mayormot

This year's Boston team may well be the best in football history, ever. That's not bandwagon-jumping, nor is it hyperbole. It's just a fact. Given that my Raiders obviously aren't playoff-bound... Go Pack Go. Just saying it now so I'm not bandwagon-jumping later.

Originally posted by: sir.rakeyInstead of moving in the more intelligent, realistic, direction, they went down the "lets have people create fairy cities that are perfect and make it easy". quote> IOW, it comes with the "ploppable Maxis buildings," "Radical Demand," and "Money Cheat" mods pre-installed. (/snark) What I find disturbing about SCS is the authoritarianism aspect of it. In SimCity, Sims do what Sims do and as Mayor you just have to deal with them. In SCS, you send police to beat up peaceful artists, until mainstream Sims say that they like whatever you tell them to like, and then they pretend to like it. Why? To carry out some arbitrary, top-down social-engineering goal that the little Sim-citizens have no say in, and neither does the Sim-government (player). I love "mime-abuse" jokes as much as the next person, but in this context I have to ask: Just what kind of "society" is SCS supposed to be simulating?

I figure it like this: People are gaining an intuitive sense that the current "Western" way of life requires more resources than will soon be available, and something has to give. They blame the Government and Coroporations (almost the same thing at this point) for "raping the planet" or whatever, when really it's our usury-based financial system that does it (by requiring constant exponential growth in the face of finite resources). Be that as it may, the Corporations fought the Enviros for the longest time, until something changed. And that something is... "The Carbon Tax." Suddenly corporations are all about greenhouse-gas awareness. It's all propoganda. Here's how it's going to play out: 1) Corporations agree to a mandatory "cap" on CO2 emissions. They spin this as "good citizenship." 2) Government gives out "permits" for the CO2 emissions, to (certain, politically favored) existing corporations only. 3) New entrants are blocked from the market for lack of CO2 permits, granting the existing (politically favored) corporations an effective cartel. PROFIT!!! goes here. More exactly: 4) Using their new "Carbon Monopoly," corporations raise prices since new competitors cannot appear. This is blamed on "compliance costs," however... 5) The "envorinmental improvements" that this all was supposed to provide, never happen. The money is embezzled by the CEO/CFO instead. Al Gore gets to be the big "hero" to the ignorant masses, but really, his Nobel Prize is payoff for "taking a dive" and not contesting the theft of the 2000 election. Now he's doing his job of selling us the "carbon tax scam" that his corporate masters are salivating over, the same way he sold out the internet to corporations back in the 90s, giving us such "innovations" as the "pop-up ad." I mean really, do you think the same companies that put melamine in our food and antifreeze in toothpaste and coat children's toys with lead paint and GHB, are *really* going to install "scrubbers" and pay for expensive "carbon sequestering" schemes? Get serious. Gore's a paid shill, and he knows it.

Originally posted by: Easy Bakes I never understood why they need to change the need for a court order to for these things. Dont they have judges who will give the aproval with out to much fussing about?quote> *nods*. The FISA court (that grants "national security" wiretap warrants) has been pretty much a rubber-stamp formality since its inception. Only about 1 in 250 requests has been rejected. In a "ticking clock" scenario, the Government can go ahead and wiretap, and has up to 72 hours to submit a retroactive warrant request. This is hardly a barrier to legitimate investigation. FISA was created explicitly to prevent secret fishing expeditions against political enemies under the guise of "National Security," as Nixon had been doing. There can be only one reason to consider it a hardship.

If Guliani has a 9-11, oops I mean opinion, about the British 9-11, oops I mean National Health, perhaps he should move to 9-11, oops I mean England, and run for 9-11, oops I mean Prime Minister. In drag he looks a lot like a bottle-blonde version of Maggie Thatcher anyway.

Whether the US "should" or "shouldn't" fix this dam is irrelevant. We'll pay to fix it, but the money will be stolen. Just like happened to the previous money, as the article states. Duh. Did we all just fall off an apple truck or something? I notice that this "dam" story appeared the same day the Fed announced new low interest rates.... I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Not.

So, are we being pre-sold on the idea of blowing the dam to flood out the Iraqi freedom fighters, or does another one of Bush's no-bid contractor buddies wanna steal another $10 billion or so? Maybe both, blow it up and then steal the "reconstruction money." If this dam was some unexpected serious problem that wasn't planned for, discussion of it would be censored for "National Security" reasons. Bushies don't admit mistakes. The only reason we're even hearing about it, is someone up top wants to fire up the printing press to inflate/devalue the dollar some more. Period, end of sentence.

Indeed, just a minor shake for us. No serious damage reported, except that the control tower at San Jose Mineta Airport needs new windows. I was in Albany (near Berkeley) at the time. I felt a surprising amount of "wave" motion for such a moderate quake.

If it's data mining, it just says that a lot of 40-y/o females are paying for the internet connections used to visit this site, which should hardly seem surprising.

Pegasus made a mod to do that - IIRC it's called the "No Roadway Junk" mod. There are also files in it to take the mailboxes and newsstands away from roads and streets. It's all modular so you can pick which parts of it you want to install, and which you don't.

I think the idea of creating a transporation system that competes with us for food is more than a little bit insane.

Originally posted by: Micah So you'd rather has a bloody massarce? People can't have it both ways. quote> History has shown time and time again that the "police state" option comes with an endless, all-you-can-eat side serving of "bloody massacre." I'll take my chances with the psychos, thanks.

I use Linux for my "real" computing. Windows machines without ethernet cards don't get infected (or "Microsoft Updated/Broken").. Last time I tried the game in Linux, admittedly a while ago, there were still mouse-tracking problems becuse the game has such a bizarre video-handling system. Never had problems reading the CD, though. The thing is, the game takes so much CPU that I don't kow if it would run very well in an emulator anyway. Even if it works, you'd need "half-residents" mods and stuff like that to avoid overloading it.