Next they probably rule that being poor is unconstitutional because you cannot buy enough stuff and therefore damage the economy which seems to be the only important factor in the U.S.

Meanwhile I realized that the difference between Obama as president and McCain is probably not much more than the color of their skin. They are both spineless idiots that just follow the way that money leads them. I guess the only way to go for you guys is further down the same road that you apparently chose as the only truth: money, money, money. Will be interesting to see where that will lead you to. I presume civil war at some point when the gap between the rich and the poor has reach a level where the masses won't shut up anymore and even tanks and armed forces will be the lesser evil compared to poverty and the lack of a proper future.

Depends on how much former this PM is. If she's not responsible for this utter nonsense called security check then she has all reason to be upset. Instead of complying with all the rediculous crap I'd prefer to throw shoes at those people as well. Sadly I'd like to reach my destination so I throw shoes (and do worse things) just in my imagination and politely (as good as I can fake it) comply to get done with it.

I wouldn't call a settlement with just 5 permanents a town. Heck, I wouldn't even call it a village. It's more of a scientific outpost.

Longyearbyen on the other hand is a real town, a small one, but a town.

Suing a 4 year old? How retarded one has to be to even think a 4 year old could act reasonable enough to be judged for her behavior? Earliest when they start to go to school they develop some kind of early stage which one could call reasonable. But even then a punishment shouldn't exceed a "bad girl/boy! clean up your room and bring your mommy an apple!" or the like.

Damn I'm so glad that I raise my son (soon 21 months old) not in the U.S. Otherwise I would be afraid to hell to let him play outside at all. Couldn't be sure that some screwed up judge decides that a 2 year old might also be responsible for his behavior ...

Still kind of proves my point. If you don't have a producer/manager/whateverheistitled that has the balls and the authority to call the shots and cut features when it's getting out of hands then you aren't capable of handling such a project.

Developing a game is much more than having a bunch of good programmers. Someone needs to keep the strings in his hands and have a plan and a schedule to follow - and the ability to make people (all of them) follow his lead.

Not all studios are run by EA or the way EA runs their studios. There are some sane people out there that are actually interested in long term goals and not only in short term revenue, especially independent studios with own funding (like the one I work for). Instead of playing poker and betting everything (or even more) on the next title those studios plan carefully and have realistic expectations and goals. They might not (ever) make the headlines like WoW & Co - but they make a decent living in their niche market(s) with a pretty solid business plan, without the fear to lose your job next month. They payments are not stellar but fair - a pretty good deal I'd say.

"stop it when it's shit" would be the better option then. It doesn't make sense to ship something that's not done. Yes, you might cut your losses because you still get some customers to pay for the crap that you call a game but what is in fact an early beta at best. But in the long term this customer will think twice if he'll buy your next game.

If you aren't Blizzard, don't attempt a project as big as Blizzard's titles. "Schuster, bleib bei deinen Leisten" is an old German proverb, meaning "stick to what you are able to handle". Being too ambitious doesn't help anyone and will just end up in a disaster - happened many times, especially in the gaming industry.

I really don't understand why even medium sized studios with medium or low funding attempt to build AAA-titles. And while Mythic is definitely a good studio - they are simply not big enough to compete with Blizzard & Co. It's suicide.
It wouldn't make me wonder if Mythic would get shut down by EA or at least merged with/into another studio sooner or later. It's common practise for this publisher.

If I had the choice I'd say: feed my remains to wolves, sharks, hyenas - whatever fits the food chain - and no badger would cause any issues when building its new home.

Sadly that's not allowed in Germany and you have to get buried or burnt.

It doesn't seem too obvious to even big studios and publishers.

I'm working in the games industry for quite a few years now, meanwhile as a project manager (just for a small, independent studio) and those are some of the lessons that I have learnt so far:

- Have a plan and and be ambitious - but have realistic expectations.
- Ship it when it's done.
- Stop it when you see you will never reach your goal.
- Don't release crappy software, it will hurt you in the long term.
- Be honest to yourself and the people around you (in that order!)

So stuff like Warhammer, Age of Conan, Hellgate London, etc. should have never been released the way they got released.

Only have the statistics from end 2008 at hand from a webpage of a (smaller) mmorpg and even back then Firefox already had >50% share, IE around 40% and all the others in low 1-digit areas.

'll get the new data next days but I guess that the IE will be around 30%, Firefox still above 50% and Chrome near 10%.

I'm pretty sure that a reasonable amount of those people have someone at hand to "fix" the computer for them, which often includes the installation of an alternative browser. I agree that the majority of the Windows users are clueless. But I wouldn't go so far to say that this is >90%.

I assume that of those people that actually know what a browser is a does the percentage is far lower than the amount of 50%. If you deduct those that are forced to use the IE at work as well you probably reach a one digit area.
I cannot imagine why anyone that has some basic technical understanding would choose to use the Internet Explorer. You must be either forced or a technical illiterate (well, or maybe stupid) to use IE.

The company that I work for runs an online game called TibiaME for mobile phones. Naturally it makes sense to use premium SMS for payments. The downside:
- You need to have agreements with each an every provider separately, world wide!
- Most provider charge an arm and a leg for their service, partly more than 50%

Now compare that to Apple's offer where you have exactly 1 company to talk to and that's charging 30-40%. It's still a lot of money - but far better than what the others charge you.

(I know this article was referring to newspapers and the like, but the system is pretty much the same.)

Care to help my oh-so-bad-memory a bit then instead of just complaining?