First, a re-introduction of the Empires mod. It is a first-person-shooter. It combines RTS and FPS in a similar but more complex way than Natural Selection. Maps are generally very big and contains many Resource Points where teams can build Refineries to gain Resources. These Res are then spent by each team's Commander (aka comm) to build Barracks (spawn points), Radar (research center), more Ref, Vehicle Factories (tank factories) and etc.
Each team begins with a Commander and everyone else. Everyone else is allowed to choose to be one of the 4 available roles: Engineer, Rifleman, Grenadier and Scout. Engineers can build stuff faster, build their own turrets, drop ammo boxes and take down enemy structures faster.
Riflemen kill people really well and can choose between 3 rifles that have their own specialties (close range combat, medium range and suppression fire).
Grenadiers are anti-tank units with bazookas, mortars and can even lay land mines.
Lastly, Scouts can snipe people, sabotage structures to either disable them or reduce their efficiency and most importantly, become invisible.
At the moment, I find Engineers too easy to use and Scouts are more exciting. Playing as a Scout quite often. Even though Scouts can turn invisible, he is not completely transparent. Each wall he touches increases his invisibility significantly. Without any walls, he is a very visible grey shade. 2 walls and he becomes virtually invisible if he doesn't move.
Several times I was able to slip past the frontlines to infiltrate the enemy bases. That was freakin exciting. There were several times when I thought I was screwed because I didn't know how invisible I was and some guy was running towards me.
I was sabotaging their Refs in order to lower their income and obviously their comm would tell some Engineers to go repair them. So an Engineer or two would patrol around to repair everything I laid my hands on.
It was like playing Metal Gear Solid in first person view. Each time I saw an enemy looking at my direction, I'd stop moving and pray he didn't see me. Half the times the enemies would, but the other half...
It can be quite exciting to build a Barracks behind their backs and call out to my team to spawn near the enemy base. Or just moving around behind enemy lines , screwing around with their economies.
I did play as a Rifleman a number of times. It gets quite boring because I like to rambo into my enemies. Everytime I see an player in the opposite team, I just fire my gun and run towards him. Of course, I also have the Damage Increase upgrade all the time. Usually I'd kill at least one before dying but this is not as satisfying as sneaking behind a whole group of enemies as a Scout and, while they're trying to shoot my teammates, rape their asses. That usually nets me at least 2 kills before they turn around and overwhelm me.
But when I'm a Scout, the joy isn't in the killing, but in the success of sneaking behind their backs. The best of times were when I stared at them while they scanned past me. Does not happen all the time.
Here's a very interesting quote.
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Apparently, it is the same in Taiwan.
I remember when Princess Diana passed away, my late father laughed at the headlines in the local Chinese morning paper, not at the death but because whoever wrote that wasn't very proficient in Chinese. The author phrased it too bluntly, making it sound crude. There are much better ways to describe death, I believe.
I'm not very good at Chinese, I cannot deny that. Both my command of Mandarin and Cantonese are merely passable. My meagre knowledge of Chinese idioms is due to my mum who likes to use Chinese idioms in her speech. I can remember and use some of the common ones, that's all.
However, it is actually very normal for a native speaker to use idioms and such in his normal speech. Compared to them, I suck at it. If I ever have children, it will definitely be much worse; they'll probably only know "diu" in Cantonese and think it's an obscene word in Mandarin, like some people I know online.
I just read that our cash is not exactly backed by what our country owns. It is more similar to IOUs than the numerical equivalent of any material goods. I am by no means an economist, but according to the article I read and by common sense, it means that money is debt. Every dollar you are holding is really a dollar's worth of something that the government owes you. Therefore, to increase the amount of cash in circulation is to increase the national debt.
Money is like complex numbers - they are all imaginary concepts. They do not really exist in reality but aids our lives in one way or another.
This is one of the best police stories ever. 3 plain-clothed police officers went to the wrong house to arrest 3 white women accused of being prostitutes. They saw an African-American 12-year-old girl and arrested her instead. When they said they were arresting her for being a prostitute, she screamed and struggled desperately while her father rushed out to save her because they didn't say they were the police. The police hit her face and throat in an effort to shut her up.
Now they're charging the girl and her father for assaulting a peace officer.
Shit makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
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