TheMightyEthan

Like I said on twitter, I think that's kind of making mountains out of mole hills. The regulations it's talking about are technical standards for products, not laws that govern the average citizen's actions.

The lead dev worked on Half-Life 2.

Yeah, I think average consumer's (read: not the kind of people who come to forums like this or read gaming blogs) reaction to EA turning off the servers to an older game that they still play would be going out to buy the sequel.

So I just watched a couple of interviews with the devs. They say calling it steam punk is not accurate, the terms they used were "retro-futuristic industrial" (which just sounds like steam punk to me) and "neo-victorian". Though looking at some of the concept art some of the stuff does look more like high-tech sci-fi than steam punk. Like these things:

How about we say "a minority of gamers".

I maintain that a bad implementation does not mean the core idea is inherently bad, it just means that bad implementation is bad.

My wife likes to play Firefight with me, so I tried to get her to try the Mass Effect multiplayer. She got to the level-up stage of character creation, said "this is too complicated" and quit.

People are always shocked that I don't like beer, and I say "It tastes bad." The respond "it's an acquired taste", to which I reply "Why would I drink something that tastes bad in order to make it eventually taste good, when I can just drink things that taste good to start with?"

I think Tali's emergency induction port was hilarious. Best line in the whole game.

Because alcohol is the best medicine.

If I had just seen those screens with no explanation I probably would have thought they were for Bioshock Infinite.

Lots of drinks have names. Long Island Iced Tea, Bloody Mary, Martini, etc etc...

How is that different from a screwdriver? Screwdriver = vodka + orange juice.

Because a normal person would say "my" and then the pun wouldn't work.

lol, yeah. Though I do agree with the theory behind judicial review: judiciary has to decide how the law applies to the facts, which necessarily means first determining what the law is, higher laws overriding lower laws, the constitution being the highest law of all. It's kind of implied in the whole concept of a judiciary. So just like how if a state law says a city can't do X, and a city does X anyway, and a judge can't enforce the city ordinance because they didn't have the power to make it, a judge also can't enforce a law that the constitution forbade them from making.

But if your primary opposition to most government programs is "it's illegal" then something that's unambiguously legal wouldn't bother you. Re: the healthcare law, I think it's probably way outside the bounds of what the Commerce Clause was ever intended to mean, but that it's within the Commerce Clause as it's been interpreted by the courts over the centuries. If I were the USSC deciding the issue with a completely blank legal history, then I would say no fucking way is that legal, but if I were the USSC deciding the issue with legal precedent as it exists now (or as I'm aware of it existing, I haven't exactly done huge amounts of research into this issue) then I'd say it's legal. So then from a legal standpoint the question comes down not so much to political alignment as to your theory of constitutional interpretation (though often that lines up with politics fairly well). If you're primarily concerned with the intent of the framers then you're probably going to say that this law is illegal, if you're primarily concerned with established precedent then you could go either way (I'd say it's legal, but it does involve some inferential leaps that not everyone might be willing to make), and then if you look on the constitution as a fully living document then you could also go either way depending on lots of things.

How had I not heard of this game before?! Apparently it's a Steam punk/Dickensian stealth action game... looks really cool. Some new screens just went up today: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/20/latest-dishonored-screens-depict-steam-punk-x-dickens-crossover/

I'm guessing battra was coming at it from the perspective that the constitution was designed to limit the power of the federal government, but if it explicitly gives the federal government a power then it's fine for the them to execute that power.

What's red and smells like blue paint? I actually find that one hilarious though...

360 version of Mass Effect 3 is on sale for $39.99 on the Microsoft Store. It says $59.99 on the game's page but if you add it to your cart then it will show the discounted price.

I consider DLC to be any non-standalone downloadable add-on (there's some overlap with "expansion pack"). It does bug the crap out of me though when people refer to standalone DD titles as DLC. Without any other context though DLC does imply to me something smaller scale than a real "expansion." Like a new side quest chain rather than a more major world expansion.

It took me a while to get the wooden head ones. The voice in my head doesn't have a British accent.

It's cool that they're actually simulating stuff at such a micro level. Weird that water is represented by agents though, since water doesn't really travel through pipes in discreet packets (I mean, I guess there are water molecules...) *Edit* - Before I wasn't too interested, but that video really kicked it up into "DO WANT" territory.