So, with that many US bases surrounding them, antagonizing the US by engaging in a highly controversial nuclear weapons program helps them how?

Are they extraordinary gamers?

One other trend we are seeing is that there is more emphasis on the subscription model. A company might sell you a game for $40, and then charge you $15/month in perpetuity. It's what made World of Warcraft a multi-billion dollar franchise.

You traveled from planet to plant in your spaceship, as either a miner, a farmer, or a priest (or unofficially as a criminal, stealing and murdering everywhere you went). No star maps, every planet was randomly found and generated (I loved that the game was completely open-ended). And if you died, you did a roll to see if God would intervene and save your life; there was a 2% chance he would, and give you a huge stat boost to boot.

Empire I: World Builders was the best game I ever played on my Apple ][+.

I'm a reasonably attractive guy; have always gotten compliments on my looks. But, I'm just an average middle-class guy. The old rules still apply: men typically contact women first, not vice-versa. I would get the occasional email from a woman, usually someone not in the same range of attractiveness. But not much. I had to initiate almost all of my conversations.

I had heard that a decently-attractive woman would get flooded with emails. Just for shits and giggles, I decided to put this to the test one day. I took a photo of a woman from an Australian dating site -- fairly attractive. I created a profile on PoF and wrote a story of her being a struggling single mom. OMG the emails started pouring in. One guy tried to initiate a chat session within seconds of the profile going live, and kept hounding me until I blocked him. I had guys sending me cheesy pickup lines. Guys telling me their life story. Most only sent one email, but some were doggedly persistent. One guy kept trying to get my attention by bragging about how much money he had.

A few things I've learned about online dating over the years, though:

1) Don't go overboard in your profile - just the basics, really
2) Only use your absolute best pictures, from within the last few years
3) Time is of the essence -attractive women who create new profiles get burned out quickly by the sheer volume of emails they receive; you stand a better chance of getting her attention if you are among the first to email her
4) Be funny in your opening emails. Don't feel like you have to rip off a quick email. Take a few hours to think about it, try to be funny and clever but not desperate. I've had a lot of email conversations where the woman never even looked at my profile, but responded entirely because of the email I sent.
5) Try to find some common ground in her profile to put in your email message

I don't know about the "sending employees on dates" part, but I do know that Match.com is a spammer.

I quit Match.com once I started my current relationship; deleted my account, told them not to send me any emails, etc. I still get the occasional email from Match saying "Someone you know thought you might find this person interesting!" First of all, everyone I'm close to knows that I'm in a long-term relationship, and not looking. Second, I would look at these profiles and see that these were randomly-picked women from my area who would have some glaring disparity that would never cause me to choose them, nor would anyone who really knows me recommend them to me.

eHarmony specifically caters to women first in their setup; that's why they've been most successful at attracting women.

That said, I've spent a lot of time on a lot of dating sites over the years, and I don't think that there's a qualitative difference between eHarmony and every other dating site out there. I've had two eHarmony relationships that I spent a lot of time and effort on completely fizzle. I'm in a very promising relationship right now with someone I met on Plenty of Fish. At the end of the day, the site you found them on is meaningless; the person you found is everything.

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