455 replies to this topic

[greywolf]

Tom Henrik, on Sep 21 2006, 04:11 PM, said:

greywolforiginal, on Sep 21 2006, 04:19 PM, said:

It may be true that the Crusaders paved the way for a free America, but I still don't consider them Christians.

They paved the way for what now?

I was responding to what I *think* Tai was trying to say a bit earlier about how the Crusades led to freedom to worship.

But thank you, AJ!

That picture reminds me of that one movie Mission to Mars, where a mountain took the shape of a giant alien face.

[Sinke]

Juni Ori

Quote

Well, would there be European culture as it is without Aristotle's writings?

It would certainly be different. For example, the text "Poetica" infuenced our culture for thousands of years, and it's remarks are still considered a sort of mainstream both in theatre and film.

Juni Ori,

Quote

Moral values do have a lot to do with peoples' opinions and there are some patterns "sane" human mind follows.

I could agree, but only to some extent. Since freedom can never go to extremes, somebody will always have to suffer. Catholics are against contaception and stem cell experiments and they feel endangered if they live in society which does those things. That means "sane" is very broad term, since they certainly don't think those practices are sane.

Juni Ori,

Quote

There I strongly agree. As some may know, I've been speaking on behalf of natural mix of nations, not unnaturally hasted globalization, which has brought different nations and cultures into same neighborhood. And those thinking now I'm racist: go ahead, think what you want, but then I rate some people with foreign roots that I know far higher than you. They accept me and my opinions, though they are all globalists.

I also agree with this opinion. It is fine to give cures to Africa, but at the same time one needs to give them enough power to sustain their agriculture ( thus sustaining increased population). What we did is that we gave them money which they spent on weapons and started their wars, now running for decades. Their medicine is very low, and agriculture is even worse.
On the other hand, one can't expect this societies to embrace our cultural values over night. It took us hundreds of years to embrace the liberalism and freedom of thought/ religion ( and it still doesn't work as much as it was expected). Globalism is here, it was here for hundreds of years since we connected two villages with foot-made road.  Now we should put it on the higher level.

Concerning powersources,
Nikolay Tesla formed an idea of what can be described as "atmospheric generator". This tech would use energy from Earth's atmosphere. Despite the popular thinking, this tech would be pollution free since Earth's atmosphere is quite strong and it recovers very fast on poles. However, when this project was recomended to Nikolay's profit givers, they canceled his work. They were afraid this invention could turn the whole balance in the world upside down. USA would lose it's coal, Arabs would lose their oil- energy would be free and for all. I guess we can't agree on powersources as well.

Religion questions- I think religion is belief, and even atheists have their belief.

Oh yes, my contribution for getting on topic again.... this is Serbian football manager giving comments about recent game of his team:

Cheers!

[A. J. Raffles]

greywolforiginal, on Sep 21 2006, 11:07 PM, said:

That picture reminds me of that one movie Mission to Mars, where a mountain took the shape of a giant alien face.

It's probably the same mountain. As far as I know, there was only one "face on Mars".

[Sinke]

It is called Cydonia, and yes, that is from "Mission on Mars". Quite dull movie, if you ask me.

Cydonia is important for gaming community. It is where aliens have base in first X-com: Ufo enemy unknown ( Ufo defense ).

[greywolf]

Ah, really. I only played X-Com: Apocalypse (and loved it, of course). I tried X-Com (the original), but couldn't figure the controls out, so I dropped it and went back to ADoM.

[A. J. Raffles]

There's a good boy.

[Sinke]

Ha ha ha ha!
Went to ADoM , leaving UFO!
I mean, UFO at least has graphical interface!
Ha ha ha ha!

PS: joking, altough I think first UFO is the best game in history, ADoM is fascinating on it's own way. Especially....ha ha ha ha, graphic interface!

[greywolf]

rofl! I didn't even think about that!

Thanks, AJ.

[Potatoe]

Sinke, on Sep 22 2006, 12:43 PM, said:

It is called Cydonia, and yes, that is from "Mission on Mars". Quite dull movie, if you ask me.

Cydonia is important for gaming community. It is where aliens have base in first X-com: Ufo enemy unknown ( Ufo defense ).

NOOOOoooOOOOoo! You spoilt it for me

ADoM is awsome. It's hard, but winning is about skill and being able to evaluate the situation, not how you can control it.(Referring to X-com.. which is great, should download it again, or maybe the sequals..) xD

edit: Damnit, terror from the deep is not abandonware... Well, I think the original and the 3rd one will have to do. xD

[Juni Ori]

Something badly wrong...

I can't understand why these things happen all the time? What's wrong? Society in some way? Media for "advertising" initial school bloodshed? Also, what disturbs me, is:

Quote

"Officers breached the classroom with explosives and within seconds the suspect shot at entering Swat (specialised response unit) officers, then shot one of the two female hostages, then shot himself."

I would assume that if there's claimed explosives inside, breaching unit would immediately take the man down. I'm not part of any special forces - except vaguely in reserve for my armed service - but I do follow technology and tactics evolving and have to wonder. Of course there are situations when everything go wrong, but in my eyes these things happen too often. Or are there in truth much more situations, but most operations go as they should and thus they don't have any media value? Anyways, to back my earlier claims, breaching units can be very close to the breaching charges and have immediately aim into the room. Tactically positioned, something like 90% of the room space can be covered and spread full of lead, if necessary. Also in most cases "fortified" criminals, especially mentally unstable, don't actually fortify anything, but only cover the windows with curtains / loose material and at most blocking the door with a table or something - that doesn't have much effect to breaching charges. The door opens anyway and gives the unit good aim. One thing I must criticize is how easily decision for tactical operation (read assault) is made. I don't know if it's some sort of cowboy mentality, but it's not very clever in most situations.

Enough of preaching.

[DeathDude]

Not even a month after the Montreal shooting and another one, geez and in Colorado too, that's even worse, sad what happened in this case and wish the family of the girl who was killed much strength and support for their loss.

Well as was said a deadline was set and negotiations broke off with the suspect so they went tactical, seems to me they may have rushed trying to get into the room, and we don't know if perhaps the suspect heard the swat team coming up and was yelling things at him that he was going to shoot the girls, or whatnot so that's probably why the swat team did what they did.

[Sinke]

At this moment, nobody knows what man really wanted. Baricaded suspects are very problematic situation, but teams like SWAT are there to interfere.

I was talking with one of local specialists in the field. He told me that in this cases you usually can't expect to have complete success. Remember Beslan? There was no way to stop the tragedy there. Altough maybe smarter intervention would bring better results.

In case mentioned, since the man was a single threat, the best thing they could have done was taking him out with a sniper. On the other hand, deploying pepper gas would probably disarm him ( but he could still shoot the hostages before). Making breach with explosive is strange move, but I'm sure there was a reason for that.  

In cases as such, it is very difficult to distinguish best move from worst catastrophe.

[greywolf]

Juni Ori, on Sep 28 2006, 04:31 AM, said:

Something badly wrong...

Tactically positioned, something like 90% of the room space can be covered and spread full of lead, if necessary... The door opens anyway and gives the unit good aim.

I don't think it would be wise to just start shooting into a room as soon as the door opens when the gunman has a hostage. The smoke from the explosives blowing the door open probably also added to the confusion and slow response of the SWAT team to stop the gunman from shooting the hostage as well.

But I have to agree with you on the first part. It seems like these tragic shootings happen more and more. As for why... who knows? Is it society in general? Is it the school practice of cliques that alienate some people? Is it because no one showed them a spot of kindness in their life? I don't know.

Does anyone know how old the shooter was? EDIT: He was 54, according to Google news. Looks like it blows that cliques suggestion out of the water for this particular shooting anyway.

[Sinke]

I believe it has something to do with Western society, not American specifically. I think we can't recognize the problems , not to mention that we can't find answers on them .

Interesting: Dubrovnik, while it was a city-state, had a law which considered murders commited during season of warm wind Jugo ( which rises anger and frustration ) far less a crime then murders commited without Jugo.

[A. J. Raffles]

Sinke, on Sep 28 2006, 03:57 PM, said:

I was talking with one of local specialists in the field. He told me that in this cases you usually can't expect to have complete success. Remember Beslan? There was no way to stop the tragedy there. Altough maybe smarter intervention would bring better results.

"Better results" as in an intervention that doesn't actually cause a large part of the supposedly inevitable tragedy? Maybe Beslan isn't really the best example here. The case reminded me a bit of that hostage thing at a Russian theatre (St Petersburg, I think) a few years earlier: the majority of the hostages killed there were killed by that gas used by the police, just as a lot of the children killed at Beslan were probably killed by the rescuers. I'm sorry, but I find it very cynical to justify hostages getting killed by the people who are meant to rescue them by saying you can't expect "complete success" in such a case.

Anyway, on topic: this is my favourite news item of the day: link