Search the Community

very interesting talk, important bit starts around 28 minutes

With thanks for the earlier link... I\'ll add that it might not actually be worth getting too very concerned about figuring out exactly how the lift/drag relationship works in the game right now, because I believe that system is supposed to see some changes sometime soon. Just speculating, since there was talk about more proper wing behavior back before C7 went to work directly for Squad.

War can turn anyone insane. See the GIs who went to war for fighting for good ideals and came back after they enjoyed the deaths of innocent men, women and children. See the young people who enjoyed their life years ago and joined groups like the Taliban because they couldn\'t believe in a peaceful future again. I seriously can\'t imagine why normal people believe in RL war games (other universe is fine for me, so-called serious games also) and talk about it like 'I GOT MOAR KILLS IN TERMINAL MISSION THAN U'. I can\'t imagine why someone can play as a Nazi in games that \'gives you real WW2 experience\'. I also don\'t know why my father talks about his electronics company inventing parts for the TIGER (he sometimes calls it heli and sometimes tank, I believe it\'s the Eurocopter gunship) or about buying resources from the Taliban ('\'cause you can\'t really get \'em in other ways, every company does that') like about everything else. I don\'t get why the Formula 1 does not care at all about being in the center of a massacre. I really hope for the day a new CoD comes out and almost nobody buys it BECAUSE IT IS WAR. I hope for the day a new product comes out and nobody buys it BECAUSE WARLORDS MAKE MONEY WITH IT. But I know this will never happen...

I can\'t believe its actually coming out at long last. I am very eager to see what the newest version will look like. It\'s odd, but I\'ve never considered it a ground breaking game, or even a particularly great game, but something about it is just amazingly fun (and no I am not calling the Diablo games \'bad\' or anything like that, that\'s crazy talk). I too started with a necromancer (in fact my original character was named Randox, and I keep using the name to carry on the line, sort of like my own personal Enterprise). My true class though are the Barbarians. Also, since D3 won\'t have the necromancer class, I might not name any of my characters Randox anymore. Randox has always been the name bestowed to my best necromancer. Might make a witch doctor named Parandox though, in honor of the old legacy.

I noticed a glitch today while trying to build a Serenity or Prometheus style ship with rotating engine pods for VTOL. If you use vectored thrusters or SAS on the rotating engines it will glitch if you have ASAS on the ship. The rotatrons get all out of whack and no longer line up properly (is this the sort of thing people talk about with the Kraken?) and you are unable to move them, it also causes a drop in framerate.

I haven\'t been talk or reading what you guys have been talking about, but there is two things that scare me. One being that how far people will go with combined themselves with robots and the other being that if we solve every desiease on the planet, that our ammune system will slowly evolve into something weaker, and then when a big bug comes along, it will wipe out half the population because of it.

Wow, never thought I\'d live to see the day when people didn\'t know how 'land lines' work. You can connect them both, but they will not be able to handle separate calls. If someone is on one and you pick up the other, you will be able to hear and talk with the current conversation. If you need to be able to handle to calls at the same time, you will need a second number(easy, less $) or some kind of multiplexing switchboard (hard, more $). Arrr! Capt\'n Skunky

I talk to my friends on deviantART in science

Basicly, I won\'t talk about this one much. Its powered by 8 swivaling prop engines. Its 4 times larger that the launch tower. It breaks up often (as seen in one of the pictures). No weapons, no fancy design, just an experiment to see how big it could go.

Are we allowed to talk about speed? ;D It\'s cool anyway 8)

When we have two parties that don\'t inspire confidence (and it happens now and again!) you do get a bit of what we call 'informal voting' and 'donkey voting'. An informal vote is one in which you don\'t follow the instructions to correctly register a preference. You are legally obliged to show up at the polling booth and get your name marked off, but since the ballot is secret, you can do whatever you like with your ballot paper; you can leave it blank, you can write 'You all suck' on it, you can draw a picture of a pony, whatever you like. All of these votes (obviously including the ones where people mark ballots incorrectly by accident) are gathered together and called 'informal'. If both major parties suck, your informal vote skyrockets. I expect a high informal at our next election! Donkey voting is when you protest by not caring; you just vote 1,2,3,4 etc down the page without bothering about which candidate is which. I dislike this form of protest because a donkey vote IS A FORMAL VOTE. So donkey votes artificially inflate the candidate numbered '1' (for this reason the law says candidates must be randomly allocated in each division). There is a bit of this kind of protest voting. However our system allows a better way of protesting. Like most major democracies, we have two major parties (namely the left-wing Labor party, and the right-wing Liberal party[1]; and you can be pretty sure that ultimately one of those two will win most of the divisions. But minor parties or independent candidates CAN have an impact because we have a preferential system - in other words, you don\'t just tick the candidate you want and cross the other guy; you rank the candidates in order from most preferred to least preferred. If the election is close, the preferences of people voting for the independents and minor candidates can decide who wins many seats. Like the USA we have two houses - House of Representatives and the Senate. Unlike the USA, in which the party of the president finances his/her campaign but doesn\'t really figure in the election, the party with the most representatives is considered to be elected as government, and one member of that party is elected (by their party members) as Prime Minister. One curious result of this is that there\'s absolutely no reason why a party couldn\'t go to an election with leader Herp, then win the election (But Herp loses his seat) and instead elect Derp as PM. This system has a big advantage over the US system - if a PM is really doing a terrible job, there\'s an easy system for removing him or her (if the party loses confidence in them and has a vote as such, the PM is sacked). The disadvantage is that it\'s all too common for a sitting Prime Minister to be ousted by their own party on the back of bad results in the Opinion Polls (that is, not necessarily doing a bad job!). Our current PM 'knifed' our last PM, and this is a real problem for many of her traditional voters. Exactly. But right now, appealing to the centre ground won\'t get a candidate much traction. It\'s easier to convince people who don\'t vote BUT ALREADY SHARE YOUR VIEW to just get out there and vote than it is to convince people to change from voting one way to voting another way. This is why Presidential candidates tend to appeal to either the redneck vote or the bleeding heart vote - it\'s just the path of least resistance. In Australia, the whacked out fascists and the crazy communists are already voting, so appealing to the extremes doesn\'t actually help you. Instead, you need to put the effort into capturing the middle ground. You say that the majority of Americans are fairly centrist, and I\'d say you\'d be absolutely right. But your system doesn\'t actually reward politicians who truly represent them. Our system does. Perhaps the diagram below might help explain what I mean. Oh, they\'re quite willing to sabotage each other. But when I talk about party discipline, I mean something a little different. Our two parties certainly don\'t work together much. But they are disciplined. Every time Congress comes to a vote, the numbers of the votes will be slightly different. This is because Democrats and Republicans who feel strongly about an issue may well vote against their party. Therefore, in order to get a bill through Congress, a president or member often has to sacrifice a lot of what is good about their bill to get it through. In Australia, we consider that if a person has been elected on behalf of a particular party, they are obliged to vote with that party EVERY TIME SOMETHING COMES BEFORE PARLIAMENT. There are, of course, exceptions. A member who votes against their party is described as 'Crossing the floor'. But this is an extremely unusual event, and since the member was elected as a member of their party, it is viewed very seriously. If that member holds any ministry, they\'re required to resign. Consequently, a party that is elected in Australia has a much easier time of enacting their platform. In fact, to promise something and fail to deliver it is a very bad mistake for a party here. Of course it happens frequently, but it really harms your re-election chances if you do it. A curious example - the current Prime Minister went to the last election promising that there\'d not be a tax on Carbon dioxide emissions. The Carbon Tax is to be enacted this year! Here\'s the weird bit: Most Australians actually have little or no problem with the tax itself (there are a fair few people who disagree, or course, but polls have repeatedly demonstrated that people are generally okay with it). They DO have a problem with what is perceived as Ms Gillard\'s dishonesty - she went to the election promising 'no' but changed her mind once elected. The Labor Party will probably lose the next election because of this issue. It shouldn\'t be. Since the main power of government is to sign cheques (think about it - if they want to do something, government has to pay people to do it!), the budget is a key statement of priorities. Now, every government deviates from their budget because you can\'t plan for every event. However, governments should stick to budget as much as possible. Also, see what I said about party discipline. In Australia, a party promises X, Y and Z (and recently they\'ve been asked to submit their policies to Treasury to be costed). They then allocate the Nation\'s funds accordingly. Since they\'re elected to enact their platform, the budget should pass without any question or comment. Otherwise it\'s like having a new election every year! Well, if you can\'t cope with an inch-long spider that can kill a horse with its bite, you\'re probably too pitiful and weak to come here anyway. [1] Ironically Australian Liberals are not 'liberals' in the American context, they\'re conservatives! The name comes from a different use of the word - the Liberal party includes a fair number of different right-wing perspectives, ranging from fairly far right (think Tea Party Republicans) to Centrist (think bleeding heart Democrats). In the sense of a wide variety of views, they can truly said to be liberal.

Voting for the president here is, in a way, voting for the party too. Not nearly to the extent as you describe, but very often if a party wins the presidential race, they also get majority house in Congress (which does all the voting on laws, bills, etc etc.) Not always, but often. Here, the party chooses who will run for president; called the Primaries. Right now the Republicans are narrowing down who will face Obama. I believe it\'s between Romney, Gingrich and Ron Paul (very unlikely to win). If you belong to the party, you get to vote on who will become the presidential candidate. So, we do get to narrow it down to 'Who we like best'/most likely to win for that party. Problem is they all blow. Which is why many people don\'t vote. The democrats are going with Obama (who will probably win the whole thing), so no primaries for them. There\'s plenty of talk on what they\'ll do in the upcoming 4 years, that\'s all they do really. However, a lot of them kiss ass to win. So it\'s likely you\'ll see them take completely opposite views to matters they had a few years ago to appeal to the public. Usually resulting in 'Mr. so and so, you want to lower taxes, but just 3 years ago you voted against Senator derp to do exactly that, what do you say to this?' Or 'You\'re raising a bill that\'s extremely similar to so-and-so\'s from 5 years ago which you voted down, why?' It\'s very superficial and I find it hard to trust anything they say. I don\'t quite see the logic here honestly, or at least I don\'t see how it would change things here. Most people in the US are very middle grounded; radicals are the extreme (they just get the most media coverage because they sound apeshit crazy and get high ratings). If implemented it would certainly rise voting rates lol. I feel like people would start 'Throwing out their votes' though. As in 'Jesus...they all suck...I\'ll vote for the guy most unlikely to win' or some random person. But who knows, that might actually cause a giant upturn and cause a super unlikely candidate to win lol I think we\'re just going through a phase. Right now Separation of Church and State is pretty hypocritical here. People are getting sued left and right, teachers fired, schools attacked for saying things like 'Merry Christmas' or quoting the Bible. It\'s being argued (very heavily by a very few select crazy people(not politicians, just parents)) that public schools can\'t imply any amount of religion. So now it\'s \'Winter Break\' not \'Christmas Break\' and \'Happy Holidays\' not \'Merry Christmas\' or you could potentially be sued (I\'m dead serious too...) by a parent who finds that offensive. So, in that respect, Separation of Church and State is VERY extreme. However at the same time, we have Churches lobbying against gay marriage, abortion and all that stuff. I\'m not saying gay marriage and abortion is right, just that the Church does influence political decisions there. The most recent upset was Obama\'s Mandate to force workplaces to offer birth control to women. Religious leaders went crazy. I mean crazy. I disagree with this. It\'s the exact opposite it seems to me. Political members are extremely dedicated to their party. So much so, that they will do ANYTHING to prevent the other party from accomplishing their goals. They stall votes over periods of months, leaving no decision to be made while the country rots. My friend\'s economic professor told us it didn\'t use to be like this, that Democrats and Republicans actually did work together before relatively well (not always). I think each party is trying to claim all the credit to boost their image and make the other look like they did nothing. It\'s what I was talking about, like the whole race is Prom Queen election. They\'re just trying to win and not help the country because they think they\'re way is the right way. The budget is some random number they make up and change when they want to >_> The amount of deadly spiders, squid, scorpions and kangaroos scare me D:

I don\'t know about your personal beliefs, but if you actually go to Denmark, there\'s two very important things you need to be aware of. - Janteloven A psychological social term used in the country, it\'s a mentality we have here, it means that everyone is worth the same, the Prime Minister is worth the same as a Janitor, they are both just doing what they do best. If you run around with a \'\'I\'m better\'\' attitude because you have a good job you\'re going to get outcast and verbally butchered. - Spirituality There\'s not a trace of it left, we\'re 80%+ atheist and churches are being closed down if it wasn\'t because we still need them for gay marriages. If you take pride in religion and talk of it/has clear influence of it people are going to look at you in an awkward fashion, religion is a very personal and private thing here. Besides that, we have chaotic weather, a good sense of fashion, and plenty of alternative healthy food, all of it in very high quality (we can feed our own population three times with our agriculture).

I read James\' article (my name is James, and I have been taught to not have the added s on the end of James\'), and though its quite realistic, I could push a few of the software stuff back a bit. But, I would also expect to have met an alien by the time I die (and would like to, I mean, learning about a new species when there is nothing else to find out about). Mostly the problems of long life is though we edit ourselves to do this, what we gain in knowledge and incite we lose in stress and the ability to take it. I personally have hope for the future, and this has gotten me out of some tight spots, but having 200 years of stressful situations? Not fun. The second thing is with the AI. It will eventually get to the stage a bit later than anyone thinks, but will be able to write its own code, which while not needing a person to create the code for them, the challanges of having the AI never remove the code that controls them is a major problem. Quantum computing is needed also for true AI. There is several other things that would be nice to talk about, but I can\'t find the words. But, as soon as there is interstellar travil, Im on the first shuttle off this place. Because while there is enough here, I can\'t be bother dealing with humans now let alone dealing with humans with AI components.

Okay, couple of things here. 1) The problems with Thorium reactors are already well known; it\'s no secret. It\'s simply that the process of making them happen will be hideously expensive. We already have a nuclear energy infrastructure based around Uranium (Which Australia should be taking advantage of far more, by the way, but that\'s another story!); to get Thorium reactors going will require duplicating a lot of that, and developing a whole new mining industry. When it\'s all said and done, much as I like the Thorium reactor concept, I think Uranium reactors are perfectly fine. The safety issues are WAY overplayed - every year coal power-related accidents kill six times the number of people that nuclear power-related incidents have EVER killed. Put simply, for every person who dies from a nuclear accident, we lose FOUR THOUSAND people from coal. We have a Uranium industry in place, and the next generation of reactors are brilliant. Why muck around? 2) There\'s a lot of talk about Hydrogen. Let\'s get this out in the open. The problem is that Hydrogen is an excellent energy CARRIER but it is not an energy SOURCE. As things stand today, the most efficient way to get hydrogen is by performing some chemical tricks on hydrocarbons, which are obtained from (you guessed it) coal or oil! Unfortunately, this is an inefficient way of using fossil fuels; it\'s better to burn them. Okay, I hear you ask, so why not use solar energy? I remember electrolysis from high school science! Yes, but electrolysis is incredibly inefficient. It would take way more electricity than we could ever produce from solar power to produce the hydrogen we need for a hydrogen economy. There IS a solution, however - Generation IV nuclear reactors can produce hydrogen during off-peak times. This would mean that for the first time in the history of generating electricity for industry, homes and businesses, we will have a method of storing the powerplant\'s energy for later - and a very useful method it is too! Incidentally, there are a lot of people who are very keen on solar energy as it is. I love solar energy. I have panels on my own roof (and now I get PAID for electricity instead of paying for it, which is very nice!). But much as I like it, we can\'t produce enough panels to generate the electricity we need for our entire society. Solar electricity might JUST be able to offset the power used by homes; but most of our electricity is used by industry, and solar hasn\'t got the moxie to handle that. Also solar energy is unreliable; it\'s a cold, wet, miserable day in Sydney today, and my panels won\'t be producing jack. And even on days with perfect weather, as soon as the sun goes down, you\'ve got no electricity. No, we need more than solar. We really need nuclear.

I hadn\'t seen this around in a while, although I heard talk about how small Kerbin was compared to Earth. I never really looked up Earth\'s true radius to get an accurate representation of how small Kerbin really was, but I finally got bored enough to look it up. Despite having an equally strong gravity, Kerbin is roughly 10.9 times smaller than the planet on which we currently are! I made a very simple diagram using my Microsoft Paint (ha) to show the size comparison of the two of them right next to each other. Kerbin is about 10.9 times smaller than Planet Earth. It does seem equally appropriate, however, because our Kerbals are very small creatures. Another thing that I never put too much thought into was the size of the capsules and rockets we get as stock with the game... They have a diameter of only one meter. I will probably get the diameter of the Apollo Command Module and see if our Kerbal\'s are accurately sized to be the same size as humans relative to their planet. My question is, do you think we will ever see Kerbin scaled up to a larger size, what with time warp now available?

I was just coming here to talk about this. I hate garbage. I know there is a pretty small chance that I will smash into a discarded fuel tank, but it really bothers me seeing it swing around the planet in its ugly misshapen orbit. So far I have only manage to put satellites in orbit cleanly, with out anything left over, but a Mun landing with the current parts is just not possible. As far as I can tell. What I have been trying to do lately. 1. No junk floating in space or left on the surface of the Mun. 2. Land safely on the Mun, place a probe on the surface. 3. Place a satellite in orbit around the Mun. 4. Return crew home. Not needing to be done in any order, but all needing to be done in a single flight. So far I can get three out of four of these most of the time, but until we get docking I do not see how I could manage all four with the current parts. My computer isn\'t great, and starts to stall out after adding my 12th-14th booster so I have not been able to build any titans to carry up a LEM type craft with more than than a single engine. Once we can leave a rocket in lunar orbit to fly back to Apollo style re-dock and have it carry us home we will be set. I keep thinking about flying a whole space station to Mars. or... what would you kall a kerbal Mars? Kars? Are we all going to fly to Kars?

I\'m not really keeping it private. I\'m just more on irc as many other coders are and the line of communication is more direct and timely over there. Run into a snag? r4m0n will be on to talk to directly for example, no waiting for the forum. The main reason for a bit of privacy was that I wanted to surprise people with Kerbin after all the talk of impossibility instead of getting hopes up and potentially failing to live up to them and didn\'t expect this problem to be so difficult to solve and take this long, but I have literally run out of things you can check on pqs and haven\'t found anything that can at the least be a check to stop collecting data when it happens or prevent this odd problem from happening to begin with. It\'s okay though, my main concern is people getting their data polluted if they use experimental code and share data collected with it here. My apologies if I seemed like coming on too strong.

Alright. This is intended to be a debate thread of things that need fixing in the world around us. I\'ll begin with a general rant I\'ve taken the time to write up, and then the debate can ensue. Basically, every once in a while I get fed up with something or other and decide to write about it. My arguments are far from flawless or all-knowing, but they are as solid as I could make them at the time. I have not edited the rant since. It has been spoilered because it is so damn long. If you wish to participate, I ask only that you read the entire thing (which, I realise, is quite lengthy) and that you contribute to the discussion in ways that are constructive. That is, argue calmly and pointedly. Do not flame or try to stomp out others\' arguments or ideas, but feel free to tell anyone (including myself) if you notice misreported facts and suchlike. Now that I\'ve laid down the law here... I\'d like to say one more thing before I proceed straight to the rant and the ensuing debate (no, two things). First, this debate has previously been conducted on a small forum. My general way of responding to everything there was to quote everyone and reply in a single post. I\'ll do that here if it\'s at all possible, and if the post is too large to be reasonable (this happened on a small forum, so I predict it may happen even more so here), I\'ll snip out pieces that I am replying to, rather than the whole post, and if necessary just spoiler the whole post so you don\'t all have to scroll through it if you\'ve already read it. Second, feel free to contribute your own thoughts about what\'s wrong with the world. This is the first of three rants I\'ve typed up so far. If you wish to view the others, head over to http://rantagainstsociety.tumblr.com/ That there is my own blog. It only gets updated when I get insanely annoyed at something or other, something which has (thankfully) not happened for a while. Even so, it makes for some very interesting debates, which is why I\'ve put it up here. One final thing. Do not argue for the sake of it. That is, have an argument, and know what you\'re arguing about. Know the background information, to as much of an extent as necessary for intelligent discussion. Thanks Also, if we decide we\'ve finished discussing this one, I may see fit to post another, in which case a copy will be placed in this post as well. I have three, but only the first is going to be discussed at this time. ... and the rant ensues: The world is a strange place... and we have made it stranger. Lording it over everything else, humans are either the smartest or most abominably stupid of all creatures. We believe that we know what we\'re doing... but no human can hope to understand the planet itself. We guess, we simplify, until we get it to a point that makes sense to us, and then we play with it, poke it until it can\'t take it any more, often leaving us more confused than we began. People are often too obsessed with money -- people who work in advertising have a job centered around how to make their audience spend money, how to buy their products. People in the public relations departments have the job of trying to explain away the higher ups\' greed and appease those of us who are skeptical, as well as preventing us from banding together and deciding to tear it all down. Humans have the capability for a pack mentality. Most of us love our individuality, but in order to accomplish something, we sit down and talk about stuff. The more effective plan of action would be to go accomplish it all as one, but we all go our separate ways and try and do what we can, often hampering the others of our group in the process. A pack thinks as one, and accomplishes a great deal. If the pack splits, the outcome is (more often than not) disastrous... and even if successful, never reaches its full potential. Governments talk too much and are too afraid of what people will think in the short term to look at anything in the long term. When people invented cars, we all though 'Oh! How wonderful!' -- and now, we\'re thinking 'These things kill the planet.' We should have looked at what they do and puzzle it out before we abused it. We never live in the present, always looking at the future; but never far enough! People who invented cars thought it was such a good idea; the people that came along after abused their ideas and tried to make money off them. Nobody ever looked at what problems these things might cause. We are too blind to negatives; looking at the upside all the time makes us blind to the downside -- that which offers the highest upside often delivers the largest downside in turn. Sight is something we all lack. By banding together and just looking at things properly, we can see what we need to. Laws are overcomplicated and often hamper punishment of the perpetrators. Sure, we must be certain who did it, but there are other ways to ensure that than a thousand restrictions. If the penalty for murder was death, and the system of judgement more about finding out who did it than money, we would have a lot less murder. At some point in history, laws and the judgement system began to be abused. Doubtless it all began a long time ago. If they were caught, they probably would have been put to death, or punished horribly. Some probably were. Many weren\'t. The result? Lawyers are more concerned about winning and their clients more concerned about beating the system than actual justice. This system is a joke; the people involved often have the resources to ensure that they win, and the person who is probably right generally turns out to be the person the 'evidence' stacks up against. Why? Because they don\'t have the money and connections to be able to create evidence. Money has corrupted the human spirit; we are competitive, but in all the wrong ways. We compete for money, but the more we get the less we\'re happy. The more famous we become, the more harassed we are. The world is backwards and wrong. We all say we\'re trying to help each other, but most of us only say that because we don\'t want the common people making an enemy of us, because we still fear the power or single-minded cooperation, and we fear to use it. Governments are the same. They fear everyone else, because everyone has their own say in who gets to be in charge. Again, it\'s more about winning and money than getting anything done. I feel like screaming right about here. It\'s physically and mentally painful to see so much potential dashed on the rocks by the sea of our unselfishness. We waste too much of our potential. Humanity needs to take one step to cut all this down in one fell stroke and build towards something better. We need to be less selfish. That\'s all. Having a sense of self is important, but never forget to share what you\'ve got. If you\'re smart, help anyone that asks for your help or advice. If you\'re strong, help those who aren\'t. If you\'re tall, don\'t patronise shorter people, just help them. Short people are just as important as tall people, smart people as well as strong ones. We all need to know our own mind, and most of us do. However, we also need to be able to work together, to stomach each others\' differences and counsel the ones we do not like in why this is so. If you have extra food, don\'t eat it for the sake of it, give it to someone who does need it. There still won\'t be enough food for everyone; there are far too many of us. Only by working together and thinking far enough ahead can we save us from ourselves. Our selfishness causes us to be short-sighted: we care not for what happens after our deaths, for we will not be around. Those who believe in reincarnation only care for the future in the belief that if they don\'t, they\'ll still have to deal with the outcome. It\'s like a self-imposed threat. Yeah, I have a solution. Yes, it changes many things. YES, IT IS DIFFICULT. Nobody ever gets anything without trying. In order to change the fate of the world, much must be sacrificed, but much will be gained in return. Yes, I am cynical. Yes, I am not easily able to be optimistic. No, I do not like the way the world is. Yes, I would love to change it. But nobody ever changes anything on their own. Little by little, the world must change. If it remains as it is, nobody will ever be truly happy with the world. Instead, we find happiness in each other. What\'s wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing at all. However, it is but one facet of happiness, and if the world was a better place, we\'d all be better off. Less disease, less plight. Nobody can honestly say they want the world to be a better say... but nobody wants to give up as much as it takes to achieve it. Nobody cares enough to do so. Even so, we must try. In trying, we will find a way. No one person must guide the rest after it begins... we all need to know the way for ourselves. Cynicism is highly painful. Most likely, it\'s despised for its power to both destroy and create; one cannot come without the other. To create a new world, one has to be destroyed. The ultimate trade-off. I realise how much of this sounds somewhat insane... but I suspect that may be down to the mental conditioning we all go through as we progress through society. We are taught what to think in school, and we either accept it or reject it. We rarely question that original decision again. If you constantly did, nothing would get done. When it comes down to it, our lives and decisions are governed by those that come before. If we make the wrong choice when first given a choice, it may chase us for the rest of our lives and we may never be free of it. The problem? There is no right choice. There never is; only some options that are better than others. Nobody is perfect, we all know that. However, we are all capable of finding the best option at the time, and that is all we should do. We shouldn\'t look at the past and look for better options if we made a good one already, we should look at what decisions we can make now and judge for ourselves whether they are good for everyone... or just selfish decisions that benefit ourselves... because if they are, the good will never last, it will be hollow, and the backlash is often dreadful, in the end. Karma, some call it. I call it logic. If you do some wrong to someone else, almost certainly you will feel some backlash. Every person is cared for by at least one person in the world unless nobody knows them. If you kill someone, chances are someone, somewhere, will hate you for it. Do not use logic as an excuse for anything. Use no excuses whatsoever. Everyone has their secrets, but if you make excuses for them, they break and shatter like glass. If someone discovers them, tell them as much as necessary, but unless you really want to, tell them no more than that. Do not make excuses... we all do it, but in doing so we hamper our ability to learn. If we do not feel the backlash, cushioned by our excuses, we will never learn to do better in future. I could say much more, and I probably should. This is enough. This will have to be enough. Actions speak louder than words, they say... so should I act, or should I wait for people to wake up? I do not know. I know too little to make a proper decision. All I can do is make the best one that can be seen. That is what I will do. That is all I can do. Yeah, I\'m cynical. I can\'t help it, it\'s part of me... but I don\'t have to like it. Nor do I. It is possibly the greatest curse I will ever know, save for one. A nameless curse, more terrible than all the rest. Its touch can mean death, or life. The journey under the curse is worse than anyone should have to endure, and some choose death instead. Are they right? I cannot know. Not until it is my time. Much is unknowable. Much cannot be seen. That which can, is rarely good. The trouble is, we never look. Dreams never came easily to me, I often saw nightmares instead. I don\'t know if I\'ll ever know why. These days, I don\'t even know if I still dream. If I do, they never stay in my memory. Perhaps I am too anchored in this world to find another. It may be a boon or a curse, I cannot say. Dreams that still remain often simply retell the future as if it has already happened, as if I were simply remembering it. How? I cannot know. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. In this world, people have many notions for dreams. One is daydreams. Those occur often enough. Another is a goal of some form, a wish to accomplish something. As to that, I cannot speak for myself. I do not know what I mean to accomplish yet, but I sure hope it ends up being worth it. The dreams I talk about tend to be the ones the mind offers up, the ones I rarely see at all. The future may be shown in the dreams, or the past. Both are often shown cryptically, but puzzling them out is like the word association game; follow the meanings until they match up with each other and make sense on some level. The future is almost always clear to me, although its often hidden away in my memory until the vent happens, and I realise I\'ve seen it happen before. This is insanely long, and if you have taken the time to read it all, I am very thankful you have. Writing down thoughts is more infuriating than most would have you believe, but perhaps it is time I did. But in time for what? Only dreams can say until time does the telling. Let the Grand Debate (v1) begin! Feel free to introduce your own ideas for discussion as well!

So the subject has been mentioned briefly in various forum threads since five minutes after persistence was introduced. Perhaps it\'s time now that we actually discuss it in earnest. Debris mitigation, also known as cleaning up after ourselves, eco-friendly orbits, conquering the clutter kraken, and not crashing into last weeks junk. To get things started, I\'m considering the following protocol for my future designs: 1) launcher stages are discarded before final circularization, 2) trans-Munar Injection stage is discarded while approaching Mun for impact or escape, 3) final Munar orbit circularization by lander stage, to remain on surface, 4) return stage goes from Munar surface to Kerbin atmosphere. Using this staging setup, the only surviving pieces are the crew return vehicle and a lander monument to mark the spot. No mess, no fess... or something. And some of the explosions will be close enough to look cool. 8) Now talk amongst yourselves. Thoughts? Anyone?

Well what do you suggest? Everyone can use Mibbit for IRC, though, like I mainly do. I\'d like to get something rolling to where the brony community has a central place to talk and discuss away from disturbing other forum goers, out of complete respect for their space. Any opinion, suggestion or idea is helpful!

Piecewise response! Here we go. Like I said in my orig. post, I assumed there was some form of spirit of cooperation between the players. I like that idea. It\'s kinda cheat-ish, but it would probably be the simplest approach. The 'true time' suggestion was kinda bubbled into my 'voting conditions,' i.e. the voting condition could be a 100% consensus. 20KM is miniscule. The only time I ever really get within 20km of another ship is an orbital rendezvous. It\'s 11,400km to the Mun. The picture I posted really is actually the best explanation of this. What happens in that episode of Star Trek is the crew comes across a planet that is in a time well. The planet itself is moving in an INCREDIBLY fast orbit, or appears to be, but the crew is unaffected outside of this region. They end up sending their resident AI down to the planet, and beam him back in about 10 seconds, but two weeks have elapsed on the planet already. So, if you\'re not technically 'in space,' yet, what\'s it to you if the planet is rotating fast? You and the planet are in your own 'inertial frame,' so it really doesn\'t 'matter' what the exact position/orientation of the planet is. Yes, it would turn the gravity wells also into time wells, but that seems the easiest way to allow multiple players to time warp and keep the 'system time' relatively intact. See above. Like I said, spheres of influence having their own time warps. I usually don\'t aim for a specific spot on the Mun to land until I\'m actually in its gravity well. When coming back, I don\'t aim for a specific spot on Kerbin to land until I\'m back in a low orbit around Kerbin, so I really don\'t care if the planet is spinning at 5000RPM while I\'m putzing to/from the Mun. The idea is, I don\'t think people are *too* concerned with the exact orientation of other astral bodies, so long as the position is right, which this time/gravity well system would allow for. That could make waiting for your 'special' friend who can\'t get out of low orbit very difficult to play with if you\'re trying to go to the Mun, and are really multiplayer-ing for sake of having someone to talk to.

Hey guy\'s sorry I\'ve been gone for a long time. I\'ve been busy with GCSE and what not (England peeps say wut wut!) But I am back to talk 40k! Also in recent news: I had a major defeat the other day (Table-top side) I had a small regiment in just a single case with me, against... Well let\'s just say what seemed like a unstoppable Tyranid army. I had with my; 2x Guard Squads 1x HQ 1x Leman 1x Kasrkin squad I took heavy casualties, like wise the opponent\'s army. He won in the end because of a Hive Tyranid :\'( RIP 45st Regiment *Salutes* ;_;7

I read a book about a month ago. In it the author said that teachers fail badly at their jobs. That their success rate is so low that if a police officer had that sort of crime prevention rate, he would be sacked. Now, I\'ll agree with the facts of the statement. But the author didn\'t say anything about the difficulty of teaching, or put any considerations into it. For instance, my English teacher is \'awesome\'. She\'s inventive, she\'s funny, and she once said a string of silly words to emphasize that all she could hear from the class was people constantly talking and saying swear words and laughing. A very good teacher. The flaw is the class. Ms.Trickey cannot teach, not because she has no ability, but because so many members of the class won\'t let her. When she is quiet, people talk. When she stares daggers at the class whilst quiet, the class stops talking. While she is talking, the class talks, and she has to go back to stage 2 just to get them to shut up again. I\'m not saying there aren\'t teachers who aren\'t \'awesome\', but seriously, the biggest problem is that so few people have respect for authority now.

Actually, for me I\'ve found the best teachers are usually the oldest ones. I don\'t know why, but it just seems I get better grades and learn the material better with older teachers, and can also talk to them better.