I wanted to like Hawken, but to me, there was no sense whatsoever of being in a vehicle. You accelerate like a person, you run like a person, you stop like a person. I didn't feel like I was in a mech, I felt like I was wearing a weird helmet and had a jetpack. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but I went in looking for a mech game, and Hawken simply is not a mech game, it's a straightforward first-person shooter where the player models look like mechs.

DCS World. The game (with one plane, a Russian Su-25 ground attack aircraft) is free on Steam, with other aircraft available as modules. Although it's still in beta, I recommend the UH-1 Huey module. I just take off and cruise around. Sometimes I'm doing 200kph just ten feet above the ground, sometimes I soar up and over mountains and drift down into canyons at a lazy 60kph and then touch down on a rooftop in a small town. Sometimes I stick some enemy trucks a couple hundred kilometers away, and when I notice them, I tell the gunners to fire at will, just so I can see four miniguns firing before calling it a night. It's very immersive and relaxing. (It has a campaign, but if I just want to chill, I use the mission editor to create a mostly-empty map.)

A means of mass-ignoring the overwhelming majority of posters who hate the redesign? Based on Dice's attitude so far, they might go for this.

Because they said they're slowing down, not backing down. We say "scrap the whole thing, it can't be saved" and they say "we won't force it down your throat until we think we can get away with it." Until they give a little more ground than that, we'll have to keep pointing out that what they're saying and doing are unacceptable.

I was an avid /.'er for a good decade and change before wandering off for a while. I've been popping by to lurk, but hadn't posted a comment in years. This beta thing is really disturbing. I thought I could always come home to Mother Slashdot. I thought /. was invincible. I thought it would Always Be, that it could not be undone, that the mutual gravity we all create would bind Planet Slashdot together forever. I forgot that there are Stupidity Supernovas that can scatter our electrons far and wide.

It looks like that's probably going to happen, but let's try to coalesce afterwards. We'll create a lot more light as a star than a nebula.

The alternative to Javascript is the absence of client-side scripting, not a different language. I can't speak for everyone who's finicky about JS, but I personally prefer spartan information delivery to a luxurious interface. Also, I keep like 60 tabs open at a time, and if they're inert documents, we don't have a problem, but if they're all running scripts periodically, it adds up. Where it's possible to not use JS, I prefer to disable JS primarily for performance reasons.

You know how all the feedback is negative, except for one or two mild approvals? Please pay attention to that ratio. I just messed with my AdBlock Plus filters to block ads displayed via Slashdot. I'm not sure I got it 100% right, but I'm quite certain I'll get there before your "beta" approaches usability. I'll go back to allowing your ads when I've heard definitive confirmation of the termination of this project. I'm not saying you can't try again, I'm just saying that what you've got so far is broken beyond repair, and cannot be salvaged. Start over. Or don't; the Classic site is just fine. Seriously, kill this off. First with bullets, then with knives, then with acid, then with fire, then with a leaf blower to scatter this disaster harmlessly in the wind.

I pay $60/mo for a pretty decent but still only residential-class internet connection, and last night my torrents were coming down at 1.6MB/s sustained, with 30-60 second spikes of 2.3MB/s. I think you need to find better torrents.

Where the hell are you getting this from? Why do you think that activation on Steam precludes you from upgrading your PC, changing your OS, etc? And why do you think that "arbitrary conditions" from Creative Assembly will stop you from playing the game?

FYI, Steam needs you to go online once to download/activate the game, and after that, you're pretty much free and clear. Every few weeks your Steam "ticket" will expire, and you'll have to go back online for all of 5 seconds to log in again. You can install it on a different PC. You can format & reload, and re-install it on the same PC. You can go from XP to Vista to Linux/WINE to the Windows 7 Beta, and Steam will allow you to install your game. (Whether the game itself will run well/at-all under certain environments is a different matter, but also not related to Steam.)

Some Steam games come with third-party DRM. I don't think Empire is one of them, but I haven't checked. Far Cry 2, X3: Terran Conflict, and GTA IV are all examples of this unfair and burdensome "extra DRM" but I don't feel it's fair to blame the store for the decisions of the publishers. I don't blame my local bookstore for, say, the content of an Ann Coulter book they carry.

Uh, "wrong." Or more accurately, "staggeringly myopic." Yes, copyright is meant to provide artists with compensation for their work for a limited time in order to enhance the public domain. Copyright exists to make sure there's a reason to contribute to the public domain, and that reason is money. For a limited time. How you failed to take the next logical step in your argument is beyond me.

So, you'd rather use 100% of your TV the wrong way than ~70% of it the right way?