, I realized: he said nothing in his post about that, and I was obviously not picking up on the true intentions of his post - that is, his frustration with the proliferation of self-anointed righteous religious figures in the media and society in general. So, rather than making myself look like an incompetent fool, I deleted it. Your weak attempt at exposing my "rude" tendencies still does not compensate for the fact that you make a brash assumption in your first post, even going so far as to name names, which is what motivated me to reply to you in such a "rude" manner. In short, learn to read a bit into peoples' posts - between the lines, as it were. Because, my friend, taking everything literally and at face value is rather rude to those who try to put an ounce of research or thought into their posts.

Eh, way to pull that out of thin air. On the contrary, I rather like Astralinre and Insane's viewpoints, because they calmly justify themselves rather than launching into a whole long thing. However, I do see how people joke about you getting into flame wars. I believe you have no right to call anybody on logic when you make bold implications such as you did. On topic, when I say that "everybody has to..." I really mean "it seems as though you primarily run across..." It's a hyperbole. Perhaps my last line did not convey the rhetoric nature of my question. I realize that there are agnostics, but it SEEMS that so many people must be to one extreme or another, and feel the need to get intensely defensive when somebody brings the simple question of spirituality up, as exhibited above. Let's please try not to turn this into another "is there a God?" thread; please stick to your personal reasons and observations regarding my original question. Personally, I sometimes look at it this way: If there isn't a god when you die and you believed in one while you were alive, then the worst that could happen is that some intolerant people thought you crazy. Big deal. But, if there IS a god when you die, you get a ticket to the afterlife. Like insurance. The whole "fear of the wrath of God" seems to be a motivating factor for some people, but not so many as I thought.

Why must everyone either be religiously zealous and fundamentalist or fiercely atheistic and hostile towards any form of spirituality? Is there no happy medium? Is there nobody who is at least mildly tolerant of others' beliefs without being self-righteous and intrusive? Thought I'd ask.

Buy an internal hard drive. They're faster and cheaper. Even if you want offsite backup, how much trouble is it to every month or so crack open your computer and take ten minutes to hook and subsequently unhook an internal drive? But, since backup isn't applicable here, just buy an internal one anyway. Faster and cheaper.

Yup, don't get AGP, find a PCI-E card. You also shouldn't get an SLI board because you don't have two cards and the one you have is pretty low end anyway I would recommend a Core 2 Duo and a different motherboard am i looking at the same price? A core 2 duo would raise the price a lot. The socket AM2 I am suggesting to upgrade to would be the same price (maybe a little more expensive) and better preformance. SLI isn't unnecessary. SLI boards are virtually the same price, and when they are more expensive it's $10 at most. For that kind of upgrade path you'd have to be stupid not to spend just that bit more.

You can get an equivalent motherboard for that same price. Why, I just ordered a 939-pin SLI-capable 4xSATAII one the other day for 80 bucks.

Preferably the family would be rich but I'd be able to keep it away from my kids to give them the proper values and such :) Although I would provide for them in ways such as a decent high school >.> It's very possible to not spoil a child but still be "rich". Would your child have to share a bedroom? Would your child be able to invite lots of friends over because there was space in your garden rather than living in a flat? Would your child grow up in a nice area where he was unlikely to be pressured to join drug groups? Would you like to be able to pay for your child's college education? Would you prefer to get home from work at 6pm every day at the latest so that you could spend time with your child? Would you like to be able to take your child on vacations abroad so that it could learn about and experience different cultures? None of these are particularly "spoiling" a child, yet poor people cannot necessarily do them. The 6PM thing isn't always true, but alright.

So often, hard work brings more hard work. Getting a promotion at a corporate job brings more responsibilities, more overtime and more kissing butt to get to the top. What so many hard workers forget is that the reason they go to work is to make money and make themselves happy. So many people work themselves so hard that they are never happy, and so many people around me fail to understand the significance of this. After all, what's the point in living if you aren't comfortable? I'm not saying that we should all quit our jobs and be bums, but let's examine other countries like Spain: they take a siesta, or Japan, whose workforce spends 3 hours commuting to Tokyo and working 6 hours. They all work smarter and get more done in less time. It seems that the majority of the Western world fails to grasp the true meaning of living. That said, I think that rich kids do have a better life, if they are raised correctly. Ideally they need to be sociable people that understand that everything comes at a price and that they should be relatively frugal and utilize what they have before thinking about buying new things, but so often this isn't the case, and this is where all those bleeding-heart "I want family because I can't buy myself friends" stereotypes come from. If your parents are rich, you are well-natured and not stuck up, and you live reasonably and can work when necessary and have something constructive to do to occupy your time (eg a hobby or job that you enjoy and do simply for the fun of it) then I'd say you have a very good, fulfilling life, as opposed to somebody that is absolutely swamped with their career or who believes that they have it incredibly tough when they don't even know the half of what other people must endure every day.

I don't have usual family problems. As in, angsty teen "YOU WON'T BUY ME AN IPOD! I WILL SLASH MY WRIST" problems. As in, I have no idea what's going on in my mother's head. First off, I seriously sometimes think she has multiple personalities. Sometimes her and my brother communicate in some form of primitive baby language. Think the Jigglypuff voice, yes, from Pokemon. I ask them to politely stop since I'm often trying to do something constructive like study or program or something but it continues incessantly until I end up screaming for them to stop and my mom spouts off some crap about how she's the matriarch and how she supercedes all reasonable behavioral fashion. Or, she constantly whines about everything. About how she works for three hours teaching kindergartners and comes home to clean, nevermind the fact that I've offered to do laundry and help out numerous times only to be told that I'm deftly incapable. She also feels the need to comment on about everything. Somebody can be walking down the sidewalk and she feels the need to say something regarding what they're wearing or look like. Her "fashion" leanings are more towards the traditional upper-middle class, but it seems that no matter how many times I ask her not to be so judgemental and superficial she has to point out that gothic kids look like they're wearing costumes and that they only do things like that for attention. I befriend people from many walks of life, and she seems to wonder why I never wish for her to meet anybody aside from my two best friends whom I have known since I was 7. She also panics about everything. Even the most minor things she asks about in a distressed voice. I can say something like "My computer doesn't work," and she will reply "Your computer DOESN'T WORK? You need to call the company right away blah blah blah" before I even explain the magnitude of the problem. So often it is something very minor but she acts as though the consequences of making a wrong decision are life-threatening. It makes NO DAMN SENSE, I sware. At this point I would say that my brother is more tolerable than she is, and he's an ungrateful whiny prat. My dad is also something too complex to go into, but despite his occasional irrationality and overprotectivity even he is beginning to make more sense than my mother does.

Just as the tipiters are getting their driver licenses, they are also getting to go through physical changes, and to have new interests. You may get that too, ocasionally. The problem is that these are all questions that people simply need somebody to talk to about, even though they know the answer. After I made my girl thread I decided that I'd best not make another one, lest I be similarly ridiculed. If I need to talk to somebody about it I have my peeps :D. That aside, girls are very strange. In some aspects everything about them is incredibly formulaic, so much so that it's crazy. On the other hand there are times when everybody, including their own kind, are left like "WTF?" when they do something strange. Good thing I got the predictable bits down pat :D. And stan, although he is overanalyzing it, just remember that total thoughtlessness doesn't quite work either.

Personally I don't find the show very entertaining. "Oh goodness, midgets! We should capitalize on their deformity and repeat the same plot points and illustrate their same basic difficulties over and over while creating artificial sympathy on the part of the audience! Besides their stature (or lack thereof) they simply lead a hectic life like millions of other nuclear American families; nevertheless, their shortness makes them SPECIAL!" I really hate reality shows, but the way Little People in a Big World is marketed just makes me sick. Although one might argue that it draws attention to the plight of little people to me it magnifies the differences in America today. They are little. I somehow believe that they are now tired of receiving everybody's sympathy and getting brown-nosed wherever they go. I know I would be. And filming all this and putting it on television... ugh. Barring my rant, I'm also glad I stopped playing P00nscape some time ago. In fact, I haven't played any MMOs since. To me they are almost all just things like time-consuming training, training, merchanting, and training, all of whcih I simply do not have time for anymore.

As I don't know what "respectivly" means, I'll agree with you. Chuck Norris is the most uncool person when you compare him to me. Don't be sad though, Chuck. It ain't that bad to be worse than me, it's just average. Can you say "ownt?" Anyway, why did David Lee Roth have to be such a [bleep] and cause Sammy Hagar to ruin Van Halen?

Really now people, is it possible for us to stop making sweeping generalizations? I'm pretty much agnostic right now, but seriously, OMFUG THE CHRISTIANS ARE CRUSADING ALL OVER THE PLACE LIKE JIHADISTS AND KEEPING US FROM ENJOYING PERSONAL FREEDOMS is getting rather annoying. It isn't a generalization, it's the truth. Christians try to convert everyone they see...In the past, even with deadly force and opression. Great religion. Christian's are no longer into the whole "jihad" thing, however. They cannot wage war over religion anymore because noone in the world will take their crap anymore. They were FORCED to take their crap back in the day, but today...Everyone has sense...OH, and guns. :P It is a generalization, by definition. Christianity is not a single condition; by definition it is a group of many conditions, which a person may or may not choose to follow despite purportedly conforming to such a label. Yes, on its most basic level Christianity means that the person follows a Chrisitain faith, but there are many subsets thereof that come with being of a faith of that nature. It would be like me saying that all teenagers are hormonally imbalanced. Being a teenager is, on its most basic level, being between the ages of 13 and 19, but with that come many different conditions which may be true or false depending upon the person. However rare it may be, I'm sure that there is a person meeting the above condition that also has normal levels of enzyme in their body. In a non-semantic fashion, I'll give you an example. At work I know a guy who is a hardcore Christian. On his work shelf, right next to the CCNA Cert study guide are books like "Finding the Path to Jesus." He has a signed picture from the Bush family thanking him for being a campaign donor. But see, he has not brought ANY of this up in the workplace, even when people say things like "Bush should be ousted from office because _____________," because he realizes that it is not necessarily his place to make others see his way. He is a Christian, yet he does not convert. And like I said before, I'm agnostic, or more specifically indecisive - the way I figure it I have more than a few years to decide if I live my life reasonably morally; I'm open to almost anything. In fact, I had to put up with a self-righteous, zealous moron who rides my bus for an entire year. The preachings about Jesus and eternal life never stopped, because I was tolerant. Although it may not have been the easiest thing to do, enduring the equivalent of 90 hours of rehashed rambling, but in my mind it was much better than saying "Screw you," and creating a mental predisposition against Christians (although in retrospect I should have had a frank conversation with him regarding his rather brazen theological discussions). Real shame that you can't separate people from their religions identity and shed your preconceptions.

Lol In other words: We have no idea what you are talking about. A "music thingy player" isn't very descriptive. Is it an Ipod? What software are you using? For all I know, your trying to put a cassette track into your tape drive... Enough razzing though, heres the answer to your question. You put the thingy into the thingy, and then open that one thing and it shouldn't do anything yet but when it does click some stuff and the stuff should go onto the thing and then it should be ready to do something somewhere. I have a thing that goes vroom when I step on the thingee, but it has no batteries. Oh, I mean a car.

Really now people, is it possible for us to stop making sweeping generalizations? I'm pretty much agnostic right now, but seriously, OMFUG THE CHRISTIANS ARE CRUSADING ALL OVER THE PLACE LIKE JIHADISTS AND KEEPING US FROM ENJOYING PERSONAL FREEDOMS is getting rather annoying.

My dying wish would be to have one week of party. No lie. Like have all my friends there, all my favorite bands, watch some kickin' movies, drink some pwnage beer, party, "mess around," etc. As everything is going now this probably won't happen to me at any kind of great extent, and for once I'd just like to have some well-deserved vacation and uninterrupted funness. Selfish as it is, that's what I want. Universal acceptance would cause the world to collapse, as the lack of conflict would cause the fundamentals of today's world to fall apart. We as a human species should progress to that point naturally. As for the homophobic sentiments, f*ck you ignorant idiots. AIDS began in lesser primates and was transferred to somebody via blood contact between them and the monkey. It then spread but was known primarily in the gay community. At this time there was AT LEAST one heterosexual person infected with it, the odds prove it. Stop blaming those different than you for the problems of the world. If someone is homosexual, I have no problem with it. If they embarass you in front of your friends, then get new ones that are halfway tolerant. They aren't humping you in public, they aren't coming on to you. The only essential difference between them and you is who they do, as well as possibly a slight hormonal imbalance and style decisions. If they hit on you and it makes you uncomfortable, then do what you would as if you were in the same situation as with somebody heterosexual. Insensitive, uninformed morons. For the record, the above does not apply to the incredibly flamboyant, contrived attention groupies who pretend to be bisexual or less commonly homosexual to get a shot at popularity, stand out, or get a chance with the opposite sex. They are just as bad as the bigots. And, as for the little religious BS attached to homosexuality and abortion: both ends of the spectrum are fueling the flames. The zealots keep pushing all their closed-minded anti-everything holier-than-thou propaganda, and the atheists keep pushing their equally-propagandanistic "OH MY GOD THE CHRISTIANS ARE KEEPING EVERYTHING DOWN!" It's analagous to hearing a person of African heritage saying "The white man is KEEPING US DOWN" as an excuse for everything - only certain ones are doing that. I respect a person's beliefs, no matter what they are, so long as they are 1) remotely moral, as in no killing babies or sacrificing children or wanton murder, and 2) they don't infringe upon or militantly degrade the beliefs of others. There are hardcore Christians that do this, and there are hardcore atheists that do this. In fact, I found the perfect wish to sum this up: stop collective thinking.

You need to know what you're doing forwards and back though, as well as how to MANUALLY! remove such malware. So many times people take their computers to, get this, a REAL COMPUTER REPAIR SERVICE (eg the Geek Squad) and they fail to remove spyware that has a backup mechanism. If you know how to msconfig, regedit, hijackthis, safemode and use LiveCD Linux, that's good. Relying solely on Ad-Aware is a terrible idea. But if you do actually know what you're doing and you can give it to the customer straight, as in without buzzwords and jargon but still completely accurate, then you should definently consider a job in computer repair. It's too bad that so many clueless cookie-cutter online degree people are getting put in jobs like that where true ingenuity and experience is needed. "But you use Ad-Aware to remove spyware! Registry editing is unsafe..." But either way, I did accounting, minor prep work and cleaning for a restaurant, and I also now do corporate helpdesk as an intern. You should keep a watchful eye on area businesses wanting help, ESPECIALLY those wanting interns if they are a big company - they get community recognition, a tax break and cheap labor, and you get a relatively nice salary (I make 10 an hour) if you get an office job.

... Please don't make this thread flame war fodder. It was meant as a joke. I think you're doing more to make it "fodder" than anybody else, not to mention absoutely spamming up the thread. At the very least I made a few remotely relevant contributions, whereas you have made absolutely none. If you're gonna troll do it somewhere else.

"He's intelligent, but inexperienced..." :D. I'll bet you're one of the people that cry when Spock dies. On topic, I don't much like RTSs, so I probably won't get it in that case.

People always complain that Star Trek doesn't have action like Star Wars, and that therefore it sucks. Then they go out and watch some two-bit drama with Ashton Kutcher in it, calling it "deep and explorative of the human soul" :roll: . Star Trek is a great science fiction franchise. If you want something like a good book or adventure then Star Trek is ideal. If you want nostalgia and camp as well then the original series is even better. If you want PG-rated space blasters then go watch Star Wars. Not that I'm trying to say that you like Star Wars and that you're a n00b, since after all you didn't even mention Star Wars, but I'm just ranting about what I hear. It's really sweet, check it out sometime. On topic, I don't much like space games either, but they're fun for a bit. I played much Freespace back in the day, and it was complicated as a mo. I might give this game a try though, since it's already so critically acclaimed

By such rationale, murders are doing us all a favor by killing people. The Columbine shooters are keeping the population in check. Abortion = effectively indirect killing. See the cause and effect argument I made earlier in this thread. Once again don't ask me about incest and such because I still haven't quite reconciled that, but as far as I'm concerned if you decide to put your Twinkie in the Suzy Q, then you should be fully expectant of the, ready for this, INTENDED AND EXPECTED OUTCOME. And you can make no excuse that will make any kind of sense as to why you deserve to prevent a life because of your own a) lack of self-control or B) cheap nature that prevents you from purchasing reliable protection. Those people that rely on welfare, whose fault is it that they had the baby 99.9% of the time? It's THEIR OWN DAMN FAULT. "Oh boo hoo, I HAD INTERCOURSE BUT I DIDN'T EXPECT A BABY TO COME OUT OF IT, I JUST PERFORMED A BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION DESIGNED FIRST AND FOREMOST TO DO THAT AND HOPED THAT IT WOULDN'T DO ITS THING!. It's absurd. A joke. Stop whining and take responsibility. As for the tax notion, those kinds of people shouldn't even receive welfare unless they truly did not know any better, but that's another argument entirely. And if you don't pay taxes and are making that argument, as so many kids my age do, then cork it until you actually have the burden of paying them.. Those of us that shell out to "the man" have it tougher than you, and if anyone decides to whine it should be us, not you. My two cents, or ten dollars.

My favorites are Brian May of Queen, Joe Satriani, Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser of Blue Oyster Cult (very underrated in my opinion, just listen to some live cuts of most of their songs and you'll see what I mean), Tom Sholz of Boston, and Criss Oliva, may he rest in peace, of Savatage. Brian May's Red Special does have godly tone, it's absolutely incredible-sounding, and impossible to equate to any other guitar sound I've ever heard. Joe Satriani may not be the most technically proficient, but he did teach Vai and he writes incredible songs. Many argue that he would be better and more popular if he were paired with a vocalist, but on songs like "Surfing with the Alien" the lead guitar is effectively the equivalent of the vocal track, and just by the name of the song you can paint a picture of what the song is actually about, much like a piece of classical music. Buck is just awesome because of the solos, jams, and awesomesauce "Buck's Boogie" instrumental. The way BOC's albums were recorded until about 1978 meant that his guitar was not very sharp, but more fuzzy and subtle in tone, which sounds especially cool in solos. I equate it to being the Snoop Dogg of guitar - laid-back, not trying, but still awesome sounding, kind of rambling. Boston is just Boston. Pure awesome. Tom also graduated from MIT and as such messed so much with his guitar tone because of his electrical engineering degree. This is what made him such an innovative guitarist - his ability to tightly control production and sound quality in a way that few other producers/musicians could. That aside, songs like "Foreplay/Long Time" (even though the lead on that was composed by Barry Goudreau) are simply incredible and epic to listen to. Almost every pre-"Walk On" Boston song is excellent by itself, which isn't surprising given that they hold the record for best-selling debut album at 17 million copies. Savatage is one of the most underrated metal bands around; I'm surprised they haven't garnered as much attention as at least other 80s metal bands like WASP or Twisted Sister. Pretty sad too, because Criss is brilliant as far as metal guitar goes. Maybe not the most technically proficient, but his heavy riffing and sheer songwriting ability more than make up for it. There are lots more guitarists I like, but these are the ones that stand out in my mind. Eddie just doesn't seem as awesome anymore given that I've found all these other bands that have songs as good or better than his, barring technical prowess. And to whoever said that so much music is judged on the basis of techincal ability, then why is it that 90% of bands have vocalists that sing in falsetto like they had their balls chopped off, or that they all have no soloing ability, or can't use any kind of keyboard other than a grand piano or square wave synth? It's a sad turn music has taken. To extremes. There is no middle ground, and it saddens me.

You're a geek. Real role-playing is for n00bs. Geek Geek Geek Geek Geek I'm sorry, I just have a tendency to prey upon other peoples' perceived insecurities. That aside, I would think that this belongs in the Forum Games section, since this would generate lots of one-liner posts and harm the post count system which we all hold so dear.

You can still play nice distorted guitar songs. That aside, acoustic songs sound pretty pretentious and contrived-artsy sometimes, as though the artist is trying to make a point. Don't get me wrong - there are loads and loads of songs I have that effectively utilize an acoustic, but sometimes it seems that guitarists are like "Unplugged Acoustic! +10 Indie Awesome!"