Actually most slashdotters are for a refocusing of the governments efforts. They've been left to the lobby groups and their own devices for too long. Regulation needs to be done but other regulations that have been put into place need to go. I'd go so far as to say peel back every law since Jan 1, 1998 and have done. Require any new criminal law to pass a 30% public vote in favor. The majority of the ridiculous laws have been passed or modified into ridiculousness since then.
Thats entirely possible. More likely the first one or two will actually happen because... curiosity. That and the fact that those that have some kind of interest in both none of the neanderthal stuff being true and evolution in general being false don't usually find out until after its happened once due to their fingers-in-ears approach to proper science.
After that there might be some public outcry and it will be stopped.
The best part about this to me is the significant number of comments both here and on the article itself referencing frankenstein as a reason not to do this. As though a completely fictional event has any bearing on reality whatsoever.
Then again, why not? We already base way too many policies and allow far too much influence in our lives from some other works of mostly fiction.
Not that unlikely. One of the neanderthals they found frozen in greenland has had its genome almost fully sequenced and they're producing copies of its DNA.
1.5 million years at absolutely IDEAL temperatures, but this ones only about 80-120k years at ~ -5 to -10 C. 10-15 degrees off the ideal, but in the direction that matters a whole lot less, and we only need it to have lasted less than 10% of the calculated ideal time.
It looks like it IS a cure for HIV-related AIDS, but we have several of those already, they just don't work in all scenarios. This one looks like it does, and does so in a much cleaner manner than current methods.
The real problem is people and the media conflating AIDS with HIV. While HIV would be a primary cause it isn't the only cause of AIDS and the two while directly related are NOT the same thing. AIDS is a symptom of HIV, not the disease itself.
If it includes a correct ratio based on the actual ratios in each country, which is what PISA does.
This article is total bullshit to try to make Americans feel better about the system while the system is still fundamentally broken due to the huge gap in poor vs rich. The system will be fixed when the country accepts it needs to implement higher taxes on the rich and more socialist policies >_>.
Proper socialist policies though, like a robust employment insurance system and stricter labour laws, including but not limited to shorter work weeks. Not "give everyone welfare" laws.
I don't see another way to phrase it. There are almost zero conservative party viewpoints(with the single exception of gun control) that have any substantiated roots in evidence or even reality. The conservative party has become entirely a "Toe the party ideological line at all costs! Even if it kills the country!". Even policies they CAMPAIGN on when the democrats try to push through the EXACT same policies the conservatives quickly about-face and turn into rabble-raisers instantaneously.
I'm not saying Obama is a saint, or even particularly good, but most of the reason for that is that he didn't use his first two years of a full democrat house/senate/presidency to quickly push through the shit that was required. Instead he played politics and tried to keep to his campaign promises. He tried to work with the republicans and figured out way too late that they were fucking him over. We'll see if he can manage anything over the next 4 years, but with the sad state of the political system currently I can't see anything happening anytime soon.
AC responded for me. Mildly more bluntly than I would have, but you have to be fucking retarded if you're going to argue about or demand "citations for unsubstatiated claims" for gun law in other places in the world and not know ANYTHING about the UK or even for that matter the Canadian gun laws which restrict carry, restrict magazines(Which is just stupid, I can name 2 guns off the top of my head that take less than 3 seconds to reload a 10 rnd mag or stripper clip into) and had a huge and expensive gun registry going for a long time. None of which have actually reduced gun violence or helped solve any crimes. It actually went against helping solve crimes because almost all of the guns used in husband-kills-wife or wife-kills-husband etc emotional murders were stolen after the registry went in. They previously used to very often find the gun in the persons house and match the ballistics.
Also the fact that gun violence, in the UK at least, has increased, because they KNOW that their targets are not armed. The only ones with guns are the criminals.
Making concealed carry hard to acquire is good. Allows cops to go after criminals for suspicious bulges. If they bother a law-abiding citizen they just won't find anything.
If you are currently an Identifying conservative in America you can't be called a geek. A geek examines evidence placed before him and will do his best to revise his opinions based around the most concrete evidence.
The conservative party is full of so much hypocrisy and out-and-out lies in America right now that it kills brain cells just to read about it. If you examined it at all you'd see it for what it is.
The Democrats have examples but they're not as pervasive. You could potentially identify as a democrat due to one issue or another being larger than others in your particular life. In reality though, any proper geek in this day and age shouldn't identify with either of the two monstrosities in the U.S.
I don't really touch on the community issue because thats an entire other problem. Suffice to say Blizzards own tools have driven the community to where it is now, which is to say a very bad place.
For the Real ID stuff I have to sadly point out you're in a (thankfully) very vocal minority.
Blizzard received a lot of feedback on the required Real ID system which was almost entirely negative but not many people would have actually left because of it. Most of those that would have did so as soon as it was threatened. On the whole the particular system that inspired the move has actually improved the game somewhat.
Thanks and maybe responding will get your post some more attention as well. That message really needs to be heard.
Something I also forgot to mention is the tendency for these companies to all end up using the same Beta testers and these testers are being listened to FAR too much on basic game design elements. Once the product goes to beta those things should be decided and done. Those are things you have decided by your extremely well-paid game designers, not the idiots clamouring begging and bribing their way into unpaid work just to get a glimpse at new game title x.
Especially if you're launching an MMO.... once its released finding the signal in the dross of forum posters is nearly impossible. Unless something is fairly universally ill-received you shouldn't even think about changing it. Even if it is, tweak it, don't redesign it altogether.
I participated in the last parts of the SWTOR beta and there was a story about a dev coming out and saying the testers ruined the game... they did. I ended up with access to a bunch of the old forum posts and saw the early beta screenshots posted to the forums. I saw the features. I saw everything. It was glorious. They had a hit on their hands that got destroyed by testers and fans. They listened to design opinions that they should have ignored, and ignored those that they should have listened to, but overall they'd have been in much better shape if they'd just ignored everyone and focused on fixing bugs and balancing classes, but not the exact way the testers wanted the classes balanced because that way goes boring shit best relegated to competitive FPS games that are the only things that CAN be balanced to the point the testers want.
I really think this is a lot of where the cloning you speak of is coming from. Its the same idiots testing every game and shouting bad ideas loudly enough that they end up getting implemented.
See: The homogenization of WoW over the last 8 years while throwing more and more shiny at it to try to call that the creativity. They tried to go against the numbers ONCE but called it so badly that their subscriber base revolted and they lost a large portion of their North American/European subscribers.
TL;DR for rest of this: World of Warcraft has shot itself in the foot for several reasons but mainly due to exactly the reasons stated in the article. They relied on numbers, and then when they realized numbers weren't getting them anywhere as a lot of people didn't like where the game design was headed... they relied on the absolute worst group of people to advise them: The hardest of hardcore gamers.
They removed the wrong functionality based on the opinions of elite players. While overall class homogenization and general horribleness really started its massive downwards spiral in Wrath of the Lich King, Wrath had one thing going for it: Variety of raids. Elite players in wrath had difficulty filling raid spots even just a month after the world first lich king kill because there were things to do. Thus when consulted they put their own interests ahead of everyone else and voted in a removal of seperate cooldowns for difficulty mode of raid encounters. This was ostensibly done for good reasons but since gated raids with gear from previous raid instances being required to progress into harder raids are no longer there... removing this trashed the list of things to do for the folks that "populate" the game world. The people that are on constantly. The ones that have little to no life outside of the game. These are the guys that get made fun of the most and they are absolutely vital to your games success. Most of them are quite friendly and helpful and they deserve better. Besides that they broke the nostalgia factor of re-rolling alts for most of their older players, who no longer fully return to the game because they don't feel like re-learning the zones in addition to the classes.
They continued homogenization while removing those things in Cata leaving everyone in the semi-hardcore(people who play a lot but not super competitively) bracket bored out of their fscking minds.
The graphics don't help.... original gfx were grittier and less cartoony. When the graphics were updated for Cata they went wayyyy too far into the looney toons bin for myself and a lot of others. I would have preferred mildly more realistic environments than vanilla(but not too realistic, the original art style had a "fun-looking" appeal to them) with much more realistic player characters. The fact that my dwarf hunters nose and hands with the new cartoonier textures look nearly as bad as the graphics in Aidyn Chronicles from the N64 is fucking depressing. Especially when its stressing a computer with hardware powerful enough to account for a 20x10 server room full of N64s.
Their numbers and polls state that graphics don't matter to their customers however, which is only partially true. Graphics quality doesn't matter AS MUCH but graphics style most certainly does. Its one of those intangibles that will likely never show up on most exit surveys unless you start forcing people to give you their top 5 reasons for leaving instead of one or two. Blizzardat the moment gets one or two.
The thing is, once you start getting the 5.... if the top 1-2 reasons are varied and split around a relatively even-looking pie-chart... then they all need work but its probably already being worked on for your next expansion etc. If 95%+ of people leaving place an issue in their top 5... it needs to be addressed immediately.
Additionally... don't just poll people who are currently playing. Poll those who have quit. Those who respond who have quit probably want to return but won't due to the reasons they list. If wow was trying to get its subscriber base back, this is where it needs to start.
Unless omitting something can be seen to have an immediate negative effect on whomever you are talking to then its not lying.
Not telling someone you have a PHD in physics for a network admin job is the same as not telling them you won a small scholarship for essay writing in high school. Neither of them has much relevance to the position you are applying to.
You're suffering from never having read any history textbook... the years of peace in human history are fewer than the years of war.
Beyond that, anything could happen. Climate change, a meteor, yellowstone blowing its top.... hurricanes... etc... etc.. disasters happen all the time, its blind fucking stupidity not to be prepared for something.
Omit but then own up to having it when they ask you about the gap at an interview. Make it clear that you got it due to an economic down turn in tech after the dot com bust but your real interest was and is in networking/whatever your real interest is. Honesty is always the best policy but do it selectively.
Incidentally tell them you left it out as it isn't relevant to your current work desires.
Preparing for some sort of cataclysmic event is prudent. Given human history and the fact that we have nuclear weapons something IS eventually going to happen. It might not even be in our lifetimes, but the bunker in the back yard is good for a few hundred years anyways, maybe the kids or grandkids will be grateful it got built.
Any serious study thats not purely control group double-blind oriented finds that in the real world, violent people that play violent video games are more likely to get their "release" from the video game and not actually go out and kill someone.
There is also the fact that depressed people(particularly younger folks) are more likely to become violent or aggressive. This has been known for a LONG time. Coincidentally depressed people also play a lot more video games than ordinary people. When I say a lot, I mean that in some subsets of people it could easily be an order of magnitude more than those that aren't depressed. I'm personally of the opinion that this is the cause that drives the correlation.
The "blame the violent video games" saga has gone on long enough. It doesn't actually do much of anything, its been proven times over. It makes you slightly more aggressive for about an hour after playing and then you calm down and resume your normal behavior. In violent people they tend to calm down further than their normal behavior.
Besides all that though, its well past too late. Doing a study on video games or even violent video games and finding a correlation to study NOW would be worse than useless. Saying someone played violent video games and also assaulted x people is almost like saying they drank water and assaulted x people.... the cause can't be directly attributed and any studies that have tried to actually source the cause rather than just coming up with more correlations have either found A) There is no direct causal link or B) there is actually an OPPOSITE effect.
Thats actually kind of sad. I expected a much bigger gap. 2.7 seconds isn't much.
Also as I recall they only ever ran one Mustang around the track and that was a base model GT, which again is 30k less than the M3.... 30k for 2.7 seconds(which I'm now certain could be made up for in horsepower and a good set of tires, since its only 2.7 seconds...) is a lot of money. Especially when at 60k you're talking you're only 15k away from Porsche territory.
As I mentioned "in general" the mountainous region makes up far less of the land... and the euros have twisty roads due to old buildings and congested population centers more so than mountains, though they also have more than their fair share of those. I don't live in flat country either, but even here there are more straight roads than you see much of in britain. Also has to do with more cities in north america being engineered instead of just built.
I forgot to mention that "practical" often factors in as well... but if someone is looking purely based on practicality they're not watching top gear or any show like it anyways and they'll be one of the idiots on the highway driving a volvo, toyota, or honda doing 10km/hr below the posted limit.
As far as a car for an everyday person who can't afford a 60k+ car... "Fun" is the often only metric that matters. The only other metric that could matter is "Moddable" and there are VERY few cars that meet that criteria as well as the Mustang.
My buddy just bought a Kia Forte 2 years ago because besides the Ford Focus it was the most fun vehicle in his price range on the market. He also wanted some gadgets though and the focus, while a better base car, was significantly more expensive by the time he got them.
I'd like to see a show like top gear that reviews more of the low to mid-range cars. Not the low-low end but something within shooting distance for most people, or at least within a 3-5 year old used shooting distance.
There used to be a show on Spike that did a lot of mods install instructionals on a lot of mostly ordinary vehicles but they never used to do any reviews. It could be on the speed network now but I'm not sure.. A combination of the two would be something I'd watch religiously. Occasionally toss in some top-gear style challenges and away to go. They could toss most of the instruction for pure mod reviews/testing and car testing etc.
Right now? Everything. Even opening up older xls files etc kicks them out to desktop. Notepad doesn't even have a metro version. How the hell are we supposed to expect 3rd parties to rewrite their programs for Metro when microsoft doesn't even have enough confidence in the platform to write in its oldest simplest programs?
Besides that though, its not done NOW. Now is what matters. Windows 8 is out NOW. If we're waiting on things just to make most of its new UI functional then it wasn't ready for release.
Beyond that however they need better open program management. Swapping between open items is a chore and you can't put multiple things on the same screen. MS is in one fell swoop undoing most of the advances in software and hardware for productivity in the last 10 years. Until they get something better, Windows 8 is at best a "toy" OS. As such, there are OS's that are much better at being toys.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually most slashdotters are for a refocusing of the governments efforts. They've been left to the lobby groups and their own devices for too long. Regulation needs to be done but other regulations that have been put into place need to go. I'd go so far as to say peel back every law since Jan 1, 1998 and have done. Require any new criminal law to pass a 30% public vote in favor. The majority of the ridiculous laws have been passed or modified into ridiculousness since then.
Thats entirely possible. More likely the first one or two will actually happen because... curiosity. That and the fact that those that have some kind of interest in both none of the neanderthal stuff being true and evolution in general being false don't usually find out until after its happened once due to their fingers-in-ears approach to proper science.
After that there might be some public outcry and it will be stopped.
The best part about this to me is the significant number of comments both here and on the article itself referencing frankenstein as a reason not to do this. As though a completely fictional event has any bearing on reality whatsoever.
Then again, why not? We already base way too many policies and allow far too much influence in our lives from some other works of mostly fiction.
Not that unlikely. One of the neanderthals they found frozen in greenland has had its genome almost fully sequenced and they're producing copies of its DNA.
1.5 million years at absolutely IDEAL temperatures, but this ones only about 80-120k years at ~ -5 to -10 C. 10-15 degrees off the ideal, but in the direction that matters a whole lot less, and we only need it to have lasted less than 10% of the calculated ideal time.
It looks like it IS a cure for HIV-related AIDS, but we have several of those already, they just don't work in all scenarios. This one looks like it does, and does so in a much cleaner manner than current methods.
The real problem is people and the media conflating AIDS with HIV. While HIV would be a primary cause it isn't the only cause of AIDS and the two while directly related are NOT the same thing. AIDS is a symptom of HIV, not the disease itself.
If it includes a correct ratio based on the actual ratios in each country, which is what PISA does.
This article is total bullshit to try to make Americans feel better about the system while the system is still fundamentally broken due to the huge gap in poor vs rich. The system will be fixed when the country accepts it needs to implement higher taxes on the rich and more socialist policies >_>.
Proper socialist policies though, like a robust employment insurance system and stricter labour laws, including but not limited to shorter work weeks. Not "give everyone welfare" laws.
I don't see another way to phrase it. There are almost zero conservative party viewpoints(with the single exception of gun control) that have any substantiated roots in evidence or even reality. The conservative party has become entirely a "Toe the party ideological line at all costs! Even if it kills the country!". Even policies they CAMPAIGN on when the democrats try to push through the EXACT same policies the conservatives quickly about-face and turn into rabble-raisers instantaneously.
I'm not saying Obama is a saint, or even particularly good, but most of the reason for that is that he didn't use his first two years of a full democrat house/senate/presidency to quickly push through the shit that was required. Instead he played politics and tried to keep to his campaign promises. He tried to work with the republicans and figured out way too late that they were fucking him over. We'll see if he can manage anything over the next 4 years, but with the sad state of the political system currently I can't see anything happening anytime soon.
AC responded for me. Mildly more bluntly than I would have, but you have to be fucking retarded if you're going to argue about or demand "citations for unsubstatiated claims" for gun law in other places in the world and not know ANYTHING about the UK or even for that matter the Canadian gun laws which restrict carry, restrict magazines(Which is just stupid, I can name 2 guns off the top of my head that take less than 3 seconds to reload a 10 rnd mag or stripper clip into) and had a huge and expensive gun registry going for a long time. None of which have actually reduced gun violence or helped solve any crimes. It actually went against helping solve crimes because almost all of the guns used in husband-kills-wife or wife-kills-husband etc emotional murders were stolen after the registry went in. They previously used to very often find the gun in the persons house and match the ballistics.
Also the fact that gun violence, in the UK at least, has increased, because they KNOW that their targets are not armed. The only ones with guns are the criminals.
Making concealed carry hard to acquire is good. Allows cops to go after criminals for suspicious bulges. If they bother a law-abiding citizen they just won't find anything.
If you are currently an Identifying conservative in America you can't be called a geek. A geek examines evidence placed before him and will do his best to revise his opinions based around the most concrete evidence.
The conservative party is full of so much hypocrisy and out-and-out lies in America right now that it kills brain cells just to read about it. If you examined it at all you'd see it for what it is.
The Democrats have examples but they're not as pervasive. You could potentially identify as a democrat due to one issue or another being larger than others in your particular life. In reality though, any proper geek in this day and age shouldn't identify with either of the two monstrosities in the U.S.
I don't really touch on the community issue because thats an entire other problem. Suffice to say Blizzards own tools have driven the community to where it is now, which is to say a very bad place.
For the Real ID stuff I have to sadly point out you're in a (thankfully) very vocal minority.
Blizzard received a lot of feedback on the required Real ID system which was almost entirely negative but not many people would have actually left because of it. Most of those that would have did so as soon as it was threatened. On the whole the particular system that inspired the move has actually improved the game somewhat.
Nothing of Mickey Mouse is in the public domain. The common joke is that copyright length is MIckey Mouse's birthday + 1.
No work from after 1923 will enter the public domain until 2019 unless its creator specifically puts it there.
Its complete fucking horse shit and that particular amendment should be unanimously voted off the books.
Unfortunately there are far too many politicians in the pockets of the big conglomerates such as disney for that to ever happen.
If copyright law had stayed as it was we'd have things right up into the 50's entering the public domain now.
Thanks and maybe responding will get your post some more attention as well. That message really needs to be heard.
Something I also forgot to mention is the tendency for these companies to all end up using the same Beta testers and these testers are being listened to FAR too much on basic game design elements. Once the product goes to beta those things should be decided and done. Those are things you have decided by your extremely well-paid game designers, not the idiots clamouring begging and bribing their way into unpaid work just to get a glimpse at new game title x.
Especially if you're launching an MMO.... once its released finding the signal in the dross of forum posters is nearly impossible. Unless something is fairly universally ill-received you shouldn't even think about changing it. Even if it is, tweak it, don't redesign it altogether.
I participated in the last parts of the SWTOR beta and there was a story about a dev coming out and saying the testers ruined the game... they did. I ended up with access to a bunch of the old forum posts and saw the early beta screenshots posted to the forums. I saw the features. I saw everything. It was glorious. They had a hit on their hands that got destroyed by testers and fans. They listened to design opinions that they should have ignored, and ignored those that they should have listened to, but overall they'd have been in much better shape if they'd just ignored everyone and focused on fixing bugs and balancing classes, but not the exact way the testers wanted the classes balanced because that way goes boring shit best relegated to competitive FPS games that are the only things that CAN be balanced to the point the testers want.
I really think this is a lot of where the cloning you speak of is coming from. Its the same idiots testing every game and shouting bad ideas loudly enough that they end up getting implemented.
See: The homogenization of WoW over the last 8 years while throwing more and more shiny at it to try to call that the creativity. They tried to go against the numbers ONCE but called it so badly that their subscriber base revolted and they lost a large portion of their North American/European subscribers.
TL;DR for rest of this: World of Warcraft has shot itself in the foot for several reasons but mainly due to exactly the reasons stated in the article. They relied on numbers, and then when they realized numbers weren't getting them anywhere as a lot of people didn't like where the game design was headed... they relied on the absolute worst group of people to advise them: The hardest of hardcore gamers.
They removed the wrong functionality based on the opinions of elite players. While overall class homogenization and general horribleness really started its massive downwards spiral in Wrath of the Lich King, Wrath had one thing going for it: Variety of raids. Elite players in wrath had difficulty filling raid spots even just a month after the world first lich king kill because there were things to do. Thus when consulted they put their own interests ahead of everyone else and voted in a removal of seperate cooldowns for difficulty mode of raid encounters. This was ostensibly done for good reasons but since gated raids with gear from previous raid instances being required to progress into harder raids are no longer there... removing this trashed the list of things to do for the folks that "populate" the game world. The people that are on constantly. The ones that have little to no life outside of the game. These are the guys that get made fun of the most and they are absolutely vital to your games success. Most of them are quite friendly and helpful and they deserve better. Besides that they broke the nostalgia factor of re-rolling alts for most of their older players, who no longer fully return to the game because they don't feel like re-learning the zones in addition to the classes.
They continued homogenization while removing those things in Cata leaving everyone in the semi-hardcore(people who play a lot but not super competitively) bracket bored out of their fscking minds.
The graphics don't help.... original gfx were grittier and less cartoony. When the graphics were updated for Cata they went wayyyy too far into the looney toons bin for myself and a lot of others. I would have preferred mildly more realistic environments than vanilla(but not too realistic, the original art style had a "fun-looking" appeal to them) with much more realistic player characters. The fact that my dwarf hunters nose and hands with the new cartoonier textures look nearly as bad as the graphics in Aidyn Chronicles from the N64 is fucking depressing. Especially when its stressing a computer with hardware powerful enough to account for a 20x10 server room full of N64s.
Their numbers and polls state that graphics don't matter to their customers however, which is only partially true. Graphics quality doesn't matter AS MUCH but graphics style most certainly does. Its one of those intangibles that will likely never show up on most exit surveys unless you start forcing people to give you their top 5 reasons for leaving instead of one or two. Blizzardat the moment gets one or two.
The thing is, once you start getting the 5.... if the top 1-2 reasons are varied and split around a relatively even-looking pie-chart... then they all need work but its probably already being worked on for your next expansion etc. If 95%+ of people leaving place an issue in their top 5... it needs to be addressed immediately.
Additionally... don't just poll people who are currently playing. Poll those who have quit. Those who respond who have quit probably want to return but won't due to the reasons they list. If wow was trying to get its subscriber base back, this is where it needs to start.
Unless omitting something can be seen to have an immediate negative effect on whomever you are talking to then its not lying.
Not telling someone you have a PHD in physics for a network admin job is the same as not telling them you won a small scholarship for essay writing in high school. Neither of them has much relevance to the position you are applying to.
You're suffering from never having read any history textbook... the years of peace in human history are fewer than the years of war.
Beyond that, anything could happen. Climate change, a meteor, yellowstone blowing its top.... hurricanes... etc... etc.. disasters happen all the time, its blind fucking stupidity not to be prepared for something.
Omit but then own up to having it when they ask you about the gap at an interview. Make it clear that you got it due to an economic down turn in tech after the dot com bust but your real interest was and is in networking/whatever your real interest is. Honesty is always the best policy but do it selectively.
Incidentally tell them you left it out as it isn't relevant to your current work desires.
Preparing for some sort of cataclysmic event is prudent. Given human history and the fact that we have nuclear weapons something IS eventually going to happen. It might not even be in our lifetimes, but the bunker in the back yard is good for a few hundred years anyways, maybe the kids or grandkids will be grateful it got built.
ABS brakes in particular can't be linked to any sort of beneficial or detrimental data beyond a few flawed tests in a lab.
What is provable is that they've led to an increase in low-speed collisions... data which you can find just about anywhere.
Its been looked at, many times.
Any serious study thats not purely control group double-blind oriented finds that in the real world, violent people that play violent video games are more likely to get their "release" from the video game and not actually go out and kill someone.
There is also the fact that depressed people(particularly younger folks) are more likely to become violent or aggressive. This has been known for a LONG time. Coincidentally depressed people also play a lot more video games than ordinary people. When I say a lot, I mean that in some subsets of people it could easily be an order of magnitude more than those that aren't depressed. I'm personally of the opinion that this is the cause that drives the correlation.
The "blame the violent video games" saga has gone on long enough. It doesn't actually do much of anything, its been proven times over. It makes you slightly more aggressive for about an hour after playing and then you calm down and resume your normal behavior. In violent people they tend to calm down further than their normal behavior.
Besides all that though, its well past too late. Doing a study on video games or even violent video games and finding a correlation to study NOW would be worse than useless. Saying someone played violent video games and also assaulted x people is almost like saying they drank water and assaulted x people.... the cause can't be directly attributed and any studies that have tried to actually source the cause rather than just coming up with more correlations have either found A) There is no direct causal link or B) there is actually an OPPOSITE effect.
They're also "good enough" for pretty much any game on the market and they're still cheap... so there is a market for them.
Thats actually kind of sad. I expected a much bigger gap. 2.7 seconds isn't much.
Also as I recall they only ever ran one Mustang around the track and that was a base model GT, which again is 30k less than the M3.... 30k for 2.7 seconds(which I'm now certain could be made up for in horsepower and a good set of tires, since its only 2.7 seconds...) is a lot of money. Especially when at 60k you're talking you're only 15k away from Porsche territory.
As I mentioned "in general" the mountainous region makes up far less of the land... and the euros have twisty roads due to old buildings and congested population centers more so than mountains, though they also have more than their fair share of those. I don't live in flat country either, but even here there are more straight roads than you see much of in britain. Also has to do with more cities in north america being engineered instead of just built.
I forgot to mention that "practical" often factors in as well... but if someone is looking purely based on practicality they're not watching top gear or any show like it anyways and they'll be one of the idiots on the highway driving a volvo, toyota, or honda doing 10km/hr below the posted limit.
I vote we bring in finnish licensing tests.
As far as a car for an everyday person who can't afford a 60k+ car... "Fun" is the often only metric that matters. The only other metric that could matter is "Moddable" and there are VERY few cars that meet that criteria as well as the Mustang.
My buddy just bought a Kia Forte 2 years ago because besides the Ford Focus it was the most fun vehicle in his price range on the market. He also wanted some gadgets though and the focus, while a better base car, was significantly more expensive by the time he got them.
I'd like to see a show like top gear that reviews more of the low to mid-range cars. Not the low-low end but something within shooting distance for most people, or at least within a 3-5 year old used shooting distance.
There used to be a show on Spike that did a lot of mods install instructionals on a lot of mostly ordinary vehicles but they never used to do any reviews. It could be on the speed network now but I'm not sure.. A combination of the two would be something I'd watch religiously. Occasionally toss in some top-gear style challenges and away to go. They could toss most of the instruction for pure mod reviews/testing and car testing etc.
Right now? Everything. Even opening up older xls files etc kicks them out to desktop. Notepad doesn't even have a metro version. How the hell are we supposed to expect 3rd parties to rewrite their programs for Metro when microsoft doesn't even have enough confidence in the platform to write in its oldest simplest programs?
Besides that though, its not done NOW. Now is what matters. Windows 8 is out NOW. If we're waiting on things just to make most of its new UI functional then it wasn't ready for release.
Beyond that however they need better open program management. Swapping between open items is a chore and you can't put multiple things on the same screen. MS is in one fell swoop undoing most of the advances in software and hardware for productivity in the last 10 years. Until they get something better, Windows 8 is at best a "toy" OS. As such, there are OS's that are much better at being toys.