Those of us who are old enough to remember know that SupCom was essentially a modern day remake of Total Annihilation.

TA suffered from some huge, glaring UI problems (specifically around hotkeys, which are essential when playing an RTS). However for proper stratergy you need to look beyond RTS to turn based strategy. Games like Civ make SupCom and TA look minuscule in scope.

Reality disagrees with your assertion.

Quality is the first thing that goes in a race to the bottom and that's exactly what you're proposing. I've lived in places where there was an oversupply of taxi drivers. Eventually you reach a point where there are so many taxis they start to resort to any number of dirty tricks. These range from grabbing you and manhandling you into a cab to dodgy meters to forming gangs and enforcing turf.

One thing that is consistent is that the quality of driver is very, very low. This is consistent from my experience with Phuket's Tuk Tuk drivers to the Dominican Republics Motoconchos to Filipino trike drivers. Quality always suffers when its a free for all. Its like saying that a buffet will be better quality than made to order because it's cheaper.

Every place with deregulated taxis disproves this assertion. The system does not regulate automatically, if the government does not regulate it, someone else will. Typically when regulation is left to the drivers they form gangs, establish turf and are pretty violent in enforcing it. Its not the clean, rational system you imagine.

Also, self regulation leads to higher prices, not lower prices. A taxi in well regulated Bangkok is very cheap, 400 Baht from the airport to the city centre. A taxi in unregulated Phuket is extremely expensive, they wont turn on the engine for less than 200 baht.

This, and social media is just the latest form of doing it.

For a long time this kind of manipulation has been the domain of major news agencies. They'd print inflammatory statements and headlines with the express intent of stirring up public outrage, trial by media such as the Chamberlain case is a classic example. With social media its gotten worse as a single person can fabricate enough half truths, exaggerations and outright lies to create the same kind of outrage.

On one hand, people should be more sceptical and mistrustful of random news sources, on the other hand humans are emotional and irrational creatures. The one unintended and good side effect of regular false outrage that we're experiencing is that people are developing a resistance to outrage, which explains why newspapers like the Daily Mail which relies on creating false outrage to sell hate social media outrage.

I would guess that the answer is "yes" we are too quick to act on media outrage (no matter if it is social or traditional) but that's human nature.

The thing is, ironically the Daily Mail is trying to point out that we should be more sceptical when the DM in itself is one of the publications which is most deserving of scepticism.

The DM may be having one of it's "broken clock" moments, but even then you can bet there's an agenda behind it.

Point in short, you should never take the Daily Mail at face value.

Utter bollocks.

I dont know when it became popular for people who are racist, sexist or homophobic to claim they're persecuted when someone points out their obvious flaw, but it's complete bullshit and a really poor attempt to poison the well.

I guess it's just a slightly more advanced effort than prefacing a racist statement with "I'm not racist but...". It's childish, immature and it doesn't work.

Public nudity isn't illegal in Spain. Please stop assuming everywhere in the world has the same laws and prudishness as your homeland.

However people having a rowdy party every 2-3 nights right next to your sleepy casa is a serious problem. This is one of the big reasons that hotels are typically not put in residential areas.

We were referring to the ability to add new content after release which used to be quite common for the PCGMR.

Only since the plague of consolisation have major releases been shipped broken. Console peasants put up with it, the PCGMR does not and realistically with the Steam sales being over and picking up over a dozen functioning PC games for under A$200, I really couldn't care less about this crappy port.

The biggest reason the infotainment system cant (or more accurately, wont) have read only access is the fact that a lot of cars use the infotainment system to adjust things in the engine, suspension, braking systems, throttle response and so forth. BMWs and Mercs are especially bad for this but other manufacturers are catching up.

Thats when you tell the dealer you only want Xenon lights.

If he says no, you thank him for his time and leave. He'll call you back in a day or so telling you that he's "pulled some strings and got it done" (which like everything that emerges from a car dealers mouth, is utter bullshit, he always could do it but he was hoping you'd cave in to the more expensive package).

You can also always go aftermarket which wouldn't be any more expensive than going through the dealer, even in the EU.

And those electronics are probably going to be one of the biggest issues with keeping that car going.

Depends on the car. People are still making replacement electronics for enthusiast models like 80's and 90's Skylines and Supras. I can still find an aftermarket ABS unit for an S13. Hell, it's not hard to find an original ABS controller for a R32 Skyline still in its original packaging (car manufacturers have to stock 10 years worth of parts when they discontinue a mode, often they stock more than that). Add to this that manufacturers tend to use as many common parts as possible across different product lines.

Japanese cars, I wouldn't be so concerned about as they're built to last. A Euro, well the late 90's was when BWMs and Mercedes quality went to pot, but after 15 years of continual repairs and gremlins I suspect the GP wouldn't be planning to keep that car for the rest of his life.

I agree with your principle, but you cant have remote start without having the remote system attached to the ignition system.

However the auto industry has always taken a very lax attitude to safety until lawmakers forced them to pay attention. Seatbelts weren't in most cars before laws forced them to be, same with immobilisers and OBDII connectors (technically not a safety issue, but OBDII standardisation is one of the best things that lawmakers have done for car owners). I expect the same story to unfold here.

Thats not unusual these days. Almost all Android applications are getting pretty bloated. On my Android 5.1.1 phone, Chrome is 101 Mb, Facebook is 200 Mb, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are 70 Mb a piece and even a simple forum viewer for Whirlpool is 10 Mb.

Long gone are the days of applications being under 1 Mb. Seems like more than just 3 years ago though.

That being true, this move is a clear sign that Microsoft is fearing the other office compatible products on Android, especially since Google have been pushing their own office products (that can read Office files, but saves them under Googles format).

2001 called, it wants it incorrect argument back.

For a long time, even pre-SP2 XP malware relied upon social engineering to be installed. Even the dumbest users didn't open an email attachment without a reason in the 90's unless it said something like "Denise Richards naked with hot grits". Social engineering has always been and still remains the number one infection vector for malware and since the mid 2000's it's been the vector for 99% of Windows malware.

Easier said than done.

We did warn people about the LNP before they were elected but the Murdoch press drowned out any voice of reason by repeatedly shouting "BOATS" and "BUT LABOR" and sadly this worked on the uneducated masses (voting is mandatory here, this is the best argument against it).

Sadly, things like this are completely off peoples radar because of all the damage the LNP are doing to other things like industry, employment and the economy. It also doesn't help that the LNP are trying to use the bogeyman of Terrorism to keep people distracted from everything else they're fucking up. We've elected our own George W Bush but in Australia's defence, Tony Abbott will only see one term however the damage will last beyond 2017.

I know saying "I told you so" is little consolation, but I'm planning to skip the country and head to England.

Sounds like a good idea.

Psychics take money from idiots, a license fee will be collecting from this revenue. Its like an optional tax on stupidity with the added benefit of cutting down on the amount of charlatans operating in the area.