While I strongly disagree with everything you claimed and find it to actually have no relevance to this discussion, let me point out that since 1963 it has been virtually been agreed to that European Union law is supreme to member state law. Here's the verdict:
By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty, became an integral part of the legal systems of the member states and which their courts are bound to apply.
By creating a community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacityof representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the states to the community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves..
Will we ever be able to play an officially ported version of Starcraft for the Nintendo DS? The stylus input system serves perfectly for strategy games, the minimap could occupy the top screen, flash is cheap enough now to be able to store full FMVs and audio, wireless support could use Battle.net, etc. It would sell like hot cakes!
Polity: Aristotle considered it to be the perfect form of government because it was neither Democracy (self-serving by the poor) or Oligarchy (self-serving rule by the wealthy) - but rather a form of government where things are ruled by everyone in the interest of the whole community.
Democracy used to be the corrupt equivalent of "polity" in the day of Athens, according to Aristotle's typology of governments. Back in the day during the time when the founding fathers framed the constitution, the word "democracy" used to have the negative connotation of "tyranny of the majority" (still exists to this day). As demonstrated by their influence to call one of the parliamentary chambers "the Senate", they opted to use another word inspired by the Romans:
Res publica: The word "republic" in latin, which means thing business / thing of the people.
Madison and Jefferson DID in turn change the definition of "Republic" to mean scheme of representation. It is different from the term Res Publica which just implies people's business. Since then the definitions and usage of both the words have changed, as hundreds of years have passed. "Democracy" changed in the sense that it now includes a representative structure ("liberal democracy" is what we all mean) and "Republic" today commonly refers to a country whose head of state is not a monarch (China is a republic, but they for sure aint democratic). In essence, the founding fathers used the word "Republic" exactly in the way we use the word "Democracy" today. I.e. Representative Democracy.
So when people claim that the United States is a Republic and not a Democracy, they're using age old definitions. If they claim the today's linguistical definition of Republic is wrong, then they ought to go back to the true Roman definition! So when someone tells you that the United States isn't democracy - do the right thing and tell them they're wrong!
Most people don't celebrate Christmas religiously, anymore, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.
The date has nothing to do with Jesus' birth. The reason why Christmas is celebrated at he 25th is because that is when the ancient pagans celebrated the winter solstice. In order to appeal to the pagans to convert to Christianity, they just said "Oh well, lets have it be about Jesus!".
Gabe Newell seems to show a lot of fancy towards the episodic method of distributing games. Put that in mind when he remarked to Eurogamer a while back that Episode 1 to Episode 3 "essentially" was Half Life 3. Smaller teams with less to lose permits them to take more risks in game design. Does this mean the real Half Life 3 (not episode 1-3!) will be distributed the same way?
However, on what we know about Episode 3: First of all, Portal takes place in the Half Life universe in the laboratories of Aperture Science. This had to be for an obvious reason since it essentially is a storyline shoe-horn in to a puzzle game. They didn't need to do it, but they did it anyway. Episode 2 spills the info that Aperture Science has a vessel called the Borealis. It "vanished" (i.e. teleportation) but has now been found. Obviously Gordon will have to go there and find the ship and obtain the gadgets and gizmos. This means Gordon will have to travel to the arctic, so Episode 3 will most likely feature snowy areas. And then there is this Gabe Newell quote on Portal (After you launch the player, play the video called "X-Play Review: Portal". Gabe's quote is a little over the halfway mark): "The character that you play is a character who has importance in the overall half-life universe, and will eventually have a fairly significant relationship with other characters that we're already familiar with".
The way Portal works as an introductory game to educate the players on how to use the Portal gun to interact with the environment is a really clever method to set things up on how it will potentially be used in Episode 3. But I'm actually not so sure however whether Chell will give Gordon the gun, cause he doesn't have the surgically inserted heel springs to prevent injury from falling the large distances. Oh, and GLaDOS will probably be involved somehow...she's "still alive" you know.
It's not the fault of the network-centric warfare, it is the fault of trying to fight an unconventional war with conventional tactics and strategies. In fact, the big irony of General Petraeus Iraqi assessment was that military counter-terrorism operations requires the opposite of network-centric warfare: the United States should be willing to have a lot of servicemen who are up to the notion of trading their own lives in turn for regional stability. Reemphasis on "a lot", because that is what will be needed. Tactics such as bombing targets are out of the question due to the collateral damage. And collateral damage is something that must be minimized as much as possible in order to build a trustworthy relationship with the local populace.
Properly curbing terrorism activity in a war zone scenario such as Iraq has an excruciatingly high servicemen casualty in return for stability rate.
Scenario A) The game will not follow the exact same formula, instead taking the original and building upon it. Substantial changes to game play and design are bound, implementing common features available in modern RTS games.
People will complain that Starcraft 2 is too different from the original.
Scenario B) The game is a minimalist upgrade. Basically being the original but in 3D, with the intention of not trying to break a tried and true formula.
People will complain that Starcraft 2 is too similar to the original (see reception of Command and Conquer 3).
1. Funding. Development time is a race against the clock. If they had money for 20 months of development but need three or six more months to polish and finish things - tough shit. Not all companies have large financial backing like Blizzard.
2. Quality. Even the crappiest game can't be fixed with additional development time. Releasing it today and raking in some cash is a better solution than releasing it later and still get the same sales (and bad reviews).
Not to mention it's despicable to push any sort of political agenda on a tragedy like this, particularly so soon after the fact.
An open debate could've been useful immediately after 9-11 and during the build up to the Iraqi war. Using this tragedy to stifle public debate is just as despicable in my opinion.
The reason why it is such a big deal that the American embassy tried to push the Swedish Minister of Justice and Secretary of State into influencing the police and the prosecutor to act upon The Pirate Bay is because of this: according to the Swedish law it is not permitted for the Minister of Justice to tell what the police should do (in Swedish we call this 'ministerstyre'). The minister is not even allowed to speak on individual cases. To you guys in the US or Britain this might seem weird, but that's how things work over here.
What happened with the raid on Pirate Bay could very well be a constitutional offense. That is of course after the Committee on the Constitution have properly investigated it. This is serious business.
Furthermore you are NOT living in a democracy but in a republic.
You're arguing that we should use the original definition of the word Republic. Correct?
The absolute original definition comes from the latin Res Publica meaning 'thing-business/affair'. Its definition is not the modern use of Republic and it's not the same of when the founding fathers used it either.
The founding fathers were very unwilling to use the word 'Democracy' because the original definition of that comes from the greek 'demos krates' meaning 'workers/masses only taking care of themselves' (heavy tyranny of the majority). Instead they took "res publica" and redefined it to mean what they wanted it to mean: popular voting, separation of powers, avoiding tyranny of the majority, etc.
Throughout the years, the definition of Republic changed to what it is today: the chief of state is not a monarch. At the same time the word Democracy got its definition changed, and when we say Democracy today we really mean Liberal Democracy.
In my opinion the people who say that the U.S. is a Democracy are more correct because they're actually using modern English definitions. And if you want to go back to the day of using the original definition of Republic, be my guest - because it ain't what you think it is.
Because it is a fuel that is:
a) source of pollution
b) finite, economically important, subject to price gouging
c) factor of tension in geopolitics
And that all of those things can hopefully be solved through future technological advancements.
Both Republicans and Democrats agree on equality of opportunity. The big question is: what constitutes equal opportunity?
Democrats believe that it's through positive liberty by having the government aid the people.
Republicans believe that it's through negative liberty by having the government do the least possible.
The game is not flawless, of course....I don't think the extreme visual style of Wind Waker would have been appropriate here, I wouldn't have objected to some slightly more stylized graphical elements. Titles like Okami and Final Fantasy XII have proven what you can get out of an aging console if you focus on style over realism; it might have been interesting to see what such a marriage could reap with a Zelda title.
Wow. You're not the first one to say that. It's funny how Nintendo were completely lambasted for making the Wind Maker cell shaded so they decided to take Twilight Princess in the art direction that the fans wanted. And now they're criticized to making the game too dark and gritty?
And on Venus, which is usually called our sister planet. The atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide. It has the densest atmosphere of all high density planets. It's pretty much a good example (though very extreme) of how bad shit can get if we don't get our act together and stop it here on Earth.
I've been reading Slashdot now for many years. Often at times the comment sections are a great place to go for additional facts and opinion. Most people here are geeks who tend to have heavy favoritism towards the rational thought and the empirical....but when it comes to environmentalist threads I've never seen so many Slashdotters who are simply science deniers on this issue (and modded up for it).
Dude, the reason why Star Trek is on hold right now is due to Berman. Paramount is waiting for their contract with him to run out before continuing with the franchise. Watch the YouTube video where Marina Sirtis, Garret Wong, and Robin Curtis talk about this (though it's rather brief).
To be fair, Anti-Americanism is a very broad word that include many different opinions, all with the common goal of highly distrusting (or even to a certain extent, hating) the United States.
Saying that Bush is responsible for making people hate our country is wrong.
- In the 1990s, an increasingly stronger portion of people began to question the US cultural dominance and thus gave birth to the anti-globalization movement.
- In the Middle East it's the resentment of secular western thought, which had heavily grown throughout the entire 20th century. It's basically a backlash against the rise of rational thinking that's prominent in both the US (and Europe).
- Muslims (and a fair number of socialists) all around the world strongly dislike the strong US backing of Israel.
- Many countries in the world strongly believe that the dominant super power role of the United States is wrong because it is not right for one country to shape the destiny of others after its own will. Sovereignity of other nation states should be respected.
Bush might not be the only reason they hate America, but due to his rise to Presidency at this special point of time in our history he has surely become the icon for it.
Seems to me that Daily Kos is a website that's brought up quite frequently in Slashdot (political) stories these days, many times for an opinionated view. Why is this the case and not with, let's say - Redstate? I know that Kos is a reader of Slashdot, but I don't think that has anything to do with it.
Wikipedia: ...Bloomberg, a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, decided to run for mayor as a member of the Republican Party, reportedly to avoid the crowded field in the Democratic primary.
That he's a Republican In Name Only makes complete sense. I laud him for this since there simply needs to be more Republicans who speak up for science, intellectual thinking and reason.
Representatives from two major political parties in Sweden, Folkpartiet and Vänsterpartiet have filed formal complaints against the Minister of Justice and members of his staff.
In Sweden, it's clearly detailed in the constitution that the Ministers may not interfer, tell or even discuss an individual case or act of whatever field they are the Minister of. The members from the farmer and liberal parties filed the complaints to the Constitution Committee which oversees matters that might violate the Swedish constitution. Thomas Bodström was accused of using his position as a Minister to tell the Police to carry on this raid. That is clearly an illegal act if it were to be true. Bodström denies that he has done this.
The Swedish constitution has some cool stuff in it actually... For example, the Riksdag has negative parlamentarism which means that if you forfeit your vote to elect a Regering (executive/government) it is counted as a Yes. This gives the interesting scenario where if the coalition parties forfeit to vote because they don't agree with the Prime Minister and minister cabinet presented they'll still be confirmed.
Also there's the passage in the constitution that says if the entire monarch family dies and there is no clear person to elect as the new king/queen the Riksdag is given the authority to vote on whether to turn the country in to a Republic. It's funny/interesting because this is the only place in the entire constitution that deals with turning the country in to a Republic, actually.
- Blizzard has SEVERAL teams, just like any other big gaming studio, that work on different projects at the same time. The only time I know of when they've lent development time from other teams (in relatively large scale) was when they were pushing the deadline for World of Warcraft about a year ago (this is as I've heard, so take it with a grain of salt).
- Diablo 2 was delayed because it simply wasn't finished (Just look at Act 4. It was promised to be the largest out of all the four acts, yet it was the shortest one -- a sign of that they had to compromise development time). Heck, it was never delayed to begin with as they had never announced a release date for it. It had NOTHING to do with lack of dedication or work ethics. Besides, it was designed and produced at Blizzard North, which renders your main point completely moot to begin with (that they only focus on one game).
- Remember the cancellation of Warcraft Adventures? It is quite reminiscent to this occurrence, except that we will probably see Starcraft Ghost in one shape or form the future. Blizzard has done this before.
Slashdot Mirror
Epic Games Mark Rein predicts the emerging market of a combination between laps and tops of some sort.
While I strongly disagree with everything you claimed and find it to actually have no relevance to this discussion, let me point out that since 1963 it has been virtually been agreed to that European Union law is supreme to member state law. Here's the verdict:
..
By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty, became an integral part of the legal systems of the member states and which their courts are bound to apply.
By creating a community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacityof representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the states to the community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves
Will we ever be able to play an officially ported version of Starcraft for the Nintendo DS? The stylus input system serves perfectly for strategy games, the minimap could occupy the top screen, flash is cheap enough now to be able to store full FMVs and audio, wireless support could use Battle.net, etc. It would sell like hot cakes!
Lets go through some terms, shall we?
Demos: Greek for "common people" or "lower class"
Kratia: Greek for the word "rule".
Thus the word demos-krates; democracy.
Polity: Aristotle considered it to be the perfect form of government because it was neither Democracy (self-serving by the poor) or Oligarchy (self-serving rule by the wealthy) - but rather a form of government where things are ruled by everyone in the interest of the whole community.
Democracy used to be the corrupt equivalent of "polity" in the day of Athens, according to Aristotle's typology of governments. Back in the day during the time when the founding fathers framed the constitution, the word "democracy" used to have the negative connotation of "tyranny of the majority" (still exists to this day). As demonstrated by their influence to call one of the parliamentary chambers "the Senate", they opted to use another word inspired by the Romans:
Res publica: The word "republic" in latin, which means thing business / thing of the people.
Madison and Jefferson DID in turn change the definition of "Republic" to mean scheme of representation. It is different from the term Res Publica which just implies people's business. Since then the definitions and usage of both the words have changed, as hundreds of years have passed. "Democracy" changed in the sense that it now includes a representative structure ("liberal democracy" is what we all mean) and "Republic" today commonly refers to a country whose head of state is not a monarch (China is a republic, but they for sure aint democratic). In essence, the founding fathers used the word "Republic" exactly in the way we use the word "Democracy" today. I.e. Representative Democracy.
So when people claim that the United States is a Republic and not a Democracy, they're using age old definitions. If they claim the today's linguistical definition of Republic is wrong, then they ought to go back to the true Roman definition! So when someone tells you that the United States isn't democracy - do the right thing and tell them they're wrong!
Most people don't celebrate Christmas religiously, anymore, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.
The date has nothing to do with Jesus' birth. The reason why Christmas is celebrated at he 25th is because that is when the ancient pagans celebrated the winter solstice. In order to appeal to the pagans to convert to Christianity, they just said "Oh well, lets have it be about Jesus!".
Gabe Newell seems to show a lot of fancy towards the episodic method of distributing games. Put that in mind when he remarked to Eurogamer a while back that Episode 1 to Episode 3 "essentially" was Half Life 3. Smaller teams with less to lose permits them to take more risks in game design. Does this mean the real Half Life 3 (not episode 1-3!) will be distributed the same way?
However, on what we know about Episode 3: First of all, Portal takes place in the Half Life universe in the laboratories of Aperture Science. This had to be for an obvious reason since it essentially is a storyline shoe-horn in to a puzzle game. They didn't need to do it, but they did it anyway. Episode 2 spills the info that Aperture Science has a vessel called the Borealis. It "vanished" (i.e. teleportation) but has now been found. Obviously Gordon will have to go there and find the ship and obtain the gadgets and gizmos. This means Gordon will have to travel to the arctic, so Episode 3 will most likely feature snowy areas. And then there is this Gabe Newell quote on Portal (After you launch the player, play the video called "X-Play Review: Portal". Gabe's quote is a little over the halfway mark):
"The character that you play is a character who has importance in the overall half-life universe, and will eventually have a fairly significant relationship with other characters that we're already familiar with".
The way Portal works as an introductory game to educate the players on how to use the Portal gun to interact with the environment is a really clever method to set things up on how it will potentially be used in Episode 3. But I'm actually not so sure however whether Chell will give Gordon the gun, cause he doesn't have the surgically inserted heel springs to prevent injury from falling the large distances. Oh, and GLaDOS will probably be involved somehow...she's "still alive" you know.
It's not the fault of the network-centric warfare, it is the fault of trying to fight an unconventional war with conventional tactics and strategies. In fact, the big irony of General Petraeus Iraqi assessment was that military counter-terrorism operations requires the opposite of network-centric warfare: the United States should be willing to have a lot of servicemen who are up to the notion of trading their own lives in turn for regional stability. Reemphasis on "a lot", because that is what will be needed. Tactics such as bombing targets are out of the question due to the collateral damage. And collateral damage is something that must be minimized as much as possible in order to build a trustworthy relationship with the local populace.
Properly curbing terrorism activity in a war zone scenario such as Iraq has an excruciatingly high servicemen casualty in return for stability rate.
Many liberals in France were not conviced by Segolene Royal at all
Of course not. She's a socialist.
Scenario A) The game will not follow the exact same formula, instead taking the original and building upon it. Substantial changes to game play and design are bound, implementing common features available in modern RTS games.
People will complain that Starcraft 2 is too different from the original.
Scenario B) The game is a minimalist upgrade. Basically being the original but in 3D, with the intention of not trying to break a tried and true formula.
People will complain that Starcraft 2 is too similar to the original (see reception of Command and Conquer 3).
The big question is, why aren't they?
1. Funding. Development time is a race against the clock. If they had money for 20 months of development but need three or six more months to polish and finish things - tough shit. Not all companies have large financial backing like Blizzard.
2. Quality. Even the crappiest game can't be fixed with additional development time. Releasing it today and raking in some cash is a better solution than releasing it later and still get the same sales (and bad reviews).
It is a truism that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
No shit, that's the purpose. Anyone found with a gun will get locked up.
Not to mention it's despicable to push any sort of political agenda on a tragedy like this, particularly so soon after the fact.
An open debate could've been useful immediately after 9-11 and during the build up to the Iraqi war. Using this tragedy to stifle public debate is just as despicable in my opinion.
The reason why it is such a big deal that the American embassy tried to push the Swedish Minister of Justice and Secretary of State into influencing the police and the prosecutor to act upon The Pirate Bay is because of this: according to the Swedish law it is not permitted for the Minister of Justice to tell what the police should do (in Swedish we call this 'ministerstyre'). The minister is not even allowed to speak on individual cases. To you guys in the US or Britain this might seem weird, but that's how things work over here.
What happened with the raid on Pirate Bay could very well be a constitutional offense. That is of course after the Committee on the Constitution have properly investigated it. This is serious business.
Furthermore you are NOT living in a democracy but in a republic.
You're arguing that we should use the original definition of the word Republic. Correct?
The absolute original definition comes from the latin Res Publica meaning 'thing-business/affair'. Its definition is not the modern use of Republic and it's not the same of when the founding fathers used it either.
The founding fathers were very unwilling to use the word 'Democracy' because the original definition of that comes from the greek 'demos krates' meaning 'workers/masses only taking care of themselves' (heavy tyranny of the majority). Instead they took "res publica" and redefined it to mean what they wanted it to mean: popular voting, separation of powers, avoiding tyranny of the majority, etc.
Throughout the years, the definition of Republic changed to what it is today: the chief of state is not a monarch. At the same time the word Democracy got its definition changed, and when we say Democracy today we really mean Liberal Democracy.
In my opinion the people who say that the U.S. is a Democracy are more correct because they're actually using modern English definitions. And if you want to go back to the day of using the original definition of Republic, be my guest - because it ain't what you think it is.
And this interests readers of Slashdot ... how?
Because it is a fuel that is:
a) source of pollution
b) finite, economically important, subject to price gouging
c) factor of tension in geopolitics
And that all of those things can hopefully be solved through future technological advancements.
Wrong. Socialism is equality of outcomes.
Both Republicans and Democrats agree on equality of opportunity. The big question is: what constitutes equal opportunity?
Democrats believe that it's through positive liberty by having the government aid the people.
Republicans believe that it's through negative liberty by having the government do the least possible.
The game is not flawless, of course....I don't think the extreme visual style of Wind Waker would have been appropriate here, I wouldn't have objected to some slightly more stylized graphical elements. Titles like Okami and Final Fantasy XII have proven what you can get out of an aging console if you focus on style over realism; it might have been interesting to see what such a marriage could reap with a Zelda title.
Wow. You're not the first one to say that. It's funny how Nintendo were completely lambasted for making the Wind Maker cell shaded so they decided to take Twilight Princess in the art direction that the fans wanted. And now they're criticized to making the game too dark and gritty?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Global warming does exist... on Mars.
And on Venus, which is usually called our sister planet. The atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide. It has the densest atmosphere of all high density planets. It's pretty much a good example (though very extreme) of how bad shit can get if we don't get our act together and stop it here on Earth.
I've been reading Slashdot now for many years. Often at times the comment sections are a great place to go for additional facts and opinion. Most people here are geeks who tend to have heavy favoritism towards the rational thought and the empirical....but when it comes to environmentalist threads I've never seen so many Slashdotters who are simply science deniers on this issue (and modded up for it).
Dude, the reason why Star Trek is on hold right now is due to Berman. Paramount is waiting for their contract with him to run out before continuing with the franchise. Watch the YouTube video where Marina Sirtis, Garret Wong, and Robin Curtis talk about this (though it's rather brief).
To be fair, Anti-Americanism is a very broad word that include many different opinions, all with the common goal of highly distrusting (or even to a certain extent, hating) the United States.
Saying that Bush is responsible for making people hate our country is wrong.
- In the 1990s, an increasingly stronger portion of people began to question the US cultural dominance and thus gave birth to the anti-globalization movement.
- In the Middle East it's the resentment of secular western thought, which had heavily grown throughout the entire 20th century. It's basically a backlash against the rise of rational thinking that's prominent in both the US (and Europe).
- Muslims (and a fair number of socialists) all around the world strongly dislike the strong US backing of Israel.
- Many countries in the world strongly believe that the dominant super power role of the United States is wrong because it is not right for one country to shape the destiny of others after its own will. Sovereignity of other nation states should be respected.
Bush might not be the only reason they hate America, but due to his rise to Presidency at this special point of time in our history he has surely become the icon for it.
Seems to me that Daily Kos is a website that's brought up quite frequently in Slashdot (political) stories these days, many times for an opinionated view. Why is this the case and not with, let's say - Redstate? I know that Kos is a reader of Slashdot, but I don't think that has anything to do with it.
Why is this guy a repulican.
...Bloomberg, a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, decided to run for mayor as a member of the Republican Party, reportedly to avoid the crowded field in the Democratic primary.
Wikipedia:
That he's a Republican In Name Only makes complete sense. I laud him for this since there simply needs to be more Republicans who speak up for science, intellectual thinking and reason.
Representatives from two major political parties in Sweden, Folkpartiet and Vänsterpartiet have filed formal complaints against the Minister of Justice and members of his staff.
In Sweden, it's clearly detailed in the constitution that the Ministers may not interfer, tell or even discuss an individual case or act of whatever field they are the Minister of. The members from the farmer and liberal parties filed the complaints to the Constitution Committee which oversees matters that might violate the Swedish constitution. Thomas Bodström was accused of using his position as a Minister to tell the Police to carry on this raid. That is clearly an illegal act if it were to be true. Bodström denies that he has done this.
The Swedish constitution has some cool stuff in it actually... For example, the Riksdag has negative parlamentarism which means that if you forfeit your vote to elect a Regering (executive/government) it is counted as a Yes. This gives the interesting scenario where if the coalition parties forfeit to vote because they don't agree with the Prime Minister and minister cabinet presented they'll still be confirmed.
Also there's the passage in the constitution that says if the entire monarch family dies and there is no clear person to elect as the new king/queen the Riksdag is given the authority to vote on whether to turn the country in to a Republic. It's funny/interesting because this is the only place in the entire constitution that deals with turning the country in to a Republic, actually.
Look I was there when Iwata-san pulled out that thing. I was there in the front row in Tokyo... and I said "You've got to give 'em kudos for trying."
[insert joke here]
- Blizzard has SEVERAL teams, just like any other big gaming studio, that work on different projects at the same time. The only time I know of when they've lent development time from other teams (in relatively large scale) was when they were pushing the deadline for World of Warcraft about a year ago (this is as I've heard, so take it with a grain of salt).
- Diablo 2 was delayed because it simply wasn't finished (Just look at Act 4. It was promised to be the largest out of all the four acts, yet it was the shortest one -- a sign of that they had to compromise development time). Heck, it was never delayed to begin with as they had never announced a release date for it. It had NOTHING to do with lack of dedication or work ethics. Besides, it was designed and produced at Blizzard North, which renders your main point completely moot to begin with (that they only focus on one game).
- Remember the cancellation of Warcraft Adventures? It is quite reminiscent to this occurrence, except that we will probably see Starcraft Ghost in one shape or form the future. Blizzard has done this before.