I don't usually believe in conspiracy theories but it isn't really a stretch to think that if the Soviets knew that there was trillions of dollars in minerals in Afghanistan that the U.S. government didn't have any idea that there were minerals in Afghanistan before going in.

I mean we have the most well-funded espionage and intelligence in the world. I feel like if there wasn't a conspiracy going on than we must have the most over payed spies in the world. I mean I'm don't know how easy it would be for the Soviets to keep a secret that huge from us.

Sometimes I wish our government had more conspiracies going on, at least our government would not be as incompetent as we are all lead to believe. But alas, I am not a believer in conspiracy precisely because our government is way too incompetent to actually be able to keep ridiculously huge secrets. I mean some intelligence analyst just leaked 250,000 intelligence documents to wikileaks.

This is pretty spooky, I mean the conspiracy theories are kind of warranted considering this station's eerie history.

Someone must have been funding a station that has lasted since 1982 and is powerful to be heard world wide. I have done a little bit of amateur radio and I know that in order to do that you need some serious power, a huge antenna, and quite a bit of constant maintenance. It is definitely not a stretch to think that this station was/is run by the Russian Government as at the very minimum for some sort of testing or maybe as an emergency broadcasting system during a disaster.

However, I really doubt its part of the Dead Hand system. I would think they would use something more secure if the dead hand system was under automatic control. If there is any possibility that it is part of the Dead Hand system than the Dead Hand system is certainly a system that requires some sort of human intervention due to possibilities of interference, false positives, or someone over riding the system to send a the activation codes.

Just my 2 cents, I am certainly no conspiracy theorist but it is always fun to think about the possibilities. There is plenty of stuff that we simply don't know about; however, I do hope that the some of the theories are real because than at least I would know that our government has a high enough level of competence to actually keep fool us in a significant way.

Google was honest enough to actually tell everyone they got this information and that they are deleting it. They came clean and didn't use this data for anything. I'm not saying that we should just be completely "no harm no foul", but just think of how many companies collect much much more private data than that and just hide the fact that they collect it.

I mean cmon in this day and age you should have security and all websites that have personal data use HTTPS. Give me a break, a lot of other corps warrant a lot more of our anger like Sony (taking away a feature that was advertised and adding DRM to everything without telling us), Microsoft (for being Microsoft...although Apple is giving them a run for their money), Apple (for completely going off the deep end and becoming "The Man"), AIG/Goldman/B of A/etc. (for taking all our money...and than asking for more of it after they lose all of our money).

Obviously the bad press had some effect. Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered bringing dedicated servers back in a whole nother game if they didn't feel the pressure.

Most of the time after a game company does something once and ignores the bad press the first they just keep on going because there is only so much bad press they can get after doing the same thing again. Just look at Ubisoft. They already went through the bad initial press from their ridiculous DRM. FPS gamers who are part of clans are just more dedicated to the PC than they are too consoles.

People are fine with playing RPGs on consoles but FPSs are a whole different story altogether.

I know that I am one of many people who decided not to buy the last game because taking dedicated servers out of the game basically took out one of the few advantages out of playing a PC game. The reason I prefer PC games when it comes to online first person shooters is because
1. A mouse is just better suited for an FPS.
2. I have a really good PC that I painstakingly built myself.
3. Because of the sense of community you get from going to same server over and over and playing with the same people.

Without a sense of community a game gets boring after a while and it is just the same cycle over and over again. I have joined a few clans but even when I didn't join the server's clan it was still fun to have a loose connection to the regulars on a server.

I play most non-FPSs on my xbox now in days, but you just can't take the PC away when it comes to FPSs.

Good job voting with your wallet everybody.

I also compulsively read through slashdot, gizmodo, arstechnica (damn can you kill some serious time with ars!), and torrentfreak instead of paying attention in class during the 11th grade.

Since I am going to go into the law profession, I better keep all my wall posts on record. Heaven's forbid if I keep a wall post from when I was 17 about how I am happy obama got elected or a forum debate when I was 15 about Bush.

I just clicked on bimetallism and ended up going on a wikipedia Link Click-a-thon for a good 30 minutes and ended up reading about the "Nixon Shock", "Revenue act of 1917", "Treasury Security", and "West Germany".

Wikipedia just isn't good for people with ADD because you can sit there clicking links all day.

This is a really old arstechnica article. Wasn't this article from last week?

Arstechnica is a great site, although they do tend to get carried away with their stories. I really read arstechnica when I'm in a boring class and need to pass time because their articles are so ridiculously long.

Most businesses in which need to run a signal a long distance need to use a Cat5 to Component system. My family owns three businesses and they all use a system in which cat5 is ran to all three of our TVs and converted to component right before reaching the TV.

As much as HDMI is great it simply is not as good as component for running an HD signal over a long distance. Component is much better with cat5 because it is split into 3 cords. That way you Cat5 can easily handle the signal. However Cat5 is insufficient for carrying the entire signal if your using HDMI.

The AACS should not have the authority to break so many people's installations. We certainly can't afford to take out our nearly one thousand dollar system of splitters and converters and I'm sure many businesses can't either.

When will game companies figure out that no amount of DRM is uncrackable. Why didn't they just go with Steam's simply DRM, especially since they were already selling the game on steam. I am a self-proclaimed pirate and even I buy games occasionally off Steam when they don't have DRM and they are actually innovative. I downloaded Mass Effect 2, played it a bit and then said screw it. I uninstalled the pirated copy and bought it on Steam. Same thing for bioshock, I had a copy for my xbox 360 already burnt and I ended up buying it off Steam.

As much as Steam isn't perfect, at least I can play games offline and I don't have to put a CD in. I have a decent sager gaming laptop so I played Mass Effect 2 mostly on my laptop when I had no internet at all, and I also did the same for bioshock 2. If they had this kind of DRM there would have been no way I would have bought it although I could have tethered on my WinMo phone but it kills the battery on my phone and why in the heck should I have to do that for a damn single player game.

Ubisoft is being ridiculous....really...they put out an old ass game for the PC and cripple it with terrible DRM. It is more than a year old, piracy is the least they should be worrying for such an old game.

When will companies learn that the PC is still king and avoiding it just because it doesn't have the same protection as consoles is ridiculous. I mean its actually easier to play pirated games on the Xbox 360 for me. No no-cd cracks, I can play online, no waiting for someone to crack it, and no trouble with updates. I can even go to blockbuster and copy a game from them. Basically there is absolutely no difference between the experience of playing a pirated game and authentic game. Then again the experience is actually better for playing pirated game vs the authentic one if your playing AC2.

Maybe if Ubisoft put out games for the PC when they were actually released and didn't treat their customers like crap, people would actually buy their games. I mean EA already learned their lesson that harsh DRM isn't the way to go after the outrage people had for the DRM on bioshock and mass effect.

I do plenty of piracy, not because I don't want to pay but moreso because I don't want to play big record labels. I always buy artist's T-Shirts so that I can give money directly to artists. I would gladly put $10 a month into this and "Flattr" a couple of my favorite artists and websites.

I mean...anything to stick it to the record labels. I don't want to give my money to terrorists.