Yantelope V2

Well, I guess what I'm saying is that generally in games you have the chapter select menu and it's totally locked unless you've beaten the game. Why does it have to be locked initially? You don't lock the chapters on a DVD until you've watched them sequentially.

Well, I guess I'm not being clear. When I say renewable energy is expensive I mean the total costs it takes to produce one KW/hr or electricity for each type of power: Wind, solar, nuclear, coal, natural gas. Here's the chart on wikipedia anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Levelized_energy_cost_chart_1,_2011_DOE_report.gif The best to worst comparison in conventional natural gas to solar which is about 20% of the cost of generation. Also these numbers I believe are based on grid level transmission so the costs of smaller installations are not as effective I believe. Anyway, that's where you can see that the costs of renewable energy aren't even comparable to those of standard generation. Wind is actually somewhat reasonable but the downside is that it's pretty limited by geography and the land investment is rather large. Anyway, I've heard estimates that we've got at least 100 years of oil to run off of and it seems to me that's a fair amount of time to find better solutions to our energy problems without freaking out about it right now. The only reason to freak out is if you believe global warming poses a severe threat and that's the scam I believe to force federal money to companies that would otherwise be completely unprofitable. There's so many more useful things that money could be doing.

What would be the downside to skipping to any point in the game? You can do that with a book or a movie.

With lasers?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/02/24/why-the-exploitation-of-gamers-is-our-own-damn-fault-2/ Now Forbes has weighed in and he makes the point that DLC is around because we buy it. I'm going back to my previous statement that only 20% of people buy it and it's still everywhere. He says they'll keep pushing until they find the cutoff point. My cutoff point already has been reached as I have not purchased Mass Effect 2 and won't probably purchase Skyrim until the GOTY edition.

Sony's clamping down hard on piracy and it screws legit customers.

I went ahead and preordered this: The limited nature of the release makes me worry that it will be hard to find.

Yeah, I really want to go the crazy man route and start buying bulk lots of game carts on ebay. If I had room to store the games and more disposable income I'd probably have already started.

I set up a platoon called "combat carl" we play at nights some evenings just in case you guys might want in. We don't do angry cursing though.

Green energy is a scam because it's an unsustainable business propped up only by government subsidies. Capital investors, many of whom are politicians buy green energy companies, fund them with government money, pay themselves large bonuses and then let the company go bankrupt after they have made their money. The only people left holding the bag are the taxpayers. That's why it's a scam. Now you may be right, the price of oil may start going up and up as the wells run dry and things could get ugly if we're forced to pay $30 per gallon of gas. Nobody wants that. Except that's exactly what the government is trying to do now. They're litterally funding energy sources that cost 10x what conventional energy sources cost. Why bring on the coming economoic downturn early? It makes no sense to anyone who's not busy scamming the system for government funds. Now to be clear, I'm all for research for alternative energy and you may be right that we might run out of oil eventually buy why bother putting in garbage technology now? Let's keep looking for better solutions rather than blowing billions of dollars that could be feeding and clothing people now.

No, the choice is do you want to go on wasting billions or trillions now on a phenomenon that might not even be man made? Oh, and as far as Spain goes, the subsidies were supposed to create jobs and get people working and boost the economy. They didn't. The green energy scam is that it creates jobs when really it's just a drain on the economy producing more expensive energy in less efficient ways.

I usually only pay $20-30 for the complete version. It was great for Fallout 3 as well as Borderlands.

Green energy has a very real negative cost impact on the economy. If you had read the article I posted the gist of it was this "Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence." The point is that green energy is extremely expensive. If everyone did have to pay $8 per gallon of gas we'd all have less money for food, electronics, videogames, health insurance or anything else. The spending on products like solar panels which cost exponentially more than other forms of energy is a major drain on the economy as was evidenced by spain's solar collapse. The quotation should read "what if it's a big hoax and we're wasting billions of dollars that could be building a better world?"

By my calculations the all the add on DLC on ME2 is about $50. Seems a bit steep when the whole game costs $20.

Yes, me too. $T are at a premium for me these days.

Also, I've noticed a tendency for games to call the piss-easy mode "normal" and I'm fine with that on two levels. Calling your hard mode "nightmare" sounds cooler anyway and calling the easy mode normal doesn't make you feel like a wuss.

I think just providing players with a very low level of difficulty is probably the best option. You should be able to set the game to such a level that it's very very hard to fail. Failure is a large part of what separates gaming from other mediums and it's also a large part of what prevents newcomers from embracing it as a medium. I've been increasingly playing games at lower difficulties because it reduces failure, allows me to complete games quicker and I can still experience the mechanics of the game just fine. I played through BF3 on easy because the reviews I read said you can die randomly and it's annoying. I find myself more sensitive to frustration in games these days so I embrace the lower difficulty.

Clearly there is plenty of waste in military spending. I also don't defend the republican congress or GW and their wasteful spending. They spent way too much also. I'm not dumb enough to say that entitlements are the only wasteful spending but they're the spending that we aren't going to keep up with. What strikes me is the $800 billion in medicare and medicaid.

I will agree with you guys that it's almost impossible to determine how the founding fathers would have implemented their ideals (or principles if you will) today. That's what I'm saying though. Argue over implementation but don't throw away your principles when they've been what have gotten you where you are.

Well, I'm sure there are some small nation states that might be able to brag about how much they love their country but take a trip to China, Russia, Mexico, India or any of the other large major world powers and see how they compare on the metrics you just presented (healthcare, green energy, financial health, personal freedom). There's a balance to be made for sure. This may even go over to the world politics thing but the EU has probably pissed away their future in the last 10 years with their spending. I guess we'll see. America does need to get out of debt. It's liberal entitlements that are burying us. I don't really think you can call our health care abysmal. Most people who want the best care (and can afford it) still come here for their care. Also this. http://upload.wikime...IA_factbook.svg Class division arguments are BS. Even our poor people have cable TV. Poverty in America is a joke. We have the richest poor people in the world (with the exception of the EU probably). Oh yeah, and as far as "green" energy (which is a money pit anyway). There's this: http://online.wsj.co...1838421366.html and this as a rebuttal to critics: http://online.wsj.co...4084429540.html I particularly love this "Trenberth et al. tell us that the managements of major national academies of science have said that "the science is clear, the world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible." Apparently every generation of humanity needs to relearn that Mother Nature tells us what the science is, not authoritarian academy bureaucrats or computer models. "

Slavery was an issue of the implementation of ideals. The ideal was "all men are created equal" but clearly people weren't considering slaves men as they were 3/5ths of a man or whatever. It was shocking to me that the ideal that all men are created equal was not interpreted as such in the beginning but you're still arguing over what that ideal means not actually trying to change the ideal.

Well, you are talking about holding America back but the majority of Americans still consider it the greatest nation on the earth and as such are not eager to abandon the principles which have led to greatness. Well sure, you have to discuss what the best ways are to protect privacy and information in the new age of technology but you're trying to preserve the ideal that individuals have some right to privacy.

There's no difference in the freedom of religion back then as there is today. There is no difference from providing the right to the pursuit of happiness today. There is no difference in the freedom from religious persecution today. There is no difference in your rights to freedom of political speech today. The ideals never change.

Why can't we know what their ideals were? We have lots of their writings and opinions and we have tons of historical context in which to place it so we have good ideas of what they were for and against at the time and what their basic ideals were. I don't think that those ideals of freedom and opportunity change with time. The best way to implement them might change but isn't arguing over that what we call politics?