I love how the anti-American bigots trot this sort of bullshit out, without context.

The US had a sterling record compared with any other nation that's gone through an industrial revolution. What's more, the industrial revolution happened well before we had any concept of the long term consequences to the destruction. The Chinese are well aware of global warming and the rest, they've chosen to engage in dangerous policies because they view it to be better than enforcing their own regulations.

As far as the lakes and rivers go, again, nobody realized the consequences when things were being built. But, now that we do know better, the water is being cleaned and for the most part is clean.

As for the currency manipulation, you wouldn't be saying that if you knew what was going on. The Chinese government still owns most of the enterprises in China. They withhold pay that should be going to the workers in order to lend money to American businesses and the government. The net effect of that is that you've got a lot of people working for very little and the normal adjustment to the currency value doesn't happen because they're sending cash back to counter act that.

In the long term that's extremely dangerous as at some point they won't be able to afford to keep lending money, at which point the wages will need to rise and when that happens they won't be able to export as many goods. It's going to get extremely nasty if they don't manage it right. Or they'll wind up with prolonged stagnation as things catch up.

You seriously think they'd be able to get a nuke onto a ship without being noticed? If it were truly that easy, we wouldn't be bothering with missiles at all.

Until somebody develops the ability to nuke all it's enemies globally instantly, and synchronized down to the second globally, there's no point in signing such an agreement as MAD pretty much ensures that nobody is going to be using nuclear weapons.

Consequently, that treaty was just an effort to bolster China's image on the world stage. If there were really any purpose to such a treaty, it would have been signed a long time ago.

Station wagon? Is that like the paddy wagon?

Probably, I use self-destructing cookies on any and all cookies that are installed on my computer. Most of them are deleted the moment I leave the website, a few that I really need, are allowed to persist until I close the browser, and only one or two is allowed to remain after I close the browser. Most of the time, I wind up with random ads, assuming I get them at all.

I can't recall the last time I actually clicked on one of those links, and I don't think I've ever bought anything as a result of one of those ads. I do however sometimes put companies on my "do not buy from" list for shitty ads and the ones where they're clearly lieing even more than usual.

You can blame spammers for that. Unfortunately, there aren't very many ways of limiting who makes accounts that don't leave some people out of the loop.

Unless you botched your post, that's not at all what you were saying. Rehashes and sequels sell tons of copies in large part because that's what the audience demands. They've played the previous game or they've played the spiritual predecessor and you get a shit load of word of mouth, whether or not the new game is any good.

That's why a game like GTA V can sell $800m when it first releases. People are already familiar with the game.

Truth be told studios prefer to release new games that are innovative, it's just incredibly hard to pass up on the relatively easy money that comes from a sequel to a new game that they did. Don't you think that the studios would love to all be releasing revolutionary games every release? Seems to me that being the guy that invented the platformer or was the first to figure out how to use real 3D would be rather rewarding, beyond the megabucks.

Not going to happen any time soon. You don't seriously want a plastic replacement part for your fender or bumper, do you?

I don't agree, KS has a huge variation in the kinds of projects that are being funded. Some of them are so simple that they can scarcely fail. A book where it's been written and the author is just looking to fund the printing. Or a sunglasses design where all the details have been worked out, but they need to buy a couple thousand to make it economical.

The problem is that people let themselves get wrapped up in the hype without having the time to do any research or access to much of the inside dirt on what's going on.

A lot of people don't realize that between taxes and the KS fees, that there's always 25% or so missing even before the project ships out the swag.

Not really, the reason for all the rehashes and sequels is that the people lending the money have some way of estimating what the IP is worth. There's a guaranteed audience that will give it a shot and you don't have to waste resources selling the concept. That safety is also a large part of why it so often doesn't work out well in terms of artistic merit.

Hollywood actually likes new stories, it's just that most of the new stories are garbage whereas the presold ideas like Spiderman 14 and Superman 1,000,000 are ones where they don't have to worry about filling seats long enough to get word of mouth going and don't have to count on advertising to get people in the theaters on release day.

Same goes there, when you're using a control scheme that players are familiar with and telling a story in a familiar format, it drastically cuts down on the risk. There's still a ton of innovation that's possible, but it's difficult to estimate the risks and rewards from doing so.

Not really, OLPC was never intended to be for sale in the developed world. Which always seemed to be a mistake. Offering a portion of the production for a bit of a mark up could have been good for everybody increased volume and the extra funds could have been used to subsidize units for the developing world.. The closes they did was that buy 2 get one deal. Which was stupid.

Which party is it that's in favor of cutting food stamps to give tax breaks to the rich?

Ballmer's rich, he may be a Democrat, but he has a vested interest in seeing that conservative policies are followed. As those policies are how he was able to accumulate so much wealth without contributing anything of value. Under a more liberal economic policy and regulatory set up, MS would never have been allowed to grow as big as it has, without earning that size. They would have been broken up in the late '90s when they used their size to stifle innovation across the industry.

Bottom line here is that it's the conservatives that are always trumpeting this sort of maladaptive business practice so that they can easily scare voters.

It makes sense because they previously had a fairly good mobile OS. I had it on my PDA about 10 years back, and it wasn't bad. The problem is that they failed to see the iPhone and Android coming and get a piece of the action.

Also, realize that they had 0% marketshare before the XBox was released, and now they're doing OK. They just missed one of those crucial moments in time with the mobile market and now they might never catch up.

The workers, and they must be punished with layoffs and having their bonuses suspended until they fix the problem of leadership.

What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity? Or you have a weak team where all of them are below average? You lose one of the better employees and one of the worst employees. But, it's not even a break even situation as stress and burn out will affect the stronger team more than the weak team.

Normally, I'd assume that you're trolling, but there's a lot of morons on here that view humans as replaceable machinery to be used and discarded on a whim because having a job is a "privilege" and not a right. But, without a decent job, you can't afford an apartment, food or anything beyond the most meager of necessities, because ZOMG we can't actually set up a system that will care for people that aren't already hugely wealthy.

The right wing's complete and utter incompetence on economic matters is threatening to render the US back to the 3rd world.