I tried the original, and I tried the revamped version. I honestly couldn't get through the 45 minutes of intro before I could do anything interesting. Then when I got there, the combat just kinda felt... meh. I have 1 friend who plays and enjoys it, so maybe it gets better. I just didn't feel like giving too much time after everything leading up to that point.

I still think I'd be far more worried about the Russian doomsday machine that was actually built. Though, I suppose given this day and age its usage is growing more and more unlikely.

Correct. I know that at, for instance, T-Mobile a customer must be the one to hang up, or give explicit instructions that they are finished with the call. Otherwise, the CSR cannot hang up the phone or they risk losing their job. This ended up being an issue for T-Mobile employees in our area because they started getting calls from elderly folks/shut ins who just wanted someone to talk to, and they'd hang on the line for 2-3 hours refusing to hang up. The rep is powerless to hang up if the person on the line hasn't initiated hanging up. Not sure if the same applies to Comcast or not (or if the T-Mobile policy has changed).

AFAIK Comcast is not a public utility. Not sure about centurylink.

The bulk of Comcast support is handled in Colorado. They do hire some contractors but for the most part they work domestically. Granted, I only deal with Comcast Business class services, so maybe we have different tier1 folks.

So what you're saying is this may be a good time to invest in companies that make bottled water or purification systems.

I'll get rated down for this, but I agree with you. People don't want to look at a lot of hard facts. We currently have about 7.046 billion people alive (based on 2012 numbers). Our global human population is increasing by approximately 1.1% annually, which means we will double to 14 billion people in 63 years (following the rule of 72). Nearly about 870 million people are currently suffering from chronic malnourishment. 780 million lack ready access to water. Realistically, do we think logistical changes to provide food and water for another 7 billion people are possible in the next 63 years? Another 14 billion in 128 years? Another 28 billion in 193 years? Worse, some countries see growth rates as high as 1.8%, which would shorten that doubling rate to about 40 years. Exponential growth is a bitch. While ebola is no where near a nice way to go, a pandemic that wipes out a significant portion of the world may be preferable to experiencing water and food wars that will occur if we aren't able to institute logistics to provide for the constant influx of mouths to feed. Otherwise, we are going to be looking at global population controls within our childrens' or our grandchildrens' lifetimes.

Madagascar has closed their ports.

FYI, I'm a Comcast engineer. All CPE management interfaces (the interface between the CMTS and the CM) are moving to IPv6 and should be transitioned by the end of the summer. The only remaining devices with the CMM interface still running on IPv4 are a handful of business class devices which should be converted by september. Beyond that, any modem which runs DHCP on LAN interfaces is running in either IPv4 or dual stack mode, though the ultimate plan is to move everything to IPv6 eventually.

How did that work out for you?

That's great, but it doesn't really tell you anything about how the parts work :)

Sadly that's not going to happen until people put more priority on other people than they do on invisible lines that old dead people drew that really have no purpose other than making us hate each other.

Really, that's all they need to do to secure funding. "We have reliable intelligence saying that somewhere, some how, space terrorists will act terroristly."

What about my welcome?

People don't understand how important GPS is these days. Loran has been more or less shuttered, so there's no real backup. The part that really scares me is that oil rigs are held stationary by massive rotors. Those rotors are controlled by GPS. If they lose signal, imagine every oil rig on earth suddenly snapping off the top of the oil pipelines that are below them. Imagine hundreds of deepwater horizon style events across the entire world.