Sshhh! We're trying to push lifestyles and agendas here people, thinking is not allowed.

The problem is none of the mods are doing any transaction logging needed for catching cheaters. You can easily handles 200k players in 1 location when there are no checks against movement speeds, positional coherence, etc. This is a non-story at best.

Hey lets put this in perspective, remember all the people that were murdered by Christian extremists when Mel Gibson made that Passion of the Christ film? And lets not forget all those that died when the Last Temptation of Christ was released. Don't forget those murdered in the name of Christ when Andrew Loyd Webber released Jesus Christ Superstars and certainly have a moment of peace for those murdered every time South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and Comic Artists featured Jesus. I mean don't you remember the "Dogma" massacres as a result of of that film? When Penny Arcade featured Jesus as Metal don't you remember the number of attempts on their lives?

It's a religion of peace people, lets keep this in perspective. Don't let a small, vocal, organized, group of extremists pain a picture of a religion is evil. I am certain those responsible will be arrested by their fellow Muslims and prosecuted for murder by their fellow Muslims.

Now the question you have to ask, "am I being sarcastic, or playing this comment straight?"

No real space battles would happen at long distances. It would be too easy for counter-measures to be deployed at those ranges. At 1000 miles firing two missiles at opposing ships the counter-measures (either opposing missiles, flack, etc) would have several minutes to intercept and make adjustments. At a million, they'd have hours of making minor ( 1 degree) adjustments to intercept. The exception to this rule would be if laser weapons are involved. With conventional ballistics, not really an option for long range engagement. There is a funny but oddly realistic lecture in Mass Effect about shooting a projectile in space that also explains why long range engagements are not a real option. We're not even getting into gravity, plotting an accurate shot over a milion miles would have to account for every object of significant mass between the origin and target. Impractical at best.

When you were a child you played cowboy and indians or cops and robbers. Eventually the argument broke out "I shot you\no you didn't" and thus the first rules of RPGs was born. The actions were abstracted into semi-random determinations. You got two dice out and the highest roll wins.

Once that was done, like any game objectives were added. Rules were added to support resolving objects. RPGs progressed.

Then we needed a narrative to tie together the objectives and quests were born.

The rest is refinement to those basic cores.

Intellectual Sharecropping

"If we cannot own people, we'll own their thoughts and charge them for the privilege of thinking."
"The chains of bondage can be forged from more then iron and steel."
"Imagination is a dangerous force that allows people to dream of a better world without us."
"The most important factor in tyranny is to ensure a high cost of challenging it."

So this guy engages in espionage, breaks international protocol and violates the confidentiality of the Diplomatic Bag, and people actually expect governments to let him go free? Wikileaks has already cost lives by not consistently redacting names in their publications. As far as I am concerned a rape charges is the least of his worries.

" insane-right-wing Ayn Rand ideologue" and where did that come from? Why exactly is he mentally disturbed?

"...the answer to a personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators..."

Bluntly now they have an email and an sample of your secret question. Given a question of "What is your Mother's Maiden Name" then script kiddies now have your email address and one of your potential secret question responses. WTF wouldn't you hash the answers....

They now have an email address, your phone number, a secret answer response. Christ all might Activision.... way to fuck up. Now ever script kiddie with that data dump is going to spam every major site with those email address and now with at least one potential secret question response... just wow...

...did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding, the court may award the recovery of full costs to the prevailing party, including reasonable attorney’s fees, other than the United States...

All this bill does is give judges the ability to required the loser to pay up. The legal definition and use of the word MAY is very important. MAY gives the judge discretion, SHALL does not. IANALBMWIAPL and she says this effectively does nothing other then give a judge the same ability to require one side to pay up without having to dismiss the case with prejudice. Nothing more then giving the judge more tools to punish trolls.

(Shameless plug of sorts, apologies)

I DM'ed (Dungeon Mastered) RPGs for many (like 20) years and I learned a very important lesson I mention in some youtube vids I am throwing out there (not a full timer, I'm just documenting some stuff for posterity so-to-speak http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL42823901F978F00D&feature=mh_lolz) but I'll give you a specific relevant quote:

"Every detail you give a player, is one less detail they can imagine for themselves." Part of limiting graphics is, it allows a viewer or player's imagination more flexability. This is why I preferred Batman TAS' art direction more then say Fist of the North Star or Robot in the Shell anime (not that I disliked either of those). The more minimal art allowed me, mentally, to focus more on the movement, the framing, the scene as a whole, and gave me enough flexibility to flesh out the world without having every rat and piece of eye candy thrown at me.

It was an embarrassment to EA to say the least. They lost over 50% of their subscription base within 90 days actually surpassing the industry's worst launch\retention Warhammer. It was a single player game with an MMO bolted on and after everyone beat it in 30 days. less then 1/2 people bothered to subscribe.

Think of this as a resturant: 50% of the customers didn't like the food enough to come back. Doesn't sound good. Prior to Warhammer, retention at 90 days was about 80% by estimate with players usually averaging 6 months before attrition. The problem is with the market saturation the demographic changed when WoW came into the picture. The Old School MMO players (pre-WoW players) had a much longer attention span in regards to rewards. The pacing, the very core was a longer experience. A novel. WoW came along and transformed that experience into a Short Story. Both enjoyable in their own right, but with the advent of the Theme Park and Sandbox styles (rather then the Virtual World model of Everquest in contrast to say WoW or Eve respectively) and the addition of a structured tread mill. The demands to engage this new demographic are not, IMHO, sustainable via a subscription model.

The problem with F2P is without safeguards, every troll douche and his inbred cousin can just script up and troll, ban, repeat. F2P is a recovery and long tail approach to MMOs and I see the industry needs to change.

MMOs should be more like muds and Counter Strike servers. More intimate, targeting 200-300 people a shard and allowing people to "roll-their-own" shards much like a counter strike server. Transform the MMO industry into a hosting industry where a few of you "Roll-Your-Own" and throw in what mods you want then invite people. Open it public, set a level cap, or an age limit, customize some rules, or make it invite only. Oddly I am seeing an uptick in Muds once again courtesy of CoffeeMud and newer Diku\Merc\Rom derivatives. Maybe a second golden age of MMOs is coming, perhaps the MMO will die and the GMUD will be revived. Who knows.

What I can say is that the original demographic of EQ players are as a majority, parents (statistically, they should all now mostly be about 35 years old) and the time commitment for old school MMOs (you know Virtual Worlds rather then Theme Park\Sandbox MMOs) means devs are left with the ADHD FPS converts that can't stand waiting more then 4 seconds before something spawns.

We call it statistical 'profiling' and it happens to be illegal apparently.

Zip guns like that are movie fiction short of using a .22 LR round !!for now!!. The walls of the barrel would based on the material need to be about 4 inches thick, minimum. That would make his zip gun roughly the size of a bowling ball if he was using a 9mm round. Otherwise it would just explode in his hand since the pressure from the cartridge wouldn't be contained in the polymer barrel. Toyota is working on high-heat\high-pressure ceramics for engines and I tell you this: weapon manufacturers are looking at those materials for military equipment.

That skinny teen? Have you seen a recent picture of Trevon?