The Old Hack

Still another reason to stick to Windows 7. I am so glad I declined that 'free upgrade.'

The Moderator: Very true, and it is greatly appreciated by those of us responsible for the forums. ~tOH.

Naw, the unwillingness to do so is because you've gotten what you wanted from them, so why spend any more?

Good that he is happy with your progress. Keep the poor man happy, get better soon!

I have been hoping for that for years. Just not that Leifeld.

I wasn't dissing it! I was being nostalgic.

And if so, which builds? Windows 95? Windows 98? Windows ME? Windows 7 through 10 only? Or... *gasp* Windows 3.11 for Workgroups?

There's an easy solution to that. Make sure they have no medical insurance. That way they get to be homeless and traumatised so they will die fast without causing further trouble. A tried and true method used by governments through the ages. *sigh*

It is somewhat more complicated than that. It is not merely a matter of 'pulling the trigger.' A number of factors are involved and I cannot hope to describe them all in a single post. But the one that is relevant for videogames is the one where games train you to reflexively open fire on a very humanlike target and do it so fast that you have no time to think about it. This is the key difference between old-fashioned training methods where soldiers were taught to fire at mere bullseye targets and the like and newer ones where you train them to reflexively shoot at human-shaped targets that may appear in an instant. It has to do with the psychological mechanism that a huge percentage of human beings have in them which goes, "It isn't right to kill another human being." This mechanism tends to make people hesitate or hold back rather than use killing blows. Modern military training conditions soldiers into bypassing this mechanism by making the trigger pull itself reflexive. However, because the mechanism is only bypassed and not suspended, this is also why huge numbers of soldiers develop psychological problems after having actually been in combat. Some part inside them goes, "Dear Lord, what have I done?" And while that part may be temporarily silenced through denial and similar coping methods, it never really goes away and eventually becomes harder and harder to deal with.

Speaking of bureaucratic mentality. I love how IBM turned down the inventors of the photocopier because there couldn't possibly be any use for such a thing in a modern office.

While I am not one to jump on the 'computer games corrupt our children and turn them evil' bandwagon I did once read an interesting argument for why certain computer games might result in dulling the "don't kill" reflex most people have built into them somewhere. It is a very complex matter described by Colonel Dave Grossman in his book 'On Killing' and deals with methods used to train soldiers in how to be more efficient killers, the psychological consequences of putting that training to use and the eerie overlap between this training and certain modern computer games. Unlike certain hysterics, I do not believe that Legend of Zelda or Bejeweled will turn children into psychopathic mass murderers. The issue is a bit more complicated than that. But I am no longer convinced that there is no relationship between modern entertainment media and increases in killing at all.

Like the Bible. o.O Mind you, occasionally that could slip up a bit. There was that Bible where a rather important 'not' was omitted from the Seventh Commandment...

Also, it might be family records or something else private, like some sort of wizard tradition Arthur is part of.

Errr, records do go further back than the founding of the US government.

Maybe he is a member of a large organisation with access to secret archives that have information preserved from much older times?

'Madness' is a very strange term that is used mostly if not solely in a social context. If someone acts in a manner clearly deviating from social mores, they are deemed aberrant or insane. It is not too long ago that homosexuality was considered a form of insanity. It is also cheerfully conflated with chemical imbalances in the brain leading to the stigmatisation of, say, people with depression, anxiety disorders and the like. Gun violence, for example, is often explained away with 'the shooter was clearly mentally ill' -- never mind that this is an oversimplification on the scale of stating of a hit-and-run driver that 'it was clearly because he owned a car.' *sigh*

I would think it would have been a much more serious issue for homo flaccus. Possibly even the reason that no trace of them has ever been found.

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2317 This is not a very good Liefeld comic. The characters all have largely human proportions. That woman exercising clearly has a spine and her breasts aren't either massively huge or showing outrageous amounts of cleavage. Also, every single character actually has joints that can articulate and actual wrists. And there isn't as much as even a single pouch in sight anywhere. What gives?

He doesn't even send you packages of pepper and tell you to blow them into your face? How rude.

From Italy, maybe? I figured Signor Mlunatico probably shares with his various mysterious twins.

The Moderator: I am sorry but I am locking this thread for the time being. This has nothing to do with the posters here; you have all large and by done your best to stay within the limits I have imposed. Rather, it is because I am currently in a state of stress that makes it very hard for me to function as even-handedly here as a good moderator should. This is, in part, due to current affairs in my homeland. I do not wish to go into details but I loathe our current government with a burning passion and I do not think much better of the opposition. Even just looking at the Danish newspapers makes me want to hit things. I need to spend some time to re-center and I apologise for that. Thank you all for your patience and understanding. ~tOH.

'Might' be. Not 'should.' I agree that the latter is preferable. But I am not in an optimistic mood at the moment.

Take heart. This will soon become the norm in first world countries, too. As more and more superresistant strains develop while our governments fritter away what antibiotics still do work through such strokes of genius as cutting funding for hospital hygiene, we are a mere decade or two away from living in the happy times of the early twentieth century where the surest way of getting rid of an infection was through amputation.

Goddammit.

Technically the first time we see it is here.