Recent content by Control Group

Good concept, but I'm leery of its execution. I say this because the thrill of games like Politburo or Junta is in the politicking between you and your opponents. Political maneuvering is an intellectual contest. For AFMP to be really fun, I fear it will require truly superior AI, and I have...

It was the company's. I'm just saying it's perfectly possible for a job to entail an amount of information that necessitates a computer, so FrewFrux's statement is plausible.

As someone who isn't bound by NDA, allow me to interject: A company I used to work for, MGIC, maintained at the time (1998ish) around 24 terabytes of policy and premium data (stored pretty much as plain text), dating back to the early sixties. I have no idea how much they maintain now, but...

Yes, I do. It's a good idea. I work hard for the money I make, but I also realize that my parents provided me with a solid head start (at the cost of a lot of tuna casseroles when I was a kid...which I had the gall to complain about at the time). However: such giving should never be...

Yeah, I wouldn't even try to play a random game with people across the internet. MP is fantastic, but I'll stick to playing with friends across the LAN in my apartment. Basically, I find MP most satisfying when we treat it pretty much like getting together for a board game. When I can't...

And this, Efexeye, you and I are in 100% agreement on. Things aren't fair. Stuff happens, and it's the same stuff that flows downhill. Bad things happen to good people. But I'd best be careful, my libertarianism is showing. ;)

Exactly. And the number of people who can sit in front of it is limited by the number of seats available. Scarce resource. Same as the above. If I'm not consuming the scarce resource, then I'm not stealing it even if I also receive it. For example, at the Alpine Valley venue in WI, you can...

I would argue that government inefficiency is primarily caused by government having no real incentive to be efficient. Do you happen to have seen an old Saturday Night Live skit with a woman working an old-style phone switchboard? The joke was her telling a complaining customer: "We don't care...

Not this American's. ;) I'd point out that capitalism isn't exactly an economic system, it's simply a reality. What we call capitalist economies are just the ones that recognize this reality, and attempt to work with it. Others are ones that attempt to mollify, deny, or refuse capitalism (and...

You're engaging in the logical fallacy of false dilemma: you assert that either video games are scarce, or they spring out of the aether. Neither is true. You're equating video games with creation of video games. Creation of video games is a scarce resource: there are relatively few...

Come ON dude, I KNOW you know the difference between a NON SCARCE commodity, like a video game, and a SCARCE commodity, like a television. Why do you refuse to see the difference between something which has a limited supply and something which has an unlimited supply? Why do you keep...

The "license to use" concept is an interesting point to raise, since EULAs are still in something of a legal limbo, as far as I know. Anyway: you do have the right to determine whether or not to sell it at all, but you have far less in the way of rights to determine to whom you can sell it...

Please. I don't pay for the air I breathe, is that stealing? I don't pay for warm sunshine, am I stealing when I sit outside? I don't pay to swim in Lake Michigan, is that stealing? And before you say that I'm paying by exerting effort to breathe or stay alive or go to the beach, then I'll...

No, it isn't. Copyright is for a limited term, after which time it enters the public domain. Of course, in the US, copyright term is ludicrously long, and will probably be retroactively extended whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain, but it's not the only instance of...

Both the above quotes are from you, Efexeye. You said people wouldn't defend people stealing food if they couldn't afford it. I said I, other people, and the Catholic Church would defend people stealing food if they couldn't afford it. Then you criticize me for comparing software to food? I hate...