It sort of defeats the purpose of R&D if you're not going to defend that R&D with lawyers.
That's the lawyerish point of view. To normal human beings, that would be: "It sort of defeats the purpose of R&D if you're not going to make products based on that R&D." Who cares about keeping lawyers employed, other than the lawyers themselves?
You use what you've got. The F-16 was not originally designed for that purpose, and a cost effective attack aircraft it is not.
The F-16 is not designed for any single purpose. It's a multi-role fighter. It can fill different roles, including that of fighter-bomber. Of course it's never going to be as effective as a specialized aircraft in any of those roles.
Nobody is claiming that Stalin was a nice guy, or that Russia put up a heroic fight in the best plucky, stalwart, British tradition. Russia knowingly sacrificed millions of Russian lives. The fighting between Russians and Germans was dirty and inhuman on both sides, and completely unlike the rather civilized war on the western front. But no matter how dirty, ugly, inhuman and brutal it was, that doesn't change the fact that that is where Germany was defeated.
Operation Overlord and the race from Normandy to Berlin wasn't about defeating Germany. Officially, sure, but the war was already lost to Germany no matter what the western allies did. It was really about keeping western Europe out of Russian hands. If you ask me, Normandy is where the Cold War started.
Knowing historical facts does not make one a Stalin apologist. Stalin was an inhuman bastard, but you have to be an idiot to not recognize that Russia did by far the most work in defeating nazi Germany.
It is true that the Red Army was not in prime shape in 1941 due to the purges, and that's one of the reasons why Hitler chose to attack at that time. That's also why Russia started the war with their scorched earth strategy: give lots of ground to the Germans, but give them nothing of value, and make them bleed for it. Russian strategy was incredibly wasteful. Many more Russians died in the war than Germans or any other nation. But Russia could afford it. They had plenty of bodies to throw at the problem, and Stalin, inhuman monster that he was, was perfectly willing to do just that. And that's what defeated nazi Germany, like it or not.
Sure, many other nations fought impressively. The UK when they stood alone, the exiled Polish and Free French, the massive Operation Overlord which was largely an American thing, and lend-lease did certainly play an important role in getting the Red Army moving forward (they had soldiers and tanks, but lacked trucks, machine guns, and lots of other stuff). Not to mention the fact that the US practically single-handedly broke Japan. There's plenty of glory to go around, but don't deny history by claiming Russia was useless or didn't do most of the fighting.
The Witcher 2 is DRM-free if you buy it on gog.com. Possibly not if you buy it through some other route, though, so the real test here is how many people will go to gog.com for it. Though I expect many people will still want the physical CD, and that probably comes with DRM.
You need to man up and spend your disposable income on broken crap like our corporate overlords intended. It's good for the economy. Or do you hate your country?
No, the real problem is that he was rewarded for being a cheap-ass dirty pirate. Had he bought the DLC + expansion over steam, he'd probably have been locked out of his game this weekend. As a pirate, he gets the superior product. That is the real problem here.
Now I know what the submitter felt. I've had the same problem with my Settlers 7 easter weekend, where the servers sucked donkey ass. OTOH, one must lay part of the blame at our own feet. First we bought the stuff.
Are you saying we should never buy stuff EA ever again? That would be a sensible response, I admit. I guess a lot of people still trusted Bioware. They did some good stuff in the past. For them, I think this is the first real betrayal. It's a "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" situation. We are to blame if we ever buy anything from Bioware ever again, now that we have learned that they suck.
Then we wasted hours trying to get it to work and getting annoyed instead of doing the right thing: Do something else while the problem gets fixed.
That doesn't make the original breakdown any more acceptable. When I buy a car and it doesn't work, sure, I could take a bike instead. But I still paid for that car. I have every right to be upset when something I paid money for breaks due to the manufacturer's destructive policies.
Honestly, it's almost like EA wants you to pirate the game; they certainly treat pirates better than the paying customers.
I was actually considering buying DA:O sometime in the near future. This news is really just in time for me. I think I'll take EA/Bioware's advice and get the full, working version.
"Just" a side effect? It's still every bit an effect, and quite a serious one at that. Locking existing save games means that they must have known that they were going to screw players with this.
This is a radiology department, not a generic paper shuffling department. Should random IT dudes get an account to remotely aim the xray machine, or activate the particle accelerator?
Of course not, but should those machines have outside access without any checks from IT?
I do agree that he should have gotten the approval of Congress, but on the other hand, I also think that it's better to prevent a massacre than to respond to one. And the UN decision was only barely in time to prevent the massacre in Benghazi. In other cities, lots of civilians had already been killed (though not on the scale that was expected for Benghazi).
Soldiers shooting unarmed citizens? In any civilized nation, the government would have fallen over something like that. I would definitely expect mass protests in response to something like that.
How about you? Do you approve of the shooting?
If it was up to you, the US would still be an English colony, and France would still be ruled by an absolute monarch.
You are putting words in my mouth.
How is rebelling against Gadhafi different from rebelling against an oppressive king or colonial power?
All I said is that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion is not a "humanitarian crisis". I never said that I hoped Gaddafi would win (or Britain, in the case of the US).
But it didn't start out as an armed rebellion. It started out as peaceful protests. Gadhafi was the one who turned it into a war against the Libyan people.
At what point is a leader massacring his people a humanitarian crisis? Was Rwanda a humanitarian crisis? Genocide in Bosnia? Genocide in nazi Germany?
Anyhow, since you like these armed Libyan rebels so much, I figure I'll ask. Do you have any credible information on who the hell they are? It's an honest question; I haven't been able to find any credible info, myself. Hell, one of the rebel leaders was quoted in an Italian paper as saying that they receive support from Al-Qaeda. We really know how to pick groups to arm, don't we. So, yeah, I haven't heard anything to make me think that these armed rebels want to replace Gaddafi with a Jeffersonian Democracy. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, so please do.
They're Libyan people. Ideologically, I don't think they have any unified theme. Some may want a Jeffersonian democracy, others may want a theocracy. I just think that they should decide what they want, and that they deserve not to get slaughtered for it.
How is a software engineer, in a few weeks, going to learn enough about a particular field to go and be able to obtain a spec document from a client? Answer, they don't, they just learn enough to be able to communicate with the experts, and translate their knowledge into relevance for the task at hand.
And if it turns out to be wrong, they just try again and the project goes over budget. It happens quite often.
I believe it was Gosling who said that Sun ordered them to invent as many patent applications as possible in order to have some defensive ammo next time IBM comes by, and that weird bogus patent applications became quite a sport at Sun at the time. I think it can be quite valuable for Google if Gosling's employer lets him be honest about that sort of thing.
You mean to say that some of the people asked for it. You conveniently ignore the fact that some of the people in that country support the current regime.
Some, but not many. Gadhafi is hiring foreign mercenaries because many Libyan soldiers won't fight for him anymore. His ambassadors abroad have abandoned him. Other than the people who directly profit from his regime, almost nobody who has a choice in the matter supports him. People who cheer his name do so at gunpoint.
Do you remember what happened in Iraq with the Sunnis after we toppled "their" man in Baghdad? I'm curious to know why you aren't worried about the same happening in Libya if we manage to topple Gaddafi? Like any politician the man does have his own base of support. Do you think they are going to just roll over and play dead if we manage to depose their leader?
He really doesn't have a lot of support. Many people who worked directly for him and his regime have abandoned him. I'm not saying it'll all be peace and quiet after he's gone, but it can't be worse than the massacre of entire cities that he was planning.
You're right. Obama didn't actually want to get involved at first. Most likely he just caved because he didn't want the US to stand at the sidelines while France and the UK took all the credit for preventing a humanitarian crisis.
What humanitarian crisis? Gaddafi was putting down the armed rebels with force, but what the hell did you expect?
I expect any credible leader of a nation not to use deadly force against unarmed protesters. When you do that, you need to be removed. Gadhafi used fighters to strafe peaceful (though angry) protests, and he ordered soldiers to shoot unarmed protesters. This is when he lost every last shred of credibility, when the people that worked directly for him and his regime started abandoning him. His ambassadors deserted, many soldiers deserted. He needs to hire foreign mercenaries to kill Libyans.
If some harebrained, armed militia from Montana marched into DC to overthrow the US government, what would you want to happen? You'll probably want the US government to put down the armed rebels with force. I sure as hell would.
And what if it's a group of unarmed protesters marching on Washington demanding that the administration resigns? I'm sure you'd help to murder them too.
No, I do not think that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion without targeting civilians is a humanitarian crisis. I think it's pretty normal, actually.
Why do you think that sovereignty lies with an unelected government that took power by force and uses deadly force and foreign mercenaries to keep the people of the country he took under control? Why would it not lie with the people who want him out?
If it was up to you, the US would still be an English colony, and France would still be ruled by an absolute monarch. There are rebellions that are justified, and the one in Libya is a good example of one.
You're right. Obama didn't actually want to get involved at first. Most likely he just caved because he didn't want the US to stand at the sidelines while France and the UK took all the credit for preventing a humanitarian crisis.
And if you don't think allowing civilians to be bombed and massacred is a humanitarian crisis, then you're sick in the head.
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It sort of defeats the purpose of R&D if you're not going to defend that R&D with lawyers.
That's the lawyerish point of view. To normal human beings, that would be: "It sort of defeats the purpose of R&D if you're not going to make products based on that R&D." Who cares about keeping lawyers employed, other than the lawyers themselves?
But as an air-superiority fighter, it's quite a bit more effective than an A-10. The A-10 is a specialist, the F-16 is a jack-of-all-trades.
You use what you've got. The F-16 was not originally designed for that purpose, and a cost effective attack aircraft it is not.
The F-16 is not designed for any single purpose. It's a multi-role fighter. It can fill different roles, including that of fighter-bomber. Of course it's never going to be as effective as a specialized aircraft in any of those roles.
Nobody is claiming that Stalin was a nice guy, or that Russia put up a heroic fight in the best plucky, stalwart, British tradition. Russia knowingly sacrificed millions of Russian lives. The fighting between Russians and Germans was dirty and inhuman on both sides, and completely unlike the rather civilized war on the western front. But no matter how dirty, ugly, inhuman and brutal it was, that doesn't change the fact that that is where Germany was defeated.
Operation Overlord and the race from Normandy to Berlin wasn't about defeating Germany. Officially, sure, but the war was already lost to Germany no matter what the western allies did. It was really about keeping western Europe out of Russian hands. If you ask me, Normandy is where the Cold War started.
Knowing historical facts does not make one a Stalin apologist. Stalin was an inhuman bastard, but you have to be an idiot to not recognize that Russia did by far the most work in defeating nazi Germany.
It is true that the Red Army was not in prime shape in 1941 due to the purges, and that's one of the reasons why Hitler chose to attack at that time. That's also why Russia started the war with their scorched earth strategy: give lots of ground to the Germans, but give them nothing of value, and make them bleed for it. Russian strategy was incredibly wasteful. Many more Russians died in the war than Germans or any other nation. But Russia could afford it. They had plenty of bodies to throw at the problem, and Stalin, inhuman monster that he was, was perfectly willing to do just that. And that's what defeated nazi Germany, like it or not.
Sure, many other nations fought impressively. The UK when they stood alone, the exiled Polish and Free French, the massive Operation Overlord which was largely an American thing, and lend-lease did certainly play an important role in getting the Red Army moving forward (they had soldiers and tanks, but lacked trucks, machine guns, and lots of other stuff). Not to mention the fact that the US practically single-handedly broke Japan. There's plenty of glory to go around, but don't deny history by claiming Russia was useless or didn't do most of the fighting.
I can now see a future US that measures everything in kilopounds, micromiles and decigallons.
Maybe not Nintendo, Sony or Steam, but full-price rentals are very popular with the likes of EA and Ubisoft.
The Witcher 2 is DRM-free if you buy it on gog.com. Possibly not if you buy it through some other route, though, so the real test here is how many people will go to gog.com for it. Though I expect many people will still want the physical CD, and that probably comes with DRM.
It's still relevant to the point that Bioware DRM sucks, though.
You need to man up and spend your disposable income on broken crap like our corporate overlords intended. It's good for the economy. Or do you hate your country?
No, the real problem is that he was rewarded for being a cheap-ass dirty pirate. Had he bought the DLC + expansion over steam, he'd probably have been locked out of his game this weekend. As a pirate, he gets the superior product. That is the real problem here.
Now I know what the submitter felt. I've had the same problem with my Settlers 7 easter weekend, where the servers sucked donkey ass. OTOH, one must lay part of the blame at our own feet. First we bought the stuff.
Are you saying we should never buy stuff EA ever again? That would be a sensible response, I admit. I guess a lot of people still trusted Bioware. They did some good stuff in the past. For them, I think this is the first real betrayal. It's a "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" situation. We are to blame if we ever buy anything from Bioware ever again, now that we have learned that they suck.
Then we wasted hours trying to get it to work and getting annoyed instead of doing the right thing: Do something else while the problem gets fixed.
That doesn't make the original breakdown any more acceptable. When I buy a car and it doesn't work, sure, I could take a bike instead. But I still paid for that car. I have every right to be upset when something I paid money for breaks due to the manufacturer's destructive policies.
Honestly, it's almost like EA wants you to pirate the game; they certainly treat pirates better than the paying customers.
I was actually considering buying DA:O sometime in the near future. This news is really just in time for me. I think I'll take EA/Bioware's advice and get the full, working version.
"Just" a side effect? It's still every bit an effect, and quite a serious one at that. Locking existing save games means that they must have known that they were going to screw players with this.
This is a radiology department, not a generic paper shuffling department. Should random IT dudes get an account to remotely aim the xray machine, or activate the particle accelerator?
Of course not, but should those machines have outside access without any checks from IT?
Maybe they just don't want to be unnecessarily restricted in what they use their own devices for.
I do agree that he should have gotten the approval of Congress, but on the other hand, I also think that it's better to prevent a massacre than to respond to one. And the UN decision was only barely in time to prevent the massacre in Benghazi. In other cities, lots of civilians had already been killed (though not on the scale that was expected for Benghazi).
I expect any credible leader of a nation not to use deadly force against unarmed protesters. When you do that, you need to be removed.
I guess that means that the US government needs to be removed, in your opinion.
Soldiers shooting unarmed citizens? In any civilized nation, the government would have fallen over something like that. I would definitely expect mass protests in response to something like that.
How about you? Do you approve of the shooting?
If it was up to you, the US would still be an English colony, and France would still be ruled by an absolute monarch.
You are putting words in my mouth.
How is rebelling against Gadhafi different from rebelling against an oppressive king or colonial power?
All I said is that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion is not a "humanitarian crisis". I never said that I hoped Gaddafi would win (or Britain, in the case of the US).
But it didn't start out as an armed rebellion. It started out as peaceful protests. Gadhafi was the one who turned it into a war against the Libyan people.
At what point is a leader massacring his people a humanitarian crisis? Was Rwanda a humanitarian crisis? Genocide in Bosnia? Genocide in nazi Germany?
Anyhow, since you like these armed Libyan rebels so much, I figure I'll ask. Do you have any credible information on who the hell they are? It's an honest question; I haven't been able to find any credible info, myself. Hell, one of the rebel leaders was quoted in an Italian paper as saying that they receive support from Al-Qaeda. We really know how to pick groups to arm, don't we. So, yeah, I haven't heard anything to make me think that these armed rebels want to replace Gaddafi with a Jeffersonian Democracy. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, so please do.
They're Libyan people. Ideologically, I don't think they have any unified theme. Some may want a Jeffersonian democracy, others may want a theocracy. I just think that they should decide what they want, and that they deserve not to get slaughtered for it.
How is a software engineer, in a few weeks, going to learn enough about a particular field to go and be able to obtain a spec document from a client? Answer, they don't, they just learn enough to be able to communicate with the experts, and translate their knowledge into relevance for the task at hand.
And if it turns out to be wrong, they just try again and the project goes over budget. It happens quite often.
I believe it was Gosling who said that Sun ordered them to invent as many patent applications as possible in order to have some defensive ammo next time IBM comes by, and that weird bogus patent applications became quite a sport at Sun at the time. I think it can be quite valuable for Google if Gosling's employer lets him be honest about that sort of thing.
That's a nice argument against any kind of innovation.
You mean to say that some of the people asked for it. You conveniently ignore the fact that some of the people in that country support the current regime.
Some, but not many. Gadhafi is hiring foreign mercenaries because many Libyan soldiers won't fight for him anymore. His ambassadors abroad have abandoned him. Other than the people who directly profit from his regime, almost nobody who has a choice in the matter supports him. People who cheer his name do so at gunpoint.
Do you remember what happened in Iraq with the Sunnis after we toppled "their" man in Baghdad? I'm curious to know why you aren't worried about the same happening in Libya if we manage to topple Gaddafi? Like any politician the man does have his own base of support. Do you think they are going to just roll over and play dead if we manage to depose their leader?
He really doesn't have a lot of support. Many people who worked directly for him and his regime have abandoned him. I'm not saying it'll all be peace and quiet after he's gone, but it can't be worse than the massacre of entire cities that he was planning.
You're right. Obama didn't actually want to get involved at first. Most likely he just caved because he didn't want the US to stand at the sidelines while France and the UK took all the credit for preventing a humanitarian crisis.
What humanitarian crisis? Gaddafi was putting down the armed rebels with force, but what the hell did you expect?
I expect any credible leader of a nation not to use deadly force against unarmed protesters. When you do that, you need to be removed. Gadhafi used fighters to strafe peaceful (though angry) protests, and he ordered soldiers to shoot unarmed protesters. This is when he lost every last shred of credibility, when the people that worked directly for him and his regime started abandoning him. His ambassadors deserted, many soldiers deserted. He needs to hire foreign mercenaries to kill Libyans.
If some harebrained, armed militia from Montana marched into DC to overthrow the US government, what would you want to happen? You'll probably want the US government to put down the armed rebels with force. I sure as hell would.
And what if it's a group of unarmed protesters marching on Washington demanding that the administration resigns? I'm sure you'd help to murder them too.
No, I do not think that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion without targeting civilians is a humanitarian crisis. I think it's pretty normal, actually.
Why do you think that sovereignty lies with an unelected government that took power by force and uses deadly force and foreign mercenaries to keep the people of the country he took under control? Why would it not lie with the people who want him out?
If it was up to you, the US would still be an English colony, and France would still be ruled by an absolute monarch. There are rebellions that are justified, and the one in Libya is a good example of one.
If SQL is the best we've got, and it sucks, then it makes sense to work on something better.
You're right. Obama didn't actually want to get involved at first. Most likely he just caved because he didn't want the US to stand at the sidelines while France and the UK took all the credit for preventing a humanitarian crisis.
And if you don't think allowing civilians to be bombed and massacred is a humanitarian crisis, then you're sick in the head.