RZ1029

Donation button or humblebundle style 'pay what you want' with a minimum donation to keep from getting screwed over by transaction fees. (Say $0.50 USD for instance, which would result in about $.20 actually going to the modder if they're using a completely standard paypal account, or more if they establish themselves with Paypal as a business account.) However, this requires dedicated management of the community (which Nexus does well, Steam does not) in order to ensure nobody is scraping someones mod and reposting for profit. I'm a huge fan of the Humble Bundle system because it allows for reasonably priced mods (lets face it, most 'cool weapon mods' that every has 20 of are NOT worth $5 a piece) while still ensuring a modder can expect their efforts to be repaid to some level or another, depending on the quality and popularity of the mod, and those that want to give theirs away can still do so or funnel earnings towards charities they support. I dislike ads because they are ugly, bulky and most ad delivery systems are outright crap to have to deal with on a poor internet connection (I had awful DSL internet for years, and still don't have a stable 20/10 line when I'm not at university). The few places I have them enabled are Nexusmods, some YouTube channels I watch regularly, Twitch, and my university's student newspaper website. I would much rather give a modder $5 outright for a well-developed mod (I'm talking Project Nevada, WMX, Weapons of the New Millenia) and then give $1/$.50 for smaller stuff (pip boy retextures/remodel, for example, or a single weapon mod). But this has to come with the assurance of quality, which means someone has to do some detailed checking on each and every mod that hits the market, if you're going to expect money up front. Elsewise, publish the mod and do donations like they have for years. This may not quite be the place, but I'd like to add the potential discussion of whether 25% is a reasonable cut for the mod creators to receive given the support they receive in the Steam Workshop?

"We do not negotiate with terrists." Or something like that. On one hand, I dislike the idea of abandoning our own to the hands of ISIS and similar ilk, but on the other, it becomes untenable to take hostages if they level the building you're holding the hostages in in response. (Case in point, Russians dealing with Nord-Orst back in 2002.) It's a somewhat heartless and nearly indefensible situation (good luck explaining that strategy to the American public) but it's something that you almost have to consider as an option when you're talking about such extremist groups.

I suspect there's an issue with dispersing the file back among the other servers (as it says it is currently only available on a single premium server), and the other servers have as of yet been unable to re-sync the file to the other servers. I'm pretty much just making conjecture, but that's what it seems like to me.

Pair them off in groups of five. Give them five sets of armor, a spear, a sword, two shields, a net, mace, flail and a bow and arrow. Each graduating class from high school must form their group of five and compete against one other group via a randomly drawn lottery system. The survivers of the fights have been deemed strong enough to join society. There is only one surviving team. This applies to males and females, we aren't sexist.

I'm not surprised in the least. People are great at using these key words and phrases that have a certain mentality associated with it, regardless of what the original intentions or source may have been.

Can we make it a requirement to pass this test before voting or serving in a public office? I don't feel like passing would be a ridiculous standard, but still high enough to demand a level of civic understanding. (I scored a 90.9%, missed three, not a bad score, in my opinion.) Before someone says anything about literacy tests being outlawed as a requirement for voting, I'd be all for making it an option to take the test orally if literacy is your only barrier. Shoot, I'd say we even give it to them in their native language, if English fluency is an issue too. We're a multi-cultural, multi-lingual country, and not everyone is 100% proficient in English, as we (technically) have no official language, I suppose we can't (legally) require them to speak 'our' language fluently. (Although, it seems some officials disagree, due to the issue with the woman who wanted to run for Governor.)

Probably just a slip of the keyboard, they got on a roll and added more than they meant. As to the whole Area 51, it's common knowledge that aircraft testing does go on there, as far back as the Cold War-era SR-71 Blackbird, which was originally based out of Area 51, prior to the whole Russia-shot-one-down debacle, if I remember correctly. That aside, I agree with the notion that it's likely a DARPA playhouse for all the technologies they are inventing. (Speaking of, anyone seen the new cheetah thing they're designing?) As for all the 'strange occurrences' in and around Area 51, anyone wondering about the lights should go sit near an Air Force base during night operations, brilliant lights in an otherwise pitch-black sky can play some serious tricks on the mind, especially at Mach 2. Also, in all likelihood, there's much more than that going on there, which may include weapons testing (including launching Minutemen missiles with or without nuclear material), among far more 'sketchy' or sinister technologies, from chemical weaponry to who-knows-what. Also, as far as the idea of aliens being at Area 51, I would like to believe that's true. I don't, but I'd like to. We've had no (solid, provable) contact with the supposed interplanetary species, which is clearly far more advanced than we are, if they are able to launch inter-system. In all likelihood, they would have launched either a follow-up party or a salvage operation, assuming they have a thought process similar to the human intelligence, which may or may not be true. I probably missed a lot of things I wanted to say, and have lots of holes in my statement, for the simple fact that it's not that easy to prove or disprove something that there is very little publicly available information about, factual or otherwise.

Define should? I'm not about to boycott something/someone for paying Mr. Limbaugh. I in no way condone calling someone a flirt, that was out of line, in my opinion. However, unless he gets government funding, then keep paying the man so long as the paying party agrees with what he says. If the private party that funds him agrees that she was just a flirt, more power to them. Every has opinions, and most of them stink. Personally, I've never put much stock in him as any sort of authority, but FAR worse has been said by both sides, albiet in (slightly) less public mediums. The man issued an apology, done and done. We're all adults and can agree to disagree with what some man on tv says.

*graceful bow* Apologies, it seems my point was missed, and was perhaps more poorly expressed than it should have been. While Webster's has been, largely, regarded as an authority on the English language, when it comes to idioms, I am skeptical of the accuracy, when often times the origins are, at best, befuddled, and at worst, completely wrong. I assume that, since it was first recognized in 1934, it was in Webster's New International Dictionary, the 1934 print edition. Before that time, I am sure the phrase was used, with some regularity, and thus would develop multiple interpretations, both connotation and denotation. The issue is, that when referencing material that old, we have to assume that we understand phrases the same way they did, using other reference material from that era that will, ideally, provide more insight to the situation. That being said, their is legal precedence for the use of Webster's Dictionary in the translation of law, involving a US Supreme Court Case, in which the W2 (not a tax form) was used to make the ruling on some sort of phrasing argument. So, from a standpoint of challenging the Amendment's intentions, it could be said that, per legal precedence, it was meant only for those in the Militia. However, the issue becomes what is, in modern terms, defined as militia. The militia of the Revolutionary War was made up of men (and likely the odd woman, though I don't have any documents to cite) who were not regular army, assembled by states for the purpose of fighting for their freedom from the British Empire. In comparison, the National Guard doesn't serve quite the same function, as many of them are, in a sense, still regular soldiers. Not to say they are completely unrelated, but that, due to much social change over the two hundred and fifty (ish, yes I know this is very ballpark) years, there is no longer the need for the average farming townsman to take up military arms and fight for their country, we have a maintained, full-time military for that purpose. Simply put, the issue is pinpoint semantics in a game of horseshoes or hand grenades. I do believe that the constitution was so worded that it would be able to be translated differently over time. For instance, the issue with all 'men' being created equal. At first, that meant 'only white, land-owning males', then it meant 'all land-owning males', then 'all males', then 'all US citizens', and now, to a degree, 'all those in the US, legal or otherwise, citizen or not'. However, I do take affront to being accused of 'not liking losing the argument'. If I am losing, I am losing. Though, given my level of activity in this particular thread, I don't see how I can be losing when I have, at best, been a bystander adding the odd thought or (supposedly) witty repartee. I was far more active in the previous gun thread, which I actually created. It's fairly well-known where I stand on the issue. Additionally, anyone that knows me knows that when I find 'evidence' that doesn't seem to have any purpose, to me, I do meet it with a simple one-liner, as it were. That is usually followed by further expounding on the other's part to help me better understand their meaning. That being said, all in all, warning noted and appreciated, though I think, perhaps, undue.