shinRaiden

Markets-smarkets. Numbers can be spun anyway you want by whoever wants to, as has well been evidenced by all parties so far. The president can beg 'pretty-please' to the Fed, but aside from that the only impact he can have on the international money markets is to play political suckup to invite foriegners to sell euro and buy dollar, or tax breaks for deep pockets to encourage the same. Now what he can directly affect is regulation and dicisplinary control that more directly impacts the middle-lower guys. One significant economic CF was the contrived artificial tech balloon. Problem was that real stuff was one-time capital investments or 20-year type of stuff, but everyone was spinning it as quarterly adventures. Do you need a router? Maybe. Do you need a new one every 3 months? Heck no - but the analysts were saying that you were going to anyway. With the glorious reliability of the economics department, as well typified by the stellar performance of Arthur Anderson (rip) and numerous other CFO's I would like to see a smidgeon of credibilty out of the bean-counters - based on a sound foundation of logic and reason. When people start paying this kind of attention to exchange rate wiggles, they pretend that they can shuffle long-term capital figgers around as pseudo-operating numbers. Worldcom tried that and nearly died sucking wind. My present employer is (like many others) so focused on selling quantifiable results at the 'cheapest' quantifiable price, that have actually screwed their core accounts unwittingly. My previous employer lost major business accounts because they focused on quantity over quality. I understand the reason behind cutthroat business trafficking, but this has gone so far over into everyone screwing each other for CYA profiteering that the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg is getting gang-raped for the feathers.

My biggest concern is that people on both sides are talking a lot not about voting FOR someone, rather voting AGAINST someone, ie "Anyone but Bush" or "Anyone but Dean." A report last week said that previous wave's of mexican immigrants that came north legally for work, are now getting squeezed because their factories are going south, and they can't compete with those who cook their papers. Then you have the city attorney's in San Fransisco who when asked about the legality of the recent Gay marriages said that "the local jurisdicitions are entitled to exercising their own interpretation of constitutional law." Bush is saying "We're all going to die, so we got to plug them first." Kerry is saying "Bush is a liar and incompetent." And the voters in general are suckers that get strung along and vote however OprahW and Dr. Phil tells them to.

So if I folllow this right, you're saying that when you start the server, or anyone else for that matter does on their machines, all's swell, but using the same configs Karr's machine crashes? First off, which OS - Win(ver?) or Linux? 2nd - dedicated or internal launch server? My experience with the memory setting in the preferences app is that the addons needing larger amounts of memory are those that have individual components requireing the -nomap exception, not a massive volume of itty-bitty stuff. If it is a windows machine, we'd especially need some specs, as well as an apps list of running processes. Posting the flashpoint.cfg would help too. Thanks.

A large part of our (the west's) problem is that we are impatiently demanding that the Islamic ME come to the conclusions, and make the philosophical changes overnight that took us over 500 years to do ourselves.

The primary problem as I see it is thus: xNIX by default is just the skeleton. Most everything is applications seperate from the 'OS'. Lots of stuff can or is turned off by default. Most importantly, users in general are actually somewhat interested in taking personal and proactive administrative measures. With windows, (for litigation reasons, not for functionality) everything is the system-borg. Everything is cross-incestualized, and it is specificly designed (for litigation reasons) to be impossible to unravel. You 'NEED' these features, so they are all turned on for spiffiyness's sake. Firewall? Why would need that? Aren't people friendly? Lets be friends everyone... I design stuff with MySQL, PHP, ActiveState Perl, and Apache on an XP pro system, then implement it on linux servers. IIS does everything to/with everyone, all turned on out of the box for your friendliness. Apache spits out pages period. Add a mod_x here, a mod_y there, pick and choose only what you need, and lock that down, and it's cool. To sum it up, with Windows, you get all the doors out of the box, and they're all open. With Unix, there are no doors, and they'd be locked if they were there. It's a fundamental logical difference, and unreconcilible.

The problem here is that the leaking was done by the black-hat community, as opposed to the white-hat crowd. Code in this state is unreliable, as you have no idea as to whether it has been 'pre-tweaked'. Aditionally, as we have seen in the case of HL2 and Warcraft:WOW, security breachs can result in lost of future development or indefinite postponement. While that is not as big a factor in MS's case,what you will see is litigation related issues. Remember folks, MS is and has always been run by lawyers. Mr. Bill (pbh) Is a lawyer, NOT an engineer. So are all his associates. Classic photo from his High School days shows Paul Allen pushing the buttons and Mr. Bill supervising with his hands in his pocketz. My prediction: nothing comes from the code other than more virii and garbage. The vast majority of the general populace will get migrated to truely draconian online DRM per-usage licensing, DCMA enforcement enhancement could be expanded to include automatic espionage authorization, etc. From a legal standpoint, it's not unreasonable for MS to take self-protection actions that will then hammer all the rest of the users. The 'easiest' thing would be for everyone to 'just go along'... whether we like it or not. - from a IT janitor onboard the Death Star.

l0s3r punk tried to IRC al'qeada More tolled logs n blogs Is it lawful for Muslims to lie to 'infidels' about anything for any reason? I've heard that it is. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

True Turkey has been a lot more 'stable' and hospitable than the rest of the ME, but Turkey is unique in lots of ways. First off, they are Turkmen, not Arabs. Also, in the west, you have a strong historical greek influence. Turkey, because of it's location, has been a place where Europe, Asia, and the ME all wander though, rather than stop at the borders. Kemal Atturk (?) iirc had to do a fair amount of typical despotic bloddletting though to enforce Turkey's secularism. Also, not being a significant Oil baron, they've had to rely more on classical marketeering, which has resulted in a moreflexible society. That and they haven't sold themselves off to the Wahabi's.

What is 'real', and what is the extent of it? Yes, and it is the obligation of both parties to confirm and resolve them. That's what I do. It's called living. Life just a big experiment, so many big shiny buttons so little time to push them all... Â When I was younger, my dad and I were at the airport. We didn't know that I needed coke-bottle glasses bad, so he asked me to read the numbers on the tail of a nearby plane. "What plane?" I asked. All I could see was a big fuzzy. Â To my perception, that plane did not exist. Of course, my dad having 20/10 vision couldn't understand why I said that there was no plane out there. How do we know what the limits of personal perception are? I would be more inclined to be leary of the interpretations, rahter than the actual text itself. Another plus for Islam, they have deftly avoided the translation debacle by declaring that only Arabic Quran's are valid. However, this means that for non-arabic speakers, we'll never quite get the hang of what's talked about. Being a partime translator (waei/eiwa) myself, I understand the vagarities and pitfalls common to translation. In fact, when I translate, I have two choices: a) dictate verbatim as to what the speaker is saying - and be sure no one understands the message, or provide interpretive translation - and describe what is 'really' meant. I could, for example, say all sorts of crap in front of my boss, and he'd never have the foggiest. Yeah, aren't we a bunch of pansies. I will say though, that on the personal level as opposed to the organizational level, the religious indepence expressed by the populace at large has been one of the chief mitigating factors supporting the west. The lack of uniformity and discipline though has led to different forms of abuse and malfeasence. Now, the Q of the day - is religious liberty something still worth fighting for and dying for? I may personally believe you are going to hell, but my faith obligates me to defend with my life your right to choose to go there. Â While Islam was the friendlist to Judiasm in the middle ages, they still practiced segregation and political exclusivity.

No, science claims that it can be proved independently by its own laws, and my faith like most others claims that it can be personally verified via its own methods. As each is verified by its own laws to the observer, and that the results can be reproduced by another observer, I correlate the two. Each religion has their own variation of a faith-based process to verify their claims. Most will admit, however, that the results are not externally independently verifiable according to classic scientific methodology. However, they hold that the results are just as valid and binding in their domain. You do not use audiological tests to determine the color of stars, and you do not use color spectrography to display the frequency shift in doppler echo-location. Now the problem we see in the ME is a rather dicey one. You're right that Christendom has its bad apples in its historical barrel. But the way we dealt with it is through ~1800 years of ongoing bloody civil war. And the consequences are that our fundamentalists are still out there, but the general populace austracizes them to avoid any further calamity. This is because a lot of 'cowboy' westerners chose to question the inconsistencies in their beliefs, and stand up for change. Some fought, many burned. This is still a major taboo in the ME - self introspection  of one's own faith. To Judiasm, this is equateable to adding to the holocaust, and the core tenet of Islam is 'Submission'. Both positions are non-negotiable, any any 'political' solutionshave to be compatible with incompatibilities. To me however, that selfsame introspection and resultant personalization of faith is the core of my ability to believe. Specifcly in the case of the palestinian issues, you have israeli and palestinian christians marching together in parades, muslim palestinian vendors supporting Israeli firms, Muslim Israelis in the Army and Knesset, Muslim palestinian and Jewish Israeli restaurant co-owners, etc. But when you ask about the things that really matter, like who ultimately gets to have the big rock, there can and will be no negotiations.

New CRITICAL update from my bosses: kbid=833404 Seeems that once again the Bhuddist <manji> has offended those that do not speak Japanese. Yoroshiku ne.

Unfortunately, any possible discourse between science and faith has been so abused that it has forced a polarization of the camps into non-negtioable positions. Since strictly rational science leaves no placefor esoteric faith, religious persons would then be confined to the scientific purgatory of ignorance. On the other hand, for a person of faith to deny to deny the manifest works of God, and ascribe them solely to the relative impulsive and reactive theories of science, would be heretical and assure one of spiritual purgatory. With this logic or arguement, there can not be any room for compromise or debate by either party, and you just have a bigoted mess on both sides. --- Anyway, this should be cheaper than paying the families of the Hezbollah bombers for the Iranians: Kerry email's Iran

In addition to the flickering, I should have mentioned that I was having huge amounts of jaggies as well. I believe that would be a limitation of OFP not (correctly?) using AA/AS in windowed mode? Could that be the cause of the flicker? No change in flickering between different resolutions, bit depths, and D3D vs. HWTL.

I set OFP in the preferences app to run in a 640x480 window on my 2nd monitor. The problem is that either in 16b or 32b it flickers like mad with the refresh sync. My monitor is running at 85hz, so that's not it, it has to do with game fps. Fraps is showing anywhere from 25 to 65 fps. Ideas on how I can make this flicker go away? Thanks.

Sorry, FAQ didn't fix the problem. I have the issue described in the FAQ when I have an actively refreshing window like task manager or asus probe running non-minimized on the non-OFP monitor when OFP is running full screen. That's more like flippling back and forth between video feeds. This is specific to the OFP window itself, and seems tied directly to the OFP fps rate. More FPS in fraps = less flicker. Currently running 640x480x32-HWTL. OFP is at 1.96b, but this is the first time I've tried this windowed setup.

The vast majority of the "plz add this" posts could be answered merely by searching the forums. I may have been guilty of asking for the multi-turret feature on something right after I started cruising the forums, but I never asked twice, and I reminded others of that. I'm not in, nor have I been in any armed service. The best I know is from chinooks flying overhead for alpine SAR missions, or driving past strykers on training ONCE while on a service call. Therefore, I am in no way qualified to declare the right or wrong way, and if I did, I would have enough material to require a pm channel anyway. There are new folks (like me) still joining OFP. I would like to see an abbreviated FAQ of known issues pinned in the Addons:Discussion forum listing stuff like all the turret/vehicle type limits, so that n00bs know what not to ask for, and also to use as a basic overview of addon development functions. I think OFP, because of its nature, is fortunate to have a large amount of maturer players, as well as a good portion of people with real military experinence. That tends to make people more disciplined, but I presume lowers your tolerence for idiotic crap, right? Thank you for what you do. Now if only I could figure out how to make Oxygen work... then I'd make a cube.

If you track the between-the-lines arguements, I think you'll see a lot of regional pan-arab politicking going on here. This, ironically, is the very sort of thing Muhammad fought so hard to correct. The unfortunate part is the traditional despots bought out / crushed the idealists and then assumed spiritual leadership. Nothing personal, you'll find that to some degree in every religion. Unfortunately, many of the despots have successfully wiggled interpretations of the both the koran and the hadidths - like others have done with their scriptures - to deny the fundamental principle of faith - that crucial to the core of islam is one CHOOSING to submit to God's will. Where death and hell is thrown at the enemy instead of missionaries of peace, that in turn inspires us to Jihad in return, with bigger sticks and stones. When the black community in America woke up, they united together to prove to the world that they were worth respect, that they were peaceful human beings. You had the most vocal leaders untited in opposing the radical terrorist elements that tried to mimic the worst of the klan. Same in India, and when some guy whacked Ghandi, Ghandi was the one who won in the end. In regards to the clerics cited by AceCombat, there are many people with hearts of sanity and moderation in the northern tribes. They understand the need religiously and politically to be neighborly. But the Saud family built its throne by uniting the kingdom under the Wahabi tent, and gave them free reign. Now the princes wring their hands while the street police stay on veil patrol. It is good to see Iran shake a bit. I particularlly noticed that the resignation was made live on public radio. Perhaps the people will talk in their families and neighborhoods and stand up for these people. Inshallah. We need more of these type of people.

If one wishes to complete the hajj, one must go to mecca. Who does the preaching in Mecca? The wahabi's. If you wish to go to al'aqsa, you have their brothers. Are there moderate clerics in the muslim world? Yes, but not there. So despite what othes may say, the 'official' word is wahabi. BTW, what's the status on the class action lawsuit proposed by egyptian law professors to recover damages against all jews and their collaborators for 'loses' in the exodus? This further illustrates the utter lack of regard for critical legal institutions such as statues of limitations. Furthermore,a number of clerics have condemned that action, as it would expose egypt to liability for compensatory and punative damages for the slavery. Additionally, that would tend establish 'uncomfortable' religious precedent, so who knows where it will go. Western european christianity had its dark ages of oppression too, and it took a lot of people getting burnt at the stake for the general populace to wake up and smell the larceny upstairs. Now anytime a David Koresh type pops his head up, it gets whacked down pretty fast. Until the moderate ration muslims rise up and fix the mess, and proactively create peace, they will, whether or not they like it, be branded culpabile in the court of public opinion. That will lead to further ostracizement, segregation, illegal abbrogation of human rights, and percieved justification for terrorism. The wahabi's have declared open war on the west in general, and the US in particular. And war they shall have. Now, if you think they are whacked, are you going to restore the lost honor of islam, or watch the the train wreck? Enough with the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' business.

Does anyone know where we can find reliable reports on school attendance rates, new school construction rates, utility coverage and managed blackout (ie turned off) areas and current damaged utility system capacity reports? Of course it is 'not' going to work for the US. If school rates are up, then they are being compelled to be in school. If they are down, Saddam was better. If there are more new schools, its buying off the populace and padding the corrupt contractors. If there are less, Saddam was better. If more folks have electricity, some still do not. If less have electricity, more had power with reprisal blackouts and postwar "forced due to chaos" looting of substations and power lines. If more folks have water, it dosen't have flouride or clorination, or is flooding the ecologically sensative swamps. If less have water, Saddam gave more water to those living in the desert. You get the point folks, that objective numbers really don't matter as long as you filter them with the proper subjective lenses. Speaking of which, I need to check the gamma filter in my Emerald City Green Glasses. I fear they are exceeding legal translucency.

Just a clarification, I'm not knocking Islam the religion in my previous post. I'm just saying that I think various imams such as the Wahabi's are hijacking the religion for their own personal gain, and that those who do not hold to those beliefs and believe that they are in fact heretical need to speak up, and louder than those agitating for war, destruction, and desolation.

The finest scholarly work of the early middle ages, the translated preservation of classical greek texts, the establishment of law - order - and justice in the ME in a relatively peaceful fashion, the advancement of commerce, the protection of different religions (aside from paganism) -- all are thanks to the genius of Muhammad and the early caliphs. As for military expansion, most governments at the time were despots with mercenary armies augmented by peasant militia. The fights were generally for protection of muslim minorities and protection of trade routes as Acecombat pointed out. In fact, the first military action was to reclaim aggrieved property in Mecca. Unfortunately, the caliphate being theocratically despotic in nature (not perjorative, rather subjective) tended to frequently revert to traditional tribal bickering, corruption, and oppresion. After a particular bad egg like Abul-Abbas al-Saffah (ruled Baghdad from 750ad to 754ad, titled himself 'al-saffah' = 'the bloodletter'), the historical trend has been for a good lengthy chunk of general chaos, followed by the next strongman, whether it be Kemal Atturk, Anwar Sadat, Saddam Hussein, or Hafez al'Assad. Speaking of Assad, Tom Friedman [NY Times] has a joke he learned from the Lebanese. Now with these guys, no matter how many villages they gas, somebody outside the country, er, a long ways away (saddam's sons got whacked in Amman for backtalking), is still going to complain and demand the despot's head. HOWEVER, you didn't hear of a lot of back talk from people Khomeini or Taliban days. After all, what right do they have to question the fallibility of their divinely appointed leaders? While various local clergy in various places have fomented unrest and oppresion in western history, over time the people have forced the churches to correct their abuses. We do have a healthy history of fratricidal religious conflict here in the west, and I think it has helped to actually stablize relations. I think what we westerners are getting fed up with and impatient at is the fundamental principle of 'Islam' equating to 'submission', in the negative sense. I know several people who view that more in an intrapersonal spiritual sense, and view islam as their personal way of life, not as the borg collective to be spread. Additionally, a concern is the independence of each mosque and its imams. There are many wonderful law abiding honorable muslims in this world, but why don't they pipe up when they see their religion abused for conquest, terror, and perversion? On three flights on 9/11, folks sat in their seats and did as they were told. On the fourth, folks ignored the "DO NOT ENTER COCKPIT IN FLIGHT" signs and went and did something about the hijackers. That's what we're asking for I guess, basicly that you're on a runaway train and help is needed in the cab immediately.

Yeah, I prefer scrambled over fried. Thanks. I just pulled the 'last rites' phrase out of the air, as I'm only speaking japanese with the vendors here at work all day, so my engrish is really muddled. Thanks again. -- edit - added -- Whoa, I knew the buses were nice, but I didn't know that they were 1337! (see the url string)

So the US is trying to rig the elections to prevent the Shiites from rigging the elections, while clamping down on Sunni rigging of the elections, and likely writing off the kurdish elections, and the Iranians are looking to slip under the shiite nose and rig the elction their way, and I suppose that the syrians have their interests in the NW and the turks to the north, and the Kuwaiti's probably are bribing the british to take care of things in the south. The next world series is probably easier to call at this point. C'mon Iraqi supreme court, show us some chads. Anybody want to take a stab as to how long the first president will last, or will he be shown the 'Pierre Gemayal door' like Lebanon?

Maybe in maintanence mode... Says here that Al-Aksa stated that their bomber was a PA Policeman. News report on recent bombing Also, for perspective... The chief editor lived across the street too. My 2yen: I've been to the mall on the west side of Jerusalem, down towards the Tisch zoo. (Walked from the zoo too, as I totally misread the map and wouldn't ask for directions) How many malls in the US have armed checkpoints and military-base security? I got a pizza once at the Sbarro's in Eilat, and wandered through the plaza there. There was a hummer with a either a .50cal or a mk-19, I forget which, and it wasn't on display. A major part of the problem is the same difficulty that screwed up Vietnam and North Korea, in that the US for political reasons refused to deal with the suppliers and staging sites in China. Here in the middle east's case, you have Arafat shipping in boatloads of automatic small and medium arms, anti-tank weaponry, explosives material, and for what good purpose? What average palestinian has a spare T-54 in his garage that the PA police could be worried about? Saddam Hussein paid $25000 to the family of every palestinian suicide bomber, and I think I heard he upped it to $35000 just before we put an end to that. The syrians have been passing off all their old surplus equipment to Hezbollah, which stages out of Lebanon. Egypt's not allowed to really put any equipment other than border patrol in the whole Sinai east of the suez under UN monitoring. Even Jordan was caught up in '48. Who did the Israeli's sieze the land from in '67? Not the palestinians, it was the Jordanians. The Jordanians were so commitied to it that King Hussein started building his 'palace' just north of Jerusalem. Since the arab nations are still united in opposing the existance of the state (and people?) of israel, and are openly aiding and abetting her enemies in levying war, would any of the pro-palestinian supporters care to venture any reasonable suggestions as to where Israel could safely obtain asylum? The UN did partition at least part of the land for a Jewish state. The arab nations have unilaterally attempted to prevent that directly and indirectly. As for the boundry/fence disputes, you'd have to go walk the line to understand the issues involved. Even a good topographical map doesn't readliy explain line of sight, not that that matters for a katyusha. Basicly, the israelis want the fence on the arab down-slope of the hills, and the palestinians want it on the israeli down-slope, and everything is hills. -- edit - added below -- I normally have sigs turned off as I'm on dialup. Just noticed your comment a few pages back Avon, thank you so much for what you do. BTW, where can I find more information about the volunteer squads that assist in cleanup, the guys that work alongside the police and firefighters to ensure that last rites / any religious needs are done properly? Um, english if possible plz. Also, I'm looking for an online egged bus map. References anyone? Thanks.

There really ain't a thread for this... Basicly, this is the critical core code for exporting graphics into OFP PAA/PAC format. If you want to make a converter like texview, or create a viewer application, or a wrp editor, this is the key to WRITING textures. Essentially, this is just the skeleton _defs and code to structure your data arrays of pixels, and properly process them through the pal2pac.dll included with Oxygen. The biggest need that can now be filled is to make a transition masher, where you could load in some base textures, a list of desired transitions, and punch out textures. Or you could make a converter for other raw formats.