Laomedon

Huzzah for friendly-types!

Huzzah-ness! Happy to meet y'all.

Huzzah! [size=8]&[/size]

Congrats NATO, and their new friends in TIO.

Good luck to the former GGA's members, finding new homes on Bob.

Sad to see you leave purple, but good luck on red!

Congratulations to our awesome viking friends for their accomplishments!

Good luck, former horde-members.

[quote name='Stealth' date='24 May 2010 - 06:39 PM' timestamp='1274751580' post='2310744'] Got hit by some kind of trojan when i opened up last page of [url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=86173&st=140"]link[/url] java opened up and installed some sort of rogue antivirus software. [/quote] I pulled the fake antivirus software off of the CN page the other day as well. (It was an add about books of some sort?) My browser told me that it couldn't play media without me allowing it, which I didn't (who wants to hear an ad?) but then the java thing pops up, and yay! Antivirus System Pro (or whatever version this was) is on my computer, sending scary pop ups all over. Luckily, malwarebytes is awesome. (I cleaned up most of the mess manually, but used malwarebytes to dig up the rootkit. Damn viruses.) So if google ads has a "make ads suck less" option, now would be the time to use it.

Congratulations, Phoenix Rising. Y'all are a cool bunch of people, fun to hang out with (the few times I manage to make it on) and I'm glad to see you're prospering. Huzzah! [center][img]http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/688/incrediblehulkcake.jpg[/img][/center]

Congrats guys. It'll be interesting to see how this treaty form works out.

Congrats to both of you. Hope the merger works out well for everyone involved.

Congrats again -- on both the merger with Troy and with your many talented new folks in gov't.

Congratulations, Phoenix. You've got a lot of awesome folks over there, so I'm sure you'll make it to 2 mil in no time.

Overall, the wiki is an excellent resource. It has good summaries of a lot of information. However, there are a small number of dedicated people that keep things updated. They can't and won't get to everything. Parts of it will be outdated or incorrect. Then, you start getting into areas concerning biased edits (usually not by the dedicated core, but rather by people with axes to grind, etc.) Some of the things I've seen are pretty much blatant propaganda. (Which may well be fine, as long as you realize that's what you're looking at.) Ultimately, the wiki is still a great collection of information. But you need to double-check everything on there. Too much in CN changes too quickly for the wiki to keep up with it all.

Hah. Excellent job! And very clever on the news from the front bit. Very creative.

All I saw was that the forums had a message saying they were "offline." I forget the rest. That was the first notice of a coup I had. But at that point, I believe the orders were for everyone to go to Dementual's forums, which he had set up previously for his emperor vote thing. There was a lot of chatter on IRC. Questions as to what was going on, etc. At some point that night, the old forums were deleted. There was a lot of confusion (on my part at least) as to who had done what. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. The charter was tossed aside by 1/3 of the Triumvirate, with help from the Regent and a couple outsiders. The forums are important, but are almost a side note, compared to everything else that happened.

[quote name='pezstar' date='26 February 2010 - 12:03 PM' timestamp='1267214832' post='2205246'] So your argument is that a government restructure was put forth to the membership, and they voted it down, but you went ahead and did it anyway because you assume they're too stupid to know what they were voting for? [/quote] Ding! Technically, the new junta is composed differently. The proposal that was voted on involved Dementual as emperor and Roy as something else. About 3/4 of the votes were against it. (I'd get you the exact totals, but the old forums are, of course, kerplooie.) The addition of JB was not in the initial proposal. And technically, the new junta hasn't gone the "Emperor Dementual" route just yet, having simply "suspended" the old charter. Still, to have a coup about a month (maybe less?) after we voted down a change in government was a bit much for me. I considered my options, and decided to join the exodus of people leaving the GGA. I was with the GGA for a long time, and put a lot of time and effort into it. (Mainly in the Ministry of Communications. I was the guy that put together the .pdf version of the [i]Grand Global Report[/i] that was distributed outside the alliance.) I know a lot of the outside world has problems with the GGA; old grudges based off of old wrongs, generally committed by people who haven't even been in the GGA for a while. Still, I saw the positive side of the GGA, the community of its members, and so on. I'm leaving because I see this coup as being detrimental to the GGA, and to the community that I was in. The recent vote was a high point for the GGA, in many ways. Dementual had an idea, he put it before the members, it lost, and life went on. Triumvirs were being replaced in an orderly fashion, following the procedures laid out in the charter. It seemed to me that on some level, the GGA had finally found a degree of internal tranquility. It still had problems, of course (member participation wasn't as good as it could be, another war knocked people down, etc.) but the government had the potential to run the place well, or at least to run itself. The coup, of course, has ended that tranquility. I'm sure the junta would disagree with my assertion, and argue the flaws they saw in the old regime. That's their right, of course, and certainly the government we had could have been improved upon (as most alliance governments can, I would imagine). From my standpoint though, the coup was negative. It upended the charter and its procedures, and leaves the GGA vulnerable to future political instability. Whoever can work out a way to seize power is entitled to, apparently. Moreover, by bringing in people who haven't been in the GGA for a very long time, it seems like a slap in the face to anyone who had been there, doing the work, making the alliance run. Their contributions matter little, when the junta brings in outsiders and elevates them to the highest level by fiat. I had considered staying in the GGA, in opposition. But ultimately, I decided otherwise. I don't have the time to lead a successful counter-coup, and don't really want to face the possibility of sparking a civil war within the GGA. And the community of people within the GGA, the people that had kept me there even when I was being pounded flat in the Karma War, that community was leaving. And so, ultimately, I decided to vote with my feet, and join the exodus of people that I liked and respected. A few are left in the GGA still, but only a few. Of the former ministers and deputy ministers, I believe one of each remain behind, the rest having left. While parts of this post probably sound bitter, I wish no ill on the junta that's taken over the GGA. If they can revive it, make it thrive, then wonderful. But for my part, I just don't see where they're going to get the kind of pixie dust they'll need to pull it off. Maybe they're probably better off without people like me holding them back, with my old, conventional ways of thinking. Time will tell, I suppose.

To answer a few more questions. First, the easy ones: - This particular issue was laid out on Scribus. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the big layout/publishing packages, but it's free. This was the first time I used it. Our in-house one is done in open office. Although I'd like to do that one on Scribus as well, I haven't been able to get it to do hot links. Open office doesn't quite have the power to make the text pretty that Scribus does, but it's much more versatile other than that. - I'm trying not to do a propaganda paper. I had considered it, and think I'd have a lot of fun doing something totally off the wall, in the vein of Pravda or maybe the North Korean news service (which I personally will read on occasion for the humor value). But ultimately, I want to do something more factual and useful, not mere propaganda. Having said that, I am a GGA member. I'm going to see certain things from that perspective. It is the "Grand Global Report," and there is a GGA flag in the masthead, so I don't think anyone should be confused as to where this paper came from. Hopefully, the stories speak for themselves as to quality. Now the tougher one: - I did consider what to put in about the rabonnobar situation. I knew that it would be controversial, but also felt that it was important enough that it should go in. In researching it, I discovered the slot-filling allegations, and looked into them the best that I could. I knew that I couldn't definitively prove it either way, which is why the article refers to "suspicions." If suspicions had been all though, I probably would have either left the slot-filling aspect out entirely, or not mentioned the nations involved. It was when I read rabonnobar's going away thread, and saw the remarks from two of those individuals that I decided to include it. "Kick some @$! for me too while you're at it." was the one that cemented my decision. It seems incongruous to me that zoomzoomzoom would launch earnest attacks on rabonnobar after expressing enthusiastic support for rabonnobar's anti-GGA campaign. I engaged in what fact checking I could. But I did it within the GGA. I didn't seriously consider asking rabonnobar "So, dude, are your buddies attacking you for real or is this just a slot-filling exercise?" I doubted I would get a useful answer. Likewise, I did not contact the suspected slot-fillers, for the same reason. If, however, the suspicions are in fact baseless, and these nations have engaged in truly earnest attacks on rabonnobar, then my apologies. I try to meet high standards for the GGR. If someone feels aggrieved by the accuracy of the reporting, they are free to contact me to set things straight. If any of the suspected slot-fillers (or rabonnobar himself) wish to forward me their battle reports, they are free to do so. If not, I understand, as I have no right to that information. (Having said that, I know that the slot-filling report was made, and no action has been taken that I can see. Presumably the letter of the rule was not broken. The spirit may well be another matter. If any of the unhappy parties would like to show me how many times they nuked rabonnobar, they are free to. We have no policy against follow-up stories at the GGR.)

Quick answer to some questions. Just to add to what Qaianna already mentioned, we report on world events because they're interesting, and because we think our members should know about them. We can't cover everything, of course. We don't have the manpower, and it would make the publication larger and unwieldy. Plus, I miss things sometimes. As for timing, I'd like to get it out more often than monthly. Every 2 weeks would probably be ideal. This issue got delayed somewhat, due to RL on my part.

Hopefully the link works now. My apologies for the snafu.

After a bit more of a delay than I would perhaps like, I'd like to offer the second international edition of the Grand Global Report to the rest of Planet Bob. We're still working on getting the mix of GGA and world news down, but here's hoping you find something to enjoy in the September 23 issue. Grand Global Report International - September 23, 2009

Thanks to everyone who offered kind words. They're much appreciated. We plan to keep putting this out. First we produce an internal one, then, a couple days later, release the international edition. It worked fairly well this time around, so that sounds like a good model, for now. Monkeybum, I would love to give you a subscription, except I can't begin to imagine how I would do that. I'd happily post links on your forums, if you'd like. As for the beer thing, well, after my guerilla tactics put Croonchy Stars to the top of the cereal list, I felt I should let the beer one proceed on a more standard course, rather than introducing beers that no one outside my immediate local area has heard of.

Greetings to Planet Bob! The Grand Global Report has been an institution in the GGA for a long time, and gone through numerous incarnations. Recently, we've decided to launch an international edition of our humble newspaper, to share with the rest of the world. Although it can't include every detail of every thing that's arguably newsworthy, we hope that our combination of GGA and world news proves interesting and enlightening. http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4Bn_t...3ZDU1&hl=en

Congratulations, New Era.