It's impossible to both "retire" and survive off of that amount of money.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Sorry guys, didn't see this thread until now (haven't been on the forums much lately).

The names which were reported were changed. I don't take the time to scan through names routinely, so unless they get reported I'll leave them alone (so names insulting me are probably safe -- I'll never see them).

The fact that it was the last day of the reset was probably a coincidence. I may not have even realized. Though maybe someone reported that day hoping I would delete -- improving their finish. Hard to say.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love you guys?

- In the threads, the pagination is working now. It may not be working on the boards (if you get to more than 20 posts) but I have the fix, so I can implement that tomorrow if I have to.
- You can now post new threads again.

- I'll add generating an error for pages which don't exist to my to-do list.
- The e-mails is a good point. Thanks.
- I hadn't realized long names broke my layout. Easy to fix though, but it can wait too since it doesn't impact functionality.
- The negative page number is an interesting error that I'd never even considered.

- The topics counter will continue to be wrong until I re-synch it due to other errors I had going on.

Hmmm... someone's managed to break something.

Things that were working have stopped.

I disabled the 30 second thing. Sorry about that.

Didn't take qz long... though I didn't think it would.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

So, I recently took over as admin for an open source project called usercake. It's a simple User Management System meant to work as a launching platform for developers.

One of the things I wanted to do when I took over was launch our own forum. We didn't have one, and I want to start building a community. I launched a miniBB forum as a stop gap measure, but wanted to design my own.

It's now nearing completion -- but the I haven't managed to get enough people into the community yet to do strong beta testing. I was hoping some of you here might be willing to help. Basically, I'm hoping some of you will go to the forum and do your best to break it.

You can find it at http://www.usercake.com/beta/forum.php

Any help would be appreciated.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

http://nextlol.com/img/7102/

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Meritocracy is governance by those with merit, which (in this context) we clearly don't have (see copyright laws).

What we have is a system in which merit affords those who have it a certain level of freedom not enjoyed by others. I don't know what word describes that system, but it's not any form of -ocracy because it's a separate issue from governance.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Definitely worth the hour it took to watch it... bits of it went over my head, but I never pretended to be a technocrat.

I don't think there's quite the binary end-game that much of the video seems to allude to, though. There will be no "winning" or "losing" except where specific points become moot. Internet (or technology) freedom will always be a pendulum moving back and forth. And that's probably a good thing, as an end situation at either extreme would mitigate part of the usefulness of the technology involved as a whole.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I always use "empathetic". I don't think I've ever seen or heard the word "empathic" used as a synonym for "empathetic" (I actually went and looked it up to make sure you guys were right that it is synonymous).

That's probably a regionalism. But since my only exposure to the term "empathic" is in the context it's used in Star Trek, I'll probably never use it unless I mean something akin to telepathy.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I assume you mean, if Al Gore had won the court battle... right? Because he won the election.

*Stirs the pot*

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

How can anyone possibly know what Kim Jong-Un is like?

We have no method of gaining insight. There's practically no information on the man, and we have no knowledge of what his opinions on recent North Korean foreign policy has been.

I'm not at all convinced that Jong-Un will be any better than his father. But that's not the same as being the same. Jong-Il wasn't any better than Jong-Sun -- but they were very different people who ruled the country in very different ways.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

You don't think they mean to Martian? They've built the ramp lead ups on both the US and Canadian side for the new bridge, and (at least in windsor) bought and boarded up the neighbouring block of houses to make way for it.

That's a pretty big investment if they don't mean to go through with it.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

The ambassador company wants to build a new bridge right next to their existing one. That's the fight.

It's not whether there will be a new bridge, it's just whether or not they'll own it.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Almost thou convinceth me...

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Heh, I should have known that if I came to AT for tech advice I'd mostly just got told "that's not good enough".

What I'm looking to do is replace my current laptop. I don't play games a whole lot, but when I do it's often during down-time away from my house. It wouldn't be a big deal if I couldn't play games during that time, but it would be nice.

Regardless, though, I expect my current laptop to die in the relatively near future. And with how little time I spend playing games, I don't think the economics of buying a dirt cheap lap-top to carry around and then a decent gaming desk-top make sense.

For the sake of comparison, my current system runs a T3200, 3gb ram and integrated graphics. It labours some to do it, but it pretty much runs what I ask it to -- the exception being civ 5 on bigger maps.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Would I be better off with this then?

http://www.futureshop.ca/...e55188f8f1ef56e44b92een02

It's a slightly less capable processor, but it has a half-gig of dedicated video memory.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

So, I'm in the market for a new laptop and looking for opinions for where else I could look.

I'm basically looking to replace my current computer because it won't let me play civ 5 on larger map sizes or with decent graphics (okay, it's too big too, and it overheats too easily even with a cooling pad, and I keep having to delete fluff because of HD is full).

I don't want anything larger than a 14inch screen, and I've been limiting my search to systems with at least 6gb of memory. my budget's around $700 before tax -- and obviously want the best processor I can get for my money.

What I'm looking at right now is this:
http://www.bestbuy.ca/...6f1d9b55f8441a75404f1en02

It's not at the top of my price range, but I can't seem to find anything which actually gives me better specs without going outside of it. But, I hate bestbuy and futureshop, and want to avoid them if I can. Neither canadacomputers nor tigerdirect seems able to do any better than this though. Any other thoughts on where I could look?

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Glad you're around for a reset mate. I hope you get to play it out. You'll find a few changes -- most notably, a lack of multies, in the game.

Enjoy.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Don't do it braden. We don't want to be stuck with their debt problems. We're far better off without the US.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Looking at that screenshot, it doesn't seem like it calculates what you ought to send. It just lets you know the total value of the units you are sending.

It's not saying "attack with X units to break" it's saying "The units you've selected are worth X points". It's just making game mechanics more transparent. I think that's generally a good thing in games.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

So, I just got a blackberry, and was wondering if someone could recommend a good IRC app for it. My preference is that it be free, but I'm willing to pay a little bit if it's the only way to get a decent one.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Hey Pang, it sounds like Martian and I are grabbing drinks at Bobby O'Brien's on King St after the concert (11ish). If you're able to come, that'd be sweet.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

We've run into a few problems recently with a couple of the major e-mail providers. It would seem that we send out enough e-mails that they're now concerned that we're spam. As a result, not all e-mails are getting through.

We're trying to address the issue, but it may take some time. The major e-mail providers are not easy to deal with.

Until it is dealt with, the admins may also be scaling back the volume of e-mails being sent as a whole in an effort to ensure that critical e-mails (like activation e-mails) are not blocked by e-mail providers.

Thanks for your patience.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only Earther in KW these days Martian. I'd be down for a beer tomorrow night though. What time were you thinking of hitting a bar at?

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I would have said iMag is like Schlitz. Everyone gets fluffed up by it once, then hates it forever.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I will have to delete some multies :(

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Sorry. My bad. Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways.

To be fair, though, it's the kind of racism that disappears when its target stops molesting women.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Primeval, the war vs. netting debate is one that has taken place many times on this forum. It is simply not the case that one has been preferred to the other.

Some of the largest changes to this game have been designed to improve the dynamics of how wars have been fought. If you ask Pang and QZ what changes they're proudest of, those are some of the ones that they mention first.

Beyond that though, there are very few changes which are strictly "netter" changes. A couple of the de-stocking tweaks might qualify, but that's it. The majority of the changes you'd call changes to "netting" are actually "country build" changes. They're neutral, because how you build your country matter in both netting and warring. The most important part of winning a war is how you've built your countries before hand, so those changes are aimed at every player.

I can see this, and I think most reasonable players can see this too. And it's not like I'm some netting snob. I was Rage FFA's hWar at one point in time, and held that same position in iMagNum on Alliance for 4 years -- and played there for nearly 8.

When war oriented players have had a genuine grievance with a specific change, I've taken it to the admins. But overall, the changes have been pretty balanced.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

We don't have the formulas from 2000. Without those, there's not even any point to discussing if this is a good idea. It's simply impossible.

Even if it was possible, this thread has already revealed another problem -- many people like many of the changes, and there would never be agreement on which ones to roll back. Do we want unlimited countries again? Do you want the interface changes rolled back? Attack Formulas? Oil? $2b bug? Conditioning tech? Oil? Attack formulas?

Different people would say yes and no to different things. It would be impossible to build a consensus and in-the-end almost everyone would be pissed off because they didn't get their way on something.

The admins are focused on the future, and further development. I know that this community has been without major change for a long time, and some of the changes in the pipe-line might cause a couple seizures when they're introduced -- but give them a try. I think you'll like most of them.

(If you have suggestions for individual things you think worked better a long time ago, feel free to make those suggestions. An en-masse roll back is not feasible though).

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Common consensus when I searched this website on google is that it's a scam. I'm deleting the other posts in this thread, and closing it.

I'll leave the thread (with this post) alive though, so Tinysub knows what happened to it and doesn't post it again.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Diz, attack throttling is mainly aimed at lag issues. Large scale warchats have been causing lag on the servers, and we're searching for a way to resolve that.

Attack throttling and bulk-attack systems both accomplish this goal, though they have opposite effects on game-play.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I'm modding these forums, and the server Bsnake.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I don't spend all day on the forums guys. But these things do get addressed.

Please remember, the admins are trying to balance many competing priorities as they continue to develop this game. Some of the changes they implement may not be universally popular, but they are being made for a reason.

If you find that a change is made that you don't like, we encourage you to voice that opinion -- no change is irreversible, and we have active responsive admins who really do want the opinions of the community. However, we do require that those opinions be offered respectfully.

Posts of this nature have a real, tangible effect on how much time the admins spend developing this game. They're real people, and want to feel valued for the huge amount of work they do. As such, even a relatively small number of posts like this have a negative impact on the overall game.

Not only that, but posts of this nature are also self-defeating. The on-going discussion will almost always revolve around the negative comments made (rather than the issue at hand), and admins who read it are far more likely to simply disregard the opinion of the writer than they would be of respectfully given thoughts. Essentially, a post like this one robs its author of his voice in the process.

I'll be closing this thread once I make this post. I won't be handing out and bans for what was posted in here today, but I reserve the right to hand out bans for this type of content in the future.

If you wish to continue discussion on the topic of attack throttling, a number of other threads already exist where you can join in the conversation.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Yes.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I've only heard that from 1-2 sources, so I assume I'm not informed enough on the subject to be persuaded by your point.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

In corporate culture, fiduciary trust exists between corporate officers and the share holders. So long as they are doing their best to realize a strong profit, they are fulfilling this trust.

Most corporations accomplish this.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Sorry Trife. I know this thread was meant as a joke, and that was preachier than it needed to be.

I'll go grab some wine, and read a book for a while. It was a stressful day at work, sometimes that shows through.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I think that the further away you get from humans in anatomy, the more differences you'll find in how/if electrolytes are used or needed. I don't know enough about the biology of grass, squid or squirrels to be able to speak to the question of "every other life form", but I don't think they're all at risk of dehydration if they lack Gatorade.

However, when I said "drink water in isolation", I meant without drinking or eating anything else. Gatorade's done an awfully good job of marketing if you think the only way to get electrolytes is to drink their product.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Please stop wasting our time with these posts.

The original post was deleted for a reason. If you disagree with the reason, please PM me and we can discuss it.

However, continually creating posts with the same name just to see if we'll delete them is stupid. It wastes our time so mods have less time to keep the servers clean and admins have less time to make improvements to the game. Worse, it breeds resentment between many players and staff unnecessarily. In so doing, it pollutes the atmosphere in the game and leads to a less enjoyable playing experience for all of us.

For the time being, I won't delete this thread. Another mod may delete it without reading it though. I will delete it, however, if posts are made which mirror the posts that the original thread was deleted for.

Remember, all the admins and the staff do as they do in an attempt to create a better community for you to enjoy. Antagonizing us may seem fun, but in the end it makes the game less fun for all of us.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I've debated a little bit on whether or not to let this thread live. I've decided to close it. The language is excessive given that there's no content.

If you're going to drop f-bombs, at least put in the effort to write some solid trash-talk to go with it.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Thanks for the caveat at the end there Angel. I'm not sure if it says something good about my reputation as a poster, or bad about my reputation as a mod. But thanks either way.

And yes, it's a dumb law that ought to be repealed. Because, in truth, water does "help prevent dehydration". It just doesn't do it by itself. I was just trying to make clear that this law isn't entirely out of left field.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Pain, there was a rumour circulating in Europe for a long time that the EU had passed a law that bananas could not be sold if their curve was too large (I have no idea where the line was).

For the most part, it was treated as an urban-myth and many people went to great efforts to prove that there was no such law.

I'm not actually clear on whether or not the law did indeed exist -- however, the EU did see fit to repeal it, whether it ever existed or not.

The water thing isn't quite so far fetched as it seems, it is stupid, but it's grounded in real facts. That article just doesn't try to explain it.

Effectively there are three types of dehydration. "Hypertonic", which is a lack of water, "hypotonic" which is a loss of electrolytes and "Isotonic" which is when both happen.

Drinking water will effectively prevent hypertonic dehydration. However, hypotonic dehydration is still a risk. In fact, because water flushes electrolytes out of your system, drinking water in isolation increases your risk of hypotonic dehydration.

For example: If you run a 3 hour marathon without drinking anything, you'll be in a state of isotonic dehydration. If you drink a large quantity of water, you'll be in a state of hypotonic dehydration. If you drink enough electrolyte giving fluid, you can usually avoid dehydration.

In the same vein, if you work out vigorously for 30 minutes without drinking, you may not be in a state of dehydration at all. However, if you drink large quantities of water during that time, you may actually end up in hypotonic dehydration.

If you're in a situation where dehydration is a risk and you'll have to treat it/prevent it yourself, it's important to know these things. If water is allowed to say "prevents dehydration" people who don't know any better may not take into account the other factors, and that could have serious ramifications.

It's still a stupid law, but it has some basis in reality. There are situations where it can be very bad to think that water alone will prevent dehydration.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Quick, someone call the producers of Veggie Tales. They need to know.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Sorry guys, I can't answer specific questions about this case in public. I will answer the general inquiries though:

First, there is only one safe list. It is maintained for the game as a whole. If you are on it and play on one server, you don't need to worry about it if you choose to start playing another server too.

However, there are reasons why you may be deleted despite being on the safe list. These include general rule violations, and also specific rules which apply only to safe-listed countries. These rules have been publicly stated in the past and are sent to every player who is added to the safe-list.

The appeal process takes place in game. So far as I know, it's never been outlined publicly because most people never see it. Basically, when you get deleted, you'll get a message saying you were deleted. That message also gives you a link to a page where you can "appeal" the deletion if you think it was a mistake.

From time to time, deletion may take place which are over relatively minor rule violations. This is because there is no way for mods to send in-game messages to players. We also can't access player e-mail addresses unless they appeal a deletion. So, we delete the country and then contact the player via e-mail when they appeal to explain what they did. We'll then restore the country and allow the lost turns to serve as the punishment for that rule violation.

This is why so many of the deletions which take place get overturned. It's not that we're making errors. It's that not everything is worth completely destroying a reset.

Thanks for your understanding. Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns about how this game is moderated.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Sorry, it's taken me a little while to get to this.

I did indeed tell Celeborn he was free to resurrect this thread when he PM'd me -- though, in truth, I didn't know exactly which of my old threads he was referring to.

In the current context of FFA, I probably deserve to be berated for this post. I can't be sure because I haven't played on this server since EE started -- but my impression is that the points I was making in 2006 (is that really how old this is?) would not hold water today.

Because of that, this thread is only worth discussing in a historical context.

When FFA shut down back on 2025, a lot of FFA players ended up on the Council server. But very few of the FFA tags actually survived that switch. They went to a lot of different places, but NA was by far the most popular single destination. Because of this, NA represented a good cross section of players from across FFA.

For a while, NA benefited from the myth this post was aimed at dispelling. That FFA players were fanatical about war, would dedicate their whole lives to fighting wars when it came to it, and that no alliance with 1A roots would be able to compete with them in a war. They used this reputation to push people around and it worked.

Many players from 1A really did express the opinion that NA would prove to be the superior war alliance because of its FFA roots. And many NA members continued to advocate this point on the boards.

Then NA got into a war with MD and MET and didn't live up to the reputation it had built. This thread was me pointing this dichotomy out to other players because I didn't want NA (who were rivals to my own alliance at the time) to continue to benefit from their reputation. It was a politically motivated post as much as anything else.

These are all facts though. NA had a war reputation because of its FFA roots, and they did not live up to that reputation at that time.

Now, obviously I tried to explain the causes of these problems as well. And that's supposition rather than fact. There's plenty of reasons why NA might have underperformed that didn't have to do with their FFA roots.

In trying to argue against me, Celeborn effectively made my point:



It was taken as a given that NA would be outstanding at war on council because they came from FFA where everyone was fanatical about war. You say yourself that such things should not be taken as a given. And, in fact, this was demonstrated not to be the case.

I used my own experience as an analogy to show that this should have been expected. I was competent on FFA and thought I was outstanding, largely because of the calibre of players I was playing with. When I moved to FFA I expected to be equally capable. This did not prove to be the case.

I was never saying that FFA players were bad on FFA. Simply that they did not deserve to be viewed as superior on the council server. If you read my, rather understated, summing up this becomes apparent.



(PS. I'm responding to this thread as a good natured discussion from the past. I have a lot of respect for FFA and its players. If I didn't, I wouldn't spend so much time modding here. I hope that this post will be taken in the nature it is intended.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Countries that have been deleted always have the option to appeal.

If the player/players who own those countries do not know why they were deleted, or believe the deletion to be inappropriate, I would encourage them to follow the appeal process. The issue will then be promptly dealt with by a member of the staff.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Here I am... You caught me while I was on vacation.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

My grandmother was a part of the Polish aristocracy when Russia and Germany split the country between them. She was 13 at the time and smuggled weapons from the Russian part of the country to the German part.

She was caught and wound up in a Siberian POW camp. Her story keeps going from there, but it's too long to share it here. Absolutely amazing the burdens the people of that time lived through. One of the strongest people I ever knew.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.