Try this one.

Fly Aces High

Not sure I should be assisting the promotion of another site on stardocks site but it seems harmless enough to me.

Take your astroturfing elsewhere.

There seems to be more going on here than meets the eye. Not quite sure if I want to know what it is exactly.

Precisely. This isn't the place to advertise flight simulators full of spyware.

Oh. Spyware. Thanks for the heads up. Is that what astroturfing is?

Commercialism under the guise of genuine interest.

Interesting turn of a phrase. Hopefully, Evil didn't get a chance to indulge his expressed interest.

Advertising, some quasi related game in the off topic forum seems OK to me. But IMHO advertising something that infects folks with spyware can only be malicious intent and warrants being banned. Do you have any proof of this?

Absolutely none. Just giving him a hard time.

Does this mean you don't think he deserves to be banned?

Does this mean you don't think he deserves to be banned? [Lieutenant] [Top 25] [Second Place Empire] [Drath] [Chaotic Evil] [Masochistic]

Kind of cute that you got my medals in that post.

Yes, I'd like to hear his response to all of this as well. Though if your only reason for criticism is that it's a flight simulator, I'm not sure why that would set off alarm bells. Also metaverse records can be deceiving, I don't put that much credence in that. I would more go by the bulk of his posts, which in all honesty I haven't looked at.

Unscrupulous ebay sellers start out jacking up their score with easy stuff before moving on to fake diamonds.

Anyone that buys a diamond from someone because of his game scores, regardless of the game, deserves exactly what they get.

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I have to admit that I was six of one and half a dozen of the other between responding to your post the way I did versus berating you for the General Homo thing (BTW I still don't approve of the General Homo thing).

But I'm glad I responded as I did. While your accusations may be subjective and unfounded, it's clear you acted in defense of the GalCiv2 community, which is an admirable thing in and of itself.

I only wish that you could have presented your case in it's entirety without me having to drag it out of you in drips and daubs.

If these accusations are false, I apologize to General Homsar in advance. If these accusations are true, I would hope that he’d be permanently banned.

if your only reason for criticism is that it's a flight simulator, I'm not sure why that would set off alarm bells.

Discussing other 4x games is fair play. When somebody says "seV rocks," I'm not going to think much of it. But this is different. Besides being a flight simulator, this Aces High game is multiplayer and not produced by Stardock in any way.

Not even the Amazon AI is stupid enough to say "if you like Galactic Civilization 2, you'll love Aces High." Close but really not that stupid.

As for short messages... I'm in the middle of a game. I respond quickly, sometimes brutally, and move on.

Stardock was the beneficiary of a scandal related to the grassroots movement against CD-based copy protection.

Lieutenant Homo here, and I can testify, in the old-school sense of the word, that I've bought three different software licenses from Stardock in no small part because they have an unusually community-oriented approach to earning money under our current "intellectual property" regime.

p.s. My three does include DA even though it hasn't billed *just* yet.

Having so glibly discussed the banning of someone on what turns out to be at best someone's subjective and unfounded opinion, I felt it behooved me to take a look at General Homsar's past posts and at least form an opinion.

From the recent Lord Pinko experience it's clear everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but looking at his posts and replies, I see nothing that suggests that General Homsar has been trolling these forums since August, making some game related posts and playing the game just so that he can gain some credibility and trick a bunch of folks onto his malware site. It just doesn't make sense. What does make sense is his claim to have turned 15 in August and that he's just a kid that plays the game and maybe likes flight simulators. He did author two of the more infamous threads (Hugo Chavez and What race is America like), but otherwise hardly, if at all, participated in them.

I have to apologize to General Homsar for giving credibilty to such unbased accusations. I'm sorry.

Cheap potshots at names is good wholesome fun.

D:If it makes anyone happy, i'll rewrite the post to make it seem less like a shameless plug.

I wouldn't bother. The only time Wheel seems happy is when he's complaining. So, in that light, your initial post did indeed make him happy (I'd like to think I was just joking here, but I fear there's just too much truth in the statement).

I know you’re probably “used” to it, but that doesn’t make it right.

Actually, I'm long past "used" to it and regularly scare friends by using "my people's" version of the f-word.

The "Lieutenant Homo" thing was at least 80% giggle for me, and the angsty remainder is mostly because I'm tired of the contemporary youth usage of "gay" as the the universal word for "stupid because I don't like it." (I like swearing, but appreciate the traditional complaint that it's compensation for poor language skills, and they way many folks born after the mid '80s use "gay" is, well, "gay")

I was just joking here, but I fear there's just too much truth in the statement

My favorite meta-humour is from Homer Simpson: "It's funny because it's true."