Imaginary

I have no recollection of an archer dogi. But damn, that does remind me of somebody else who had "dog" in their name, I just can't remember who it was. Might have been a fighter, not a ranger. But I do fuzzily remember a "dog" ranger. Heh, maybe it was archer dogi, I didn't know everybody. But yeah, lots of people ranged lessers in Karamja. I know I did, it was great fun. The very first day in July you could get rune meds from them, people were swarming around to fight them. And kill stealing was rampant. The mods actually did something about it... they would actually teleport you out of the demon area, or even strip runes/arrows out of your inventory if you were kill stealing. I always hated the idea of them doing that. You saw a lot more of the mods back then. (Actually, I think it was only Rab back then.)

Global climate change is already happening; it doesn't matter why. If we did cause it, it's too late to stop it now. (FYI, I strongly believe it's our fault, but who really cares.) If it's happening naturally, we can't stop it anyway. All we can do is prepare for its effects. - Alternative energy generation Nuclear power is great. (ironically, it's a very "green" power source, and its biggest opposition comes from ignorant hippies). We should build more plants. Solar and wind are great, too - they're great for supplementing generation, but contrary to Greenpeace's assertions, they aren't large scale, reliable, or stable enough to be the sole suppliers of our energy. A combination of nuclear, fossil, solar, wind, and hydro (basically energy wherever we can get it) is what we need in the next century. Lowering carbon emissions is nice, but the idea is to diversify our energy generation so we'll always have it available. Modern agriculture is extremely energy intensive. What happens when farmlands are affected by drought? The world is changing, and resources are dwindling. More energy can only help us better adapt to those changes. Which brings us to... - Energy conservation Global warming or not, SUV drivers are [wagon]. Petroleum is a wonderful thing; it's quite the concentrated, easily stored, easily utilized form of energy. How convenient for us that dinosaurs soaked up the sun's energy, and thoughtfully died and melted for us, trapping the sun's energy in their liquid remains. This magic dino-liquid fuels all our newfangled internal combustion engines and is the backbone of our transportation and agriculture. Ohcrap, we're running out of dino-juice. It's not just a question of energy, it's a question about how that energy is stored. We just don't have anything as convenient as the dinojuice. And guess what? Here we have slack jawed cell phone yakkers driving around in their Hummer H3s. Oh, and evil bad guys with beards and turbans and bombs control the world's supply of magic dino-juice, so that's why we have to liberate them but that's not going so well because of the liberal press so we may have to cut and run leaving evil bomb turban bad guys with control over magic dino juice. The solution here is twofold. First, we have to cut down on petroleum use, and hard. Or it'll be that much more painful when we have no choice, because there just isn't any more. Mandatory taxes on gas. Mandatory efficiency requirements. Incentives on shared transportation. Subsidies on public transport. And second, find another way to fuel transportation. We may generate energy in a nuclear plant, but how do we get it into the car? In our present state, we don't. The car's energy comes from dead dinosaurs, remember? We are working on ways around that, with things like more effective batteries, or a hydrogen economy. Then we'll be creating our own energy. That is energy independance. Not depending on dead dinosaurs buried under crazy bearded guys to make our cars go. - Intensified weather Climate change will be marked by extremes in weather patterns. It's not just "global warming" - it will be both hotter and colder, with more extreme variations. It will be more storms, tornados, and hurricanes. There's really nothing you can do about that, just be prepared to repair the damage, and mitigate it for next time. Build stronger buildings (hurricane resistant buildings on the coast, sufficient levees, etc.), and have a proper response plan in place. - Sea level rising Sorry coasters, you're screwed. Unless we suddenly had endless resources, and sci-fil technology and energy generation, you're not moving a city or building a wall that will protect such a large area. Really, there's nothing I can think of to counter this. Just evacuate where you need to, and build barriers wherever you can. Sucks, but what can you do? - Agriculture As mentioned above, modern agriculture is heavily dependant on fossil fuels (or machines powered by fossil fuels). Even more important is distrubution, which is also the work of trucks powered by fossil fuels. Climate change will also hit farming hard. Not all places will necessarily experience drought... It's the unpredictability of the weather, like extremes in heat and cold and seasons, storms destroying your crops, etc. In America and other first world countries, we can at least try to counter these effects, if we've been following my above suggestions. - Extra energy to irrigate drought affected land - Electric or hydrogen economy to fuel agriculture/food distribution - Technology to predict changing weather patterns, giving you more time to react - Genetic technology to engineer strains more resistant to variations in temperature, changing conditions, etc. Third world countries depending on a mule and hack-n-slash farming are screwed. Sorry. In conclusion, Global warming = a lot of people are screwed. If you're posting here, you're likely among the group that will potentially be far less screwed, as long as certain people in power play it smart. Oh and the far less screwed people have all the guns, so the screwed people can't do jack. And us American less screwed people have two oceans to protect us from the totally screwed people without boats.

Your name sounds sort of familiar. Did you use to have a FPS themed avvy or sig? Like a Doom guy as your avvy I think it was. Anyway, I joined tip.it back when the RS site linked to fansites, and tip.it was at the top of the list. The first thing I looked at was a smithing table that told you when you could make what. That was very useful. IIRC: - Early/Mid 2001, we the forums had a light brownish background. It looked integrated with the tip.it site. I believe the URL was just http://www.tip.it/forum - In October, I believe, they switched to a new forum system that had a white/gray background. This only lasted a few weeks. One thing I remember about these forums: There was a guy named Rock. I think his name ingame might have been "Attila" or something like that. He was Finnish. But his forum name was Rock. His avvy was a cute little animated rock. (a stone). His sig was a big picture of The Rock (the wrestler), with the caption "CAN U SMELLLLL WAT A ROCK IS COOKING". I don't know why, but whole setup was somehow hilarious. The sig picture was also grossly oversized (it was a vertical picture of The Rock, which is a nono since it takes up more vertical space, the reason most sigs are longer horizontally), but nobody ever called him on it. It was great. Come on. Somebody else has to remember that. - I forget what the next iteration of the tip.it forum was, but I know from January on, it was a dark blue, PhPBB board. - I think for a period of time in early 2002, tip.it did not have a board, forcing us users to settle down in another de facto primary RS board. Varrock Forums I know were popular for a time. Stompfest, and another guy whos name I can't remember (both from KC) ran a board. - I'm pretty sure Tip.it came back in a dark blue PhPBB form, because I remember Gugge warning me about sig sizes, arguing with Raenond about PK ethics and MMORPG morality, stirring up riots with Iampenguin about loggers... that was all on tip.it on a forum with a dark blue style. - There was also a smaller, exclusive "leet players board" that started in early 2002. I think it was GregE6 or Elx who invited me to it, and I forget for the life of me who ran it. Was it xxpr0xx? Bah, I can't remember. Somebody has to remember what I'm talking about, and tell me what those forums were called. - I quit RS in June 2002. I came back to tip.it in the fall just to mess around. By this time, it had changed to a white background resembling what we have now. I'm not sure if it was Scapeboard/DK3 yet, though. I recall getting warned by Lightning for having a flashing animated sig of kids playing with guns. - And then the 2003 era, which was definately Scapeboard/DK3. I remember in the fall of 2003 I participated in a big "Religion vs Science" Scapeboard Showdown vs. religion believers. I remember a guy pulling quotes from Dr. Dino, that was especially fun. I kept expecting the mods to warn me to tone it down in PM, but they liked it. Who knew? Eventually they closed down the thread, though, what a shame. I started playing RS again in fall of 2003, and I didn't have much time screwing around on tip.it, aside from that one evolution/creation debate. I did post some stuff about RS2 (when the RS2 demo was revealed in early December 2003). I don't know what I did, but for some reason my name appears in the credits for RS2 info. We hated RS2, so me and my friends called it quits for good, and went on to other games, and eventually WoW.

Real Lamp quit in April/May 2002. I don't know what became of his character after that, supposedly got banned. Kdog... I quit in mid 2002, but I still remember talking to him on AIM regularly up until early 2003, when I went off the grid. Annnd, I made a pure comeback in late 2003, and I saw him off and on a couple times, so apparently he was still playing as of December 2003. Last time I saw him. Wonder where he is now. :P That's quite a list, though.

I did Underground Pass with 1 agility. It took a while. Fortunately, the oil can was buyable when I did Earnest the Chicken. The puzzle is not too hard, though, I solved it for my brother because we didn't want to walk all the way back to town to buy it.

Some funny names I've seen: Eek A Mouse Iampenguin (I called him "Lamp" all the time) Muhahahahaha Fckedyomomm (had to change it, I believe...) Wife Beater (apparently named after the type of shirt, but people got mad at him anyway) Fook A Ji And Hat

What a shame, because it has everything PvP players are looking for. And more. You can build your own boats and shoot the crap out of other people. With cannons. How cool is that? WoW is a great game, but it's sorely lacking in PvP depth. It has such a great control system though, I'd love to see something like that, or even an improved version of it in another game. (Counterexample: Guild Wars, or EQ1 = horrible controls) Here's hoping WAR will be WoW, but with better PvP. From everything we've seen and heard, it strongly resembles a WoW clone... which is a good thing, as long as they get the PvP right. I've never played DAOC, so I can't comment on that. Here's also hoping Conan works out. It's the closest thing to Darkfall, with PvP (in PvP zones), player buildable cities, and most exciting, a real-time, action-based combat system. No more ridiculous "targeting" and dice rolled accuracy. Both these games will be coming out later this year, and I'll be trying them out for sure. But if Darkfall ever comes out, it's time to jump ship, because that'll be the game to have it all. Or if some other more established developer picks up on the concept.

http://www.darkfallonline.com

EvE is great. I played it for a while and it was a lot of fun. Reason I quit: none of my friends wanted to play it with me. Also the control system irritated me. You didn't have direct control over your ship; it was more "click here to move". While I didn't like the interface on a personal level, the game has brilliant interaction and depth. What other game has such a complex player-driven economy? Oh yeah, and scams are great in EvE. Nightfreeze, Guiding Hand Social Club, Currin Trading, and EIGB.

Well... crap. I can't remember my first post at all. It was years ago, in summer of 2001. It was something computer related, after a hacker hacked the tip.it website and tried to use it to store his uploaded warez files. Files the idiot was trying to upload were larger than the space available on the server; apparently he tried several times. Durrrr.

I remember stinger, he had good ranged. He was also one of the more old school archers, I remember seeing him on "Server Status" often. (Back when I was trying to get there myself.) I have been playing so long I knew Blick when he was a man. Hah. I knew him back in 2001. I quit and came back in 2003, and was like "Who the hell are you?". She was his sister. Some of my other ranged buddies I remember: - Kobiianardo, the highest ranged for a long time. In summer of 2001, I saw him hit a 13 and was like "WTF". I'd never seen him before, because he'd always trained on chickens and rats (I can't stand that method), and I was always in BK castle or Kharid warriors. He was a nice guy, just leaving the chickens to take a break on BKs. He quit in the fall to concentrate on school, and his level 88 ranged wasn't touched until Feb/Mar(?) of the next year. - Kxb, the guy who finally passed Kobii This guy was crazy. He shot up like a rocket, and from late December 2001 to March or so 2002, everybody in the ranged hiscore list took a (-1) to their name. A lot of people accused him of botting ranged, which wasn't true. You can macro chickens/rats, I suppose, and possibly Jail (not sure if programs of the time could have). But you can't macro BKs or Lava Maze in wildy, which is where he leveled. Plus he always responded when I talked to him. He did bot fighting, though, which is how he got banned. From what he said, he wanted to quit the game before summer, so he botted fighting in an obvious location to give himself the boot. I called him crazy, but what do you know, I quit myself that summer. - GregE6 I can't remember if it was him or somebody else who killed an idiot in wildy who had thousands and thousands of high level arrows (steel, mith, addy, +). Apparently the shady kid had links to some dupers, but anyway, good thing somebody killed him. He told me he'd trade me the arrows (to get 99 ranged) for 10k nature runes. So I camped the thieving chest for days to get them. However, I decided to quit the game and just gave the runes away. Also IIRC, GregE was the first player to have a sex change (before the makeover guy even existed). Also, in the earlier days of runescape, when his forum name on the original tip.it boards was "Cali Sun" (even though he's from NYC), he had a pic of Tsunami from Tenchi Muyo as his sig, so everybody thought he was a girl to begin with. Eh, I'll end this here before it to be too big a list.

I haven't played Runescape in years. I had no idea what "safing" meant until I read the thread. Upon doing so, I felt compelled to smack myself in the head and laugh at the sheer stupidity of it. THIS is what people are complaining about these days? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Five years ago, I remember one guy complaining about his opponent using food, and he was universally laughed out of the PK forums. And this is coming from me... In early 2002, me and Lampenguin - remember him? high level smither, the community's best prospect at challenging Bluerose's smithing dominance, but quit after getting high enough to make rune squares? - eh, nevermind. After retiring from smithing, he turned to PKing in the wilderness. What really ground our gears was "loggers", people who log out instantly upon seeing a white dot approach on the map. We started a big uproar on the forums complaining about loggers, petitioning Jagex to institute a logout timer (like WoW, you have to sit down for 20 seconds before you can log out), etc. We even took down the names of every person in the wilderness who logged, and encouraged others to do the same. The thing snowballed into a massive 3 page list in the PK forums. It was great. I wish I still had that list somewhere. Now obviously we got nowhere for our efforts, but it was great fun. This anti "safing" phenomenon, however, is just stupid and I feel stupider for having read about it.

Eric, prove to me *scientifically* that there is no life or existance after death. ;) You can't ask science to prove a negative. That being said, the scientific reasoning behind "when we die, we die" is this: There really is nothing after death - that we can measure. So a completely accurate statement is "When you die, you cease to exist as can be detected by modern science." However, science does not acknowledge the possibility if life after death, because 1) it is not required to explain anything, and 2) it requires an unnecessary "leap of faith". (Occam's Razor) In other words, an afterlife is unnecessary to explaining any phenomena, and its inclusion into scientific principles adds a slew of new "unexplainables" to sort out. We also have a satisfactory explanation for death: our "life" or "consciousness" is a result of electro-chemical reactions in the brain. When we die, these signals cease, effectively ending our lives. This is the simplest solution utilizing the fewest assumptions, and is consistent with existing scientific principles. If I said "We die because Family Guy's Death reads our medical forms and comes to kill us when our HMOs mark us as deceased.", that'd be a less satisfactory answer than above, because it relies on the unprovable assumption that Norm MacDonald is Death. This theme of Occam's Razor pretty much sums up my entire view on religion: That it's a matter of faith. (He was a 14th century Christian theologian who wanted to prove that believing in God is based on faith, not logic.) There is no proof, nor is there need of proof, for the existance of a god or gods. From a scientific perspective, which I choose to take, there is no religion. If you choose to believe in God, it's entirely up to you, and nobody can tell you "That's Wrong!", as it's a question of faith. I.e., what YOU believe. IMO the reason the last thread got so messy (well the part I participated in, anyway) was because people tried to apply religion to scientific concepts. Most notably literal interpretations of 7-Day creation in Genesis and Noah's Ark. Science cannot prove a negative, but it most certainly can disprove extraordinary claims that stray into its boundaries. In this case, taking Bible stories a little too seriously.