irokin

Haven't heard anything from him, no idea whats going on. Anyone shed some light on this? Is he alright?

*snicker* Wasn't my idea but.

Spotted this GTR throttled SR setup. Thought I'd post it just for any future ideas. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v482/str8e180/IMG_1325.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v482/str8e180/IMG_1324.jpg http://nissansilvia.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=509897 Looking great guys, can't wait to see the manifold finished.

Because the free market economy doesn't work. Wouldn't it make sense to produce a product that makes everyone addicted and guarantees a continuing market and to hell with the consequences for the consumers? You don't have to pickup the pieces after all. The cost to society as a whole is phenomenal. I probably wouldn't support banning it completely but I wouldn't be opposed to taxing them out of existence. Sure you CAN smoke, but you're sure as hell not going to leave everyone else to foot the bill. I suspect you wont see prohibition in this country and it certainly isn't the road to fascism. The US had it for 14 years under the 18th amendment and everyone is well aware that its a shit idea and causes more problems than it solves. It also didn't serve as a progenitor for totalitarianism in the US. Look up Paul Pisale. He's a prime example of someone who's in politics for the right reasons. Unfortunately health problems (and his loyalty to his city) will probably prevent him ever striving for a higher office but what he's done for Ipswich has so far been incredible. I'm sure there are plenty of others. Have you got some specific examples you'd like me to respond to? I'll point out again though that I don't necessarily agree with everything our or any other government does just because I'm a statist. But at the same time that doesn't mean that anarchy is the only alternative or that governments then become unnecessary. Personally I'd love to see how a society operating as a democratic technocracy (elected technical experts) does. I find it slightly bonkers that people with absolutely no skill or knowledge in an area expect to be able to effectively govern it, I'm looking at you Stephen Conroy. But there are issues with this even, as there are with every political ideal. You're describing a demarchy and the problem I have there is that we struggle to get people to not shirk jury duty as it is. Every friend/family/coworker of mine who got a jury duty notice and mentioned it to me has tried to get out of it. So far only one of them was unable to do so. Wouldn't that potentially leave us back with the same issues we have now? I haven't done a whole lot of reading and thinking on the concept of a demarchy though though. I'm getting a little confused as to your position. You seem to be in some middle ground between stateless and statist society, maybe a minarchist?

Welcome :)

Unfortunately that doesn't make it any less of a logical fallacy (there's a few there I think). I'm anti smoking and anti drinking (to excess) but that doesn't make me instantly analogous to Hitler. While I'm not prepared to be an enabler I'm not going to stop peoples free will either. For example I won't hand my work colleagues their packet of smokes but rather move aside and let them grab it themselves.

Oops, there goes Godwin's law.

Sigh, American presidential preselection is in full swing. Might as well laugh at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhDhDRvHaGs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFB6LQ1-WKU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehYoIKTsiV0

But its not voluntary. It might appear that way in the current society but you work with the group or you become a social outcast and you die or at least find life very difficult. Switzerland has some pretty awesome natural defense in its topography. They have the luxury of being able to fall back into the Alps and mount a defense from there. They also had and have an army and an air force and a strong milita (generated largely through conscription currently) which was and is armed by... the government. Why weren't they invaded in world war II? Well Hitler never gave the order, so we don't know. They had the full intention to do so however but perhaps it was easier to leave them until the pesky British were out of the picture as that provided the only real invasion platform and was a clear threat. Finland requires permission from the police and you need a valid reason to own a firearm. You're also not permitted to carry the gun in public. Switzerland requires males who have gone through their armed services requirement (and thus been trained in firearms) and are in the reserve to keep their service firearms at home (though they are rendered semi automatic only). If you wish to carry the firearm in public you require a permit which requires you justify the need. There's also yearly mandatory firearms training. Both markedly different to the US situation. I'm assuming you're pointing to the Mujahideen who were well equipped (either directly or financially) by the American government and repelled the soviets. They lost somewhere in the order of 500,000+ combatants to the Soviets ~14,000, pretty costly. Likewise the Taliban currently have lost somewhere in the order of 40,000 combatants to ~2000 coalition combatants. They may not look like they're succeeding though only because the coalitions strategy of courageous restraint; positively identifying targets before engagement in order to minimise civilian casualties for various reasons. Make no mistake, if the US just wanted to occupy Afghanistan at any cost they would have done it by now but their intention is to have a workable country come out the other end. As for giving up, well they're already starting a troop draw down and a transition of power to the Afghan army. It'll probably lead to a period of anarchy again like it did after the soviets withdrew in the 90s. A $10 trillion national debt due in part to an economy with little restrain exercised over it tends to have that effect. But I suspect the natural progression of society will see them back to having some form of government in the not too distant future. Remember that government does not just describe a democratic one. All it takes is for one person to begin forming a group. The effective groups have some form of leadership structure. That prompts others to form groups to protect themselves from the other groups. Suddenly you have the progenitor for governments and the process will continue to snowball until some steady state is reached. I think you're giving humans far too much credit and being way too idealistic. People aren't going to have the resources available to maintain a phone system or ammunition factory with only ad-hoc rule. You require someone to maintain the electricity system, someone to operate a power plant, someone to dig a coal mine to fuel the power plant, someone to provide tools to the miner and someone to provide a structured education to all these people so they're capable of working together. The chain flows on and on and I struggle to see why a disorganised society would be capable of working together sufficiently to achieve JUST the power side of production without even touching gathering metals, transport and even how payment might be made. And that's making the assumption that this infrastructure preexists and you don't need to construct it all as well.

haha, best zero car ever!

Dave comes up with the goods! Antilag rawks. I've no idea of the quality of the BCs but I think I'm in the boat of getting the professionals to do it. Matching springs and shocks to your car is gonna be guess work without the right equipment (shock dyno) and knowledge or just hoping what others have tried is somewhere in the vicinity of optimum. Do it once, do it right. Uni holidays? Man I do exams when the next subject begins. 365 day cycle *sigh*, but hey, leap year next year. Day off!

I'd just like to explain my position on this a little bit here. I've long held that this is an automotive site and that topics such as politics and religion don't belong here (off topic aside) unless they specifically relate to the site (e.g. hoon laws, censorship etc). At the same time I'm a strong supporter of free speech and heavily anti-censorship. So that creates a bit of a contradiction for me, if I want to keep the site on topic then censorship in a way becomes necessary. What I mean by this is if people post something like "Vote XYZ!" or "Join my religion its great!" then it'll get shitcanned, regardless of their affiliation and whether I share that persons views or not. That said, I don't think I've ever deleted one of your anarchism related posts (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't have any problems at all discussing it in an off-topic thread like this but I find it difficult to reply to throw away comments in others threads without first essentially killing the threads original discussion and looking like a total asshole for doing that. I'm glad you chose to make this thread though and I'm hoping there'll be plenty of discussion and people sharing their views. I grew up in the country and was still living there when the gun control laws came in. I remember my grandfathers anger at having to turn in his Winchester 1400 and Remington .303s (among others) and shared his sentiment. Now I'm older, while I play FPS games, love military tech and don't mind watching the occasional FPSRussia vid on youtube, I'm actually glad we don't have the "freedom to bear arms" in this country. Watching any cop show out of the US and they treat everyone as if they're armed and dangerous. Routine traffic stop? Cops got his gun ready to go and you'll probably be in handcuffs shortly even though you've committed no offense, purely for the perceived safety of the officers. Plenty of unarmed innocent people have been shot dead because the cop incorrectly though there was a danger to his own life. Here? "Hey mate how you going, blow on this. Thanks, see ya". I'm sure you'll point out that this wouldn't be the case in an anarchy. And yea, probably right but there'd be plenty of gunfights until the ammunition runs out (because the infrastructure to produce it is gone). OK, so what if a country invades, we're defenseless as citizens! The thought has crossed my mind, though if we were invaded an insurgency is little more than a pain in the arse to the invading forces. The insurgency in Afghanistan haven't really achieved anything and the French resistance (while I'm not completely read up on them) appeared to have only achieved something substantial when the American war machine rolled on through. Compared to the Taliban though they were significantly stronger at 1mil+. This I can agree on, in part at least. Far too many of the wrong people end up in politics for the wrong reasons. To me there's essentially two types of people who go into politics; Those who genuinely believe they can and seek to effect change for the better (and usually end up hobbled by the second group) and those who do it for personal and in my opinion the wrong reasons, whether to advance their own business interests or satisfy some mental itch with a power trip or something along those lines. But its no different to many other situations, from community groups to religions to the police to forum mods/admins. I'm not sure what the solution is, I'm not sure what would happen if it was a jury system like you've proposed. I suspect many people thrust into the position would remain too narrow minded within their own community that things would get done there while everywhere else suffers. My solution with forums is to not promote people who seek out mod positions. All of the active mods here have been approached out of the blue but I don't see how this could work for states. Who gets to select? Its fine here where I can consult the mod group and see what they think; it requires a power structure that preexists. My original assertion that many of the things present in modern society couldn't exist was perhaps a bit of a cheap shot. There's no way of absolutely knowing this because we can only observe the world we have. Even so, its hard to imagine how something as basic as a sewage system could work when old mate over there doesn't like it going through his property so he just destroys the infrastructure. Then what, mob justice? The way I see it with anarchy you don't get to have your cake and eat it. I think eventually you'd end up back at a Bronze Age style existence as the stability for large infrastructure doesn't exist. Neighbors can't even agree on fencing issues, what makes you think something as complex as a power grid or road network would be even remotely possible? But that's not even the biggest issue I see, that kind of existence might be perfectly fine and even desirable to some. For anarchy to be possible you would need sweeping and world wide adoption relatively quickly. Why? OK so Australia turns to anarchy tomorrow, there's no funding for a defense force and we're reduced to essentially an insurgency style defense only. China or even the US (after all, diplomatic ties have just been severed) says, oh hey nice undefended resources you've got there and invades with little to no resistance and your anarchy is over. So why governments? First, please don't misrepresent my position as one of supporting the current state of government in this or any other country. I think its in a bit of a mess at the moment with some serious bullshit going around. But I don't believe society can exist without some form of government. I suspect that we're genetically programmed to form groups. Our survival depends on the group as we're incapable of sustaining ourselves on our own. The calorie output and time demand to build shelter and gather food and water exceeds what we're capable of obtaining on our own. So we form groups, where the tasks can be spread around and its easier to gather larger amounts of food. The more people there are working together, the easier it becomes and the more you can achieve. Governments in one form or another have existed for many thousands of years, Democracy has been around for about 2500 years and I suspect its just a natural progression of the group and its need to keep the group working together in relative harmony. I'm also a little confused why people believe we are constantly worse off. In 1970s in Queensland you would have been arrested for protesting. I don't see it as so much a one way movement towards totalitarianism (or whatever the perception is), but a cycle somewhere between the many basic forms of government. Anyway, there's my partially coherent ramblings.

un freaking real! Restos are nice, but original in such fantastic condition is really something very special.

Hayabusa starlet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhAWlXhr-U8 Doesn't sound that different, but I'd put my money on the busa motor lasting longer.

Neil Armstrongs rocketship :laff: </corny> What's it running? Sounds like a Hayabusa motor?

Yea, I guess maybe they go a bit too hard with the damping and springs on the rear? I had a hell of a time the first track day with the Bilstiens, I had the rear ride height too high and the car was flip-flopping on the exit of turn 1. As in, the load would come off the outside and the car would roll the opposite way. Was not particularly pleasant but I dropped the rear and extra inch or two and that solved it pretty much. But never had the same experience with a similar ride height with the old stiff Cuscos. I'll see how it goes anyway, everything I've read so far has suggested the rear swaybar will push the balance back towards the front but there's only one way to find out. I picked up another set of R33 GTR rims too finally, not quite as good as my first set cosmetically but more than good enough! Edit: Need to drop this here for future reference: http://nissanroadracing.com/showthread.php?t=1652

Well done, car looks great!

:yes: I'd be more afraid of the bloke in the Porsche/Merc/Bentley/Rolls that you might hit one day and the insurance company telling you you're shit out of luck and up for a $50k+ repair bill from your own pocket. Beats anything the traffic branch could deal out.

Oh yes, because anarchy is totally a viable alternative. Oh please - cars, roads, race tracks and the internet couldn't exist under your perceived nirvana and if you think they could you're kidding yourself. The system is far from perfect but its a damn sight better than the extreme alternative. I'm happy to discuss this until I'm blue in the face in the off topic area, but not in other peoples threads. And don't get me wrong, I love your tech insight but I cringe every time I see one of these gems dropped in someones thread. Anyway, on topic, I didn't think it was that extreme of a request. Its a monocoque and you're cutting a huge chunk out of the middle of it. Any strength you can restore or increase there is a good thing and a folded metal seam is less likely to propagate a crack (underneath your carpet and out of view behind the gearbox) than a continuous welded bead.

Dayum, I'd have almost dragged it back from Vic as a reshell at that price :P Ah well, hope you have better luck with the council in future.

Aftermarket rims? Changing the offset will affect the scrub radius and long story short, one of the side effects of negative scrub radius is increased steering effort. They'd have to be a pretty shit offset though on a corolla. MA61s (14x7 +8) create a much lighter steering effort than stock, even with wider tyres. That said if you're running standard rims and tyres I would NOT use that as a band aid solution, something else is seriously wrong.

http://www.spoolimports.com/spool-conrod-piston-packages/toyota/spool-4age-conrods-and-ross-forged-pistons

How expensive is too expensive? I've seen forged pistons and rods for a little over $1000.

Yea but they didn't have to know that :P

Microsoft will never call you, ever, period, just hang up. I tried to play with one of these fraudsters one day but his English was so bad he couldn't understand me :(