Those would be terrible in practice though - crud would accumulate in the ridges, and it would get in the way when you want to do something wherever it is.

Flush ones would be the way to go.

Yes, because professional snipers in the world's most-funded army are going to use an off-the-shelf commercial product, and not say some super expensive custom-made equipment that exactly fits their mission parameters.

They're totally going to use some equipment that basically amounts to an iPod wired to a laser and duct taped to their rifle.

Are there climatologists who claim global warming will destroy civilization?

Because from what I've seen, they mostly just say it'll cause drastic changes over the next hundred years, which is fairly well supported; whether or not those changes cause some sort of societal collapse depends on how we handle them.

Erm have you actually read Christy's stuff? He disagrees on the magnitude of the effect of climate change on humans, the quantity of our contribution, and which mitigation measures we should take if any - not about whether or not climate change is happening, or if we contribute anything to it.

And there are real scientists, respected climatologists, who are asking "how do we know?" about global warming. And some are coming to different conclusions.

Name one who isn't Richard Lindzen, and you might have a point. Until then you're pretty much just making stuff up.

I don't want to fund research on gun violence either.

Well congratulations then, that's actually been passed into law. It's nearly impossible for academics to get the raw data they would need to do research, entirely due to that one amendment to some random bill.

The overall impression is that life tends to "stagnate": once life evolves into an efficient survival mechanism, there's no pressure to evolve further. Evolution aims at being a better "fit" for the unchanging environment, but more complexity is simply not needed.

Yeah, one thing to keep in mind is that our world has had several such plateaus, during which (as far as we can tell) no sentient life evolved.

I wouldn't be surprised if life is exceptionally common out there in the universe, but it really seems like life that's capable of leaving its planet is nearly unheard of.

My point was that even with Google having not having said even a single peep about fiber in the Bay Area at all, I think they're still more likely to come around and wire up my parents house than Verizon is - despite Verizon having announced their fiber plan eight years ago.

My parents live in the Bay Area, and my dad's been talking about how the very moment Verizon FIOS shows up at our house he's buying it.

He's been saying that since 2005.

It's been eight goddamn years and Verizon has been dragging their asses the whole time. At this rate, Google Fiber will get to my parent's area before Verizon pulls collective their thumbs out of their asses.

Which, I think, is the point of Google Fiber.

Dude, some ISPs are already injecting ads into web content that you access through them. If it's a choice between that and Google knowing that I look at Slashdot ten times a day, I'm pretty okay with the loss of privacy.

The Ogre: Designer's Edition kickstarter is going to ship about a year after their initial estimate, largely because the amount of support they got was ridiculously over their initial expectations.

Same thing with the Shadowrun Returns project, to the point where that was basically the first thing Jordan said in the first video update after the Kickstarter ended.

You just have to take Miyamoto's words to heart - a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is bad forever.

There's still $5 games on Kickstarter, it's just gotten big enough thay now there's $20 and $30 games too.

Just because it gets you high doesn't make it "intellectual" property.

You're right, it's happening already! Look at these evil merchants of second hand books I found just searching online:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=465600
http://www.abebooks.com/
http://www.powells.com/

If somebody doesn't do something soon, we'll be seeing merchants of second-hand records and CDs and videos as well!! I've even hear rumors that there are some brick-and-mortar institutions springing up and collecting second hand materials and LOANING THEM OUT FREELY TO ANYONE WHO ENTERS! Have we reached such a nadir of respect for commerce and capitalism that we're going to allow every moocher and freeloader in the 47% to simply BORROW someone's intellectual property without paying for it?! I'm shocked the Supreme Court would hand such a victory to the Marxists and Linuxists.

Simcity was cool in the 80's & early 90's, but now? I doubt it.

Wow, do you really think that? I hope you're just being bombastic for the sake of karma, because it's flat out not right.

The SimWhatever line of games have always had significantly wider appeal than "core" games like X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. Just look at how many people played The Sims, and how much money EA made off of that series - it's ridiculous. Any game that has this sort of mass appeal is going to sell well. There's people out there who haven't played a computer game in decades lined up to buy the new SimCity, just because they remember playing one of the older versions when they were younger. Even if you don't think it's "cool", there's a few million people out there who disagree with you.

The difference is, this is the first time anyone has tried to pull these always-online DRM shenanigans with a well-known mass market game. In fact, that's probably why there's been such a huge outcry - a lot of people are actually buying the game, and realizing that it's unplayable as released. They're not as willing to take EA's bullshit as the benighted Diablo fanboys who suffered through Error 37, so this time we're actually seeing effective backlash.