I learned on alice YEARS ago, and I remember my first project was a fps (enemies would run at you, and melee you when they got close, gun bound to camera bound to wasd with a little sphere projectile as a bullet that killed what it touched, etc) and the second was a maze type thing with things that tried to kill you. You can make legitimate, fun games with alice (not that mine were) and I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn how to code.

I'm not an expert, but I would bet that you want the windshield to be as strong as it can be, while still being able to safely shatter. That way it absorbs maximum kinetic energy in the event of a crash.

I wonder if there's some legal fun to be had with the points that "never expire."

I think WoW got it right with their 2 weeks or level 20 cap, for free. By level 20, you get to experience a couple of primary factors in the game, like pvp, different zones, dungeons, etc. and it was plenty of time to decide whether or not you'd enjoy leveling to max. Of course, it gave no insight into arena or raiding, but no one decides to start playing WoW and spend 100+ hours getting to max level just to do max level stuff. While that may be the main draw, I highly doubt there is anyone who would enjoy that and would hate their first level to max.

I think the goal isn't to have free and paying players coexisting, the goal is to make the free players want to spend their money. I forgot what you were talking about at this point but wrote enough that I think I should post anyway. Sorry, everyone.

Probably the executive level guys did the math, and found out that between maintenance staff and servers, there wasn't a whole lot of extra cash that could go towards paying their 200k+ salaries, and decided it would be better to give themselves a nice bonus than to continue with the game.

Audio advertisements? That's unforgivable. It's not hard to look away, but we hear everything, and the day I get an ingame audio advertisement is the day I *some generic statement.*

great catch! I missed it. As did (I'm assuming) all above posters.

What about, say, Starcraft 2 - a compelling single player story, with totally unrelated excellent multiplayer game? The two are not mutually exclusive. It's just that all too frequently the way the devs go about writing it is either "Let's get this multiplayer thing down and then add some story" or "Let's take our single player stuff and make it online."

/rant

As an enthusiastic fan of multiplayer gaming, let me be the second to say that Windows Live is perhaps the stupidest, most awkward, piece of crap to have ever been designed for gaming. It is inane, it removes functionality, it insists on running in the background while providing no added value, and it screws up everything. Until microsoft realizes what a useless, stupid, infuriating platform this is, they are essentially shooting their pc games in the feet, knees, stomach, and at least a few other vital organs. Please fix this, as some games (Batman Arkham Asylum, Bioshock 2) are actually worth playing were it not for the idiocy that is Windows Live.

/rant

And of course, because myspace = "my space" i.e. a place to put your things, and facebook = a book of faces... they aren't JUST made up names, they are actually pretty good descriptions. Unfortunately OSSFacebook isn't as catchy and probably is infringement.

I spent most of high school sitting in boring classes teaching myself physical skills while some teacher droned. One was holding my breath (started ~45s, finished ~3min). One was writing efficiently (i.e. writing e by making a single trace, rather than the c + horizontal line that I learned with). And one was writing (passably) with my left hand. I assure you - write 5 spiral notebook pages of a single letter each day, and your bad hand will quickly learn to write. After 3 years, I could write almost as well with my left as with my right (oddly enough, the left looks like a younger person mimicking the right).

I'm inclined to agree - he sensationalizes the whole time, yet never explains why the game is impossible to play with one's right hand.

It's too bad we call him POTUS (POH-tuhs) rather than POTUSA (poh-TOO-sah) sounds much funnier.

Let me put my opinion into a mathematical analogy (it'll make sense). Let's say there's a big graph. Y Axis is "How great your country is" in some sort of measurement. X Axis is time. We move right on the graph as time moves forward. Right now, the US function may be at/near the top of the graph. However, the derivative of the US function is negative. In fact, if the derivatives of all the nation's position functions were graphed, we would be pretty close to the bottom. Sure, there are some countries (like African ones that just had a coup, or something) that may be falling faster than us, but our derivative is negative and big. And more importantly, our second derivative is negative, and it's also very negative. We are going to get worse faster than we have been, is basically all that means.

Some analysis of that: Position (where we are right now) we rank 1st, let's say. Speed (what's being done right now) we are going in the wrong direction, and we are heading there quickly. Acceleration (what's going to happen to the speed) is also headed in the wrong direction, and its also getting more negative quickly. To translate this to the real world, position is our current set of laws. Speed is the laws that are getting passed that are dropping our position (right to privacy, open government, etc), and acceleration is really public opinion - a positive acceleration with a very negative speed means that the population realizes things are bad, and they are trying hard to change it for the better. An acceleration of zero means people are happy with the direction the country is going in, or at least they don't care enough to change it. Negative acceleration means people are actively setting the stage for the next batch of politicians to be even worse than the current ones.

It may be lengthy, but I like using these three criteria as a means of rating government. When people tell me America is the greatest, I agree, but then explain how it won't be very soon. Most people disagree at first, but after some arguing, most people agree with the acceleration argument, and probably half (democrats, mainly) agree with the speed.

I think most of slashdot is pretty clear on the fact that it's against the law - the general consensus here though is that the law is wrong.