If you do that, you're just giving Russia the justification they needed to turn that kinda-sorta-cold-but-lukewarm war into a full out one.

The problem when calling bluff is that the other one can do it too. Do you thing you will get the necessary popular support for a war against Russia over some country most people never heard of? You still need some kind of Pearl Harbor to convince the people that this war needs to be fought. And after the 9/11 ruse, I think being convincing could be a tad bit difficult.

So the new cold war ain't democracy vs. communism but corporate state vs. national socialist dictatorship?

I wonder which is the lesser of the two evils...

My Tektronix 453 is still going strong after being retired from use in avionics testing/troubleshooting/repair. As is the old black-Bakelite Simpson analog-meter VOM.

Another "old" technology I use regularly are vacuum-tube guitar amplifiers like the ones I play through, repair, and design & build. Nearly all the major guitar amplifier makers' current lines of flagship pro- and semi-pro-level guitar amps are tube-based designs.

Many of the most sought-after and expensive studio microphones are also vacuum-tube based (integral pre/buffer amp).

There are actually more vacuum tubes being produced currently than were being produced 30 years ago.

Audiophiles also tend to prefer tube-based amplifiers.

I hope relations between the US and Russia don't deteriorate too badly. Russia is a major manufacturer and exporter of vacuum tubes, as is China. Chinese tubes in general are not as high a quality generally speaking though, in my personal experience.

Oh, and the PC I posted this with is circa 2000 with a CRT monitor.

Do I win an internets?

Strat

Detroit failed because of those policies that drove the tax base away. Yes, that is entirely the city's fault. No one has any moral obligation whatsoever to live in any given place. Quite the reverse: it's the city leadership's job to make the city inviting. But Detroit chose a different path.

Tax laws are a big part of what makes both people and businesses want to come or go, balanced by the degree to which those tax dollars actually make the city a better place (the absence of corruption). A city seeking prosperity needs to remember that. You can tax all the things, and give all the money to your friends - but not forever.

All of which you did when you downloaded the game in the first place.

Which is why I prefer GOG. But almost no one's willing to sell their games there, and Steam would be equally empty if it were the same as GOG. Steam does a great service in convincing many smaller studios that Steam is "enough DRM," no need for more. (EA can go fuck itself.) It's not like these guys would be on GOG if Steam vanished - they'd be a wilderness of homegrown distribution platforms with DRM licensed from one of the really evil companies.

Well, I use my CPU to transcode media files, so I might get one. But for gaming? When will CPU ever matter for gaming, unless your running some terribly-written Java game?

Of course you have to be online the first time you launch it, just like you have to be online to download the game. That's not actually a burden.

Steam offline mode has had issues over the years, and I still don't trust it, but having to be online the first time you ever launch a game is the least annoying copy protection possible. There's a freaking checkbox in Steam to launch a game as soon as the download is complete, for goodness sake, so you don't even need to babysit it to do that first launch.

He was laid off with all the QA guys. He got a nice severance package though.

Wikipedia's WikiProject Editor Retention has looked at the same problem, but from a retention point rather than the perspective of attracting new women. There were no real answers, just lots of speculation. Lots of people blame the culture, or say the place is too "rough and tumble" but I found that conclusion rather sexist, as it says that women can't compete for ideas in the same environment as men. There doesn't seems to be a difference in retention of men and women, they just aren't coming to Wikipedia to begin with.

And some people just want to have some sort of "right" to be an annoying SoB, and don't want to turn vegan just for that.

Now, now, now... that last example is at best black magic.

Global warming denial meets conspiracy theory.

I feel like in some weird, cheesy DC-Marvel crossover comic...

In all fairness, 200 years ago Americans were smart enough to not settle in the middle of the bloody desert.

There is exactly one surefire way to create rain, it works flawlessly every time:

Wash your car.