ShortStraw

I fixed this problem on windows 7 by playing in windows xp (sp3) mode but I can't figure out how to do that on windows 8.1 yet. Does anyone out there have any tips on how I can fix these issues or is it just not possible to run old games on 8.1 (I also can't get any of my pre 2010 games to run properly on my windows 8.1 machine). Windows 7 spoiled me by automatically setting the emulator to play the game on the best settings through a "troubleshoot" dropdown that appeared when the problems appeared but now I'm not getting a troubleshoot option at all. I'm also not finding an option to activate a windows xp or vista or even 7 emulator. Also, the version of nam I'm trying to install is from 2009. Do I need to find an updated nam? (nam is the only mod I've ever used for simcity, I play sincity4 delux exclusively). I tried loading the game from one of the several discs I've bought over the years with no luck at all. Finally I broke down and bought the gamer again, this time from Steam, and it loaded and starts wonderfully but still refuses to accept the nam mod and shortly after gameplay begins I get graphical errors such as huge blocks of color obscuring the screen. Is any of this familiar to other windows 8 users? Am I destined to only play sincirty4 on my windows 7 machine? Thanks very much for your help in advance. You guys have been my fall back for years and I'm sorry to have been away for so long.

Scooby, as long as you aren't experiencing abandonment issues your city should be fine with long breaks between periods of development. If you spot abandoned buildings then you should check your RCI and take appropriate steps to raise any bars that are in the negative.

Hi Simtropolis. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. I've been away for a while and this site is unfamiliar to me now. I'm about to buy an older, probably used computer for the primary purpose of running Simcity4. A laptop would be ideal but since my budget is very low (under 700 us$) I might go with a desktop instead. I intend to use Windows XP since I've had problems with Vista and 7 on my primary computer. I'm sure the answers I need are somewhere in these forums but I can't seem to find a relevant topic or thread. If someone could point me in the right direction or offer suggestions I would be most appreciative, thanks in advance.

Thanks everyone for your input. I was wary of Windows7 because of some complaints about compatibility I had read here and on Devotion but I actually couldn't find a copy of XP in my hometown and the used machines available were priced absurdly high. The local computer shops are very proud of their merchandise and apparently can't bear to part with any of it so they price it as if it were made of gold and blessed with divine properties. I briefly considered the sensible patient approach of ordering something from one of the many reputable online dealers but then went with my usual impatient impulses and just bought a new machine from a department store. It has Windows 7 and I was nervous about that but it has performed very well with no more glitches than I got from XP so everything turned out better than expected. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

I've been away (from Simtropolis) for a while so I only just now noticed this thread but it's something I've been spending some thought on myself. I also have chronic health issues and see drugs for my condition advertised in a misleading and ethically questionable manner. You folks have said most of my words but I wanted to point out that this issue has a lot of historical precedent. This is just one of the numerous vintage drug ad sites out there (http://community.livejournal.com/vintage_ads/88173.html). These sites are there to make you giggle but they are an indication that unethical advertising practices by "Big Pharma" are actually a time honored tradition and one that is unlikely to go away just because it's so very very very WRONG. EDIT: Oh, and regarding the post just above mine, wouldn't it be neat if they used their Marketing budget to finance Research and Development?

A few hours of much needed sleep have cleared my head a bit. So what would need to happen to fulfill my vision of a matriarchal future is that women would have to develop the tendency to produce multiple eggs. For it to happen naturally anyway. Between this story and "Octomom" it looks like it's technically possible to artificially balance the fecundity in men and women already. Now the only question left is why exactly this story triggered any interest at all in my exhausted brain, heh.

The babies pictured in the article are not the twins in question. They're models, eye candy, added for visual effect. What would be really cool would be if this was the first incarnation of an evoloutionary transition. . . what if the mechanisms of natural selection (or God, depending on your particular belief system) determined that this would be a positive mutation, useful for propogating our species. What if, a few generations from now, women could, er, incubate offspring from multiple partners if she chose to do so? I imagine a world where the women have multiple husbands (Bigamy, only opposite of the way we usually see bigamy today), when she wishes to have children she is "fertilized" by each of her husbands and gives birth to a litter of offspring, each carrying seperate paternal genetic material, technically making them twin half-brothers. Rich and powerful women might have harems composed of men exhibiting optimal genetic traits. . . (I'm a guy, that thought just stopped my train of thought dead in its tracks, heh) Up until now only a male could spread his genetic material into the next generation through multiple mates simultaneously, making the spread of male genetic traits more prolific than those of the fairer sex. With this mutation, it's possible that someday our species could lean more towards a matriarchal societal structure since women could now produce multiple offspring from different mates simultaneously. Currently there is an imbalance in the fecundity of the male and female human. Wouldn't it be interesting if this were an attempt by "Nature", "natural selection" or even (gasp) "God" to correct that imbalance? It would be fascinating to see how such a development would effect our societal structure in future generations. Would it allow for the female to more easily attain dominance in relationships and ultimately result in a more feminine or matriarchal society? As opposed to the generally male dominated patriarchal societies of today and yesteryear. . . Wow, it's awful lonely out here on this limb edit: Just read SkiGeeks link. So women already can choose to have multiple offspring from different mates at the same time. So this would happen much more often if, say, women were as promiscuous as men, at least during their menstral cycle. Well, my mind is sufficiently boggled. Think I'll go lay down for a bit.

At certain nadirs in my life I have been the recipient of Christian charity, receiving "aid and comfort" in the forms of medical care, food and shelter. Each time I was prepared to humor a pitch for my soul but most of the time it never happened. Even when I was at my lowest and most vulnerable, even when these Christians had me "right where they wanted me" and would have been perfectly justified in making their sales pitch since, after all, I was indebted to them, with a couple of tolerable exceptions, they did not try to sell me their doctrine. In other words, in my experience Christian charity usually comes with "no strings attached". I only bring this up because I want to point out that the claims Jezus53 makes about helping the homeless are not at all far fetched. I have no problem believing that he and his associates offered aid with no spiritual sales pitch attached. It is unfair to accuse them of recruitment opportunism because they target the homeless or destitute in their charitable efforts since the homeless and destitute are the people most obviously in need of charity. Serving as a positive example of charity and goodwill may be proselytizing but if so it is surely a tolerable and acceptable form of passive recruitment and not worthy of scorn. The only active form of recruitment I actually see in my day to day life is the small packs of Christians that roam residential areas "fellowshipping", basically knockin on doors Jehova's Witness style. Any time they have knocked on my door I have taken all of 5 seconds out of my day to say no thank you and they move on. I've never had one get pushy at me. I'm also under the impression that "fellowshipping" is just another of their quirky, essentially harmless rituals. A small, irritating minority of pushy loudmouthed people will try to shove their beliefs down your throat. While these people deserve all the derision you can heap on them, they should not be held up as accurate representatives of whatever unfortunate religion (or political party or belief or opinion) they may claim to follow. Unfortunately, some people will actively live down to the ugly stereotype of the Bible thumping Christian. Do not allow these people to define your understanding of the modern christian any more than you allow the "suicide Bomber" to define your understanding of the modern Muslim. That's pretty much all I got.

Originally posted by: crushedcar I think what Duke of York means is that those who don't care shouldn't be trying to start a debate. One thing about Americans is that, as a group, we are much more likely to register opinions on issues we have no knowledge. quote> I've studied religions quite closely for many years now. I'm a history buff and one cannot appreciate the history of the development of our species without also studying religions and their impact on us over time. I was raised to be a christian. Like many americans, I began to have doubts in childhood and by the time I reached adulthood I no longer identified myself as a christian. nevertheless, I live amongst christians in a primarily christian neighborhood/town/region and I find that the more I learn about christianity in general the better I understand the christians around me. I feel that this qualifies me to debate in theological matters despite the fact that I do not hold any particular religion to be absolute truth. Besides, "A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength."

Originally posted by: frogface I think we should look to the bible to see the definition of whos a true christian tm and jesus says true believers will be able to pick up snakes and drink poison without any ill effects, so the question is who wants to go first !quote> I once accidentally ate half a box of rat poison (don't ask) and suffered absolutely no ill effects. A few years later I unwittingly (again, don't ask) drank about 2 ounces of Naptha (lighter fluid) and again, felt no effects whatsoever. I have picked up snakes on numerous and varied occasions in my life and never been bitten. By the quoted definition of "True Believer" and taking into account that I'm a devout Agnostic I can't help but wonder if I also live outside the Laws of Natural Selection. . . cause that would be awesome.

Every satanist I've actually met and gotten to know a bit was basically just over reacting to a poorly executed Christian upbringing or had some kind of personal problem with a Christian faith. The "fact that Catholics and Protestants may have slightly different practices, but ultimately they share the same belief system" is also a big part of why I feel like satanists are christians. They may have rejected Jesus' personal salvation/message/whatever, but they generally recognize the Holy Trinity which (to my way of thinking) sets them apart from the particularly non christian Biblical religions (such as Judaism and Islam and, er, whatever others may exist). There may be satanists out there that never were christians, have no pre existing axe to grind with christianity and focus their dogma on Old Testament doctrine, ignoring Jesus and the Trinity and going really old school with their fancy dress rituals and whatever but I have never met one of them and I suspect that if such "Old Testament, pre Christian" satanists exist they are probably an extreme minority. All that said, if you go so far as to blindly accept the literal existence of any religious legend and you decide to cast your lot with the "Bad Guy" in the story then you obviously have some misfiring synapses or something and should seriously examine your motives and maybe seek some professional help (or better yet, quit toying with religions and focus your energy on comic book movies or the sci fi channel or something, I mean Jesus. . . ).

Well said Abes. We definitely should fix the stuff we have before we get more stuff.

Yeah it sounds like your transit network is breaking down under heavy population growth. What happens in that case is that the roads (and/or rail) becomes so congested that sims cant make it in to work so they lose their jobs. The sims or the jobs get tired of waiting for improvements to be made and move out, relieving the pressure on the transit network and raising desirability causing sims to move back in and subsequently overburden the transit network again and repeating the cycle. If this is what is happening to you then all you need to do is expand/improve your transit system. Replace roads with avenues, provide mass transit options such as bus and rail as suggested above. Use the traffic data view and transportation query tool to locate and clear up traffic bottlenecks and other congestion points. Research the omnibus for information about encouraging R$$$ development and building transit networks. There's a lot of information there that might directly address your troubles. Good Luck.

Use the tab key to switch between the different types of single sided parallel ramps.

Originally posted by: Barbarossa Originally posted by: manticorefan Originally posted by: ShortStraw I'm still kind of blown away by the Egyptian pigs. I'm barely educated and am only paying half assed attention to the story and still I have learned that the Mexican Swine Novel OMGitsTheApocoplypseWhere'sTheDuctTapeQuick Flu does not pass from pigs to humans and cannot be contracted by consuming pork. How can the Minister of Health of a Nation, not to mention the nations President, not realize this? How can that poor countries Minister of Agriculture not realize that putting all the nations pork on the market at once will wreck the pig farmers "harvest"? quote> Being a Muslim nation, they opportunistically are targeting the minority that raise pigs in Egypt... Christians. They are using this overblown 'crisis' to economically cripple a whole group of people. They know there is no danger from the pigs in Egypt.quote> That's a bit too conspiratorial for me and "crippling" far too strong a word. Christians will not suffer such an extent of damage from the slaughter of pigs (even if the reaction is foolish). There are myriad other meats to eat. Are the local Jews starving? You may have noticed they haven't offered any compensation to the farmers who are about to lose their entire means of livelihood.quote> Now that does suck, if true. We can't say either way, though, since it simply may not have been mentioned. Barbarossa quote> I'm inclined to agree that the swine slaughter appears to be a deliberate and opportunistic snub (at the very least) at their non muslim minority. The President and the Minister of Health have to know that if you're gonna slaughter something to prevent an airborne viral attack you have to slaughter people, not pigs. Also, this is from the article I linked a few posts up: "Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork due to religious restrictions. But the animals are raised and consumed by the Christian minority, which some estimates put at 10 percent of the population." and "Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza told reporters that farmers would be allowed to sell the pork meat so there would be no need for compensation." That looks like it passes the Duck test as far as targeting a minority. . . Originally posted by: SkiGeek A British family I know came over here to visit. They were practically addicted to watching the news programs over here. They came to the conclusion that the media is deliberately keeping the American people in a state of fear. They wanted to know why the government didn't stop it. I told them the government here doesn't get to demand things of the news media. I don't believe that our culture of violence is an accident, nor do I believe it is government-inspired. I believe it is more due to TV shows and movies. I'm not saying they cause violence. I'm saying they make it more culturally acceptable.quote> When I say our American Power Structure I'm referring to the tiny collection of wealthy and powerful corporate entities and private individuals that own controlling interest in all of our significant media outlets as well as owning sizable chunks of our government at state and especially federal levels. I'm certain that people like Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch manipulate the masses with their resources and I'm certain that the pharmaceutical, oil and defense industries are on a much closer and more personal relationship with my government than I am. What I have never been certain of is how much of the manipulative fear mongering and apparent social engineering has been carefully and deliberately planned and how much of it is just "the consequence of Stupidity" and just coincidentally looks like malicious intent to an overactive imagination or paranoid mindset. I can't help but notice that the wealthy few who own our media outlets, the wealthy and powerful few who represent our biggest corporate powerhouses and the wealthy few who run things in Washington DC are very often the same people. I agree that our tv shows and movies and video games and news programs contribute to our "culture of violence", what I wonder is, did they do that on purpose? Or is it an accidental consequence of some other social engineering project? Or is it just a big old stupid accident brought on by greed and shortsightedness that just looks really, really, suspicously deliberate? Originally posted by: Hym Are you suggesting someone stole the vials and did some tampering?quote> I miss Michael Crichton.

I'm still kind of blown away by the Egyptian pigs. I'm barely educated and am only paying half assed attention to the story and still I have learned that the Mexican Swine Novel OMGitsTheApocoplypseWhere'sTheDuctTapeQuick Flu does not pass from pigs to humans and cannot be contracted by consuming pork. How can the Minister of Health of a Nation, not to mention the nations President, not realize this? How can that poor countries Minister of Agriculture not realize that putting all the nations pork on the market at once will wreck the pig farmers "harvest"? This whole thing does shake at least one of my personal beliefs though. I've believed for a long time that the American power structure knowingly and deliberately fostered a culture of violence in my country through strategic media driven fear mongering. Now, seeing the fear mongering happening on an apparently spontaneous global scale I can't help but wonder if maybe the fear mongering in my own country isn't just an unplanned consequence of plain old fashioned Stupid run rampant, which would mean that our culture of violence is an accident and maybe the American power structure is not as sinister and, well, evil as I thought. . . Also, my conspiracy sense is tingling. . . I'm pretty sure a story broke on cnn about the army "losing a virus" just before this story broke but hasn't been reported on since. I don't remember any details of that story, I didn't follow it at all, but I think it has more entertainment potential than any other "Swine Flu Conspiracy" theory I've heard yet. . .

"Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu even though no cases have been reported here yet, the Health Ministry said." That's the opening statement to a report found here They're killing all the pigs in Egypt. All of them.

I use all the stock transportation networks in my cities and I can tell you, the mass transit systems can work the way you want them to. In some of my cities my rail networks move more people than the road networks. Assuming your game is not suffering from a bug (such as the endless commuter problem or a mod related discrepancy), the most likely reason your rails aren't being used is because they are sufficiently outclassed by your road network. Very often this sort of problem comes down to flawed station placement or a poor track layout. It may be that you don't have enough transit stations, the stations may be inconveniently located, there could be a break or flaw in your track somewhere. Have you tried disabling your road network to force your sims onto your rails? If you gimp your road network and sims still refuse to ride rails at all then you probably have either a bug or a broken track. If you get a weak ridership, that is a few sims using trains but most insisting on using your gimped up road system, then there's probably a problem with your station placement or track layout. You can make mass transit work and it doesn't require special mods. I do use the nam but that's my only mod and I have cities with extensive and busy subways, monorails and passenger trains (I don't use GLR) but It's not always easy to pull off and there have been times that I have had to intentionally make my road system inefficient in order to force rail usage. Keep tinkering with it and eventually you'll get what you're lookin for. Good luck!

Originally posted by: warrior But then Shakespeare can't have been the only person to shape the English language, there must have been others so why don't we remember them?quote> We do remember them. There's a ton of information out there attributing particular words and phrases to their contributors. If those people are not featured in your lessons it may be for the same reason that Shakespeares contemporaries are not included in your grade levels literature classes. That reason being that no one else has made a contribution to the English language or literature as significant or profound as what Shakespeare did. There isn't another single literary figure born within, well, forever who has contributed so much to the development of the Modern English language. If you're gonna focus your english studies on just one man then he is the logical choice. I agree he did a lot for English, but as is blatantly obvious when you read his books the language has change a **LOT** since then. I don't really see how learning Shakespeare can affect you in later life, this is something I have talked with my Mom and she said once she left school she hasn't had a use for since. Also Shakespeare has affected the language, and I can't see it affecting it now. The point of language is for the other person to understand what you are saying so there is no *need* to know where or why the words came from(sometimes though I admit you can just be curious). If we keep looking back to the past of language the slower it will evolve.quote> When I was 15 I told my trigonometry teacher that I intended to coast through his class with a bare minimum passing grade because I didn't expect to ever have a direct use for the math he was teaching in my forseeable future. He surprised me by sitting down and explaining to me that although I may not ever again do the particular mathmatic equations he was there to teach, the process of learning and performing those equations would exercise my mind in ways that would have a direct and measurable beneficial effect on my entire thought process. I may never again use trigonometry to "Solve for X" but knowing how will make me better at evrything I do that requires conscious thought. This is also how Shakespeare affects you (and your mom and everyone who has studied him). Even if you don't neccesarily see the direct influence, rest assured it is there. This is why math and science are as important for arts students as the arts are for math and science students. Learning the history of your language (and the history of pretty much everything) is important for more reasons than I can spout off all at once. We keep looking back to the past to more clearly understand where we are coming from. We dissemeniate where we have been and what we have done so that we will make informed decisions or predictions about where we are going and what we are doing. I like that explanation enough to settle with just it. Personally I would much rather read a book I can understand as I read the word, not looking the words up because then you lose the story. He didn't write them to be dissected and nobody will ever be able to understand exactly why he wrote what he did or where it came from. Instead he wrote the books to be enjoyed, so I think if we're going to learn about Shakespeare we should read a practically word for word translation and enjoy it, then as a small side of the topic is looking at the original text just to see what it's like. And I don't think Shakespeare is crap btw, just that when something doesn't work you make it better. I can't understand Shakespeare right now so lets make it better by the main focus being a translated version. quote> Regarding the bolded text, He did realize that his work would be dissected by his peers and critics. It is very likely that he could have anticipated being studied posthumously. His words were carefully crafted with this in mind as well as with the intent of providing entertainment to the masses. The fact that he succesfully entertained the masses and managed to please his peers and critics (most of the time) all while working with a comparitively new and incomplete language is a testament to his greatness. It's possible to understand why he wrote what he did and where it camer from, it just requires careful study. You can't make Shakespeares work better by translating it out of its original wording. You can make it more accesible to the uneducated mind, but it is not better. The best solution to not being able to understand Shakespeare is to study harder. It's worth it, trust me. That said, there are a ton of modern translations of shakespeares work out there and many teachers use them specifically in the way you suggest. It is wholly worthwhile to read a modern translation for the sake of studying the story development and characterization and various literary qualities of his work before tackling the admitedly challenging elizabethan language. I would go a step further and say see his plays performed since they were meant to be seen as plays and not read as novels but it can be tough to find a live production that is skillfully carried off and true to the authors work. Even watching the latest hollywood versions of his stories is a worthwhile exercise though as they get his points across very well for the most part. Also one other little thing English Lit lesson is practially dedicated to him. We don't have a dedicated Science lesson to Einstein or other incredibly clever people who have a lot more relevance in the modern world today the Shakespeare.quote> In my own high school classes we did not study a single individual scientist to the extent that we studied Shakespeare but I would say that the various scientists we did study (including Einstein) all added up amounted to at least equal time as Shakespeare. If there is a deficiency in your curriculums science courses then the solution is to strengthen your science courses, not to create an equal deficiency in your lit courses. I eagerly await the days everything can just be downloaded into my brain and I know it in an instance quote> Until then, study and learn all that is offered to you and maybe one day your grandchildren will be able to DL The Bard directly into their brains and not have to waste valuable leisure time on our primitive studying methods.

Originally posted by: SkiGeek Originally posted by: ShortStraw PEOPLE! It's Shakespeare! Get a hold of yourselves for cryin out loud. Don't let your difficulty with your native language or your bad school experiences blind you to the simple obvious fact that the man is an icon for good reason. quote> and for those of us who don't think this is obvious, what is that reason? quote> I don't mean any offense to anyone personally. I struggle with my own difficulties with my native english language and my own bad public education experiences very nearly ruined my own chances at appreciating the brilliance of one of the best writers of all time. I'm a fan of the English language and a minor history buff. I've also been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, books have been my preferred form of entertainment and enlightenment for as long as I've been alive. To me, Shakespeares greatness is self evident and I tend to forget that there's probably a lot of people who don't consciously know much about him. I italicized consciously because everyone who speaks or reads English has been directly influenced by him. English had only been the official national language in England for about fifty years when Shakespeare was baptised. Up till then French, Latin and Greek were the preferred written languages (French was Englands official language before English). English was the preferred spoken language in Elizabethan England but it was still a developing thing. Compared to the dominant languages of the day english was grammatically unstructured with a deficient vocabulary. It fell to the "wordsmiths" of Shakespeares age, that is, those people who made their living by writing and especially by writing to the masses through the relatively recently invented printing press to expand on the English vocabulary and to a lesser extent to craft the grammatical structure that makes up the rules of Modern English. The most influential and prolific of these wordsmiths were the poets and playwrights and Shakespeare was the best of them. It's not just that he contributed more words to the english vocabulary (up to 2000 by some counts), it's also how he put words together, crafting phrases that will still be in common usage 500 years after he was born(!). Language and thought are inseparable. You need words to think and to think you need words. Language is the tool our minds use to think, plan, solve problems, and succeed. Therefore, it follows that knowing more words gives your mind more ways to think about things and more tools to plan and solve problems. So being exposed to different ways of using language also has the potential to influence the way you think. Having a better vocabulary literally improves your ability to think. And that's just his influence on the development of the English language. I haven't touched on his direct influence on literature and to keep this post from getting uncomfortably long I won't, I'll just say that Shakespeare influenced every generation of writers since his death and still today has some level of impact on contemporary plays, movies, and poems. His stories still make great movies today (about 250 of them, look here----> http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivia/films/films.htm) and this is sufficient testimony to his skill as a storyteller in my opinion. I know Wiki is despised but this wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare has a nice general summary of Shakespeares influence and is as good a jumping point off as any if you need further evidence of the unequivocal brilliance that is William Shakespeare. The last thing I wanna say is, even if you've read his work and seen his material performed as plays and movies and you still just don't like anything he has written. . . you probably like something that wouldn't exist if it weren't for his influence on its creator. Even if you've never heard of him and have no opinion at all about his body of work, if you use english (especially if it's your native language) or if you enjoy poetry, novels, movies etc then Shakespeare has influenced the way you think. That , among many reasons I'm intentionally leaving out, is why he is an icon. Thanks for bearing with me if you read all that and all apologies for my own sloppy grammar and poor handling of the language I just professed so much admiration for.

PEOPLE! It's Shakespeare! Get a hold of yourselves for cryin out loud. Don't let your difficulty with your native language or your bad school experiences blind you to the simple obvious fact that the man is an icon for good reason. Sheez, this is like seeing people rip on Einstein "cuz sience is stoopid lol". . .

Originally posted by: Duke87 Originally posted by: SkiGeek Most insurance companies offer coverage to a legal spouse. By recognizing same-sex marriage, there is suddenly a large number of legal spouses. Some insurance companies waive the "pre-existing condition" clause for a new spouse. Which means that the insurance companies would suddenly be carrying a large number of people whether they want to or not. and some of this new population need a large quantity of expensive drugs. Anytime someone asks "Why don't they . . . .?", the answer is usually money.quote> Not to mention social security survivorship benefits. ...which, actually, brings up an interesting point. If you're legally married to your gay lover in Massachustts and they die, how does the SSA handle that? quote> Apparently the federal government does not recognize gay marriage. Check into the "Defense of Marriage Act", a summary of which can be found here. . . http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3995552 From the act- "In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."quote>

Cater to your rich (R$$$) Sims. Provide all the civic services, a full education system from elementary through to museums, healthcare, full coverage police and fire protection. Use parks and trees liberally to spread your industrial zones out. You don't want them to pack in tight the way dirty industry and manufacturing can. Hi tech needs to spread out to keep traffic pollution to a minimum. Speaking of pollution, tolerate none of it. Do everything you can to keep air and water pollution to a minimum. Mass transit is always good but be sure you have an optimal road network, most of your Hi tech workers will be driving to work. Be careful with ordinances, some of the anti-pollution and conservation ordinances can discourage all industry, including hi tech. Search the Omnibus for more on that. Get the Advanced Research Center as soon as you can. Remember that Hi tech likes freight connections the same as dirty and manufacturing so provide neighbor connections via road and rail and use ports if available. There's lots of good information on how to attract high wealth in the omnibus, it's worth it to browse around in there. Good Luck.

I don't know the law, or the details of her insurance policy well enough to know if the insurance company is legally obligated to pay out on this womans claim. I played WoW for a while and I am sure of this, you cannot legally sell "equipment, weaponry, animals, magic spells and gold nuggets" from World of Warcraft without permission from Blizzard entertainment. They point out explicitly in their terms of use or user agreement or whatever that everything in the World of Warcraft including your character and all of his/her possessions and money and everything is their property. I'm pretty sure it even says somewhere in there that you can't sell their property so don't even try. Also, last I heard, people who purchased accounts or in game items or paid for leveling services or anything else that "comprimised account security" and got caught were subject to an account ban. If Blizzard were interested in this case it would be as victims of theft and they would likely be prosecuting this woman. To me it seems likely that she earned the money illegally and this causes me to doubt her credibility. That said, if the insurance policy specifically covers the loss of property then they should have to pay out. I could only support their decision not to pay if the policy specifically excluded gold bullion or if there was probable cause to believe the bullion didn't exist, in which case there should be a fraud investigation to settle the matter.

Goodbye Maude