The PS2 was released in late 2000, and it was really obsolete by early 2004.
Um, what? Obsolete how?
Obsolete in that it's nowhere near state-of-the-art anymore. That multiplatform developers often have to cut out features and tone down graphics to get their game to work on the PS2.
Original author certainly didn't mean "obsolete" as in "not useful or enjoyable anymore".
I think a lot of people are going to hear Apple is running 'Intel Inside' and compare that to a Dell running the same thing and see a vast price difference and buy the Dell.
That is unless Intel agrees to run a special "Apple-only" line of CPUs. They'd just be rebranded Pentium 4's or something, but that might be enough obfuscation to confuse the average user.
Requiring an AO rating is very nearly the same thing as banning it. There are so few distribution points for such a game it becomes nearly impossible to make back the production cost.
The AO game "Singles" seemed to do well enough to justify a sequel.
Also, no major movie theater chains will show pornographic movies, but I hear those films make money also.
A further difference is that the British rating is based on violence, and the new American rating is based on the sudden horrific discovery of sex mixed in with the violence.
To be fair, unwanted teen pregnancy is a much more common occurance than people going on GTA-like killing sprees.
Not that it justifies blaming the world's ills on a videogame, but reckless sex can certainly cause a lot of trouble. And in a contest between sex and violence, sex is a lot more appealing and feasible (not to mention legal!)
1. "...that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target..."
Well they should have thought of that back in 1991 when the Iraq war was ended in a highly ambiguous manner. No peace treaty, just a cease fire with some pretty specific requirements. If the conditions were met, then the sanctions and no-fly-zones would be lifted, and a formal peace treaty would be signed.
Not to go into details, but that left the United States with three options:
A) Saddam complies. B) Saddam gets let off the hook. C) Invasion.
All parties at the time (CIA, MI6, UN Inspectors) agreed that option A) just wasn't happening. (Though Saddam made a concerted effort to fake it in late 2002/early 2003.)
Bin Laden's associates have also regained something they were losing in Afghanistan and didn't have in Iraq under Sadaam: a place to train terrorists for operations in many other places.
Do you really think constantly being attacked by Coalition forces in Iraq is just as good as being left alone in Afghanistan?
I maintain that not one terrorist has been exported from Iraq since we took control of the country. If you have even vague evidence otherwise, I'd like to hear it.
Oh, and you can play the percentages game all you want, but the fact remains that all the funding, leadership, and any new weaponry come from foreign sources. You boast that 95% of the prisoners at Abu Gharib are Iraqi, but how many there are just run-of-the-mill thugs and kidnappers? Even out of the insurgent prisoners alone, how many are just common criminals trying to collect on al-Qaeda-sposored bounties? I'd imagine most.
The hatred is so bad and prevelent that I dislike her and don't even know why.
Here is why I don't like her, and note that I don't even go into her policies:
1) Her reaction to her husband cheating on her seemed strange and opportunistic. She practically admitted as much, saying she felt better about the Lewinsky scandal after she and Bill started talking about her political future.
2) Her blatent finger-to-the-wind pandering, as is evidenced by this article.
It is also worth noting, that it is extremely hard to enforce anything in space. Any space station (at a Lagrange point or anywhere else) can be knocked off with a minimum amount of effort and energy by a determined nation anyway.
But any attack in space will invite retaliation on the ground. Thus the value of getting there first. Once you have the advantage, then you talk cooperation with other countries.
We played the appeasement game in the Middle East for over a decade, and got rewarded with 9/11.
Oh, I forgot, this is the United States of America we're talking about. Damned if we negotiate with dictatorships, and damned if we overthrow them.
If our actions are making terrorists, then Afghanistan and Iraq should be major exporters or terrorists. Yet that is not the case. Hell, Iraq can't produce enough "insurgents" to fight against U.S. forces in their own country. Most terrorism there is due to foreign interlopers.
If our actions in Iraq are so bad, why are so few Iraqis taking up arms against us?
So why did we prop up this dictator back in the 80's, and help him gas the Kurds which we now claim is somehow bad? If he's a horrible dictator, why did we install him there?
All lies. Saddam installed himself -- he was quite capable. The U.S. did not give him WMDs, nor did it encourage him to attack the Kurds.
It's the exact same thing that happened in their neighbor Iran: they had a nice, stable democracy, so we overthrew it and installed the Shah. The place has been a mess ever since.
Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did that, but it was during the Cold War. He feared the Soviets would have done the same thing given half the chance. Doesn't make it "right" by today's standards, but that's the full picture.
Decades later, if Jimmy Carter hadn't botched things up, Iran might have had a successful transition from U.S.-backed dictatorship to independent democracy. Just look at South Korea.
America successfully defended Kuwait against Iraq in the Gulf War. The current Iraq war is supposedly due to violations of the treaty ending the Gulf War.
The key word here here being "supposedly", yet even if it were true, which it is not
Actually, there never was a peace treaty -- just a tenuous cease-fire. If Iraq met the conditions of the cease-fire, then they would have gotten a formal peace treaty.
I mean, did you really think we'd maintain No-Fly Zones after a formal peace treaty?
the WMD claims were lies by the Bush administration that were nearly as transparent at the time as they were now
If they were so transparent, where was the political opposition? Oh, that's right, they were saying the same thing about Iraq and WMDs.
Using that WMD intel was a mistake, but it was an honest mistake. The notion that Bush knew about the intel being faulty beforehand is an unsubstantiated rumor. A crackpot conspiracy theory, on par with thinking the moon landings were faked.
the US loved him because he was so good at slaughtering Iranians
And we allied with Stalin during World War II, who was arguably a bigger monster and turned out to be an even bigger threat.
And the notion that we helped Saddam come to power, or keep power, or that we gave him WMD -- well, those are all false.
Bin Laden was our man in Afghanistan
Another rumor. The CIA aided some Afghan rebels against Soviet oppression, but both the CIA and Bin Laden say they never worked together.
responsible for at least a hundred thousand deaths
According to a single flawed study. I'll believe the Red Cross numbers, thanks.
Bush is also a dictator over those who oppose his illegal immoral actions taken in the name of America.
So has Bush dissolved Congress and disbanded the Supreme Court? Are you writing this from a prison camp?
Parents have no problems sending 17, 18, 19 yr old kids off to Iraq to get shot up and permenantly damaged.
I've seen this meme several times, and it always confuses me. Who in this country sends their children off to join the military? Nobody that I know of.
You cannot be forced to join the army -- not by the government (at the moment), and certainly not by your parents. The military recruits able-bodied adults of their own volition. Simply saying "parents send their kids to war" absolves the soldiers of their own choices and seems to infantilize them.
Kind of ironic that earlier you said "It's much easier to blame others than to actually take responsibility."
These operations are exactly why the US should have led for banning all space weapons when we had the unchallenged political, economic, technological and military status in the 1990s.
If the Chinese government is covertly doing military research in space now, as you say, what would have prevented them from doing the same even with a treaty?
Oh wait... I get it. If we had a treaty, we could wag our collective fingers at them when they blast Taiwan off the map with an aimed meteorite.
The true terrorists would have no freedom fighter status in which to cloak themselves, and the nationalist insurgents would likely turn against the terrorists.
What's so great about your friend's outlook is that it's unassailable.
Me - "Look at [ System Shock/Deus Ex / Thief ]." He - "It's just another Doom." Me - "It's supposed to be about story and [ exploration / choices / stealth ]" He - "Is it a single-player FPS?" Me - "Yes" He - "It's Doom."
Invading a defenceless country and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians makes you an "evil bully".
Fortunately the U.S. has never done this. Outside of your imagination, that is.
Being a member of the UN security council and blocking attempts to intervene makes you and "evil bully".
The U.S. has been pushing for action in Sudan. The Europeans have been pushing against action, and the Chinese have been threatening to use their veto.
My wife is hooked on World of Warcraft, and I'm sure she's not alone. Stories of couples playing the game together abound on the official message boards. I have no real numbers, but I'm not surprised WoW would attract a significant female audience.
A) It's a role-playing game, and there is significant investment in the advancement of your character. (Chicks dig that.:-)
B) Although it is pretty action-ey, it's not such a twitch game that those without years of video game conditioning are put off.
C) There is the social element inherent in most MMORPGs.
D) Fantastic, easy learning curve, and you start playing almost immediately.
E) It's just a really well built game. You don't have to put with a lot of bullshiat to enjoy the game underneath.
F) And, of course, it really does look quite graphically nice.
Slashdot Mirror
Obsolete in that it's nowhere near state-of-the-art anymore. That multiplatform developers often have to cut out features and tone down graphics to get their game to work on the PS2.
Original author certainly didn't mean "obsolete" as in "not useful or enjoyable anymore".
That is unless Intel agrees to run a special "Apple-only" line of CPUs. They'd just be rebranded Pentium 4's or something, but that might be enough obfuscation to confuse the average user.
Is teen pregnancy higher in the U.S. than elsewhere? I can't recall seeing a nation-by-nation comparison.
Well, whatever. Maybe I'll try looking it up later.
Have fun on the internet(s)!
The AO game "Singles" seemed to do well enough to justify a sequel.
Also, no major movie theater chains will show pornographic movies, but I hear those films make money also.
To be fair, unwanted teen pregnancy is a much more common occurance than people going on GTA-like killing sprees.
Not that it justifies blaming the world's ills on a videogame, but reckless sex can certainly cause a lot of trouble. And in a contest between sex and violence, sex is a lot more appealing and feasible (not to mention legal!)
Well they should have thought of that back in 1991 when the Iraq war was ended in a highly ambiguous manner. No peace treaty, just a cease fire with some pretty specific requirements. If the conditions were met, then the sanctions and no-fly-zones would be lifted, and a formal peace treaty would be signed.
Not to go into details, but that left the United States with three options:
A) Saddam complies.
B) Saddam gets let off the hook.
C) Invasion.
All parties at the time (CIA, MI6, UN Inspectors) agreed that option A) just wasn't happening. (Though Saddam made a concerted effort to fake it in late 2002/early 2003.)
You may have to revise your talking points.
And expect more of that after this incident.
Do you really think constantly being attacked by Coalition forces in Iraq is just as good as being left alone in Afghanistan?
I maintain that not one terrorist has been exported from Iraq since we took control of the country. If you have even vague evidence otherwise, I'd like to hear it.
Oh, and you can play the percentages game all you want, but the fact remains that all the funding, leadership, and any new weaponry come from foreign sources. You boast that 95% of the prisoners at Abu Gharib are Iraqi, but how many there are just run-of-the-mill thugs and kidnappers? Even out of the insurgent prisoners alone, how many are just common criminals trying to collect on al-Qaeda-sposored bounties? I'd imagine most.
Here is why I don't like her, and note that I don't even go into her policies:
1) Her reaction to her husband cheating on her seemed strange and opportunistic. She practically admitted as much, saying she felt better about the Lewinsky scandal after she and Bill started talking about her political future.
2) Her blatent finger-to-the-wind pandering, as is evidenced by this article.
Sorry, just trying to make your head explode.
As you might have seen:/ 138247
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/14
But any attack in space will invite retaliation on the ground. Thus the value of getting there first. Once you have the advantage, then you talk cooperation with other countries.
What political use did delaying the Gulf War for a decade serve? I'd really like to know.
Uh, "jobs" and "wealth" are not finite quantities.
Most of your rant is undermined by that one fact.
We played the appeasement game in the Middle East for over a decade, and got rewarded with 9/11.
Oh, I forgot, this is the United States of America we're talking about. Damned if we negotiate with dictatorships, and damned if we overthrow them.
If our actions are making terrorists, then Afghanistan and Iraq should be major exporters or terrorists. Yet that is not the case. Hell, Iraq can't produce enough "insurgents" to fight against U.S. forces in their own country. Most terrorism there is due to foreign interlopers.
If our actions in Iraq are so bad, why are so few Iraqis taking up arms against us?
All lies. Saddam installed himself -- he was quite capable. The U.S. did not give him WMDs, nor did it encourage him to attack the Kurds.
Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did that, but it was during the Cold War. He feared the Soviets would have done the same thing given half the chance. Doesn't make it "right" by today's standards, but that's the full picture.
Decades later, if Jimmy Carter hadn't botched things up, Iran might have had a successful transition from U.S.-backed dictatorship to independent democracy. Just look at South Korea.
Actually, there never was a peace treaty -- just a tenuous cease-fire. If Iraq met the conditions of the cease-fire, then they would have gotten a formal peace treaty.
I mean, did you really think we'd maintain No-Fly Zones after a formal peace treaty?
If they were so transparent, where was the political opposition? Oh, that's right, they were saying the same thing about Iraq and WMDs.
Using that WMD intel was a mistake, but it was an honest mistake. The notion that Bush knew about the intel being faulty beforehand is an unsubstantiated rumor. A crackpot conspiracy theory, on par with thinking the moon landings were faked.
And we allied with Stalin during World War II, who was arguably a bigger monster and turned out to be an even bigger threat.
And the notion that we helped Saddam come to power, or keep power, or that we gave him WMD -- well, those are all false.
Another rumor. The CIA aided some Afghan rebels against Soviet oppression, but both the CIA and Bin Laden say they never worked together.
According to a single flawed study. I'll believe the Red Cross numbers, thanks.
So has Bush dissolved Congress and disbanded the Supreme Court? Are you writing this from a prison camp?
I've seen this meme several times, and it always confuses me. Who in this country sends their children off to join the military? Nobody that I know of.
You cannot be forced to join the army -- not by the government (at the moment), and certainly not by your parents. The military recruits able-bodied adults of their own volition. Simply saying "parents send their kids to war" absolves the soldiers of their own choices and seems to infantilize them.
Kind of ironic that earlier you said "It's much easier to blame others than to actually take responsibility."
If the Chinese government is covertly doing military research in space now, as you say, what would have prevented them from doing the same even with a treaty?
Oh wait... I get it. If we had a treaty, we could wag our collective fingers at them when they blast Taiwan off the map with an aimed meteorite.
"Shadow Government" "U.S. population is extremely ignorant" "9-11 was deliberately manufactured"
How much more obvious can this troll be?
That's already happening.
If you didn't know about that, then you might want to consider broadening your news sources.
The U.S. has been pushing for action in Sudan. The Europeans have been pushing against action, and the Chinese have been threatening to use their veto.
Can't believe I forgot to list one of the most important reasons that a wife or girlfriend would enjoy playing World of Warcraft.
G) The fact that you can play it together.
My dear wife and I don't always play together nowadays, but we often do -- especially when we were first starting out.
My wife is hooked on World of Warcraft, and I'm sure she's not alone. Stories of couples playing the game together abound on the official message boards. I have no real numbers, but I'm not surprised WoW would attract a significant female audience.
:-)
A) It's a role-playing game, and there is significant investment in the advancement of your character. (Chicks dig that.
B) Although it is pretty action-ey, it's not such a twitch game that those without years of video game conditioning are put off.
C) There is the social element inherent in most MMORPGs.
D) Fantastic, easy learning curve, and you start playing almost immediately.
E) It's just a really well built game. You don't have to put with a lot of bullshiat to enjoy the game underneath.
F) And, of course, it really does look quite graphically nice.