If only there was a -1 stupidity..it suits the entire clique of shrill voices in here adding they laypersons's half a cent to the voluminous material that was peer-reviewed and published.

Why? It conflicts with their worldview. Apparently, the atmosphere is "really big" meaning human activities clearly could have no impact. Similarly the Gulf of Mexico is 'really deep' so, you know, the blow-out preventer collpasing and creating an uncontrolled gusher is really unimportant - a 'drop in the oceans'.

Insanity. Collective, managed, suggsted insanity. These people have the nerve to then claim they are free thinkers. Instead, they have swallowed the BS train from the profressional PR firms empoyed by companies in the energy industry to muddy the waters as much as possible. These tactics should be familiar by now.

Anyway, don't let logic get in the way of a little irrational paranoia and hysteria. Those evil scientists!

On a 'science' website - this gets modded 'Insightful'? Scientists are a little clique of conspiracists set on imposing their politics and energy ethics on the poor old USA.

Wow. Good luck with the future, you've clearly lost your minds.

Apparently some low-ranking district court judge now makes law.

Congratulations on one of the most backwards decisions in recent history.

"ip number gives it away" its misunderstandings like this that are causing all this hoopla. The IP address you are using at a given time will be used by someone else in the near future (in most cases). While the ISP can track you - assuming you do not use a proxy, or series of proxies, which everyone with a brain who posts hateful comments now will - they can only track it to your house. MAC addresses are easily spoofable.

Now, imagine you share your wireless network with three or four people - family, or friends. How do we establish who was posting?

Or, better yet - your wireless network is unsecured! Ooops! Anyone can now post using your IP. Checking the neighborhood, I see all kinds of default password and WEP-less open access networks. Good luck tracking down who is who.

I'm sorry, I have not read the comments and so cannot speak to their nature, however, no matter how bad they are, I don't think that this kind of disclosure is necessary - it will have a huge chilling effect. And the clever ones will still be able to say whatever they want, and innocents will get caught up in bizarre legal dramas because of both the courts and the defendants incomprehension of the underlying technology.

_____

I know everyone here knows this, I am cross posting from the Globe and Mail. Rarely have I been so outraged at a ridiculous and backwards court judgement.

They already rolled over - apparently 'do no evil' only runs so far.

Some of the comments were allegedly made under an account registered to a gmail address. How this helps them, I have no idea.

Statistics is a sham of a 'science' that can prove anything.

Large scale, long-term stuides often have valuable proofs - but these tiny, pop-science studies are more to do about the political agenda of the lead authors or their financial backers. I can essentially prove anything I want with these methodologies.

And you know it.

The sample set is exclusively 19-90 year olds living in the greater Seattle area.
Do people younder than 19 not play video games? This was a very sloppy study, probably a small survey done over the phone or web, and no, 500 is not a large enough sample size to draw MEANINGFUL correlations.

Unless they amend it to - Average Seattle ADULT gamer.

"Who was time for this, and the desire to spend this much time? The lonely, the single, the depressed, the inactive."

Please, speak for yourself. I have time to do as I wish, and I dont need anyone dictating to me how to spend said time. Further, there are plenty of 'lite' games you can play that require little to no effort and give you your little endocrine reward of 'completion' at the end.

Further, the fact that you just swallow the assumptions of the study without question shows how succesful the pop-psychiatry brigade has been in convincing us that video games are somehow deviant or lead to deviant lifestyles.

Its flat-out nonsense.

You know, social sciences are a great thing, you can find some very interesting data.

However, I am increasingly sick of these kinds of studies that use a sample pool so small as to be statistically irrelevant. I realize it costs money to do bigger studies, but trumpeting this kind of tiny average as 'fact' goes beyond mere chutzpah to full on fucking annoying.

Well since I cannot beat pop culture with mere logic, I might as well join them and open up Dr. Doom's Videogame Addiction Curative Haus. Forced to play the Atari 2600 version of ET until eyes bleed, while fed tofu and listening to a mix of Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls.

River delta, where fresh meets the ocean.

Efficiency doesnt matter, the pump is natural and you dont capture (or pay) for that loop.

I dont think you considered this long enough before posting your 'Why It Wont Work' rant.

'The game equivalent of Charles Manson'

Exaggerate much? This is typical of the attitude of carebears, who even when they enter a area clearly marked and deliniated 'BEWARE OF SHARKS' are prone to fits of hysteria when a shark actually bites them.

"How dare that shark bite me! That hurt! How was I supposed to know there were sharks here?'

Please, take the sociopath comparisons and other hyperbole to your personal blog where you may find a sympathetic audience.

Not to be offensive, but are you really this stupid?

There are two safe areas on opposite sides of a large map. If a Hero strays too close to the Villain safe area, or vice versa, they get killed by the drones.

They respawn in their own safe area, which happens to contain the exit to the *consensual PVP zone* (emphasis mine)

There is no camping here, which would be kind of a dick move, but due to the robots and the fact you respawn in your own safe guarded area (with egress) its impossible, literally.

Really, CoH/V players are the thinnest skinned Ive ever met on the wild and wooly internets, and thats saying a lot.

Anonymous coward fail is fail

The professor might be a joke but these carebear tear carryovers are even more pathetic.

People's pixels got hurt in a online game, we get it.

My friend who played CoH/V for some time made a villain and also used to use the teleport foe power to bring people to the drones to get killed and indebted. I instead used a Stalker (stealth hitter with big opening attack) during the brief time I played.

One constant was the amount of whining in-game. Most PvP MMOs dont allow the two enemy sides to talk to one another to lessen this kind of nerd-rage trash talk, but COH does, for good or for ill.

People would whine when I attacked them (note: with no teleport abilites) because they were just in the zone to 'quest'. Well, it has big warning signs all over it when you enter, and I came here to bash some heroes, not drink tea and discuss politics.

So: in short, each game has a different culture. In WoW, if the character regularly used cheese tactics and ganked regularly, people might dislike him, but the playerbase as a whole is far more tough-skinned. Interestingly, the player base of CoH/V skews to an older set, perhaps one not inured to getting defeated in online games by countless hours of getting spawn killed in twitch shooters.

Nothing new here, CoH is a carebear game. Carebears dont like dying. Period.

Id rather he spent his time on EvE - that is a microcosm of real society and would have been far more interesting.

This is modded insightful? Wow, how far Slashdot has fallen.

Since we have dropped off the face of logic, you might as well shit-can this whole thing. The stupid mob has taken over and we have inflammatory nonsense like what is posted above.

Im sorry but Deus Ex is 10 times the game L4D is, which is just a glorified HL2 mod.

Please, give the man some respect, he created, in Deus Ex 1, one of the most complelling and vivid sci-fi settings I have ever had the pleasure to indulge in since Neuromancer.

Narrative, done well like Deus Ex 1, gives the player room to make choices and experience consequences. Most importantly, the narrative gives actions purpose. If there is no story, who cares that you just killed the Grand Foozle of Badness? It is out of context and just a collection of pixels you pumelled.