WoW rewards more people for little effort or intelligence. Quests= little imagination. A level 1 is worthless to a level 60 raiding group.
EvE is not warm and cuddly. You dont get a warm fuzzy feeling for doing a quest although maybe that will change with the new incoming faction combat. Piloting takes intelligence as stupid moves gets you dead. You lose your stuff when you die so there is a high learning curve which alot of people can't handle. Top that off with detailed game mechanics which make you actually pilot a ship, not button mash. There is little soloing in the game unless you've had some training. A 1 week noobie with 500k skillpoints, a noobie ship, and a 20k scrambler is as valuable to a fleet as a 2yr 20mill skillpoint player.
The game is all about cooperation, awareness, and determination. Unless you're willing to take some knocks while you're learning the ropes you'll hate the game. The players control, police, and supplement space not npc's. They also dont care much for those that can't handle it.
For those that can handle it, the game is incredibly fun. Whether you're an industrialist (war profiterring ftw), an alliance member (defending their homelands from invaders), or a pirate (Jack Sparrow is a poser..yarrr). But you have to find your niche and thats the part where most never put forth much effort before quitting.
The Ipod dominates because there really isn't that much that can really challenge it. Its that good of a player. If the Zune was really as good as its hype you'd probably see Ipod sales drop. Unfortunately the hype was just...well hype and the Zune sucked. Nothing else on the horizon either.
The Iphone on the other hand is jumping into a saturated market with plenty of REALLY good competition. Its not going to dominate and to be honest as I go over the features I can't really see anything really special about it other than the apple logo or the virtual keypad. The latter might turn out to be a more of a hinderance for some people and the single carrier is really going to put off alot of others. And to top it off you can't even change out the battery (sound familiar fellow Ipod users?). I guess if I buy it I'll have to get a new phone when my service is up in 2yrs...sorta like my Ipod. Sheesh!
Jobs put alot of hype on this thing because it would create a media frenzy. And it worked. Stocks are up and people are buzzing. The buzzing is already starting to fade and will be flat by the time it actually starts to sell. After that point is when it will really be held up for measurement and the buzzing starts again or the bitching begins.
Just over 50 Merkava were hit with anti-tank weapons. Out of that 14 were destroyed and those required multiple hits. Most crew casualties and injuries were top down hits on light upper spots and a large number were in the driver section (sucks for them)or results of the shockwave of the hit. The RPG-29 turned out to have more bark than bite against the MBT's but proved very effective against APC's and other vehicles. The Russian made Kornets and Metis (Russian versions of the Milan both man portable) account for the most damage done and yet they still needed multiple hits. The anti-tank mines were successful against older version mk II's which didn't have the underbelly armor like the mk 4's unless it was jury rigged. Other than that all other tanks damaged were brought back online after short repairs. Throw in the new Trophy anti-anti-tank missile system thats being developed and suddenly things dont look so bad for the future. Only poor nations are still using reactive armor on their current MBT's (older versions and APCs use it much more often).
Armor when used properly is very effective for any terrain. Its a matter of using them correctly as are anti-tank rockets (Iranian training paid off it looks like). The Vietnamese used armor against two American firebases and wiped them out. The third firebase was ready and responded with their own armor and arty and routed the NVA. The current Iraq conflict is an excellent example of how armor can be used effectively in conjunction with dismounted troops in an urban terrain.
There are plenty of examples of why armor isn't going away anytime soon and plenty of reasons for it to stay. If the Trophy or Iron Fist systems turn out to be half as good as they say then someone will have to reinvent the anti-tank systems. Lets not forget that little 6 day war when the arabs brought their own tanks either. Thats still always a real threat.
As to the autonomous tanks I dont think we'll be seeing anything like that for a very very long time. Any unmanned vehicle is subject to being jammed or recieving interferance. Heck there's even a chance the encryption on the transmission can be cracked and the vehicle turned on its users. Alot of IED's in Iraq are jammed on a regular basis and easily I might add. So unless someone has Skynet in their back pocket or a few thousand miles of coax cable laying around I wouldn't count on it.
Ok so the Aussies have decided to clone embryo's for stem cell research...but are tightening up laws against full cloning? Why? Why not just go all the way and clone vegetive bodies for organ harvesting? That right there would save more lives than stem cells have or probably ever will (yeah I've seen the research and even I'm skeptical despite early research stage cries) in the future.
The Aussies have already shown they dont care for US "morals" so why stop now? Isn't that hypocritical?
Scientific "ethics" are more convoluted than most and arbitrary than most politics.
Yes you do if you want to play the latest games in the best resolution. So dont play on the highest resolution. Despite an uber system you're risking lag when the shit hits the fan anyway which you're already going to get when using the console version. Guess which way you fix that problem on either platform.
The facts speak for themselves 50% of well educated I.T. people couldn't play a freaking game on their systems given 4 hours to dork with it. I'm calling BS on this one but either way I have a very poor view on "I.T people" in general. I can give you stories about ITT grads who specialize in databases that didn't even know what a fucking "object" was or "educated" ITT's that can't troubleshoot for crap. Heck the GeekSquad guys call themselves IT's and we all know just how good they really are. The fact that they couldn't figure out their problem after 4hrs is pretty sad.
Heck it took over an hour to install the freaking patches. Patches are game software issues, usually fixing minor bugs they new about but shipped anyway to meet a deadline. Thats common practice now. You'll have to download patches despite running Windows, Linux, or OSX. Not too mention that this is already starting to happen with console games. Expect it to become more commonplace down the line. Drivers? Are you kidding me? The only driver you really need to run a LAN party is a vid driver and those you should have downloaded at home on your own ages ago. They dont change that often.
No more blue screens of death, no more adware, no more spyware, no more weird crap running on my system. Dear god man what are you doing to your machine?! Do you have a firewall or even an anti-virus running? Are you clicking every single.exe file you find? Blue screens are hardware compatibility issues these days unless you're playing with some weird software.
Kid, all I can say is that the majority of the problems you had are due to YOU. I shudder to think what you're going to do to a poor Mac. Think of the kittens!
The problem is that the CD adaptors or FM adaptors pretty much suck. Most people dont like having to deal with those things and they often lower the quality of the sound.
Heck forget Apple, it would make sense for manufaturers to make a standard plug in port on the radio face that can be used by any Ipod or MP3 player. At worst you might have to use a tiny plug adaptor which you can leave in your keychain.
Actually, most people don't understand the issue with tumbling, coefficients, and various properties thanks to crappy media reporting as usual.
Military ammo is given a full metal jacket. This is misleading to many people. The jacket is EXTREMELY thin and better referred to as a copper gilt. Its purpose is to cut down on bullet deformation in the barrel and accomodate better friction. ALL military bullets are intended to tumble when entering human flesh. When tumbling occurrs the bullet when it reaches its first perpedicular axis to its path (when its facing upwards instead of pointing straight) it will fragment dynamically. This turns a little bullet like a 65grain 5.56mm when entering flesh into a pocket of shredded meat and lead the size of your fist. This all depends on the speed of the bullet when it hits flesh and things like short barrels, body armor, and physics at long range all affect how well a bullet performs.
The current M-855 which the military uses has a tiny nub pointed steel at the tip of their bullets. This gives it just enough power to penetrate flak jackets (it was designed to defeat Russian body armor of the time right after Vietnam) and still have its devestating effects. It is considered "light" armor piercing. The downside is that it penetrates further in unarmored flesh than the rounds without the steel tip. This caused problems in places like Somalia where the people were thin and undernourished. Wounds to the extremities (arms and legs) would pass through without fragmentation and in some rare cases (talk about thin) the fragmentation would occur well past vital organs.
The 7.62Nato (also know as the.308) is a big bullet that travels somewhat fast but relies on it heavy weight for alot of its properties. It also hasn't changed much since the type was first invented other than some specialty rounds (most of which aren't an improvement when striking flesh). It does the job great and short and medium ranges but needs a long barrel (ie M-14 and G3) and is HEAVY to lug around.
Rounds like the new 6.8mm are pretty much crap. Great for short ranges and somewhat medium ranges (the M-855 is too duh) but not much else as they have the ballistic coefficient of a brick. They are also expensive, have more hype about then than what is good for, and still weigh more. To date I have yet to see any test results using what the military would use (FMJ with cheap brass, primers, and ball powder). Most tests are once again specialty junk which are going to be used by some police agencies and a few private citizens (ie TAP, nosler, etc) not the military.
To the person that said, better armor=better bullets....that is pure junk. There is no body armor in the world that is proof against all specialty round out there. The rounds needed already exist. The thing that really effects this arguement is COST. Can a country afford to outfit their army with expensive bullets that they will be firing off on a regular basis? This is the same argument as to which countries can afford to issue effecitve body armor to their entire armies.
Cost affects what we can issue to our soliders, how well we can train them, how far we can deploy them, for how long they can be deployed, and how long before the homeland political scene will begin to destabilize. If cost wasn't an issue we'd be in power armor, using the new chemical lasers, and would probably have invaded more countries by now.
Actually this brings adaptation into the mix which could over time lead to evolution (give or take a few hundred years). As food changes then so do our diets and our sources. Eskimo's eat whale blubber fresh off of the corpse and treat it like candy. Asians suck down rice like its going out of style. Irish ate potatoes like there was no tommorow. Who's to say what the next food staple would be for us if all of the worlds cows died tommorow?
Lets not forget that change is what brings on evolution. Look at neaderthal bodies compared to current models (in shape that is). Barrel chests (for heat concentration and conservation) aren't common. Bone structures, muscle groups, etc are all different based on what was needed. That adaptation (ok lets do some Darwin) comes over years and years. Unless this so called change happens extremely fast we wont even really notice the changes in ourselves.
Ok maybe some pointy Vulcan ears or a 3rd testicle might be obvious.
Is this going to be able to work as a universal adapter or will it be for Ipods only? Steve Jobs already tells us enough what we can and can't use. Damn the man and his DMR's
Two big questions here. First, is this going to be a kiddie show thats strokes the Rebel Alliance or is this going to be a harder "yeah good guys will die" kind of movie? Second, are the "elite" stormtroopers going to be as sucky as possible to allow the "good guys" to get away with pure crap as usual?
Seriously though, as much as I looove Star Wars GL really pushed the edges or reality but oversimplifying the enemy into bumbling goofs who just happened to have defeated an intergalatic federation (no ST pun there..well maybe) and controlled the galaxy for the past 18yrs with an iron fist. COMBAT trained pilots with thousands of hours of flight time making easy targets of themselves (try and get me to believe Luke's combat flight training wasn't him playing their modern day BF2), armor that is only for show (ewoks..damn ewoks), and military trained riflmen how can't hit a human target at 10ft. Blaaaaah!
A struggling alliance against an empire that actually has teeth and can use them makes for better entertainment than the typical "you charge that stormtrooper platoon and wipe them out with this chopstick while I stand out in the open and use my powers of Lucas cheats and a paperclip to make them miss me".
Sorry dude Lucas forgot that the 12yr target audience (and his current biggest fans) all grew up and are in their 20's-40's. Its bad enough that the EU stuff is butchered by crappy writing. Try doing this to a more adult audience....pleeeeease.
Actually its lose weight belt, feel stupid, curl up in feotal position as the bends kicks in.
This is why diving with a buddy is pretty much mandatory. The octopus or spare air canister are more for decompression stops than anything else. (besides unless your tank is super ancient, you have a reserve built in that requires a flip of lever and $40 for a 0 air tank inspection).
It would be more cost effective to make the armor in sections and piecemeal than as a whole unit. The bullet is still going to cause damage and the part will still have to be removed and inspected to check for reuseability. Replacing a thigh section would be easier than replacing an entire pair of trousers. Additionally those pieces could be modified with the MOLLE system to act as a load bearing device much like the current SAPI laden vests are today. If nothing else these when complied would make a nifty light weight anti-trauma plate for the regular IIIa stuff.
If this stuff is as good as it says it is then we could actually start dropping ceramic plates and go with lighter and thinner titanium plates instead for level IV protection. That would make any MOUT or SWAT team very very happy.
Hehe, we are getting closer and closer to full body armor all over again. Oh oh...if we get the right helmets we can start painting it all white!
1) A good chunk of those trillions of dollars are for the reconstruction of said country. And no one else is pitching in on the same level.
2)The "hundreds of thousands" of deaths is a gross overstatement as usual and most of those are from a war we should have finished years ago.
3) The reporters used poor judgement in an effort to report on a subject that they knew the government would take a serious interest on in order to gain more popularity and sales. And that poor judgement for sensational headlines seems to be infecting paid journalists as a whole (look at the bin Laden and radio phone deal). Why do you think people are so untrusting of journalists today compared to years ago. Those nice little "incidents" where their sources proved false and the politically charged reporting have seriouly tarnished their image.
4) The city wasn't abandoned. There was warning just like every other hurricane thats passed through. Katrina was no biggie and everyone and I mean EVERYONE treated it like a regular hurricane (I lived most of my life on Padre Island so I have first hand experience). The difference is that the port was messed up (and fixed as usual) and that the levies broke (although the New Orleans government embezzelled roughly 1 billion dollars meant for levy maintenance). If the levies hadn't broke there wouldn't have been such a big deal. You should have seen Houston when the next "big" hurricane was inbound that month and the collective forehead smacking when after the mass evacuation after it acted as every other hurricane has.
The US as you portrayed it is the axis of evil. And yet you've yet to give a valid reason as why. And yet code Pink is still doing their shannanigans on the white house lawn, Michael Moore is still making crap movies, reporters are still reporting "factual" news from questionable sources and unconfirmed evidence (look at CNN and Fox then look at live video from real small time and freelance reporters actually in the thick of things speaking with the people involved).
The US still has an abundance of freedoms but unfortunately we as americans take them for granted waaay to often. You can look at any other continent and realize the grass isn't greener.
As for a shield law I have to say no way to the idea. As one poster stated earlier, we already have a problem with paid journalists holding a "supercitizen" status amongst others. This would be compounded by said law. Additionally its ripe for abuse (and they will abuse it) providing journalists with a safety net not just from the gov. but from anyone who has any legitemit claim for libel or damages from false reporting. God forbid should bloggers start using "concealed sources".
I can see some of the casual gamers moving over to a Mac but it wont touch the heavy gamer crowd. They'll try it, realize the Mac is not upgradeable then drop it. Then they'll also wonder what all of the hopla is about the Mac. Face it, its only going to be a niche crowd thing for gamers and will always stay a niche item until it becomes upgradeable, modable, and have aftermarket parts at competitive prices. As games require better and better parts to make use of graphics, sound, etc the Mac is going to get worse and worse performance and the only way to fix that is...buy a new Mac. And the prices of Mac's are on par or worse than that of a decked out PC system. Gamers, modders, and hardcore users are like car fanatics. They like to squeeze every bit of performance out of a system, they like to mod their stuff like crazy. The Mac will appeal to the general gamer...of course those are the same people that use AOL.
The only leg they have to stand on is that gamers may move to OSX on a PC if the games can run without glitches, without lag, and without having to jump through hoops to get it to run. For the development side this stuff might be a darn good thing (except for the wine issue) for the PC hater crowd who want to develop on their Macs. For everyone else? Dont bet the farm.
Well, this is probably going to turn into flames so my apologies ahead of time. As a gamer though I had to speak my mind though.
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WoW rewards more people for little effort or intelligence. Quests= little imagination. A level 1 is worthless to a level 60 raiding group.
EvE is not warm and cuddly. You dont get a warm fuzzy feeling for doing a quest although maybe that will change with the new incoming faction combat. Piloting takes intelligence as stupid moves gets you dead. You lose your stuff when you die so there is a high learning curve which alot of people can't handle. Top that off with detailed game mechanics which make you actually pilot a ship, not button mash. There is little soloing in the game unless you've had some training. A 1 week noobie with 500k skillpoints, a noobie ship, and a 20k scrambler is as valuable to a fleet as a 2yr 20mill skillpoint player.
The game is all about cooperation, awareness, and determination. Unless you're willing to take some knocks while you're learning the ropes you'll hate the game. The players control, police, and supplement space not npc's. They also dont care much for those that can't handle it.
For those that can handle it, the game is incredibly fun. Whether you're an industrialist (war profiterring ftw), an alliance member (defending their homelands from invaders), or a pirate (Jack Sparrow is a poser..yarrr). But you have to find your niche and thats the part where most never put forth much effort before quitting.
The Ipod dominates because there really isn't that much that can really challenge it. Its that good of a player. If the Zune was really as good as its hype you'd probably see Ipod sales drop. Unfortunately the hype was just...well hype and the Zune sucked. Nothing else on the horizon either.
The Iphone on the other hand is jumping into a saturated market with plenty of REALLY good competition. Its not going to dominate and to be honest as I go over the features I can't really see anything really special about it other than the apple logo or the virtual keypad. The latter might turn out to be a more of a hinderance for some people and the single carrier is really going to put off alot of others. And to top it off you can't even change out the battery (sound familiar fellow Ipod users?). I guess if I buy it I'll have to get a new phone when my service is up in 2yrs...sorta like my Ipod. Sheesh!
Jobs put alot of hype on this thing because it would create a media frenzy. And it worked. Stocks are up and people are buzzing. The buzzing is already starting to fade and will be flat by the time it actually starts to sell. After that point is when it will really be held up for measurement and the buzzing starts again or the bitching begins.
Just over 50 Merkava were hit with anti-tank weapons. Out of that 14 were destroyed and those required multiple hits. Most crew casualties and injuries were top down hits on light upper spots and a large number were in the driver section (sucks for them)or results of the shockwave of the hit. The RPG-29 turned out to have more bark than bite against the MBT's but proved very effective against APC's and other vehicles. The Russian made Kornets and Metis (Russian versions of the Milan both man portable) account for the most damage done and yet they still needed multiple hits. The anti-tank mines were successful against older version mk II's which didn't have the underbelly armor like the mk 4's unless it was jury rigged. Other than that all other tanks damaged were brought back online after short repairs. Throw in the new Trophy anti-anti-tank missile system thats being developed and suddenly things dont look so bad for the future. Only poor nations are still using reactive armor on their current MBT's (older versions and APCs use it much more often). Armor when used properly is very effective for any terrain. Its a matter of using them correctly as are anti-tank rockets (Iranian training paid off it looks like). The Vietnamese used armor against two American firebases and wiped them out. The third firebase was ready and responded with their own armor and arty and routed the NVA. The current Iraq conflict is an excellent example of how armor can be used effectively in conjunction with dismounted troops in an urban terrain. There are plenty of examples of why armor isn't going away anytime soon and plenty of reasons for it to stay. If the Trophy or Iron Fist systems turn out to be half as good as they say then someone will have to reinvent the anti-tank systems. Lets not forget that little 6 day war when the arabs brought their own tanks either. Thats still always a real threat. As to the autonomous tanks I dont think we'll be seeing anything like that for a very very long time. Any unmanned vehicle is subject to being jammed or recieving interferance. Heck there's even a chance the encryption on the transmission can be cracked and the vehicle turned on its users. Alot of IED's in Iraq are jammed on a regular basis and easily I might add. So unless someone has Skynet in their back pocket or a few thousand miles of coax cable laying around I wouldn't count on it.
Its a legitimate question. So answer it.
Ok so the Aussies have decided to clone embryo's for stem cell research...but are tightening up laws against full cloning? Why? Why not just go all the way and clone vegetive bodies for organ harvesting? That right there would save more lives than stem cells have or probably ever will (yeah I've seen the research and even I'm skeptical despite early research stage cries) in the future. The Aussies have already shown they dont care for US "morals" so why stop now? Isn't that hypocritical? Scientific "ethics" are more convoluted than most and arbitrary than most politics.
Yes you do if you want to play the latest games in the best resolution. So dont play on the highest resolution. Despite an uber system you're risking lag when the shit hits the fan anyway which you're already going to get when using the console version. Guess which way you fix that problem on either platform.
.exe file you find? Blue screens are hardware compatibility issues these days unless you're playing with some weird software.
The facts speak for themselves 50% of well educated I.T. people couldn't play a freaking game on their systems given 4 hours to dork with it. I'm calling BS on this one but either way I have a very poor view on "I.T people" in general. I can give you stories about ITT grads who specialize in databases that didn't even know what a fucking "object" was or "educated" ITT's that can't troubleshoot for crap. Heck the GeekSquad guys call themselves IT's and we all know just how good they really are. The fact that they couldn't figure out their problem after 4hrs is pretty sad.
Heck it took over an hour to install the freaking patches. Patches are game software issues, usually fixing minor bugs they new about but shipped anyway to meet a deadline. Thats common practice now. You'll have to download patches despite running Windows, Linux, or OSX. Not too mention that this is already starting to happen with console games. Expect it to become more commonplace down the line. Drivers? Are you kidding me? The only driver you really need to run a LAN party is a vid driver and those you should have downloaded at home on your own ages ago. They dont change that often.
No more blue screens of death, no more adware, no more spyware, no more weird crap running on my system. Dear god man what are you doing to your machine?! Do you have a firewall or even an anti-virus running? Are you clicking every single
Kid, all I can say is that the majority of the problems you had are due to YOU. I shudder to think what you're going to do to a poor Mac. Think of the kittens!
Would the alliance politics found in EvE online be considered "high brow"? What about interdictions and industrial ventures?
The problem is that the CD adaptors or FM adaptors pretty much suck. Most people dont like having to deal with those things and they often lower the quality of the sound.
Heck forget Apple, it would make sense for manufaturers to make a standard plug in port on the radio face that can be used by any Ipod or MP3 player. At worst you might have to use a tiny plug adaptor which you can leave in your keychain.
Actually, most people don't understand the issue with tumbling, coefficients, and various properties thanks to crappy media reporting as usual. Military ammo is given a full metal jacket. This is misleading to many people. The jacket is EXTREMELY thin and better referred to as a copper gilt. Its purpose is to cut down on bullet deformation in the barrel and accomodate better friction. ALL military bullets are intended to tumble when entering human flesh. When tumbling occurrs the bullet when it reaches its first perpedicular axis to its path (when its facing upwards instead of pointing straight) it will fragment dynamically. This turns a little bullet like a 65grain 5.56mm when entering flesh into a pocket of shredded meat and lead the size of your fist. This all depends on the speed of the bullet when it hits flesh and things like short barrels, body armor, and physics at long range all affect how well a bullet performs. The current M-855 which the military uses has a tiny nub pointed steel at the tip of their bullets. This gives it just enough power to penetrate flak jackets (it was designed to defeat Russian body armor of the time right after Vietnam) and still have its devestating effects. It is considered "light" armor piercing. The downside is that it penetrates further in unarmored flesh than the rounds without the steel tip. This caused problems in places like Somalia where the people were thin and undernourished. Wounds to the extremities (arms and legs) would pass through without fragmentation and in some rare cases (talk about thin) the fragmentation would occur well past vital organs. The 7.62Nato (also know as the .308) is a big bullet that travels somewhat fast but relies on it heavy weight for alot of its properties. It also hasn't changed much since the type was first invented other than some specialty rounds (most of which aren't an improvement when striking flesh). It does the job great and short and medium ranges but needs a long barrel (ie M-14 and G3) and is HEAVY to lug around.
Rounds like the new 6.8mm are pretty much crap. Great for short ranges and somewhat medium ranges (the M-855 is too duh) but not much else as they have the ballistic coefficient of a brick. They are also expensive, have more hype about then than what is good for, and still weigh more. To date I have yet to see any test results using what the military would use (FMJ with cheap brass, primers, and ball powder). Most tests are once again specialty junk which are going to be used by some police agencies and a few private citizens (ie TAP, nosler, etc) not the military.
To the person that said, better armor=better bullets....that is pure junk. There is no body armor in the world that is proof against all specialty round out there. The rounds needed already exist. The thing that really effects this arguement is COST. Can a country afford to outfit their army with expensive bullets that they will be firing off on a regular basis? This is the same argument as to which countries can afford to issue effecitve body armor to their entire armies.
Cost affects what we can issue to our soliders, how well we can train them, how far we can deploy them, for how long they can be deployed, and how long before the homeland political scene will begin to destabilize. If cost wasn't an issue we'd be in power armor, using the new chemical lasers, and would probably have invaded more countries by now.
Actually this brings adaptation into the mix which could over time lead to evolution (give or take a few hundred years). As food changes then so do our diets and our sources. Eskimo's eat whale blubber fresh off of the corpse and treat it like candy. Asians suck down rice like its going out of style. Irish ate potatoes like there was no tommorow. Who's to say what the next food staple would be for us if all of the worlds cows died tommorow? Lets not forget that change is what brings on evolution. Look at neaderthal bodies compared to current models (in shape that is). Barrel chests (for heat concentration and conservation) aren't common. Bone structures, muscle groups, etc are all different based on what was needed. That adaptation (ok lets do some Darwin) comes over years and years. Unless this so called change happens extremely fast we wont even really notice the changes in ourselves. Ok maybe some pointy Vulcan ears or a 3rd testicle might be obvious.
Is this going to be able to work as a universal adapter or will it be for Ipods only? Steve Jobs already tells us enough what we can and can't use. Damn the man and his DMR's
Two big questions here. First, is this going to be a kiddie show thats strokes the Rebel Alliance or is this going to be a harder "yeah good guys will die" kind of movie? Second, are the "elite" stormtroopers going to be as sucky as possible to allow the "good guys" to get away with pure crap as usual?
Seriously though, as much as I looove Star Wars GL really pushed the edges or reality but oversimplifying the enemy into bumbling goofs who just happened to have defeated an intergalatic federation (no ST pun there..well maybe) and controlled the galaxy for the past 18yrs with an iron fist. COMBAT trained pilots with thousands of hours of flight time making easy targets of themselves (try and get me to believe Luke's combat flight training wasn't him playing their modern day BF2), armor that is only for show (ewoks..damn ewoks), and military trained riflmen how can't hit a human target at 10ft. Blaaaaah!
A struggling alliance against an empire that actually has teeth and can use them makes for better entertainment than the typical "you charge that stormtrooper platoon and wipe them out with this chopstick while I stand out in the open and use my powers of Lucas cheats and a paperclip to make them miss me".
Sorry dude Lucas forgot that the 12yr target audience (and his current biggest fans) all grew up and are in their 20's-40's. Its bad enough that the EU stuff is butchered by crappy writing. Try doing this to a more adult audience....pleeeeease.
Actually its lose weight belt, feel stupid, curl up in feotal position as the bends kicks in. This is why diving with a buddy is pretty much mandatory. The octopus or spare air canister are more for decompression stops than anything else. (besides unless your tank is super ancient, you have a reserve built in that requires a flip of lever and $40 for a 0 air tank inspection).
It would be more cost effective to make the armor in sections and piecemeal than as a whole unit. The bullet is still going to cause damage and the part will still have to be removed and inspected to check for reuseability. Replacing a thigh section would be easier than replacing an entire pair of trousers. Additionally those pieces could be modified with the MOLLE system to act as a load bearing device much like the current SAPI laden vests are today.
If nothing else these when complied would make a nifty light weight anti-trauma plate for the regular IIIa stuff.
If this stuff is as good as it says it is then we could actually start dropping ceramic plates and go with lighter and thinner titanium plates instead for level IV protection. That would make any MOUT or SWAT team very very happy.
Hehe, we are getting closer and closer to full body armor all over again. Oh oh...if we get the right helmets we can start painting it all white!
1) A good chunk of those trillions of dollars are for the reconstruction of said country. And no one else is pitching in on the same level.
2)The "hundreds of thousands" of deaths is a gross overstatement as usual and most of those are from a war we should have finished years ago.
3) The reporters used poor judgement in an effort to report on a subject that they knew the government would take a serious interest on in order to gain more popularity and sales. And that poor judgement for sensational headlines seems to be infecting paid journalists as a whole (look at the bin Laden and radio phone deal). Why do you think people are so untrusting of journalists today compared to years ago. Those nice little "incidents" where their sources proved false and the politically charged reporting have seriouly tarnished their image.
4) The city wasn't abandoned. There was warning just like every other hurricane thats passed through. Katrina was no biggie and everyone and I mean EVERYONE treated it like a regular hurricane (I lived most of my life on Padre Island so I have first hand experience). The difference is that the port was messed up (and fixed as usual) and that the levies broke (although the New Orleans government embezzelled roughly 1 billion dollars meant for levy maintenance). If the levies hadn't broke there wouldn't have been such a big deal. You should have seen Houston when the next "big" hurricane was inbound that month and the collective forehead smacking when after the mass evacuation after it acted as every other hurricane has.
The US as you portrayed it is the axis of evil. And yet you've yet to give a valid reason as why. And yet code Pink is still doing their shannanigans on the white house lawn, Michael Moore is still making crap movies, reporters are still reporting "factual" news from questionable sources and unconfirmed evidence (look at CNN and Fox then look at live video from real small time and freelance reporters actually in the thick of things speaking with the people involved).
The US still has an abundance of freedoms but unfortunately we as americans take them for granted waaay to often. You can look at any other continent and realize the grass isn't greener.
As for a shield law I have to say no way to the idea. As one poster stated earlier, we already have a problem with paid journalists holding a "supercitizen" status amongst others. This would be compounded by said law. Additionally its ripe for abuse (and they will abuse it) providing journalists with a safety net not just from the gov. but from anyone who has any legitemit claim for libel or damages from false reporting. God forbid should bloggers start using "concealed sources".
I can see some of the casual gamers moving over to a Mac but it wont touch the heavy gamer crowd. They'll try it, realize the Mac is not upgradeable then drop it. Then they'll also wonder what all of the hopla is about the Mac. Face it, its only going to be a niche crowd thing for gamers and will always stay a niche item until it becomes upgradeable, modable, and have aftermarket parts at competitive prices. As games require better and better parts to make use of graphics, sound, etc the Mac is going to get worse and worse performance and the only way to fix that is...buy a new Mac. And the prices of Mac's are on par or worse than that of a decked out PC system. Gamers, modders, and hardcore users are like car fanatics. They like to squeeze every bit of performance out of a system, they like to mod their stuff like crazy. The Mac will appeal to the general gamer...of course those are the same people that use AOL.
The only leg they have to stand on is that gamers may move to OSX on a PC if the games can run without glitches, without lag, and without having to jump through hoops to get it to run. For the development side this stuff might be a darn good thing (except for the wine issue) for the PC hater crowd who want to develop on their Macs. For everyone else? Dont bet the farm.
Well, this is probably going to turn into flames so my apologies ahead of time. As a gamer though I had to speak my mind though.