Profile for Or else o'erleap.

Error message

Deprecated function: implode(): Passing glue string after array is deprecated. Swap the parameters in drupal_get_feeds() (line 394 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).

Recent posts

Pages

AuthorRecent posts
Arthur C. Clarke in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 20 2008 17:14 Profile Homepage #10
I've always taken SF/F to stand for Sci-fi/fantasy. You know, that lumped genre that gets shelved together. Also, while that may be true, I think this is actually a very good time to produce fantasy and soft sci-fi. Hard sci-fi seems a little stale these days, but it's still made. What I actually meant is that it's a bad time to be an author. Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, and now Arthur C. Clarke. And I'm pretty sure there was another important death in there too.

—Alorael, who suspects a conspiracy, probably one involving aliens. Only the last heir of a forgotten space-mage empire can take up the Sword of Clichés and triumph over boundless evil!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A2 annotated maps. in The Avernum Trilogy
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 20 2008 17:07 Profile Homepage #2
As far as I know nobody has completed an annotation for A2.

—Alorael, who thinks Redstart is confusing the barely begun A2 maps with Silver Harloe's extensive A1 annotations.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Behold II in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 20 2008 17:06 Profile Homepage #49
quote:
From the Code of Conduct:
What constitutes a major transgression for a member:

+ Any communication that is intended to harass, belittle, humiliate, threaten or cause embarrassment to a fellow member.
+ Discussion of illegal activities.
Killing is a threat and illegal. This thread is now locked and you will be banned immediately.

—Alorael, who is sorry he missed the beginning of the festivities. He wishes you all the best in ousting crusty old men and bringing both new ideas and a dash of feathers to town hall.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Book worm reviews in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, March 19 2008 08:08 Profile Homepage #1
It's a sad day when literature spams.

—Alorael, who will visit the site when bots start reading.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Arthur C. Clarke in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, March 18 2008 17:27 Profile Homepage #4
The third of the Big Three is Robert A. Heinlein.

—Alorael, who has only two thoughts. The first is that the era of "it's not good to write SF/F right now" isn't over. The second is that the other Big Two created words that entered dictionaries and common parlance (robotics, grok, waldo). What's Clarke's word? His concept, of course, is the geostationary satellite.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A Question in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, March 18 2008 14:22 Profile Homepage #16
I've always found my desire to converse far more limiting than my minutes.

—Alorael, who sometimes considers responding to text messages with snail mail.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A Question in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, March 18 2008 11:32 Profile Homepage #13
Text messaging is also useful because it requires only a short burst of connection instead of a long time for a conversation. If either you or the person you need to talk to is getting terrible reception, a text message can be great.

—Alorael, who has a cell phone so that he can call people and be called wherever he happens to be. This is deliberate. Wherever is not the same as whenever, though, and apparently his decision to either turn his phone off sometimes or, shockingly, not answer is entirely unacceptable in this modern world.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The 2008 Elections in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, March 18 2008 11:24 Profile Homepage #28
I'm no fan of McCain, but I think you should bother to do some basic fact-checking. He's a Naval Academy grad, so presumably he intended to join the navy. He was definitely no pencil-pusher, and he was shot down and held (and tortured) as a POW for years.

—Alorael, who just isn't quite sure what military record has to do with being a good politician. At least a lawyer with a good record has experience that's somehow relevant.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A4 Hidden Skills [SPOILERS] in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 17 2008 20:58 Profile Homepage #46
Since this thread isn't about Sharpshooter and it's almost exactly two years old, I award you a warning for flagrant necromancy and put this thread back to rest.

—Alorael, who also proposes an alternate theory to sanity consumption by fluffy turtles. Maybe just like zombies eat brains, zombie threads eat sanity. It could be...
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Internal Server Trouble? in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 17 2008 18:50 Profile Homepage #43
Posting huge external images probably wouldn't do anything to the UBB. All it has to do is keep track of a few bytes of text and feed them to any browsers that retrieve the topic. The browser then has to go and retrieve the massive image. It would be really inconvenient for all humans, but the UBB would be fine.

—Alorael, who assures you it's far easier than that to bring things crashing down around here. Post, say, the entirety of the Iliad. Or the Kama Sutra. You'll get banned for it, but you can also demolish the thread.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Internal Server Trouble? in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 17 2008 12:06 Profile Homepage #34
There have been several members who returned after being eaten. Only MM kept his original member number. Saunders just got her custom title and mod position back on a new account.

—Alorael, who supposes that that is not dead which can eternal 500 internal server error, and with strange eons even the UBB may be replaced by some functional forum.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Pat Condell is a hero in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, March 15 2008 06:49 Profile Homepage #47
While I know that you're going to accuse me of bending over backwards and so on, you have spouted what to most people would be classified as hate speech. As these are private forums that are intended to support games and not drive away potential customers, this thread ends here.

—Alorael, who suspects further judicial action will be forthcoming. You were, in fact, warned about not posting hate speech, and just because you don't think that's a good rule doesn't mean that it isn't a rule that the mods must enforce.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
F-117 Stealth Fighter enters retirement in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, March 14 2008 10:12 Profile Homepage #24
Electromagnetic gravitation would go a long way towards grand unified theory, a holy grail of physics. That's more theoretical and too controversial for the military to be working on it, though. We need planes that work. Or do you just mean using electromagnetism to generate propulsion and keep a plane in the air?

—Alorael, who finds the entire idea of war somewhat odd now. The psychological dynamics of America or other nuclear powers waging warfare when both sides know that if push comes to shove the entire region can be turned into glass are, well, bizarre.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Internal Server Trouble? in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, March 14 2008 10:05 Profile Homepage #21
quote:
Originally written by Jumpin' Salmon:

quote:
Originally written by Jeran Korak:

Why do you people make fun about such serious matters? It feels so...so freaking amature!
Immature or amateur?
Armature.

—Alorael, who doesn't take this thread seriously because this is a very old issue that perennially plagues the boards and then goes away and because Jeff has expressed a distinct distaste for having to expend time or money on the forums. Migration requires at least one of the two.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Studies in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 13 2008 21:54 Profile Homepage #50
quote:
Originally written by The Ratt:

quote:
Originally written by Fibrous Beings:

quote:
Originally written by The Ratt:

quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

Oh, I don't know. If you're in a marching band, there might be some circumstance in which you'd hear the word.
However in this case I fell as though I am the only person that got that reference.
If you dignify puns like that with a response you only encourage him.

—Alorael, who has done nothing to bring this thread back on topic. In fact, he's only making it worse.
I feel as though you didn't get the reference. The reference was to a song, "Pomp and Circumstance". So tell me, did you get that reference?
How, exactly, would I be able to talk about the pun without detecting the pun and therefore presumably knowing what Thuryl was punning on? To answer more directly, yes, I knew (and groaned) when I first saw his post.

—Alorael, who now has to apologize for both participating in thread hijacking and for quote zigguration. All further impunment should go in the thread for that purpose.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Internal Server Trouble? in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 13 2008 12:45 Profile Homepage #6
Spiderweb Software should declare bankruptcy and Jeff Vogel should fake his own death and move to Buenos Aires under an assumed identity. All servers should be taken down, erased, and then subjected to dissolution by alkahest.

[Edit: I can get this thing right the first time.]

—Alorael, who considers the errors the finest in bot deterrence technology. You can't spam if you can't post!

[ Thursday, March 13, 2008 16:27: Message edited by: Sleep for the Week ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Studies in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, March 12 2008 18:48 Profile Homepage #28
quote:
Originally written by The Ratt:

quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

Oh, I don't know. If you're in a marching band, there might be some circumstance in which you'd hear the word.
However in this case I fell as though I am the only person that got that reference.
If you dignify puns like that with a response you only encourage him.

—Alorael, who has done nothing to bring this thread back on topic. In fact, he's only making it worse.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
10,000 BC [Spoilers] in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 10 2008 16:43 Profile Homepage #29
quote:
Originally written by Lepidus timidus:

So it is consistent with real life, especially in this day and age. I mean, how long has Europe been fighting off the scummy, barbaric, brutish hordes of Asia in order to prevent their women from being raped, their crops from being burnt, and their children from being sold as slaves? Probably millenia.
Oh, where to start... Yes, Europeans have been fighting with Asians for millenia. They've also been fighting Europeans for much the same reasons for a similar length of time. This makes a lot of sense, as Europe and Asia are one long landmass.

quote:
The Battle of Tours, Moorish conquest of Spain and Portugal, The Siege of Vienna, The Mongols, The Imperial Japs, the constant attacks on Israel, Muslim aggression during the Crusades, etc etc.

The Battle of Tours was indeed a case of Arab/Berber aggression, but political wars over land aren't really a barbarian problem (cf. the last two thousand some years of European history). The Moorish conquest of Iberia was a political struggle, the Visigoths were simply a previous dynasty of foreign invaders, and Christians were definitely the barbarians in Iberia. Vienna? Standard invasion. The Mongols? Imperial invaders. The Japanese? One extremely brief period of imperialism and centuries of isolation. The Middle East? A disaster, but it's because of mass displacement.

The Crusades don't fit here, as they were undeniably Christian incursions into non-Christian territory by definition. Here the Christians were the invaders, and the Crusades were also notable in their wholesale slaughter, pillaging, and other barbaric actions.

Now, let's compare white history. We've got constant warfare in Greece, Roman imperial expansion, Vikings, the succession from Picts to Anglo-Saxons to Normans in England, repeated clashes between England and France, and two World Wars, just to start. The Western world may be technologically and intellectually ascendant now, but that's a relatively recent development. Chinese, Indian, Arab, and other cultures have all had their contributions.

quote:
What I'm saying isn't 'racism', it's simple historical fact.
It's both racist and factually laughable.

quote:
Westerners have often need to take up the sword and bow against hordes of savages who have little concern for human life, and certainly don't 'play fair.'
Very often those savages are Westerners, you know. And how about the savages who have to take up arms against Europeans? Just because Europe was militarily advanced doesn't mean it was the good guys during the the establishment of African and American colonies.

quote:
Saladin was probably an exception to the rule (although his underlings were always baying to loot, rape and kill).
Saladin was fighting in territory in which the Crusaders really had no business. And they'd also made a name for themselves as butchers and barbarians.

—Alorael, who recommends reading good history, not white supremacist history. Largely, the story of history is a history of wars between everyone and everyone else. There are no good guys except very recently, and that's only because it's hard to look at yourself and say you're not the protagonist of history.

[ Monday, March 10, 2008 16:45: Message edited by: Is this the face of a meme? ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
HELP NEEDED ! ! ! in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 10 2008 16:16 Profile Homepage #1
It's the skill called Mage Spells.

—Alorael, who wouldn't worry too much about having Dispel Barrier immediately. You can go for a while without it. (Jeff claims you can finish the game without it; it's probably true, but you miss out on lots of good things.)
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
10,000 BC [Spoilers] in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 10 2008 09:16 Profile Homepage #7
quote:
Originally written by Lepus timidus:

So the only way you can deal with opinions that are radically divergent from your own is to brand the orator a troll?
You have my sympathies.

—Alorael, who has always imagined that ethnocultural superiority is a very heavy burden under which to toil. It's not easy being the top of the foodchain.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum 5 - 9.01 (10.0/6.0) in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, March 9 2008 10:02 Profile Homepage #18
A more complete A2 rating thread is here. Also, entertainingly, HotU gives exactly the same rating.

—Alorael, who thinks ratings can be a little more fine-grained than whole numbers. Maybe by half-points?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum 5 - 9.01 (10.0/6.0) in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, March 8 2008 15:02 Profile Homepage #4
I'll give it a round 9. It's not perfect, but it's up there with A2 and Nethergate.

—Alorael, who thinks he would rate it higher if he weren't disinclined to rate it above A2. Maybe he should bump A2 up to 9.4 and put A5 at 9.2.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

Pages