Sotha

OMG. I hate comment systems in news services. I never read them because it seems that the people who comment the news in those are well.. usually limited by impediment of some mental kind. But sometimes, when bored enough, I read those comments. They can be quite hilarious. I want to share a translation one of the comments, which I spotted just now in a finnish news feed. It fits perfectly to the discussion here. The news which this text was commenting was about finnish goverment productivity improvement program, which failed: 8000 jobs have been reduced, but the productivity has not increased.

Well, this certainly seems true. My point is that the gun designer cannot possibly be blamed when a war occurs, where weapons designed by him are routinely used to kill other people. Partial blame may be transferred, but in practical sense it would be silly to prosecute individual gun designers after -for example- a school shootout. There are others who are more guilty. Everything is connected to everything so the line has to be drawn somewhere. A metal company would be prosecuted for producing led, which is used to make bullets, which are used to kill people. Is the guy who smelted the trigger for an AK47-rifle in a factory personally responsible for the killings done with the rifle? He just needed the salary to make ends meet. Am I personally responsible if the research I do open up a new research path, which opens a new research path, which opens a new research path, which opens a new research path which leads to the ultimate doomsday device? I'd say it is sane to limit the blame-chain (hey a new concept!) to only a few jumps, which covers only the most immediate parties. You know, the ones who dictate the specifics of the killings. Certainly it would be much more fun and safe to live in a world where there would be no guns and people had so high ethical standards that they refuse to even go on a research path which would yield Technology of Death. Unfortunately that is not our reality. If Kalashnikov would have said "Nope, I'm not making guns, they kill people." Then someone else would have made an equally or more devastating killing machine. Like in Einstein's case: either nuke for the US or nuke for Hitler. Easy decision.

That's better! Now you are basically scheming to participate in a murder, so you certainly are guilty. But the analogue still does not fit the case where a weapon designer does his job and creates a gun, which a soldier uses to kill people that a politician/general targets for the killing. The weapon designer is not participating in a scheme of killing. Think about the nuke: the scientists figure out the principle, the engineers build the bomb according to scientists instructions. The politicians/generals press the big red button. Who is guilty? The politicians/generals could easily make the decision to use the weapon only as a leverage, never as a weapon itself. Which was very nice and considerate of him. Science gives us possibilities, but the policy makers decide how the possibilities are exloited. "Chemistry means the difference between poverty and starvation and the abundant life." -Robert Brent The fruits science improves the lives of everyone. Think about it: in the medieval times there were the nobility (really small amount of people) and the peasants (really large amount of people). The resources were scarce. The noblitity had it all, the peasants had nothing (but work.) Scientific achievements mean that more people now can live more abundant life than even the kings of the medieval era. Thus scientific developments have huge impacts on our fast changing society and I think that future scientific revelations make the current social-economical "My SUV is bigger than yours" civilization obsolete. But I agree that human greed and excess are fundamental obstacles: humans will always be immature for new technologies for some time. I know that someone might point out that our ecological footprint is huge when compared to the medieval times and this current abundant life destroys the planet: scientists fault. I respond to this with: I wish the money spend on recent US wars were spend on renewable energy research instead... We would have Grätzel solar cell / Nocera electrolysis -power plants in apartment buildings already, cutting overall energy consumption greatly in a green way.

My opinions on mantling: Mantle abort would be nice. I've also been climbing and realising there is a guard in front of me, getting caught because the mantling cannot be aborted. Mantle speed is really good as it is. There is absolutely no need to speed it up. You can think about real life and you can think about GAME BALANCE. Think about it: the player is superior climber when compared to the AI's. The usual way to flee from pursuers is climbing. If climbing was faster the player could escape from the AI's too easily. Now due to the slow climbing, the AI's in pursuit can get roughly one free slash at you with their swords when you climb. I find this the perfect balance to have. I would even like to see the mantling interrupted when you get injured during a mantle. That would be realistic, you lose your grip due to pain and shock when a sword slashes you.

Your analogue is a bit broken when you make a comparison gun->child; nuke->US. Do note also the non-military application for the technology I already mentioned. Also note that the world was at war, and dropping the bomb essentially forced the japanese to surrender. Dropping the bomb expedited the end of the war. Maybe it saved some lives that way. Remember that the japs did have suicide tactics when they were losing. I won't comment Kalashnikov, because I see him more as a soldier and weapon designer, rather than a scientist. Oh, and even if he still did design an effective weapon, the burden of guilt hangs on the people who decide how to use the weapons. Politicians, generals, not scientists. (Or weapon designers. )

Nice. I can hear the christmas carols in that screenie of yours. I like the snow patches next to the window. I've always wondered how to get such a snow scene to look more... Well.. Freezing. Maybe switching the ambient light slightly to bluish might help? Do we have frost decals?

Heh.. Do note that the technology which is used for the bomb has other benefits. And it is not the scientists who order the pilots to drop ze bombs or fire ze missiles. It is The Great Leaders, politicians and soldiers. Not scientists.

Heh.. After seeing what grades this guy has been giving for some recent FM:s without any rationale/justification, I find it amusing when he present such a crappy scene.

Aye! Let's just hope that the great man/woman is going to be a scientist. The reason for this is that history shows that if a non-scientist great person advances things, it will always result in the deaths on very many people as a side effect. Alexander the great, Napoleon, [nazi card played], Stalin etc, etc, etc. For some reason, only scientific giant leaps seem to occur peacefully.

Heh.. I'd love to see some leaked documents on this topic.. It just might be that the victim has some connections to US intelligence agencies or something else..

http://www.moddb.com...r-awards/top100 Um. Do everyone need to vote again for TDM? I think it looks like that. I revoted TDM now. Everyone please do the same. Login to moddb. To to the link provided in the first line. Click Doom3. Click the vote button on the left hand side next to TDM. Could people encourage TTLG and darkfate and Thief the circle communities to vote for TDM as well? There are no other thiefy mods out there, so if they love thief games, they should vote for TDM only.

I wish I could simply say that you're just paranoid, but unfortunately I think this is true. The companies job is not to provide a reliable service and good products, but rather maximum profits to the owners and stock holders. I agree that sometimes reliable service and good products are required for the maximum profits, but sometimes they are not. Profit oriented aim results in the companies operating at peak 'efficiency', in other words skeleton crew. The overworked employers do not have the time to provide good and reliable service. You can see this in some restaurants, for example: typically there are only one waiter per 1000000000 customers and then you have to wait forever for everything. Or your ISP/web-store/cell phone manufacturers customer 'care.' It is worrying me that many basic society functions get transformed into companies. Like the mail service. If it gets privatized, that would mean that it becomes a profit producing system rather than a service which has an important function in the society. It is not about delivering mail reliably, it is about making profit. Same applies to services which you cannot refuse from. Like car inspection services. They were privatized in my country, because politicians thought the competition would reduce prizes. Actually it ended up increasing the prices drastically, because in the end only a few big car inspection firms ate all the small ones. After that they can dictate any price they want because you cannot refuse from that service and there is no real competition in the field. Therefore there will be no options for the customers. Hooray!

Nice text. We should start a new offtopic thread: "The ideal society" to gather peoples visions. Might not only be fun, but interesting too. When I become the emperor, I might then maybe consider implementing these visions. On this big brother thing I sometimes entertain myself by wondering the following thing: Who decides what is fashionable?I asked one time a trendy girl wearing leggins and a tunica why suddenly all 'trendy' girls dress up like that. She told me that that is the stuff which is available in shops at this time.This means that someone decides that something is now trendy and then mainstream clothing shops have only series of clothes available that match this current trend.Then people's clothing decisions have been forced into certain trend, because of the availability of the clothes.And then the fashion trend is observed: people dress in certain similar types of clothes. It is mysterious to see large amount of people suddenly to start dressing up similarily. Someone has a weird control over these people. Shouldn't we all choose our individual clothing style and not be influenced by mass trends? Why should everyone dress up similarily?

Thanks, I'm flattered, but I must say no. I'm am currently having a long mapping break after contributing three maps in relatively short period of time. I'll think about it once my mapping synapses are recharged.

It's gonna be a really short FM, where the player (and all the non-undead) guards are killed instantaneously by the atmosphere.

And the list of animations could involve all kinds of head shakes, shrugs, pondering or whatever people tend to do when they think they saw/heard something and conclude it was just their imagination. Sounds simply awesome. And remember, such animations are the ones the players are going to see a lot in this game genre: guards going "Nevermind, it was just rats." But it should not be overused if we have only a small amount of anims in the beginning, so maybe it needs some kind of percentage when the pondering animations get played. Sometimes/usually the guards should simply continue their patrols without pondering.

Sigh. You seem to fail to grasp the basic idea. Read more carefully. No one is forbidding anything. You can do a fm of anything you want. It is all about what the mod team can officially host. The line seems to be that darkmod is not going to officially endorse fms which violate someones intellectual property. Celestial objects are not anyones commercial intellectual property. Again, this is only my impression.

Nope, i think missions will be listed as long as they do not violate existing commercial Intellectual Property. You can invent your own places, but you can't have a FM in a Harry Potter location. At least that it my impression.

Whoa! That's nice! Would it be difficult to make another animation, which is basically an alteration of this one so so that the AI looks forward and ponders? Now when the AI hears the player making noise, he turns to look in that direction. Then the AI only stands there and watches. It would bring the AI more into life if the AI sometimes played this pondering animation before resuming patrol route. I mean this kind of sequence of events: *player makes noise* *Ai turns to look in the direction* "I thought I heard...." *Pondering animation* "Nothing here now.." *Resume normal patrol*

Heh.. Have to agree that these would be much interesting. Files on North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and perhaps most significantly, Israel - its weaponry, war plans, assassination squads, foreign sources of funds, Mossad and its collaboratorsFiles on weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological. Top secret files of the IAEA on nuclear non-proliferation contributed and deceptively withheld by a bevy of nations, ie, the CIA's Valerie Plame and related front companiesFiles of global WMD research laboratories and the status of reserve stocks of offensive and defensive weaponsWar plans of all nations, for and against one anotherFiles of billionaire political meddlersFiles of the major world banks and their attorneysFiles of national tax agencies. There were a lot of uninteresting tabloid-class information, but there might be something more interesting stuff. It might be too early to condemn the material as totally irrelevant.

So.. Let's talk about politics, my other favorite smalltalk topic. Finns don't do much smalltalk. So wikileaks has been publishing some secret and embarrassing documents, letting ordinary people see behind the curtains of US warfare, goverment and international politics. What do you think? Will their actions lead to a destabilized world, or will there be a benefit that ordinary people know things the ruling elite thinks ordinary people should not know? I've personally not yet formed a clear opinion. I have to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Discussions like this help people to see multiple point of views and thus form a better opinion. Initial thoughts are that the ordinary people should know exactly what the people they elect to office are doing. Somehow I'm not surprized when it was shown that diplomats act as spies etc. Powerful individuals might be held in check by one additional watchdog. Maybe possibility of leaks reduce goverments spying on each other in the future? Or maybe international politics get more harsh? I am rather worried will this kind of stuff end when a satellite smashes down from orbit 'accidentally' killing Julian Assagne or other wikileak key figures, and scaring others. Some people have people as enemies, some people have goverments as enemies.. I'll vote cautiously 'both.' Let's see if additional points of views make me change opinion. How exciting!

Thanks! I hope the catalyst AI disabilization fixed the issue. Enjoy the mission!

The dark mod does not need the negative publicity caused by dark mod fail youtube videos of this type. It is well known that catalyst AI causes this kind of problem. http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=FAQ#The_sky_is_corrupted Disable catalyst AI in the catalyst control center.