Messages

1051

Jokes / Re: Funny videos

« on: October 27, 2008, 10:59:29 AM »

damn... that's horrible!

It's happening in an area where apparently it's acceptable to wave a handgun in the air. So I'm assuming that this crowd is in some way related to a militant faction of something. Plus this guy is stupid enough to hand a loaded gun to a 3 year old. Thank God that the idiot got shot and not the child. I still feel bad because the kid doesn't know what just happened, nor does he know what happened to his dad. I think that the saddest thing on earth is the Mercury Rising situation where a child, who both doesn't understand death and is 100% dependent on his parents, is faced with the loss of one.

According to the caption it was in Syria, at a wedding. Apparently it's customary to shoot your load at weddings there to express your joy. Coupling violence with a wedding celebration is idiotic beyond all idiocy as this example shows. Doing it in a crowded patio is insanity.

The caption states the father died, the kid was two years old and is now four and "suffers shock" but I don't think a four year old has any concept of the nature of the incident. He will probably have dim memories of the event as he grows older. A belly shot like that is usually fatal. At that angle the round probably took out every organ from the spleen to the lungs and hopefully fragmented against a rib and took out some other vital organs on the way out his shoulder. He died in the hospital according to the article but he was as good as dead when he fell.

1052

/dev/random / Re: im drunk

« on: October 27, 2008, 08:31:15 AM »

It's called the 1000-yard stare and anyone who has seen serious combat knows it. He has seen some serious shit and he didn't like it. He has also realized his own mortality or has seen one or more buddies in his unit killed or seriously wounded. He will talk about it when he's ready but probably not with you if you are non-combat or civilian. You wouldn't understand it.

Don't make fun of it or play it lightly. If he does talk about it, just listen, don't make stupid comments about how cool it is that somebody got fragged. Pay attention to comments about suicide or wreckless behavior beyond the usual mosh-pit self-destructive behavior he may have exhibited with you in the past. Look up the symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome and be aware of them in him. Refer him to professional counselling if he is discharged from the service.

Your buddy is in some serious pain.

1053

Jokes / Re: Funny videos

« on: October 27, 2008, 08:18:03 AM »

Darwin's law in action. Too bad he reproduced first. Oh well, hopefully the kid will follow his father's example. He already has a good start.

Firearms, crowds, kids, probably some good hashish on the side. Bad mix.

1054

/dev/random / Re: im drunk

« on: October 25, 2008, 08:35:21 PM »

Two words: Meth lab.

1055

0x1337c0de / Re: Q2 Source Code - Question

« on: October 25, 2008, 08:30:20 PM »

cl_fx.c is part of the client code not the game DLL. The game DLL controls the game when running as a server.

1056

0x1337c0de / Re: Q2 Source Code - Question

« on: October 25, 2008, 08:46:43 AM »

Are you asking where are the files or where are they configured in the weapons?

The files can be real files or they can be inside the PAK files.
The weapons are configured in the game DLL, in the weapon g_item structures, for example:

Code: [Select]

gitem_t gI_weapon_blaster =
{
"weapon_blaster",
NULL,
Use_Weapon,
NULL,
Weapon_Blaster,
"misc/w_pkup.wav",
NULL, 0,
"models/weapons/v_blast/tris.md2",
/* icon */ "w_blaster",
/* pickup */ "Blaster",
0,
0,
NULL,
IT_WEAPON|IT_STAY_COOP,
NULL,
0,
/* precache */ "weapons/blastf1a.wav misc/lasfly.wav"
};

Client side sounds are also configured in cl_fx.c in the CL_ParseMuzzleFlash function.

1057

Politics / Re: What does this mean to the economy?

« on: October 15, 2008, 09:29:39 PM »

Alan Greenspan will go down in history as the worst FED chairman in the history of the United States. His obfuscated statements in his reports will be recorded as meaningless blather and nonsense. His concentration on combating inflation at the expense of all other monetary features of our economy is what allowed the tech and real estate bubbles to persist and expand.

1058

Religion, and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist / Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali at AAI 07

« on: October 11, 2008, 12:06:42 PM »

An excellent description of Islam from the POV of a woman subjugated by it and her escape from it. That the enlightenment of REASON not dogma is the way out of subjugation and deprivation.

1059

Politics / Re: What does this mean to the economy?

« on: October 11, 2008, 11:29:39 AM »

it's the bankers fault, and the president's fault.  they made the bad investments, the president said nothing.

You really are clueless, aren't you? The banks didn't "invest" anything. They lent money to people who obtained mortgages they couldn't afford by letting mortgage brokers tell them it was OK to lie about their incomes and expenses. They sent pre-approved credit card applications to people who couldn't afford to pay them off like students and others who managed their credit badly. One friend of mine is on his 5th re-finance since buying his 2nd home and wondering how he'll ever pay it off with two daughters who are getting married soon.

The President has absolutely nothing to do with all of that. The president DID try to tell Congress there was a problem and THEY wouldn't listen because one of their friends [ ] was the CEO of Freddie Mac.

In 2003, the company revealed that it had understated earnings by almost $5 billion, one of the largest corporate restatements in U.S. history. As a result, in November, it was fined $125 million--an amount called "peanuts" by Forbes.

A 200-page report issued by Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight indicated that the company's records were manipulated to meet Wall Street earnings expectations. The firm signed a consent order promising to improve internal controls and corporate governance.

On April 18, 2006 home loan giant Freddie Mac was fined $3.8 million, by far the largest amount ever assessed by the Federal Election Commission, as a result of illegal campaign contributions. Much of the illegal fund raising benefited members of the House Financial Services Committee, a panel whose decisions can affect Freddie Mac. Notably, Freddie Mac held more than 40 fundraisers for House Financial Services Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio.

Oxley, remember that name? Does Sorbanes-Oxley ring a bell?

Franklin Raines presided over Fannie Mae during that period.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Congress set the rules. Congress set the goals. The banks correctly sold the mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who bought them on margin with only 2% capital reserves. That means for example, they bought $400,000 loans with only $8000 in reserves to back them up if the mortgagee defaulted. Get it? The GSEs simply didn't have the funds to guarantee recovery of assets if they had to foreclose. Frank Raines incorrectly told Congress, under oath, that they were riskless. Futhermore, he ordered the cooking of the books so the company would meet analyst expectations so he and his officers could get their bonuses.

Now, you blame the president. Which president? Frank Raines served under Clinton!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines
in 2005:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_02/b3915646.htm
April, 2008:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004358433_webraines18.html

"But forget the now-familiar tales of mortgages gone bad. The next horror for beaten-down financial firms is the $950 billion worth of outstanding credit-card debt—much of it toxic. "
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_42/b4104024799703.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

1060

Politics / Re: The Official Obama Bashing Thread

« on: October 10, 2008, 09:35:19 PM »

 

1061

Politics / Re: What does this mean to the economy?

« on: October 10, 2008, 09:21:06 PM »

I blame the bankers for the problem, since they are the root cause. 

Circular logic with a bad premise. Bankers were not root cause, they just knew bad investment needed to be traunched and diversified. Blame colleges and universities that teach "creative economics" to their MBA's and graduate bean counters who's sole goal in life is to secure big salaries and even bigger bonuses by meeting unrealistic goals using unrealistic bookkeeping.

Governemnt [sic] mandates that caused banks to give out poor loans was extremely negligable [sic] , considering the extend [sic] of the problem.

Government, (Congress) and Bill Clinton as far back as 1997, told FNMA and FMAC to pick up more MBS even when they knew the MBS were "toxic". They also encouraged banks to lend to people who were "disadvantaged" and needed to participate in the "American Dream" of home ownership, even if they couldn't afford it. When OFHEO told Congress (Maxine Waters, Barney Franks) that FMAC officers were pulling extraordinary compensation and pointed out bad bookkeeping, Congress critters defended FMAC and accused OFHEO of false accusations and bad practice. Congress failed in their oversight responsibility.

OFHEO reports to Congress, not the President.

As far as the government not fixing problems ahead of time, I blame the president.  It's not like he was saying, hey maybe these policies we issues in the past were good at the time, but now we gotta change them, he didn't say anything like that.

The President enforces the laws. Congress writes the laws. You can't enforce what isn't written or step into enforcement that Congress has reserved to itself. This is and continues to be the main problem between Congress (no matter what party controls it) and the president, no matter what party he belongs to. The Congress continues to micro-manage national affairs while sticking their pig noses into the trough and blaming the president for acting "imperial". Congress tried, to Gen. G. Washington's everlasting exaspiration, to underfund the Revolutionary War while micromanaging and interfering with his command of the army. (Sound familiar?)

Congress and "banking experts" continued to falsely claim "everything's fine" in order to avoid the kind of generalized investor panic we are now experiencing. Quite simply, they lied about the whole mess, hoping it would work itself out and just go away. They pulled "The Enron Maneuver" --  tell everyone it's all OK in order to avoid a "run on the bank".

It doesn't matter who is president. It won't matter if McCain or Obama is president. Except if Obama is elected it would probably become much worse, because the president doesn't control or even have much influence on the course of the economy, it's all the Central Bankers and the Federal Reserve is a private company. Gee, another one of those GSE's?

1062

Politics / Re: The Official Obama Bashing Thread

« on: October 08, 2008, 10:43:21 PM »

If I had the energy, I wouldn't need 5 minute abs, I'd be able to use 10 minute abs but I don't have the energy anymore.
Pass the salt, please.

1063

Politics / Re: The Official Obama Bashing Thread

« on: October 08, 2008, 08:27:26 AM »

qwazy is too intense for me

 I'm having fun  being intense.

1064

Politics / Re: The Official Obama Bashing Thread

« on: October 07, 2008, 10:50:27 PM »

Well, let me see. Do we respond to the claim that I am a racist first or that I was denegrating (oops) Abraham Lincoln's achievements as an Inexperienced President. Or shall I respond to the claim that citing the fact that the Civil War killed more Americans than any other implies that I am against the Civil War and it follows that if anyone is against the Civil War they ought to be against the Iraq war or vice versa.

1. I never experienced racism until my junior year in college. I was a member of the broadcasters club at the school and we had a short-range FM radio station and I was one of the DJs, this was in 1975. My partner was black from Detroit and was a year behind me in age. I am white and was brought up in the nearly-all-white suburbs of another city midwest, not in Michigan, precisely where is irrelevant. We got along just fine and we had a nice gig going in our time slot. One day, we decided to get lunch and jaunt around town in my car. After lunch we were seeing the sights and generally hanging out. The car was a convertible. We stopped at a traffic light and there were some black kids our age standing on the corner. They yelled at my passenger, flipped him off and called him Uncle Tom. The light changed, we moved on. I asked him WTF? He said "Nothin' man, keep moving." I had to look it up later to figure it out. I had never heard of Uncle Tom before. It turned out the real racists were black that day.

2. The Civil War was inevitable no matter who was president. While the moral high ground may have been his, it was Lincoln's speeches on slavery and his making it his policy that if elected he would be against admitting any new slave states that caused the secessions of the southern states upon his election so one could say he precipitated the war. If the south had not seceded and caused the north to respond with force of arms, slavery in the south might have lasted another generation but it was inevitable that slavery should end one way or another. The war, and the south's defeat, actually hastened the process of abolition. What's interesting is that blacks who owe abolition to the Republicans tend to be regarded as voting more for Democrats, the common misconception that "conservative" is equivalent to racist or something. Maybe that is/was true in southern states but I don't think there were many Republicans in office down there until more recently since being a white Republican in the south would be equivalent to being "One of Them Damn Yankees".

Weren't George Wallace and Jesse Helms both Democrats? There's some nice racists for you.

There is no logical connection between the Civil War and it's causes and the Iraq war and it's causes.

It's not a question of down playing Lincoln's greatness. It a matter of seeing him and his actions and policies in the reality of their history and consequences. Facts can get in the way when our heros have feet of clay.

I never supported the Iraq war. I thought it was a mistake to go there when it was clear to me at the time that the real center of conflict ought to be Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iran since that's where Al Quaida was. GWB made a huge mistake trying to re-fight daddy's war but I suspect Saddam scared the shit out of the Saudis and they needed him taken out. Lots of phone calls from the good old boys from Rhiyad, no doubt.

I am in favor of McCain's idea that staying there and helping to fix what we helped break is better than some artificial timetable for withdrawl to satisfy the masses. Just another example of vote buying. However, anyone with kids in the armed forces has my sympathy. It's going to be a tough next couple of years. Even if Obama gets elected, it will be at least two years before the beginning of any withdrawl.

FYI, my ancestry in the New World goes back to a young Englishman who came from Hingham, Norwich, Norfolk in 1635 and began his life on this continent at the ripe old age of 25 as a carpenter, mason and general contractor in Boston. He married the ship captain's daughter and was NOT a member of the Puritan church and therefore could not vote. He was made a "freedman" in his 40's and lived to be some 70+ years old. My ancestral grandfathers and uncles fought and died as volunteers in the Revolutionary Army under George Washington and at least one served as Ensign during the war of 1812. Another generation served again in the Iowa Volunteers during the Civil War. My grandfather served during WWI, my father fought in WWII and my Great Grandmother was Sioux. I am 13th generation American and part Native American. And that ain't no bull.

1065

Tech Junkie Lounge / Re: Math geek clock

« on: October 06, 2008, 09:56:25 AM »

Toward a more accurate timepiece.