Lurker

We are. Aliens, Borderlands, Hell's Highway. What happened to Heat?

Lurker, because I lurk.

This is exactly what I'm doing for school, getting it tomorrow. Buying 2GB of RAM and hooking up an external 320GB HD for home-use. Should be awesome, can't wait. You'll want more than 512MB to run many programs on OSX.

Did you know, there was a shocking increase of 33% in the last year of flag burning incidents in the United States? They're up from 3 to 4! In a time when the United States is facing many problems like the War in Iraq and immigration, Congress is focusing on election year pandering like gay marriage and flag burning. Shows you why this is called the "Do Nothing Congress".

And Italy dives their way into the group of 8. I can't believe the ref called that penalty... figures he was French.

It was an airstrike, but Zarqawi lived until 52 minutes after the strike. Iraqi police were the first on the scene, followed by the American soldiers. There are rumours that he was tortured/beaten. Not necessarily. It doesn't matter if the person is an angel or the devil. If you have a charter stating you will not assassinate or torture, you don't. If you do, your word is worth nothing. I'm not complaining in this case necessarily, his death did everyone a lot of good, but the United States has a history of stepping outside of its bounds. US-backed coups. US-backed assassinations. US-backed renditions. US-run sercret illegal prisons. The list goes on and on. It's a culture of hypocrisy. If you're not going to play by the rules, don't say you will. Don't sign an international agreement saying you will. The United States government would do well to remember that you get what you give in. If you don't fight by the rules, don't expect your enemies too.

Al-Zarqawi had a history of doing things against Islamic tradition. In his youth he drank excessively and got tattoos. This was before he went to Afghanistan to fight in the Mujahideen. That doesn't really matter. As far as the Iraqi insurgency, Al-Zarqawi's activities were anything but A-list. His group makes up what is a small percentage of the insurgency, and in my opinion his importance is grossly over-inflated. That being said, his death is obviously welcome news and hopefully the reaction from Iraq is equally as over-inflated, in the "good" direction.

I work in game retail, and the same thing happens with the PSP. If a customer comes in and asks me if they should get their son or daughter a DS or PSP, I almost always tell them to go with the cheaper DS, unless they're looking for an entertainment handheld system. Same thing will likely happen with the PS3 -- games are alongside the entertainment portions of it, and unless they're looking for the complete/whole/expensive package, I'll probably have to tell them to go with the Xbox360. The real winner in this is Microsoft, seeing as how Nintendo is not in direct competetion with them like Sony has aligned themselves. To me, the PS3 screams over-ambition and excess.

Even taking your games over to a friend's house wouldn't work... either way, I won't be getting a PS3, but it seems like Sony is constantly making bad decisions.

http://www.biagame.com/index.php?p=screens_bakerwall

Enjoy even more. First high res screenshot released.

University of British Columbia's business program. Not too sure whether or not I'll go, but it's a great place and a good school.

Beautiful, you'll love it there. I'm thinking about going to school there next year, actually.

why? What's free and democratic about executing a man who changed his religion? In a truly free nation, this would have absolutely nothing to do with the State, and would be kept within the religious organizations that were affected. Western nations in Afghanistan (Canada, US, etc.) are there spreading the right to live as democratic and free people to the country, and presented with this opportunity they turn the other way. Yeah, but why do they turn the other way? Because they don't understand the concept of a free society where people can practice what they want. We still struggle with it, too (read: gay rights). So I mean, the fault lies with no one. It's human nature to want to run things your way, and sometimes forget what is best for the collective. I think Fletch has a great point: it's like night and day for them. The concepts of freedom and democracy are easy for us to understand because we've already experienced, and still are, the growing pains that come along with it.

why? What's free and democratic about executing a man who changed his religion? In a truly free nation, this would have absolutely nothing to do with the State, and would be kept within the religious organizations that were affected. Western nations in Afghanistan (Canada, US, etc.) are there spreading the right to live as democratic and free people to the country, and presented with this opportunity they turn the other way.

Only speaks to the great difficulty in spreading Westen values in these Middle Eastern countries. In many cases, they shun freedom, democracy, and the right to live where we would embrace it by choice.

this is not true, there is no such thing as 100% solid proof in science. Proof is for mathematics. So you're saying that photosynthesis is a theory, not a "proof"? Some things just are. They happened, they aren't theory. A science is knowledge of a subject derived from observation, experimentation, and study. Technically, mathematics IS a science, and technically a lot of things outside of chemistry, biology and physics are, too. If something is observable in the physical world and can be evaluated using a scientific method, in my opinion, that's a valid science. Edit, via Wikipedia: "Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space and change. It developed, through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, from counting, calculation, measurement, and the study of the shapes and motions of physical objects." Via Princeton: "a science (or group of related sciences) dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement " If it looks like a science, acts like a science, and quacks like a science, then it's probably a science.... or something like that.

In science, the term theory is generally given to a piece of work that attempts to explain what happens in a certain instance, ie. the Big Bang theory. Once a scientific theory is proven based on fact, it's called a proof. So if this research proves that the Big Bang actually did happen, it would no longer be a proof, rather a proof. Happens in mathematics all the time. An extremely simply example would be: 1 + 2 = 6 - 3 A theory, really, until someone understood what to do with the numbers to have them equal each other, in which case it was proven to be true. And yes, when you have a proof, you have enough evidence to prove that there is no other sequence of events that would lead to the exact same situation (in other words, proving that this event did happen).

'Yeah, why don't the developers of these ultra-authentic and historically accurate Brothers in Arms games pull a new theatre of war out of their asses and create a new one?' Right.... and I can't believe someone even compared COD2's graphics to this and said they were the same.

The cartoons were the spark that ignited the fire. What goes around comes around, and that goes to both sides in this argument.

If we're in a war, how come they aren't accorded POW rights? Technically, it's not a war, except everyone including Congress and the President calls it a war. So it isn't a war, but it is? See? Yeah, I was and am just as confused. As far as I'm concerned, this is a classic tale of treating your enemies with the respect you would want your own people to be treated by your enemy iif they happened to be captured. Seriously, POWs and those kidnapped in iIraq et al are just as deserving to life as everyone else, but I find it hard to give out sympathy to those policy-makers who deem it necessary to add fine print the legislation so they have a loophole big enough to torture people without consequence. For being such Christian people, I fail to see why the White House still harbours not a good bone in their collective body.

Ah, I just wanted to know what made you so sure you were right. Not so sure what makes your opinion more credible than the others voiced in this thread...?

Question for mawibse: Have you been to Gitmo Bay? What makes statements made by your opposition conjecture and your's true? By the way, I'd like you to produce a credible source to back up your statement about the investigators being invited to Gitmo Bay and given access to the materials they needed. As far as I know of, no UN or human rights group has been allowed inside of the camp to do the necessary work to uncover the truth. Note: a source other than the one used in the CNN article, ie. someone not biased towards their own cause (Richard Grenell). I find it really sad that the government is attacking those who are looking out for the wellbeing of fellow human beings. Another example of the US government supporting a group when they support their position and casting them aside as crazies when they don't.

Tonight we're expecting 15 - 25cm (6-10 inches) of snow, adding onto the total already fallen today. Fun