Klaas
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Posts posted by Klaas
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Yeah, that's just rediculous those provocative or violent manifestations. The result is the reverse of what they try to accomplish, people get only more fanatic.
Well, OTOH manifestation should also bear some kind of humerous atmosphere if possible. I don't about the mentality in Montreal but here those slogans appear quite often in even the most peaceful and friendly demonstration, people take it much more lightly.
I don't really have a border when it comes to what people can write or say really, as long as it's not personal. If homophobes want to shout "all gays are sick" or sexists want to shout "all women are second-class people" go ahead, it only shows how untolerant and backwards they are.
The line ends however when it comes to not only writing and shouting but also practicing. I strongly belief in personal freedom and equality, so that's where my line is.
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I'm sure it cannot be contested that the US has the best equipped, most highly trained military in the world (not to mention the second largest). That being said, can someone please tell me, in complete honesty, that the American government could not have sent an elite special ops force to either capture or kill Saddam Hussein, and avoided the entire mess of a full invasion althougather?
They probably could but Saddam gone doesn't mean that the Baath party is gone. Anything could happen when Saddam would have been murdered but most likely either anyother Sunni ruler would take over or Iraq would have been thrown into total chaos, civil war and anarchy, probably much worse than now.
People often forget that Saddam was a stabalizing factor in both the Middle East and his own country. With that factor falling away, without a strong military force to keep order intact the Middle East would fall into total warfare imho. I'm pretty sure Iran wouldn't just sit there and watch but just grab its chance.
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If you don't have PCI-Express what about an ATI 9800? They're pretty cheap these days but it's still a top notch gfx card imho. Plays BF2 and AoE3 extremely well, with only 512MB RAM, 3Ghz P4.
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Yep that's right
Yeah, I just mean the general idea: CPU and memory. I guess some systems may use Harvard architecture, though in general it's comparable to von Neumann except for the memory. Well I don't know the details, I could be wrong.
You're up now
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I am through the campaign already...it is a good campaign, but a bit too much base building IMO. There should have been more scenarios with time constraints or a one-man-show..like you get a hero and have to go through an enemy fort without being seen.
The skirmish modus is okay either...however, the AI is not very good.
Yeah completely agree.
That the AI isn't good doesn't bother me. I'm bad at rushing, I always want to have big base and economy before I attack, so not the best strategy for AoE3. So it's not that easy for me to win on expert
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Rofl, forgot about this whole thread.
Well it's my first question so here it goes
What's the name of the architecture nearly all computers are based on?
Tip: it's the name of a person
If you don't know I'll give some additional tips
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Have you tried Wikipedia? Well if not I'm sure Morgan can tell you all about it.
I guess an important factor here is the distinction between Marx himself, marxists and communists. The thing is that Marx's words aren't always put to practice literally by marxists and/or communists, so it may be useful to make that distrinction first before you go on.
In general what's always mentioned when people write or talk about Marx and religion is his writing "Religion is the opium of/for the people". This quotation is of course open to quite a few interpretations, so that's something you could look up.
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@Deacon
Well that's exactly what the fanatic extreme-right is saying in Europe. Frankly I don't get it why they say such things because there's absolutely no evidence at all that Muslims (Muslims in general I asume?) are trying to take over the world.
If you know so much about history I asume you know why many of those Muslims moved to France? They didn't move there to conquer it but because De Gaulle gave them the choice when Algeria got its independance: either they stay there and become Algerian citizens, either they move to France in stay French (Algeria was a French province, not a colony). Next to that many Muslims moved here because of war (Bosnians), and mainly to work here. In Belgium for example many migrated to here to work in the mines.
So Muslim immigrants have been here for quite some time, and most of them to seek prosperity, not to "conquer the world".
What these kids are doing on the streets has nothing to do with conquering but has its roots in two things imho: social circumstances (no job, a lot of crime, no future, bad education) and mentality (neglected by parents, spoiled kids, being bored, etc.).
I also believe you're mixing up Muslims as a religion with the Ottoman empire or the caliphates, things that shouldn't be compared that easily with Islam today.
That blacks started slavery is a pretty bold statement. In fact slavery has existed for quite some time. The slavery you're talking about wasn't started by blacks but mainly by Muslim tribes and Europeans. Indeed black chieftains sold blacks to them, but that doesn't mean that slavery started on their initiative, the demand was European, not African.
Anyway, that doesn't matter anymore imho. The only thing that matters is that any person gets the same chances, whatever color, sex or religion that person has. And we're still a long way from that.
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It should indeed not be state-mandated but it's very important that these problems are dealt with because those riots in France show the result.
I'm a strong believer in integration (note: not assimilation), but preferably on personal initiative or by evolution. This means that the state should not oblige people to integrate per se but they should give them the tools to integrate: free or cheap language courses, decent and free education, good housing, a chance to get a job with a fair wage, eradicating any discrimination based on race, sex, etc.
And still, I don't buy it what many of these teenagers are saying, that they do this because of what Sarkozy said. Many of them are just trouble-makers and because they now have the chance to make trouble on a large scale they're using this as an excuse. Sure, what Sarkozy said wasn't the most strategic or respectful thing to do, but if that's a reason to burn schools there's a serious problem.
Imho both the government and the trouble-makers share the responsibility for what's happening now. Both should find a sollution to the problems that caused these riots.
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Well I'm not embarrassed this is happening Hyborian, but indeed our governments should be.
It seems that this is a problem caused by both sides; the government not giving enough attention to the situation of the poor neighbourhoods and immigrants, and the mentality of the young immigrants themselves. As long as they keep living in such a situation, with no future and no job it's quite logical that they're angry. OTOH it's not acceptable that they show their anger by burning cars, schools or harassing people.
I also have a problem believing what some of them are saying. They claim that the police is racist, that they're being discriminated. While there may be some truth in that I've also heared many different stories, mainly that they're just criminals wanting total control over these neighbourhoods.
I believe CNN recently made a documentary about several towns in Sweden with similar problems; where firetrucks and first aid workers need police assistance because they constantly are being attacked.
Also in my town we have more of those problems. These kids aren't poor or immigrants, but last week nearly a hundred of them were fighting on the town square damaging cars and even using baseball sticks. This time the police came, but many local shops have been constantly complaining about being attacked by 12 to 14-year-olds during the weekend, and yet the police didn't do anything about it.
I don't know what the problem is, because it certainly isn't poverty or discrimination in this case. I guess that problem is society, with pop-culture oriented around black gangesters and pimps, parents that don't give their children a proper education and children that don't have a hobby but rather stay on the streets and do nothing.
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I want to apologise too, Klaas.
My words have been too harsh, and you didnt deserve them.
I have lost people in both the Basque and the Northern Ireland conflicts, people I loved - and any conversation or discussion that deals with this topic- terrorism-independentism, gets me hot under the collar, to the point of almost loosing my temper.
Indeed
That's a very sad thing to hear Naurwen and I perfectly understand your reaction, no need to apologise
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I'm sorry if I offended you Naurwen, I didn't mean to say that ETA is better than the Spanish authorities, not at all. I'm aware that ETA has done gruesome things and that the Spanish authorities probably had enough patience with them, in no way I approve their acts or want to justify them, they're a disgrace to any regionalist movement. I also didn't want to imply that Spain isn't a democracy or respectable nation, but I guess any democracy has its faults, including Spain.
With the imprisonments I wasn't talking about ETA members, but about regionalists outside ETA. I don't know if this is still going on, but during Aznar AI filed several complaints about the situation in the prisons and the lack of evidence for arresting several people.
I'm aware that the Basque authorities forbid those demonstrations. Same thing happens here you know, quite recently a Flemish one was forbidden by a Flemish mayor. I don't know about Spain, but quite often Flemings with a high political position often choose the side of the Belgian state.
Anyway, my sources are indeed not that relyable, it's mainly the Flemish leftst movement that has a few correspondents in Basque. But I can assure you that ETA, or any other regionalist movement that uses violence, doesn't get any sympathy from the leftist regionalists here because we know it is possible to get more autonomy in a peaceful way, it only requires patience and much courage. After all, the independance of your own region is to provide its inhabitants with better services, a better government, so wasting lives for that is totally against this ideal.
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Well I partly agree Naurwen, but not about Spain. Basque and Catalonia aren't 100% independant from Spain, not at all really. Especially in Basque the police, judges and other state institutions are still controlled by Madrid, resulting in unequal treatment of the Basques and the Spanish nationalists.
Still, although since Aznar is gone this happens less frequently, Basque nationalists are imprissoned without any clear evidence and Amnesty International has filed quite a few complaints about torture in Spanish prisons when dealing with Basque nationalists. Also demonstrations are often forbidden (a few months ago many people in a peaceful demonstration were arrested), while those of the Spanish nationalists or falangists (followers of Franco) are allowed and even protected by the police.
Although I don't agree with what ETA has done you also have to understand where they're coming from. It was mainly them, along with the Catalan leftist nationalists, that brought Franco's regime to its knees, and it was mainly them that lost lives in the struggle against the fascists. But when Franco was gone the new Spanish regime didn't thank them at all, instead they allowed them some independance, but not nearly as much as the Basques and Catalans asked for.
Of course it's not a reason to turn to violence, but if the Spanish regime after Franco allowed the regions more or even 100% independance it wouldn't have come that far.
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http://www.xmms.org/ works fine for me
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Well I think a video/graphics card is a bit overkill in Yiuel's case, especially the Nvidia 6xxx range. If you play games, do CAD moddeling or graphics design it's indeed something you can't miss but for other stuff it's better to have a GPU on the motherboard, it can save you $100 or more.
What also has a big impact is the software delivered with it. If you already have WinXP get a PC without an OS. And if you don't need Windows get a PC with Linux, it'll save you another $50 or more.
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Well, last friday the Belgian unions striked as well
I was talking about the Belgian unions
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It is worth its price, but if I were you I would save up some more money to buy a computer that will last you longer than this.
It's also important to know which type of CPU it is, the clock frequency alone doesn't tell anything. If it's an Intel Celeron I would definatly not get it because those CPU's are really bad imho.
I would look for something like this:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP or Pentium IV 2.4 - 2.8 Ghz
Memory: 256-512MB
HD: 40-80 GB
CD writer and DVD-reader (many new media is coming out on DVD these days)
That's a typical low-end computer that is powerful and will last you quite long if you don't play games or don't do graphic design/CAD or programming. It's possible to find this at around €500 I think.
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What do you mean by the same thing?
Yeah I agree about retirement. The current system is discriminatory and asocial, too many people have to work until 60/60+ while those selfish union-members demonstrating last friday get retirement much earlier. My father worked 44 years (16-60) and he has a pension that isn't even half of what most blue collar workers get. But my gf's grandmather has a pension nearly 4 times as high as his and she hasn't worked 1 day in her whole life or paid 1 cent to our social security system. She was lucky enough to have a husband who was a school president in Congo.
That's not fair imo that people get such a high retirement while others a lot less. What they should do is make the age 60 for everyone and lower the differences.
And I agree, I don't want to work for a generation that was lucky enough to pay only little taxes but get a high pension. They should be happy with a bit less and also think about the younger generations, we also want a piece of the cake, but they want it all.
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Looks nice Lorian
For centering in IE use text-align: center on the container of the element you wish to center.
This will center everything of course, so in the centered element simply add the style text-align: left to override it.
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1) yeah it doesn't go high enough. I first set it to direct to the highest element with an id which is #top, but then a selection box is drawn around it which doesn't look nice. I guess I'll have to add a hidden a tag with an id, not really semantically correct but atleast it works.
2) ok thanks for letting me know
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Well Civicspace is pretty cool but it's huge and packed with features. So I now installed Drupal (Civicspace is an alternative Drupal distro), which offers the same core features as Civicspace but less bloated.
I really recommend Drupal to anyone, it's a very nice CMS with the user in mind, not the hacker.
Its very lightweight, only 1.3MB to install, but its core can be extended with modules so you have endless functionality. It also uses the latest web trends and not some strange stuff like Mambo or Typo3 do: taxonomy for categorisation, basic multi-level categorisation, content types based on nodes and blocks. These things are really all you need:
Taxonomy is a categorisation system that lets you assign pages or content to a certain term. For example, you write an article about CSS tabs and you assign it to: CSS, XHTML, Tabs, Javascript
Then you also have the usual category system. You simply assign content to a category or a category to a parent category, pretty straightforward.
Pages are based on nodes. For example a page could be a story node which is a page that can expire after x days. You have endless possibilities here, you can specify many types of pages as long as you can write a bit of PHP to make a module for your custom node.
Blocks can be anything. The navigation for example is a block. Or you could have a block with a login box, or a block displaying the latest forum topics. You can also configure the blocks so it only appears on a specific node (eg. the front page only).
Anyway, a very simple CMS with endless extensibility, exactly what I was looking for
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Cool
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Well not really Caesar because liberals (ugh what an ugly word in Europe, total oppiste of what it is over the pond) don't regard the embryo (or whatever you wish to call it) as human life. But that's another discussion
I partly agree with the text Mythos, but if I pull it outside its context and put it in a European one that's really a very populistic piece of propaganda.
In our case we wouldn't be talking about liberals but about social or christian-democrats. Yes, they fought for all that, but the question is, are they still fighting?
Imho absolutely not, they're now fighting for rediculous rights, for the rights of union-members and not those who either pay 50% of their income to the state while working for 40 years 40hours+/week or those who are alienated from society and especially unions (eg. the poor).
Tomorrow is the second day this month that the trade-unions try to block the whole country so people can't go to work or even school. And for what reason? Because the government has decided to let people work until they're 58-60 instead of 52-58 or even less (my brother's father-in-law retired when he was 52), because we have too many retired people to pay for.
Insane and digusting imo because many people outside those selfish unions already had to work until 60+, work 4 or more hours a week than they do, get 10 or more days less vacation, get up to 80% less retirement wage, etc. I didn't see them coming on the streets for that, nor did I see them when our government approved the asocial EU constitution...
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No not really. Well it's fine for my personal website but I'm not going to use it for clientsidecoding.com. The problem is that I need to do too much hacking to make the layout look like I really want to, there's too much html hidden in the php files, outside the template. Next to that I don't like that the views of the sections, pages or categories are fixed, there isn't much flexibility really, atleast not enough for a more complex website. I do think that Mambo has much potential, the goals they set last summer (xmlrpc, 100% templating, ajax based admin, getting rid of the section/category system, xhtml compliant) are great, but it seems they aren't there yet.
It's also filled with bugs and features that only work half. The multilanguage module for example frustrated me that much that I'm never going back to Mambo again; lost a whole page of translated text because the admin panel logged me out after 15 mins and quite often pages aren't even saved when you submit.
I could go on about Mambo but the bottom line is that it isn't suited for a dynamic website meant to make some money with, it's simply too unrelieable.
Python vs xml ?
in Computer Desk
Posted
Not sure what you exactly mean. Python and XML are both completely different things. Python is a programming/scripting language while XML is only a markup language.
Markup means the description of data, for example:
<title>some data</title>
So the 'title' markup tells us that 'some data' is a title.
In practice XML is used for various things. In games the most common use is configuration or storing stats and such.
Python can't be used for that though (to some degree that is possible, but it's bad practice). With Python you manipulate that data. For example parse an XML file or make a GUI, etc.
So in the end you need both if you want to mod something or make your game "modable", for enough flexibility. Python isn't necessary though, you can also use javascript or another lightweight programming or scripting language.