TheMightyEthan

Making a habit of optionally paying more would give them more power, because if the government began relying on that income (because the payors were making a habit of it) then they could hold that income hostage by saying we won't pay it if you do x or don't do y.

Well and there's a difference between trying to make it completely secret and just not advertising it.

I will say, one time I was at a party and had a beer that I absolutely freaking loved. It tasted like drinking a loaf of bread, in the best way possible. To this day I have not ever been able to figure out what my mystery wonder-beer was (I drank it from a cup), and that makes me sad.

I think this one's public knowledge because it's a trial run, I'm sure the actual emplacements will be less advertised.

Shooters Hill seems like an appropriate place to station them.

I've started jonesing for an upgrade, even though I really don't need it. I predict that I will be able to hold out until I come across a game that I want to play but can't at anything higher than medium graphics, at which point I'll break down and build a whole new PC.

That espionage looks super cool. I want it now.

Here's part 2

Depends on the media. There's some damn fast flash media (like that used in SSDs), but a class 10 flash cart is only rated at 10 MB/s and USB 2.0 is rated at up to 60 MB/s, so for that stuff the USB connection isn't the bottleneck. *Edit* - Flash wins hands down in read latency though.

I also thought there was something strange about

Yeah, HDDs are WAY faster than optical discs, and faster than most flash media also.

Yes, it does, but it's not very common that people use it. "Horny" is more common.

Can someone explain to me what's going on with Goonswarm? I know they're attacking the main hub to shut down trade, and that they've stockpiled minerals (presumably so they can sell them at a higher price after shutting down trade?), but there's more to it than that that I don't think I get.

What makes it different from what MS is doing is that it's day-and-date with the retail launch. And the biggest thing to me is it's a marked shift from Nintendo's previous approach to online of "do the minimum we can to be able to claim we have an online service."

In 1000 years you'll stop taking donations?

I have tried on a couple of occasions, but always quit when I realize I don't have a fucking clue what's going on. Are there any packs that make the game more newb friendly? Like, that make it so I can understand what things mean and such?

It's Valve, what did you expect?

Yeah, the real reason I posted that was the news about the Wii U games.

Yeah, I used "utility" more broadly than is common, some of what I said was really more applicable to cable companies, local telephone, etc, rather than traditional utilities.

We do have lots of government-enforced local monopolies, but in general they tend to be for utilities in smaller towns where there wouldn't be enough business if they had to compete. So like a city government will say to a cable company "if you will come to our town and provide cable service, we won't let any other cable companies compete with you" because the alternative is not having any cable at all. Usually those kinds of deals have requirements like the company granted the monopoly has to provide service to everyone within the city limits, can't charge a certain amount above cost, etc to ensure they don't abuse the monopoly.

I hate it when companies do something I want, like release a game in NA, or on PC or whatever, but then hobble it with stupid shit like that.

Apparently Nintendo, on the other hand, is working on getting their shit together: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/26/wii-u-retail-games-will-be-sold-digitally-at-launch/ It's kind of amusing that MS, the first to really have a viable online console experience, is now falling behind Nintendo, who has pretty much had the most half-assed online services possible.

I don't know about other countries, but in the US monopolies themselves aren't illegal, just anti-competitive practices (price fixing, selling at a loss to drive smaller competitors out of business, etc).

Always turn off motion blur.