[rontal85]

Taospark wrote:

You guys have diverted this topic in the most awesome way possible.

As for Netanyahu, I think it depends a lot on the other players involved. He's not likely to start any major military campaigns this early and not without testing the political waters to gauge public reaction, especially with such a thin margin of victory.

Obama's administration in the US is probably going to push for peace and Abbas is probably the most amenable Palestinian leader yet, assuming his neighbors (including Israel) can give him the political backup to keep Hamas from retaining power. With the historic relationship between Turkey and Israel now becoming strained, it'd be interesting is Netanyahu is able to reach out to Saudi Arabia or Iraq as partners in trade or security.

Netanyahu will most likely try to empower Abbas... especially if Abbas will indicate that he will give full recognition to Israel (this has never really been done). Although it seems as though Abbas may turn into a Peon in Livni's effort to oust Netanyahu. The Saudi's have already indicated that they are willing to work things out with the new Netanyahu administration, so that's a positive sign of things to come (I hope). Syria is shakey, in light of the fact that the entire junta running it will be charged with the assassination of Lebanese Rafik al-Hariri.

As for Obama, I think Netanyahu is the only politician in Israel that could earn his respect.

[BartSimpson]

AblativMeats wrote:

Lets not forget that Israel has, to date, never fired the first shot.

Except when they fired at the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

I'm generally on their side in things but am not afraid to point out that they are not perfect.

[Firekite]

You're really going to count an accidental friendly fire incident during an intense war when Israel was not informed that the US ship was there even when they asked to make sure?

Kjorteo wrote:

Except that, given his hawkish tendencies, I'm willing to guess that he was kicked out for a reason and that it's not a good sign for peace in the region that he's back.

See, this is the kind of thing I don't really understand. Please remind me of what wars he went around starting while he was in power. More importantly, help me understand how any of the appeasement tactics of PMs that followed him have lead to peace and stability in the region.

[antodav]

Hello everyone,

I have been a lurker here for a little over a year now, but in this discussion I felt it was time for me to finally chime in:

I cannot believe that, in all this discussion of the N64, NO ONE has yet mentioned the single most popular N64 game, the one that revolutionized a genre and is widely considered to be the greatest video game of all time:
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time!!!

Now personally, I preferred SNES and NES to N64 too. I got a Game Cube, which I hardly ever play any more, and while I want a Wii, I can't afford one yet. In total I have less than 10 games for the N64--but that one game stands out for me, above any other, as the reason why that system came into existence in the first place. Pure awesome, from beginning to end.

Oh, and as to the topic that this thread is actually supposed to be about:

I personally am encouraged by Netanyahu's election. I think he will act to secure U.S. interests in the region more than Obama will; for example, he will stand up to Iran even as Obama plays pattycake with Ahmadenijad. As Israel goes, so goes the West--and having Netanyahu in power to means we that we will continue to have a strong bulwark against Iranian expansion even after the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is another matter entirely. I don't expect Obama to be able to make any more progress on that front than Bush, Clinton, or Carter before him were able to, nor do I expect Netanyahu to make things any worse than any of his predecessors. Frankly I've pretty much stopped caring about it altogether; a plague on both their houses, as far as I'm concerned. The more that time that passes, the harder I find it to have sympathy for either the Israelis or the Palestinians, since they are both equally guilty of horrendous acts of violence towards civilians on each side and neither of them, within my lifetime, has seemed really serious about pursuing peace. Each wants the other wiped off the face of the earth, and to pretend otherwise is the worst in naïveté.

I should not say anymore lest someone accuse me of being racist or anti-Semitic. But it is good to be here, and I shall certainly put in my two cents on a regular basis from now on.

[antodav]

OPP wrote:

Psudo wrote:

I never remember the N64 being the new, hot thing. I always saw it as the symbol of trading well-made 2D in for low-poly, awkwardly animated 3D for no reason other than 3 > 2. From it's release to today, I have consistently preferred the SNES and Sega Genesis to the N64.

Not to mention the outdated game format used. Sony PlayStation was already way ahead at that time.

For me that was a step in the wrong direction, and one of the main reasons I never got a PlayStation. Cartridges, while they may not have been able to hold as much memory (although arguably now, with the advent of flash memory, they probably could make a comeback), never scratched, were far more difficult to break, and allowed you to save your game without buying any of those stupid, expensive memory cards (though N64 did have memory cards, they were used for more than just saving your game). I've broken down and conformed with GC and Wii, but if I had my way top-loading cartridge-based game systems would still be the norm.

[Kjorteo]

antodav wrote:

Cartridges ... allowed you to save your game without buying any of those stupid, expensive memory cards (though N64 did have memory cards, they were used for more than just saving your game).

That very issue is why cartridges are so heartbreaking for anyone who's into retro gaming. NES/SNES/N64/Game Boy-era cartridges save your game in the SRAM, which is volatile memory that will cease to exist when it loses power. This is why cartridges that have battery saves have those tiny watch batteries in them that are basically there just to provide enough of a charge to keep the data alive. Those things in a cart are good for about 15-20 years, sure, but on the other hand, guess how old the NES and SNES are?

I just ordered one of those InterAct Mega Memory Card deals for the original/Pocket/Color-era Game Boy. I had forgotten about those things back in the day, because they struck me as unnecessary--I never loaned my games to anyone, so why would I need to back my savegames up? What do I care if you can only have one Pokemon file at a time? However, I just now realized that it could possibly at least be used to back up my data onto a non-volatile format, so I can avoid losing, say, my Pokemon Silver data, which I would desperately like to avoid losing since it has over 120 hours in it and more or less was my high school years. It'd be nice if there were a similar NES/SNES answer, though those are slightly less important as far as amount of heartbreak involved in losing data.

I like the PlayStation memory card system for avoiding that issue, and also because I had (and still have, though I now lack a computer with a Serial port to read it) a DexDrive, which was basically the ultimate answer in that regard.

Anyway, welcome to the fora.

[Psudo]

autodav, I don't think anyone in my history on this forum has ever so completely and embarrassingly proven me wrong. You're totally right, The Legend of Zelda (while not a favorite of mine) was certainly groundbreaking for it's franchise and deserves to be listed among (if not at the top of) the best games for the N64.

Kjorteo, you may have explained why my Super Mario World cartridge no longer allows me to save progress. Then again, I'm not sure a battery failure explains why I cannot erase saves either.

[Taospark]

AblativMeats wrote:

Then again, I can easily see N telling O to get stuffed if Hamas keeps chucking rockets...

Those rockets are the most pathetic terrorist weapon ever. I think after 2 weeks of bombardment with hundreds of those things, they killed one person and he was technically killed because the rocket set fire to the building he was standing next to.

Even Hezbollah's underwhelming Katyusha barrage in 2006 produced more of a death toll. The unfortunate truth is that once Hamas gets driven underground, and they probably will, they'll realize that the only way to get a reliable double-digit death toll is with suicide bombs, and we will have unfortunately come full circle.

[rontal85]

Taospark wrote:

Those rockets are the most pathetic terrorist weapon ever. I think after 2 weeks of bombardment with hundreds of those things, they killed one person and he was technically killed because the rocket set fire to the building he was standing next to.

Even Hezbollah's underwhelming Katyusha barrage in 2006 produced more of a death toll. The unfortunate truth is that once Hamas gets driven underground, and they probably will, they'll realize that the only way to get a reliable double-digit death toll is with suicide bombs, and we will have unfortunately come full circle.

The reason suicide bombing is down is rather due to improved prevention than Hamas deciding that a rockets is a good strategy. They didn't stop because they are nice.

[OPP]

Psudo wrote:

autodav, I don't think anyone in my history on this forum has ever so completely and embarrassingly proven me wrong. You're totally right, The Legend of Zelda (while not a favorite of mine) was certainly groundbreaking for it's franchise and deserves to be listed among (if not at the top of) the best games for the N64.

That was really a no-brainer, Psudo.

[Psudo]

In my defense, I never had a N64 until I was grown up and married. While the N64 was popular, I was more interested in the RTS genre for the PC platform and my feeble attempts to write my own games. That's not enough to make my error reasonable, but perhaps you'll sympathize with my distance from the system and leave my wounds free of salt.

[Kjorteo]

If it makes you feel any better, I forgot about Ocarina of Time as well, mostly because of my personal disinterest in it. It was revolutionary, of course, but I didn't take part in said revolution, so, you know....

[OPP]

Psudo wrote:

In my defense, I never had a N64 until I was grown up and married. While the N64 was popular, I was more interested in the RTS genre for the PC platform and my feeble attempts to write my own games. That's not enough to make my error reasonable, but perhaps you'll sympathize with my distance from the system and leave my wounds free of salt.

Consider yourself exonerated.

[Taospark]

rontal85 wrote:

The reason suicide bombing is down is rather due to improved prevention than Hamas deciding that a rockets is a good strategy. They didn't stop because they are nice.

Oh, I never meant to imply that in the slightest, merely that Hamas (like Hezbollah in 2006) tried to "upgrade" from a group of guerilla/terrorists to an organized army, which meant employing at least marginally more respectable tactics. What I'm saying is that once Hamas gets fully stomped down in an open military confrontation with Israel, they'll go back to trying suicide bombing regardless of Israel's improved security.

[Firekite]

I guess the real meat of the topic is going unaddressed?

Firekite wrote:

Kjorteo wrote:

Except that, given his hawkish tendencies, I'm willing to guess that he was kicked out for a reason and that it's not a good sign for peace in the region that he's back.

See, this is the kind of thing I don't really understand. Please remind me of what wars he went around starting while he was in power. More importantly, help me understand how any of the appeasement tactics of PMs that followed him have lead to peace and stability in the region.