TheMightyEthan

Yeah, I got it for Christmas, wanted it for the same reason.

It's weird that it's not on the back of the box.

It seems like that same reasoning could be used to ban ads showing Kinect's "Better with Kinect" voice-command features because not every single Xbox game supports them.

And in that Chinese knife attack, how many people died? I know guns aren't the problem, they're not even most of the problem, but the easy availability of certain kinds of them is part of the problem, and it's a part that can be addressed. I don't think guns should be (or legally can be) banned, but you can institute more rigorous checks before people buy them, and get rid of loopholes like the gunshow stuff, and make it a national system rather than state-by-state, and put limits on the size of clips allowed, etc etc. Those measures, of course, would only address a part of the problem, and would need to be enacted in conjunction with other efforts such as actually funding public mental health services, rather than just paying lip service to it, and I'm sure other things (education? social programs? I'm admittedly no expert on this subject, so I don't know what all goes into affecting this stuff). The violence culture is definitely the root problem, but that's not something that can really be addressed with top-down solutions, at least not directly. If you can think of a way to do so I'm all ears. But just because we can't fix it completely doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for things that we can do.

By that logic I should be allowed to have an M1-A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank because people are going to do horrible things anyway and there's no point in limiting the tools they have access to with which to do those things. If it's just how people are then why doesn't this stuff happen (nearly as frequently) in the rest of the world? *Edit* - Also, I like how you equate thinking there's a problem we maybe should address with over-emotional reactionism. It is possible to react in a "we need to do something" way while still being calmly rational.

?

I've been playing XCOM. I never played the original, so I can't compare, but goddamn am I loving this one.

Well but that was my whole point, I agree with the "knives are just as dangerous" argument, but only within a very narrow set of circumstances. Also, I really want to get some crazy fast-firing gun and try to cut a steak with it now.

I was thinking more "husband kills wife", "dude kills neighbor" type situations.

As far as single murders go, I really do agree with the "you can just as easily kill someone with a knife" argument. If there's a specific person you want dead that's easy enough to accomplish, with or without guns. Where guns come into play is in the mass killings. Killing 30 people in a crowd with a knife is not as easy as doing it with an assault rifle. Sure you can just use a homemade bomb instead, but even that is a hell of a lot more difficult than a gun.

Totally agree that access to guns is not the main problem, it's more of a facilitator. Like suspending the driver's license of an alcoholic who drives drunk, it addresses one of the issues but not the root cause. We need better programs to treat people with mental illnesses, and to fight poverty, etc.

Either.

I know they're just mindless explosion-fests, but I enjoy them.

Uploaded them to imgur just for FDS:

You think Suri Cruise is just as much a target for assassination as the first family? Right... I agree Feinstein's point is hypocritical. But to say that it's hypocritical for the president to have highly trained, extensively background-checked Secret Service agents guarding him just because he doesn't think every random person out there should be able to legally and easily access high-powered, fully automatic rifles is asinine. That's not even a little bit the same thing.

Wait, I'm confused, are you saying you agree that it's hypocritical of Obama to want him and his family to have guards, or are you just saying that Feinstein is a hypocrite?

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-truth-about-guns-video-games/ Interesting perspective on the issue.

Nintendo is merging its handheld and console divisions, and tasking the new merged group with developing next-gen hardware. You heard it here first: the Wii U 2 will have the tablet act as a stand-alone handheld when not within range of the base station, allowing you to play all your games on the handheld or the TV seamlessly.

The tit sculpture.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

My only thought would be to be careful about licensing issues with distributing the images like that.

Yeah, I think I might be better off trying to get into strategy boardgames rather than full-fledged tabletop wargames. *Edit* - More than for myself, the problem is the attention and interest of the people I might get to play with me.

Well like I said, I absolutely love the mechanics, and I love being able to see exactly how they work. It's just the process of actually going through a turn that starts to drag. I played with my sister and her boyfriend and we were playing a "skirmish" (the small size battle) with the recommended number of units each (4-5 per team), and we played for 2 hours and got through 2 rounds (a "round" being a full turn for every unit on the table). I love the way the systems interact and watching it happen, but it was just so slow. Although we were playing with a dice rolling app rather than actually rolling physical dice, maybe that would have made it more fun.

I'm starting to think my best bet might be to take the rules to Mobile Frame Zero and write my own game in Java.

Yeah, I hadn't realized until I started really looking what a dearth of turn-based strategy games there are.