Pop

Lulz. Youtube's lack of profit is no proof of magnanimity on the part of Google. The internet economy isn't based off of profit. If it was, it wouldn't exist today. It exists based on the idea that at some point in the future it will make a profit, and a considerable profit at that. That's why Amazon is considered the greatest success on the internet today despite having been in the red every year since it started (though I seem to recall them making a very modest profit this year or last year). If it were a normal company it would've collapsed long ago. But the shareholders have colossal faith in its promise.

Civ 4. I swear, either the AI is really smart or really erratic. So I'm ze Germans, playing the Earth scenario (somewhat tightened map of the Earth). I started off in Europe, with the Greeks and Romans to the immediate South. I built my first defender and second settler and took Spain, then built a second settler and took the Balkans, filling out the gaps over time and moving North, occupying the majority of the European subcontinent and all of the UK. This effectively trapped the Romans such that they had their three cities and expansion would have required Open Borders, which I denied them. Greece had only a slim area of expansion in Eastern Europe, between my eastern frontier and the western frontiers of the Persian and Indian empires. Africa was cut off by the Egyptians. But the Greeks were doing better than the Romans were, having an unbroken corridor of territory starting in Anatolia, west through Greece and then east again along the coast of the Black Sea and up along a row of cities from the Northern Black Sea up through western Russia. At some point, my borders started pushing eastward, and Greece suddenly declared war. Now, I usually play Civ as a cultural / technological expansionist, trying to get the best tech and most developed cities quickest. As a result I usually come up short on units, aside from an average of 2 fortified units per city. So the declaration of war sort of blindsided me. I lost my easternmost settlement. But I bounced back rather quickly, as my strongest cities to the West started churning out units quickly. I did what is my tendency in these games as well as in RTSes, which is create a huge, lumbering strike force and go on the hunt. I seized the Black Sea settlements, creating a gap between Anatolia / Greece and their Northern frontiers, and liberated my city, and I forced a peace treaty with a few cities added. Trouble is, for some reason Rome declared war. So I crushed their two cities and became the sole power in Europe. Here's the rub - Greece was in a weakened state but still acting like **** to everybody else. Eventually 2 or 3 other powers declared war on Greece. It looked like Alexander was living on borrowed time. So I, being a fan of expansion, decided to act quickly and claim some Greek cities before anyone else did. So I declared war, mobilized my 25-30 strong force of cannons, riflemen and cavalry (always cavalry) and moved Eastward towards the interim Greek capital. That's where **** went down. As I moved the force close to my border, two things happened. One, Alexander got smart and swore fealty to the Persian empire, the third most powerful civ behind myself and the Chinese, and the Persians declared war on me in turn. No sweat, I thought, and proceeded to move ever closer to the Greek capital. Just then every single goddamn power in the game declared war on me, except the Egyptians, who were vassals of mine. Now, I'm in a really tough spot. No one's talking to me. I moved up from fighting the greeks, who were still using chariots and phalanx while I was using gunpowder units, to modern foes. And now I've got 4 powerful civilizations sending forces against my Eastern borders. I don't know how well I'll hold out. I just researched machine gunners, who are about as good of defensive units as you could ask for, and I'm churning them out to send out to the frontier, but I don't know if I'll be quick enough. So yeah, either the mere presence of my siege forces caused the entire world to consider me an immediate threat that had to be destroyed, or the AIs just randomly and arbitrarily decided that I had to die. tl;dr Does anybody know if the AIs react to troop movements in Civ 4?

Anybody got a line on who Josh Gilman was in CoD4? If we do, we might have some idea of what Thorton's gonna sound like. Mobygames and the like have him as "additional voice talent". This is gonna sound a bit odd, but I really hope AP doesn't have Mass Effect's problems when it comes to using the voice on a non-white, non-Canadian character. Also, come on Funcroc, step up your game. This should be your bag.

You'd have a point here if 70-80 percent of black voters didn't already strongly trend democratic in the first place. But they do trend that way, so you don't have a point here. I see you've picked up the term "liberal" as a pejorative. You don't seem like the Fox News type, where did you cultivate that charm? Regardless, even if there was some sort of "reverse racism" going on (what a silly term that is, as if favoring one's heritage were an abomination. I wonder why ~Di's ilk doesn't boycott St. Patty's day, or Black History Month), there's a reason black people are called "minority voters". It is because they are literally in a minority, in some states more than others. So picking up a larger percentage of them might not be particularly beneficial. Actual racism is a factor because a smaller percentage of white voters exhibiting it will handily cancel any advantage getting even 100% of the black vote will get you, especially in places like West Virginia or Ohio, or any of the Western states, or ****in' Iowa. These are the states Obama has trouble with, coincidentally or no. I've got lots of history to judge on. Brown v. Board (that's the start of the Civil Rights Movement, more or less) was just 54 years ago. There are voters who remember it. Strom Thurmond only recently passed, having been celebrated by southern political heavyweights since shamed. I'm not as quick as others to declare that, since that generation is dying, racism is dying too. Institutionally, racism is still latent, particularly in an education system that relies on property taxes. It was just a few years ago that Katrina hit, and the response to that was completely inexplicable and inexcusable. The war on drugs has incarcerated thousands upon thousands of non-violent black offenders and created countless violent ones, while slapping white offenders on the wrist, mostly due to different preferences in drugs (technical difference - crystal vs. powder), and income differences. I could pull you figures on all of this, but I think you're smart enough to see the lay of the land as to the existence of racism. Now whether or not it's going to influence the election is the question. I just assume it will. I did mention the push polling in North Carolina against McCain in '00, alleging that McCain had fathered a bastard black child. The day those calls went out he had a 5 point lead, and he lost the state soon after. As with ~Di's 70-80% figure up there, there might be a more plausible explanation, but negative campaigning really seems to work, and in that case it contained racist propaganda. The racist factor will be a marginal effect, hopefully, but the margins will really matter this November.

Of course it is. This isn't a post-racial country. Weren't you around for Jeremiah Wright? People were scared by the idea that Obama might have been "blacker" than he looks and acts. If Obama had done anything but disown Wright he wouldn't have the nomination. And he's got an unusually difficult time shoring up support amongst working class whites, even when he's actually softer on the social issues they care about than Clinton was. ****, McCain's fictitious "illegitimate black child" may just have lost him a good deal of votes in South Carolina in 2000, in any case far more than it should have. This election is going to be close enough that racist sentiment could certainly be a factor. Besides, more people will tell you that McCain "looks Presidential" than they would Obama. In a country that elected George Bush because he was the kind of guy you could drink beer with, it's really not unthinkable at all.

beatdown

It's not all that surprising. Sort of crafty of Paul, making a (fruitless) show of endorsing third parties but not running with one, where he'd be the strongest of any this race. Not that it would've mattered had he endorsed any actual candidate. The logic is the same as in any American national election. You can think of voters as a big pool, divided up. Whoever has the biggest share of the pool in a state wins, but you have to figure that third party voters only really affect elections in the same way people who don't vote do - they subtract from the vote pool of the candidate they'd otherwise vote for. Ron Paul's fanbase has been up its own ass for so long that they'd never actually say they'd vote for McCain even though he's closer in ideology to Paul than Obama is, and more importantly, he's much whiter than Obama. But I'm betting that, just like the evangelicals, they'll fall in line come election day. He's endorsed McCain, he just doesn't know it. Or maybe he does? Anyway, watch McCain walk into a beatdown at the View, of all places. Also, Slate examines the many personality similarities between Palin and GWB. Here's one difference she has with Bush - apparently she still believes Iraq and 9/11 were linked. Another interesting developing story - Palin charged for rape kits? Now that's libertarianism. The City's records are open to the public, and if you read the figures, they seem to bear out the claims - $15,000 was set aside for the department's 1st year of existence (1993-1994), $5,000 for 1994-1995 and 1995-1996, and $13,000 for the last year of the first police chief's employment (Palin fired him for "interfering with her governance") in 1996-1997, spending $11,625 of that $13,000. Charlie Fannon, Palin's new chief, took the budget allocation from 1997-1998 and about halved it, requesting of $7,298, spending $3,454 of that. After that in 1998-1999, the "personal responsibility" initiative kicked into gear. That year a measly $3,000 for sexual assault victim assistance was requested. Just $205 of that was spent. Palin's signature is on all the documents, so she either wasn't diligent or she had knowledge of the policy. Thankfully the state legislature (who, let's face it, are probably socialists) got wind of it and banned the practice statewide. As to if anyone was affected by this (lord, I hope not) nobody knows at this juncture.

Really? When was it confirmed that jumping was an adjustable skill?

Could be that he fell from a higher ledge. Hence downward mobility, but not upward mobility. Helps linearize the levels.

FOOLED YOU

Please, please Mr. Molyneux, please make a PC game, for the love of God.

Also Thorton starts the game with a list of contacts. Ostensibly they would be able to hook him up with whatever he needed.

Myron talked up real drugs a bit. Other than that, nothing I can remember.

Like Kotaku pointed out, it may have to do with MGS' lack of faith in the PC market. Most likely an aggregate of that and any number of other factors. Joystiq sez the key players are being courted by Microsoft to serve in some capacity outside of Ensemble.

That's a legitimate way to play the game, but a lot of people specifically avoid using their guns because they enjoy the challenge (and reward) of "accidents" and otherwise silent/untraceable deaths. Also at higher levels of difficulty, you were penalized for not taking care to remain inconspicuous.

Tribal stage was just awful. Civ was marginally better. Space is much better. But if I'm going to be forced to go through the first 4 stages to get to space again, I'll be done with this game after the first playthrough.

I'll be surprised if this game isn't as consistently overrated as its predecessor.

Don't get the "Triple Dose" pack, it won't install. The only part of it that works is Overdose, which Best Buy was selling at the same price as all three games put together (?!)

http://kotaku.com/5046552/amazon-reviewers...y-to-spores-drm That seems more like nerd rage poll flooding more than anything else. With The Dark Knight you had the phenomenon in reverse - the inhabitants of IMDB went about artificially juking the movie's score to Best Evar levels even before the movie was released. It just goes to show you how people on the internet will get stupidly and pointlessly enthusiastic about trivial things. One wonders how many of those "reviewers" actually played the game.

The expectation seems to be that it's going to be delayed, but it could just be that Sega really sucks at hyping.

Neither EA nor the countries in question have issued any statements regarding the state of the game. And since the game has not yet been published its banning would be blatantly illegal in Germany.

Do you really think so? In order to court the Republican base McCain has promised to pursue the same foreign policies that the Bush administration has enacted. We certainly won't leave Iraq (ever) if he's elected.

Ostensibly the UN was placed in America to ensure our participation, since we had the least to gain. But the truth is, it was built on donated land by the Reptilian Illuminati Jews who live in the center of the Earth, as a stronghold from which they could infringe upon the freedoms of good-hearted smalltown America using socialist doctrine disseminated through institutions of higher learning. Most nations flout the UN in any case, at least the P5 and those countries whose interests are entwined with theirs. It's just that the executive branch has made a bigger show of being cowboy ****heads than usual, as of the last 8 years.

Oh noes! It's teh global elite!