Now to address your point JavaLord - it is not an all-or-nothing scenario. Law enforcement worked very well in this country prior to 09/11/2001,
Actually the FBI/CIA screwed the pooch prior to 9/11, or the attack would have been avoided.
and would have continued to do so afterward even without limiting our constitutional rights. Even after virtually eliminating our second amendment rights,
Hasn't that been going on forever? I live in a blue state, so I have no second amendment rights so it's hard to know.
enacting laws which put general aviation into jeopardy,
Did I miss this one?
infringing on first, fourth, and fifth amendment rights by spying on citizens inside our borders, is our country any safer?
When police would spy on Mafia members, were you upset about their rights being violated?
Answer: NO. Dubya himself admits that not all terrorism activities can be stopped. In the meantime we've been handing over our essential liberties in exchange for a little temporary apparant security.
You mentioned above, "it is not an all-or-nothing scenario". So W. saying that not all terrorism activites can be stopped is merely agreeing with your above point.
Also, the semi-Ben Franklin quote you made is actually a misquote and out of context. I know everyone on the internet likes to use it, and change it around to make it sound like Franklin was talking about terrorism. The truth was he was talking about taxes, and welfare. The exact quote goes like this:
They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security, deserve neither Liberty nor safety.
No. What I'm saying is that the threat to our citizens, our national security, and our way of life posed by terrorists is not in any way, shape, or form large enough to justify the wholesale destruction of our civil liberties.
What civil liberties have we lost? Did I miss something? The only civil liberty I've ever seen chipped away at in this country is the right to bear arms. That was going on long before 9/11
The administration has used one event to justify unbelievable changes to what ordinary, law-abiding citizens can expect with respect to their privacy and freedom.
One event? I really don't know why you guys keep repeating this. It's like the mantra of anti-Americanism. Here is a list of terrorist events where Americans have died or a major attack was foiled:
1993
February 26: World Trade Center bombing kills 6 and injures over 1000 people.
June: Failed New York City landmark bomb plot.
1994
December 11: A small bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. Authorities found out that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for his planned terrorist attack.
1995
January 6: Operation Bojinka is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after an apartment fire occurred in the apartment.
April 19: Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 people, 19 of them children; the most deadly act of domestic act of terrorism the United States to date
October 9: An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by anti-government saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona.
1996
June 25: Khobar Towers bombing -- In all, 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi were killed and 372 wounded.
July 27: Centennial Olympic Park bombing, killing one and wounding 111.
1997
February 24: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
1998
August 7: U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
1999
December: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb US and Israeli tourists in Jordan and pick up 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
December 14: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States-Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
2000
The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
October 12: USS Cole bombing kills 17 US sailors.
2001
The attacks on September 11 kill almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, originally intended to hit The White House, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Paris embassy attack plot foiled.
Anthrax attacks on the offices the United States Congress and New York State Government offices, and on employees of television networks and tabloid.
December 22: Richard Reid, attempting to destroy American Airlines Flight 63, is subdued by passengers and flight attendants before he could detonate his shoe bomb.
2002
January: Kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl.
June 14: Car bomb at US Consulate in Karachi kills 12.
July 4: An Egyptian gunman opens fire at an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport, killing 2 Israelis before
So what you are saying is, we have to wait until the terrorist kill a significant amount of people before we should spend money to fight them.
So how many innocent people have to die before the US government can spend money to stop these nutjobs without our domestic socialists crying about malaria in Africa?
Here is a news flash, the American government and the American people owe no debt to Africa, nor do they have to spend money to fight a disease there while disregarding their own personal security.
Five. Unless you count the jihadist (Joel Henry Hinrichs III) who blew himself up outside of an Oklahoma football game last year. Then it's six. Look into his story and figure out how many deaths could have happened that day.
If you're worried about dying as a result of a terrorist attack, you must be absolutely petrified of dying in a road traffic accident.
Being 'worried' about dying has nothing to do with it. I'm not worried about dying of breast cancer, yet I think donating money to find new treatments and a cure is a good idea. I'm not worried about being murdered, but I think murders should be thrown in jail, and in extreme instances (ie Timothy McVeigh) killed.
Was going into World War 2 worth it, in your opinion? After all, the men killed at pearl harbor were stastically insignificant compared to many other social ills of the day.
Terrorism is an inconsequential threat to this country. Statistically, it is inconsequential to the individual, quite similar to the threat of dying in a "conventional" airplane crash. Obviously it is consequential to its victims, the same as any other threat, so your point has no real point.
Statistically you are much less likely to be murdered than you are to die in a car accident. Does that mean we shouldn't put murders in jail, or allocate resources to capture them? Your politics are clouding your judgement.
It's only inconsiquential if nobody you cared about died, or your political ideology allows you to overlook their deaths in an effort to bash the current administration.
There are plenty of things to be critical of with the Bush administration without trivilizing the loss of life in the US and overseas due to terrorism.
What it basically comes down to is if you are playing a game, and no nothing of it's lore you will assume whatever race(s) are fighting the humans are evil.
Reasons for rolling one race or another vary. For example:
When I picked my first character, I was looking for a hybrid on the horde side because I wanted to play the evil side (since I enjoy ganking). Since the warlock didn't have good melee attacks, I was thinking about the Shaman. I decided I didn't want to play a Shaman though, since I usually associate Shaman with being healers and I wanted a more offense based hybrid. In what can only be called a dumb move in retrospect, I rolled a human paladin. I really had no desire to play the human race (or dwarves) I was more picking my race because of what class was available. Had there been some kind of undead death knight, I would have taken that.
Trying to come up with reasons why people pick one race or another seems silly. Doesn't everyone decide on a class when picking their first character then pick the race from there?
Every time the New York Times or the Washington Post leaks about some secret program that is used in the war on terror, therefor invalidating it, I wonder to myself if they will take responsibility for the next terrorist attack.
This is the truth. He seems like an all around down to earth guy which makes it even better.
Quake 3 was by far the best game of its time. Unreal Tournament was fun, but it just wasn't Quake 3.
I thought Q2 was better than the original unreal, but I thought Unreal Tournament was much better than quake 3. The extra game modes, along with maps with better flow sold me. The best feature of the original unreal tournament was the overpowered guns. All of the guns seemed mega-powerful, and they were a blast to use. I didn't enjoy UT2K3 or 2K4 because they ramped down the power of the guns.
Note to developers: Guns mean everything in FPS games, powerful is better, and the more variation the better.:)
I still offer to pay $100 for an off-the-record, name-never-to-be-published full detailing of Blizzard's network and operations systems. I'd like to know if it's simply a problem of demanding too much from too few resources, if it's ineptitude on the part of admins, or if it's full-blown poor architectural design.
It's been stated before that the ingame login server is the same as the forum login server. I think I've read before it's tied into the battlenet login servers too. I'm betting the problem is poor design from teh start, along with demanding too much from too few resources.
The United States gives $13.3 billion tax dollars in direct Foreign Aid annually. The United States is above and beyond the single most generous benefactor of the United Nations, donating $2.4 billion dollars of OUR money, to primarily third-world dictators.
This amount is 25% of the United Nations budget. In addition, the United States also gives another $1.4 billion tax dollars to United Nations' programs and agencies. The American taxpayers fund more for the United Nations than ALL of the other 177 member nations COMBINED.
What is with you Americans and this view of the UN?
We aren't socalists and we are stuck funding this anti-american establishment via our tax dollars.
It is the only framework we have for having nations try and work together peacefully, and establish the way they'll play together. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than saying "fuck it, just invade anyone you wish".
Do you think if the UN went away everyone would just say "FUCK IT"? Did the UN does not stop aggression at all.
Well, it was the US who helped to create the UN, after they said the League of Nations was no longer relevant.
Which it wasn't.
You can't throw away the only even remotely-functionaly international treaty organization every time you feel like throwing a temper tantrum because you didn't get your own way.
If we pay for it, we should be able to throw it away.
The US uses the UN to give them legitimacy when it suits them, and flagrantly disregards the fact that's a signatory to some of those treaties when they wish.
So why would you object to the US pulling out?
Walk away from it, and you could find yourselves a pariah state,
Get over your anti-american wet dream of things going badly for the US.
and your relationships with your allies could become rather tenuous.
Doubtful, they will still need us, and we will still need them which is why they are allies.
Although, they've been becoming tenuous over the last few years due to the protectionism/xenophobia your leaders are putting forth to the rest of the world.
Yeah, that protectionism is really hardcore in America, that is why they have such a large trade deficit with China. The xenophobia is really big too, I mean we have politicians right now trying to decide how to baby illegal immigrants correctly.
Le't hope America doesn't decide it want to go it alone so it can become the asshole/bully of the world -- though we see shades of that now.
Lets hope America pulls out of the Anti-American UN. It does not serve our national interests to be part of such an organization. Let Europe rot and become Eurabia, fuckem.
Did I come into some false reality here? Don't people still buy hardware for the software they can play/run on it?
This generation of consoles is the first where I actually haven't bought one (or all) of the consoles. The only reason I ever choose one over the other is software available. I could care less which company has their name on a console, I only care about what games it plays. Am I in the minority?
Man that's just terrible. The name "Revolution" had a powerful feel behind it, which I think would have been useful in its marketing against the Xbox360 and the PS3. "Wii" sounds diminutive and powerless. I hope they reconsider. Somehow, saying 'Hey I'm going to go out and buy a Wii [we]' just doesn't have the ring of 'I'm going out to buy a Revolution!'.
Not to metion, revolution made sense with the new controller. Wii, as others have mentioned sounds like 'why?' which is what some people first thought when they saw the controller.
Your point about "wii" sounding weak is valid as well. Also, didn't any of their developers realize that 'wee' can also mean 'pee' in American english? As in, I'm going to take a 'wii'? How do these people get their jobs?
I know its hard to resist the Dvorak trolling, but you need to consider one thing: He's not listening to you. He doesn't even care about your opinion. His crazy theories are keeping the money flowing, and that's good enough. Arguing with his drivel is simply wasting your time.
Opinions that differ from yours aren't "Trolling". As for his crazy theories, if they are that crazy just ignore him.
John Dvorak declaring IE the biggest mistake Microsoft has ever made. From the article: 'All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"
Yes, but we don't know what would have happened had they left netscape to dominate the market. Netscape might have taken over the world by now and enslaved us all!
Unfortunately, based on the rumors I have heard, Blizzard has chosen to tie a bunch of stuff together. For instance, the common web forums use the characters from all the realms (the web forums know about your level 23 mage), they have a single set of auth servers, it's not clear that the item databases are not shared between realms, and so on. This is sort of sad, because it's not like Blizzard are the first people to roll out an MMORPG.
Yep, they have a single login server for the forums and the game. Which is funny, because when the login server goes down, everyone rushes to the forums to whine, and they can't login. Then again, that might be "Working as Intended" in blizzards view.;)
One would think they could just lower the population caps on the servers and that would improve performance. If you took today's medium population servers and considered them high pop/closed to new characters and then transfered people out of the high pop servers, it should work itself out.
That is, except for the problems they have with their own ISP. What does it take to get good service from an ISP nowadays?
Slashdot Mirror
At worst he's flat-out wrong.
;) Misguided maybe.
opinions aren't wrong.
Now to address your point JavaLord - it is not an all-or-nothing scenario. Law enforcement worked very well in this country prior to 09/11/2001,
Actually the FBI/CIA screwed the pooch prior to 9/11, or the attack would have been avoided.
and would have continued to do so afterward even without limiting our constitutional rights. Even after virtually eliminating our second amendment rights,
Hasn't that been going on forever? I live in a blue state, so I have no second amendment rights so it's hard to know.
enacting laws which put general aviation into jeopardy,
Did I miss this one?
infringing on first, fourth, and fifth amendment rights by spying on citizens inside our borders, is our country any safer?
When police would spy on Mafia members, were you upset about their rights being violated?
Answer: NO. Dubya himself admits that not all terrorism activities can be stopped. In the meantime we've been handing over our essential liberties in exchange for a little temporary apparant security.
You mentioned above, "it is not an all-or-nothing scenario". So W. saying that not all terrorism activites can be stopped is merely agreeing with your above point.
Also, the semi-Ben Franklin quote you made is actually a misquote and out of context. I know everyone on the internet likes to use it, and change it around to make it sound like Franklin was talking about terrorism. The truth was he was talking about taxes, and welfare. The exact quote goes like this:
They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security, deserve neither Liberty nor safety.
No. What I'm saying is that the threat to our citizens, our national security, and our way of life posed by terrorists is not in any way, shape, or form large enough to justify the wholesale destruction of our civil liberties.
What civil liberties have we lost? Did I miss something? The only civil liberty I've ever seen chipped away at in this country is the right to bear arms. That was going on long before 9/11 The administration has used one event to justify unbelievable changes to what ordinary, law-abiding citizens can expect with respect to their privacy and freedom.
One event? I really don't know why you guys keep repeating this. It's like the mantra of anti-Americanism. Here is a list of terrorist events where Americans have died or a major attack was foiled:
1993
February 26: World Trade Center bombing kills 6 and injures over 1000 people.
June: Failed New York City landmark bomb plot.
1994
December 11: A small bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. Authorities found out that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for his planned terrorist attack.
1995
January 6: Operation Bojinka is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after an apartment fire occurred in the apartment.
April 19: Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 people, 19 of them children; the most deadly act of domestic act of terrorism the United States to date
October 9: An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by anti-government saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona.
1996
June 25: Khobar Towers bombing -- In all, 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi were killed and 372 wounded.
July 27: Centennial Olympic Park bombing, killing one and wounding 111.
1997
February 24: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
1998
August 7: U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
1999
December: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb US and Israeli tourists in Jordan and pick up 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
December 14: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States-Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
2000
The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
October 12: USS Cole bombing kills 17 US sailors.
2001
The attacks on September 11 kill almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, originally intended to hit The White House, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Paris embassy attack plot foiled.
Anthrax attacks on the offices the United States Congress and New York State Government offices, and on employees of television networks and tabloid.
December 22: Richard Reid, attempting to destroy American Airlines Flight 63, is subdued by passengers and flight attendants before he could detonate his shoe bomb.
2002
January: Kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl.
June 14: Car bomb at US Consulate in Karachi kills 12.
July 4: An Egyptian gunman opens fire at an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport, killing 2 Israelis before
So what you are saying is, we have to wait until the terrorist kill a significant amount of people before we should spend money to fight them.
So how many innocent people have to die before the US government can spend money to stop these nutjobs without our domestic socialists crying about malaria in Africa?
Here is a news flash, the American government and the American people owe no debt to Africa, nor do they have to spend money to fight a disease there while disregarding their own personal security.
AFAIK zero.
Five. Unless you count the jihadist (Joel Henry Hinrichs III) who blew himself up outside of an Oklahoma football game last year. Then it's six. Look into his story and figure out how many deaths could have happened that day.
But hey, there is no threat right?
If you're worried about dying as a result of a terrorist attack, you must be absolutely petrified of dying in a road traffic accident.
Being 'worried' about dying has nothing to do with it. I'm not worried about dying of breast cancer, yet I think donating money to find new treatments and a cure is a good idea. I'm not worried about being murdered, but I think murders should be thrown in jail, and in extreme instances (ie Timothy McVeigh) killed.
Was going into World War 2 worth it, in your opinion? After all, the men killed at pearl harbor were stastically insignificant compared to many other social ills of the day.
Their ideology aside, the "terrorists" in Iraq and Afghanistan are repelling foreign invaders
I'd say they are attempting to repell foreign invaders, and not being all that successful.
at this point and focusing their attacks on military targets.
Tell that to Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl.
Terrorism is an inconsequential threat to this country. Statistically, it is inconsequential to the individual, quite similar to the threat of dying in a "conventional" airplane crash. Obviously it is consequential to its victims, the same as any other threat, so your point has no real point.
Statistically you are much less likely to be murdered than you are to die in a car accident. Does that mean we shouldn't put murders in jail, or allocate resources to capture them? Your politics are clouding your judgement.
1) Terrorism is an inconsiquential threat.
It's only inconsiquential if nobody you cared about died, or your political ideology allows you to overlook their deaths in an effort to bash the current administration.
There are plenty of things to be critical of with the Bush administration without trivilizing the loss of life in the US and overseas due to terrorism.
What it basically comes down to is if you are playing a game, and no nothing of it's lore you will assume whatever race(s) are fighting the humans are evil.
Reasons for rolling one race or another vary. For example:
When I picked my first character, I was looking for a hybrid on the horde side because I wanted to play the evil side (since I enjoy ganking). Since the warlock didn't have good melee attacks, I was thinking about the Shaman. I decided I didn't want to play a Shaman though, since I usually associate Shaman with being healers and I wanted a more offense based hybrid. In what can only be called a dumb move in retrospect, I rolled a human paladin. I really had no desire to play the human race (or dwarves) I was more picking my race because of what class was available. Had there been some kind of undead death knight, I would have taken that.
Trying to come up with reasons why people pick one race or another seems silly. Doesn't everyone decide on a class when picking their first character then pick the race from there?
I can't wait to make the Javalord JVM. Soon the internet will be overrun with craplets that only work on my JVM. MUHAHAHA
Looks like the commies are going to get owned.
Every time the New York Times or the Washington Post leaks about some secret program that is used in the war on terror, therefor invalidating it, I wonder to myself if they will take responsibility for the next terrorist attack.
John Carmack is a Genius in the gaming industry.
:)
This is the truth. He seems like an all around down to earth guy which makes it even better.
Quake 3 was by far the best game of its time. Unreal Tournament was fun, but it just wasn't Quake 3.
I thought Q2 was better than the original unreal, but I thought Unreal Tournament was much better than quake 3. The extra game modes, along with maps with better flow sold me. The best feature of the original unreal tournament was the overpowered guns. All of the guns seemed mega-powerful, and they were a blast to use. I didn't enjoy UT2K3 or 2K4 because they ramped down the power of the guns.
Note to developers: Guns mean everything in FPS games, powerful is better, and the more variation the better.
I still offer to pay $100 for an off-the-record, name-never-to-be-published full detailing of Blizzard's network and operations systems. I'd like to know if it's simply a problem of demanding too much from too few resources, if it's ineptitude on the part of admins, or if it's full-blown poor architectural design.
It's been stated before that the ingame login server is the same as the forum login server. I think I've read before it's tied into the battlenet login servers too. I'm betting the problem is poor design from teh start, along with demanding too much from too few resources.
The United States gives $13.3 billion tax dollars in direct Foreign Aid annually. The United States is above and beyond the single most generous benefactor of the United Nations, donating $2.4 billion dollars of OUR money, to primarily third-world dictators.
This amount is 25% of the United Nations budget. In addition, the United States also gives another $1.4 billion tax dollars to United Nations' programs and agencies. The American taxpayers fund more for the United Nations than ALL of the other 177 member nations COMBINED.
What is with you Americans and this view of the UN?
We aren't socalists and we are stuck funding this anti-american establishment via our tax dollars.
It is the only framework we have for having nations try and work together peacefully, and establish the way they'll play together. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than saying "fuck it, just invade anyone you wish".
Do you think if the UN went away everyone would just say "FUCK IT"? Did the UN does not stop aggression at all.
Well, it was the US who helped to create the UN, after they said the League of Nations was no longer relevant.
Which it wasn't.
You can't throw away the only even remotely-functionaly international treaty organization every time you feel like throwing a temper tantrum because you didn't get your own way.
If we pay for it, we should be able to throw it away.
The US uses the UN to give them legitimacy when it suits them, and flagrantly disregards the fact that's a signatory to some of those treaties when they wish.
So why would you object to the US pulling out?
Walk away from it, and you could find yourselves a pariah state,
Get over your anti-american wet dream of things going badly for the US.
and your relationships with your allies could become rather tenuous.
Doubtful, they will still need us, and we will still need them which is why they are allies.
Although, they've been becoming tenuous over the last few years due to the protectionism/xenophobia your leaders are putting forth to the rest of the world.
Yeah, that protectionism is really hardcore in America, that is why they have such a large trade deficit with China. The xenophobia is really big too, I mean we have politicians right now trying to decide how to baby illegal immigrants correctly.
Le't hope America doesn't decide it want to go it alone so it can become the asshole/bully of the world -- though we see shades of that now.
Lets hope America pulls out of the Anti-American UN. It does not serve our national interests to be part of such an organization. Let Europe rot and become Eurabia, fuckem.
China has them... so why don't democrats support us getting them?
Did I come into some false reality here? Don't people still buy hardware for the software they can play/run on it?
This generation of consoles is the first where I actually haven't bought one (or all) of the consoles. The only reason I ever choose one over the other is software available. I could care less which company has their name on a console, I only care about what games it plays. Am I in the minority?
Microsoft has more than 50 billion dollarsin the bank by now.
That is pretty close to limitless.
Man that's just terrible. The name "Revolution" had a powerful feel behind it, which I think would have been useful in its marketing against the Xbox360 and the PS3. "Wii" sounds diminutive and powerless. I hope they reconsider. Somehow, saying 'Hey I'm going to go out and buy a Wii [we]' just doesn't have the ring of 'I'm going out to buy a Revolution!'.
Not to metion, revolution made sense with the new controller. Wii, as others have mentioned sounds like 'why?' which is what some people first thought when they saw the controller.
Your point about "wii" sounding weak is valid as well. Also, didn't any of their developers realize that 'wee' can also mean 'pee' in American english? As in, I'm going to take a 'wii'? How do these people get their jobs?
is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork."
As opposed to the culture of entitlement in most european countries?
I know its hard to resist the Dvorak trolling, but you need to consider one thing: He's not listening to you. He doesn't even care about your opinion. His crazy theories are keeping the money flowing, and that's good enough. Arguing with his drivel is simply wasting your time.
Opinions that differ from yours aren't "Trolling". As for his crazy theories, if they are that crazy just ignore him.
John Dvorak declaring IE the biggest mistake Microsoft has ever made. From the article: 'All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"
Yes, but we don't know what would have happened had they left netscape to dominate the market. Netscape might have taken over the world by now and enslaved us all!
Thank god for IE.
Unfortunately, based on the rumors I have heard, Blizzard has chosen to tie a bunch of stuff together. For instance, the common web forums use the characters from all the realms (the web forums know about your level 23 mage), they have a single set of auth servers, it's not clear that the item databases are not shared between realms, and so on. This is sort of sad, because it's not like Blizzard are the first people to roll out an MMORPG.
;)
Yep, they have a single login server for the forums and the game. Which is funny, because when the login server goes down, everyone rushes to the forums to whine, and they can't login. Then again, that might be "Working as Intended" in blizzards view.
One would think they could just lower the population caps on the servers and that would improve performance. If you took today's medium population servers and considered them high pop/closed to new characters and then transfered people out of the high pop servers, it should work itself out.
That is, except for the problems they have with their own ISP. What does it take to get good service from an ISP nowadays?
I don't see the point in having to pay for the privilege to waste my time.
You don't pay to go to the movies? Or for cable TV? Or for any form of mindless entertainment out there?