CylonBookworm

Just to clarify, Хрущев (Khrushchev) gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. As I said, I didnt research anything I wrote. I also found out that there are neo-fascist elements amongst those who seized power in Kiev so calling them Nazis isn't as ridiculous as I thought it was. Still, its all a bit of a mess, eh? Maybe next time It would be a bit smarter to research the topic throughout before jumping in the conversation with a long post and start throwing accusations People in Crimea aren't afraid of "their families getting shot and buried over freedom of speech and democracy". They were the ones to call Russia for help, frightened by things that happen over in Kiev. People there were going from house to house, causing mess and brutally torturing/killing people that were a part of a police defense group, "Berkut", defending Yanukovitch and attempting to keep the damn peace. I don't protect or in any way try to justify what Yanukovitch did - but Berkut did not deserve getting themselves burnt to death or killed by a bunch of neo-nazis who killed people left and right, opposition or police. I've seen various pictures on the internet (I do research my stuff before saying it ) And people there are hugging the Russian army, taking pictures with it, NOBODY is conquering anyone's land. Ukrainian and Russian people have had a "brotherhood" relationship with each other for a long time, if there's ever a reason for armed forces in Crimea, it's because people in it asked for the help. If this is really true, it's insane how different the east/west perspectives on it is. In western media Crimea has been invaded by Russia. According to the press and several quoted western experts Crimera is lost to Russia and Ukraine will never get it back. Putin wants Crimera because he and all Russians believe that if people speak Russian, then it's Russian territory. Indeed some western politician compares Putins rethoric with Hitlers, when Hitler started condemning Jews as Putin condemns homosexuals. I think the west needs to accept, that they have no clue on how Russians see things, and just believe that Russia has friendly and peaceful intentions. Here's a sum-up of things that doesn't make sense The west acknowledges the new Ukranian government despite it is technically illegimate. The west holds constitutions very dear, yet apparently not. When the egyptian military couped the Muslim Brotherhood despite they were elected by the people, the west didn't condemn the coup.Putin denies having sent troops to Crimera. The soldiers country marks have been removed. Why is that?Why is the estimated 30.000 troops necessary to maintain peace in Crimera?Why does the EU think it can just send military observators into Crimera, as if EU is elevated beyond the conflict.Why does demonstrators attempting to breach police barricades near the government building in Donetsk wave Russian flags when they should be waving Ukranian flags? This makes the so-called brotherhood between Russia and Ukraine look a bit assumed. It does look a little orchestrated to me.I'm glad the US has such a "weak" president. Things could escalate very quickly and badly if the previous president was still in office. I think there's a massive canyon between the perspective of things. In our age of technology it would astound me if such a canyon can even exists. Then again. I've sometimes wondered why I never really hear much about what is going on in Russia. I often hear about events and trends from EU and USA, even the Middle East, Afrika and some parts of Asia. Russia I know nothing about. It's a huge country, many people. Yet it is as if nothing ever really happens there. Okay, A few things from these posts that need to be corrected... - I've seen the videos, the unedited stuff that the has been spread through Facebook and Tumblr and around the net, that never gets to the media, most of it taken by protesters with cell phones. The Berkut were MURDERING PEOPLE and shooting indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters and were calmly dropping molotov cocktails off of rooftops into the crowds below. The Berkut are NOT innocent, the Berkut are MURDERERS (not all of them, but most) and that is the reason the Berkut fled to Crimea, because the people were enraged over what they witnessed and wanted revenge for the people murdered in the square. -Of course there are pictures with them hugging the soldiers. So far the Russians haven't killed anybody and it's a very wary peace, but lots of men with guns around tends to stifle neighborhood crime, ya know. Plus this is a PR war right now. Russia claims no soldiers in Crimea, and they're bending over backwards to make sure their guys don't do anything that could be considered hostile. (besides, y'know, INVADING A SOVEREIGN NATION) Yes, Putin can at this moment be compared with Hitler. Let's see... He's invaded a sovereign nation under the guise of ensuring the security of Russian speaking peoples.Apparently Russian soldiers are going around pieces of paper (assumed to be lists of Tatars) marking the houses of the Crimean Tatars with Xs (which is what happened under Stalin when they were given 5 minutes to leave their houses and deported to Uzbekistan and other places).He's sent in between 7,000 and 30,000 Russian VDV, or Airborne, soldiers, having ordered them to remove all identifying patches/insignia/nametapes, and telling the world "They aren't Russians, they bought their top of the line Russian military vehicles at military surplus stores"He's installed a pro-russian puppet in Crimea whose first act was obviously to invite the Russians in.He positioned 150,000, that's 150 THOUSAND soldiers on the border with Ukraine, claiming they were perfectly normal and previously scheduled military exercises.-"Just believe that Russia has friendly intentions"? Like Chamberlain believed Germany had friendly intentions? -Okay folks, one more time, THE CURRENT UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT IS NOT ILLEGITIMATE, IT IS NOT ILLEGAL, THE UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT IMPEACHED YANUKOVITCH'S ASS. -The EU can send observers into Crimea because the current legal government of Ukraine has requested them from as many people as it can get, so that the rest of the world can see that Russia has invaded Ukraine. -If you never hear about what's going on inside Russia, it's because you haven't looked. There are Russian websites that have English translations. There's the propaganda new service RT, there's the mainstream news coverage of the Russian people pissed off at Putin claiming he rigged the election and then Putin arresting many and cracking down hard on the protesters. etc. Some general facts about Putin. -16 years KGB, resigned at rank of LTC. -Director of the FSB (the new name for the KGB) for 1 year. -Went from FSB to Prime Minister of Russia -The president of Russia unexpectedly resigned shortly after, with Putin automatically going from Prime Minister to President, and then signing a law saying Yeltsin wouldn't be prosecuted for corruption. (aka he had dirt on Yeltsin and told him either drop out, or he'd force him out.) -President of Russia from 2000 to 2008 -In his last days in office he worked to make the majority of the government report to the Prime Minister instead of the President. -Putin's close friend/puppet Medvedev is elected President, Putin downgrades one step to Prime Minister. -Prime Minister from 2008 to 2012. -Russia invades Georgia, wins the war in Georgia without the West lifting so much as a finger. -Putin's pal Medvedev suggests Putin run for president in 2012, Putin graciously accepts, Putin becomes president in 2012. If the above happened in the United States, with a cold war CIA director so obviously pulling the strings, we would already have had a second civil war. Throughout Putin's reign, Russian strategic bombers have been flying missions along the US coast, along Alaska, Along the UK coast, and generally everything they did back during the Cold War. He's a frakking madman.

@KingNoodle - He is no longer the president. He was impeached by the Ukrainian parliament and he fled to Russia screaming bloody murder.

I disagree. Predictions for Olympic (the Allied invasion of Japan, that never happened, thank god) were one million allied casualties, and pretty much the entire japanese populace wiped out. The Japanese were training their civilians to fight american soldiers with spears/sharpened sticks for crying out loud. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a amazingly light on casualties alternative. Yes, many died horrible deaths, but it was either that, or continuing the war for 20 years until an entire people were wiped out of existence.

The "missile bases" that Russia likes to bring up so often are strictly defensive ABM, or Anti-Ballistic Missile facilities. Basically, if Russia decides to nuke Europe, these missiles are supposed to try to knock them out of the sky.

The only thing that might have stopped Putin from this land grab is if NATO, the EU, and the US (if NATO refused) had all immediately condemned the act, raised the alert level of our armed forces, deployed the entirety of the 6th fleet into the Med, steaming east, and threatened Putin with armed intervention unless he backed down by a deadline set by the UN. But because Obama is a coward and a fool, Crimea is lost to Ukraine, until such time as Ukraine is absorbed back into the great Russian Empire that Putin is intent on creating. Frakking madman.

Нажмите спойлер для моей попытке перевести это на русский язык (click spoiler for attempted Russian translation) To address the bolded parts... -Wrong. Crimea was/is a territory that is a part of Ukraine. If a comparison must be made, it's more like a state would be in the US. Or a very large county. -The new government is not a fake government. They impeached the president that is currently hiding out in your country. (By the way, somebody claimed Yanukovich is dead. heart attack) The current government is a temporary government until elections can be held in the next two months. -Yes, the pro-Russian patsy that Putin installed in Crimea asked for Putin to save him from the big bad wolf of the west. There's a guy in my gaming community, a Ukrainian, who spent time on the cooking area for his fellow citizens during the protests and uprisings. He saw what the Yanukovich government did. I saw the videos. Berkut on rooftops throwing firebombs on the heads of unarmed protesters. Yanukovych snipers shooting civilians. Berkut shooting shotguns and assault rifles into the crowd. Maybe I'm an American, but at least I'm trying to take the time to investigate these things. I understand you have to defend your country, if not your government, but I implore you, my young friend, open your mind and expand your sources of information. A Russian woman, a reporter who works for the BBC, was detained for a short time by these "unknown" soldiers. While she was being detained she noticed that one of the soldiers had a tattoo on his neck. VDV. So Putin sends tough, elite Airborne soldiers into Ukraine, and he looks into the camera and says there are no Russian soldiers in the Crimea, they have to be Ukrainian civilians, pro-Crimean supporters. He says that they bought their equipment in hunting and military surplus stores. He expects us to believe this ? That pro-Crimean supporters went to the store and bought Iveco LMVs and GAZ Tigrs, vehicles of the Russian army ? Putin = uncivilized madman.

But during a zombie apocalypse all currency becomes worthless and the only usable system is bartering...

Go Dragon or go home?

I think that in this alternate reality, instead of drilling for oil in Alaska or Siberia or The Gulf of Mexico, whales evolved to where they could fly, and became large flying predators in great numbers, so that in order for humans to get oil, the easiest way is to hop on a while with a drill and a hose. Takes mid-air refueling to a whole different level.

yeah, it's a clusterfuck. Youtube won't last forever, and they are hastening it's demise.

*cough* (I still say cat meat could be a good survival food...)

That I'm still alive. I knew I shouldn't have believed those frakking Mayans.

Meh. I meant the cliff bit to refer to the community. Not the developers, not Bohemia or Marek or the amount of players or anything of that sort. Rocket's work is a spectacular boost to Bohemia, at a time when they definitely needed it. The influx of players and paying customers gave BIS the boost they needed to push A3 out, and "Take On Mars" and possibly Carrier Command but I'm not sure about that one. The short term effects = almost all good. The mid-term effects though... the DayZ community is now it's own separate entity, and it's draining the life from the ArmA community. With continuous Intellectual Property theft by DayZ players and communities, more and more addonmakers, terrain creators, *content providers*, are leaving, or "going underground" and only sharing their work with a select few. The ArmA community, in fact the ArmAversum itself, rests on the shoulders of the content providers. Bohemia provides the public with an alright game. Not good, not great, but alright. Passable, worth the money, but barely. The content providers, people like Vilas and Rocket and GranQ and Rock and Wld and Franze and Footmunch and a hundred others, they are what makes the game good. They are the reason for OFPs success, the reason why ArmA 1 didn't get chucked in the bin, the reason why ArmA 2 survived long enough for BIS to make it stable, etc. etc. DayZ will be a good game, Rocket is a good man, and I'm sure not all the DayZ players are represented by the idiots I've seen in their forums and moderator staff, but the reason I don't like DayZ players, the reason, if I'm completely honest, why I at times hate them, is that they are running *the community* the real underlying community of addonmakers, off. By direct theft for their little DayZ spinoffs, and by introducing an incredibly large number of people who don't give a rats ass about IP, into the community. It just... it saddens me. What's good for the community has always been good for Bohemia, but I... I don't think what's good for Bohemia is going to be good for the community, long-term.

I'm from Texas/Alabama, currently in Tennessee. While this region doesn't get as much snow as, say, Kansas or Colorado, it certainly gets enough to be noticed. It may not last very long in comparison, but it definitely snows down here. Winter of... 2011 I believe, we got snowed in down here around Nashville. Last winter it didn't snow at all, and this year it got a lot colder a month earlier than expected, so we'll have to see whether it just gets cold or if we get snow. Anyways, my point is that if it snows in Nashville, if Mobile,AL can get a blizzard, if El Paso can get several inches of snow that admittedly turns black as soon as it hits the ground, then snow in Kentucky requires no suspension of belief, just the belief that when it's snowing in PZ it happens to be one of the years we get snow. Snow doesn't have to mean the deep sled worthy stuff you'd find elsewhere, it just means any snow at all. Enough to wet the roads, muddy any dirt, and give grass a little white jacket. It adds to the winter atmosphere, and the only things necessary for it to be realistic is the ability to imagine a particular cold winter, and for it to not be very deep/last very long.

Why won't EA just friggin die already. :/ Long live Westwood! Long live The Brotherhood! KANE LIVES!

Snow in the south isn't realistic? May I ask where you're from, Rathlord? (Country wise if outside the US, region wise if inside?)

+666 Because you're you. -320 For not putting peanut farms in PZ. -300 For inevitably saying "Rob's your uncle". -40 For having not made your bed. -5 for not giving us Dragons yet.

...for the final FTL jump to...

Why did TinnedEpic feel the need to rain on my insanity parade?

I'VE BEEN SINGING THAT FOR 8 HOURS. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!!

...the CIC of the Battlestar Galactica...

Banned for shagging a kangaroo.

I've encountered like 7 of them in one go about 3-4 weeks in. I like to imagine it was an exodus from Ft. Knox, and the planes that flew over around the same time were enforcing a quarantine no-fly-zone and shot the bastards down before they escaped.

I figured I might as well try my hand at this. I'm not going to say anything epic, I'm not gonna post a gif, I'm simply going to post a song. If my fellow forum comrades have seen their fair of the internet, it should be enough to cause a shocked silence, and a deep sense of horror stemming from a terrible memory...

Meh. To quote my hero, DayZ can "Bite my shiny metal ass". Dean Hall is a good man, and his USEC crew brought some damn good stuff into ArmA 1 if you go back 5 or 6 years, with some other goodies once ArmA 2 came out, but DayZ is an example of a community killing disease, possibly one of the biggest examples out there. All the whining brats, and the idiot freakin people who have absolutely *no* respect for Intellectual Property laws, or EULAs, or any sort of license whatsoever. If you're an addonmaker for ArmA and you find out some dipshit has been stealing your creations, labeling them as their own, and then putting them in a DayZ edit and telling people they will get such and such addon or such and such starting kit if they pay $5 for them, and you try to stop said dipshit from doing this/stealing your work/making money off your work, you get attacked by dozens of other dipshits saying that everything on the internet is freeware, asking if you're the creator then did you get a license to make a copy of such and such vehicle from it's RL company- insinuating you're as much in the wrong as they are, and what pisses me off the most is that the DayZ forum moderators join the dipshits in the attack. It's a complete and total frakking travesty. The example is of an acquaintance of mine, and the money these people are making through "donations" or "starting packs" that include his content? It's enough money that if he was getting it, he'd be able to quit his job and put his mother in a retirement home. A frakking travesty. The only good news is that there will be absolutely no modding capabilities with the stand-alone game. Hopefully the ArmA mod version will die a quick and very excruciatingly painful death, along with all of it's IP theft promoting offshoots. (Also... you know DayZ isn't "indie", right? Tis the only appropriate place in the forums, but my inner nitpicker compelled me to say that DayZ is under Bohemia Interactive, a fairly large and global studio...) (Also also, I apologize for my rant. I've been in the BIS community for 7 years now. It's been like watching the decline of The Roman Empire. ArmA 2 was a giant drop with a slow but steady climb into greatness, but DayZ dropped us off the edge of a cliff, and ArmA 3 we're still rolling down a hill. Not a steep hill, but still half a mile down from the peak of A2. )