70% of Americans are ready for the next generation of technology!

Actually I have a masters in CS.
But real coding is art, and I have mostly liberal views, so you're not far off.

Wow, I really hate looking at life in purely monetary terms. I didn't really think (much) about money when I decided to go to college. I was looking forward to the life experiences; the learning, the discussions with the professors, the companionship, last but not least, the parties.

It's important to have enough money to get by, beyond that, it's the life experiences that matter, not if your college degree was "worth it" in terms of money lost vs. money gained.

Actually, real incomes (inflation adjusted) in Germany have been almost stagnant in Germany as well, in contrast with other west European countries. Some say this is the reason that has allowed Germany to keep low unemployment and booming economy while the rest of Europe has been moving downward or sideways at best.

I know about the Military-Industrial-Complex. The thing is that, as soon as you mention it, many conservatives will put a label on you "socialist conspiracy nutjob" and move on. It's the truth, but many conservatives have been conditioned to shut off the critical thinking bits in their brains when certain words or phrases appear, which are dangerous to their ideals.

Similar thing with "Bush". If you dare to suggest that the clusterfuck that is going on in Iraq right now is the result of Bush's misguided policies, the conservative brain shuts down and will start ridiculing you about how everything is Bush's fault. If you want to reach out to conservatives you have got to learn how to get across information without using any of these trigger words.

Yes. Your millionaire breeding grounds are popular for those who can afford them, further enforcing the enormous divide between rich and poor that exists in the U.S.

The other 98% get left behind.

World War 2 dragged the U.S. out of recession. Since then, the military and all the ecosystem surrounding it has become a cornerstone of U.S. economy The modern idea is not to win wars, but to have perpetual war. A reason to pump all that tax money into U.S. arms industries, making some people rich and allowing many others to keep their jobs; workers, engineers, managers, contractors, lobbyists.

To enable this "economic system" that puts money into military instead of more productive endeavors or social welfare, you need a constant threat. A constant legitimacy to put money into defense and a patriotic citizenship to go along with it.

Difficulty of running the original game? I suppose perhaps they started their project before the age of Dosbox. I mean, you can even buy the original XCom's on Steam these days.

What would be really nice is if they now started improving on the original. And what would just be incredibly awesome is, if they would merge XCom and Terror From the Deep into one game with both assets, land and sea bases... extreme X-Com awesomeness in a single package.

Not really. My Slashdot name is a symbol of my existence in this simulation - it's imperfect, and I can't have everything that I want. If this were not the case I would feel bored very soon and loose interest in this life. It's the way it has to be.

You don't really have to stretch your sample size to encompass the entire universe. Our galaxy is big enough and contains enough stars to make the fermi paradox a viable thought experiment.

Intelligent life is not enough. You don't see dolphins or the hyperintelligent jellyfish that really do exist in the depths of the abyss building spaceships. You need some kind of limbs that are not completely useless too.

Nice theories. The real reason is of course, that this universe is a simulation designed for me, you're all figments of my imagination and whoever programmed this system simply didn't bother to include aliens.

Charlton Heston says monkeys will inherit the Earth. Again.

Charlton Heston says it's ok for humans to condescend on humanity.

My 486 DX2 had a turbo button which was really useful (turned off) to run all my old 286 games, which were not frame limited.