Messages

Well... fuck! I somehow expected the batteries of the car would have given up already. My can usually runs out of battery in under 8 hours if I forget to turn off the lights and then I need to push the damn thing downhill to get it to start again. Maybe it's one of those newfangles hybrid cars that are mostly made out of batteries...

> Curse in a family-friendly manner
> Enter car again and turn off the damn lights
> Take a nap (heck, the car IS a shelter)

Personally my main worry is how, in many mainstream games, the importance of story and character developement is diminishing, and how singleplayer elements are being shunned in favor of multiplayer-heavy high-profile games.

I know it's a useless ideal to think "the good old days" of gaming, namely early 90's, should come back with their infernally hard but somehow rewarding games, but one can hope, right?

If the only reason you dont go around killing people is because you are afraid of the law then you can stay at least 3 countries away from me.
That literally makes you a psychopath in the medical sense of the word.

Let's look at a country that does not have a police force, shall we?
Iraq?

The nation's police force have been basically driven into hiding, and the foreign military forces who are present are unable to maintain a safe environment. Terrorist movements have risen to seemingly limitless power, vehicles transporting local civilian police to training are bombed to keep a police force from forming and the people...? Live happily ever after? I doubt that...

Indiscriminate bombings of military, police and civilian targets are damn near daily over there, and I can't help but wonder WHY? Why is there nothing stopping these madmen, these animals?

Yes, I am aware the reason Iraq does not have a police force is the war, and yes this is a special situation, but if you cannot see the pattern here, you must be blind! Police were removed from society -> Criminal scum has nothing to really fear as the closest thing to law is far overstretched, poorly trained and ineffective (Coalition troops are good soldiers, but now jack shit about serving and protecting) -> criminal scum keeps a police force from regaining strength -> Anarchy

> "I say, that must be the mythical 'lights of Wyrdweald" over there!"
> Sit up, pinch self to ensure wakefulness
> Listen closely, are there any sounds in the direction of the lights?

[> Put ear against huge door in the middle]

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> Put ear against huge door in the middle

You press your ear agains the double doors leading SOUTH. It is completely silent in this place at the moment. The only thing you can hear is your own breathing.

[>Go West (Life is peaceful there)]

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>Go West (Life is peaceful there)

You decide to head back the way you came, since you've come to the conclusion that the small security room is a dead end. Besides, now that you've done what you've done, that dead guy kinda creeps you out.

You now stand in the dining room / mess hall. It's quite dark in here, now that the lights are out.

I like it! 

Holy moley!

*wanders off in search of popped-out eyeballs*

> March away from the sun, march until sunset begins to seem imminend or your feet give away
   > Or stop if you spot something interestin, that's cool too

I'm an idiot! 
I already forgot my password for the control panel (didn't write it down), but oh well, at least I have the FTP login and password.
All I have running at the moment is a redirection to my "work in progress" website, but I might change the agser.me site later.

Thanks Peder!

We are, by nature, a social species that instinctively works together. The best way to lower crime rates is better education, both moral and otherwise.

No we aren't! Human beings tend to only work for their own personal good. Laws are in place to ensure as many people as possible agree on what is good for YOU and through that, what is good for the community as a whole. Break the law = punishment = not good for YOU = you are discouraged from breaking the law.

If WHAM's assertions were correct, that people are either law abiding by nature or they should be killed then the only way he could account for the widely unbalanced prison population is racism and facism. Why are you more likely to be in prison if you are a poor, black male? Why are you less likely to be in prison if you are more educated even when factoring in things like wealth?

It is the poor and the minorities who, in their greed and perceived misery ("boo-hoo, I am poor and miserable because I cannot afford a new TV, when millions of people are literally starving to death, but that's neither here nor there!") turn to their animalistic side, abandon the law and abandon humanity and break the law for their own personal gain, like the looters from whom this discussion/debate began from. This is another issue we must be able to resolve, sooner, rather than later: too many people = uneven distribution of wealth = unhappiness in those who perceive themselves as being "poor"

Further more, going back to InCreators point about raising children, what do you think happens to children that are taught right and wrong using fear and violence? Children learn from their parents by *emulation*. If a childs father uses fear and intimidation to tell them what to do then they associate that behaviour as acceptable and use it to get what they want. Children with violent childhoods are far more likely to end up in prison than those without.

Knowing what the mind of the majority here is, I'll get branded for this, but I remember how I was punished as a kid. There were threats of violence, mild but still violence, if I misbehaved repeatedly. If I went far enouh out of line, I got physically punished (spanking etc). I suffered such punishment on three occasions, and I learned from them.
Do not come home by bedtime = punishment = I did not repeat this mistake
Do not take something without permission (steal) = punishment = I did not repeat this mistake
Do not lie to your parents = punishment = I have not told a lie to my parents since the age of 13

Biggest issue of modern society is not the laws or punishments, it is the fact that people are not given the rules, the laws of society, at a young enough age and they do not know what is OK and what is not when they grow up.

Also: I haven't gotten a single fine, have not had a single issue with the police, have never broken the law (well, I did speed that one time, but that's not exactly a major crime now is it?) and have had a normal life in a small apartment, doing 10 hour days at work, living with my girlfriend. I guess that's all the violence and threat thereof I suffered in childhood making me a bad and twisted person, eh?

> Look at the sun again
> Try to figure out which way the sun is going to set
   > Head in the opposite direction, and keep the sun behind you
     > March on

I'm also pretty sure the "good guys" in Italy hanged Mussolini and his allies publicly...

[> Stick finger into bullethole on forehead of the deadguy]

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> Stick finger into bullethole on forehead of the deadguy

You kneel next to the corpse and prepare yourself. You take a deep breath and stick your finger inside the corpse.
Ooooh, God, it's still a little warm! You feel extremely queasy. Actually you feel pretty sic... BLEEEEEUUUUGH!!!



You find nothing interesting inside the man's head, save for a tiny metal fragment which seems to be a part of a bullet, and some skull fragments. You decide to leave the scraps in the head. You clean up your hands on the remains of your old pants and step away from the corpse, and the pool of your own vomit.

Whatever your job was before you lost your memory, brain surgeon it was not!

Phew, ddq, that a LOT of words there. Let me go through that and see if I have any arguments left.

For crimes of passion and opportunity, one is aware only of the immediate results of the act (e.g. dead spouse, new TV, adrenaline rush), and is unfocused on or discounting of possible punishment that would await one after capture.

On this matter I believe in evolution. If those people who fail to control themselves are diminished in number, then they are less likely to reproduce, multiply and grow. I truly believe such people are like cancer. You cut it off, and even if it spreads, you keep cutting or you die. It will hurt, it will disfigure you, but you WILL live. Humankind's "body" in this example is quite strong and healthy, and actually could do with some lopping off of body parts.

For premeditated cases, the perpetration takes the steps necessary to avoid apprehension and intends on escape. Whether they would spend 10, 25, or 50 years in prison of face the death penalty would have negligible effect on someone who intends to get away with it.

Well, if we manage to deter even SOME criminals from crime, AND we cut down on the costs of maintaining prisons and prisoners, the money and resources we save can be put to apprehending these clever premeditated criminals. It will never be perfect, but it will be better than what we have now.

And what of the police officers?

They are humans, yes. They make mistakes, overreact and break the rules, yes.
This is why we need more police, more ways for the police force to be internally regulated. Internal investigation departments already exist and their importance will certainly grow in in a world where punishments are tougher, as the risk of critical mistakes on the part of the police grows.

I have a hard time believing that the institution of a much more versatile application of the death penalty to the extent you are suggesting would not meet fervent resistance.

Sadly I know you are right. Humankind has always HATED change, even if the purpose of the change was to make the life of humans better in some way. It is the few who do not resist change who are siding with me in this argument, and many others like it, who seek to truly better mankind. We can only live as we do now for a certain amount of time and the way we live today will probably one day in the future be called a "dark age" too.

a government that believe not all lives are created equal

Where did you get the idea I think of some lives as less valuable than others? That was nowhere in my earlier writings! The law and the punishments it doles out should be universal, worldwide and equal to all.

And thank you for horridly misinterpreting one of my favorite novels

You are... welcome? However I do not think it as a misinterpertation. The novel, like almost all works of art and literature, are open to interpertation and all who read will have their own interpertations.

I first read The Lord of the Flies when I was about 10 years old and I really hoped the children who "went feral" and killed Pig (I think that was what he was called, the sick but smart boy with astma) didn't deserve to be saved off the island. I felt they deserved a punishment and should be left on the island forever for what they had become.

I just wanted to point out that what you consider good or bad doesn't depend on who wrote the history.

Yes it does...

I'd consider doing good things as 'good', not abiding the law.

I'm considering abiding the law in general as good and breaking the law as bad. Maybe that's just me, maybe we don't need laws and eveyone will just magically get along.

If your thoughts about the world originate from movies then we can stop talking.

My thougts are my own. That is all I can say about that.

First draft of the Demo has been sent out to testers NOW. I'll give these people as much time as is needed, so now it's mostly up to them when the demo gets released.

After that I'll have a small poll for feedback purposes and I'll see where the project goes from there.

@Matti: So you are simply saying, that taking a hard stance on crime makes you want to overthrow the government, and therefore you believe a government should be lenient on crime? That makes absolutely NO SENSE!

You know, there are people DURING the current regime who believe the current laws suck and summarily executing criminals is a good thing. Does that change anything? No...

I had no idea it was completely legal in Syria for people to kill one another for no reason whatsoever! That is SO COOL!
However, we are again trying to compare the western civilization to that of the one in middle east. As was stated before, such comparisons are unrealistic and pointless.

I learned about good and bad from Disney movies! 

There should be some islands for sale in the kingdom of Tonga. Let's buy one and declare independence.

"Welcome, tourists, to the lovely paradise of WHAMstate! To the left you will notice the beatiful palm tree lined beaches you will most certainly come to enjoy during your stay. To the right you can see the gallows, where currently seventeen convicted criminals are hanging for hard crimes, such as murder, rape, drug-dealing and inciting widespread violence amongs the populace. Please note the wonderful bleached white colour of the structure, as it is built entirely out of the bones of those convicted of crimes during the period of time known as the "First trials", which took place soon after the first wave of immigration into WHAMstate..."

EDIT: Shit, sorry, doubleposted by accident. I was supposed to modify my last post.  

@Calin: You keep repeating that "death penalty is not effective" like it was a proven fact, whereas I have repeatedly expalined to you that there is no proof of it ineffectiveness in the form I and others here have spoken of.

"Death penalty" IS admittedly ineffective, for example in the United States, because of bureucracy, lengthy procedures, massive costs and logistical issues, as well as human rights ones. What we propose is a system wholly different, with swifter punishments and less cost in time and taxpayer money. A streamlined process, if you will, which WOULD without a doubt deter hard crime. Even the crimes of passion you mention would be likely to drop as people simply would either think twice of the consequences, or the idiots who don't would stop existing thanks to natural selection: the WHAM way.

And yes, I quoted "final solution" and yes I was thinking of the WORDS Hitler used back in the day. Not the idealism Hitler built on, but the exact WORDS. However, thank you for enforcing Godwin's Law.