A very wide no fly zone, strictly enforced by air to air missiles. And also employ the TSA to confiscate large scissors.

I remember having this conversation in Physics class many years ago, would be fantastic if it goes ahead but I honestly don't think that anyone would invest the huge amount of money needed to even attempt this, at least not until the oil has run out.

I agree completely, hopefully it works and we can all carry on as normal, unfortunately I think Dice have spent too much money on this to let it go. We will be sold out to the advertisers like every other free site on the web. The monetization of everything eventually fucks everything. There will be no safe harbour anywhere for long until either the nature of humanity changes, or the nature of the economy does. I know which one of those is more likely, but even that is a long hard road that no-one wants to take the first steps down at the moment.

What's ironic for me is that the articles over the last couple of days have been a lot more interesting to me than in recent weeks, while I fully support the FUCK BETA protest, it's a real shame that we're missing out on some interesting discussion.

I was directed to the beta site the other day on a work computer and I honestly thought I had been directed to the mobile site, and I only put up with the mobile site because it's too much hassle to load up the full site every single time. I've been there once since on purpose just to see if it really was that terrible, and frankly yes it is. If your attempt to appeal to a wider audience drives away your estabished, core audience-who by the way are your content creators- you are doing it very very wrong.

On the other hand, it's possible to enjoy sport and have a sense of humour simultaneously.

It's quite simple, the market for computer games was very naive back then, people believed hyperbolic quotes on the back of games, and the misleading screenshots and cover art. We are now dealing with at least 2 generations of tech savvy consumers, and poor games simply won't sell, it's not like poor releases can taint the industry anymore on the same scale as the early days of cheap computing. Barriers to entry enforced by dominating entities such as Microsoft just mean that they get to define the playing field to suit themselves, whereas more competition means the playing field has more of a chance of being defined by the consumer or developer.

Unfortunately Microsoft seem to be looking to looking to emulate Apple by taking a cut on every piece of software released for the platform, and raising the barriers for entry for indie developers in the process. I think that the competition for their traditional gaming market by players such as Steam has the potential to persuade Microsoft not to backtrack on their previous business model. Either we get what we have been used to as gamers and developers from Microsoft, or we have a new place to go which is based on Linux. I really don't see the problem here.

I agree with you totally, what needs to happen though is the economy needs to run in a way that reflects that. A lot of problems could be solved.

Well done, they thwarted that one good and proper. I'm talking about one that was stopped by MI5 or GCHQ. Such as this one http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/04/northern-ireland-police-ira-mortar, stopped by security forces in Northern Ireland. Try again.

Especially when they quote bullshit for the reason, i.e. Britain faced one or more terrorist attack per year since 2000 and will continue to do so http://news.sky.com/story/1151954/mi5-boss-warns-of-growing-uk-terror-threat. Now that means that there have been 13-26 attacks according to his figures and we haven't heard of one of them? I remember when the UK really was under the threat of terrorist attacks from the IRA, and though a lot of things were kept secret for obvious reasons during that time, when the security forces scored a major victory or prevented an attack you knew about it. Are they seriously saying that 7/7/2005 was 'the one that got away', and they haven't told us about the others because of secrecy? Just one for an example?

fta

Why do they need to own the copyright to remaster them? Fucking tabloid bs.

Cool, thanks for the link. I think they have the right idea. So many people hang on to Windows because of the gaming aspect. If Valve can build their OS into a genuine gaming competitor then that's another finger prised off Microsofts grip on the home user space.

Why though does it need to be a Steam Box if it's really just a PC with SteamOS on it? Could I set up a Steam Box shop myself, or would Valve only let licenced vendors sell em? My guess is it would be fine. Which reminds me, I better go play the Half life episodes which I never got round to playing. Half Life 3 must be just round the corner.