brainless

yep ameribass, there's also been that pretzel story (for those who don't know about this: The honorable Mr. President almost killed himself by eating a pretzel);and a few months ago he almost knocked down a guy from the Secret Service with his bike...by the way, most german politicians have long broken with their militant leftist ideologies but as you can see, Mr. Bush should be the militant protestors' friend since he's still attacking police officers... ;D

yes, I agree with your position on the picture discussed being displayed in this thread. I also agree with your position on the "morons" (well, we could discuss the name you've given them but that would be way off-topic and actually, most of them are just this) since it's usually possible to get past police lines without any of those breaking through having to use violence [except for when it's necessary to give out a punch or something in order to get out of a cop's grip - don't worry, around my places the cops are dressed in helmet and full body armor when rounding up people], though the police will usually use water cannons, batons and chemical weapons in order to stop the mob. One more thing about the violence: Stones, glass bottles etc usually are of no use against a line of riot cops - they've got armor, tanks medics and backup units. To achieve any effect at all, you've either got to use paint eggs [yep, eggs filled with paint], which don't hurt any of the cops but leave nice marks on the tanks (which I do support) or something like molotov cocktails (which I condemn 'cause even cops are human beings)...so I think we generally agree on the basic view that violence is bad/unnecessary and that even cops make mistakes. Let's leave it at that and get back to topic...(btw I just noticed the "Enable signature"-checkbox, I'll ask a mod to disable my signature in this thread) Notice from Rejected: Signature disabled. Psst, Johhny you forgot to do it

ok, to minimize the damage done by an unfortunate misunderstanding:The image Milovoriel thinks does not fit into this thread does not show a cop from London, yesterday but a cop from a village near Gleneagles, the day before yesterday, when a group of about 15 non-violent protestors tried to get over one of the fences surrounding the G8 conference centre at a place where a group of 5 regular cops guarded it. As you might see, the police officer in the middle is not in immediate danger but still has his baton at hand and threatens a journalist. For those who never had contact to one: batons hurt, especially when you're hit on the head (forbidden in Germany, happens way too often to be called accidents but unfortunately pictures of this are a rarity).I know just as well as you might know that the average police officer isn't too friendly but far from rude when you meet one in the streets and don't behave too bad - but when they're in groups and you're part of an unarmed, non-violent, uncomfortable minority it's sometimes hard to stand against their attacks. This is not a problem specific to german, british, american, australian or any other nation's cops but specific to police units being used against groups who might start a street fight - sometimes we don't even have to start it and a group of riot cops comes rushing in without anyone knowing why...... the other pics shown here show police officers who're doing something else than crowd controlling. In these cases it's way less likely that anyone's going to throw anything at anything because no sane person supports violence against human beings. By the way, there are rumors that some members of the Anarchist Black Cross were around as well. Does first aid fit into the common view of Anarchists? It does just as much as the image of cops who are more violent than they have to does...

ok, I agree that the London bombing series was a terrible thing to do._but_: If there's really noone in the "civilised" world who can support such a thing, why, why the heck did some other people call for nuclear bombs on the entire Middle East; why did someone ask to put terrorists to death without trial; why do people claim that even the most basic human rights should not be applied to people from the Middle East?These claims are nothing else than requesting to be put back into the middle ages, when people were put to death on the simple cause of being called a witch, wizard or simply non-Christian.The Human Rights and the Geneva Convention are two of the most important protocols which have been developed and accepted by almost the entire world dring the last 60 (UDHR) to 120 (GC) years - now give me some good reasons why I should accept abolishing these?by the way, if no one in the so-called "civilised world" can support killing dozens of civilians and injuring hundreds - how can you support the "War on Terror"? by now, about 130,000 iraqi civilians have been killed by the US and UK army and many, many more have been injured and are being mistreated in the occupation troops concentration camps, of which Abu Ghurayb is the most infamous but by any means not the only terrible thing.as long as we (with "we" meaning the people from the so-called "western world") do not stop mistreating, raping, torturing, murdering innocent people, I don't see any reason why we should be outraged when people who in our view are innocent die due to their government's actions. Remember: There's no "it's the government, not me" in a democratic world because we claim that the governments represent the people, therefore the people are responsible for their gov...

ok, since some people in here seem to lose contact to reality I've gotta repeat this message:what the heck do you think? "those people in the Middle East deserve to die" like in "they deserve to die because they're still trying to survive where they've been born? Most people in the Middle East don't even know how to live through the next freakin' month while people in the so-called "western world" [named so by famous politicians and news corporations] wonder how to kill them.Remember - people from the USA and Europe and some other nations rape, torture and murder civilians in the Iraq every single day, again and again, and attacks against those who are there to do so didn't convince them to leave - so it was more than about time to give a third strike to places where those who are responsible for these deeds feel like they're safe. Three names for you two: New York - Madrid - London. Remember what they stand for and remember what happened to them. None of this would have happened if we'd give people from outside a decent treatment instead of sweatshops or state-sponsored torture. Most of this would have happened later if some nation hadn't given billions of dollars, training and weapons to a guy named Osama bin Laden.Your freaky attitude is party responsible for what happened and the world would be better off if North America and North/West Europe would be nuked instead of the Middle East...

copyright because the average human being is replaceable in the capitalist machine; therefore the machine should be protected while the human being, which exists in billions of copies, can be thrown away *sick*

the latest I've heard is that 6 bombs blew off.Important if true: Some newspapers claim that a group linked to al Qua'eda has claimed responsibility for these attacks.... it's definitely a sad thing to see so many people killed and I really don't support people who resolve to violence as a way of expressing their problems - but it's not surprising that it should hit London. It was rather about time.As you might remember, a guy named al Zarqawi predicted bloody times for all those nations which don't remove their troops from Iraq within the near future and that was about one and a half years ago. After the attacks on Madrid in 2004, the new spanish government decided to withdraw their troops from Iraq. The UK and US governments stayed in the Iraq and keep on murdering tens of thousands civilians every other month. It's not surprising that some people who feel to be closely connected to the civilians being slayn in Iraq decide to kill some civilians in the nations responsible for this massacre as well when attacks on the occupying forces don't work the way they'd like to...

nothing to add there...back in the days, I loaded my first song from Napster. A few minutes later, the same guy loaded the same song from me.I asked him why he's doing that - and he told me that he's getting his song back... ;Dthose were the times where P2P didn't bother about anonmity

hehe ;Dopaque, whyme: thanks for the hints ... that reminds me of a short excourse in my diving theory lessons where we've been told that diving with pure oxygen in the bottle is a pretty safe way to die while diving if you don't use a Rebreather (some expensive device which simply filters the new carbon dioxide out of the air you exhale and replaces it with oxygen from your bottle) because there's something about the partial pressure of oxygen in the air you breathe which always has to be something around the normal level; though I don't really get why pure oxygen can be used for medical breathing purposes but not for diving [no, I won't give it a try]...

one hint to the Christians among us: God kicked Adam and Eve out of the paradise _after_ they covered their genitals with leafs from local trees, not the other way round. Think about it... :unsure:Anyways, I don't think it's only the US government's fault in this case. As I have learned in the last weekls of my religions class, fundamental christian organizations have a pretty large influence on politics because they can mobilize both many voters and lots of money.Another thing which is being taught by fundamentalists: The use of condoms supports spreading the HI-Virus because the condom industry builts the virii into condom tips; therefore people shouldn't use condoms...Sex education isn't such a problem here in Germany because fundamental christians are a minority; though it can happen that some children are don't receive it. In Lower Saxony, where I live, sex education is part of the elementary school's curriculum. In Hessen, where a friend of mine comes from, it's part of the middle school's curriculum. She moved from Hessen to Lower Saxony between elementary school and middle school. That didn't stop her from gaining experience in high school...

ok, I just got another 90 minutes before I've get to get to my other job 'cause there's nothing to do for me today at the lake :unsure:Something of which I think that it has to be mentioned is that those who yell "bad games, bad games" the loudest is that those people never ever admitted to have played these games themselves. Anyone among us who did play the one or other violent game him- or herself can probably tell that most people don't play the game because of it's violence but because the amount of training necessary to win - some people play soccer; others go swimming; others try to achieve highscores in video games [or best frag-death-ratios or whatever]. The common gamers plays for the competition, not for killing.The IMHO funniest (if it wasn't such a sad thing) faux-pas has been pulled by the german Federal Secretary for Traffic etc: "Video games like GTA or Need for Speed are to blame for the many traffic crimes young drivers committ and the accidents happening to them."--For your information: In Germany, adolescents can get their driver's licence at the age of 18 and only after a 45 minutes test ride with an examinator paid by the state. For the next two years after the driving exams, the new driver has to drive pretty careful because there are very strict regulations what happens when the new driver violates traffic rules. For example, anyone who drives more than 20km/h more than the speed limit within the first two years loses the licence immediately and has to take a break of a couple of years before he or she can enter the process of acquiring a driver's licence again. And it's almost impossible to get a driver's licence for less than 1250 euros, imagine having to pay this twice. Right, the average young driver will not risk this...--As you might guess, the most common traffic ticket is a ticket for false parking. Neither GTA nor NFS can be won by parking; it's simple laziness which is to blame for this (if you don't park your car at a very dumb place like in front of an hospital's ambulance entrance, you will get away with a EUR 5 fine).As you might also guess, no one with a driver licence will run over people just for the fun of it - and it's impossible to do so in the NFS games and it's dangerous to do so in GTA, just like in the real world. Once again, video games are not to blame even though an government official told us so.Most accidents which involve young drivers happen during friday or saturday nights (about six to seven times as many as during the week); guess what is not to blame? Yep, it's once again not the video games which are to blame. In these times, most of us get the parents' car for driving to the next party so we don't have to call them to pick us up. It's common to pack the car with 3 or 4 people because fuel is expensive in Germany. On the way to the party, it's quite safe. On the way home, everyone but the driver is drunk - and it requires a pretty strong personality to stand against your friends teasing you 'cause you don't drive fast enough or too careful. Sometimes it's also just because you're not used to the road you're driving on and the weather conditions.A few weeks ago, I asked a friend of mine to bring me to another friend's house after we went partying because I was unable to get a car for the weekend. I did not drink alcohol that evening anyway but the road from the highway to my friend's place is pretty tricky, even on sunny days. This friend of mine had to get through this in a rainy night. We were able to get through this pretty fast because I could give her directions like "you can go fast here"; "watch it, sharp turn" but for some reason I got distracted after I told her that she can drive about 80km/h for the next minute and yelled "brakes" just in time for the next corner but we still sliddered onto the track in the other direction. Luckily there was no one driving in the other direction...... did you notice any involvement of video games here? Right. It's rather a story about lack of experience...oh, and one more thing about people driving way too fast: It's a common thing to see people in big cars (Mercedes, BMW, sometimes even foreign cars in that class) driving something like 180km/h where 100 is the limit when there hasn't been a restriction by traffic signs. These people don't drive dangerously fast because they think it's fun but the drive that fast because they think they don't have time to stick to the limit. well, the average speed on the roads is 110 to 120km/h, somewhat reasonable when you consider that the 100-limit is for security reasons and rather on the safer side...I think I've made it clear that I can't accept the theory that violent games are the cause of violence, though I don't think that they can't catalyse violence.My theory is that when politicians yell "bad violent games cause violent children" it's either for publicity reasons or to distract from real problems.Publicity because most people who do not play violent games will blindly accept violent games as the cause of violence - they don't play them, they aren't violent - must be true. That's almost anyone older than 25, way more voters than the group of people below 25 (while everyone younger than 18 is not even allowed to vote). I've told you earlier about loss of contact to reality. In this case the people did not even have contact to reality before.Plus: Groups of people who claim to represent the nation's parents put pressure on the government so the politicians will be quick to assure that something will be done.In the "distraction theory", I claim that 'the goverment' distracts from their plans to implement a more and more complete system of censorship. After a 19 years old boy shot down some people in his school in Erfurt, about 2 years ago now, some major politicians told us that he used to play violent games like "Counter-Strike" and "Unreal Tournament" which were most likely the cause of his violent outbreak;a few days later, the police announced that they found a pile of so-called "spladder movies" in his room, stuff like "Braindead" [story: A guy mows down several hundred zombies within an hour or something].Two weeks later some newspaper foud out that he had serious problems at home and did not dare to tell his (divorced) mother that he has been expelled from school some weeks before he wanted to take the graduation exams. He took the pistol and lots of ammunition out of his father's apartment when he visited him a couple of days before the school shooting; his father didn't report that he was missing a loaded weapon and some ammo. Unfortunately he was unable to explain that the video games he played, according to the people who said they knew "a bit" about his life (obviously these weren't friends), only occasionally were not the cause of his excess use of violence.While noone except for some gamers was watching what the government did, they passed a law which requires any video game which is supposed to be sold in Germany to be examined by an "independent" government office which gives out "not suitable for children under 12/14/16/18/any age" certificates which have to be printed on the package clearly visible and games dealers are required to check ID cards if in doubt. Games without such a label are only allowed to be sold to people over 18 and they may not be visible in the store. well, that wouldn't be that bad if the certification process is free of charge - but according to the GameStar, an german video games magazine, it costs several thousand bucks. EA Games might be able to pay this without noticing it but small companies might be ruined if the people don't pay thousands of copies.by the way, why don't we get a federal office to check newspapers for appropriate content? What I read everyday makes me way more angry than any video game could do; would it be ok if I get myself a gun, shoot the managers of the local BurgerKing/McDonalds/Shell franchisees and tell the police that I did that because I learned that it's ok to kill people who you don't like from reading about their corporate actions in a newspaper?(well, I made that part up for BK and MD but you might want to searhc for Ken Saro-Wiwa's story...)

ok, once again: It's not the video games. It's society - and games may become part of this. I've read here that someone's nephew played GTA (doesn't matter which - the first two parts were innovative, the latter one's lame rips) for a couple of days almost non-stop. I don't care who to blame but isn't it crazy that [i suppose] a boy can play games on his console non-stop without anyone trying to get him out? well, if this boy didn't have any company at all, I am not surprised that the world of GTA became his substitute reality - and almost anyone who loses touch to reality for a long period of time has problems getting into reality again. A story from my life, which IMHO proves this theory even though it's a non-violent thing: A couple of friends of mine and me participate at two to three Model United Nations conferences per year. In an MUN conference, hundreds of students from all over the world assemble to simulate a United Nations General Assembly session plus two days of committee work. As we all know, simulations are intended to be as close to reality as possible, that means suits, tie and very diplomatic language for us. Although none of us can imagine to walk around in suit and tie, referring to other people in the third person all day long; we keep on adressing each other as "the honorable delegate" for a few days and we don't stick to "i want an iceream" but say "motion to have an icecream". well, nothing wrong with this kind of behavior for the general mass, huh? I think it's kinda scary to experience such a loss of reality. By the way, in our everyday lifes, we dress kind of normal but don't try to fit in too much... I'm sorry I've gotta get to work now but I'm not finished yet. Call it a conspiracy theory or f***in' leftism but you'll see...

AFAIK we're talking about bars whereyou can get oxygen instead of booze; like you sit on your chair and get an oxygen mask instead of a glass... Something like this: http://www.portalmarket.com/ I don't know exactly why oxygen bars should be bad but I don't trust this concept (maybe I'll start one in the next major city? ). My first instinct is that the body gets used to the elevated availability of oxygen and you'll suffer some kind of withdrawal syndroms when you stop pushing your body with oxygen; my second thought, when I read some experience reports about oxygen bars, was that most people don't even notice that there's something wrong in their environment. They used the oxygen for medical purposes without realizing that - and just because it worked, they're going to do it again. well, seems to be easier than changing your way of life...

Ich bin geb?rtiger Deutscher aber meinen Noten zufolge ist eher Englisch meine Muttersprache

I don't think everybody should have voted at the same time, I just think everyone should have the right to vote on the Constitution. But maybe you're right and everyone should have voted at the same time [wasn't that one of the criteria for democratic elections, everybody has to vote at the same time/on the same day? never mind...]... hehe ... I only quote those if I simply can't find any other source ... politicians say many things when the day's long If you need your theories based on facts, you should rather go for printed stuff like draft laws [or online copies of them] or something alike, newspaper articles usually give hints what you have to look for... I just compared the german edition [printed book from the german Agency for Political Education] and the english edition [from the source I quoted earlier today] and, at least for not-native english speakers, the german edition is easier to understand than the english. In the english version the "instruments of ratification" have to be deposited at the italian government while I would translate the german version to "certificates of ratification" or "documents of ratification" or something alike. Article IV-447-2 states that _all_ instruments of ratification have to be in Italy for the treaty to enter into force since there's no exception like 2/3 in this article... As to whether we're talking about a constitution or not: Actually we're talking about the "Treaty establishing a Constitution for the European Union", if I'm not completely mistaken; the german Agency for Political Education named the book "Constitution for the European Union", so I believe it comes pretty close to a constitution. If you have a look at other parts of this Treaty, you can see many things which are in other constitutions as well (especially in the first (I) and second part (II) where the fundamental rights are stated)... ---- I think BBC is mistaken on article IV-443 and I can fully understand why you've fallen for this mistake, since it requires at least some experience with treaties and stuff like this to notice the difference. Article IV-443 states how the constitution can be amended and not what happens when the original treaty is deadlocked. Any treaty amending "this" Treaty [did you notice that the amending treaty is lowercase while the constitutional Treaty is uppercase? I'd suggest we use Treaty for the Consitution, if I can't persuade you to call it a Consitution, too] is not the Treaty itself.I suppose this article says the national governments will have to state why they couldn't ratify the amendment yet and the european council will debate it and thereby answer the government's question(s) so the ratification process can continue...

As some of you might remember, "Four more years" was the Bush election campaign's main slogan in 2004/2005. Before, during and after the elections, there were many reports about "abnormalities" in the election process [among those a programmer of electronic voting machines who said on oath that the voting machines' system is compromised and that they are able to change the vote count in order to give the preferred candidate a given percentage of the votes - with an algorithm to give the vote counts a natural look] and in the end Mr. George W. Bush received "four more years" in office. According to the US constitution, this should have been his last term in office. But I just found a bill suggested by the democratic congressmen Steny H. Hoyer, Howard L. Berman, Frank Pallone and Martin Olav Sabo and the republican F. James Sensenbrenner which would repeal the 22nd amendment to the US constitution, which prohibits any president from running for a third term of office. well, this bill would have to pass many hard steps, two thirds majority in both senat and house of representatives and in three-fourths of the states but if Democrats and Republicans submitted this bill - this shouldn't be too much of a problem... 1) Bill: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/: 2) 22nd Amendment: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Nothing wrong with your opinion, it's just the "if". Yeah, _if_ the people can make clear what they want. Here in Germany, we didn't even get the chance to say no, our parliament decided over our heads that 95% of the german people are in favor of this constitution... nope. Have a look at Article IV-447: Source: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

the problem is not how a treaty should get ratified if every nation had to vote on it but how could we call our systems a democracy if the people are not allowed to vote on what's going to become their constitution [heck, we're talking about constitutions, not a law on the regulation of chicken breeding!]. And it's not a problem to get a constitution ratified - as long as the constitution is being accepted by the people. This can be done either through propaganda and faked voting procedures or by the constitution's content.well, with up to 17.x% of the people being unemployed [as was the case in Germany a few months ago and it's still way above 10%], it's hard to make the people vote in favor of a treaty which increases corporate security and decreases social security...

it's not only your heads of state ... sorry to say that :/ here are my favorite quotes on the EU constitution from our chancellor: "there's no other option than voting in favor of this treaty"; "we spent so much time working out this treaty, I don't think that we should have too close a look at the one or other sentence now that we're supposed to vote on it" (so we're supposed to agree with it before we have a look?)... ... well, I'm not strictly against an united europe - but I'm definitely against a europe with a constitution which is supposed to protect corporations more than the people ('cause that's what a neoliberal economy does ... if you're too lazy to search for an earlier post on this topic by me, I'll search and post a link...)

my favorite anti virus program is AntiVir, I'm using it since about 5 years. Easy to use, fast and it has a "repair"-function but unfortunately that doesn't work always... ... you can find it here: http://www.avira.com/en/free-antivirus-windows

one way to trick web filtering software, especially when you've got access to a php- or perl-capable webserver which you can connect to from behind the filter, is to install a php/perl script on that server which fetches a given URL for you and works kinda like a proxy server, but don't ask me where you can find such a script (google?).In some cases you might have to find some way to encrypt the URL in the adress bar because some filters judge what you may access and what not by scanning the URL for certain keywords.In the end you would either access <yourserver>.com/fetch.php?<URL> or use a form to submit an URL to the script...

yep, that's a good insight ... well, I've been against the war in the first place anyway but I believe that "we told you" is not the right attitude about now - but the US army can't handle the situation on its own. I suppose it's about time the USA apologize to the international community and request some help and, even more important: It's time for the US army to treat the iraqi people decently. Almost all over the world there's one simple rule for occupation armies: Be nice and you'll receive a nice welcome. Does anyone here remember the pics from the first days of the assault? People were standing along the roads and welcomed the US army - that was before they began to mistreat and kill civilians on a large scale.The resistance the US army has to deal with in Iraq does not come from former Baathists (as the propaganda machine said in the first months), islamic fanatics (at least not that much), it's the people who wants to get rid of the occupation. I'm not happy to say this but if this army would be in my country - I'd do my best to keep them busy, too.By the way, the situation in Iraq has to be very bad for the US and "iraqi" army. Did anyone hear about the Operation Lightning? In this operation, about 40,000 US and iraqi forces were said to have captured 900 resistance fighters, killed about the same number and established 194 permanent and 608 mobile control posts in the city of Baghdad. Today I've read a note on the Reuters website, that there were no first hand reports about any changes that certainly would have been noticeable in such a large operation. The Reuters article further said that this was not due to ignoring the reports - neither independent nor critical nor embedded journalists reported about any of these control posts, a heavy military presence (40,000 soldiers - that's pretty much, even for a country at war. There are less than 200,000 soldiers occupying the entire country) or whatever. Does this sound like a real military operation? To me it does not...One more thing before I leave for the night: There's been a message on the german press agency's website on Saturday which has not been spread in any but a swiss newspaper: A US military patrol attacked a car whose driver was standing in front of some traffic lights. Even stranger is the fact that they attacked it from behind, according to eyewitness accounts. Is there anyone around who can tell me why a car which is waiting at the traffic lights is a threat?

ouch, accidents like this are mean ... hope you're all fixed soon :Dabout 8 months ago, I was riding my bike downhill on a wet road ... at some point my back wheel just slipped away and stupid as I am I tried to catch the fall instead of trying to fall decently. I just heard something around the direction where my ankles were snap. I've been lucky and it was nothing too serious but I still had to wear a bandage for about a month. The bad thing about it: I had agreed to accompany a friend of mine to her city's fair two days later. well, she fell from her horse the next day so we were both unable to walk at our usual speed

... the documentation file has been moved or deleted, I got an 404 error when I tried to follow the link...[update] ok, it's back

Papa Roach - Last Resort... the ideal song for couch-headbanging *cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort.suffocation, no breathing, don't give a f*ck if I cut my arm bleeding*