Agreed - the distribution of wealth in China makes 1%-ers look like child's play. As you mention, this is creating a ticking social time bomb as people inevitably harbor envy and resentment.

Another serious problem they have is the one-child policy creating major social issues. The obvious one is the gender ratio, which was something like 56% male last I heard. That means over 20% of guys are left out in the cold. Then there are less obvious things like how you now have 2 parents and 4 grandparents all focusing their attention on raising a single kid. This is creating a generation of incredibly spoiled and entitled children. The flip side of this is that a single person may have to support his parents and grandparents when they are older which is a not insignificant financial burden.

The bottom line is that China might have a promising economy from an outsider's perspective, but their society is massively dysfunctional. They might be able to be successful for a short period of time but in my opinion they are not built for long term success.

It's fairly safe to assume GW2 will be launching some time in the next few months. Maybe not by mid May, but then Blizzard is still first to market which doesn't really disprove my theory.

Also, the whole situation stinks of some suit forcing the devs to cut PvP in order to rush it out the door in time to match up against the anticipated Guild Wars 2 release date.

We certainly have a lot of other things that start with "idio-" though...

According to this, he will be half English, half Native American.

Most don't realize that in modern pop/rock music, you don't need a good singer, or a technically superior guitarist to get national. But if your drummer (and bassist, as part of the rhythm section) sucks, you're going no where... ever.

The White Stripes say hi.

Maybe he's just trying to properly convey that this situation is no laughing matter.

Bill Gates, I believe.

More like if car companies also were in control of all gas stations, gave you a car for free, and charged $15/gallon for gas.

The genius of the Wii was that instead of having to fight with Sony and Microsoft for market share, Nintendo basically went and found a whole other market (casual gamers). Where they didn't think this through is that casual gamers are not the kinds of people who upgrade their consoles every generation, especially one with expensive hardware like the Wii U's new controller. Time will tell but the next console generation is probably going to seal Nintendo's fate.

Oops, formatting fail:

• EU November 18, 2011
• NA November 20, 2011
• JP November 23, 2011
• AU November 24, 2011

According to Wikipedia: EU November 18, 2011 NA November 20, 2011 JP November 23, 2011 AU November 24, 2011 As you can see, Japan is in fact not first, and the proximity of the release dates doesn't seem to fit in with your theory that working on localizations is the reason for the staggered launches.

I say solely, you say soley.

What's going on is that SW:TOR and GW2 are going to be out within the next 6 months or so. Pandas are basically their "in case of fire, break glass" plan.

I actually wonder about this. Seems to me that technology has made the 2nd amendment much less impactful. 250 million armed civilians won't get you very far against tanks and fighter jets.