LOL, of course you don't have to do the crime to do the time!

Haven't you seen the email evidence procured from Yahoo themselves of the Al-Qaeda 3 that helped convict them of intending to bomb airlines using liquid explosives?

"Coded" emails were sent about CDs and DVDs as well as Projectors....

Damning stuff that!

I think the Martyrdom videos they made were much more incriminating. Unless they were *really* gloomy rap videos.

Ironicaly , the only convicted anthrax through the mail person was American...

Heh, Joel in the article says a similar line for "Duct Tape Programmers"
"Duct tape programmers have to have a lot of talent to pull off this shtick"

Anyone got a more succinct way of putting this like the above for architects?

I agree in that I have been a life long gamer and was "surprised" at how sobering I found the actual footage from a gunner position on a C130 Spectre gunship. A lot of gamers today will recognise it because that scenario was part of the popular game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
The gunner positions have enhanced visual aids and you could see little man shaped IR silhouettes running about and bright unfolding blossoms on the screen when the explosions from the howitzer or grenade launcher went off. Some figures would just lie down and not move and then you realised that they were probably dead. Others ran in different directions and the audio would calmly id targets and call in the targeting. As I said, very sobering when you know it's real. However, I was still able to play that scenario in COD4 :-)
Also having held some real pistols in the UK (a rare event for us on this side of the pond!) that too was a "sobering" experience as soon as the ammo was loaded (a gun toting buddy has nsp'd them first). Quite different from the "murder simulator"/desensitiser of Airsoft guns which I have played with quite a bit previously.
Essentially, I think it's all about the reality. Games are not real, they are pretend. As soon as it becomes real or related to life, the context has changed and we're in new mental territory.
What would be interesting in the context thing, would be to take something completely unrelated to video games and make it real. If you told people in a soccer match that the goals they scored meant people were executed, how would they feel? What about Chess? It could just be a button on a wall that random people on the street press. Probably quite sick once the "player" was informed of the reality!

Actually, if you play Postal, you can get the crying and the dying!
"Help... me... I can't move my legs....!"
"My eyes! My eyes! I can't see!"

But you get points for executions, so they didn't have long heheheh.

Hmmm... I thought China was concentrating on Pebble Bed Reactors. Had big plans to roll out modular 1MW units to stack to need.

According to Wikipedia and my own pet South African Nuclear Engineer, Pebble Bed Reactors do indeed not go into runaway chain reaction processes! There's some physical effect that stops the chain reaction leading to meltdown process. Kinda similar to the way you can't hold your breath until you die (without specific and additional actions that is).
Doesn't mean you can't get radioactive material release, but at least you can't get a Chernobyl.

...in January we landed on it in a helicoptor and stuck a GPS unit into it.

I guess the GPS unit was hammered into the ice :)

Hmmm, I read the article and paid great attention to the benchmarks. 4890 tends to score better.

Here, read the FPS results for yourself all run by Extreme Tech at 1900x1200 (from about 22" to 27" monitors).

card noAA/4xAA

crysis
275 24/19
4890 24/21

far cry 2
275 68/56
4890 79/56

l4d
275 125/105
4890 126/95

COD5 World in Conflict
275 61/40
4890 56/38

Company of Heroes
275 99/84
4890 69/60

Supreme Commander
275 66/64
4890 68/63

Hawx
275 71/43
4890 61/54

Stormrise
275 29/28
4890 47/42

Stalker Clear Sky
275 50/23
4890 48/23

OCUK Price of 275 229.99 GBP inc VAT
4890 209.99 GBP inc VAT

So to say the 275 takes the cake is rather a strange view.

Nvidia and AMD are both very savvy and big organisations. They have products aimed at all market sectors now. From budget gamers to bleeding edge competition sponsored gamers.

TBO, to choose a graphics card today, you have to know which games you play. Cos both Nvidia and AMD have roughly equivilant cards for the performance and the budget. Yup, it's that close a race!

The other factors you have to consider are
Chosen output? (pretty much determined by your optimal flat panel resolution these days!). No point looking at 24" panel resolution results (1900x1200) when all you have is a 19" (1280x1024)

How pretty you like it? Note the two values above. The second value is lower as it uses AA at varying levels. Think of it like putting the roof down on a convertible car. Car looks and feels great, but the performance hit is quite noticable.
Similarly to cars, some ppl can't live without that AA feature turned on (along with AF too!). So when comparing the numbers, find out if those features are essential to you.

NB: DO NOT USE THE ONBOARD GRAPHICS RAM AMOUNT AS AN INDICATOR! The graphics card manufacturers these days have cottoned onto that one. It's a bit like having 16 valves on a ford fiesta 1.1L. it'll improve it but in the end it's still a tiny 1.1 litre engine. Similarly with graphics cards.

Now I'm not espousing Tomshardware, but this page is the only one with a complete hierarchy that i've found that shows a rough relative performance with older cards too, so you can really see whether it's worth an upgrade.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-radeon,review-31515-6.html
Also has some mobile graphics cards listed too, so you can see what portability is costing you performance and price wise!

lol, I'd play Planetside 2 in a heartbeat!

the issue really is what is the point of making a game MM ie Massively Multiplayer.
There was a game called UltraCorps that was MMOspace strategy. But because you only interacted with those immediately around you, it meant only 3-4 ppl in reality. Of course, being successful bought it's own issues. If you thought having a war on 2 fronts was bad, try playing against 30 when you've conquered a few players/territories.

Planetside being a FPS MMO really had something extra for the scale that came with a MMO. You had all the various parts of a military campaign, from artillery to heavy armour, to gunships and bombers. The other thing was that because of the network of bases providing functionality (like radar, or extra vehicles/equipment) for the entire network, this encouraged commando raids behind enemy lines to cripple said benefits. So on a good night we had armoured columns (troop carriers and tanks) with air cover from reaver gunships and mosquito air scouts, along with artillery and liberator bombers softening the target and galaxy dropships to do hot drops (2 Max suits, 6+ infantry and 1 vehicle). Plus the stealth/commando raids on network benefits. And that's not even considering the defender's options and having counter artillery or counter air screens etc.

I don't see where the MMO part of an RPG has a similar effect. There is no strategic level that is added with the scaling up to an MMO. It's just the same tactical situation that you could easily play in Diablo. Raids for instance just appear to be more in each tactical slot be it Tank, DPS, Healer etc.

However, I can see Super Teams in the DC Online having a better draw/reasoning behind it. But it's scarcely much above tactical...