So Mitt Romney will get us to Mars first? Color me confused :)

I know this may be borderline blaphemy ... but I've always wanted a limited multiplayer component to those games. I generally play with a couple guys, mostly to drink beer and BS about life and our wives/kids and what not over the mic (in private chat of course wouldn't want to offend the tweens!) I guess it's mostly like a pokernight, but since we are now geographically dispersed it's conducted over an Xbox controller and microphone rather than a table and stack of cards.

Not interested in the MMORPG nonsense, too many people running around that we'd rather not interact with. We actually had high hopes for Two Worlds, but it was such a buggy POS that it was literally impossible to play. Think Oblivion done by interns.

But if someone could jump in and play as your follower I think it would really add to the game. Preferably 2-3 followers actually, so one of us wouldn't be left hanging :) The drop-in drop-out system could probably work something like Diablo 3 or Borderlands.

That said, for the love of Mara please don't let MP ruin it! No auction houses or anything of that nature!

Have you seen a pug? That guy was a genius :)

Problem is, more money buys better, brighter geeks.

Only if he sings "Chocolate Rain" ... *ducks

The problem generally isn't the communities of more than 1000, it's all the dispersed "neighborhoods" in the rural parts. Back in my hometown there's multiple rural parts that probably have around 500 or so people living in them, but they're all on between 5-20 acres ... with tracts of farmland thrown in for good measure. The houses will generally cluster in groups of 5 or 6 along a stretch of road, each one on multiple acres and these clusters will be a mile or two apart form each other. Thus far it hasn't been feasible (read profitable) to run cable lines out there between these dispersed clusters of houses and this is only a few miles (about 3-5) out of town where broadband is available. It's not like they are in the middle of nowhere, but they aren't organized into communities either.

If I still lived there I would want a house out there. It's a really good life, quiet, peaceful plenty of room for the kids and dogs to play. But in reality I would have to buy a house in town because of lack of broadband. My brother that still lives back home is currently in the same situation ... and he's buying in town.

I want to take one of these setups to an organic orchard and program it to shriek in agony when someone picks the fruit. That should give those vegetarian hippies something to think about!

In theory, more local congress-critters are more receptive to their constituents wants/needs than are the national politicians. For example, in my hometown they build the cores for ship/sub nuclear reactors (or is it nuculur ... lol). As you can imagine, it's a very pro-defense spending area and our local politicians do their best to make sure more subs/destroyers/carriers get built.

To make this expensive nasa stuff fly, us US-ians will need enough of the politicians to feel like their constituents have something to gain in the near/medium term from more investment in space exploration. Sadly, outside of the Cape and Houtson ... it's a bit of a hard sell. Sure everyone benefits in the long run, but short term? Really just those precious few congressional districts see any appreciable gain.

What about the moon landing? Well everyone seemingly benefited because we beat those evil commie soviets and showed them who's boss. So I guess here in 'Merica we need one of two things: money to be made and/or a villain to defeat.

I do personally feel that knowing how one is doing relative to their peers is important. Why? Because in life you want to do BETTER than your peers! Everything that matters in life is based on competition. (OK, not everything ... everything that isn't the subject of a Beatles song or 50.) Competition is the basis for earning scholarships, jobs, promotions etc. You've got to be better than the next guy to get ahead, it's just a (somewhat sad) fact of life.

Knowing that you are "setting the curve" is a good feeling. It lets you know that you're doing a good job, and that you're doing it better than everyone else. In the later grades, it lets you know you're likely to get into better schools than the average Joe. In college running at the head of your class is a pretty good indication of how likely you are to get the best job upon graduation (or any at all).

If you're not one of those kids setting the curve, don't kid yourself into thinking you'll end up better off than those who do. You won't get the scholarship, job or promotion ... they will. (Statistically controlling for character defects and nepotism of course.)

Letting our kids pretend they aren't in FIERCE competition with everyone around them isn't doing them any favors. Sure it may extend childhood a bit which is nice, but life will bitchslap them later on.

I'll be raising my daughter and son that's on the way to know that Johnny So-and-so did better than them on the test because they worked harder. That they lost the game because the other team practiced harder. That if they want to win next time they need to work harder. If they don't want to put in the effort they can't expect the rewards. It actually makes me quite sad, because it would be easier and more fun to just smile and say they're special and unique and blah blah blah ... but that won't prepare them for life.

No you couldn't. They're detecting what device it is and switching it to a smartphone plan if it detects a smartphone on the other end. At least this was the case when I looked into buying a cheapie android off of newegg without a plan.

Here's a wild guess ;)

Marketing budget / sales = $450
$49 cost from an advertisement

Until she starts to drive and has trouble staying awake on the highway ... meaning her husband has to do ALL the driving more than 1/2hr away. My in-laws used to put my wife to sleep with the "drive around until she's asleep" method. I'm convinced that's why she gets really drowsy on the highway. On the plus side at least she isn't critiquing my driving all the time..

Very true, but I hope that I can instill in my daughter enough self-confidence and common sense that she'll be able to brush this type of stuff off as the worthless ramblings/rants of people who are lashing out because they are subconsciously aware that they are "peaking" in HS ... and life is all downhill for them.

Everyone had to deal with this type of stuff growing up in one way or another. How one dealt with it says quite a lot about their character or lack there of. Dealing with assholes is a fact of life that will never go away and a life skill that we all sadly must learn. Thankfully my daughter is only 3 and I've got a while before I need to deal with this type stuff.

I very much agree that there is currently a large failure in schools to mitigate these situations in meatspace. I really think they're harping about the "cyber" part of it because there's a paper trail for them to fall back on.

... that sissies are not allowed on the internet. Is trolling/cyber-bullying bad, sure it is and I'm not condoning it. It's just sad that people are so thin-skinned that some goobers in politics feel the need to attempt to outlaw trollish comments!

Of course this probably has nothing to do with cyber-bulling or trolling and likely has everything to do with stopping leaks, dissent and general repression of free speech. After all, there is no speech more free than anonymous speech. Are they banning anon tips to the police and anon letters to the editor as well?

Nah. They'll keep the current price, just limit it and charge crazy punitive overage charges. Say it's $50 a month right now for unlimited. In the future it'll be $50 for the first (insert arbitrary but low # of gb) and probably $5 for every gb after that.

You didn't truly think this was going to save the consumer any money did you?