Jonnan001

Reply to The Great Debates -- VP Debates -- "Palin Needs Structure" in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

It's not just that Palin doesn't just have a lot of experience - her experience is . . . eerily familiar She took a city of 5,000 with no debt, and left it with a debt of $22,000,000. She pushed through a city gym of arguable worth, and put

Reply to Game ownership? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

In the U.S. at least, the status of "Owner of a Copy" gives specific rights, which do include archiving and using in a day to day fashion, and (having deleted my copy) selling the original and archived copies as a unit. Not including however reverse engineering/modifying outside certain specific parameter of the DMCA (Reverse engineering for purposes of compatibility is explicity allowed). So 1.), but to specific limited points condoned and outlined by law. Jonnan

Reply to Here comes the next OS from Microsoft in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

As someone that does tech support - no Vista is *not* as stable as XP in my experience - the support requirements are disproportionate to the market penetration. Not horrid, but not as good as XP either. Call it a reasonable second place. That said - my real problem with Vista is just that it does absolutely nothing to excite me in any way. It's not horrid, and it's certainly not Me, but Vista doesn't actually give me any reason to give a darn about upgrading. Barring games an

Reply to drm fallout in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

I think that's getting into the differance between entitled to and reasonable expectation again. The company own the board - I am not *entitled* to talk about anything their - it's their board, they could kick me out of a bar for picking a fight, so I assume they can kick me off a BBS. I have a reasonable expectation that's not going to happen, partly based on the rules of the road previously established, and partly based of the fact that, if the topic is a subject of legitima

Reply to GCII Keyboard Shortcuts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Stupid question: Ctrl P has been added for the planetary governor - are there are *other* new keys added to 2.0? I'm playing with SVG and using it to create what I think is (With apologies) a better keymap, as a stepping stone to another project. - I have an almost up to date awaiting evaluation; but don't want to miss anything obvious. Thanks - Jonnan

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Draginol" reply="10" id="1893814"] [quote][quote] Not legitimate: DRM is just wrong in principle, you buy something, you own it and should be able to do whatever you want. This is a view held by some but the person who makes the thing has the right to distribute it how they want. If I spend $5 million making a game, someone paying $50 doesn’t “own” it. There has to be some middle ground on serving customers and protecting IP holders.[/quote]<br

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Not legitimate: DRM is just wrong in principle, you buy something, you own it and should be able to do whatever you want. This is a view held by some but the person who makes the thing has the right to distribute it how they want. If I spend $5 million making a game, someone paying $50 doesn’t “own” it. There has to be some middle ground on serving customers and protecting IP holders.[/quote] I will argue that there is a limited form of this that is legitimat

Reply to GCII - Espionage in a more Customizable Galaxy in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="serptico" reply="18" id="1893026"]Your the only one with the wild imagination. It must be lonly in your world jonnan.[/quote] "Wild Imagination" - That someone can't see your arguing over the question of revamped, radical, or improved as being assinine and childish without somehow being evidence of some wild imagination - what a self-important conceit. Serptico - get over yourself already. Jonnan

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Spartan" reply="8" id="1892995"] Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Umm... So how is it you are for the bailout and seem to be of the opinion that if the average guy gets screwed to damn bad - his fault for not planning properly for the end of the world regardless of Normal 0 fa

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Long and the short of it is you're going to have to provide references on that Psychoak, because I don't see anything in the stats to bear that out, and it would be pretty a pretty big footprint if it were true. The 1986 Tax reform dropped the top income tax from 50% to 28%, while removing the Capital Gains from being exempt to being taxable, and was designed to be revenue neutral (i.e., balance the two of them out so that the gain in the one would balance out the loss in the other),

Reply to GCII - Espionage in a more Customizable Galaxy in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="serptico" reply="16" id="1892967"] Quoting Jonnan001, reply 15 Asinine, or childish . . I'm just not sure . . . Jonnan do me a favor, stay unsure ...[/quote] You want favors, don't put people in the position of figuring out if you're being asinine or childish - {G}. Jonnan

Reply to Freakin' Peacekeepers everywhere - what to do? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Oh - once I had enough tech, I plowed through the Pirates pretty easily. It was the Dread Lords that had been sitting across the map from me slowly becoming more powerful that were something of an issue - {G}. Jonnan

Reply to GCII - Espionage in a more Customizable Galaxy in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="serptico" reply="6" id="1892310"] Quoting GW Swicord, reply 4 We were promised a radical change I hate to play with words either but really, in my opinion the word revamped vs radical for marketing purposes is not really a major difference. But if they wanted an honest marketing, I would of used the word improvement for which people wouldn't of mistaken for revamped or radical. [/quote] Hmmmm. Asinine, or childish . . I'm just not

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]So my answer is B. since you fail to see the case from Blizzards point of view and instead make short sighted conclusions in favor of the user. short sighted because either the new implementation of the eulas may be more inconvenient for the user and/or the production of games will shrink the user would want to consume.[/quote] That fine Bodyless - perhaps my logic is flawed. But "fail to see the case from Blizzards point of view and instead make short sighted conclusio

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="EmperorThrawn" reply="20" id="1892492"] On the capital gains tax if you what to raise it fine but know this, every it is raised income from this tax drops why? Well because the wealthy can wait two, three, five years tells it is lowered again (or find some other tax shelter) And what happens when it is lowered? can any one guess, why yes revenue from it rises You if you want it to be “fair” fine go ahead raise it but it wi

Reply to Drath War Profitering Too Powerfull? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I'm not sure I'd say it's overpowered - get rolling on Tourism and you can easily have more money than that. Not that 600 is chump change, but it's about one bought item a week (Maybe more if you're neutral). Jonnan

Reply to Freakin' Peacekeepers everywhere - what to do? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

If it's anything like the "Pirates Everywhere" variant that happened to me; I'd recommend concentrating on creating a few fast ships that they can't catch, and let everyone else get their arses shot off while you expand. With the pirates, I just cashed in my starbases for the decommision money (they were going down anyway) upped my tech until I could beat them, then blew them out of the sky. THe real problems was that the vast pirate fleet had kept everyone holed up when the Dread Lor

Reply to Galactic Civilizations II: v2.0 is coming... in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

I presume my spies will steal what they can get - for you maybe: "Gee, I was gonna pick up these blueprints for a doom ray, but Dark Lord Serptico was definite that he wanted a mass driver. I guess I'll leave them there - he's always yellin' 'bout bein surrounded buy idiots and fools and stuff, I don' wanna make him mad at me" Jonnan

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]However the real issue is why did the companies allow this - it clearly wasn't maximising shareholders interests, and so that suggests the shareholders did not have full information regarding this.[/quote] The problem here is the assumption that it *wasn't* maximizing shareholder value - in fact it was . . . for a time. Which means something fairly obvious - every analyst for a firm that told his boss "Stay out of these derivative markets" had to have an answer for his

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="psychoak" reply="25" id="1890428"]It wont solve anything because fannie and freddie will still be required by law to buy bad mortgages and create an artificial market for them. Jonnan, run for president, you've got my vote for changing capital gains to income. Got an opinion on the fair tax plan? You're rather unfair towards the investments though. It's not as if people invest into a vacuum. Although the m

Reply to Federation and Empire in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

And you thought the British Parliament was rough and tumble politics - {G}. Jonnan

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Willy: The authors of "[link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Done_Gone"]The Wind Done Gone[/link]" parody of "Gone with the Wind", a reverse engineered retelling of the exact story of "Gone with the Wind" beg to differ with you on the basis that (IMO) that single court case seems to me to debunk every point you seemed to believe you were making. 'nuf said. Jonnan

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Factual inaccuracy: a 54-44 party line ([link="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00105#position"]1 Dem in favor, no GOP against[/link]) vote in the Senate for [link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act"]Gramm Leach Bliley Act[/link] does not exactly scream 'massive bipartisan support in both houses, although the house vote was more one-side, 90+% of the GOP and exactly 2/3rds of the Democrats voted

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

With apologies Bodyless - I gave you a list of five points. Either A. My logic is right, but one of the premises I have listed in that post is wrong, so the logic, while consistent, is based on a false premise. If you believe one of those premises is wrong, please tell me which one and why you believe that. B. My premises are correct, but my logic is flawed. Again, if you believe that to be the case, please point out the step that you believe is incorrect. C. H

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="psychoak" reply="4" id="1888969"]That isn't entirely accurate. The deregulation makes this scenario possible. It does not however make it impossible to refuse buying a bad loan. Being able to buy and sell loans allows for more risk yes, but without Fannie and Freddie being run in an insane manner for back door socialism, there would be no massive housing bubble right now. With no one to sell the $200k mortage with zero down for a guy making $30k a year to,