I would really like to see a movie where aliens invade that don't have awesome, hugely advanced technology, and every facet of their war was in line with real weapons and real consequences.

Say, they get here not by FTL travel, but generation ships or cryonics, or a physiology that allows them to hibernate for years, like some earth organisms do. When they land, they have guns. Not lasers, or plasma rifles, or antigrav gunships, or weird fucked-up magic death rays that suck you up into the sky through your eyeballs (Skyline was teh suck). It could be an allegory of Iraq or Afghanistan. First would be an alien Shock and Awe, as they use EMP to knock out infrastructure and technology and drop asteroids on cities and installations. Superior firepower only due to them having the "high ground", and a ground occupation more like WW2 or WW1 as all our fancy shit was toast and we EMP'd the crap out of their tech too...

Shit... I should copyright this post.

@gwiz665 i think you've completely missed the point with the "get on their knees" nonsense. It was plucked straight out of the comment that started the whole thing. It was someone else's rediculous metaphor turned around and half your post is trying to take that apart. I didn't think it needed an addendum, i had hoped it was obvious.

As for the first half, i'd just like to mention that sales figures in today's world are always going to be weighted due to the proliferation of PCs and the HUGE boom in internet access across the whole world. A million subscribers in, say, 1999 is 10 million less than in 2009, but it's a bit like saying black and white tv's were rubbish because colour tv's outsold them 10:1 - the factors that affect the sales figures have exponentially increased in the time period - it's not just the proliferation of PC's (which is huge in itself), but the speed of internet connections, the accessibility of the internet, the medium through which the game can be released, advertisements (which increase as other media popularity increases - more tvs = more people seeing adverts, etc.) - i won't continue, you can imagine for yourself.

I think the reason wow has blown all other mmo's out of the water is that, at the time, there was no competition - the market and timing was perfect for (at minimum) a playable mmo with acceptable graphics and wow was there. It was made with a decent level of competency and released with few bugs. It pandered to people's immediate wants from the game (ie. i want loot right this instant) and diluted the feeling of achievement by doing so. I never said wow wasn't very skillfully made - the methods it uses to keep people playing are brilliant. However i subscribe to the view that people don't know what is best for them, and getting their desires in the short term turned out to make a less fulfilling long term.

And finally, i've been to the hardest hardest parts of wow, and even the most disgustingly difficult parts of it are only as tricky as some of the moderate encounters in (hate to use this as an example again, but it's really the only one i have) everquest. I would even go further as to say that a HUGE part of the difficulty in wow lies around random numbers - sometimes you will get hit for a huge amount, or 2 abilities will trigger at the same time, or 2 aoe effects land in the same spot, or 2 of your priests/whatever are targetted with an ability, etc. Those are my experiences with wow, and i was at the forefront of freshly released content up until the one after they recycled naxxramas and charged me for it. And every time we ploughed through the content, i'd cancel my account again and go back into hibernation.

Anyhow. If your only point is "vote with your wallet", i think you can skip that. As i've said - i did, but i see no harm in mentioning what i prefer in an mmo as well. The two are not mutually exclusive.

>> ^demon_ix:
Poor teddy bear


He's a bear. He will be fine with his hibernation.

You have a Zappa playlist???!!? awesome... hmmm, I kind of remember it I think. Zappa is awesome

In reply to this comment by moodonia:
Thanks again for the promote! I am right now going through your playlist too and thanks for the invitation, I had no idea invites could be made so I will will have to send you one to the Zappa playlist I made. Sorry my response time has been slow, we have two inches of snow here so naturally the entire country has ground to a halt (including my metabolism), I've only briefly broken out of hibernation to catch up online

In reply to this comment by Fusionaut:
*promote!

Thanks again for the promote! I am right now going through your playlist too and thanks for the invitation, I had no idea invites could be made so I will will have to send you one to the Zappa playlist I made. Sorry my response time has been slow, we have two inches of snow here so naturally the entire country has ground to a halt (including my metabolism), I've only briefly broken out of hibernation to catch up online

In reply to this comment by Fusionaut:
*promote!

For ads I use Ad Muncher, but there's a number of other options.

Just google "adblock chrome". There's also a flash blocker which allows you to choose whether you want to load flash items or not, can't remember where I got it but I remember some kind of plugin does it. I'd find it for ya now, but it's late and I'm too tired.

Chrome crashes every now and then too for me and it also has the recover tabs option. That might be because I'm using beta though.

Looking at memory usage, Chrome does actually seem to use a lot as well. It lists different tabs in task manager separately. From the 8 I've got open, they vary between taking 20,000K - 90,000K each. Thing is though, Chrome doesn't ever lag even if you have like 30 tabs open unlike Firefox. It does slowdown slightly if I run a session running for days on end through hibernations, but that's to be expected.

Well excuse me, take a few minutes, to mellow out
Big Daddy Kane is on the mic and I'ma tell about
a minimum length, of rhymes of strength
and power, so listen to the man of the hour
Flow and go to a slow tempo and you know
sing hoe, swing low, then yo the show
will go on, as I perform
Transformin on stage like a Decepticon
But I'm not animated like a cartoon
I'm for real, shootin lyrics like a harpoon
Across the crowd, the listeners, the spectators
So let's groove with the smooth operator

The B-I-G, D-A-double-D-Y-K-A-N-E
I'm good and plenty, servin many and any
competition, wishin for an expedition
I'm straight up dissin and dismissin, listen
Rappers act so wild, and love to profile
Frontin hard but ain't got no style
I give nightmares to those who compete
Freddy Kreuger, walkin on Kane Street
Confuse and lose abuse and bruise the crews
who choose to use my name wrong, they pay dues
Destruction from the exterminator
But in a calm manner, cause I'm a smooth operator

Now girls step up to this
One simple kiss, and it's over Miss
Sold to nice dreamers, high as the price seem
girlfriend, you been scooped like ice cream
So just swing or fling a gathering try to cling
Cause It's a Big Daddy Thing
And I'm lovin em right word is bond
So just play Marvin Gaye and Let's Get It On
I make it real good like Dr. Feelgood
To make sure that my point is understood
That when it comes to this there's none greater
Sincerely yours... the smooth operator

Now ain't that the pot callin the kettle black
Sayin I'm a new jack, you need to be smacked
The smooth way I say em and the way I display em
to make them sound different in a way that's gifted
and hey I'm, makin sure every lyric is done fine
And I make one line, bright as the sunshine
Attack you like Robatussin on a cough
If you know like I know -- step off!
Competition, I'ma get rid of
You can't get a bit of, so just consider
a break or rest vacation hibernation
And make way for my smooth operation
I'm a smooth operator

In reply to this comment by E_Nygma:
i gotta say, i love the fact that you created your username on a lark due to a random comment thread a long time ago, and are still around and posting with it. awesome.

In reply to this comment by aceofkidneys:
That bear is wasting a lot of calories that it could be using for hibernation...
Tx budday. I do my best.

I've notice the same thing. I have an E8600 at 4.4 GHZ and I've recently noticed my system start to chug when I leave VS open in Firefox for a long time. My system doesn't hibernate. When I check the task manager in this situation, FF is eating up to 50% of my CPU, or 100% of one core.

Yeah, I know. But this isn't the case here. No hibernation and I restarted firefox several times, to make sure nothing was lying around in tab-undo-buffers that could still be active.

If you're using Firefox and you're leaving it open for ages and hibernating the PC a lot too, it will create a massive memory clot and occasionally cause videos to lag.

[i]schemes that end in greater tyranny and less individual liberty[/i]

I love this new republican talking point. It makes me wonder;

Were these guys in hibernation over the last 8 years when we actually were loosing individual liberty in the name of tyranny?

Cause it's either they were all asleep or they are masters at lying to themselves and believing it.

>> ^Memorare:
The excitement of exploration that briefly drove the science and technology of the early 60's has gone into hibernation. The only place you feel it these days is in the new star trek movie.


That is only because you don't know where to look. Projects such as Cassini/Huygens and the Mars Rovers are orders of magnitude more advanced than the moon landings. Just because the media find reality shows more worthy of attention nowadays doesn't mean the science and innovation has stopped.

Best comment - "The space age hasn't begun yet."

The excitement of exploration that briefly drove the science and technology of the early 60's has gone into hibernation. The only place you feel it these days is in the new star trek movie.

i gotta say, i love the fact that you created your username on a lark due to a random comment thread a long time ago, and are still around and posting with it. awesome.

In reply to this comment by aceofkidneys:
That bear is wasting a lot of calories that it could be using for hibernation...