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jerdge

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  3. jerdge

    Posted

    QUOTES PART 2

    It's off-topic so I won't discuss it in depth. It was a situation in 2010 where people tried to extort low amounts of tech from GPA nations to show they wouldn't do anything about it. They did attack the people doing it because they weren't in an alliance, but if they had joined an alliance, nothing would have happened and the only reason Lennox paid reps was because Polar made him as a condition for joining.

    Considering that you evidently know nothing about those events, as evidenced by this last post and by all your previous ones on the subject, you can't certainly discuss it in depth.

    I honestly don't know why I am replying to you at all, anyway... I guess I'll soon stop to bother. :huh:

    My source was Impero, who was engaging with GPA people during the thing. That's when he revealed VE had a unilateral defense pact over GPA. You said you didn't know about it, so I don't know why you're talking down to me.
    I was MoFA and I was knee-deep in all the negotiations. VE was not contacted or involved

    Just as a point of clarification, we were involved to an extent. However, in your defense, within the room that was set up for the matter I believe our involvement was kept just between your president, vice president (could have been MoD), and us. I don't 100% recall the details and don't feel like looking it up, but I believe what we did was limited to making it clear that we would respond in force if UINE (might have been someone else, I forget) attacked you guys for hitting the rouges if they failed to pay reps.

    It should be noted that GPA did not seek us out, we sought them and the party on the opposite side of the aisle out, and our reason was purely to protect our interests in trades when they were faced with an imminent and unwarranted attack. I don't see it as a blight to them whatsoever, since it was something we would have done whether they liked it or not as I wasn't about to see half our trades put in jeopardy for a couple of laughs.

    Edit: I think you may be thinking of a different incident or something. Found our log post on it, Loriean was MoFA and we also sat in on the final negotiations to 'witness' Lennox's ultimate agreement (600 tech) so he didn't try to pull some garbage afterward.

  4. jerdge

    Posted

    QUOTES PART 1

    Plenty of people want to roll you.

    Now you will surely think that I am shocked at this revelation.

    The issue is, you continue to insist it's not viable. Take the NAMBLA case for example that was a little fun Rayvon and someone else had. You were entirely reliant on VE's muscle because you weren't going to do anything to UINE about it and avoided any hardline stances. So if they had just told you to sod off, it'd have been VE being the reason any action would be possible.

    I surely didn't say that anything is not viable.

    The only NAMBLA I remember was Lennox's one, Rayvon had nothing to do with it, I have no idea if VE ever knew or cared about it, I don't know what UINE has to do with it all.

    Basically, I have no idea of what you're talking of, and I suspect you don't either.

    I guess your lack of seniority is showing itself. I don't have the logs on me at the moment.

    They were both somewhat involved. VE knew and cared about it and was in communication with GPA the entire time.

    Lennox went under UINE's protection with Crimson Fists and initially didn't want to pay reps.

    Were you GPA gov in late 2010? If so, how did you not know VE was involved? He paid reps because it was a condition for him being in Polar when he ended up going there.

    I have been GPA government all the time, and I can guarantee to you that I very well know what I am talking of. Rayvon was not involved as far as we knew and know, and I very much doubt that you can prove otherwise - but you're welcome to.

    Lennox tried to run here and there and everybody was treating him like a ghost. He eventually paid substantial reps, he later decided it was a good idea to rogue us again and he was then sentenced to ZI (even our patience ends), which IIRC he didn't serve because he deleted (which I was sad for). He then came back again, doing stuff that made him a lil bit more famous.

    I was MoFA and I was knee-deep in all the negotiations. VE was not contacted or involved, although I can't exclude off the top of my head that they asked what was happening and that we told them - we tend to treat anyone with courtesy (unless they're aggressive with us), as anyone we have contact with can confirm.

    Lennox joined Polaris and he agreed to pay reparations - Polaris decided to condition his membership to that, without us even needing to ask. Just like every other alliance I have experience of (NSO, GOONS, MK off the top of my head), Polaris handles their rogue incidents with professionalism and composure.

    As Lennox had previously abused his NSO membership to convince a few more NSO members to attack us, the NSO also agreed to pay us reparations to get those members of theirs back, without further trouble on our part; IIRC it was me and RV which settled that down. I later decided to waive said NSO reparations, which were modest and not worth our and NSO's time.

    Just after having paid the reparations, Lennox attacked us again, he was insta-booted from Polaris and his nation was then reduced to rubble. Our objective was to ZI and bill-lock his nation (three chances with us were enough), but he just deleted, (to my knowledge) coming back with that VE-Lennox-Dajobo-Polaris spying incident.

    At that point I issued an internal policy, about us not bothering about him anymore, as his deletion was equivalent to ZI and bill-lock. I called that "his fourth chance" with us. :)

    I doubt you can find anyone in CN which was or is more up to date than me on the whole GPA-Lennox relationship, save maybe Lennox himself (which AFAIK is not in CN anymore).

  6. jerdge

    Posted

    Pressing on the handle might break/loose it in the long run. You could also close it too tightly and later have to apply a lot of force to open it up again (operation which too can compromise the handle).

    The "Moka" coffee pot requires loose coffee, which you usually put in the filter using a teaspoon. Any kind of "pre-packed" filter is a big no no.

  7. jerdge

    Posted

    "C. arabica contains less caffeine than any other commercially cultivated species of coffee." - Wikipedia

    So another coffee might be better if you're not just drinking it for taste, but want a stronger boost from it.

    On the other hand you can drink more Arabica coffee without assuming too much caffeine, or drink the same amount and assume less caffeine (some people should avoid/reduce the amount of caffeine they assume).

    Anyway yes, the Arabica preference isn't "universal", it's just how I like to drink it. I can live with Robusta drinkers... :)

  10. lamuella

    Posted

    CN is a game of stats and words, and both pillars are essential for success.

    "OWF propaganda" (dressed/labeled as "moralism", or whatever) isn't everything, but it isn't irrelevant either. In other words, posting is already doing something.

    (The only way to really do nothing in CN inter-alliance politics is to be neutral. I should know about that... ;) )

  13. ktarthan

    Posted

    I love your blog, ktarthan.

    I am not sure that I agree that analogies are never useful in a discussion/argument, though. If you can make an analogy between two things you can also use the analogy to infer something that is grounded in the common aspects that allowed you to make the analogy in the first place. In other words, an analogy is a model, which (like with all kinds of models) you can correctly use to make inferences as long as you don't cross the borders of its applicability.

    "Oil is like water" as both are liquid. Like water, oil will then take the shape of the container. This is a correct inference, that works on one aspect the two have in common. You don't want to drink oil as oil (unlike water) isn't drinkable.

    In fact there's one fundamental problem in outright disqualifying analogies from arguments: if you decide that models (analogies) can't be properly used in arguments because the very idea of modelling has limits, you shouldn't use any kind of model. The problem being that, without models, you can't even communicate at all, as language is a model as well (the word "oil" is not oil). That would mean that the only "real" way to explain what oil is, would be to show it... Which some believe to be the case, but which is also probably impractical in most situations.

  14. Omniscient1

    Posted

    With all the possible liking for Roq, I don't see why this blog too has to be about him or his issues with [anyone].

    On topic:

    Well said, Omni.

    To others: thinking of solving the RL attacks issue with in-game actions is stupid - sorry for being blunt!

    We need to change the culture of the community, which requires working together with the respectable people that inhabit the current in-game "hegemony" (there are many there as well). Instead, we probably won't get much real help from the abusive idiots that inhabit the current in game "under dogs" (there are many there as well).

    We won't achieve anything until we realize that this is a cultural issue which has little to nothing to do with the actual game. It's cross-alliance and even an inner problem of each one of us, individually. Why don't we speak against RL attacks as soon as we know of one? (I am not talking of making noise on this board, but of speaking with the people that commit/witness them where they happen).

    Gather all the "NS" you want, you won't solve anything until you start working to change how people act as individuals.

    (And Schatt, at a certain degree I agree that some people just can't get it; but these last are a minority that couldn't cause much damage if all the others openly protested their shenanigans when they bring it too far.)

  17. Alfred von Tirpitz

    Posted

    Roqageddon, aroqolypse?

    Also to be clear, I don't consider said incidents where bros mentioned to me things spying, as such things were never for the purpose of advancing an agenda or gaining advantage over alliance.

    I have no idea why we don't call this "brosgate". Unless we're taking it from an IC angle, of course.

    Which you're anyway probably doing from the look of it, TBH.

  19. Schattenmann

    Posted

    CoJ is a terrible alliance exactly because My Dear Shantamantan is horrible at telling people's characters, as evidenced by the fact that he tried to recruit me. Multiple times!

    I see my alliance (FOK being mentioned). Sitethief was a spy, he spied on FOK with a multi while being in TOP. He was expelled by TOP and we almost ZI'd him. Eventually we let him get away with a simple tech fine.

    AFAIK Sitethief isn't here anymore, and what's done is done. Just for future reference, if you know of a multi there's only one wise course of action, which is turning him to moderation. In fact the game rules you signed to obligate you to do so, and you can be deleted/banned for not doing it. ZI-ing and tech fines were a dumb management of that issue.

    I know that mrwuss's post was nothing more than a barb to get a reaction out of you. And I find it endlessly entertaining that this blog post is the result.

    I guess that you actually know that Schatt is well aware of what mrwuss was doing, and also that you know that Schatt is just exploiting that dumb taunt to make his argument. Dressing this blog entry as "a moralist falling for the bait" may work though.

  21. Bob Janova

    Posted

    Everyone does pre-empts, every negative stigma associated with them evidently vanished and the point of them deserving something special is evidently moot.

    Sparta has (ITT) quite some political backing that Pacifica didn't have, and keeping people at war for the sake of destroying their upper tier can only reduce the number of competitors, i.e. make this game even more one-sided.

    Maybe the victors just don't want to kill the game, and decided that "real" terms were a terrible idea for the game. Besides, I don't see how the NPO has to get the spotlight on this. There are way more influential alliances in their side, several of which are hardly hesitant in making decisions (controversial or not)... It really isn't about "2008's hegemony" anymore, how could it be?

    BTW, I have an horrible sense of dejavu. I think we had a very similar conversation in Bob's blog after DH-NPO/PB-Polar/how you call it. (maybe not)

  23. jerdge

    Posted

    Q: Would you expect other neutrals to think differently on these issues? Why or why not? Is that ever a topic of conversation between you? (i.e. do you think a different stance on neutrality could work equally well?)

    Well, I actually don't know about them.

    I think (=/= "know") that WTF has a more laid back attitude. I imagine they just don't care much about politics, and they think that a war coming to them would just be a war, they'd just fight it and be over with it.

    I have no idea about TDO or Pax Corvus.

    GOP and semi-neutrals (like OBR and Créole) have probably again another attitude, that I'd imagine more based on military readiness. I for one wouldn't like to have to mess with Hime Themis.

    Finally, it's IMHO not imaginable that anyone even just thinks of bothering GC or Ubercon.

    Sorry if I am forgetting some other neutral...

    Anyway keep in mind that all of these are just conjectures on my part. To answer to your second question no, we never discuss these things with any of them.

  24. jerdge

    Posted

    Are you excited to take first in score?

    It isn't because we had any special growth, but rather it's IRON and then MHA which were/are involved in the current global war, so it isn't that much exciting to me - I don't feel proud or anything.

    Maybe it's also because it's not the first time I am in an alliance that gets to the top (I was in the MHA when they/we seized #1).

    I also think it won't last much, once the war is over. IRON and MHA will probably both retain the ability to overcome us again quite "quickly", and we don't have the numbers to go faster then them.

    Is the rising popularity of NO-CB wars a reason for concern for the GPA? This current global war has seen many instances where alliances have been declared on who were not involved in the war or if they were involved they had no direct impact or connection to the people that ended up attacking them.In a nutshell do you feel a woodstock masacre 2.0 could be brewing with the changing social standards in CN?

    This is actually a very complex matter.

    In short, the GPA safety is based on her neutrality: as we don't really take part in the power struggle, people has one less reason to want to fight with us.

    As a matter of fact, the GPA choice for neutrality is ideological, based on the belief that peace and diplomacy are more apt for civilized people, and that in case of conflict of interest with someone else it is better to try find a compromise through negotiation, than to just count on the "safety through allies" paradigm.

    Surprisingly to most, it also generally works! It's an unintentional - but welcome - by-product of our ideology.

    Everyone by now knows very well that the GPA can't be considered a threat even by the craziest standards, and the lack of scarce resources to fight for (which are basically absent from the game mechanics) also removes another possible reason of conflict with us.

    We aren't anyway really guaranteed to be safe. As you put it, people might want to fight us with "no reason", or rather no reason that most people would call rational. "WoPII" is possible and - given enough CN time - even probably inevitable at some point.

    The GPA defence is based on a (small) "hard" (military) power and a "soft" power which is very difficult to quantify.

    The hard power logic works on the ability to inflict punitive damage to aggressors, and is effective as long as potential aggressors find it inconvenient to attack us.

    While we're not a militaristic alliance, the game mechanics and the tech level of several GPA nations ensure that the top layer of the aggressors would suffer significant damage in any possible configuration (if you ask our MoD - which is me - to quantify that "significant", he'll surely decline to comment...)

    Parties that intended to fight with the GPA should thus accept to be damaged, which can or not be acceptable to them according to the global balance of power - after all, generally no one wants to jeopardize their chances in the global race to grab power, by fighting a war that they could have very easily avoided.

    This means that attacking the GPA becomes non-inconvenient if the attackers can muster a greatly overwhelming force and they also have a definite dominance over the global game, or if they don't care about compromising their strategic positioning. This second possibility comes into play if people start really believing in the "end of days rhetoric", i.e. they don't care about bleeding military relevance because they're convinced that the game is about to end (for everyone, or for them). There's objectively very little that we could do to avoid that this happens, but at least we have the comfort of knowing that, even in that case, our adversaries will be defeating themselves by giving up on the game and by willingly abandoning the competition.

    The soft power logic works on the ability to damage the reputation of aggressors. While I don't by any means underestimate the importance of hard power, I consider it complementary of the soft power, which is the real drive that allowed the GPA to be attacked only once in almost six years of existence.

    The WoP didn't happen by chance and it wasn't improvised. The attackers were at the height of their power and they were able to gather the greatly overwhelming force I was talking of above - to which you have to add that they had the advantage that nuclear first strikes were still socially unacceptable. They had a solid control over the CN forums and they had effectively driven any cultural opposition off them, with the few dissenting voices still existing systematically drowned in propaganda, and made pariah. There wasn't any other bloc or cluster that could be credibly considered to be a rival to their one.

    Even in that "optimal" situation they didn't strike out of the blue, but they first engaged in a long campaign of cultural attrition, discrediting the GPA faithfulness to her neutrality and painting her as a "threat". Only at the end of it, they attacked.

    This is because they valued the power of words, in this game of words.

    While a lot of people claim that their reputation isn't important, or they believe that their reputation wouldn't suffer that much for an attack on the GPA, in reality solid, long-lived successful leaders can't take the luxury of ignoring moral support. CN is a game of words more than anything else, and human beings generally don't like to think of themselves as "evil". Leaders can of course pursue an "evil" agenda (nothing bad, it's a game), but they can't ignore that most of the CN populace (their and of their allies) has a much simpler approach to the game, which isn't that keen against openly harming harmless people.

    This is IMHO valid for several alliance leaders (some of which are more or less, but not insignificantly, influential), for a lot of the politically active group, and also for the silent masses that don't really care much for the game, and usually just lend their raw power to their leaders.

    In the current situation an unprovoked attack on the GPA is IMHO still bound to cause a violent PR hit, with a lot of people (most of them external to the GPA) being very loud against the attackers. I also believe that in case of need we can put out a more than respectable opinion-making structure, and I personally have a couple of ideas to help that PR hit to really hurt. Simply put, truth will be on our side and that's a great advantage.

    Then it can anyway be that some party can again put the public opinion under their control. Or, similarly to the military angle, people can attack without caring about the severity of the PR (= political) hit associated with it.

    In this case too we can't really ensure anything, other than being content that we will again emerge to the light at some point.

    Not to brag about anything, but just to state what I think to be the simple reality, the GPA is absolutely stable and it's really hard - next to impossible - to permanently harm her.

    Back to the War on Peace, despite all the preparedness of the attackers and the severity of the hit, the GPA survived. More, the GPA culture remained untouched. Not even for a moment the Agency lost her faith in neutrality and peace, the Constitution that was "imposed" over her was actually crafted in full accordance with the GPA pristine values, as proved by the fact that only a few adjustments became necessary with time (it actually provided a better governance than the previous one), and in the end the heavy reparations couldn't prevent a fast recovery.

    Now, of course I don't claim that the WoP was a GPA "victory"! Literally hundreds of players were lost and that is one of the greatest tragedies that ever hit this game. In the end, though, the GPA way of life continued and thrived again, in the meanwhile the aggressors lost grip on their power and, when Karma struck them down, the GPA proved that they were wrong with their accusations, simply by not seeking revenge on them.

    From a cultural point of view the GPA held to their values despite her despairing situation, and she eventually emerged free. This is what I expect to happen in any future case, and this is the strong terrain on which we build our future day after day.

  25. jerdge

    Posted

    Is there a way by which a rank and file GPAer would be allowed to participate in the IC areas of the owf?

    We have a long standing blanket gag order, but the term before this one saw some news in that: the MoFA set a framework for any member to basically apply for a "posting permit".

    It's still in alpha, though, and I am not sure of a possible term for it to become operative.

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