Depends which pyramid we are talking about. Actual evidence like yours shows that they used different techniques at different locations during different times in history.

Publishers treat the entire continent of Australia as a rounding error!

250ms ping to a US/EU server is about average since very few of the major titles have servers in Oz, SE Asia or Hawaii is normally is good as it gets from the arse end of the Earth. You know you have a really clean connection if it's under 200ms.

The lag from Oz to anywhere else on the planet is largely a true physical limit imposed by the speed of light, no amount of bandwidth will fix it. Anything that "tricks the users brain" into not perceiving that lag would be welcome, 4X the data for a game won't be noticed with the average data cap we have here these days. OTOH since the birth of online gaming I've been trained by experience to lead my shots, so it does mean I would have to significantly adjust my playing style to take advantage of a lower ping.

Yep, it puts the "free" in "free market". The alternative is to allow telco's to hold content providers to ransom. OTOH why does it matter that these arseholes keep spewing ther comical propaganda, who's buying their bullshit these days, anyone?

Please, people are beheaded or stoned to death every day in the ME and N Africa, nobody gives a flying fuck until it's a westerner's head. The staged execution clip is propaganda, it's clear intent is to divide and conquer through fear and xenophobia, why else would they choose an executioner with a british accent?

There is simply no rational reason to keep circulating enemy propaganda, people who do so are driven by fear and/or myopic ideological priorities. This is a proxy war between the Saudi's (Sunni's) and Iran (Shia), but the Saudi's have now seem to have realised they've created yet another frankenstein puppet. So far the world powers have been using brains to fight ISIS. let's hope that Russia, China, and the West keep using their brains in this conflict, because resuming the indiscriminate bombing of Iraqi cities will do nothing except entrench ISIS' 7th century ideology and governance into the local culture.

While on the subject of propaganda and hypocrisy, it's also convenient to western self-interest that this (and the MH17) story gained huge attention but the repeated bombing of a UN school in Gaza with US munitions is quietly "swept under the carpet". Where's the political outrage toward those acts that was starting to manifest itself as large street protests a couple of weeks ago?

Why not? They paid a lot more of the tax that funds it compared to (say) sugar addicts with bad hearts, bacon lovers with clogged ateries, or skateboarders with broken bones. All of those health problems are "self inflicted" and entirely avoidable but for some reason nanny state arseholes like you have a vendetta against smokers, you insist they pay an excessive "sin tax" and then demand they be denied any benifits from that tax. Fuck you and the holier than thou horse you rode in on.

My 51yo lady friend has 20K+ battles on WoT (desktop), I think that counts as a mature female gamer. For years she would not have anything to do with FPS games because of the blood and gore, but would play bridge online for hours, which I think also counts as a "gamer". I talked her into WoT because it's only tanks, not people, she was hooked for life in 30 minutes but still plays bridge every now and then.

How is the required ability to outshine said galaxy NOT a severe constraint?. The only thing this technique could possibly detect would be a Borg style alien civilization that has conquered and then overpopulated an entire galaxy, I'd say that puts a very tight constraint on the kind of aliens it can detect and a huge assumption that such galaxy wide civilizations are even possible in the first place. I think they should rename the project to A-HAT ( Aliens Harbouring Awesome Technology)

Yep, the new warlord desperately wants the US to start bombing Iraqi cities, it's the oldest recruiting method known to man.

Nobody liked Fred except the 100 brainwashed family members in his "congregation". I was thoroughly disappointed with the gay community's reaction to his death, I had been looking forward to a Brazilian style Mardi Gras at Fred's funeral. Turns out they have a lot more self respect and common decency than Fred, who knew?

The right to free speech does not mean a university has to provide the publishing infrastructure to make that speech. By logical extension of your standards universities must also provide spray cans so that students can spray paint their thoughts onto the campus buildings. Also Fred Phelps is not a defender of free speech , he's a serial pest who harrases people at family funerals, I really wish more of his victims used the "fighting words" defense as an excuse to beat the shit out of the repulsive little turd.

Jebus, have none of you actually read Orwell? What you wrote is actually a pretty good example of "circumstantial evidence".

A "thought crime" is where certain thoughts are illegal. My favorite example is from Christopher Hitchens @4:00 - 4:30, worth watching the whole speech.

The defining feature of thought crime is that there is no physical act, no physical manifestation of a crime, just an "illegal thought", accessing a web site or making a speech is an action, it doesn't qualify. Of course in the book, the only way to really find out what Winston was thinking was to torture him with his greatest fear, a live rat chewing on his face.1984 is a precautionary tale about power and control, and there is no more "totalitarian" form of control than the ability to control what people think. You really ought to read it before trying to redefine the terminology. ;)

Yep, that's one of those images that doesn't go away, and the people behind this propaganda video are trying to provoke the same knee-jerk reaction - "Stock up on cruise missiles, someone has to pay for this atrocity".

Please go a reread 1984. That is not the definition of a "thought crime". Also, if you're from the US I think you would be surprised at the sex that's available on late night broadcast TV in the UK. As with many other nations in the commonwealth, the UK draws the line at depicting certain acts of violence, particularly when it's associated with sex. Depicting acts of fornication or buggery is not illegal, in fact talking and joking about them in explicit terms on national TV seems to be almost compulsory. .

1. It's not him silly, it's "the people of the UK", who are you to claim immunity from the democratic will of society, where does this immunity end?
2. Your overreacting to something the head cop said "could" be considered illegal. I think if you dig a bit deeper than the click bait headline you'll find his real message was more along the lines of - "Yes we all know it's shocking, but please stop reacting as intended by those who perpetrated this act". There's also a cultural difference in the way the UK justice system operates, as a general rule UK public prosecutors are nowhere near as eager to be associated with frivolous convictions and "plea bargaining" as their US counterparts seem to be. UK society in general is less tolerant of "anti-social behaviour", it's their idea of "keeping the peace" and it works rather well for "the people of the UK".

Yeah right, you tell 'em how it is internet tough guy, lol.

Disclaimer, not the AC, who btw has as much right to his privacy as the Foley family does to theirs.

Excellent rant! Personally I don't care to have those sort of images in my head, kinda like - once you've seen one uncensored holocaust documentary you've seen them all. And you're spot on with the propaganda claim, the new warlord in Iraq would like nothing better than the west to start bombing the shit out of Iraqi cities because the obvious result would be a flood of eager new recruits. As someone commented recently "it's the oldest recruiting method known to man".

I do think some think some images should be illegal and actively censored, pre-pubescent kiddy porn, snuff films, stuff that is abhorrent to a sane person and constitutes a grave criminal act. Such images are in fact a very deep invasion of the victim's, and their family's, privacy. The beheading video is different in that it is an "act of war" specifically designed provoke a knee-jerk military response, the executioner was almost certainly chosen for his UK accent and would have been told - "Cut his head off, or lose your's".

At the end of the day all one can really say about this kind of military censorship is that "The first casualty of war is truth". Old Ben was a politician preaching to the colonial choir, the quote is an obvious attempt to boost the morale of those who would do the real fighting. Probably the bravest thing he did was fly a kite in a thunderstorm, that feat took real scientific balls!