The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens . . . can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea . . . But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. . . The research . . . shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. . . . if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments. . . . . . democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."
As Sir Winston Churchill said: Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Eve handles large scale battles just fine. The problem is, the term "large scale battle" gets redefined every time their network code gets updated. Over the past few months there have been dozens of large scale battles with less players in this particular matchup, but still having hundreds more players than would be possible in years past.
As for only having 8 hours a week to play, eve is probably one of the most casual-friendly games out there. Skills train whether you're online or not. All ships, even the basic newbie ships which require virtually nil resources and training time play a role.
He hacked the logins which is pretty much equivalent to hacking an email account. The eve online thefts were all perpetuated via in-game mechanisms and since the game's terms state that all in-game items are property of the maker of the game, there was no actual IRL theft to prosecute.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein