Well how many distractions could there be while filling out aOOOH SHINY!

Here's a mental exercise for the problem. Treat all your data sources like they were petulant little children. All of them are screaming for your attention, and you should acknowledge they exist, but you can only actually pay attention to one at a time. Once you've fixed one child's problem as well as you can, move on to the next one. If that child starts screaming again, well, you'll get back to him at some point in the rotation. If one of the children comes up to you and he's lit on fire, prioritize!

Guess you're going to have to quit /. because we're using vanilla http at the moment as well.

Nonsense. All Blizzard products are the same. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to play some World of Diablo: Starclysm.

The main developers are making somewhat easier games (with difficulty settings) because that's the way the market works. If you make every game require the same level of memorization, reflexes, and skill as Battletoads, a large portion of people are going to stop buying your games pretty quickly. They're a business, they have to make money, so no surprise here that they try to cater to the larger demographic.

There are, however, independent developers who are still making difficult games. They don't have to answer to the bottom-line so much. Some of them even do it for fun. If you want a difficult challenge, go looking around for IWBTG and its ilk. Theyr'e not hard to find, and they won't cost you anything, except perhaps the keyboard you broke in half.

Well, everyone organizes things differently and has different mannerisms. What works well for one person might work poorly for another, and what's great for one group is not neccessarily good for another. The default configuration might be a solid general solution, but in game development you shouldn't figure the general solution is the optimal one for all your players.

I know the meat of this discussion is on the next expansion and the map editor, but the comment about the 1.2 patch boggles my mind. This is StarCraft. A game which is taken so seriously in competition that we actually measure a player's actions per minute. Who at Blizzard had the bright idea to disallow full hotkey mapping, and did he get canned for overlooking a "feature" which should be blatantly obvious?

I dunno, maybe they split up the work load. Maybe there's a lead software engineer for implementing the Zerg, the Protoss, the Terrans, the single-player engine, and the multiplayer backbone. Then all five of them report to and coordinate with the [insert title here] of the project. I don't know much about business hierarchies, but that's just one possibility which occured to me.

I think your last sentence is the real kicker. We could come up with a TLD that costs less than a .com, but if it doesn't have the recognition factor, it's not going to matter. People will use what they're familiar with and tend to avoid the unknown.

Nah, I just do improv a lot, and so have a very quick mind. ...maybe my mind glows in the dark? o_o;

So how long until I start getting spam messages about how I can use this to make my penis glow in the dark?

You're absolutely right! He could have manufactured the tools neccessary to collect the bacteria, found the bacteria, collected them, manufactured the tools to process the bacteria, and collect all the Butanol he could have possibly needed to get back home in time for dinner. It's so obvious!

Except for, you know, the fact that would take an incredibly long time and he'd be killed long before he succeeded.

Sue Marcellus Gilmore Edson.

Actually, you did say legislation only. I'm looking at your post right now and you mention nothing outside of legislation.

Also, considering I do work for state right now, I have an idea of the magnitude of personal information is held by the government. I see how protected it is. I see how significant it is. I won't even say my experience on the issue. You say yourself that more important data is less protected. What does that tell you about making a relation for voter information in a database?

Right, because legislation prevents crimes from happening. That's why we bulldozed all the jails. Oh, wait...

Secret ballots ultimately exist to stifle coercion. Of course, it still happens, but said coercers would actually have to be in the booth with you while you voted to know for sure whether or not you bent to pressure.