Enamel32

Don't you see what's going on here? There's a media frenzy going on right now. People across the country are calling their senators about this. You DO have a voice. Where was the media frenzy over the patriot act? Why weren't the masses calling their senators over the patriot act? The patriot act could have been stopped, but the people allowed it to go through because they thought it would protect them from terrorists. I hate to say it dude, but by not creating a severe nationwide anti-patriot act sentiment, we the people gave up our rights by effectively saying "The Patriot act is not significant enough for me to call my senator about". The patriot act is quite clear in outlining what it was going to do, and internal spying was one of those things. It might not explicitly outline what it's going to do, but you have to use your head and read between the lines. No, you don't have direct control over their vote; however, if everyone in your district calls in too, your senator isn't very likely to vote in favor of the bill I think both situations are quite clear. From wikipedia on the Patriot Act "Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" What do you think "appropriate tools" means? This is just the title P.A.T.R.I.O.T. lol Furthermore, what do you think terrorism means? Do you think it's just a dude with a turban? Here's another quote from the wiki: "The act, as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, significantly weakened restrictions on law enforcement agencies' gathering of intelligence within the United States" "significantly weakened restrictions on law enforcement" is a nice way of saying, "we gave up our rights". The purpose of the Patriot act was as clear in 2001. Nobody whined about it because they thought it would protect them from ebil terrorists.

OMG is that an infinity facepalm? And here I thought the triple facepalm was epic. You need someone else's hand just to complete it! That's a lot of facepalm. I.....love..................this should be a .gif of it's own! Congrats OBR and OG!

I guess I disagree somewhat, because according to the news, there's an internationally accepted 'level' of spying. I thought that was one of the purposes of the Chinese-US meeting a few weeks ago. They were going to attempt to come to an agreement on the acceptable level of spying. But that's the thing. I'm not sure anything leaked that the US is doing is actually illegal. If there's an internationally accepted level of spying, perhaps the US is acting within their bounds? We really don't have any information to compare against. I've been told personally by people who would know, China hits our defense installations often. Internal spying is definitely legal via the patriot act. Eh, an exact correlation of this situation to CN is tough. I guess I can kind of see it like that dude who published a bunch of TOP's FA direction to the OWF. TOP gave the guy access to that information. It's not known if Snowden 'hacked' the information or not. Like that TOP leak, Snowden may have just been given access to the information. I don't think admin can really do anything about it. I don't think that's a criminal act OOC either. At least, good luck getting someone to seriously investigate the TOP Leak. (Although I'm sure Crymson would have pushed for it though if he had some OOC popo contacts xP) Did TOP have a right to roll the leak? Yeah, and they did I heard. That TOP member knew what he was doing was wrong, but he chose to do it anyway. Was any of the information in the TOP leak embarrassing? Yeah. Was it surprising? Not at all, but he still got rolled for it. Same situation for the United states. Is the information embarrassing? Yeah. Was it surprising? I don't think anyone finds it surprising. But what the NSA is doing is legal under the patriot act! When the patriot act was passed, we knowingly gave up some of our rights. TOP said things on their boards that would have been "illegal" in 2007, but were deemed by the community as perfectly "legal" in 2013. Even though TOP was acting perfectly within the "law" the leak still got rolled for his 'illegal' actions. If murder was legalized. People started murdering others, and there was no prosecution, would you be surprised? You could cry injustice all day long, that doesn't change the fact that it's legal. We "the people" legalized it!

Awesome post! This is precisely what I'm trying to articulate; however, to add to the complexity, "China", "Russia", and "EU" are spying on the US too. I find this parallelism so hilarious and interesting. I dare say it's why I'm still playing this game today. EDIT: knowing that you appear to see this predicament similarly to me, you never answered my last question: Do you believe Ecuador (or any country for that matter) can have a valid reason to harbor this guy? EDIT 2: thanks for the post, I hope you enjoyed the read.

I think you're getting confused between RL and CN. However, if I understood your post correctly, couldn't all these things be said about RL? War is always occuring in RL. It's just that the media drowns out what is occurring in third world countries. Furthermore, how do you win RL? There's just as little definition for winning RL as there is CN. The only difference is that you can escape CN by quitting. You can't quit RL.---err well, you can, but it's not pretty. xD I think the analogy really only applies for a very specific event: rogue behavior, and from a high level view. Obviously Snowden isn't a nation, but in reality, "nations" are just text defined by admin. I sometimes think of alliances as "nation simulators" and the nations as "individuals". Admin could change the text, and I don't think gameplay would change at all. Don't forget bradley manning was sought after by the US military after he leaked some serious government documents too. Yeah, sometimes CN rogues do get accepted into alliances in CN; however, in my experience, that usually doesn't bode well for those alliances. Dave93 was arguably the last straw for MK, for example. And no, I don't think the US will go to war over snowden either, but I do somewhat expect that they will get the opportunity to punish him with prison time. Cheers and thanks for the post

I see. So instead of just disagreeing and moving along, you're going to come and mindlessly troll a Cybernations OOC OP-ED Blog. Makes sense. You are vastly missing my point. You must really take me for a fool if you think I'm just porting over my CN knowledge to RL, heh. Have you never read an employment agreement? I believe even for the most trivial jobs, such as flipping burgers at Mcdonalds, you have to sign a non disclosure agreement stating you won't give away trade secrets to Burger King. If you decide to quit Mcdonalds and go work at burger king; first day on the job you say, "Whoa you're flipping burgers all wrong. Mcdonald's flips the burger precisely 3 times. Only then, burger perfection can be attained". You may be doing Burger king a huge favor by giving them this information; however, you're in gross violation of your Mcdonalds NDA. Lawsuits can be filed over that. It's punishable by law. People have been punished by law for it. People will be punished for it in the future. This is not a new concept. The fact that most CN alliances have psuedo non disclosure agreements required (or implied) for membership is entirely a footnote, but my point, that everyone is roid ragin' about, is "NDA's" exist in CN for the same reasons NDA's exist in RL. It's one of the many tools with which to protect your enterprise. If you don't want to accept the analogy, then fine. The guy still violated an NDA, which is a criminal act in RL.

Content or gtfo Honestly, I don't care if you don't like the post. But if you're going to make a post, and least prove me wrong, heh. You took the time to read it and comprehend it enough to believe that I'm off my rocker.

But you don't find it interesting, that cause and the effect of what has been done, has similiar impact on the community, yet you don't want to acknowledge why the public response between both events is being hailed so differently? I find that extremely interesting.

If I'm so wrong, how about putting some content down?

Lmao, what am I being dense about? All I'm saying is that this game isn't so different from real life. Yeah, there's differences. "crime" between the two worlds has significantly different magnitudes, and the punishments are also of different magnitudes, but the way the two world's handle crime and punishment has some striking similarities. I just find it interesting that this guy has done something very serious, and the masses clamor behind "freedom of speech, and don't trodden on my rights", when in fact the guy is quite clearly trying to use his trust privileges and other countries as a tool to damage the US. He didn't have to take an OPSEC job if he had ethical issues against it. That's the first question the recruiter asks you when doing any defense projects. If a leak like this happened to goons (fakeedit: Oh I see you're in LPH now), you guys would be throwing a !@#$%*fit, as you rightfully should. Someone betrays your trust, you have a right to be upset. I'm surprised more people in RL aren't outraged by this. The people barely complained when the patriot act was put into effect. We all knew this was going to happen as a result, and now people are acting all surprised, when it could have significant negative impact on them? I don't understand you, america. I guess it's easy to let this guy go, because the negative impact of his actions won't ever be immediate or clear, although the positive impact will likely be more government transparency. The truth of the matter is that's no excuse for putting people in danger or violating the law. The older I get, the more I realize that accidents, ignorance, or "doing the right thing" are not excuses for violating the law. This guy is not an exception. That applies in RL as much as it does CN. It just goes to show how important it is "the people" carefully look at the legislation put into place. The patriot act was a gateway piece of legislation. It probably never should have been passed as it stood, but it is what it is.

Watching someone leak forum information is a lot less serious than releasing information that impacts 6 billion people, too.

Or bullets, that may or may not have been fired, as in the case of Gulf of Tonkin. Hmm, good post. I went and actually looked up what the Asylum process actually was. As you have stated, there is thousands who apply and receive it each year in the US alone. In 2012, about 50% of the asylum seekers in the United States were from China and Mexico. It says that right of asylum is a human right granted under the human rights act. The human rights act further defines reason for asylum as persecution based on "race, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership and/or participation in any particular social group or social activities" according to wikipedia.After doing this bit of reading, I'm starting to see why this is such a complicated international issue, because depending on how you think about it, this case could fall into the "political beliefs" reason for Political Asylum; however, this guy signed a contract saying he's not going to divulge national security information, and then he went and divulged national security information. As far as I understand it, the purpose of asylum is not to protect criminals. The purpose is to protect people from wrongful persecution. Perhaps the real question is do countries think this guy is being wrongfully prosecuted? I don't know why any country would be happy with someone leaking what they considered national security information after they agreed not to. Granting someone asylum with that logic is tantamount to, "We don't support mass murders, but we'll grant this known, self proclaimed, mass murderer political asylum". I could see certain countries doing that coughirancoughvenezuelacough, but that's highly questionable logic by most countries standards. The only reason I could see someone wanting to grant this guy asylum if they felt they had something to gain from it, but again, wars have been fought over less. Relationships have certainly been damaged over less. I still think this can be applied to CN on a wide scale. I don't know why everyone is so reluctant to see the parallelisms here. If I leaked damaging documents from sparta, or any alliance for that matter and all the documents significantly benefited you personally, none of you would protect me. None of you!

I've been semi-closely following this snowden ordeal. I don't want to make an argument about what he's done as being right or wrong. I have my own opinion on that, but that's not why I made this blog. In CN, if someone spies on your alliance. Another alliance harboring that person is an act of war. Granted, CN is not RL, but I think it puts into perspective how potentially damaging this could be for US relations with other countries. What can be worse than rogue harboring, is when a rogue goes to another alliance with the explicit intention to use them as a safe haven or "big stick" with which to gain extortion leverage against the infringed alliance. Ecuador is really in a bad position in this case. I don't think Snowden really cares about Ecuador. He just wanted to go there because he thinks he can get asylum like assange. What incentive is there really for Ecuador to help this guy? I would think Ecuador government would have more important things to do than to concern themselves over a person who is arguably a criminal. I mean, if I wanted to go to Ecuador without a passport. I have no doubt, I'd get turned away at the border. Even if I begged the border security how much I'd love to stay in Ecuador, I'd still be turned away. Why would any country go out of the way for snowden? In sparta, if you're on someone's blacklist, you get turned away. It's rare government will go out of the way for you regardless of how much you beg for mercy, for the simple reason that these people are more trouble than they are worth. There will be no return on investment. No payoff. Only trouble, only headache. Granted, in RL, there's an ethical responsibility that goes along with all this, but if ethical responsibility is Ecuador's prime motive for harboring snowden, wouldn't Ecuador have more impact at less cost helping people in Africa or some similar cause/region? What do you think? Are CN rogues and alliance response a representative comparator for this particular escapade by snowden? Does Ecuador have valid reason to harbor snowden?

Lol, I love cliffhanger >_> The Price is Fark wooo hooo!

Are you subtly implying you're older than 12? If so, that would be the most shocking thing I've read all year. I'm not sure that's a good thing either.

Go back to plotting the take down of the irrelevant and useless, as if it were relevant and useful. :unsure:

Good luck out there guys! Been fun!

:( Good luck out there RnR!

"I am winning all my wars-I seek out the most inactive nations to fight to hide from the fact my coalition is losing. " I lol'd at this one. So many highly active nations pick out the weakest of the weak targets.

According to the logs, NPOsphere/DR would have legitimate reason for war as well. Glad we're on the same page though, regarding the magnitude of these logs. :)

I'm not proposing any CB, but the content of logs could lead to a CB, sure.

I think what's most sad about this is that politics have become so predictable that this is not really surprising. Back in the day, this would have had potential to be a war worthy dump.

I dont want to sign up on those boards, but if you like, you can tell them you know a guy getting his PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and the notion of a "white built" anything is truly false. While blacks/latinos are still a tiny minority of those attaining bachelors and graduate degrees , graduate engineering programs in North America are dominated by Middle Easterners, Chinese and Indians.

"Technical combat" in a FPS is tough. I don't think computer interfaces are flexible enough to make technical combat truly interesting. You either get "decent" technical combat (no technical combat is ever perfect), at the expense of clunky gameplay (i.e. needing a million button presses to perform minor actions to hide behind a box and shoot), or you only get a few actions which keep gameplay streamlined and fast paced (ex. Halo). Because of that, I don't find technical combat as alluring as I once did. I like my shooters fast. I moved to RTS when I realized technical combat in FPS was never going to meet my expectations. If you want attack strategy and co-op, RTS is the only way to go imo.

That sounds similar in plot to GRAW. If you had that type of situation, your rioters/insurgents would probably dress exactly like the civilians, only stand in large crowds of civilians, and only pot-shot (1-2 hit kill) you when you were turned around. Your game better not have armored vehicles, because random spawn locations for innumerable IED's would be quite the downer. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more horrible it sounds. I'm not a soldier, and I never wanted to be a soldier for those exact reasons. No way I'd want to play a game that simulated the uncontrollable situations modern day soldiers experience, it's just not appealing to me. The games I like have plots like this: Ok soldier, you're going to go here and kill as many dudes as you can. NOT: ok walk around and wait until a fight breaks out. That's one thing 007 for N64, and even HALO to a lesser extent, got right. You'd open a single door, and immediately there'd be 10 guys there waiting for you lmao I mean, I hear you and don't get me wrong. A game like that would probably sell millions, at least for the first release, but that's exactly what I think is wrong with the FPS gaming industry. Games are based on graphics and things people perceive to be fun, when in fact, "fun" is relative. Each 'outstanding' game is the greatest gift to the earth........until the next release, which makes me question whether or not the 'outstanding game' was really that outstanding after all. I guess I have a fundamental disagreement with sports games as sources of entertainment at all: you're playing a game.......of playing a game.......I had a brother and a sister,and multiple sports leagues in my town, if I wanted to do that I could have just went outside. That said, I saw my friend playing FIFA 2012, and I legitimately thought I was watching an actual game for like 15 minutes....I can't deny the sweetness there.