Hi everybody.
Lately it seems like Skype is messed up somehow.
Yesterday I could talk to Nick (who appeared as offline to me as I did to him) only after Jay had set up a group chat. Most people on my Skype list have appeared as constantly offline for many days now (quite unlike their usual online frequency) and some of those who do appear online don't seem to receive my messages (at least I never received any reaction whatsoever).
Has anyone of you encountered that kind of trouble on Skype before?

Ocassioned by the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy I'll soon hold a presentation about John F. Kennedys life, his presidency, the man vs. the myth, and of course the assassination itself (it will be a pain having to complete the presentation within 90 minutes when it is a topic so huge one could talk about it for days without coming close to it being really thorough or complete).
I am kind of interested in what everybody thinks (as in holding likely rather than being absolutely certain (unless of course you happen to be absolutely certain)) about whether it was the lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald or if there was a conspiracy and (in case of the later assumption) who of the most frequently mentioned groups of "conspirators" you would suspect.

And here comes the final round of the Award voting this year.
The appreciated member award can be won only by those who participated in the vote on the previous seven awards but were not elected for an award themselves. The Appreciated Member Award is also meant to honor the plenty contributions without which the GOF wouldn't even exist even though they do not necessarily fit into any of the categories of the other seven awards.
Also note that anyone who has skipped two votes of the first seven categories must vote in the appreciated member Award to qualify for an award (either one previously won (Iris, I am talking to you ) or for the Appreciated Member award if elected (do you hear me LettuceBacon&Tomato ). Concerning the runner up of the Appreciated Member Award the same rules apply as in case of the first seven awards.
The voting will run till the end of Saturday August 31st and the awards (all of them) will then be officially issued on Sunday September 1st.

These are the candidates who can be elected in this year's Appreciated Member Award vote (and darn, I thought the appreciated member award vote would be easier for fewer candidates to pick from but with these candidates I'll seriously have to give it more thought and the decision will be very tough indeed):

Cancerian Tiger
jansenov
LBTDiclonius
LettuceBacon&Tomato
Littlefoot1616
LoyfeCycleProtector (1)
Pterano (3)
The Anonymous Person
The Chronicler (2)

It is that time again. No, not the wheel of morality but the Award voting of 2013 are about to begin.
First of all here are the rules. Thanks to Iris for taking on the task of refreshing the rules and decorate with fancy notes
Everyone please read through the rules and ask if you have any questions about any of them:

Newly written rules:

The voting process will officially open on 9 August and will be started by an opening speech from one of the members of staff of the GOF. You cannot start voting before this opening speech.
Voting for the initial 7 categories will last for 2 weeks and will close at 12 (midnight) on 23 August 2013 (forum standard time)

We understand it is a wall of text, but we would like you to at least read through the rules once before you start voting so that you won't breach any rules.

♪♫♪ OFFICIAL RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR 2013 GANG OF FIVE MEMBERSHIP AWARDS ♪♫♪

1)  All selected GOF members listed are invited to participate in the GOF Awards. These candidates have been granted participation on clearing of the following conditions:
A. Have a post count of at least 100 posts
B. Have been active on the GOF within the past 3 months
C. Have been a member of the GOF for at least 3 months
The list of eligible candidates for this year's awards can be found below! If your name is not on that list, you are not eligible to receive an award in this year's nominations. If you find you fulfil the three criteria listed above and still are not on the list, please contact one of the admins about it. We do our very best, but mistakes are always possible.

- The Appreciated Member Award will also be included but nominations for this award will be conducted AFTER the main 7 categories have been finalised and the awards distributed. DO NOT reveal your nomination for the Appreciated Member Award alongside your votes for the initial 7 categories because it won't be counted.

2)   You are to offer one (1) nomination per category highlighting the nominee's GOF username in underline and/or bold to aid with the tallying process. We strongly advise all participants to vote in every category if possible.
Understandably there may be some areas you are not too sure on if you haven't been involved directly (e.g. the RPG section) or are genuinely unable to select one candidate but we urge you try to offer a nomination if you can.

3)   If you want to be entitled to win an award, you will have to vote for at least 6 out of 8 categories. In case you did not vote in at least 6 categories, you will not receive any awards you are entitled to. The awards will instead go to the member with the second highest amount of votes. If you are not interested in winning an award, but still wish to vote in several categories, you are allowed to do so.

4) If you skip 2 votes in the first 7 categories, you are obliged to vote in the Appreciated Member award in order to win an award yourself.

- The Appreciated Member Award voting will be held after the main 7 categories have been finalised and the awards distributed, since only members who didn't win any of these 7 categories can be voted for the Appreciated Member Award. DO NOT reveal your nomination for the Appreciated Member Award alongside your votes for the initial 7 categories because it won't be counted.

5) All nominations must be accompanied with a few lines or a brief statement as to why you feel your choice deserves the award. It doesn't have to be long, but it should at least help enforce your choice so that it can be counted as valid reasoning. Feel free to express credit to those member you felt were close contenders for an award if you wish. Nominations without explanatory comments will count as a skipped vote, so make sure to include them!

6) If you do not complete all your nominations in one post, please submit the remainder of your nominations in a separate post. Please do not edit/update previous posts, since this will confuse the one keeping record of the votes. We will constantly update your votes and will not go back to check older posts once votes are cast.

7) We discourage voting for yourself in any given category for the awards. if you genuinely feel that there are no other eligible candidates who deserve a specific award then you are permitted to vote for yourself in 1 category only. Voting for yourself more than once will count as skipped votes. In case a tie in number of votes comes up, the candidate who did not vote for themselves automatically wins the award.

8) The candidate who gets most votes for an award will be permitted to add one of the drafts of the award to his or her signature. The candidate with the second most votes can choose one of the drafts of the awards after the winner has chosen his and can call himself the runner up! Runner ups must have at least one third of the votes the winner had and cannot use the same banner as the winner. Runner ups do not have to state that their award is a runner up, they can be just as proud as the actual winners.

9) In case two members get an equal amount of votes and are both entitled to either the award or a runner up award there will be a tiebreaking vote. These will be held after the main voting and before the Appreciated Member award voting. This final tiebreaker will decide who wins the award.

And lastly, we would like to remind you all that the awards are here for fun. Any activity that could be considered ruining the fun will disqualify you from the awards and might even result in a harsher action if necessary. Here is a list of what we find unacceptable:

• Cheating
  
• Bribing
  
• Vote fixing
  
• Conspiring
  
• Any general misconduct of ensuring that one GOF member will be guaranteed an award
  
• Claim an award when you're not elected
  

We want all of you to have as much fun as possible and we can only assure that if you help along yourself.

Thanks for reading. If there are any other questions feel free to post them below

- The main categories for this year's Awards are as follows -
~Fanart Award
~Feedback Award
~Friendly Member Award
~Helpful Member Award
~Philosopher Award
~Proactive Award
~Role Play Gamer Award

Caption away

In this thread I'm going to point out some thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of some of the land before time movies and invite everyone to do the same. It is largely opinion based though in some cases it may be possible to be specific about the reasons for an opinion. The purpose of this thread is not so much an indepth discussion of the individual movies, but perhaps it will bring forth some points which can be discussed more elaborately in other threads. The recent thread on LBT 6 with the different assessments of the quality of the Secret of Saurus Rock made me think that such a thread may spark some other discussions.

The land before time
Pro: The one movie that started it all came with extremely emotional scenes. It had a somewhat sinister setting in which the meaning of the Great Valley stood out a lot more than it has in any other movie and it was likely this darker setting that makes this movie the one where one could make the best point when claiming for it to be made not for kids only.
Con: I do believe that some of the scenes cut from the movie could have improved it significantly. Littlefoot's returning to get the other others after finding the Great Valley would have been a lot more meaningful than his just happening to find it after everything else had been told. The oasis scene (which for all we know may have never gone beyond the written draft) would have stressed the topic of racism / speciism a lot more which has been kind of watered down with Cera being the only one in the gang to actually show any of that trait.

The land before time II - The Great Valley Adventure
Pro: This sequel came with some very emotional and powerful scenes. And it was helping that rather than relying only on the newly introduced singing they also used many themes from the original movie again. With the extremely sinister depiction of the mysterious beyond there was a degree of continuity in the depiction of the Great Valley as the one save harbor. I am a bit split about whether Chomper would be regarded a very positive point about LBT 2 if it wasn't for his later roles (I'll write more about that point in the cons).
Con: In spite of the aforementioned continuities there is also no denying that already the very first sequel was a very shar breach with the original movie in many ways. The debate about the inclusion of singing dinosaurs will never be resolved and while I think that some of the songs from other sequels were really worth it I can't say I found the songs of LBT 2 particularly inspiring. The animation while it had some great moments too (during the thunderstorm for example) had some severe weaknesses (e.g. the lava during the volcanic erruption didn't look like anyone was even trying to make it look like real lava or fire). Most importantly however I feel that what may be a great strongpoint of LBT 2 may also be its great weakness, namely the plot. The inclusion of a purple colored sharptooth into the plot was not just a break of style. Now don't get me wrong, I really like Chomper, but first of all we never learn much about him in LBT 2 and to this day there are many plot holes about him. What I consider a real pity is that they never ever made any reference to Littlefoot's mother and that they just depicted Cera in a bad light for bringing up some very valid concerns. In a sense I feel the makers wanted to use that hot iron of a herbivore - carnivore friendship, but then didn't dare to really touch that iron. Also while Chomper's parents came accross as really tough and scary in several scenes they at the same time also had some of the "Sharptooth Slapstick" scenes in LBT 2 the worst excesses of which we were to see in later sequels.

The land before time III - The time of Great Giving
Pro: A very interesting story scenario that came with both some funny and some emotional moments. I like this movie more than the shortness of the pros compared to the cons suggests, but it is a lot more difficult to pinpoint the pros about this one than the cons.
Con: Unfortunately the telling of the story had some weaknesses. While some characters worked out alright in the setting of the story they (the bullies in particular) were extremely clishee. It would have helped if they had taken a little more time in making these characters a bit less archetypical and a bit more individual. I think the worst flaw of LBT 3 is that it became way too preachy. Especially towards the end (but also in some earlier scenes) they were really drumming in the morals with a big club where it would have been a lot better if only they had managed to bring them across with a little more subtlety. With regard to subtlety I think it would have also helped if they hadn't exaggerated the extreme dualism of "stupid quarreling adults" vs. "smart problem solving kids" as much.

The land before time IV - Journey through the Mists
Pro: This one probably holds a special place in the hearts of many LBT fans with the final words, the promis that the gang would indeed meet Ali again one day, having been something to cling to in times when there was uncertainty about whether or not there would be any further movies. The discussion whether those were "just words" or an actual promis had been going on for a long time and the expectations were consequently so high that most people were disappointed with Ali's return in the TV series. As for the pros of the movie, it does come with an interesting story scenario again and in spite of showing green landscapes outsite the Great Valley it still corresponded nicely with the original movie by bringing up the topic of the changing lands. The somewhat gloomy but also hopeful ("...maybe we'll all live together some day.") atmosphere of this kind of setting is something that I feel Charles Grosvenor never managed to capture in his LBT movies. Including the first ever other young longneck since Littlefoot's mother had promised many of those in the first movie undoubtedly sparked a lot of interest and no mistake Ali was an interesting character. The movie also had some extremely emotional scenes which by themselves were a great pro, while I'm afraid I need to list their integration into the movie among the cons.
Con: I'm afraid LBT IV had the potential to be a lot more than it was. If we look exactly at what we got it is hard to deny that we barely get to know Ali at all. It would have been awesome if we had learned a little more about her and her background (we barely get to know anyone from her herd with the Old One being just the narrator of the earlier travels). How come for example that Ali is clueless about the looks of the flower? How exactly was her upbringing? Was she really afraid of the others from the gang after they (including Cera) had just introduced themselves in a perfectly friendly manner? I don't have any problems with the characters Archie and Tickles, but they too remain relatively annonymous and it is odd how nevertheless they managed to tie some of the most emotional scenes from the movie to these characters. My guess is that the use of music played a very large role there. Perhaps they could have used the time to bring in (but not really introduce) Tickles and Archie better if instead they had used it to let us get to know Ali a little more. As for the villains, I like the general idea of their dependency on each other but once again LBT stuck to the clishee of villains necessarily disliking each other. I'd love to see a pair or group of LBT villains for once who formed a group with a comradship similar to that of the gang.

The land before time V - The Mysterious Island
Pro: We got to see Chomper again in a powerful story including the first ever mention of Littlefoot's mother since the original movie as part of a beautiful song.
Con: The story came with many unanswered questions (how does Chomper know leafeater language) and once again refuses to seriously address the problem of the sharptooth leafeater relationship. Again Cera is "the bad one" for addressing a problem against which Littlefoot doesn't have any other argument than thinking differently and being right because he is Littlefoot. It is also sad that in spite of mentioning Littlefoot's mother in the song always there the makers didn't have the courage to also include the mention of her fate. I guess once again it was an iron too hot to touch for the makers of LBT V to let for example Cera bring this point up when arguing with Littlefoot about Chomper. As the first LBT movie done by Charles Grosvenor this one already came up with some of the elements which I disliked about the animation and plots in Grosvenor's movies. With regard to the animation it would be the disregard for realistic colors so long they are extremely colorful (whereas the movies by Roy Alan Smith often had scenes with not so strong background colors which fitted a lot more to the slightly gloomy setting). The worst manifestation of this is in my opinion the over the top turning everything red in case of danger which we got to see in LBT V for the first time. As for plots I am refering to Grosvenor's carelessness about details (if he needs a tsunami to roll from the coast towards the open sea then it will be made so without any further questions) and a certain weakness for "deus ex machina" moments (in this case in the shape of Elsy).

The land before time VI - The Secret of Saurus Rock
Pro: Among those movies made by Grosvenor LBT 6 has not many major flaws. Others may think differently, but I didn't have an issue with Dinah and Dana for example (though they sure could have told a bit more about where they came from and what happened to Cera's mother). Those parts about the story which may be difficult to swallow (legend of the lone dinosaur, badluck etc.) are told in such a way that it is up to us to decide how much of it we buy. At the end of LBT 6 we are left to decide whether to think of Doc as "THE" lone dinosaur or just some lone dinosaur who happened to be at the right spot at the right time in the movie. I like the interaction between the gang members in this movie.
Con: While it didn't have any major flaws LBT 6 didn't seem to have any of the extremely powerful emotional scenes that I love so much about many other LBT movies either. The movie softened up the image of the Great Valley as the special location it used to be in the original movie for good: "This place is nice but there are others just as nice out there somewhere...". One thing which I cannot help but feel irritated about is the way Doc and Littlefoot's grandpa executed the unconscious sharpteeth by burying them alive while the gang was cheering as the carnivores were smashed and suffocated. Compared to the morals of the movies including Chomper this really didn't fit in. Had the sharpteeth been killed in the fight or if there had been any explanation for it (and in any case no cheering during the killing) it might have worked out, but the way it was done it really left an odd aftertaste.

The land before time VII - The Stone of Cold Fire
Pro: Inclusion of an interesting character, with an even more interesting background story reminding of the darker setting of the original movie.
Con: I got to admit that LBT 7 was the first LBT movie I had serious issues with right after watching it. While they did have some interesting ideas they barely bothered to lay them out to us. While the "mysteriousness" worked out in case of Doc and Littlefoot's enthusiasm for him the total vagueness about that "Stone of Cold Fire" didn't work out at all as far as I am concerned. We are never really told what exactly that thing is supposed to be and in the end we are told that what Littlefoot saw was not a Stone of Cold Fire anyway leaving out any explanation whatsoever on why that flying rock, as Littlefoot pointed out, had looked totally different from any others he had seen. Also, why on earth did the adults none of whom had seen it, make such a fuss about hearing that Littlefoot had seen an odd flying rock? It just didn't make any sense at all why the next day they would gang up to put Littlefoot before some kind of court of inquiry to basically tell him "YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT ROCK AND DON'T YOU DARE TO CONTRADICT!" Then out of nowhere came the rainbowfaces to mention that stone of cold fire nobody had ever heard about (why would they do it aware as they apparently were that whatever Littlefoot saw was NOT a stone of cold fire?). And what on earth that they said made Pterano who was sneaking up think that the stone of cold fire would make everyone do his bidding (Pterano's actual aims too remain very vague in spite of his song "Very important creature" being among the most informative and very characterizing songs throughout the entire series). The sudden secretiveness of Littlefoot about where the stone of Cold Fire landed made as little sense as the whole sent Petrie as a spy plot. It could have worked out splendidly if only they had bothered to provide a solid basis for the plot point. Unfortunately they continued to ignore sensibility with the plot. While right amidst unusually sound sleeping dinosaurs Pterano tells his plan Ducky overhears it all and is abducted as a consequence... WHY?
Why on earth did the flyers take Ducky along? From all we had seen and heard so far Pterano could have loudly announced to the whole Great Valley that he was going to get the stone of cold fire and most likely he would have earned no more than a collective shrug. Only by taking Ducky along for absolutely no reason did he get anyone interested at all. The plot continues to suffer from extreme weaknesses such as the implausibly slow flyers being unable to make it to threehorn peak long before the gang, the gang making it up to the top with the help of (deus ex machina) rainbowfaces and an extremely implausible "geysir elevator" after they had been in a cave with green lava (why was it green?). After finding out that there was nothing special at all about the stone they made it down from the mountain with a (deus ex machina) flyer conveniently and unrealistically large enough to carry Littlefoot, Cera and Spike who can just stand firm on that flyers back without any way to even cling to anything at all. The final departure of the rainbow faces in a Star Trek beam was just kicking the corpse in my opinion. Frankly, I think that a character as interesting as Pterano would have deserved to be put into a story that made any sense at all.

(Too late to continue now, but I may before long).

There have been quite a few threads about various topics of world history on the GOF. With a number of avid historians on the GOF and also a number of people not so much interested in history for whom the threads might become distracting the admins decided to create a new subsection for the GOF history threads. While there are many threads easy to identify as strictly history threads (anything refering directly to historical events without direct relevance to current events) there are also threads which are a mixture of history and current events (e.g. various threads concerning US presidents, gun control etc.). The basic rule of thumb estimate is that threads with a very current topic are better posted in the After Midnight section while this section is to be for all the threads on historical events, people, speculation etc. which are not as prominent in current discourse.
I'm looking forward to our discussion here

Congratulations for completing your second decade and a happy 20th birthday to you StrutEggStealer
I hope that you have a great birthday today and that your 21st year of life and third decade will both be times of health, success, happiness, friendship, luck, peace love and occupation

The voting is over and we got our winners and runner up winners. You may pick your award banners from those presented in  this thread. By right clicking on one of the banners you can copy the address of the banner and if you add it in Image brackets to your signature you can display it there. Each banner may be picked only a single time and when there is a winner and a runner up the winner takes the first pick (while there are no other differences whatsoever to the awards received).
And here are our winners:

Fanart Award:
StrutEggStealer (winner)
Flipperboidskua (runner up)

Feedback Award:
Pangaea (winner)
vonboy (runner up)

Friendly Member Award:
Mr Wonk (winner)
Malte279 (runner up)

Helpful Member Award:
Pangaea (winner)
DarkHououmon (runner up)

Philosopher Award:
Malte279 (winner)
jansenov (runner up)

Proactive Member Award:
Chomper98 (winner)
Mumbling (runner up)

Role Play Gamer Award:
Serris (winner)
Nick22 (runner up)

Appreciated Member Award:
Pterano (winner)
Kor (runner up)

Congratulations to all of you and thanks to everybody who participated and did cast his or her votes

There is one last voting session before it is concluded for this year. The Appreciated Member Award which only someone can win who did participate in the preceeding vote to the point that he or she qualified for an award, but won neither an award nor a runner up award in in (which is why this voting must take place after the others).
Everyone who has cast five votes so far and has been voted for an election must participate in this vote to reach the required minimum number of six votes. Everyone who already did vote six time is encouraged to vote anyway.
These are the candidates we have this year for the Appreciated member Award:

Cancerian Tiger
Fyn16
Kor
LettuceBacon&Tomato
Littlefoot1616
MrDrake
Pterano
The Chronicler

Gee, and here was me thinking that it might be easier to make up ones mind about the Appreciated member award due to the smaller number of eligible candidates. With the candidates we have however this will be tricky to make up ones mind about.  
The voting for the Appreciated Member Award will run for one more week (with the same rules as the other awards) at the end of which there will be an post officially proclaiming all Award winners of this year who may then proceed to choose their Award Badges (unless they don't wish to add any to their signatures).