I'm planning a camping trip through North America with my son. If any North American folks want to see me, drop me a comment. (Sorry Aussies, I'd love to see you, but I can't afford you right now.) If you have no idea who I am on account of my not having played the game for a while, you don't need to post here--not that you are not perfectly nice folks, but I am more interested in seeing people who have known me through the internet for several years.

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I just want my bonus.

Nice post Detmer.

I recently turned 40 and shaved my balding head clean. Now I can tell everyone I am 65 forever after, and they will believe me.

Land trading is traditionally frowned upon, but I don't have much use for tradition when it's a legitimate cooperative strategy. Besides, if you don't like it, you can always go hit the land traders. By the nature of their strategy it is impossible to run with a good defense.

It's just a game. It's not a particularly awesome game, but it's the game we all play. If you want to participate in this community feel free, but quit moaning about it.

feb-rue-ary: I lived 34 years in SE Michigan and the last 6 in SE North Carolina.

More than one person has commented on my accent being from nowhere since I am quite well traveled, but as the son of an English teacher, I was taught from a young age to not be sloppy with my pronunciation.

That's ok. Leprosy can be treated now.

bacteria and amoebas are neither the same species nor use sexual reproduction, so it is not a good comparison. It would be better to compare orange house cats and black house cats. That is to say no important distinction exists, and they breed at the same rates as appropriate for the availability of resources.

It's not that simple Forgotten. Humans are merely following the same pattern as bacteria in a petri dish. The multiply until until they exceed the population load for their environment thus damaging it so that it will hold less afterward, but it doesn't just become lifeless.

So it's not the end of the world that we face--just a lot of pain and suffering. Unfortunately there isn't much to do about it. Those who believe we should have fewer children will simply have their ideas overwhelmed by the progeny of those who think having more children is better. Catholics for example would be fine with breeding out the non-Catholic population of the world.

Babies don't have much of a sense of self until after they are a year old and possibly two, so the concept of asking the me that was a fetus many years ago if I object to my mother having an abortion would not just be beyond my language ability, but literally beyond my ability to care about it.

If I set that aside though and use my adult intellect to answer for my unborn self, I still support my mother's right to choose. Somehow I doubt this will sell Klown on my pov though.

I think watertowers undervalues unreformable criminals. Those are the people I want manning a colonization space mission to Mars never to return to earth. Penal colonies have in the past proven to be a relatively effective way to populate new territories. Those people's inability to follow rules and fight for dominance is exactly what would keep them alive as a Martian colonist.

a bit more...

When a human exists to the detriment of the rest of humanity, the death of that human doesn't bother me. This doesn't give me the right to choose that death for someone else's baby, but I feel no compulsion to write laws against someone who does choose to do that to their own baby. Contrary to our instincts, babies are the least valuable people in society. They have not been taught anything and have no ability to do anything useful. There are many hunter gatherer societies that historically did not keep unwanted children. It could endanger the survival of the entire community. I do not condemn them.

It is far better to not have children you are not prepared to care for, but until I am allowed to withhold my tax dollars in support of these unwanted children so that they can properly starve to death when their mothers can't care for them just as nature intended, abortion is a good option. Infanticide is not as good. I don't prefer cruelty--only that people take responsibility for their reproduction.

Believe it or not, I think it would be better to go the other way with a voucher system. Send your kid to any school he/she qualifies for, but the school can only accept the voucher from the state--not private contributions. What happens then is the rich people hire a private tutor to make sure their kid gets good test scores and gets to go to the best school. Maybe this sounds a bit unfair, but I used to be a private tutor for $20 an hour. Even a poor family can handle $20 once a week if it's important. When I see all these kids in my school with the latest and greatest products from Apple when 90% of the kids qualify for free or reduced price lunch, a shift in priorities is in order.

That sounds good to almost anyone except when you start talking about paying for it. I'm at a point in my career that for selfish reasons it wouldn't phase me much to do away with public schools and work for a charter school that would pay me that 6 figure salary and be a teacher for the children of parents who of course also have six figure salaries.

However, I also know that one of the things that built this country was offering fully government subsidized (not free) education for any child regardless of their family wealth.

The sad truth is that a large portion of the wealthy Americans would prefer to pay only for the education of their own children. Also, a large portion of poor Americans don't care enough about education of any kind enough to stand up and defend it, so when it comes to establishing a tax to pay for it, nothing comes of it.

It's pretty sad that we can get fired up to fight wars, but when it comes to paying for services to make the lives of citizens better, no one wants to pay for that. Split all the money that went into fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan among every public sector employee including fire fighters, police officers, and the support staff for them as well, and I bet we'd all get a pretty big bonus.

Indeed, welfare is lousy compensation for the enslavement of someone's ancestors. Seems to me there is no proper way to compensate for that in a totally fair way, but as a gesture of good will toward the black community, I'd like to give them Watertowers. I know he's not much, but it's a start, and maybe with a proper whippin' he might learn respect.

I miss Australia--though Sydney least of all. Unfortunately, I can't go there this year. I need to become a millionaire so I don't have to worry about stupid little crap like dropping several thousand dollars on a plane ticket.

I hate to break it to you, but with three quarters of a million kids, LAUSD makes the news more than most other school systems in the USA. I teach in a much smaller rural system that is majority minority and economically disadvantaged. My school has 6 permanat substitutes because there are simply not enough licensed teachers on the market to take a job that pays badly compared to the credentials required to do it. The only requirement to be a substitute is to have graduated high school and be at least 21 years old.

That's a lousy standard to select a person responsible for children. If you are a Democrat leaning person, you probably want to see public education get better funding. If you are a Republican leaning person, you probably want to see public education abolished in favor of a voucher system that allows you to use public money to send your kid anywhere you want.

Right now, I don't care which is picked, but sitting in the middle causes a broken system with appallingly low standards, poor results, and dangerous hiring practices.

I'm disgusted by this too, but it's not just L.A.

I was always a proponent of land trading. It doesn't abuse anyone and allows peaceful people to prosper through cooperation.

If you transfer stock in an alliance then so be it. Isn't alliance server supposed to be cooperative? Heaven forbid people in an alliance have advantages over those who are not!

Do the land trades right there in the alliance. Anyone who doesn't like it can start a war. There is nothing wrong with that either. It's not a cheat though. It's a feature of the game.

Presidents gain their real power in their second term when they know they can't get reelected anyway. I'm not really happy with anyone right now, but it will be an interesting year.

I'm afraid we've passed a tipping point. Obama would not have been a bad president if most of the members of congress were genuinely interested in helping the American people. Most of the Republicans are politically maneuvered by the interests of multinational corporations. Some are outright bought. The Democrats are not as far gone, but they no longer have the power to swing the balance back.

I'm afraid most of you conservatives are going to have to learn the hard way that only a small fraction of you will prosper if the trends set by GWB but stagnated by Obama become even more entrenched if a Republican wins. I know my standard of living has dropped steadily through both Bush's and Obama's administrations. I'm blaming Bush because Obama wanted things I wanted, but simply couldn't get congress to pass the laws that would have helped someone like me.

I'm almost tempted to vote Republican--almost, for the simple notion that a frog in slowly heating water cooks while one that gets burned quickly jumps out of the pot.

It's not a big conspiracy theory and it's not collaboration between the Republicans and the Democrats. It's common sense really. Money and power go hand in hand, and there are enough people across government of any party that have been bought by corporate interests that the real control rests with them and their common interest--to make as much money as possible.

The sad thing is that their short-sightedness will be their undoing. They actually need government to keep competition from becoming destructive. They have a no win situation on their hands. Those who do not soak common people for as much as they can are not competitive and their business folds. Those who do will ultimately be faced with common people in revolt. Unless you want to build a prison for yourself, no amount of money will make you bulletproof.

I was checking to see if any recent suiciding action was being advertized on this thread. It would appear not.

At this point, this is as far as I am willing and able to take this topic in this medium. I got what I wanted. Awareness has been raised, and a fair few people are noticing that all the people playing in all the servers are effectively one community even though not everyone would want that.

I'm not sure if I will feel like dropping back in here, so if you want to communicate with me, you might want to just send a PM.

In fact, from PDM, exactly 2.

Poisoning the well is a poor debate strategy.

Listen to my points rather than my reputation--good or bad.

I'm not a bully Detmer because I picked a fight against a bigger opponent. I'm on the losing side of aggression and that is a huge distinction. I'm just a thorn in the paw of the lion.

If I'm evil it's from ignorance and the leadership I followed. I have a job, and while it allows me some leisure, I can never be fully versed in all politics.

Some here are ranting at me to get me to lash out in anger. I won't do that. In fact, if it were just my own needs, I'd just leave. I have friends who want to play. This is the game they have been left.

Please understand that I'm not the sort of person that would hurt your dog. It's a game. I'd like to play. I'd prefer to play with my long-time friends as an alliance--maybe even alliance server.

My thoughts are my own. I claim no leadership in this. I just talk without being followed.

But I'm still talking so there is still some possibility for peace if some can see past rage.

Forgive the pun, but if I am looking for a paradigm shift, shouldn't I look to Paradigm? Statements about how no change can be made only suggests that no change should be made on my end.

This is the existence large and powerful alliances select. I think it's pretty destructive, but if this is the measure I must take to have something in common with my clanmates, then so be it.

If there is a community wide commitment to social irresponsibility, I consider it completely within the spirit of the game being played. The only difference between me and most other suiciders is that I am willing to put a name and even a face if you do the research to who I am.

The name of our game right now is bullies vs. suiciders. There are no server boundries. What, you don't like this game? Me neither.

I don't like suiciders, but I have to tell you from the core of my being, I like bullies less.

I will never hit #403. Live long and prosper.

That's at least partially a valid point Chaoswind. There is value to making suggestions to fix the server. I had assumed at least some of my clan mates had participated in that, but I was wrong to assume that.

This does not however make me sorry I participated in this action. I'd like it if I had the resources to AB every country in every alliance that had members participate in TSO. They may be unfortunate bystanders, but not innocent.

They lack social responsibility. They allowed TSO to do this and would continue to allow it if they thought it would never burst their little bubble they live in no matter how many suggestions on fixing team server are made.

Although Pang definitely has skills as a programmer, I am mainly concerned with his ability to rally people socially. That is where the fix is needed in my opinion. I never had the power to do that myself, and now I definitely don't since I am now the bad guy, but he still does.

I was more seeking a response from pang at this point since people like archaic are beyond reason and would waste my time in ways that will never solve the problem. Having hotheads call me a worthless piece of fluff or anything else doesn't concern me.

The point is, I am not a hothead. Attention has been drawn to the issue. Now I can not personally guarantee that others who wanted to suicide will stop just because I do, but I can full well guarantee that going into hate mode will not help.

I'm just learning as I go here. I will refine my process to achieve better results.

Actually, I am also Devastation's friend. He may find this post interesting:

When I started playing earth around 13 or 14 years ago (I honestly can't quite remember) I was a bit of a hothead and went ballistic at the drop of a hat. My screen name matched me pretty well.

These days I am a lot more laid back but I still have then name. I really didn't sweat it much. However I do consider PP a friend even though he makes a point of not reciprocating. But I decided to help him in this effort. I honestly didn't research anything. I haven't done any FA in years, and I don't love politics. All I want is a nice place where a small group of friends could play in peace. TSO exists to prevent small groups of people from having fun.

Now, I have a country in alliance. I hope it isn't necessary to use it, but I still may. PDM definitely isn't solely responsible for what has happened, but given their political power and level of respect across the game, it is possible they may take steps to resolve the issues. Besides, I hate hiding in shadows. It's undignified and cowardly.

So Pang, you started the thread, you are of course prominent in PDM. People will follow you if you ask them to. Give me a reason to turn my friend PP away from his task. I have a country in a holding pattern, but I honestly don't get any joy from suiciding anymore. I've lost my touch and I'd really rather not.

I'm just wanting a place where a small group of people can play with a fair chance at prosperity.

Resolving? No, that resolves nothing.

Eye for an eye? They eye to be stricken out has a dead country on team server. You want to kill it twice?

trep gets a cookie.

...but hopefully their hate will fade away when they realize they have no one to target in the team server.

Ensuring that team server will not function is definitely not the answer.

I have another thought. This community is small enough that it might be possible to have people of good character and a history with earth register their teams at the moderator's personal discretion and then hold said registered team leaders responsible for the actions of their teams.

For a server that hosts less than 200 people on it's best day, that is actually workable for a human to make a judgement call, and when a human makes a judgement call, the team leader will feel more humanly responsible.

Yeah, I'm drinking too. I'm sorry to say that locket makes a good point. He illustrates exactly how rules would be perverted to make them ineffective. It goes back to the notion of players choosing to behave respectfully and for alliances to police their own members so that those who behave badly are not tolerated.

Sepher, I don't think PP cared about alienating people who were not ever going to do more than talk about how people should go into team server and trash the place. His asking for consideration wasn't going to fly either. It's easier to just ignore people you don't know or care about.

The goal here is to move passed PPs suicide agenda. As repugnant as the idea may seem, that means actually changing our collective attitudes to appease him and those who sympathize with him.

Consider this: What would have happened if PP had gone onto the Team boards with a polite request to TSO to not gang up everyone else and kill everyone without provocation. What would have happened if he had come to the alliance board and politely asked those people to monitor their members and respect the team server?

Be honest. It would have either been totally ignored or laughed at. No one would have adopted his grievance as important.

Now, lucky for us, PP isn't the same as RL terrorists who committed their lives to destroying those whom they object to. I do believe PP would stop suiciding if there were steps taken to resolve his issues.

So far all that has happened is talk. I expect he won't stop his actions until real actions are taken to correct the problem.

I agree, but deletions won't be necessary. Once the rule is made that teams in cooperation beyond non-aggression, it probably won't be necessary to mass delete a lot of people.

If two teams choose to fight and players who are not on those teams join in, then they get deleted.

Braden, I honestly don't think there is a way to make team server playable if there is a group of players intent on making sure it isn't.

The change we need is social. That starts with someone in a position of some authority stepping up to say they will do their part. I'm sure someone will correct me since this thread has grown rather long, but I've not seen that yet.

The new restart rules are quite friendly. Crying is a thing of the past.

Out of respect, I would also like to thank Pang for his hard work as a game developer. It's a shame you can't rewrite the code for human behavior. I suspect you could introduce some improvements.

I rather like NukEvil's suggestion to just set the rules that there will be no cooperative efforts to kill a country from the same team. Killing might still be possible if there were teams in cooperation which of course there always would be, but it would no longer be the dominating influence in the game.

I still prefer to not modify rules in preference to having players be more socially responsible, but setting down rules is probably easier and has a better chance of actually working.

Lots of people said lots of things to me during the night, and I am not ignoring you, but I want to keep this simple.

Team server issues are not confined to team no matter how much anyone thinks they should be. It is the same group of players in both servers.

Many people in many alliances need to change their behaviors--both active and passive.

1. Bullies suck. TSO destroyed team server. Anyone who participated in that perverted the intent of the server and made it impossible for small groups of legitimate players who were too small to thrive in alliance server to even play in team.

2. Passive acceptance of bullies sucks. Anyone who sits in an alliance that tacitly condones this behavior by doing nothing to stop it is guilty by association.

Specifically to Detmer: I know you don't condone murder as a person. I didn't lie, but I could have chosen a better word. I wasn't trying to make it personal and I apologize if you took it that way. However, I do maintain that PDM not regulating anyone's behavior in any way as long as they follow the game rules is a bad policy. That is the specific change that should be made and that is what all of PDM is resisting in favor of going out and making it even harder for a small group to play and have a reasonable opportunity to see success.

To all: It's not just PDMs fault even if it is currently their problem. You can not beat PP. If PDM leads by example and other alliances follow that lead, I'm pretty sure PP will stop. If PDM changes its stance but other alliances do not follow that lead, I'm pretty sure PP will shift his focus. If PDM insists they are only a victim and does nothing but lash out wildly to ensure team server is unplayable, I'm pretty sure PP will continue exactly as he is.

I used to like alliance server reasonably well, but it became so politically stagnant there was no room for a small alliance that wasn't riding in the shadows of a larger alliance to protect them. I don't want to be in a large alliance (although I did enjoy my brief stay in PDM and am glad some PDMers still play mafia). I just want my small alliance where I know all the people pretty well. Team server was supposed to provide a home for folks like me. Right now it doesn't.

PP may not have had the ability to target his actions in the very most effective ways, but I hardly blame him for what he's doing. He's done a great job of getting everyone's attention. Now our small community of several hundred earth players need to decide if passive acceptance of bullies is ok.

We can certainly distinguish sportsmanship from a text based browser game from real life to an extent. These demonstrations may be pale shadows of our true selves, but as small as that might seem it is still the time of our lives and it is real.

Your commitment to whole-heartedly support TSO because your against its primary opponent is both a logical and a moral fallacy. What you seem to be supporting is a strong resistance to change. Members of PDM are supporting rampant bullying and from Detmer even murder in the name of doing things as they have always been done.

Is it possible that PDM could benefit from a little introspection? Some suggest that team server is broken because of bad coding. No. It's not bad coding. It's bad people. Pang can't fix them.

All those who think alliance server stands completely independently of the other servers is foolish. Those who think that alliance server is the only one that counts is arrogant.

What needs to happen for the benefit of the entire earth community is for each player to respect all the subcommunities and their players so that those communities can function as they were designed.

Detmer: In my personal experience, if you are a murderer, that is grounds to cut you loose. I hired a convicted murderer to strip and paint my garage doors. I paid him $12 an hour for his feeble efforts for 5 hours, and gave him a couple beers while he worked. I paid him $60 cash and that very same night he broke down my back door and stole $3000 of computer equipment while I was walking his girlfriend home from my neighbor's birthday party.

I was a fool. Some people have bad character and it should not be defended. That you do makes your own reputation suffer at best. (I think very highly of you.) At worst it lowers your own character. When you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

I miss my chats with you Drow.

I am thinking PP may have possibly done more research on these matters, but either his patience or possibly his resources were limited.

Most of us would like to see better sportsmanship across all servers. Unfortunately there is no way to redesign game code for that. Having one player that misbehaves isn't too bad in the grand scheme. Saying it's ok because he's only one is awful--as though any wrongdoing is acceptable as long as there is someone worse than you to point a finger at.

PDM might not be the worst offender, but they might have more power to fix the problem than anyone else. Assigning blame doesn't solve problems. Changing behavior will. That is my point.

Also, it is a lot easier to control your own behavior than someone else's.

Message me for a chat sometime Drow.