Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (Resurrection)

My deepest condolences to you Paul.

@dinosaur:

Yea, I remember those days too.  The best game out there was a text based Star Trek game called Space Wars because of possible copyright infringement.  It took about one minute to make a single move or fire a torpeedo.  If you warped into a sector with more than two Klingon ships, you’d better use phasers and knock them out in a single salvo or you may not get a second chance.

We had that game on our high school PDP-8 computer.  The key was to do a scan of the entire universe so you knew where the klingon’s were.  We had a grid made the represented that universive size, and could determine the number of units to warp to each occupied space.  Also used photon torpedos to pick off individual klingon ships instead of phasers that used lots of power.

I believe we did clear the galaxy once, but it was a lot of work to do so!

I saw it at your house, remember?
When they were picking on R. Kelly

Thank G-d! That explains everything. :D

Ooh ooh! Thankew vewy mucho, dz!! Ewe r sew kynd.

Jeepers :) I think we can all agree that “ctm” is right. Let’s leave it at that

I think most of the backing came due to two facts:
(1) the USSR needed reforms, that was obvious.
Still, they probably wanted a long term leader that could be influenced => a younger one, after the two short reigns of Andropov and what-was-his-name… Probably, the influentials wanted some change, but surely not that much that it would threaten their power-base, one of the reasons for the coup that failed due to Jelzins help for Gorbachev.
(2) The general secretary and all the other positions he fills made him the most powerful man in the USSR. Probably, whoever put Gorbachev into place, underestimated him. Pretty much the same underestimation that Hitler faced when he was appointed Chancellor, but luckily Gorbachev used that to reform positively, and i consider the new freedom of information, the right to ask wether the party is right and that the crucial reform.

So, I don’t think that there was “real” backing, i believe Gorbachev was kind of a compromise candidate, kind of a makeshift. Of course, once he was into power, you ccouldn’t remove instantly, that would have meant that the party made a mistake (which was not “allowed” before Gorbachev). And he was clever enough to stay into power, and use his popularity at the beginning (which soon, after the economy started to collapse openly, was reduced to more or less nothing) to enforece the reforms.

And you don’t think we oppose them too? But so far, no hate crimes have been committed or buildings exploded. I say that would be Democracy at work.