... and we got half or even less of what people expected with iPad.

The answer is simple really.

The politicians in government want to spend our money. Don't be surprised that those guys who sell/install those screening devices are politicians' pals or pals of pals. This happens all the time. The "security" part is just a smokescreen and a distraction so you see those devices as a necessity. I bet they cost a fortune by the way.

True enough, and I was considering that answer while writing my previous post. But they did take more than five years for it and Cataclysm isn't released yet anyway. Moreover, I would venture a guess that half of the original population isn't even playing WoW anymore. And we'll see what we will get because they like to promise a lot of things for the "next expansion" which gets implemented later or unfortunately never.

My point was though, that even if WoW (the biggest MMO) has problems improving stuff which is already there, I'm not that certain that smaller MMOs will improve stuff more readily. But I could be wrong of course, wouldn't be the first nor the last time.

I just can't agree with the second sentence. Take WoW for example. Of course it was tweaked thousand times, but huge building blocks of the game world didn't change a bit 4 years after even if they were broken or just hastily put together at launch. The only thing they did change was for things people were absolutely screaming about and that was usually class balance, some itemization, nerfing dungeons etc. They did put a lot of *new* stuff, but it is my observation that they didn't put much effort in improving stuff that is already there.

Maybe it is unnatural to you but I still have to find more natural/faster way to zoom in/out on a touchscreen device. It is that good.

IIRC the problem isn't with the quality of the photos themselves, it is the problem with the application which is horrendously slow. And that doesn't help at all with taking the photos.

You can have both. iPhone proves that easily. It is kinda ironic because just few years ago apple fanboys were all having their heads in the sand shouting that nothing will ever surpass ipod or a standalone media player. You can pull up that old argument how specialized hardware is always better than general purpose hardware but in this case (of general day to day cellphone use) I just don't buy it. Finally, trying to defend a company who made a crappy piece of software (media player) when at the same time they could have made it 100 times better is a rationalization.

The GP was thinking of a thin plastic film they put on the shop windows usually. The same is used for tinting car windows, but those are usually transparent. My friend installs those and are very hard to break. The window may crack but will not disintegrate so they still need to get through. They would need a car probably to ram it, but using a brick wouldn't help them in that case.

I'm quite puzzled now because I just formatted my sandisk stick which had u3 so the virtual cd and all other software just went away.

Good old format (insert linux equivalent) doesn't work?

Shaped, sized and weighted like a nonpocketable brick? Check.

The summary describes the first part of our parking system well. That means when you park at the (pay for) parking space you have to go to the parking machine (which is generally near), insert some coins, get a ticket and put it on the dashboard.

But there is another, "more smarter way". You pay by sending a text message.

Lets say you park in the first zone (there are 5 zones afaik which have different prices), you just send a sms to 8511 (the last digit is the zone, the first three are the same always) with your licence plate. You immediately receive a confirmation sms and off you go. The amount is billed to your monthly bill with the mobile provider, or if you have prepaid, you are immediately billed. After an hour you will get another sms telling you that the time you paid for is expiring so you can just resend the last sms and the time will extend. The guys who check if you have paid the parking fee, walk up to your car, and if you don't have the ticket on the dash check by sending an sms to a parking server. They immediately receive confirmation if you paid by sms.

This is a great system and many people pay that way because it is so simple and convenient. You can even save your sms parking message as a template so you don't even have to enter it when you park, you just send it when you need to. Moreover, the mobile providers have put sim applications which enable you just to enter the parking zone (0-4) and licence plate for the first time. And did I mention that the price is pretty much the same as the normal ticket price?

It is easy to answer, those already present goblins/worgen will get different tribe names (some of them already have). There will be quests to explore why you have to kill them by the thousands (probably some eeeevil magic or potion or whatever). It is not a difficult thing to solve actually.

Completely agreed.

The players who profited the most with pvp gear was the ones who started arenas (5's mostly) immediately after they were introduced. Then just had to ride the wave and they always had the best pvp gear in game and with little effort. Those guys who started a bit later with arenas just got completely destroyed and that is mostly because of gear imbalance. Then I had to go back in battlegrounds to get some gear and then that epic gear through honor was introduced. But still it would be a total lie that type of gear was easy to get. It wasn't. It required a hell of a bg-time and tons of honor which was difficult to acquire if the opposite faction was winning almost every game. So after a few months almost any serious pvp-er outside of arenas had epic gear (which was still quite significantly worse then arena gear). But then those pvp seasons ruined almost all because they went by faster than I could get gear from battlegrounds, so it was perpetual grind and a big lag behind to get better gear. That was the reason I quit because I hated that grind and I hated the 4 battlegrounds which I visited 40million times.

And more importantly, they have a collection of games which can only be played at the same console so they can either sell them at a loss or get another identical console.

Yeah, judging from the trailer it is a bad breed between SW: episode 2 and some Disney's Pocahontas or whatever.

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm simply stating the obvious problem with the money gained from the selling the oil. The linked article says so as well clearly. Of course american people are footing the bill because if they didn't, the invasion would seem like a destroy, capture, and get out. And any higher moral ground would be lost in an instant (as if they had any though). So of course that they went with some reconstruction to keep the moral high ground. And some politicians of course concluded that iraqis should pay with their own oil the reconstruction. This is where my analogy from my original post kicks in. It is "oh so well, but we are rebuilding the country and installing democracy". As the army didn't see that the infrastructure was very well destroyed.

And you may repeat 1000 times that the iraq is totally in control of itself but I just can't believe that. If anything I have learned from history is that when you conquer a country you don't just leave completely. You invade for a reason. And the reason is well known and pretty obvious. And I don't want to defend that point because cubic kilometers are written about it. And not you nor I don't actually know what is going on with the iraqi government but the reality is not so simple and good mannered as you want to picture it.

Concerning your twisted misrepresentation of my example. Firewalls aren't a crucial resource of a country. If say US controlled all the water in China, yes, that would be a great problem for china. And as CIA could approve or stop and action of croatia's military (which is a crucial country's asset), then croatia wasn't really sovereign nation.

Concerning the socialism in jugoslavia under tito, I'm not relevant much because I was born 2 years after he died ('80/'82). But I know the effects which croatian population inherited from jugoslavia. Socialized healthcare is probably the best one. But last couple of years (even more so these days) the government is dismantling it for the "private model" (aka american model, yes the horrible version). Of course the insurance companies are lobbying for them and there is pretty much noone to counterweight them (common sight for any issue). We inherited rampant corruption (one of the most corrupt countries in the world) which is eating the country alive. Add that the biggest employer in the country is the state. There are not only corrupt politicians, but pretty much every government service is corrupted to the bone. Healthcare is one of them. It is not about money strictly, it is about favour for a favour. And this is completely "normal", because well, they are doctors, and they "save lives" so of course one is morally "obliged" to give something to them. I can go on and on, but nobody cares anyway.

Your question was if the socialism under tito was any good? I'll just answer you that the general consensus is it wasn't like in other western european countries, but it was far better than in russia or some other socialist eastern european countries. But well, now we have democracy and capitalism (probably a minimal definition), and pretty much everything is owned by foreign corporations. Big import, no export, no real economy. But croatia gets the loans which it cannot repay so the (foreign) banks just take the villas by the sea, extremely valuable terrain etc. As long as they can get terrain and islands, croatia will get loans. When the banks (an then european rich people) buy out everything the money will stop coming. But you cannot blame the corporations only, the politicians make that happen because I know first hand they are in the pockets of foreign companies.