Looking at pics and descriptions in a couple live blogs, and based on that i've got to say that i didn't like live tiles when Microsoft created them and i don't like them any better now the Google seems to be copying them.

Also, reportedly "Each of your active Chrome tabs shows up individually in the app switcher". If that's true i so do not want. I've got over 90 tabs open in chrome on my phone right now, and about an equal number in Firefox. I do _not_ want to have to sort through all that just to switch apps.

Game engines already exist. People already develop content though you kind of need a working and enjoyable game first, with some content, before people will develop more content for it.

Who funded Linux development in the early days, answer, noone? Would need to be a volunteer effort to some extent.

Hopefully Carmack will be disillusioned with working for Facebook soon and do it for love of gaming and graphics programming.

Kickstarter is the obvious answer if you really want cash.

There is a pretty obvious solution to the steep decline in modern games. Its the same solution that was found to over priced, proprietary, commerical operating systems.

We need an open source gaming system. Its probably the only escape from eternal damnation to over priced, poorly designed, crap games.

Some critical issues need to addressed up front for it to work.

For starters you need to settle on an open source gaming engine. Torque3D would be one possibility, people here could probably name others. It needs to be capable, open source and multi platform, with as few licensing restrictions as possible. You need high caliber game developers, like Carmack to emraced it and work on it, with someone like Linus holding it together.

You need to develop a small number of core games based on the essential archetypes, FPS, MMORPG, Space battle/trading, racing.

You need to create councils for each game selected from game developers and excellent players who set rules, direction, maintain order and hold the game economy together.

As always if a game/council fails to satisfy their constituencey a solution is a fork but you want to ACTIVELY discourage forking when it leads primarily to fragmentation and wasted resources. You want as much wood behind one arrow as possible.

Each game needs to actively support and leverage mods and user developed content. In fact that will be the primary source of content.

The core games need to be designed for extreme longevity, its the content that needs to constantly changing and growing.

Councils need to design intelligent tournament systems and leader boards that actually put the most skilled players at the top, where they belong, not the grinders, scammers and cheats.

I'm a long time gamer who no longer plays games, because the games I loved the most died at the hands of corporate greed and stupidity. In particular they died because decisions were made by executives who were for the most part not gamers and made decisions that were all wrong.

If I could, I would probably still be playing the original EQ, the original WoW and Battlefield 2, Karkand Infantry only.

Battlefield 2, Karkand Infantry only was, in my mind the pinnacle of PVP. If you had evenly matched teams, with evenly matched gear, fighting a battle decided by 1 point there was no better adrenaline rush and it never got old. The map never changed, the rules seldom changed, the thing that constantly changed was the people playing it, their skills, their tactics and strategy. Developing huge maps like PS3 where you can never find an even fight, or in game purchases that allow the fools with the most money to win, developing massively too dense graphics, that are way to expensive to develop, require to much graphics power to run and add no FUN to the game, and adding too many gimicky weapons and gear that cause nothing but unbalanced matches, are just some examples.

If I could have kept the original EQ or WoW and just added a never ended series of new dungeons, quests gear and battlegrounds I would probably still be playing them. The first rule is you NEVER raise the level cap, because as soon as you do the game turns in to a pointless treadmill. New dungeons, gear and PVP is all a game needs to stay fresh.

I'd still be playing BF2 if there were any servers left that didn't suck.

If one has to have a short and specific word (instead of just "photo" or "video" as has already been suggested) then i would go with "SelfPic" or "SelfVid" as appropriate. It may not roll off the tongue quite so easily, but it's only one character longer than "selfie" and, most importantly, it doesn't sound like you're performing some kind of sex act on yourself.

Tesla's 3rd generation car is supposed to be a mass market vehicle that may disrupt the "automotive order" if Musk manages to build it. The giga battery factory he is looking for a home for is a critical component since it is critical to have enough affordable batteries for a mass market electric car.

Tesla today wont disrupt NADA, but Tesla in a few years very well may, they know it, so they are trying to nip it in the bud.

I dont think these rich, tech executives are trying to reform illegal immigration from south of the border.

They are trying to reform immigration so they can import as many engineers as possible in to the U.S. from other countries.

You don't think most of them got rich by actually writing code did you?

They mostly get rich by hiring/funding engineers to write code for them. The more engineers they have to choose from the happier they are because they have more startups to choose from and they can suppress engineering salaries which improves profitiability and the value of their stock portfolios.

[Citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

I've only looked through the rules for about ten of the states, but so far it seems pretty damn easy to either get an independent on the ballot or get yourself declared as a major party and thus be on the ballot, assuming of course you've actually got enough people supporting you to actually have a chance of winning the election. (Generally it seems to require an indication of support of anywhere between 10,000 people and 20% of the registered voters.)

So what evidence do you have that it's not actually as easy as that page seems to indicate? And please note that despite being a relatively small group, the Libertarians have succeeded in getting a number of their candidates onto the ballot.

Your #1 is patently false, given the premises. If everyone agreed on a choice, they could elect anyone they want. Getting on the ballot is not as hard as you make it out, and in most places write-ins are possible anyways. Again, you're conflating the reality that many people are lazy and easily misled with the idea that the system can't work. The system _can_ work, it just doesn't because many people are lazy and easily misled, so they don't fight to find the best candidate and make sure that person gets on the ballot.

As for #2, you're arguing that it is impossible to find approximately 537 honest people in America. (Or 1074 if you want to have both a liberal and a conservative option.) Or do you believe that getting into office instantaneously makes one irredeemably evil? And also stupid given that they were elected for essentially a single issue and if they don't follow through they have zero chance of getting elected in the next term.

And remember the disagreement we're having is whether the political process gives the public control over the government. You say they have no control, i say they have control but in aggregate they choose not to use that control. I think we both agree we're never going to actually see the results we'd like, but you seem to think it's because there's something wrong with the system, while i think it's because there's something wrong with human nature.

So don't elect politicians. Pick a regular bunch of people who've never held office before. Get them to sign a binding contract that if they're elected they will disband the NSA. Then elect them. It's entirely possible. We have the _ability_ to do so. We just don't have the collective will and agreement to actually do it.

The voters have _all_ the say. The voters can elect whoever they want. The problem is not a lack of control, the problem is that about half the people abdicated their responsibility and control, a large percentage of the remainder do not actually study the issues in depth, and the remainder are too fractured in their opinions to agree on any one candidate or set of policies.

If we could get everyone in the US to agree that NSA surveillance was bad, and then only support candidates who agreed with that position, then we could end it about 5 minutes after the next election. (Well, about 5 minutes after the new people got sworn in anyways.) The problem is not the system, the problem is the people. And sadly it's probably harder to fix that problem than it would be to reform the system.

Because i generally have no problem going to sleep with the lights on, but often have a tough time getting up in the morning. Having the lights on when i wake up in the morning helps with the staying awake process... a little. (I think i might also have originally gotten into the habit during i time when i was single and lonely. Having the lights on seemed more... cheery somehow. That's obviously not a problem at this point however.)

Given how quickly and deeply i can fall asleep under various circumstances, that i can get up to deal with things like cats throwing up and then go back to sleep right away, can shift my sleeping schedule forwards or backwards with ease, and get by on a couple hours of sleep if i want or sleep for 8+ hours without interruption if i let myself, my girlfriend is convinced that i have some kind of sleeping superpower :)

Two years ago i slept with the lights on all the time and was 175 lbs. (79 kg or 12.5 stones for you metric types ;)

Then i got a new girlfriend, who prefers to sleep with the lights off. Since then i've gained 25 lbs.

Yeah yeah, correlation is not causation, and anecdote is not evidence. And in this case the difference in weight is presumably due to going out to dinner with her more and going out to exercise by myself less. (I'm working on trying to change that now, but progress is slow =P)

But in my individual case either having the lights on was not helping me at all, or if i'd been sleeping with the lights off at my previous level of food intake and activity i would have ended up looking like a stick.

Well if your cat doesn't like it there's not a lot you can do about that (not nothing, but not a lot.)

However since our cats like it just fine i've found it superior in a number of respects. The pine pellets we use are better at odor control, it's much easier to clean the cat pan, and there's no cloud of clay dust when pouring it in. The one aspect that is _not_ so good is that when the pine pellets break down into sawdust the sawdust gets tracked all over. We put a pad under/in front of the cat pan and that has helped some, but not eliminated the problem. But overall we're pretty happy with the stuff.

But as Mark Twain used to say "any quote sounds more profound when attributed to Mark Twain."

BF2 64 man Karkand Infantry Only probably the best PVP game ever, and I doubt it will ever be topped on the sick trajectory PVP shooters are on.

Sad to see it go, though there is only one server left. Big E, and the Big E admins suck so it was effectively dead already anyway.

All of EA's lame COD knock offs since simply don't capture what makes multiplayer PVP intense and fun, nor does COD:

A. Teams need to be evenly balanced
B. Teams need to be in a confined space so there is immediate contact
C. Needs to be some tactics and strategy but not a lot, versus aimless COD styling circling, killing and being killed
C. Weapons need to be equal, simple, skill based. No air, no armor
D. No stupid gimmicks
E. No excessively dense, expensive graphics. Simple graphics is actually better and you aren't forced in to a constant hardware upgrade just to play games that are immensly fun even if the graphics are simple. Excessive graphics also drive up costs needlessly.

If EA had just kept fixing the bugs in BF2, spent more effort controlling hacks, did new maps occassionaly, did minimal refinements, someone like Twitch promoted a competition system around it, someone provided some professionally admin'ed servers to get away from clan based bias, it would've gone on forever like Starcraft.