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Is this still going to happen? What does Domo want done?
Both his servers are still outdated and misconfigured.
Not to toot our horn or anything but it seems like the alumni-run TF2 server is the only one we have, for any game, that ever has people in it.
Here is a list of banned video games listed by country. Definately worth looking at.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_video_games
You’ll notice almost all banned games are for extreme violence and/or gore.
I’m not sure that’s fail but I do believe Microsoft bans you for it.
Something about an unfail advantage
a waffle said:
Any news on the flyers or posters? If not I will print some myself and post them at the LAN centers in Asheville.
The club has too many resources for you to be paying to print them yourself.
Their reaction towards Bush 700 B bailout:
Bush was a RINO and few conservatives voted for the bailout. Once a spending bill like that’s been passed there’s realisticall nothing that can be done about it other than prevent followups.
What they would have done for the ailing economy (including loss of jobs, stemming the recession, etc):
Had Obama done nothing, as in kept ALL existing policies and tax rates in place, the economy was modelled to have already recovered by now. The reason many businesses have cut hiring this year is because they still don’t know for sure what their tax rates will be next year. Any tax cut extension for businesses passed now won’t affect the tax hikes for the first quarter of 2011.
What Obama did was the exact same thing FDR did in the 30s, pass bill after bill and create program after program and in the short term there was improvement but you can’t use bandaids to fix a long term problem. It’s interesting, if you study economics you’ll find that the reason politicians think the government can positively affect the economy is largely in part to the keynesian economic model. This model was developed in the 1930s, oddly enough during the worst economic times in the US, and when FDR followed it to the letter by using government stimulus to fund programs and job “growth” it failed. Miserably. This economic model, which is confusing at best and completely unrealistic at worst, is the model that Bush and Obama used to push their stimulus programs. Look how, 70 years later, it still fails to create jobs. In theory, the math looks great. When you apply the whole “real world” equation to it all the math on it falls apart. Most economists now say that if FDR had kept his fingers off the economy we’d have recovered almost completely and had a stable economy by the mid-1930s, just like the rest of the world did.
So I guess in tl:dr, Obama pulled an FDR and the end result was the same. Doing nothing is ALWAYS better than doing something that could drastically make things worse.
Wars in middle east:
They would have done the same Obama did but would have allowed the Afghan and Iraqi governments set the timetable for it. The surge in Afghanistan was a long time coming but Republicans couldn’t do it without committing political suicide, the dems would have torn them up over it. When the US started pulling out of Iraqi cities, everyone over there cheered and partied, until they discovered that their police forces were not ready and violence increased exponentially.
One thing to keep in mind, they never actually stopped the insurgency in Iraq. One a timeline was set the number of attacks seemed to go down almost overnight. I think Obama has set himself up for a dismal backlash from insurgents and I don’t think anyone in Washington will see it coming until CNN reports that our three embassies there have been overrun.
Anything extra, what would they improve on, what they would propose and pass in congress (health care reform?):
Don’t have the time but will hit this later. There’s a ton that could have been done without all the complete overhauls that were done.
Quote:
The image I get is similar to what you just said, I think nothing would get done. So i figured you might know because you’re, well, conservative and all.The problem is that democrats are oblivious to the fact that they just lost the ability to pass legislation. All spending and taxation bills are writen by the House, which republicans now have a sizable majority. Now, republicans can not only shut the senate down through filibuster but they can push bills through the House without needing a single democrat vote. Instead of changing to a constructive, “hey we lost so now let’s work together” attitude like Clinton did in 94, Obama still maintains that “if republicans have some ideas, we’ll consider them.” No dumbass, if YOU have ideas WE’LL consider them. The losers don’t dictate policy, something democrats took full advantage of while they held majorities in both houses of congress. This is the only reason I’m glad the tea party gained so much ground, they aren’t going to go to Washington with a “let’s do it their way” attitude, they go there with a “you *edited*ed America off and they voted you out, now we run things and we’ll do it our way” attitude. This isn’t going to be good for democrats and they’ll run as much “anti-cooperation” propaganda as they can, but with so many democrat senators with unfavorable poll numbers up for re-election in 2012, they’re going to have to start voting how their constituents want, rather than how Obama and Reid tell them. All it takes is a couple democrats to allow republicans to push a bill through congress and if something polarized, like a repeal of Obamacare managed to pass the senate, it would force Obama to pick between veto’ing congress, which will cost him re-election and negate all constructionist propaganda, and preserving his agenda. I honestly think he’d give up re-election and cost democrats tons of congressional seats in 2012 if it meant his agenda stayed on the books, if only for another 2 years.
One thing I like though, the republicans seem to be backing Boehner and from what I’ve seen and read he’s the perfect guy for the job. He has a nice conservative touch to him but he’s not a wacko about it, and he’s a good public speaker. Obama and Gibbs have trash talked him hard in recent months but now that’ll be stopping. lol
If he can push the republican agenda and maintain the relationship between mainline republicans, conservatives, and the tea party, I’d say we have a perfect presidential candidate for 2012. Getting those 3 to agree on social issues is going to be like driving donuts in a minefield but if he can pull that off being president would be simple by comparison.
Obama is still just as delusional as he was a week ago.
“I don’t think voters want us to spend the next 2 years changing what’s already been done.”
The next 2 years are going to be abysmal. Nothing is going to get done. The largest flip in the House since the 1940s and democrats keep moving on business as usual. This is surreal.
major newrayz said:
warning: republicans, you may want to close your eyes and press mute.
Or just avoid the play button
The forums can be changed at any time. The rules need doing now.
I think some peoples’ priorities are a little skewed.
My parents let me play Doom2 and Duke Nukem 3D when I was 10 or so. By early teens I was playing Soldier of Fortune.
Violent video games don’t create violent people. Only in the US judicial system would an assertion as stupid as that carry any weight. Using violence to solve problems IRL is a choice and if you aren’t prepared to suffer the consequences of making that decision maybe you should look for another way to solve your problems. This is called being accountable for your actions and American kids aren’t taught this in schools anymore, everything is someone else’s fault. You can pass the blame all day long but there’s only so many people you can throw under the bus before you end up under it yourself.
You really think laws like this will stop minors from playing those games?
i just lol’d. hard.
Again, you already have a system in place to deal with this. Why not work with that existing system instead?
What this will do, however, is make it more expensive to make the game because a special box will have to be made just for the state of California. Such a cost increase will be passed to EVERY customer in EVERY state. Gee thanks.
And why do we care? Because stupid stuff like this is how more excessive bans start. It’s the foot in the door that politicians need. America is a unique in that our government bans very few games while other countries routinely ban games entirely for “high impact violence” or force developers to release watered down versions just for their country. Nonsense and unneeded laws like this is how it’ll start here.
Also worth noting, video games are considered protected speech under the 1st Amendment. Allowing a state to restrict free speech, even a vague form like this, would be an enormous blow to it from the standpoint of precedent.
So California doesn’t have a problem with people buying pot but they’re bent out of shape over video games?
Seriously, wtf is wrong with that state?
Maybe instead of banning the games they should work with retailers to actually enforce the ESRB age limits on game purchasing. I always tell this when it comes up, because it’s always applicable, when I bought Doom3 at an EBGames I got carded. No biggie, I should have and certainly didn’t mind. The 12 year old behind me bought GTA3 and was not carded. Who in their right mind would card an obviously old enough person buying Doom3 and then turn around and not card an obviously NOT old enough kid for a GTA game?
And yes, the Panthers are terrible.
At least yesterday it looked like Moore was throwing the ball where it was supposed to go, except for that first pass anyway.
4:55 PM – *Paper-Cut: i think i finally figured out what i’m going to do with my life
4:59 PM – MasterP: does it involve bleach?
4:59 PM – *Paper-Cut: no
4:59 PM – *Paper-Cut: lol
1) We’ve had the same rules here for years and until recently have never really had any issues. If someone stepped out of line it was dealt with quickly and effectively and threads very rarely got out of hand. If the students feel that the rules need more clarity then by all means add it in but you need to be careful not to limit or overstep the scope of the rules. If you ban dissention you’ll never get any ideas that aren’t in step with your own, which makes the entire discussion meaningless. Now there’s nothing wrong with honest debate and well-mannered arguments, and I know you know this, but any rule changes will have to keep such “disagreements” in mind. There’s a fine line between disagreement and flaming. The current rules allow for those treading that line to be dealt with even though they may not be directly stepping over, if you get specific in the rules you may not be allowed to take action until they clearly step over it.
Banning trolling, flamming, and thread derailing is a novel concept, and we all know the endgoal is to banhammer me for it, but are you prepared to ban Liquid the next time he does it? Or Kazka? More importantly, do you think the next administration will be as willing to enforce the rules equally? What if there’s a disagreement about whether or not a post is in violation of the rules? What happens when someone is banned and complains to SGA about it? Are the club execs prepared to take the flak for it or will they cave and unban them with a “warning”? What if a negative post is made about someone not doing their job, does commentary on indisputably poor performance have to be spun in a positive manner? These questions have to be considered when deciding to strengthen the rules here.
2) A private board like that already exists. It’s visible to root admins only and that likely will not change because passwords and serial keys don’t need to be available to all club execs, lest we get a disgruntled VP or secretary hacking into the database or taking down the gameservers remotely, even after resigning. Before you say that won’t happen, it’s already happened before and the database password in the hands of the right *edited*ed off exec can be devastating. One command, run remotely, could delete the column that stores everyone’s passwords and then we’re pretty much boned.
As to the private sections, we started out with only one but split it off into two to allow for more people to interact in private discussions without infringing on the discussion of execs. The “exec discussion” board allows the current execs to discuss issues privately amoungst themselves and the “private discussion” board is open to the current execs as well as all previous execs, CLs, and alumni. If you want to remerge it and only have the exec discussion so be it but considering the recent downward trend in discussions held on here prior to being brought forward at meetings to be voted on I think you’ll be ignoring a ton of good advice that past execs and alumni have to offer. You are MUCH more likely to have flaming and extreme negativity on here if you don’t allow, or “forget” to have, a discussion on a big change before voting on it, especially if something’s been tried before and failed. When you strip a car down, you’ll always find an engine, the same can be said with gaming clubs. No matter the location, the students, or the games, there’s a fundamental set of variables that will always remain the same. The past execs, CLs, and alumni have been around long enough to know what those are and help you avoid the pitfalls that many other univerity clubs face when changing between generations but we can only do that if you let us.
Now I know who’s pushing this, and I know why he’s doing it, but like I’ve said several times now this is a great idea in theory but never works in practice. There’s always going to be discussions that don’t need to be seen by the public. Perfect example is from the WCUGA’s own message board, a private AIM discussion was posted that included things like stealing money and a half dozen other things that SGA frowns on but since they didn’t have a private section it was posted in the open for everyone to read. And everyone did read it. It was later deleted after they figured it out but by the time execs remove something it’s almost always too late to kill. An example that relates to us: what if you have an unruly member and you want to ban him from the board or remove him from the club? Are you going to discuss his banning in the open, where any member can comment on it including the member in question, or do you want that to be kept a little more private? Without a private section you would likely have to call an exec-only meeting to discuss it, which not only wastes everyone’s time but it usually takes a day or more of notice to get the entire exec council in the same room which means any truely pressing issue is left unresolved. The private section would eliminate the need for an executive meeting and all the hassles that go with it while simultaneously decreasing the time it takes to have execs weigh in on an issue and come to a consensus on the course of action.
3) The problem with a single moderator is that one person, or small group of people, are responsible for keeping everything in line. As it is now, if someone spams or derails a thread, any current exec or root can deal with it. That’s like 12 people. You’re much more likely to get things done than if 2 people are doing it. When was the last time an on-topic thread was editted or a non-trolling/flaming/derailing post removed? I think the driving force behind this issue is a fear that admin abuse will occur rather than stopping actually occuring abuse. Aside from a tiny handful of execs, which are no longer active here, we’ve never had admins abuse their powers to squash legitimate discussions or remove posts that weren’t in violation of the rules. Sure it happens occassionally, we’re all human here, but a few isolated incidents is no reason to overhaul the entire system. If something isn’t broke, and this obviously isn’t, it doesn’t need fixing.
Furthermore, given that exec use of the forums is at an alltime low, who do you have in mind to be the moderators? I’m sure you guys want students to do it but who in exec is truely active here, or can devote themselves to logging in 5+ times per day and reading every post in every thread? That’s what it takes to moderate this board. The first thought that comes to mind would be the PC VP but since he hasn’t logged in for over a month I’m not sure he’d even be qualified to pick moderators at this point. Not intending to offend or flame, it’s just the truth. You would need students who you know can do the job without bias or prejudice and those aren’t the dime a dozen they used to be. Also worth considering is what happens when the moderators don’t agree on something? You’d obviously have to have a “lead moderator”, which would also have to read every post in every thread, or a way to arbitrate disputes between them which means another mile of bureaucratic red tape. Is all that really worth it to fix a non-issue?
Tallgeese said:
I will try to get up with keith tomorrow. Half the time I try to get hi he is out of his office in a meeting or out and about.
You can use the club email account to check his calendar.
Yeah I diffused Nickname. He was going to merge this with other threads to form one giant entity of epic… win or fail, I’m not sure.
