Bay 12 Games Forum

And a "dirty bomb" can be as little as taking your nastiest (or at least most available) low-level-but-long-term nuclear products (some medical isotopes, or their wastes, perhaps accumulated or sequestered somewhere 'safe') and packing it round explosives/doping a fuel-air bomb to be dramatically dispersed upon (otherwise standard) ignition.

Not to tell anyone how to do it (anyone whose direction is tilted this way doubtless has investigated it already), but it's much easier than putting together a working fission, or indeed fission, device. Especially if the 'dirty' part of the bomb is your real aim. The hoops to jump through are generally wider and closer to the ground, even if they still exist.

As for candidates, I would suggest:
1) Meet and vet your candidates
2) Support the good ones

...and (even more obvious a retort, in light of the very next post)...
3) Go back and "vet" the bad ones...

((Obviously not serious. You'd probably need to bring along a physician, not a vetinarian.))

(Re: Brief rundown)

Well, LibDems were formed from the Liberal Party (once the main to-and-fro competitor with the Conservatives, back before Labour emerged as a political force[1]) and the SDP (Social Democractic Party, created by the "Gang Of Four" - four dissaffected Labour centrists - after Labour lost to Thatcher's Conservatives in 1979) and have generally been the (distant-)third party for most of the time since they were created, at least at National level.  When Labour (under then PM Brown) found itself nearly level-pegging with the Conservatives (under next PM Cameron) with neither having a majority, the LibDems formed a Coaliation with the Conservatives (as hinted by my naming the next PM!) in what seemed like a mixture of "king-maker" and somehow getting into power even though (despite doing well) they were nowhere near getting into power under their own steam.

The result put many people off the idea of coaliaions, which aren't generally a thing that happens here in the UK; though the DUP supporting the Conservatives under May, etc, might be considered similar.

It also put people off the LibDems, for 'selling out'. Because of various promises by the LibDems (e.g. tuition fee issues that attracted students to them) which they surely thought they'd never have to honour. They clearly found that they had to default on them, as junior partner to the Tories, and so disappointed many of their natural base. They probably moderated some Conservative things, but it's hard to tell how much so they really couldn't get any credit for making an already bad Austerity.  (It was in light of the global economic depression which Brown had mitigated a bit, probably, but because he left office and the low-tax/low-spend Tories took over we never really got any hint of the complete bounce-back of the kind we might - or might not - have had.


Also, add Plaid Cymru ("Plide Cumree") to the 'others' list. The Welsh party that does the same as the SNP does for Scotland (though more rumbling and less "absolutely in control of their own regional government), and... these days at least... not as radically subnationalist as Sinn Feinn might be considered to be (except, of course, they also don't just not want to be part of the UK, they also want to become part of Ireland.

All-nation (or at least all-British Mainlaind[2]) parties also include everything from the wacky Official Monster Raving Loony Party (whose policies I think are probably the most realistic) to the wacko successors to the United Kingdom Independence Party (whose policies got absorbed into the Tories anyway, but not very successfully). There's also your Greens (with actual MPs, but not many, and certainly below their proportional level of general support) and redder-than-the-Red/etc parties. But effectively it's two parties (and a third) in the UK parliament, one party dominant (and the other main three as also-rans) in the Scottish one, a rather more dynamic and (generally?) friendly mix in the Welsh assembly and nobody doing that much in the Norn Ir'n one as one party (and, seemingly, it is always the same one party these days) not playing ball and so spoiling it for everyone else.

[1] Pror to Conservatives/Liberals it was various other pairings, generally, like "Whigs and Tories", but the lines from the Tories of old to the (conserva)Tories of now are a bit mixed. And I couldn't tell you the ins and outs off the top of my head...

[2] NI being a special case. I think it's bascially got two pro-Irish parties, two pro-British parties (each half of each half swaying politically in the more usual two directions as well) and a "we don't have an opinion" fifth-party trying to lever itself in there. But of all the areas of the UK I find that one a little bit harder to even think I understand.

There also the fact that China's Government would very much like to pretend nobody is opposing them.
Thus the Counsel being in the News is a No-No, since it gave the Democracy Advocates a greater platform and sympathy.

That's a given. With the possible exception of Bridge Man (the news of his action circulated internally despite the usual heavy machine of censorship activating around all mention of the issue) there's probably a dearth of common knowledge within China about anything the top brass don't feel is germaine (or cannot spin to their cause).

I imagine in-country Democracy Advocates are whistling in the wind with what little internal publicity there is from this action. And out-of-country ones (like those who had the protests that led to this) can do pretty much as little about it, insofar as back-home is concerned, as ever.

Letting posters stand longer wouldn't be any more useful than (as hoped?) driving the protestors away. On balance, I don't see it having been better for the servants of the authoritative regime to have held back and risked an indeterminate escalation of protest without any official reaction. Were all protestors going to even leave (and leave their material materially unguarded) at night? Doesn't sound like typical protestor behaviour, on balance, and doesn't sound like good anti-protestor taskforce behaviour to depend upon it.

Look (e.g.) at the wave of pro-Tibet protests in 2008, across Europe/the West in general. With the difference being that (in the UK, but similar to the French/etc situation with their own local services) the Met arrested individuals who were deemed to be ringleaders in a situation which was embarassing (politically) to the UK, in the year of the Beijing Olympics.

There's comparatively fewer political reasons to kowtow (fig. or lit.) to China, right now and several interesting new ones to let them eat a bit more of the general protesting. If the PM has any thoughts of having a say in the matter, they (he, she, and now whoever is next) have had other bigger concerns so there'll probably not be the same crackdown as then, especially after having had to respond (and positively so) to Hong Kong residents who have had their promised continuity of democracy dashed, and the de-facto alliance (or strict neutrality yet having a definite lean) with Russia. Amongst so many other things.


(I haven't heard much about why Hu wandered off, 'escorted'. I suspect we're supposed not to know, at least until we're told (something, correct or not). I doubt he will be 'disappeared', but it does sound a bit like "gone to retire to my dacha (in Siberia)"/being put on the bus, rather than having to be put on trial for something to fully discredit (whichever nuancsd parts Xi wishes to discredit of) his legacy in order to reinforce his own. It could be full on Game Of Thrones stuff, or just "about time the old guy just retires". It could even have been Hu just asking not to be part of the new era, before it ever became necessary to be asked to do so. I don't think Hu has a comeback in him. But then I didn't think Boris did (one of those Comback Kids, I know, but I felt sure that this was it, this time) yet he's possibly going to surprise us. Definitely has the momentum to surprise us. Just needs to poke the right ultra-minority support-base at the right time.)

(That was about a week ago, and has been rumbling on for most of that time, so not sure why some newswires were unaware of it then suddenly were. It's either news or it isn't (probably the former, for anyone who cares) and not something hidden away under secrecy or anything. So perhaps only actually filled a gap in NYT coverage, eventually?)

Have a BBC link, the most recent I could find (filed under "China", admitedly), and an earlier one (UK news) that I don't think was the earliest I saw, but has the blow-by-blow set out nicely.


@ninjaLidku: Word is that Chinese diplomats (and 'diplomats') tend to not want to look bad to Xi/home authorities, so will act all "holier loyaller than thou" to extremes like this just to not get told off for ignoring vicious provocations like... protesters saying "down with this sort of thing" and "careful now". They feel pressured to over-react. Which probably happens with other consular/etc presences, but seems to be something culturally affecting China (especially in "yeah, we can stand outside the gates of Number 10 and boo at our own HoG, fair play to them, just don't impede the traffic too much" countries, like our own) much more at the moment...

Double-ninjaed, now, but nothing more to add beyond the unpaywalled link. (Might be GreatFirewalled, but then I suspect NYT already is... )

Seeing rumblings that the Tory members want Boris back, and the MPs are starting to talk about May as a stable and competent alternative to the current mess.

To be fair(!), they always actually wanted Maggie back, in one form or other. Including, quite possibly, as the actual mostly rotted zombie of her corpse. (Which others would also like, but for yet other reasons.)

The amusing thing is that Starmer has something like a -5% approval rating (might be weighted by left-of-Left people, to some degree?) and yet is still officially more popular (by several tens of percentage-points, in some cases) than pretty much any serious Tory (potential-)leader, right this moment. Obviously, the solution is clear to everyone on every side of the political spectrum... Appoint Starmer as Conservative Leader!  It solves all problems and hardly creates any new ones, right?

This is why I thought you'd just want access to the data (that, in some cases you might have to prepare for), after making a fresh install and getting it working nicely already.

The SSD install neither knows nor cares (for the most part!) that 'installations' exist on the old drive. It's just all data, of various kinds, so long as you don't try to invoke the runnability of any exectable item that now sits there. It's like if you copy any Program Files (or whatever the location) items on the SSD into the My Documents on it, where it would be (almost[1]) as disassociated, and the original (SSD) install would still work nicely enough.

Uninstallers generally tell the current OS (the one on the SSD) how to remove currently installed things (that were installed on the SSD), by doing such things as removing resource files, reverting registry changes, undoing associations, deleting links to things that no longer exist.

If the SSD's system has never had these changes made, I'd actually presume that trying to run the old drive's uninstallers would immediately go "Oh, can't do that... can't do that... can't even work out how to do that..." and either suggest that it's already removed or pretend that it got rid of everything or possible tell you point-blank that it's wrong. I'm not sure why it might have reset your desktop (well, I have some ideas, but it assumes that installers/uninstallers do things that I'm not sure why they'd every do in any sane situation... which probably perfectly describes some hack/work-around situation that some (un)installers have to use for reasons dictated mainly by MS's intentional obfuscations).

But I'd suggest you just don't even try to do that. Pick up savefiles, dabble into (human-)readable config files, etc, and use this information (perhaps!) to rejig the fresh installation (of any application, itself upon the fresh installation of OS). And your old-HDD "My Pictures"/etc data can be copied across to SDD "My Pictures" at leisure... or establish a new root directory structure on old-HDD to gradually sort and shuffle things as you work out what you actually want to keep.

Then you're free to just delete all the unwanted (even system-level) directories on old-HDD. With care that you're not deleting something new-OS now thinks is part of it. Everything under "\Program Files" (or "\Program Files (x86)") can probably eventually be removed once you've checked there's nothing you actually want out of each subdir. The (hidden) "\ProgramData" directory might have some gems of usefulness in it (or under "\Documents and Settings", I forget when Windows changed their nomenclature), but it's the one currently on C: that counts (which you don't even access by explicit C:/...whatever), not the one on D: or whatever letter it is. Delving into the "\Users" structure you'll probably find (eventually!) your masses of saved MP3s, JPGs, .DOCs, etc that you might have accumulated and previously expected to see under the Documents, Pictures or media-themed areas of your designated usespace.


Possibly if you haven't actually done anything drastic, your old drive could be removed from your new computer and replaced back into the old computer to allow it to boot up (and without stopping your new one from doing so) if you still need to find out how to access the data that you think you are missing. That's if you haven't donated even more parts between the system. At this stage, though, I'll admit that I'm purely guessing as to how much fiddling you did that I would not even have thought you would. If you don't have to reverse the process, and it still works well, then I'm not going to pursuade you to try anyway.


Oh, and the caveat that I'm fairly good with the system layouts of any version of Windows version prior to 8[2]



[1] By dint of the correct drivers/etc still existing in the correct directories, you could probably still run some of the cross-copied executables, but once you uninstall the main-install (or, possibly, get an update) there'll probably be confusion by the copy-executable (not changed) finding that .dlls that it might previously have picked up now being missing/changed.

[2] I could tell you about the time that I used the DOS6.2 version of DEFRAG upon my brand new Win95 machine, because I still prefered the DOS interface. Except that DOS6.2 didn't have any concept of the LFN data and wiped, so ending up with directories such as "C:/PROGRA~1/MICROS~1/..." and "C:/PROGRA~1/MICROS~2/..." was the least of my problems... And forced me to learn the ins and outs of the system quite quickly