darkmonki

Hey Bonie... Just thought I'd mention I finally got a copy of that darn Goteki CD. And... Despite being a little primitive and 80's sounding at times (even Numan moved on a little), it's really subversively catchy. Yet another convert. Though it's hard to listen to them knowing what they look like. Makes me a laugh a little, as I've met a lot of the people who pioneered this stuff and they were a little more into the likes of Johnny Violent, etc. So... One of these days, I'll actually get round to hearing this Radio One show that Natasha put together... Until then I'll always have Goteki.

Oh... And Interpol, who totally rock my world right now...

[point]

HA, HA!

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Take a look around you, Aga. Normal people don't exist on this board...  

I think I have the solution. The sniper uses .223 rounds, right?

We arrest anyone who tries to buy .223 rounds. We hold them indefinitely for questioning, say in Guantanamo Bay, with no legal rights whatsoever, if the murders don't stop, then eventually he'll run out of ammo. Done! End of sniper. Of course, we might not "bring the evildoer to justice", but if he goes into hiding, and we catch a lot of people who think it's a good idea to by .223 rounds when there's a ####### sniper out on the loose.

I return you all your regularly scheduled US/Europe flame war.

Oh, sorry, wrong thread.  

See above reply. If you know what the police are going to do, then HE knows what the police are going to do. News networks and the police are really fumbling the ball here, and they know it, or else they wouldn't have dropped their 4 press conferences a day tactic to 1 per day.

Personally, as I've done before, I call for an "agree to disagree" stance on the gun control debate within this newsgroup. There are many Americans and Australians here who do not understand why it should exist, and there are many Europeans here who do not understand why it didn't happen before Prohibition. It's all based on the country and culture we grew up in, and makes no sense to keep it going. Myself, living in the US, I sometimes fire off a few cheap shots at gun laws I feel are ludicrous in order to gauge the mindset of the current readers, and I apologize for any trolling to that effect.

May I now return you to your regularly scheduled cyberfest...

Sheep On Drugs, however, do kick butt. Brings back a loooot of memories. All good...

"Jesus Christ, it's Saturday night... Hold on tight, hold on tight... I'm a motorbike!"

To really show my age, when I saw S.O.D, I thought she was talking about Spear Of Destiny...

If it's 867-5309 I think I'll puke. Tommy Tutone the sniper? I think not...

-Ridley, having read through the gun-control issues yet again and now in a less serious mood today.

Erm... Cuban missile crisis? Sure the talk had a lot of threats and military might to back it up, but WW3 was averted by cutting a deal, not by nuking Cuba.

More people are killed by Doctors Mistakes than are killed by 125mm howitzers, but I still wouldn't want members of the general public running around with them trailer-hitched to the back of their pick-up truck.

So yeah. Moot argument. I can say nuclear weapons kill less people per year than Doctors Mistakes. Doesn't matter. Ebola kills less people in the US per year than Doctors Mistakes. There are many things that kill less people in the US than errant madical practitioners, most of them are not available for public use.

And I really don't want to get into YET ANOTHER DAMN GUN CONTROL ARGUMENT. I was asking a simple question.

<phew!>

Personally I've gone the "lay claymores everywhere then shoot at the flying pieces" way of defence, and it worked for me most times. Then again, I'm no general. And I used to play a lot of Twilight 2000...

Having said all that, however, there are still some people in the world who, brushing politics aside for a moment, honestly believe that the world would be a safer place if the untrained public didn't have access to high-velocity firearms. To some people, an AK74 is a weapon of mass destruction. After all, correct me if I'm wrong, but this sniper has single-handedly killed more people than last year's anthrax attack, and no one's defending the right for the public to bear germ warfare. What I really don't understand is why the NRA is so opposed to criminal background checks and tighter enforcement in the issuing of gun licenses.  

Another way of putting it is that:

Yes, if the perpetrator of a crime is killed, there will be no chances for escape no chance for media interviews and really no reason to bring their name up again.

However, if the person caught, tried and sentenced to death is not the perpetrator of the crime, then it no justice has been done at all, really has it?

Not that I'm against capital punishment, but really... Lethal injection? Pah! Put 'em in the street directly after sentencing and tear them to pieces with hooks like the old days. There's really no such thing as "humane capital punishment". Anyway you look at it you're murdering them, so you might as well do it in a way that will make even the victims of the crimes throw up.

And sometimes, just sometimes, you may something, too. It's doubtful I could ever learn anything from people whose opinions match those of Bill O'Reilly, but it happens.

Ambrosia Devon Custard truly is the food of the gods. Not many things that come in cans that you can eat cold or hot and it still tastes good... If I ever leave my quiet little corner of NYC I'll have to pack a couple of crates of this stuff. I honestly haven't seen it anywhere else in the US.

How the hell I forgot Transmetropolitan is beyond me... Damn!

Quote (case1dog @ Oct. 14 2002,19:23)

Although obviously a poor author, Hitler was a very charismatic speaker.  Just watch the history channel

I just wish the History Channel would stop showing us how charismatic a speaker Hitler was. There's more to history than just WW2. And there's certainly more to history than planes and tanks, which which is pretty much what I see every time I surf by that channel.

My favourite has to be Split's... I wonder what it supposed to be?

Personally, I like the concept of Roles, as skill packages, at any rate. The SAs, as I've said before, can be turned into membership levels, skills, or merits/flaws as necessary. Roles as a skill package, allow a GM to drum up an NPC or large group of NPCs of a specific type w/out having to figure out every single skill they should have. One of these days, when my CP site finally gets going, I'll throw up the NPC rules I made for the game, which were based on the character sheets RTal sold. (Five skills, limited amount of cyberware, etc.)

Along with Shirow's stuff on the manga side, may I also add:

Akira, Battle Angel Alita, Bubblegum Crisis, Silent Moebius.

These are the ones that spring straight to mind. Outside the manga angle, there are others. There is the Neuromancer graphic novel, of course, which only covers the first few chapters of the book before it was cancelled... There was a four-issue mini-series by two Argentinians called New York:Year Zero, which was less cyber, but had an extremely cool look to its near-future setting... There's a site alluding to a comic called Polykarbon which looks mighty cool, very Shirow-esque... Oh... I can't think of any more right now.

Non-cp, but very influential on my games was Sanctuary. I used to live in a manga-nut's house and went through all her comics way back when for inspiration.

Strangely enough, I used to run games very low cyber, with high tech, but not a lot of cybernetics. Kept the book-keeping down for NPC's, but I always wanted to do a game in the mode of Battle Angel Alita, where almost EVERYONE has cyberware, and full-borgs are an everyday sight, with outlandish modifications... I honestly think that Iron Mike was leaning in that direction towards the end of CP2020, and it looks like much of CP203X will look like that, too...

Sorry. Quoting Aerosmith. They have a few good songs, that's one of them.

"Good morning, Agamemnon... Going... down?"

Ah, you betcha. Is it just me or does no one here want to admit being a wanker?