Station wagon? Is that like the paddy wagon?

Probably, I use self-destructing cookies on any and all cookies that are installed on my computer. Most of them are deleted the moment I leave the website, a few that I really need, are allowed to persist until I close the browser, and only one or two is allowed to remain after I close the browser. Most of the time, I wind up with random ads, assuming I get them at all.

I can't recall the last time I actually clicked on one of those links, and I don't think I've ever bought anything as a result of one of those ads. I do however sometimes put companies on my "do not buy from" list for shitty ads and the ones where they're clearly lieing even more than usual.

You can blame spammers for that. Unfortunately, there aren't very many ways of limiting who makes accounts that don't leave some people out of the loop.

Unless you botched your post, that's not at all what you were saying. Rehashes and sequels sell tons of copies in large part because that's what the audience demands. They've played the previous game or they've played the spiritual predecessor and you get a shit load of word of mouth, whether or not the new game is any good.

That's why a game like GTA V can sell $800m when it first releases. People are already familiar with the game.

Truth be told studios prefer to release new games that are innovative, it's just incredibly hard to pass up on the relatively easy money that comes from a sequel to a new game that they did. Don't you think that the studios would love to all be releasing revolutionary games every release? Seems to me that being the guy that invented the platformer or was the first to figure out how to use real 3D would be rather rewarding, beyond the megabucks.

Not going to happen any time soon. You don't seriously want a plastic replacement part for your fender or bumper, do you?

I don't agree, KS has a huge variation in the kinds of projects that are being funded. Some of them are so simple that they can scarcely fail. A book where it's been written and the author is just looking to fund the printing. Or a sunglasses design where all the details have been worked out, but they need to buy a couple thousand to make it economical.

The problem is that people let themselves get wrapped up in the hype without having the time to do any research or access to much of the inside dirt on what's going on.

A lot of people don't realize that between taxes and the KS fees, that there's always 25% or so missing even before the project ships out the swag.

Not really, the reason for all the rehashes and sequels is that the people lending the money have some way of estimating what the IP is worth. There's a guaranteed audience that will give it a shot and you don't have to waste resources selling the concept. That safety is also a large part of why it so often doesn't work out well in terms of artistic merit.

Hollywood actually likes new stories, it's just that most of the new stories are garbage whereas the presold ideas like Spiderman 14 and Superman 1,000,000 are ones where they don't have to worry about filling seats long enough to get word of mouth going and don't have to count on advertising to get people in the theaters on release day.

Same goes there, when you're using a control scheme that players are familiar with and telling a story in a familiar format, it drastically cuts down on the risk. There's still a ton of innovation that's possible, but it's difficult to estimate the risks and rewards from doing so.

Not really, OLPC was never intended to be for sale in the developed world. Which always seemed to be a mistake. Offering a portion of the production for a bit of a mark up could have been good for everybody increased volume and the extra funds could have been used to subsidize units for the developing world.. The closes they did was that buy 2 get one deal. Which was stupid.

Which party is it that's in favor of cutting food stamps to give tax breaks to the rich?

Ballmer's rich, he may be a Democrat, but he has a vested interest in seeing that conservative policies are followed. As those policies are how he was able to accumulate so much wealth without contributing anything of value. Under a more liberal economic policy and regulatory set up, MS would never have been allowed to grow as big as it has, without earning that size. They would have been broken up in the late '90s when they used their size to stifle innovation across the industry.

Bottom line here is that it's the conservatives that are always trumpeting this sort of maladaptive business practice so that they can easily scare voters.

It makes sense because they previously had a fairly good mobile OS. I had it on my PDA about 10 years back, and it wasn't bad. The problem is that they failed to see the iPhone and Android coming and get a piece of the action.

Also, realize that they had 0% marketshare before the XBox was released, and now they're doing OK. They just missed one of those crucial moments in time with the mobile market and now they might never catch up.

The workers, and they must be punished with layoffs and having their bonuses suspended until they fix the problem of leadership.

What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity? Or you have a weak team where all of them are below average? You lose one of the better employees and one of the worst employees. But, it's not even a break even situation as stress and burn out will affect the stronger team more than the weak team.

Normally, I'd assume that you're trolling, but there's a lot of morons on here that view humans as replaceable machinery to be used and discarded on a whim because having a job is a "privilege" and not a right. But, without a decent job, you can't afford an apartment, food or anything beyond the most meager of necessities, because ZOMG we can't actually set up a system that will care for people that aren't already hugely wealthy.

The right wing's complete and utter incompetence on economic matters is threatening to render the US back to the 3rd world.

100% right now, but that will come down. Also, you're ignoring the cost of energy dependence on foreign nations. It costs 100% right now, but whenever there's a war or scuffle in the middle east, the price of oil goes up. The Russians regularly use their natural gas supplies to influence politics outside of Russia, and the Chinese have little control over solar cells that have already been deployed outside of China.

100% is a bit much, but it's hardly a full 100%, they do get some stuff for it and the longer the solar cells are up, the less the difference is.

Right now things are booming for North Dakota, but in the long run, oil is a dieing industry. We've been using oil at a rate that will take millions of years to replenish, so it's a matter of when we run out, not if.

At some point we'll either migrate to other forms of energy or we'll run out and be forced to migrate to other forms of energy. In the mean time, the oil industry will have foiled the air and the water and the land and there'll be bills related to shutting down and cleaning up.

Anytime you're reliant on one or two industries you're susceptible to downturn when that industry falls on hard times. Around here we learned that lesson in the '70s when Boeing was having a hard time, since then we've managed to regulate our fisheries back to good health, keep our timber industry going, as well as gain an IT industry with notables such as Nintendo, MS as Amazon having operations here.

And there's a crap load of precious medals buried in deep the earth's mantle and core, but it doesn't make it any more efficient to go for it. And those metals are tons more cost effective than anything you're going to find in space, even if we do solve the problem of the nearest planet being a full year away.