DeepOne

I bought a new computer in late 1994, and I got X-COM shortly after that. I was 31.

Recovering USOs will get you money for the items that you recover and sell, so in that way, not recovering them means you will have less money. However, I'm pretty sure that not visiting the crash site will not have any negative effect on your relationship to governments and their funding - except that your "score" will be lower, but that isn't necessarily a problem unless your score is really low (like negative). If you allow USOs to fly around unchecked, then that can certainly affect government funding; however, once you've shot them down, I think you've already dealt with that threat. I think it's virtually unavoidable that you will lose the funding of a number of countries during the course of the game, but I have never had it get to the point where it affected my ability to finish the game.

TFTD is actually more varied than EU, but the tactical maps are larger, so the battles take longer; and I think that makes it more likely to become monotonous after awhile. You don't have to recover every USO that you shoot down. Technology (including captured aliens), money, and experience (for your aquanauts) are the reasons for recovering them. If you don't need any of that, then just leave them. The terror missions (especially the ones on ships) can take a very long time to complete, but you don't really need to do those either. Just make an appearance, and then leave if you don't feel like doing them. If you're doing well enough in other areas of the game, then this won't hurt you. Once you've recovered the Deep Ones and Calcinites required for the research tree, then there isn't anything else in these missions that you really need (you don't actually even need Calcinites to finish the game). When you're powerful enough, you'll be able to shoot down the USOs that trigger these missions before they can do so. Are you aware that the research tree has bugs? If you research certain things in the wrong order, then you'll never be able to get to the Leviathan (the ultimate X-COM craft) which you'll need to finish the game. If you've triggered that bug, then the game will be neverending and will certainly become monotonous. Here is a site devoted to helping people avoid such problems.

I didn't get to see what was at the original link. Was it something like this? Women Know Your Limits

I thought that was a bug, and it survived past beta testing. The first version of TFTD I bought (on floppy disks) had that spawn point (for one of your own units). The Collector's Edition doesn't have it. Edit: Oh, you said Triton. The bug I was thinking of was only for the Leviathan.

Hmmm... I have a GeForce 6800, and I'm using version 77.77 of Nvidia's Forceware. I have a ViewSonic monitor. I have it connected to the card's DVI output if that matters. I installed drivers for it which i downloaded from the manufacturer's website. Have you done that for your monitor?

I think the LCD monitor is part of the problem. Go to Control Panel / Display / Settings / Advanced. Select the tab for your video card, and open the Additional Properties (if they aren't already open). Select the Digital Flat Panel Settings. I have four options here, and I think "Display adapter scaling" is the one that works best for X-COM 1&2. The image ends up slightly stretched vertically, but I don't really notice it except when viewing the geoscape while zoomed out (the earth is sort of egg shaped). I usually use "Fixed aspect ratio scaling", but I think the X-COM games give me the problem you describe when I use that.

Muslims tend to want Sharia Law.

He started the war in 1990 when he invaded Kuwait. The war paused in 1991 with a ceasefire agreement. Over the next 12 years, Saddam continually violated the terms of that agreement (see UN Resolution 1441). Saddam supported Islamic jihad (which was the impetus behind 9/11). Bush laid out the reasons for taking out Saddam in his 2003 State of the Union Address (scroll down about 3/4 on that page).

I think the premise of your questions is flawed. You seem to be presuming that threats and/or violence are always wrong. Circumstances can create the aforementioned "shades of grey". Just as a police officer shooting an armed robber is not the same as the armed robber shooting his victims, so is forcefully opposing a brutal dictator not the same as becoming one. It can be better to forcefully oppose evil than it is to appease and, therefore, enable it. Or do you lament that the world is not ruled by Nazis now?

Cause that seperates the just from the beasts. It enables and perpetuates the beasts. I think that is the opposite of "just".

Why should dictators be treated any better than they treat the people over whom they rule?

That doesn't make sense. Bush cut off the oil because the U.S. had intelligence that North Korea had a nuclear weapons program and had, therefore, already violated the agreement. When confronted with the evidence, North Korea admitted that they had been working on developing nuclear weapons for years (since the mid-to-late 90's apparently). Bush didn't cause the problem; he exposed it. And it wasn't the change in policy which created the problem; it was the original policy itself which was ridiculously naive. History has repeatedly shown that appeasing dictators does not work. Instead of negotiating we'll give you a bunch of stuff if you just promise to behave yourself , we should simply be telling them if you don't behave yourself, we'll make you wish you had.

Yes, both Clinton and Carter are Democrats. Democrats are always liberals although some like to call themselves moderates - meaning moderately liberal, I suppose. But liberals are not always Democrats. There are a handful of Republicans who are liberals. It seems that they will run as Republicans in places where conservatives have no hope of winning (i.e. "blue states" if you're familiar with popular U.S. political jargon). Many conservatives think Bush (and his father) are too liberal on some issues. Because the definition of conservative and liberal can vary greatly depending on context (including time and location), I'll post this link again to provide basic definitions in the U.S. political sense.

It seems that U.S. liberals have had a lot to do with it. In 1994, President Clinton, with apparently unsolicited help from ex-president Carter, made a deal in which North Korea received $4-6 billion to construct a pair of light-water nuclear reactors for generating electricity and 500,000 tons of fuel oil per year. In exchange, North Korea agreed to not build nuclear weapons. Of course, they started to work on developing nuclear weapons almost immediately, and this deal must have greatly improved their ability to do so. Carter later won a Nobel Peace Prize (that Prize is a joke - even Arafat won one). I don't think that North Korea using its nuclear weapons is the primary concern. The problem is that they are heavily into arms trafficking (they're also into counterfeiting and drug trafficking - nice regime over there). They could sell a nuclear device to Iran or some other Islamic jihad supporter. And those people would be quite eager to use it to destroy a city. They don't fear reprisal.