david1314

Wow...I actually agree with both sides. Savage will sue the UK in a US court for publishing it's allegations in the US in a defamitory manner and he will win and the UK will pay. The UK will retract it's statement, do some embarasing back-tracking, and finally claim it stands by it's conflicting descisions. That's just my prediction. The problem is he will have the support from the state department who will pressure the UK. Freedom of Speech is a far more important right to people in the US than it is abroad and any perceived limitation on speech will win the eventual ire of the American public, American courts, and American government (Or would that be United States?... *scratches chin* ). The UK does not want the international incident they've created (and really should be expecting, WTF were they thinking!?...seriously!)

Originally posted by: Barbarossa Note: I will never play MMO games. I refuse to pay to play a game after I have purchased it. I consider this to be an affront to common sense.quote> Sometimes I just feel alone in the world...other times I have more hope. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this (and fearing city XL which probably should be called "Zoner XL" which such vital parts of a city like an airport being aparently excluded from the game) Originally posted by: Jezus53 Basically, she bought drugs, someone stole them, and she's publicly announcing she's suing for damages. nice... /analogyquote> Wow... I certainly see the irony of people criticizing others for believing WOW to be real, but then you turn around and equate non-binding game rules with codified law. And then improperly equate a matter of civil law with criminal law (an act is 'illegal' only if it is criminal).... She did nothing illegal. Back to reality people! If she notified the Insurance company of each gold bar, then they are on the hook for it. If property was in your custody, the insurance company was notified, and it is covered property lost in a covered peril, the case is open and shut. At this point, the burden rests with the company to show either 1) that she never had the gold, or 2) that the gold is not covered. Working in insurance, the gold would be considered "Personal Property"--a coverage typically afforded by standard Homeowners policies. Unless there were extenuating circumstance (i.e. her Homeowners were placed in surplus lines) then the HO policy would also cover theft. My guess would be that the company intends to mount the defense that because they were never notified of an in-home business the "Business Personal Property" is not covered and that the gold is "Business Personal Property". But if this were the case, I would assume garage sale law as opposed to business to business law would apply and the defense is incorrect. But that's just my guess. The above is applicable to US law, but Insurance law (particularly matters of personal property) date back before the US, so I would guess that Australia has very similar laws.

Blond, Bill Nye quoted the (King James) bible directly. It was only a few rogue audience members who drew false conclusions. "Light" is not significantly defined scientifically to apply directly to the bible. It is not clear if the bible is decribing an luminous, illuminated, or reflective object. I did find Youngs Literal Translation Bible that offers the term "Luminaries"; but alas, my knowledge of Latin, English, religion, and physics don't quite jive on this point for me to suggest what "luminaries" refer to-I can imagine it referring to both a luminous and an illuminated object, but the third case is what's operative here. and it doesn't seem to favor one of the three types of objects. What it comes down to is the bible is correct in it's vaguery (they are both provide light to the earth's surface) and that Bill Nye is correct they are not both sources of light (we are unsure if the term 'light' was applied only after the fact on the blog or by Bill Nye himself). But insofar as: Bible says moon is a luminary; and Bill Nye points out moon not luminous; so Individual says "we believe in god" and storms out in anger... The individual could have said anything "I like spam," "I feel sick," "Help, I'm on fire", and it would have made equally as much sense in context. Originally posted by: Duke87 No, but, then again, he should have known better than to speak of the bible in a less than positive light in front of an audience of conservative Christians. Oh, and it's "segue". "Segways" are those two-wheeled personal transport thingies. quote> He didn't appear to speak poorly of the Bible. He just made a factual statement with no normative moral judgement. I mean, he could have just shut up and not said anything, but it kind of defeats the purpose of travelling to Texas. I would think the context was that he was offering an educational and entertaining presentation to individuals that were there voluntarily to hear him. Admittedly, my theory is heavily dependent on that assumption, but it is such a common situation (academic presentations) that the burden would fall to someone else to suggest that this was NOT the context. In this context we may safely pass judgement on Bill Nye that his actions were normal and acceptable. I would go further to categorically state that an interuption claiming beleifs counter to the presenter in announcing a departure in the context of an academic presentation is rude-at the very least. I would think that at this point, any reasonable person would expect evidential support before suggesting that Bill Nye may have been guilty of a lack of tact. I've alway been a proponent of the simplest explanation being the most likely (I perfer the term 'proximate explanation), and I would think my 2nd paragraph explains the situation the simplest way. Duke, I would agree with your point that we don't know the context if the one woman who yelled out said something like "The moon is a light and you're an idiot!" or "I think you're wrong and intollerant in your views on sun-moon inter-relations" but to go off on a subject that had not been invoked can be clearly established as outside the context of the discussion-regardless of the tact of the presenter can clearly be established as outside the context of the discussion, even if that context is unknown.

Originally posted by: Duke87 Originally posted by: SkiGeek So . . . people who do care about religion shouldn't be educated? quote> I think the point is that if someone's got so much wool over their eyes that they actually believe the moon gives off light, they don't want to be educated to the contrary. ...then again, I get the impression that the offense was taken not at Mr. Nye claiming the moon reflects light rather than generating it, but at him saying "there's this bible passage that says this, but it's wrong because..." This was (understandably) read as him taking a cheap shot at their religion. If he hadn't mentioned the bible, they wouldn't have objected. And then of course the media read that as "look at these idiots who believe the moon gives off light and take offense to someone saying otherwise." quote> Bill Nye is an academic. Dialogue is paramount to the academic process. To start and say something obtuse like "the moon doesn't give off light," unqualified and without proper introduction as a stand-alone idea would cast a dark shadow on his credibility. You can either do a ground-up construction of an academic thought, as you would for say teaching an abstract idea like calculus; or you can present the Socratic dialogue which necessarily hinges on correction of the misconception. Obviously, you cannot do a ground-up construction when anyone which sight who has lived through a lunar cycle understands the moon gives off light, this is not an abstract thought and is self-evident even to those who do not understand light and reflection. The only reasonable way he could discuss this credibly is by introducing it in opposition to an errantly held belief. Remember, the bible is an academic document first-a historic recording. It was only once people venerated the academic document that it became a religious one. I would compare the situation to describing Chaos theory to a group of physisists. The proper place to begin this discussion is that Newton didn't get it quite right. At this point, if physisist moaned, declared their belief in Newton, and stormed out in anger, we would be right to fault the intollerant physisists. The person who claimed Newton wasn't quite right CANNOT be held accountable for the offence taken; no reasonable person would claim this. The same applies in the Bill Nye-Waco situation. We can hardly fault Bill Nye for offering a reasonable segway in lieu of an awkward discontinuity in the discussion.

Is it unamerican to be a Texas sesessionist even though I live in CO?

Well I'm going to London this summer. I hadn't planned on taking camera, but now I will. I'll have to share the terroristic inteligence with this community.

Originally posted by: nspeds Hi everyone, I'm a law student, and I'm thinking of launching a class action suit against Aspyr. Namely, several key features in the game simply are not functioning (hello? night lights for BAT buildings?), and performance is terrible... even on top of the line Macs. Some of you may think that this is pointless, but I feel that this could give Aspyr the kick in the pants they need to work with their customers a little more. Tell me your thoughts.quote> Well, one of these days in law school will come the day when you learn a judge certifies a class initiating the 'class action'. You must first file a complaint, propose a class, and get it certified....you cannot 'file a class action law suit'. I think you may be jumping the gun a bit.

Originally posted by: saltandsauce civil partnership i don't care if it's legalised for homosexuals. but forcing the church into accepting something it clearly does not is fascism on the states part. as you know you can't pick and choose your beliefs without changing your church. i don't care of whatever wordy, limp wristed, lawyer language-twisting you use but a christian marriage is the pairing of a man and a woman in God's house by a minister/priest/pastor/whatever else. civil partnership/humanist marriage(the same thing) is when you get the tax breaks. if any religion changed for popular beliefs and flavours of the decade then it wouldn't really be a religion at all since they usually forbid things like alcohol or drugs and often involve fasting and repentance and being nice to people in some shape or form. quote> No one is forcing the churches to perform gay ceremonies or changing your beliefs from the bench (unless they're very persuasive). The judge just took the church our of the law persuant to the first and 14th ammendments. Establishing a religious belief as a law across the land is unconstitutional. And afording a special set of rights to men and not women or women and not men is also unconstitutional. For example, unless there is a bona fide reason for which a law should by biological necessity to apply only to a man or woman, any instance of gendered language should be replaced with the more generic "person". The best example of such biological necessity is that (missionary position) rape cannot be committed by a woman on a man without extenuating circumstance. But to invoke languge from the Declaration of Independence using "man" in it's non-gendered sense to mean "person", we are left with the idea that marriage is the union between one man and one man (and strangely, I'm not the first person on this thread to assert this *scratches chin*).

Actually, the stigma associated with public transit is going away in the US. With the exception of the City Park South towers in Denver, every new luxury condo building is within a quarter mile of a light rail station (there have been 6 to go up or going up over 20 stories in the last year or so). Also, there are towns like Golden, which is one of Denver richest suburbs has actively lobbied FOR mass transit and AGAINST highways (see C-470 story). And not to mention the provisions for MT in the stimulus bill...

Well, I tend to shy away from using photos showing the name, but 1 is Novosibrisk Edit: er....wait, no, it's Hoboken, NJ!

That's actually a good reason NOT to use the default install location. If all your dependencies are installed in the same directory, they cannot be installed again without overwriting the existing file. And, when it comes time to delete obselete files, they're all in the proper place ready to be sorted as you please (date modified, date created, and alphabetical are particularly useful). The only good argument I could see for default locations would be if there were a standard that were applied to all installers for directory structure. Unfortunately, even the BSC who has so championed their use doesn't use a common directory structure across team files; I've explained above why a standard directory structure is highly desireable. Props (which I did install to the default directory, hence my BSC directory), install to one of at least 8 locations in the paltry 300MB they occupy on my disk. I couldn't tell you how messy their lots are because I haven't installed them to a default location ever since making my own tilesets with some of their models / lots.

First off, a quick note on what limits SC4 speed. Becauase SC4 is not graphics-intensive but is processor intenstive, the RAM will make the biggest difference to load time. Doubling your ram will put you just over half the previous load time. I did this on my old machine. Processor could be an issue if there were ample memory available to run the game optimally. VIDEO CARDS WILL NOT AFFECT SC4 PERFORMANCE. I ran the game with a 64MB Radeon 7200 for about 6 years at 1280 x 1024. tahill79 - RE: Load times; The short answer is that each file that SC4 must 'index' is already in a readable and indexable form when SC4 looks at it. Because of this, it takes very little time to load additional plugins contained in the same .dat file (the same way it would take you less time to copy 100 lines out of one .txt than to copy 1 line out of each of 100 .txt files). In order to index a plugin contained in it's own file, SC4 must open the file then load the content, then open the next file. As a result, the plugin-affected load time can be minimized by reducing the NUMBER of files rather than the total size of files (though total size will offer some improvement). Unfortunately, SC4 (to my knowledge) does not distinguish between the file extensions, so it sees .txt, .jpg, .htm, etc. as game files it should try to load. Load speed is determined approximately as follows, Game essential files are loaded first, like the .exe itself and necessary .dll files. This takes a matter of seconds (probably more time is spend with game verifying the CD than loading the game files). Next, the game will load stock and custom content in the order I described above, but with simcityX.dat loading before the plugin directories. Finally, the region loads. Region load times can be the largest factor in loading a city, it must pull the image and alpha_channel out of the saved city file and then display it as the region map. I found on my old machine that with a 1.5 gig plugin file (with about 30 .dat files only) that a 7x7 large tile region would load at about half the speed as a 2x2 region. Originally posted by: DocRorlachThere is one more caveat: nowadays a lot of teams create their own, fixed structure: that should actually be followed in most cases...quote> I wholeheartedly disagree with that part. The ONLY time the location of a dependency matters is when it reindexes a plugin over an existing indexed plugin. Other than that, the file sturcture suggested by teams is crap. It is wholey incompatible with a multi-region organizational structure for reasons that should be obvious above (i.e. if you have a BSC set of Euro buildings to use with SFBT Euro buildings, your stock directory structure will prohibit effective management of the files. That, and installers simply shouldn't be used. There is no reason for it. With winrar, an install (of an unlimited number of plugins) takes not more than 4 mouse-clicks plus any additional clicks required for overwriting the files as prompted. An installer starts with the indentical install instructions (and an equal number of steps) before allowing you to 'begin' the install process (keeping in mind this is where a typical install would end). At this point, you must click an additional 14 times, in not less than 4 different locations (and rather than this tedium occurring once and you being done with a batch of plugins, you must do it once for EACH plugin). Finally, it does not give you the option to not display the readme. I would consider an unwanted execution of a program to be malicious coding...though, nowhere near as malicious as installing to a location different from the location it tells the user it will install to...but enough ranting on this stupid installer question...stupid, stupid, stupid...Ok, one more quick rant. For an idea of how wasteful this is to users time, in rebuilding my plugins directory from scratch for new comp it took about 20 hours of work. Of this 20 hours, not less than 14 were spent with ONLY BSC items downloaded from SC4D. Other installers took about 3 hours, and the remainder (it makes up about 800MB of 1.2GB, the VAST majority of my plugins) took about 3 hours...and this was because of DL speed, not computer operator speed. The one other thing I would disagree with you on is readmes. Removing the readme files will DRASTICALLY decrease load times for reasons described above. And on load times, I went from a 512MB (RAM), 2GHz, 64MB (Video) to a 4-4-4 Gig machine and load times are about 1/4 - 1/6 what they were on the old machine. This is consistent with my analysis of the importance of RAM to SC4.

If I may weigh in. First off, we have 2 plugin directories to play with. USE THEM. Think of your directories as layers, SC4 indexes them in a given order, and knowing that order can help organize plugins. SC4 will load it's root directory's subdirectory plugins first in alphabetical order by the name of the subdirectory. So, ...\SC4\plugins\NAM will load before ...\SC4\plugins\Terrain Mod. After loading all subdirectories, it will load the SC4\plugins root directory itself. It then does the documents\SC4\plugins directory in the same order as as the game directory. (FYI: This indexing order is the same order that the windows file system will display files if selected to sort by: name in asscending order) With that knowledge, we can force the load order of certain files without relying on "z_" as a lead to the file name to push it to the end. This is useful because if the NAM is installed in your game directory, as I have, then any texture mods on it can be safely installed in a number of locations and will properly overwrite the indexed textures. This can also be used as a workaround for a number of files that form known conflicts. Default install locations are evil. Don't use them. And be weary, there are a number of installers out there that will install to where IT wants to rather than where YOU tell it. This kind of release practice is unethical, but unfortunately, there are some rather good downloads hidden in some very inconvenient packages. Organize your documents directory plugins into a number of basic folders. I have: Airport, BS (this is my BSC directory renamed to protect against rogue installers), Civic, Commercial, Dependencies, Dutch Tile Set, Farms, Industrials, Landmarks, Parks, UK Tile Set, Transit. The idea of this is that most of your directories will be used for all your regions despite what localization you do with downloads. Some directories, like those in italics above, I would use only on a specific region. If I don't want to use a given tile set I have set up, I remove it from the directory to save on load time. You can then subdivide each of the folders in your plugin folder if you wish to have certain plopable lots in game. Setup a different plugin folder for each game setup you have (mine are plugins.all, plugins.dutch, plugins.uk, plugins.dev...). Finally, using datpacker, rename each of your directories one at a time to plugins (with no false extention) and use datpacker, adding the extention back on to each when finished. When you have packed all the plugins you wish to use on your region, copy the files from each plugins_compressed directory into a fresh, empty plugins directory. You will end up with: ..\plugins (this will have about 15 *.dat files in it that you have copied over from each of your plugins directories after packing in datpacker) ..\plugins.all ..\plugins.uk ..\plugins.dutch ..\plugins.dev Finally, maintain your plugins.* folders as 'master' plugin directories. If you add plugins, you can temporarily place them in your play plugins folder, but install them properly and repackage your full plugin directory frequently (backing up your old one until you ensure the new one worked properly). A note on files types: There are MANY file types that are useless to sc4 and will in fact slow load times considerably (because of the way SC4 indexes its files, the number of files, rather than size, is the biggest factor determining load time). ONLY, .sc4desc, .sc4lot, .sc4model, .dat, and .dll files will do you any good in your SC4 directory. Otherwise just delete it. There is nothing worth saving in the endless menutia of readmes that isn't readily avialble online and their images really slow the game and eat space. Edit: Oh, this one is important. Always extract files to their own directory, this way, you should have a good clean recognizable file name. This will also keep lots packaged together. If you're picky about it, you can make sure there's only the one directory because many are packaged with annoying subdirectories (or worse, actually INSTALL subdirectories); but this isn't necessary and will not affect game function or performance.

long time ago...and because it really sucks to have only one pic in play at a time, unless it's a difficult one. But no one wants to wait 20 hours for another round of pix after someone guesses the correct airport 10 mins after the picture was posted

Here we go, one for the interim-same as above but no one has guessed:

Ok, between showing a TU-154, a generally well themed city, and my BAT, this one deserves a place in my sig. Oops, guess ST didn't take my sig update.... We'll try again. sorry about that. Also, where's that TU-154 from? I would love to have some of those at my airports.

Spread industry out around your city. A quick experiment you can do is grow x number of jobs with no free tiles in a small area, and do the same x number of jobs with more than 50% open space in between. The pollution graph will show a clear difference. Problem solved. Ironically, the way to defeat the pollution problem is to move the jobs nearer your residential area. This hits both on the front side as described above and on the back side when less commuting means less pollution.

^ I like that guess.... and the V5 hold marking means that the piper wing we can see would be a Piper Seneca (I think...definately a piper twin) from Ocean Sky Aviation Lol, go look at google earth, you can actually SEE the piper twin with matching paint!

Lets go with Dusseldorf (DUS) or Stuttgart (STR) for 1 And Cologn for #3

Originally posted by: CaptCityI'm not saying the lots you mentioned are good or badquote>I will... vanderaap's lots are good. That goes for every single one he uploaded before May of 2008. I've both used them as they came from vanderaap and created an entire tile set with my own lots, the Vda series of buildings is good. And it's without a doubt a simple conflict.

1 - Edinburgh International (EDI) 2 - Warsaw International (WAW) 3 - Amsterdam Schipol (AMS) 4 - Manston-Kent International (???)

I think the way to do it is a puzzle peice that goes 2 tiles into the city from the edge. The problem being that you cannot get the RULs to behave properly, as far as I understand, going out as RHW-2 on the neighbor-side and RHW-4 on the city side over a single tile...i.e. each conjoining tile must be of the same RHW-x as the tile it enters onto the puzzle peice...at least if it's the same network You do have the option of other networks. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anything would prohibit a 4x1 puzzle peice that would connect an RHW-6 to Ground-Highway. I don't think the game coding has any problems with multiple traffic exemplars per tile, so long as each access-side doesn't conflict. Unless there is something hard-coded pertaining specifically and only to networks, this should work the same as a multi-network TE-tile. My point is, we know that the puzzle peice can be used to feign a connection to a neighbor; and we know that we can multi-TE any tile. I'm wondering if it's where you got caught up, but I think this method should work on puzzle peices nevertheless. Am I wrong? Let me try to be productive here: I don't know how to get the new intersection into the RUL files and into the game properly. If you could make a plugin that applies some pathing and some textures to the file, I'd be happy to get my hands dirty with the editing. Edit: Also, where did you get hung up on your attempts with this method?..I can't help but think a more conspicuous disclosure might help solve the problem.

Lol, yup, it occurred to me that the guy in the cherry picker was not covered as they tend to be in ice-prone locations Memphis?

So, I just was reading the readme for the RHW's newest version, and I've had a thought about how to avoid the "loop connector"...at least cosmetically. Before the dragable method of networks (like RHW) was devised, connecting to a neighbor with non-standard networks meant laying the standard network and plopping a puzzle peice over it. The first version of this was z_connector.dat for the GLR over El-Rail (by smoncrie or Goaskin), I made an updated version of it that is still available, though obsolete. Anyway, using that same method, you could use the RHW-x textures with the RHW-2 pathing to make what the game treats as a loop connector but appears to be RHW-x. The only thing would be traffic would not work, but this is nevertheless a vast improvement over the strange looking current situatioin. Also, I presume that the capacity could be upped so that the cross-traffic would not factor in to the congestion? Also, an RHW-2 -> Subway & RHW-4 would be a nice little touch to add for making neighbor connections with wide, multi-tile medians

The MD-11 is Deicing, and you can see it's #2 engine (at least) is running.