My Four Cents

[mgh 89]

...tell me then why BP's stock market crashed after the Oil Spill? It was still making it money? (They had $50 Billion in savings, if I remember correctly.) Therefore surely it's still a "good" company to invest into? Right?Wrong. Investor's knew the backlash which was going to happen because of it, and how the public image of BP was going to be of a bad one.

BP's market price crashed because investors were concerned about the possible effects on their dividends, not because it was a "bad" company or because of its public image.BP was trading at about 650p before the oil spill, The price fell to about 300p immediately afterwards. It's now back to about 500p even though it hasn't paid a dividend since Q4 2009. An announcement is expected next month. Once dividends resume the price will probably incease further.

[Virtual Reality 0]

BP's market price crashed because investors were concerned about the possible effects on their dividends, not because it was a "bad" company or because of its public image.BP was trading at about 650p before the oil spill, The price fell to about 300p immediately afterwards. It's now back to about 500p even though it hasn't paid a dividend since Q4 2009. An announcement is expected next month. Once dividends resume the price will probably incease further.

Agreed, that was another reason for it as well.Look, i'm not going to get into BP, I admit I am wrong on some of my remarks. What I just wasn't happy was the immature reply from january. State a point, that's all very welcome, but to add in childish remarks afterwards was just not needed. I am sorry back for the remarks I made towards him, it just makes me angry when people have to use sarcastic comments to get their message across.All I am trying to get is that, I think, if Microsoft just posted some video's on their "Flight" website from the development team, or did a little bit more with the community, like a Live Q&A. I still think that is better than nothing at all, even if it just makes $50 more by doing those, it's still money and still extra profit for only 30 mins of time, while a support team member does a video or Q&A's, if you get me?I just thought there was a lack of input from Microsoft when they launched FSX, it was like "Here you go" and when people found bugs and slow performance, Microsoft were very quite about it, until they launched SP1. If Microsoft were to be more connected with the community which helped build Flight Sim what is is today (and I know Microsoft were at the AVSIM event, but I mean they were more connect to the general flight simmer) then I think it will regain trust in Microsoft's flight simulator as I feel many others, not just me, were a little disappointed when FSX first came out.Thank you,Virtual Reality

[january 19]

From a BP Press release-"Release date: 01 February 2011 BP today announced that it plans to resume the payment of quarterly dividends, which were suspended in June 2010 following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It also set out its strategic agenda to deliver higher value for shareholders through increased investment in new access and long-term growth opportunities and more active portfolio management, which will underpin a return to a progressive dividend policy."---------As a retiree/pensioner, I vote for companies that pay dividends and who act to increase shareholder value.AR

[n4gix 4,961]

If Microsoft were to be more connected with the community which helped build Flight Sim what is is today (and I know Microsoft were at the AVSIM event, but I mean they were more connect to the general flight simmer) then I think it will regain trust in Microsoft's flight simulator as I feel many others, not just me, were a little disappointed when FSX first came out.

Did you not know that MS/ACES had a salaried "Community Evangelist" during the development of FSX, and who was actively engaged with the FS community until the "Great Sacking of ACES?" His name is Hal Bryan, who, along with a few others, was trying really hard to establish more open dialog with the larger FS community at the grass-roots level.The single largest handicap they faced however is the tremendous amount of dillution, factionalism, and fractionalization of the "FS community!" There are simply too many websites, forums, mailing lists, and newsgroups for any real traction to be gained.I routinely visit at least twelve different "FS" website's forums on a daily basis. I am constantly amazed that at least one of them seems to be consistently at least one year "behind" everyone else in current knowledge and events! IOW, they are just now discussing (reinventing the wheel so to speak) issues that were discussed and solved a year or more ago... :( The same problem of information dillution is without question the single greatest handicap to anyone involved in FS development as well. Compounding and confusing the problem is the staggering number of "hits" one can receive while attempting to search the web for relevant answers to specific issues, the vast majority of which are either flat wrong, or at best only partially correct.

[moggel 0]

Very good four cents indeed. I have a few whishes that might have been put forward by others in different threads but here they are, just the same:PersistencyI would like to see a feature where you can create an individual airplane, give it a tail number, possibly a painting, and then have the sim follow up on its use (or misuse). (Being able to see the wear and tear would be awesome but that might be hoping for too much? :( ) Also, I would love to be able to just continue from where I last left the bird, without having to fill up a folder with "flights" like in FSX. Improved Architecture LongevityQuite frankly, 3rd party addons is a far bigger investment than the sim itself for most of us. I don't think I'm the only one that's getting tired of seeing this investment being rendered void with every new version of the core product. Also, I can imagine 3rd party developers would prefer extending on their work and create improvements or more scenery rather than spending development resourses on pure compatibility issues or, even worse, having to rebuild them completely. I would therefore like to see a better architecture for "Flight!" where graphics and physics could be improved in a more modular fashion as new hardware hits the market. The best scenario would simply be to utilize Windows Update (or some similar mechanism) to upgrade over time. Let's face it: A platform attempting to cover the whole planet provides a big enough market to provide future revenues for Microsoft and their partners without having to release completely new versions of the sim like we have grown accustomed to ever since its original release. Regards...Jonas

[alainneedle1 97]

Did you not know that MS/ACES had a salaried "Community Evangelist" during the development of FSX, and who was actively engaged with the FS community until the "Great Sacking of ACES?" His name is Hal Bryan, who, along with a few others, was trying really hard to establish more open dialog with the larger FS community at the grass-roots level.The single largest handicap they faced however is the tremendous amount of dillution, factionalism, and fractionalization of the "FS community!" There are simply too many websites, forums, mailing lists, and newsgroups for any real traction to be gained.I routinely visit at least twelve different "FS" website's forums on a daily basis. I am constantly amazed that at least one of them seems to be consistently at least one year "behind" everyone else in current knowledge and events! IOW, they are just now discussing (reinventing the wheel so to speak) issues that were discussed and solved a year or more ago... :( The same problem of information dillution is without question the single greatest handicap to anyone involved in FS development as well. Compounding and confusing the problem is the staggering number of "hits" one can receive while attempting to search the web for relevant answers to specific issues, the vast majority of which are either flat wrong, or at best only partially correct.

MS is now using the dev. to get feedback from us.

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

I would like to see a feature where you can create an individual airplane, give it a tail number, possibly a painting,

You can already do this with FSX.

[strider1 579]

To an investor, the definition of a "good" company is that it makes money. Since MS had a very profitable year, that makes it a "good" company- especially when you take into account the GOOD things being accomplished by the dividends being paid into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation!(Do a bit of research if you haven't heard of it.)The last I heard was that BP was also making money for the many pension plans that invest in their stock- AND very likely YOU may have gas in your tank produced by- guess who! Or perhaps you prefer walking.AR

Bill Gates And Neo-Eugenics: F. William EngdahlFriday, March 5, 2010Microsoft founder and one of the world’s wealthiest men, Bill Gates, projects an image of a benign philanthropist using his billions via his (tax exempt) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle diseases, solve food shortages in Africa and alleviate poverty. In a recent conference in California, Gates reveals a less public agenda of his philanthropy—population reduction, otherwise known as eugenics.Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, “Innovating to Zero!.” Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, “First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”¹ (author’s emphasis).In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth. When Bill Gates speaks about vaccines, he speaks with authority. In January 2010 at the elite Davos World Economic Forum, Gates announced his foundation would give $10 billion (circa €7.5 billion) over the next decade to develop and deliver new vaccines to children in the developing world. ² The primary focus of his multi-billion dollar Gates Foundation is vaccinations, especially in Africa and other underdeveloped countries. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a founding member of the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunization) in partnership with the World Bank, WHO and the vaccine industry. The goal of GAVI is to vaccinate every newborn child in the developing world.Now that sounds like noble philanthropic work. The problem is that the vaccine industry has been repeatedly caught dumping dangerous—meaning unsafe because untested or proven harmful—vaccines onto unwitting Third World populations when they cannot get rid of the vaccines in the West. ³ Some organizations have suggested that the true aim of the vaccinations is to make people sicker and even more susceptible to disease and premature death.⁴Dumping toxins on the Third WorldIn the aftermath of the most recent unnecessary Pandemic declaration of a global H1N1 swine flu emergency, industrial countries were left sitting on hundreds of millions of doses of untested vaccines. They decided to get rid of the embarrassing leftover drugs by handing them over to the WHO which in turn plans to dump them for free on select poor countries. France has given 91 million of the 94 million doses the Sarkozy government bought from the pharma giants; Britain gave 55 million of its 60 million doses. The story for Germany and Norway is similar.⁵ As Dr. Thomas Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the Cochrane Research Center in Rome noted, “Why do they give the vaccines to the developing countries at all? The pandemic has been called off in most parts of the world. The greatest threat in poor countries right now is heart and circulatory diseases while the virus figures at the bottom of the list. What is the medical reason for donating 180 million doses?” ⁶ As well, flu is a minor problem in countries with abundant sunshine, and it turned out that the feared H1N1 Pandemic “new great plague” was the mildest flu on record.The pharmaceutical vaccine makers do not speak about the enormous health damage from infant vaccination including autism and numerous neuro-muscular deformities that have been traced back to the toxic adjuvants and preservatives used in most vaccines. Many vaccines, especially multi-dose vaccines that are made more cheaply for sale to the Third World, contain something called Thimerosal (Thiomersol in the EU), a compound (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), containing some 50% mercury, used as a preservative.In July 1999 the US’ National Vaccine Information Center declared in a press release that, “The cumulative effects of ingesting mercury can cause brain damage.” The same month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alerted the public about the possible health effects associated with thimerosal-containing vaccines. They strongly recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines as soon as possible. Under the directive of the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, the Food and Drug Administration also determined that infants who received several thimerosal-containing vaccines may be receiving mercury exposure over and above the recommended federal guidelines.⁷A new form of eugenics?Gates’ interest in inducing population reduction among black and other minority populations is not new unfortunately. As I document in my book, Seeds of Destruction,⁸ since the 1920’s the Rockefeller Foundation had funded the eugenics research in Germany through the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes in Berlin and Munich, including well into the Third Reich. They praised the forced sterilization of people by Hirtler Germany, and the ###### ideas on race “purity.” It was John D. Rockefeller III, a life-long advocate of eugenics, who used his “tax free” foundation money to initiate the population reduction neo-Malthusian movement through his private Population Council in New York beginning in the 1950’s.The idea of using vaccines to covertly reduce births in the Third World is also not new. Bill Gates’ good friend, David Rockefeller and his Rockefeller Foundation were involved as early as 1972 in a major project together with WHO and others to perfect another “new vaccine.”The results of the WHO-Rockefeller project were put into mass application on human guinea pigs in the early 1990′s. The WHO oversaw massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines. Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization, became suspicious of the motives behind the WHO program and decided to test numerous vials of the vaccine and found them to contain human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, or hCG. That was a curious component for a vaccine designed to protect people against lock-jaw arising from infection with rusty nail wounds or other contact with certain bacteria found in soil. The tetanus disease was indeed, also rather rare. It was also curious because hCG was a natural hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. However, when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, it stimulated formation of antibodies against hCG, rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy, a form of concealed abortion. Similar reports of vaccines laced with hCG hormones came from the Philippines and Nicaragua.⁹Gates’ ‘Gene Revolution in Africa’The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with David Rockefeller’s Rockefeller Foundation, the creators of the GMO biotechnology, are also financing a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan. Accepting the role as AGRA head in June 2007 Annan expressed his “gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.” The AGRA board is dominated by people from both the Gates’ and Rockefeller foundations. ¹⁰ Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta and other major GMO agribusiness giants are reported at the heart of AGRA, using it as a back-door to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ a euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. The person from the Gates Foundation responsible for its work with AGRA is Dr. Robert Horsch, a 25-year Monsanto GMO veteran who was on the team that developed Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready GMO technologies. His job is reportedly to use Gates’ money to introduce GMO into Africa.¹¹ To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops. AGRA is being used to create networks of “agro-dealers” across Africa, at first with no mention of GMO seeds or herbicides, in order to have the infrastructure in place to massively introduce GMO.¹²GMO, glyphosate and population reductionGMO crops have never been proven safe for human or animal consumption. Moreover, they are inherently genetically ‘unstable’ as they are an unnatural product of introducing a foreign bacteria such as Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) or other material into the DNA of a given seed to change its traits. Perhaps equally dangerous are the ‘paired’ chemical herbicides sold as a mandatory part of a GMO contract, such as Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used such herbicide in the world. It contains highly toxic glyphosate compounds that have been independently tested and proven to exist in toxic concentrations in GMO applications far above that safe for humans or animals. Tests show that tiny amounts of glyphosate compounds would do damage to a human umbilical, embryonic and placental cells in a pregnant woman drinking the ground water near a GMO field.¹³ One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, “We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies.” ¹⁴ Hein explained that they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, in reality they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption. “Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm,” said Hein. “They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada.” ¹⁵ Hein claimed it was a possible solution to world “over-population.” The moral and ethical issues of feeding it to humans in Third World poor countries without their knowing it countries he left out of his remarks.Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates’ foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan’s AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to “reduce population.”And the ‘Good Club’Gates’ TED2010 speech on zero emissions and population reduction is consistent with a report that appeared in New York City’s ethnic media, Irish.Central.com in May 2009. According to the report, a secret meeting took place on May 5, 2009 at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, among some of the wealthiest people in America. Investment guru Warren Buffett who in 2006 decided to pool his $30 billion Buffett Foundation into the Gates foundation to create the world’s largest private foundation with some $60 billions of tax-free dollars was present. Banker David Rockefeller was the host.The exclusive letter of invitation was signed by Gates, Rockefeller and Buffett. They decided to call themselves the “Good Club.” Also present was media czar Ted Turner, billionaire founder of CNN who stated in a 1996 interview for the Audubon nature magazine, where he said that a 95% reduction of world population to between 225-300 million would be “ideal.” In a 2008 interview at Philadelphia’s Temple University, Turner fine-tuned the number to 2 billion, a cut of more than 70% from today’s population. Even less elegantly than Gates, Turner stated, “we have too many people. That’s why we have global warming. We need less people using less stuff (sic).”¹⁶ Others attending this first meeting of the Good Club reportedly were: Eli Broad real estate billionaire, New York’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Wall Street billionaire and Council on Foreign Relations former head, Peter G. Peterson.In addition, Julian H. Robertson, Jr., hedge-fund billionaire who worked with Soros attacking the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and the Asian Tigen economies, precipitating the 1997-98 Asia Crisis. Also present at the first session of the Good Club was Patty Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Gates foundation, and John Morgridge of Cisco Systems. The group represented a combined fortune of more than $125 billion. ¹⁷ According to reports apparently leaked by one of the attendees, the meeting was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe.But the central theme and purpose of the secret Good Club meeting of the *****crats was the priority concern posed by Bill Gates, namely, how to advance more effectively their agenda of birth control and global population reduction. In the talks a consensus reportedly emerged that they would “back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.” ¹⁸Global Eugenics agendaGates and Buffett are major funders of global population reduction programs, as is Turner, whose UN Foundation was created to funnel $1 billion of his tax-free stock option earnings in AOL-Time-Warner into various birth reduction programs in the developing world.¹⁹ The programs in Africa and elsewhere are masked as philanthropy and providing health services for poor Africans. In reality they involve involuntary population sterilization via vaccination and other medicines that make women of child-bearing age infertile. The Gates Foundation, where Buffett deposited the bulk of his wealth two years ago, is also backing introduction of GMO seeds into Africa under the cloak of the Kofi Annan-led ‘Second Green Revolution’ in Africa. The introduction of GMO patented seeds in Africa to date has met with enormous indigenous resistance.Health experts point out that were the intent of Gates really to improve the health and well-being of black Africans, the same hundreds of millions of dollars the Gates Foundation has invested in untested and unsafe vaccines could be used in providing minimal sanitary water and sewage systems. Vaccinating a child who then goes to drink feces-polluted river water is hardly healthy in any respect. But of course cleaning up the water and sewage systems of Africa would revolutionize the health conditions of the Continent.Gates’ TED2010 comments about having new vaccines to reduce global population were obviously no off-the-cuff remark. For those who doubt, the presentation Gates made at the TED2009 annual gathering said almost exactly the same thing about reducing population to cut global warming. For the mighty and powerful of the Good Club, human beings seem to be a form of pollution equal to CO2.

[january 19]

The wonderful thing about democracy is that we are all free to believe in the views & ideas of whomever we choose.But this thread has now gone way off track.Moderators?AR

[dmaher 0]

...

[moggel 0]

You can already do this with FSX.

Not with any persistency, no. At least not in any way I know of. Please enlighten me if I am wrong. :huh:Jonas

[mgh 89]

The wonderful thing about democracy is that we are all free to believe in the views & ideas of whomever we choose.But this thread has now gone way off track.Moderators?AR

But we're not free to infringe someone else's copyright by simply cutting and pasting an article - especially when the poster seems to be trying to make a moral point.

[Tierborn 201]

The wonderful thing about democracy is that we are all free to believe in the views & ideas of whomever we choose.But this thread has now gone way off track.Moderators?AR

agreed ... and can someone tell us what Strider1 cut and pasted .. in less then 5 sentences   :(

[n4gix 4,961]

agreed ... and can someone tell us what Strider1 cut and pasted .. in less then 5 sentences   :(

It is an article written by F. William Engdahl, the same person who's advanced the rediculous claim that "Wikileaks" is actually "...a Big Dangerous US Government Con Job" :( http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Not with any persistency, no. At least not in any way I know of. Please enlighten me if I am wrong. :huh:Jonas

Add-on developers are always creating new aircraft and repaints for FS. It may not always be easy, but there's always something in development.