The reason that Gears of War was so popular for so long had nothing to do with the single player mode. The multiplayer was the shooter equivalent of a fighting game. It was wildly popular.

But they decided that since the multiplayer didn't fit their vision, that they'd create a completely FUBAR version complete with a screwed up lobby system where you could wait 10 minutes between matches with levels so large that it almost guaranteed that you'd end up playing hide and seek at the end of rounds while everyone else watched, and completely changed the dynamics of the weapons on multiplayer simply because lesser players were getting beaten soundly. They didn't even test the game enough to see that visitor side shotguns weren't even shooting at the target. Instead of competing for the top spot on the XBox Live charts, it's battling Hello Kitty Sings and Muppet Massacre and who knows what else.

When 3 versions of Call of Duty rank above your game in online play, you have a serious problem.

I played the hell out of Gears 1, couldn't stand Gears 2, and won't spend a single cent on Gears 3.

Yeah, because the world's track record in pre-democratic eras was just SOOOOO innovative.

Well, here's the general difference:

People work for the government for 2 reasons: control and security. When a government agency doesn't spend its entire budget, the budget for the next year is probably going to be cut. A governmental manager would be pretty upset to see their budget cut because it's going to be harder for them to get things done in their little fiefdom, not to mention harm their expense account. A government, for that reason, will spend every dime it has, even if there's no good reason to do so.

Companies, on the other hand, are there to make a profit. It's a negative for a company to spend all it has. And while you can point out a few companies here and there which have gone into the red, the majority of them do not survive doing so for long, and they certainly don't do it purposefully.

Pretty much the only governments which can possibly operate in the black are governments ruled by dictators or monarchs, because they have no need to answer to the people.

That's not really THAT outlandish for an ERP system, but it most certainly is for a PM. Normally your $250 and up guys are the ones with specialized abilities in certain fields that require a mix of technical and functional understanding. When I was a recruiter, I once placed a consultant on a treasury project for a large agricultural company at a pay rate of $350 an hour, and his bill rate was over $500 an hour.

And that was AFTER the whole IT boom. I know an SAP Human Resources consultant whose bill rate was over $1300 an hour during that period.

... what can easily be dismissed as an otherwise natural process, like plate tectonics. That's how you get PAID, my Ivy League brothas!" -- Al Gore

That's like saying that someone isn't holding you down if you can still wiggle your toes.

There is no right to anonymity in this country. This is not a free speech issue. This is a douchebag issue.

... and not a professional programmer.

Here's a little story:

Once upon a time, there were 5 friends. Each was in the cart making business. Each manufactured every part of his cart from scratch, because that's the way REAL cart makers made their carts back then. Their carts consisted of wheels, an axle, the body of the cart, the traces, and a yoke. Each of these friends happened to make one component of their carts better than the rest, and at least one part very poorly. Making a cart is a time consuming process, so one of the friends decided that he would purchase his worst part, the wheels, from his friend who made wheels the best. His friend thought that it was wierd that his friend would only want to purchase wheels from him, but because cartmaking is a tedious, low-pay job, he obliged. He could use the extra money.

This worked great. His carts were now that much better because he no longer had the weakness of the wheels to worry about. AND he got his job done faster since he only had to purchase them. So he then decided to approach his friend who made the best axles. While they didn't fit the wheels exactly, they were a good enough fit with a bit of tinkering. And so he went to each friend, purchasing a bit of a cart until he didn't actually have to build any of the parts himself, he only had to get them to work together.

People came to him because he built superior carts made with the best products, but he wasn't actually working all that hard because other people were making the parts for him. Soon, the demand for his carts was so great that his friends quit making carts altogether and simply made their cart parts for him. They were losing business to his superior carts anyway, and were making parts and subsequently, money much faster than if they were making entire carts by hand.

And they all lived happily everafter. Until that bastard Ford came along and wiped them all out.

The higher your talent level is, the more likely you're going to enjoy your job, simply because you have more options.

I know being a fry cook is tough for you, but chin up, soon you'll be working the burger line.

It's kinda like the health care debate. Democrats, in all their glorious wisdom, have decided that the best way to make sure that everyone has access to healthcare is to force people to purchase health insurance from private corporations, or face penalties of fines and incarceration. Because when someone refuses to purchase health insurance, the best way to get them to do so is to lock them up so that they lose their ability to pay for it anyway. Americans have always had an implicit right to determine which private parties we want to do business with, but that may soon change. Until, of course, the Supreme Court slaps them silly for being completely oblivious to the commerce clause.

Both parties are willing to trade away our freedoms, it just depends which you're talking about.

You can rant and rave about climate change all you want, but the fact of the matter is that unless all nations have a firm agreement in place to stem the unmitigated increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, then it's pointless to try to do it unilaterally. In that case, instead of stifling industry by requiring the reduction of greenhouse gases, you should instead be trying to accumulate as many resources as possible for the inevitable climate change you claim is going to take place. If we really are at peak oil, then the market is going to take care of the carbon issue for us anyway.

And excuse me for being a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but it seems rather odd to me that the same folks who are championing climate change as a scientific issue are also trying to use it to create an international social program in the same flavor as the IMF. They want developed nations to set aside $130 billion to be distributed to 3rd world countries. And by "developed nations," they mean the US and the EU. Because reducing the pool of money available for the countries who actually invest in these green technologies, otherwise driving costs down, makes perfect sense.

Now we'll have libraries with "knowledge is power" posters everywhere.

Guy 1: Hey Joe, how many volts you need to run that there dishwasher?
Guy 2 (named Joe, apparently): I reckon three Libraries of Congress oughta do it.

Interesting. I bought a Kindle because my bookshelf is struggling to keep up with the technical books I purchase for work and the books I read for leisure. The vast majority of the books on the Kindle are mobipocket format, from sources like Project Gutenberg. Technical books are a struggle to use on a device like a Kindle, but novels are just fine and dandy. And since I usually read several books at the same time, depending on whether I'm in the mood to read about science or philosophy or fiction or non-fiction, the Kindle makes it easy to jump from one to the other without having to lug 4-5 books around.
I'm also more likely to purchase a book through Amazon's Kindle service than I would if it were in paper format.

Only real complaint I have is the size of the screen. But the DX solves, that problem, I guess.

You want the opportunity to use my services at your convenience? Pay me a retainer equal to X hours a month. I work any more than X, you pay me an hourly rate. I work less than X, you still owe me for those hours.

230 miles per gallon? Sure, if you want to ignore all the fuel burned to charge the vehicle. The worst part is that the EPA is falling right in line and practically sponsoring this propaganda. Fuel efficiency should be determined by figuring out how far the vehicle can move on the equivalent of one gallon of gasoline or diesel. Anything else is apples and oranges and total bullshit.