Seriously, fuck him. Having been on the receiving end of this kind of crap before, I'm fine with this clown going to jail. A public beating wouldn't disappoint me either.

People who set things up so they're the only ones who can make it work need to face the same kinds of penalties for malpractice in other fields. There is nothing that will make me get rid of an employee faster than job security shenanigans.

Good points. The thing is that the KS isn't asking for seed money, although that's another part that's kind of shady-looking. What they're saying is that they'll build the game for $1.1M, but if they get more then they'll make more content. But realistically, I'd expect them to need to add a digit before they had something they could ship. I know there's some economy by using UE4, but they still need to license it and pay for development, QA, etc.

As for how much money they have, you're right - I don't know how much they've spent on keeping the lights on while they do....well, what have they been doing for the past 10 years? There's probably something more to this than what we see here, considering they still ought to have a little bit of cred with the industry. It makes me go hmmm.

Honestly, that's not a lot of money to spend developing a game. I've run software projects on that much that were nowhere close to as involved as game development. So I'm a little suspicious about their projections there.

The other thing is this: these guys don't have a million dollars to drop on this? And no publisher was willing to give the guys who did Myst $1M to build this? Hoe about half? Something just doesn't sound right here.

But I'm in for $45. I'm loyal that way...they have definitely given me a bar tab's worth of fun over the years. I just hope they don't do another Uru.

About 4 years ago, I took a trip to Ethiopia. One guy I talked to there was the head of an aid organization that helped build infrastructure in the more rural parts of the country. He explained to me that while the Western countries like the US, Germany, the UK, etc donated money to local organizations, the Chinese preferred to come in and do the job themselves. It saves on the corruption and waste, and they get to build a positive impression themselves. So you see lots of Chinese companies there building roads, burying cable, building farms/industry, etc.

He told me they had the right idea. The Chinese are *investing* in Africa as opposed to donating to it. That's going to have a long-term impact on who has more influence in Africa. So yeah, they're going to build surveillance...they're building the infrastructure. If we wanted to stop them, we'd go start building too.

I find that I feel small in the presence of cold nature.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

*GASP*

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Thanks for the best laugh of the week. You should take back your meds.

+1 dude. Anybody who thinks they're going to protect themselves, family, friends, or property from the government with their guns is living in a fantasy world. You might take a few cops/soldiers with you, but you're still going down. There's simply no scenario where you fend off govt forces and they go away and leave you alone.

I hear ya. We just had the initial eval for the IEP today, and while the school district people mean well it's pretty clear that we know more about treatment than they do. Based on my discussions with other parents, I'm not optimistic that the school system will do an adequate job. We're going to push for a lot in the IEP and then document actual delivery very closely. If they fail to deliver, NC has a law that says we can put our daughter in a private program at the state's expense. I don't like that option for a lot of reasons, but in the end my goal is to get my daughter the best care and services I can. I've got very few regrets in life, and don't want one of them to be that I didn't do everything I could to give her the best chance at a "normal" life.

I'm not sure what state you're in, but you may have a case if the school says that can't provide care for budget/scheduling reasons. That may be the reality, but the law as I understand it (IANAL, nor do I play one on TV) doesn't permit limitation of services based on availability. In short, if the IEP says your kid needs X speech therapy sessions/week then the school has to provide that or there are steps you can take to get that level of assistance. It's a pain, and it's not going to help you make friends with the people in your school district, but that's not the point. There's a pretty good set of rules and procedures in the IDEA act to make sure the right level of accommodation is being provided.

So I hope it works out for you and your girl. Thanks for doing all of that for her.

My daughter was diagnosed with PDD-NOS a year ago and turns 3 in January. She's adopted, so I don't know if her birth parents were "smart" or "geeky" but I can second everything else here. My wife and I are smart and geeky, respectively.

After talking with a lot of doctors and specialists over the past year, my feeling is not so much that the incidence of ASD is higher as much as it is that we're identifying it better now. But there are two things I know for sure: that early, intensive intervention is extremely important and that dealing with this disorder is just fucking heartbreaking. Our daughter is at the "mild" end of the spectrum, and we are very fortunate that we're able to afford the speech, occupational, and physical therapy as well as the many specialists who have been involved over the past year. My insurance through work is adequate for regular stuff, but totally sucks for getting treatment for Autism. As a result, we're out-of-pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars just for the past 12 months and it's not looking like that's going to change. All we can do is advocate for her and make sure we exhaust every possible legitimate avenue for treatment and hope we can pull her far enough out of the hole she's in to make a difference.

Still, I can't stress strongly enough that early diagnosis and intervention is the best way to mitigate the effects of Autism. A lot of parents don't want to admit that there could be anything wrong with their child, which just makes things worse for everybody. We all want to think that our kids are perfect and all, but denying that there is a problem leads to bad decisions, lack of care, and much worse outcomes.

So good luck, anonymous dude. Make sure your kid gets a good IEP and starts in the school system at age 3. And keep up the work on all the therapies. Try to get as much ABA therapy as you can afford and stay away from the snake oil "amazing cure" crap. Like you, I have no idea what the future holds but I'm determined to do everything I can to help my daughter be happy and healthy.