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I don't know. I purchased ME and it wasn't a mistake, but I got it for 20€. It would have been a mistake to pay 45€ for it. No, this is making the assumption that making a demo will result in increased sales and/or less piracy. An assumption for which, on the other hand, I have no evidence. More sales (with a demo available) = more happy customers, though. It's difficult to analyze the actual effectiveness of different marketing strategies, as said effectiveness is often gauged based on the success of the product. WOD's argument has merit: a demo is a deciding factor for potential customers. It's probably a more sound business strategy to market a brand than a defined, transparent product. It's not surprising that people download the game to try it, if the company offers a deal that effectively amounts to an act of faith. Evidently. If EA had stated they are planning on releasing a demo, I wouldn't be saying that it may be a good thing to release a demo.

Uh, so what? TV ads are absurdly expensive, too, and they purchase time on air for the big hits. It all comes down to the amount of money and effort you want to invest in marketing. It's not like making demos is a budget-breaking enterprise - especially not for EA. I don't want EA to make me a demo (and I'd appreciate you stopped trying to represent me as a child with a fit, otherwise we'll stop discussing the topic and start discussing each other). I'm simply pointing out how demos can appeal to a) people who would rather play games than read what some brain-dead reviewer thinks, and b) people who may be interested in the game but are turned off when faced with the prospect of $50 going down the drain if the game isn't their cup of tea; those people may think of checking out the warez releases to give the game a spin. In short, demos have a deeper and more lasting impact than just words and video clips. They are, unsurprisingly, more expensive to produce. DUH! I'm not going to continue the speculation on what shareholders may demand to "protect their investments" or whether they prefer silk or cotton for their undergarments, it's a pointless exercise as neither of us is on the EA board.

I must have missed your point, because I don't see where I have a "problem" (wow, I actually like playing games!), or how the raison d'

I don't like reading about games. I don't like watching videos about games (except for some AVGN clips). I like playing games. The character creator was a step in the right direction, but it had no actual gameplay at all after a ~400Mb download. I'm not too sure about your point about BIO RPGs, because BIO and their games change over time (see pre- and post-KotOR), and it's possible that I may like some of their games but not all. I couldn't get into JE, for instance. Further, I'm a long-time fan, but is it unconceivable to think that there may be some people that have never played a BIO game before? *gasp* What is pretty silly is that EA is willing to invest in the tech support and PR nightmare that is SECUROM, but a demo is too much to ask. People may like free, illegal stuff off the internet, but they also like not being treated like pirates after purchasing a game and not being stuck with a product after being forced into a blind-purchase or no-purchase situation.

I doubt it will. Still, I think that releasing a demo would help lower the appeal of warez releases.

I'm not really interested in reading Soviet-backed propaganda. I started reading that, and couldn't finish because it reads more like a pamphlet than an academic recounting of facts. The same old, "it's all the bourgeois saboteurs fault!", all over. But in truth, it was gross incompetence and indifference on the part of the central government of the Soviet Union and the officials in charge, who were more interested in revanche than in efficiency and results - a staple of revolutionaries worldwide. I could look up some passages from the Black Book of Communism to counter, but let's not go that way. Not sure how one thing follows from the other. Stalin's aim was to neutralize any and all possible political adversaries, and to take a proactive stance towards potential political dissent. Looks fairly similar to what the Nazis did, but Mussolini was still (nominally) subject to the authority of the King.

Yes, but it appears to be natural only when communists apply POWERFUL THINKING to agrarian management, as the Great Leap Forward had a similar "natural" famine, and implementation in North Korea failed catastrophically too. I doubt those mass famines were used as deliberate extermination tools, but the idea that they were "natural" as hurricanes or earthquakes is hard to swallow. The Semana Tr

Um, yes it is - retribution and punishment are fundamentally the same, they are synonyms. Simply adding "just" doesn't change that, especially given the arbitrariness of the notion. Oh, I remember now. The LAW is the LAW and nobody is above the LAW.

Hahaha. Okay, professor. So, now not being "as genocidal as they could have been" (just how genocidal could have they been, pray tell?) is now somewhat of an excuse for war crimes, as we're apparently using Nazi Germany as a basis for comparison. Anyhow, why don't you end this debate in one fell swoop and show me these groundbreaking secret sources that prove beyond any measure of doubt that Soviet war crimes have been grossly and systematically exaggerated by Western sources, as a propaganda tool for use in the Cold War, even though the cold war ended two decades ago? I'm waiting. And your blatant Soviet war crimes apology doesn't work at all when you insist in portraying yourself as fair, unbiased, and better informed than most academic sources. Something is bugging me: how do you manage to fit your monstrous ego through doors?

You are aware that after the fall of the USSR, a lot of files have been declassified, aren't you? But yeah, every western historian is deeply biased and will cherry pick his sources, because he is from the west, while you are quite obviously possessed of a fair and neutral point of view. Right. Also, the Soviets DID abuse their power as they advanced. Read up on a little town once known as K

In a sense, you are implying that all humans are evil robots...

The lighting's been set up carefully, yes. But bad lighting making people uglier is a problem IRL, too. It's not realistic to expect lighting to make all characters look good, always, when the real thing doesn't... That's the default male head too, so it's likely that a much greater effort has gone into that, than into making randomly generated heads look good with that sort of modifications.

No, I'm reading just fine. It was the "personally", in your sentence that rubbed me the wrong way. Why would you expect the Soviets to repay Germany's crimes with some atrocities of their own? Nah, I'm fine with people having different opinions; it'd be too boring otherwise. It's your tendency to pass your opinion as fact and pontificate about your highly refined tastes and educated understanding of all things artistic that riles me. Painting, as a whole, is considered art. Music, as a whole, is considered art. Games as a whole are not considered art, save for the cases in which RPGMasterBoo I issues a bull decreeing an exception - for no apparent reason other than the occurrence that he seems to like a particular title quite a lot. See the inconsistency yet? Bah.

Yeah, because war crimes justify war crimes, obviously. LOL So, essentially, we must bow to your mostly arbitrary criteria to tell us peons what is ART and what is just a trivial pastime. Thanks for the laugh.

As I suspected, that went way over my head. After a bit of research though, it seems that Christian's work hasn't been published in any peer-reviewed journals yet. It may be that they are pulling a Galileo on the poor guy, but it also may be that he's simply wrong. Calling that evidence against a well established theory to support determinism is stretching it a bit, methinks. At any rate, a counterexample to a theorem doesn't exclude the possibility that a version of the theorem with revised premises (as the theorem itself cannot be disproven, and it's the interpretation of EPR's topology that the paper attacks) can be formulated, no? The jury's still out on this one, it seems. Nice read anyway, thanks.

Wait, games are now "trivial"? I thought they were ART. Which one is it?

Excuse me? In other news: politicians appoint and sack scientific advisors based on anything but competence. More after the break.

Pics?

No, I don't think I can "easily" read up on advanced algebra, lol. I can read summaries and hopefully gain a superficial understanding of how one concept relates to another, but don't expect much more. I knew sooner or later I'd wish I had finished either of my degrees! Oh well. What exactly do you want to discuss, anyway? Yes. Statistics can describe the behaviour of complex systems, but that's still far from the classical concept of determinism.

Hehe, I thought so at first. But the stuff they sell isn't original, only the clothes that produced the patterns to manufacture the merchandise they sell is. Still, depending on the quality of the leather, $400 for a trenchcoat isn't bad.

Seriously dude, where can you buy one of those? Feeling a bit like annexing Poland, are we? Dunno how much it would cost to import, or even if they'll ship overseas... http://www.totls.com/index.php?option=com_...3&Itemid=44

So, they missed the 3 photons that stopped by last year and probably wont even look at the delayed one that is due next year. They are getting sloppy... Hmm, the idea is that since there is a huge energy difference between the two photons, and given the very short life of the GRB that emitted them (~2s), the high energy photon would need to have a substantial head start to reach us (almost) simultaneously, according to predictions that energy density affects the speed of light. What I want to know is whether c is a constant no matter what, or the variations are too small to lend credibility to this "foam void medium" theory (but they exist and explain this 9/10 of a second difference) - or the difference is due to other causes.

Hey, do enemies level with you like in the flash game? That sucked.

Your source sure seems well informed. Some of the references are from subscription-only journals, shame. Knowledge should be free! Thanks man - I have some serious reading to do.