This is something you ought to fight. Vehemently.

Online voting can be compromised from anywhere in the world. At least voting in person requires people at voting locations, thereby (plausibly) reducing the chance for wide-scale fraud. It's just not worth taking the chance. Open networks, no matter how secure they are designed, will always have vulnerabilities. Most of those vulnerabilities lie within the computer operators (PEBCAK, if you will).

Yes. In Children of Dune, Leto's stillsuit was sabotaged. They tampered with the pumps located in the heels, which would normally circulate water as the wearer walked through the desert.

Good call.

Didn't Frank Herbert write of something similar to this in Dune? I recall small objects which collected water, but I don't recall whether they provided any sort of power generation in the process.

I suspect you don't have the military background I possess.

Firstly, the AH-64 and OH-58 are primarily Army platforms, who use almost entirely rotary-winged aircraft. The Apache is a wonderful system -- the most badass thing in the air. It has a huge armament of 4 winglet pods (16x hellfires, or 76x FFARs or a combination thereof, plus a 30mm chain gun). But it doesn't have the ceiling of the A-10, nor does it have the range. The Kiowa doesn't have anywhere near the armament of the Apache, being a smaller, lighter aircraft -- it can only maintain 1 small FFAR tube and a .50 cal, or a two of one and none of the other.

The AC-130 is a massive bird. Puff the Magic Dragon, we called it colloquially. Fantastic engineering. But it is HUGE! It is designed to linger over an area, like a village or town, and obliterate everything in the area. 105mm howitzer, 40mm and 20mm rotary cannons. This is used when you need to destroy an insane amount of bad guys and boost morale into infinity.

The MQ-9/Predator/Reaper is nice, but it doesn't have the same capabilities of any of the above craft. Safer in that you don't have pilots put into danger. But it has less armament capability than the A-10 or the AH-64, less agility than the OH-58, and nowhere near the firepower of the AC-130.


So no, there are not "lots of things that are far better at the A10s limited role". You are ignorant. Go back to your Call of Duty.

I'm not entirely incorrect.

Nothing currently available has the capability to replace the A-10, making it the best tool for the job. So while it hasn't been replaced yet, it cannot be effectively replaced in the foreseeable future.

Semantics, I know.

Probably more effective than whatever they're trying to do now :)

The F-35 replaced the A-10 Thunderbolt II's role as a tank buster, CAS bomber...

With the money we have spent on the F-35s to date, we could have repaired, retrofitted, and maintained our supply of A-10s for several decades. Hell, the A-10 is practically a flying tank. It has some of the best armament and is the most rugged fixed-wing aircraft which America has. It was a ridiculously short-sighted move to replace it with another overexpensive "multi role, joint" fighter.

Fair enough. My misinterpretation then.

Still, it is good on Subset for releasing free additional content which many companies would charge extra to obtain.

Plenty of studios understand this very well.

Subset Games, who created "FTL: Faster Than Light", recently released their port to iOS, including content that did not exist in the original game. To show that they still appreciated their original customers, they released all of this content for all platforms simultaneously.

That's business done well, for the sake of the devs and the gamers. Sure, Subset makes slightly less profit in the short run, considering they could have released the add'l content as DLC (which really would have been fine, in the end, as long as it was appropriately priced). This way they'll actually make more money over the long term, because customers remember when they're treated well and given quality products with a highly-perceived value.

Don't worry. Pirates will make this right.

Oh great...that means we're fucked.

It's the federal government's procurement process. It has not evolved with technology, and therefore everything involved in all of their processes is antiquated, inefficient, and slow.

I dealt with this kind of thing for 8 years as a soldier, and am still dealing with it as a contractor. It's pretty ridiculous when you know how much more smoothly things could be running.

Papers, Please was created by 1 guy. It's not "infinite", but it is really damned good.

The quantity on the dev team is obviously not indicative of the quality of the finished product or the enjoyability of the game play. Otherwise, how could we explain the dismally disappointing nature of Diablo 3 or Call of Duty: Whateverthehellthey'recallingitnow?

So long as big, publicly-owned companies are churning out games they are generally only going to consider profit and perception by shareholders as the end goal.

Companies who create a good game for the sake of the game itself can often see profits as a result of their dedication -- the end goal is always putting out a game which is as good as that studio can feasibly put out. $$$ is welcome, but secondary. For this reason, I am an advocate for game developers to stay privately owned. If I hear about a producer/publisher's IPO I will absolutely scrutinize every reason to even consider their products from that point, forward. Can anyone name a publicly-traded gaming company who isn't all jacked up?

I have not purchased or pre-purchased a AAA-produced game since the awful release of Diablo 3. While it did turn out to be a fun game, Blizzard proved to me that they really don't have a clue as to what captured the essence of the first 2 games in the series, nor do they actually give a crap about the people who are ensuring their paychecks. If anything, I will wait for a Steam Summer Sale, Humble Bundle, GoG sale, or something comparably discounted. I end up missing out on the early days of fun where a whole bunch of friends and other players are online all at once, but I save a ton of money and I don't regret my $5 purchases...as opposed to those $50-60 mistakes.

Can you provide some evidence that they are qualified?