Flaser Posts

I'm a mutant with 9 incisors and only 2 wisdom teeth. They're on my lower teeth and apparently there'll be enough room for them.

I'm afraid you're wrong about both those men. Neither were bat shit insane or religious radicals. The media has done everything in their power to trump up their irregularities, when they were actually pretty normal and forced to work in extremely hostile environments.

Granted Cho may have had issues... so yeah, maybe Cho could've been filtered out.

Hassan? No fucking chance. It was the army's fault all the way. I mean the guy was getting harassed on a daily basis for being of Arabic descent, he wanted to quit the army no matter what - he was even willing to pay all back all the money the army pumped into him, down to the last cent - but no, they wouldn't let him go as there was a pressing need for interpreters in Iraq...
...a war Hassan felt ever more doubtful for, and was frequently raising his conscience problems with participating it.

All reports and evidence in the media pertaining to Hassan efforts to peacefully get out of what was shaping out to be a living hell were carefully scrubbed:

http://exiledonline.com/scrubbing-major-hasan-the-strange-silly-media-rewrite-of-the-fort-hood-shooting-spree/

As for school and workplace shootings, you should really read stuff from Mark Ames, like his book "Going Postal". America has brewed an extremely venal and nasty environments that literally push people to the brink. The shooters can't be profiled... what profiling has been done, has proved that *anyone* could become a shooter. There was no racial, religious, education or even family status trend among the shooters.

However Ames did something different: he tried to profile the schools and workplaces where the shooting took place. He always found the same; injustice, humiliation, in-groups playing their little power-plays and making life a living hell to those who are perceived as "not fitting in".

I'm afraid that's not the legal definition either... in fact there's no legal definition of what a lolicon is, since it's not a legal matter, but of DSM classification:



http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/01/28/pedophilia-vs-lolicon-mental-health-through-manga/

The fact that there was excessive semantic drift around these word doesn't help either, so let's look at how we got here:

1. Nabokov's Lolita: the book depicts a man having an illicit sexual relation with 12 year old. She's clearly *pubescent*, so Mr. Humbert could be describes as an ehebophile. The word comes to be associated with underage (of consent) adolescent girls.

2. Japanese otaku adopt the word to describe all kinds of erotic manga & doujinshi featuring underage participants. However through semantic drift it is usually used to describe *pre-pubescent* or very early *pubescent* children, as Japanese works feature pubescent teenagers very often.

3. Western otaku copy this use of the word, but they extend it to include all participants not yet adult, even though this covers girls (and boys) over the age of consent as well as girls (and boys) below the age of consent but clearly pubescent.

Personally I use the word to refer to small children as Japanese otaku do.

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We can open another can of shitstorm, since we're talking about *drawings* not actual children and it's downright hard to tell what the perceived age of a drawing is.

This is because manga/anime likes to use composites. So your average manga/anime character will have oddly proportioned limbs, facial structure or curves.
Even in lolicon works the girls may often have flaring hips and a waistline that no child could ever posses as well as long legs one would find on a supermodel.

The fact that drawings also simplify a lot, and the feminine characteristics we find sexy (big eyes, oval face, petite nose) also described simplified drawing of children to a T.



Ages 00-05: You sick fuck! --> toddlercon
Ages 06-10: You pedophile! --> lolicon
Ages 11-15: You ephebophile! --> ?

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If you want to go with a legal definition though, the closest thing in criminal codes is having sexual contact with someone under the age of consent.

Pornographic works involving minors is another thing that's prosecuted, since their production involved either the exploitation of children of employing teenagers unlawfully. Possession and distribution are prosecuted as they create a demand for more production.

...what and what doesn't constitute a pornographic work as well as what does and doesn't involve minors also changes depending on the jurisdiction. In my country for instance a minor had to be directly involved in some way during production, so drawn works are not affected. In the USA with their precedent based law, even drawn works have been prosecuted even though no minor was directly involved in the production.

The important thing is momentum. Whatever happens, just roll with it, even if you didn't make a perfect impression moving on is better than trying to fix it.

A firm (but not vice like) handshake is better than trying for a "perfect" response. Same goes for how much to shake. People nowadays come from different cultures and different customs, so there's no "universal handshake protocol". So just be yourself, have some confidence and roll with it.

Here's what I meant:

Hungary (like other Warshaw Pact countries) was under Communist rule until 1989. My father was among the reform communists who were striving to reform the system... in the end it fell upon them to dismantle it and hold general elections.

(He has a funny story too. At the time they were getting "advice" from a lot of western consultants. Guess what the first question of the US consultant was? ..."Could we *fix* it?" ...that is, could they rig the elections. The first fucking idea, to come out of the west was to see if a candidate could be picked, and the US would back the idea as long as it was "their man"... and people wonder why things are so fucked up in Russia. He told them, that the idea was the opposite thing in this case... (and then probably told him, to go and fuck himself)).

This was a "revolution" of sorts, but it was bloodless, as there were no impeachments or criminal tribunes held for the "crimes" of the past system. (There was a lot less need as well, thanks to Goulash Communism). Instead the MSZMP (Magyar Szolialista Munkás Párt - Hungarian Socialist Workers Party) gave up total power. Thanks to the NEM the country already had some experience with capitalism. Everything looked good, we should be good at this!

...well we weren't. In one form or antoher, we're still living in the cape of János Kárár. He was the leader of the MSZMP for almost 40 years. He proposed Goulash Communism, which was can be summed up in the difference in his motto from that of Mátyás Rákosi the man he replaced, who was ousted in the revolution in 1956.

Rákosi was a total bastard, a power-mad dictator his motto was:
"Those not with us, are against us!" - that is, unless you were 100% behind him and the movement, you were an enemy of the people and an enemy of the state. He heavily used secret police and network of informants to terrorize the population. People were imprisoned for telling jokes!

Kádár's motto is telling in turn:
"Those not against us, are with us." - that is unless you were actively rebelling against the system, you won't be prosecuted. He heavily curtailed the powers of the secret police. He even left avenues to criticize the system, in fact his favorite humorist Géza Hofi often did so on prime time national television. It was still a dictatorship of a sort, but a far cry from what the country experienced under Rákosi.

What do I mean about still living in Kádár's cape?
-Only 50% of the expected taxes ever arrive in the coffers. My people have made tax evasion into a national sport! They still act like they're "sticking it to the man".
-However they still demand full social services: free health care, education, a state mandated pension, cheap public transportations, big welfare support for the jobless, big welfare support for those with children... everything for everyone and damn the costs!
-Meanwhile corruption is still rife. You can't win big tender, unless you grease the appropriate palms, or have pals/relatives in place. By now this has even penetrated to the work market, where you can't get a job without connections and 70% of all job adverts are bogus! They already have a man for the job (through connections and often under qualified), they just have to go through the forms as the law mandates it.

What the hell is wrong with my people? They still live like it was fucking communism and the system they were thoroughly sabotaging wasn't the one they have such high expectations for (look at that long list of social services).

...and when the MSZP (yeah, the successor party to the old Communist ones!) tried to fix it with reforms, to rationalize spending (I can never get over the irony, that my country's so screwed up that a socialist party would push to get hard line neo-liberal reforms through) the people were collectively up in arms about it, demonstrating in the streets, and eventually a public votes was held - and those gutted the reforms.

Yeah, I hate neo-liberalism too, as several countries were screwed by it (that's why Russia crashed in 1997)... however my country's a loon-house! People want everything, but are unwilling to finance it. Sometimes you have to say enough is enough.

Now for some reason, people are happy they have a conservative cabinet in place. Fidesz has promised everything: They'll fix everything, and they won't "take anything from the people". How do they propose this? With TAX CUTS! ...Tax cuts, when the budget already has holes big enough to drive an battleship through...

Well actually there's rational behind this: part of the reason why tax evasion is so high is because the taxes are really damn high. But they're high because tax evasion is so rife... so you get where I'm going.

So yeah, tax cuts wouldn't be a bad thing... but what are the chances, that people will still not pay their taxes and the budget will sink us all? In fact where will the money for the pension come in the meanwhile, until people finally start paying?

Well here's what they did:
-They *seized* (or blackmailed people into forfeiting) their private pension funds. They reversed the pension reform that was made 12 years ago. They have no idea where the pensions are going to come when people do retire (and we have a demography crisis, that made the private pension funds necessary in the first place).
-They put out a *crisis* tax on big corporations. They will keep this tax on for *years*. Capital is already fleeing the country. If the government can cannibalize your profits at a whim, then you'd be a fool to invest here.
-They also retro-actively reclaim 98% of all state employed leader's severance pay over 10 000$. Granted, some of those were outrageous... however instead going to the trouble of criminal investigation, they made a blanket move... THAT GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING, THAT THE LAW STANDS FOR! You can't retro-actively make laws. (This is a form of "getting even" with MSZP for being "forced" into opposition for 8 years... as if loosing the actual elections had nothing to do with it...).

...and they're bringing the worst excesses of communism back too:
-Recently a privately owned aluminum firm was put under government control. This was done in response to catastrophe with toxic waste. Never mind, that the corporation was following the law to the letter, was willing to pay compensation and it was government regulators who saw nothing wrong with the current waste-disposal method. Never mind, that this was one of the few world class industries in the country.
-The new media law. A state censorship body will be able to fine and outlaw anyone who they believe is acting against "public morals". We're already getting a lot of flak from the EU over this.

So yeah... that's why I think revolution doesn't solve anything.

Just possessing a gun is a big detterent against any threat against you.
However I feel that the US citizens don't realize what *is* and *isn't* self-defense. If you get a gun, you should do that to protect yourself.

When attacked, run away! Yes, run like hell! If you can't run without getting shot at,take cover, take out your gun, and loudly proclaim that you're armed and ready to defend yourself! Next, with your opponent contemplating this, see if you can leave. You should leave and run anyway if you can! Fuck the stolen goods! Fuck all the bullshit about what's manly/brave thing to do! Get the hell out of there.

The police can chase the perp, it's why they get paid the big bucks. Only use your gun if you can't run away and the perp won't leave you be. Tell the perp that the two of you should go your separate ways. Don't lecture him or make demands... especially while waving a gun in his face. Just state that you have a gun, and if he attacks you will defend yourself. Now back away and leave... if you can't than tell him to leave and save both of you the embarrassment of getting shot and killed over a 20$ stereo.

That is self-defense.

Shooting the bastard 'cause he nicked your stuff is not. Shooting because you're frightened out of your wits by all the bullshit and sensational stories about manslaughter by the irresponsible media is not. Shooting because you have a hard on for heroism or for "delivering justice" is not.

Self-defense, first and foremost is a mindset. Even without a gun, having your wits, your calm and especially your priorities straight is priceless!

Your first and formost priority should be to avoid danger altogether! Don't go into neighborhoods where trouble abounds. Take the safe road. When a conflict seems to come, once again back away, try to avoid it.

Most of the time that's all you'll do since you'll never even allow danger to approach you. Most of the time... almost all the time. Unfortunately you can still run of out luck, danger may still find you even if you're actively avoiding it.

It's OK. You've prepared, and you know what you gotta do. You're in danger - maybe lethal danger. Your no.1 priority is to remove yourself from this danger. No. 2 is to deny the danger (the perp) even the chance hurt you. You last priority is to retaliate if you can't avoid the danger!

The gun in your hand is your last refuge. Beyond shooting it also gives you a strong negotiating position. See, I'm armed. I'm dangerous.... however all you have to do to make me leave you alone is let me leave, or leave yourself. Calm, certain to the point.

...and if all else fails, shoot... and for Christ's sake if you own a gun at least go to a range and practice! Practice not only shooting, but what you should do if attacked! Practice it until you can remain calm even under stress! Practice until the self-defense mindset becomes second-nature, until you have that quiet confidence that needs no bravado to carry you through.

Check this post:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=2043740

Your winamp playlist is a plain text file and you can set what goes into it.

For me it's the exact opposite, I've been using a Tenga Air Cushion Cup, but the sensation's a bit light, unless I use a lot of lube to really get the suction going. Granted it's according to their diagram it's one of their milder toys.



Maybe I should try out either the Rolling Head or the Double Hole Cup as they're listed as more intensive.

I'm for gun ownership, but I'm also for gun control.

Guns don't kill people, it's the ones pulling the trigger who do it. Yes, the gun enables the killing and makes it a lot easier to kill than if you had to do it with your bare hands.

However it's often vastly overestimated how "easy" it is to kill. It's not. To be able to pull the trigger takes enormous changes in the psyche:



Rather than focus on the singular issue of gun ownership, if we're to combat modern violence we should focus on what the myriad things are that enable us to kill either in cold blood or in rage.

I'm afraid that video games are one of these, as just like modern combat training it enables one to overcome our natural tendency to avoid doing harm to thing that look human.... however it can't be enough. I've played these for several hundreds of hours (maybe thousands over the years), but I'd probably still find it hard to kill someone.

The "gun ban" freaks are on a wrong footing, they thing magically: if we take out the gun from the hands of people they won't kill... that's stupid.

IMHO we should use the fact that people want to be armed.

Just as with an auto mobile, we should make people accept that carrying a firearm goes with a special responsibility. I find it idiotic, that people demand to own a gun as a born right. Yes, I believe everyone should have a chance to acquire that right, however not without training.

If one were to demand that they should be able to drive a car without any training whatsoever we'd think him mad: he'd be a menace on the road and would likely end up killing someone...

...and we don't want to handle object created with the express purpose to enable one to kill with the same respect? Utter madness.

A part of the training should be (beyond gun safety) a rigorous training of *when* one can use their gun. I find it bad, that most of this training views current self defense laws as something to get around - so you can shoot and kill the bastard! - rather than something that protects us, from becoming killers ourselves.

Yes, there are times when it's obvious that it's kill or be killed or kill and someone else (undeserving) get killed... however the ready willingness of Americans to use lethal force creates an ever wilder and nastier circle of violence. Since perps are also well aware of this mindset they're also perfectly willing to kill.

I don't know how the USA could break out of this cycle. Sometimes if one allowed a perp to get away, if it wasn't a life or death struggle, but a merely a question of getting caught versus getting away than the perps themselves wouldn't feel pressured to kill. Yeah, even a violent criminal isn't readily willing to kill. You heard right: the overwhelming majority of criminals is no different than you when it comes to killing.

You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
Just because someone is a scumbag, doesn't warrant them being called a terrorist.
Terrorist is a word. It has a *specific* meaning... and anyone who thinks otherwise can go to hell!

Doublethink is the art of not only simultaneously thinking two mutually-contradictory things, but of depriving words of their meaning, of twisting and bending language to your own purpose.

I know language is a living thing and it changes and evolves according to the needs of the users, but re-purposing the word terrorist to mean any scumbag who killed in anger without a lawful order does not serve the public.

-It serves greedy politicians, who thrive on fear mongering to get elected.
-It serves greedy businessman, who can make a reaping with their security companies maintaining a security theater that does little to make us objectively safe.
-It serves greedy defense contractors, since they make a killing selling expensive weapons systems.
-It serves greedy military brass, who can get that last promotion for "leading in the field" (...and so do all their Power-point ranger cronies) or for having bent backwards in procurement processes and cushy commercial job once they retire.
-It serves the inane policies of the neo-conservative interest, who pushed through two wars that literally does nothing against Al-Qaeda, eats of the youth and resources of the country and makes some people a hell of a rich.

I'm not a darn peace-nick. As is, the USA can't pull out of Iraq (though I'd argue against staying in Afghanistan) since that would lead to the total destabilization of the area.

However from DAY 1 the Intelligence Community has been saying all of what I've been saying... only to be shut down. People who complained had their carriers wrecked and we ended up with a government without expert advice or oversight.

Um...yeah. Hell, yeah!

Try here:
https://www.fakku.net/viewtopic.php?t=56886

Unless you have multiple subtitles, audio tracks or video angles (some DVDs have extras where there's more than a single video track since the action was recorded from multiple angles) then there's little point to converting to mkv as it won't change the viewing experience, nor will it make the file more accessible through multiple devices.

The prime reason why "mkv" is used by release groups is that it allows all the content to be packed and distributed in only a single file and allows the playback of all features to be "tied to the format".

Because this, people often wrongly assume they need "advanced" codecs or new media player to play "mkv". In fact all you need to play mkv is a splitter that streams the appropriate tracks to your player (ie. this is usually halii's). However to play the file, you also need to able to decode the streams themselves.

Earlier people used to use codecs for this, however these have a nasty tendency to conflict with each other, since the direct-show platform (used for video playback on windows) used to be a clusterfuck and the codec makers themselves didn't help matters et all as they tended to trounce all over each other's code. (Little wonder, since they *were* competitors).

Nowadays, unless you're actually encoding video all of that is gone. On windows FFDShow has revolutionized playback. It's a direct show filter that support all the major formats. I call it filter, because it only handles decoding, without encoding, so it's not a codec. All the good players out there tend to use it namely:
-Mplayer
-Media Player Classic - Home Cinema
-CCCP (Which unlike what it's name suggests is a FILTER, not a codec pack and could be thought of as a fined tuned release of MPC-HC)
-...anything worthwhile.

...if you use any of the players above, then you won't need to install FFDShow yourself as it's already included.

English dubs are so horrible, because in America dubbing is a shit tier job in the entertainment industry. You get paid less and usually the production is a rush job, so no re-takes and often the dubber reads the script the first time when he's acting it.

I live in Hungary and back in the "Goulash Communism" we used to have excellent dubs.

The reason was, they were produced by the same state owned company (Studio Pannonia) that employed most film/theater actors.

So films were dubbed by the same stars who you otherwise saw in domestic films or playing Shakespeare in the theater.

When commercial TV stations appeared the quality of dubs went into a nose dive, since they employed ridiculously cheap dubbing companies.

Gold plate --> vs. <-- wear and tear?

You have no goddamn idea what you're talking about.
Gold plating is done to ensure superior conductivity and no signal noise from the coupling. (It's also corrosion resistance).

Since HDMI is transmitting digital data, it has no whatsoever use.

That 3 micron gold cover costs about 2$ and you'll likely end up paying 10-15$ more for it... for a damn cable.

Just buy a cable and don't twist or bend it this time around.

Mkv has nothing to do with picture quality. Like ".mp4", ".avi" or the now defunct and deprecated format ".ogm" it's a container. It has features for embedding multiple audio tracks (ie. japanese and english dub + a director's commentary track), subtitles and for handling chapters inside a video (so you can skip the opening) as well as to seamlessly play multiple files on the run. Ie. it's enough to only supply a separate file for the anime's opening and ending thereby trimming entire gigabytes from your overall size.

Mkv is also pretty flexible, supporting a myriad of video and audio formats. Earlier anime tended to be encoded with Divx/Xvid with mp3 or ogg sound; nowadays people use h264 for video and FLAC or AAC for sound.

This same flexibility though is why, until recently, very few stand alone devices supported the format as you need to be able to decode a myriad of formats.

When you have trouble with playback, it's usually not the container, but the content that's giving you trouble.

Actually I think most of the systems I mentioned (maybe with the tentative exception of Ars Magica) are largely irrevelant, as they're for tabletop (or live chat) role-playing, rather than play-by-post. The later can be a lot more freeform, in fact I'd encourage to move away from strict statistical systems (if any system is necessary et all) and instead to focus on writing elaborate backgrounds. I've seen stuff like thiss (ie. The Star Army of Yamatai RP forums) and I think it'd be a good literary excersize.

I also find all complaints about cybering and "user sexual interaction" downright dumb...
...anyone with a modicum of maturity has to realize there's a difference between a player/poster and their character. The character is a person (protagonist) in a story and not necessarily your avatar or a direct representation of you in that world. They inhabit a different world, have different concerns, wants, ideas.

Yeah, it acts according to your wishes, but pretty soon it'll develop a life of its own. (It tends to happen even if you're the only one writing a story as almost all writers will attest). If not... then they were never more than a thin illusion, a hollow vessel for your self-insert fantasies and will probably come off as fake or unreal.

Are you sure it's sleep mode? If it doesn't work even when plugged into a monitor, then a component was probably fried (your - maybe integrated - graphics card, you CPU, you RAM, etc.)

To access your files, you'd need to remove the hard drive and connect it to a desktop.

NOPE.

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.