I heard about this myself. I think it was a study where they just hooked 360 gamepads up to PCs running the game and did 4 v 4 matches. It might have been HALO or Call of Duty, I can't remember.
Well, I think Apple is bullshit for the same exact reason. I absolutely agree with you on this. Expensive, proprietary hardware doesn't do the consumer any good. It's great for the companies, though, especially when they can get a cult of personality that borders on religious hysteria like Apple can.
Just wanted to say, the prudent thing to do here is to buy the games anyway. You can pause the download and it sits in your Steam library as a game you own and you can download it after the next month comes around and your cap is reset.
It's always a epic laugh to watch a "expert" with a console controller to try and control a player character in a FPS style game, like watching Helen Keller race the Indy 500. Or try and play a RTS game. To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS. Some serious lowest common denominator shit.
I really wish someone would do a study on the science of this.
I know intuitively that you can get finer control with a mouse than with your thumbs. A thumbstick just cannot keep up with the same level of precision. That said, there are also situations where a joystick (not a thumbstick) are better - flight sims and spaceship games, for instance. You can't really do a steady banking turn for a few seconds straight with a mouse.
God help me I'm becoming an elitist. Get me some non-ironic domestic beer and a copy of MW3, stat!
Nah man, you're not becoming an elitist.
Mainstream games are constantly getting dumbed down and coming bundled with garbage like DRM and stuff that we don't want. We've finally reached the point in the gaming industry where a small team can put out a really good game. We don't have to buy the big budget stuff anymore, we have options and so we go for what we see as the superior product - the one that doesn't treat us like a criminal. The one that doesn't treat us like a child that can't understand a complex rules system. The one that knows we want more in our games than simple twitch play (although there are always times for twitch gaming for the sake of twitch gaming, and that is why the Lord God Carmack saw fit to bestow Quake Live upon us.).
While I may not agree with your wording, I do agree with your sentiment to a degree.
I loved Beyond Good & Evil. It was, in my opinion, probably the last good game that Ubisoft put out. A cult classic in every sense of the word.
I noticed that there was a PC version and it was on sale on Steam for $5. I bought it right away... but I also regretted the purchase to a degree. The ability to change the controls was very, very limited. You outright couldn't unbind certain actions or movement axises. I ended up having to get a pretty awesome program called XPadder so I could just rebind the keyboard and mouse controls to a gamepad.
So yes, I agree that consoles do often have an undue influence on PC games, especially when a console game is ported to the PC.
As I said in this post just a little ways down the thread, I am a big fan of Diablo 2 and I'm not really too keen on a lot of stuff they're doing with Diablo 3. But when it comes to some of the "console-ization" they're doing with D3, a lot of it makes sense.
One thing that I've seen decried since it came out was the removal of allocating individual skill points to skills. Rather than being able to raise any skill from Level 1 to Level 20, you can now only have that skill at one level. This makes sense, though.
I'll use the example of a Bone Necromancer build in Diablo 2. 20 to Teeth, 20 to Bone Spear, 20 to Bone Wall, 20 to Bone Prison, 20 to Bone Spirit, 1 in Decrepify, 1 in Corpse Explosion, 1 in Bone Armor. The rest of the 110 or so total skill points were used for prerequisites. This is pretty standard fare for a build - you have 5 skills that are maxed out. You usually only use one or two of them - Bone Spirit in this case was the bread and butter in nearly every instance. Sure, you might use teeth or Bone Spear situationally, but you're going to be using Bone Spirit more often than not. Decrepify, Corpse Explosion, and Bone Armor were important enough to me to actually have the skills, but not important enough to get beyond Level 1.
Most builds were basically like this - 5 or so skills maxed out to Level 20 and only one or two are really used most of the time. Removing skill points from skills makes sense to me because of this.
Then, we have the bit with removal of health potions in favor of "healing orbs". This system is used in a few games. Every Diablo player worth his salt wouldn't go up against a boss like Hell Diablo without a belt full of Full Rejuv potions and a few extras in his inventory. Dying (and losing experience!) was a costly price to pay, and any amount of gold, gems, and runes spent to prevent this was almost always worth the price when the alternative is grinding out more Baal runs to recover levels or failing to win against a boss that took days or weeks to save up the items for.
I don't know how I feel about this - it makes sense in a way and it simplifies the game without dumbing it down. I'm against simplicity at the expense of versatility and customization. I am not against complexity for the sake of complexity or because "that's how the last game was".
Lastly, there's the art style. Most people didn't like it right out of the gates. They said it looked too much like WoW and that it lost the feel of a Diablo game. Counter-arguments pointed out things like Acts 2 and 3 were pretty bright (as if anyone hadn't been rushed past those points straight into Act 4...). It is true in the sense of coloring that the entirety of Diablo 2 was not 100% gothic grimdarkness. But it is also true that Diablo 3 feels fundamentally different than its predecessor in an artistic and thematic sense. I look forward to player-created mods and texture packs (that we'll inevitably have to hack into the game somehow and get Blizzard all pissy) that will actually maintain the mood of the game better.
That is, of course, if I buy the game - which isn't looking too good right now to be honest.
I'm going to preface my reply by saying that I am a huge fan of Diablo 2. I didn't like Diablo 1 all that much (a classic to be sure, but a little too slow and clunky for me). I've put thousands of hours into Diablo 2 (a small portion of which is represented on my Xfire profile. I know the game inside and out. That said, while I was excited about Diablo 3, a lot of the stuff that has been happening has caused my interest to gradually wane.
Don't forget the in game auction house
Something I can understand. There are going to be items sold for D3 whether or not this exists. Any solution that *would* stop people from selling items will end up costing money as it would have to be either a very developed technology, involve a lot of people, or both. It's against the ToS of every nearly online game out there to sell items, accounts, etc. and yet you can readily buy them for all of those games.
This way, Blizz makes some money and everyone's generally happy. Hell, there are people who are talking about the potential of making a livable income off of said auction house. How possible or not this will be can only be discovered once it's actually out and has been subjected to the usual balancing, but it may be a likelyhood to put in 40 hours a week and make minimum wage or something close enough...
Moreover, occasionally people are hard up for cash and need to get rid of assets. In the digital age, a Level 80 WoW character with maxed out crafting and the best of the best epic gear is an asset in every sense of the word - yet we cannot legally sell them due to the ToS. If a similar case came up on D3, at least someone would be able to clear out a whole bunch of the items they've been saving for one reason or another and put some money in their pocket.
the lack of a real singleplayer game
Diablo 2 was fun single player, but I honestly always had more fun running it in groups. The lack of offline single player is, as far as I am concerned, the lack of a single player game though. I agree with you here.
and that like SC2 there will be no LAN play option.
This bugs me to no end, and for more reasons than you may think.
Starcraft 2 came out. I tried it on a weekend while hanging out with a friend at a LAN party weekend at his house. I loved it.
But I didn't buy it.
The lack of LAN play is a deal breaker for me. If it turns out that I really, really want Diablo 3, I may buy a legitimate version and run the superior pirate version in a sandbox so I can have LAN play. In the digital age, there are people who are just as skilled as the people working for companies like Blizzard working to give the fanbase what they want. If the players want LAN play, they'll have it - just like they have it with Starcraft 2, just like they have it with games like Minecraft that don't really have an official LAN play system (via Hamachi), and just like they absolutely will with Diablo 3. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
I remember them rationalizing taking away the offline play as not requiring people to start over if they began a character offline.
Of course. This is marketing 101. "We're not taking something away, it's actually a bonus feature!"
Personally, I'm glad that they didn't have anything better to do like making sure that the game is actually better than its predecessor so that they could tell players how to play. Personally, I'm glad I didn't waste my money on SC2, I'm guessing that I'll feel the same way about Diablo 3.
I fear that I may feel the same way about Diablo 3. I have basically zero interest in buying Starcraft 2 until the full three games are out in a battle chest, and even then I might just not buy it. There's nothing so awesome in Starcraft 2 that I would be willing to put up with the garbage that comes along with
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter.
You sure? These comments are original works of me, my opinion, my creation.
You have to see the difference between information and creation. That Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table is not copyrightable. It's information. Even if I create an elaborate statement that culminates in its essence in this and little else, there's no chance that I'll retain copyright of it. Because the main part of what I created is still just the information that hydrogen is the element with the least mass.
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter. That IS copyrightable.
Really? I'd say it's a mix of a few things. The only thing that isn't average about Dell nowadays is their incompetence.
First, we have them essentially giving up on what made them great - custom computers tailored to their customers needs and getting financing thereof. You could talk with a Dell Agent over the phone and end up with something that was perfect for you. Buy a Dell after 2004-2005 and the quality is noticeably just not there anymore.
Secondly, we have their lovely proprietary parts. One of my customers had a Dell from that golden era - around 2003-2004 - and 2 gigs of RAM (two sticks of 1024) cost approximately $189. I could otherwise have purchased 10 gigs of RAM for any other computer of the era at that price.
They actually make it really difficult to upgrade. My old roomate had an Optiplex... GX280, I think. It was a "slim" case, looking something similar to this. He wants to buy a new graphics card (thank goodness that Dell couldn't figure out how to make THOSE proprietary), but after looking at the system specs I realized that the stock 150W (!) power supply probably couldn't handle a newer card. Just buy a bigger power supply, right? Nope, it's a special piece of hardware in a unique size. There *are* no other power supplies for that size. Once I told him the options were basically to try and jury rig a new case because otherwise a new power supply would have to sit outside of the case, he elected to just buy a new computer altogether.
I know it seems like I'm railing against Dell (and honestly, I am). They've done a lot of fantastic things over the years. Their netbooks of recent years seemed to be a fair bit more sturdy and powerful than those of competitors, and a guy of my size really appreciated the larger keyboard. Even so, I recognize that they're going down the gutter. It's sad in a way, and it frustrates me every time I have to deal with one of their machines because they just aren't as good as they used to be.
I should rephrase that last bit. Rather, it's not relevant to my day-to-day life.
Philosophical ventures aside, whether or not God exists doesn't affect what video card I purchase or whether I end up going for a walk in the park or just down the block.
Pathfinder (which was created by Paizo, the guys who used to do D&D Magazine) is called "D&D 3.75" by a lot of people in the community. It seems to take all of the good stuff from 3.5, get rid of a lot of the bad stuff, and keep the game very interesting without dumbing down any of the rules.
Pathfinder is what should have happened to 4.0.
In all honesty, can't they just make plenty of money off of campaign settings and miniatures? I don't really see the need to reset the rules every few years. You'd think they would have this shit down after 35+ years of D&D. =|
In other news, Wizards of the Coast is acquired by Houghton Mifflin. A statement by the company said they were proud of Wizards for putting out new editions so often but that if they shuffled around some tables and charts they could get a new edition out every year.
I don't think this is an oversight on NASA's part.
I mean, would you want to take on the expense of air dropping if you don't even know if the thing is livable? First test out the practicality of the unit in an assembled state, and then figure out how to air drop it and how it can be assembled in a suit.
I try to find a short, concise rebuttal that utterly defeats that argument.
The best I've found is, "Science is about the ability to test a claim. You cannot test the claim that God did it, therefore it is irrelevant to science and as such irrelevant to my life." If anyone wants a shot at wording this more succinctly or effectively, go for it - I'd love to hear it. (I'd also love to hear any potential counterarguments).
It is an unfortunate byproduct of being an Atheist that people generally challenge my beliefs (or rather, lack thereof) and I've had to come up with a few defense mechanisms over the years.
Or, in short, Microsoft used up all of their goodwill a long time ago. Google hasn't - yet. Geeks are skeptical by nature and are willing to give a company or person that is fundamentally good the benefit of the doubt.
If we can only weaponize it, Americans would be all over it.
"Paint a target with the LipidLaser 2000 and our global network of satellites will obliterate it from orbit with microwaves! Lose weight AND your enemies!"
If we're getting Slashdot-related wishes granted, I'd prefer they spend some time making Slashcode less of a massive clusterfuck. Slashdot is hands down the slowest, clunkiest, and least user-friendly website that I use on a daily basis.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard about this myself. I think it was a study where they just hooked 360 gamepads up to PCs running the game and did 4 v 4 matches. It might have been HALO or Call of Duty, I can't remember.
You don't expect to watch the same movies and TV shows you did when you were younger, so why expect to enjoy the same games?
Oh yeah? Then explain why I sit in my underwear watching Stargate SG-1 re-runs!
Check and mate.
Well, I think Apple is bullshit for the same exact reason. I absolutely agree with you on this. Expensive, proprietary hardware doesn't do the consumer any good. It's great for the companies, though, especially when they can get a cult of personality that borders on religious hysteria like Apple can.
Oh come on now, it's not like we have gulags where we make people disappe-
Oh.
Just wanted to say, the prudent thing to do here is to buy the games anyway. You can pause the download and it sits in your Steam library as a game you own and you can download it after the next month comes around and your cap is reset.
I watched Watchmen more than a few times. I thought the doomsday clock was an over-the-top, made-up example of how nutty we were during the Cold War.
Apparently truth really is stranger than fiction.
It's always a epic laugh to watch a "expert" with a console controller to try and control a player character in a FPS style game, like watching Helen Keller race the Indy 500. Or try and play a RTS game. To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS. Some serious lowest common denominator shit.
I really wish someone would do a study on the science of this.
I know intuitively that you can get finer control with a mouse than with your thumbs. A thumbstick just cannot keep up with the same level of precision. That said, there are also situations where a joystick (not a thumbstick) are better - flight sims and spaceship games, for instance. You can't really do a steady banking turn for a few seconds straight with a mouse.
It also had local multiplayer. I wonder if Diablo 3's console version will have it? PC surely won't have anything of the sort.
God help me I'm becoming an elitist. Get me some non-ironic domestic beer and a copy of MW3, stat!
Nah man, you're not becoming an elitist.
Mainstream games are constantly getting dumbed down and coming bundled with garbage like DRM and stuff that we don't want. We've finally reached the point in the gaming industry where a small team can put out a really good game. We don't have to buy the big budget stuff anymore, we have options and so we go for what we see as the superior product - the one that doesn't treat us like a criminal. The one that doesn't treat us like a child that can't understand a complex rules system. The one that knows we want more in our games than simple twitch play (although there are always times for twitch gaming for the sake of twitch gaming, and that is why the Lord God Carmack saw fit to bestow Quake Live upon us.).
Confirmed for shit.
FACT: consoles retardify any gaming experiance.
While I may not agree with your wording, I do agree with your sentiment to a degree.
I loved Beyond Good & Evil. It was, in my opinion, probably the last good game that Ubisoft put out. A cult classic in every sense of the word.
I noticed that there was a PC version and it was on sale on Steam for $5. I bought it right away... but I also regretted the purchase to a degree. The ability to change the controls was very, very limited. You outright couldn't unbind certain actions or movement axises. I ended up having to get a pretty awesome program called XPadder so I could just rebind the keyboard and mouse controls to a gamepad.
So yes, I agree that consoles do often have an undue influence on PC games, especially when a console game is ported to the PC.
As I said in this post just a little ways down the thread, I am a big fan of Diablo 2 and I'm not really too keen on a lot of stuff they're doing with Diablo 3. But when it comes to some of the "console-ization" they're doing with D3, a lot of it makes sense.
One thing that I've seen decried since it came out was the removal of allocating individual skill points to skills. Rather than being able to raise any skill from Level 1 to Level 20, you can now only have that skill at one level. This makes sense, though.
I'll use the example of a Bone Necromancer build in Diablo 2. 20 to Teeth, 20 to Bone Spear, 20 to Bone Wall, 20 to Bone Prison, 20 to Bone Spirit, 1 in Decrepify, 1 in Corpse Explosion, 1 in Bone Armor. The rest of the 110 or so total skill points were used for prerequisites. This is pretty standard fare for a build - you have 5 skills that are maxed out. You usually only use one or two of them - Bone Spirit in this case was the bread and butter in nearly every instance. Sure, you might use teeth or Bone Spear situationally, but you're going to be using Bone Spirit more often than not. Decrepify, Corpse Explosion, and Bone Armor were important enough to me to actually have the skills, but not important enough to get beyond Level 1.
Most builds were basically like this - 5 or so skills maxed out to Level 20 and only one or two are really used most of the time. Removing skill points from skills makes sense to me because of this.
Then, we have the bit with removal of health potions in favor of "healing orbs". This system is used in a few games. Every Diablo player worth his salt wouldn't go up against a boss like Hell Diablo without a belt full of Full Rejuv potions and a few extras in his inventory. Dying (and losing experience!) was a costly price to pay, and any amount of gold, gems, and runes spent to prevent this was almost always worth the price when the alternative is grinding out more Baal runs to recover levels or failing to win against a boss that took days or weeks to save up the items for.
I don't know how I feel about this - it makes sense in a way and it simplifies the game without dumbing it down. I'm against simplicity at the expense of versatility and customization. I am not against complexity for the sake of complexity or because "that's how the last game was".
Lastly, there's the art style. Most people didn't like it right out of the gates. They said it looked too much like WoW and that it lost the feel of a Diablo game. Counter-arguments pointed out things like Acts 2 and 3 were pretty bright (as if anyone hadn't been rushed past those points straight into Act 4...). It is true in the sense of coloring that the entirety of Diablo 2 was not 100% gothic grimdarkness. But it is also true that Diablo 3 feels fundamentally different than its predecessor in an artistic and thematic sense. I look forward to player-created mods and texture packs (that we'll inevitably have to hack into the game somehow and get Blizzard all pissy) that will actually maintain the mood of the game better.
That is, of course, if I buy the game - which isn't looking too good right now to be honest.
I'm going to preface my reply by saying that I am a huge fan of Diablo 2. I didn't like Diablo 1 all that much (a classic to be sure, but a little too slow and clunky for me). I've put thousands of hours into Diablo 2 (a small portion of which is represented on my Xfire profile. I know the game inside and out. That said, while I was excited about Diablo 3, a lot of the stuff that has been happening has caused my interest to gradually wane.
Don't forget the in game auction house
Something I can understand. There are going to be items sold for D3 whether or not this exists. Any solution that *would* stop people from selling items will end up costing money as it would have to be either a very developed technology, involve a lot of people, or both. It's against the ToS of every nearly online game out there to sell items, accounts, etc. and yet you can readily buy them for all of those games.
This way, Blizz makes some money and everyone's generally happy. Hell, there are people who are talking about the potential of making a livable income off of said auction house. How possible or not this will be can only be discovered once it's actually out and has been subjected to the usual balancing, but it may be a likelyhood to put in 40 hours a week and make minimum wage or something close enough...
Moreover, occasionally people are hard up for cash and need to get rid of assets. In the digital age, a Level 80 WoW character with maxed out crafting and the best of the best epic gear is an asset in every sense of the word - yet we cannot legally sell them due to the ToS. If a similar case came up on D3, at least someone would be able to clear out a whole bunch of the items they've been saving for one reason or another and put some money in their pocket.
the lack of a real singleplayer game
Diablo 2 was fun single player, but I honestly always had more fun running it in groups. The lack of offline single player is, as far as I am concerned, the lack of a single player game though. I agree with you here.
and that like SC2 there will be no LAN play option.
This bugs me to no end, and for more reasons than you may think.
Starcraft 2 came out. I tried it on a weekend while hanging out with a friend at a LAN party weekend at his house. I loved it.
But I didn't buy it.
The lack of LAN play is a deal breaker for me. If it turns out that I really, really want Diablo 3, I may buy a legitimate version and run the superior pirate version in a sandbox so I can have LAN play. In the digital age, there are people who are just as skilled as the people working for companies like Blizzard working to give the fanbase what they want. If the players want LAN play, they'll have it - just like they have it with Starcraft 2, just like they have it with games like Minecraft that don't really have an official LAN play system (via Hamachi), and just like they absolutely will with Diablo 3. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
I remember them rationalizing taking away the offline play as not requiring people to start over if they began a character offline.
Of course. This is marketing 101. "We're not taking something away, it's actually a bonus feature!"
Personally, I'm glad that they didn't have anything better to do like making sure that the game is actually better than its predecessor so that they could tell players how to play. Personally, I'm glad I didn't waste my money on SC2, I'm guessing that I'll feel the same way about Diablo 3.
I fear that I may feel the same way about Diablo 3. I have basically zero interest in buying Starcraft 2 until the full three games are out in a battle chest, and even then I might just not buy it. There's nothing so awesome in Starcraft 2 that I would be willing to put up with the garbage that comes along with
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter.
Ten copies, please. WHY WON'T YOU TAKE MY MONEY?!
You sure? These comments are original works of me, my opinion, my creation.
You have to see the difference between information and creation. That Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table is not copyrightable. It's information. Even if I create an elaborate statement that culminates in its essence in this and little else, there's no chance that I'll retain copyright of it. Because the main part of what I created is still just the information that hydrogen is the element with the least mass.
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter. That IS copyrightable.
Does this mean I can't use the quote button?
That joke is so derivative.
1-5 years is more reasonable for a copyright nowadays.
The life of the author + 70 is not.
Really? I'd say it's a mix of a few things. The only thing that isn't average about Dell nowadays is their incompetence.
First, we have them essentially giving up on what made them great - custom computers tailored to their customers needs and getting financing thereof. You could talk with a Dell Agent over the phone and end up with something that was perfect for you. Buy a Dell after 2004-2005 and the quality is noticeably just not there anymore.
Secondly, we have their lovely proprietary parts. One of my customers had a Dell from that golden era - around 2003-2004 - and 2 gigs of RAM (two sticks of 1024) cost approximately $189. I could otherwise have purchased 10 gigs of RAM for any other computer of the era at that price.
They actually make it really difficult to upgrade. My old roomate had an Optiplex... GX280, I think. It was a "slim" case, looking something similar to this. He wants to buy a new graphics card (thank goodness that Dell couldn't figure out how to make THOSE proprietary), but after looking at the system specs I realized that the stock 150W (!) power supply probably couldn't handle a newer card. Just buy a bigger power supply, right? Nope, it's a special piece of hardware in a unique size. There *are* no other power supplies for that size. Once I told him the options were basically to try and jury rig a new case because otherwise a new power supply would have to sit outside of the case, he elected to just buy a new computer altogether.
I know it seems like I'm railing against Dell (and honestly, I am). They've done a lot of fantastic things over the years. Their netbooks of recent years seemed to be a fair bit more sturdy and powerful than those of competitors, and a guy of my size really appreciated the larger keyboard. Even so, I recognize that they're going down the gutter. It's sad in a way, and it frustrates me every time I have to deal with one of their machines because they just aren't as good as they used to be.
I should rephrase that last bit. Rather, it's not relevant to my day-to-day life.
Philosophical ventures aside, whether or not God exists doesn't affect what video card I purchase or whether I end up going for a walk in the park or just down the block.
2009 - Pathfinder
Pathfinder (which was created by Paizo, the guys who used to do D&D Magazine) is called "D&D 3.75" by a lot of people in the community. It seems to take all of the good stuff from 3.5, get rid of a lot of the bad stuff, and keep the game very interesting without dumbing down any of the rules.
Pathfinder is what should have happened to 4.0.
In all honesty, can't they just make plenty of money off of campaign settings and miniatures? I don't really see the need to reset the rules every few years. You'd think they would have this shit down after 35+ years of D&D. =|
In other news, Wizards of the Coast is acquired by Houghton Mifflin. A statement by the company said they were proud of Wizards for putting out new editions so often but that if they shuffled around some tables and charts they could get a new edition out every year.
I don't think this is an oversight on NASA's part.
I mean, would you want to take on the expense of air dropping if you don't even know if the thing is livable? First test out the practicality of the unit in an assembled state, and then figure out how to air drop it and how it can be assembled in a suit.
I try to find a short, concise rebuttal that utterly defeats that argument.
The best I've found is, "Science is about the ability to test a claim. You cannot test the claim that God did it, therefore it is irrelevant to science and as such irrelevant to my life." If anyone wants a shot at wording this more succinctly or effectively, go for it - I'd love to hear it. (I'd also love to hear any potential counterarguments).
It is an unfortunate byproduct of being an Atheist that people generally challenge my beliefs (or rather, lack thereof) and I've had to come up with a few defense mechanisms over the years.
Or, in short, Microsoft used up all of their goodwill a long time ago. Google hasn't - yet. Geeks are skeptical by nature and are willing to give a company or person that is fundamentally good the benefit of the doubt.
Because I was going more for humor and less a statement of fact?
(My general rule is if there's no supporting sources outside of religious texts then it probably didn't happen.)
Or they could be using the "sue them even if we we'll lose and they'll be bankrupted" tactic.
If we can only weaponize it, Americans would be all over it.
"Paint a target with the LipidLaser 2000 and our global network of satellites will obliterate it from orbit with microwaves! Lose weight AND your enemies!"
If we're getting Slashdot-related wishes granted, I'd prefer they spend some time making Slashcode less of a massive clusterfuck. Slashdot is hands down the slowest, clunkiest, and least user-friendly website that I use on a daily basis.