Beamer wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 15:11:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 14:54:

Axis wrote on Apr 24, 2013, 11:33:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 24, 2013, 10:24:

Cutter wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 12:50:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 12:21:
To be fair I haven't looked into who put this bill forward. But I'm willing to bet it was democrats. Gotta have some more tax dollars to spend.

Wrong again - as usual.

Difference being, I actually admit when I'm wrong. Something you or Beamer seem to be incapable of.

That's a good portion of vocal liberals man, blindly full of themselves because they know how shit their lives are with no one to blame... but blame they try!

A good portion of them also like to invent issues to deflect from actual important things like I dunno say the fucking economy. From everything to attacks on the 2nd amendment, to the "war on women" which is really more so pissed off feminazis and tumblr communities in the first place anyway.

"There is no war on women, it was just invented by feminazis" he says without a trace of irony.

Axis wrote on Apr 24, 2013, 11:33:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 24, 2013, 10:24:

Cutter wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 12:50:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 12:21:
To be fair I haven't looked into who put this bill forward. But I'm willing to bet it was democrats. Gotta have some more tax dollars to spend.

Wrong again - as usual.

Difference being, I actually admit when I'm wrong. Something you or Beamer seem to be incapable of.

That's a good portion of vocal liberals man, blindly full of themselves because they know how shit their lives are with no one to blame... but blame they try!

Verno wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 10:48:

Optional Nickname! wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 10:15:
Arguably, EA has the most negative influence on PC gaming, rivaling only Steam in its willful customer deception. Steam has a near monopoly on fan-boyism and astro-turfing so it has a much stronger PR response.

See below.

Comparing EAs negative impact on the industry to Steam is like the ultimate masterstroke troll

I know exactly what I'm getting from Steam and exactly what I'm giving up. The idea that they're tricking anyone is silly.

wtf_man wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 09:39:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 09:29:
I still think the industry is heading for another '84 type crash before long.

That was mainly the coin-op gaming industry.
People quit going to arcades because of PCs and Consoles.

I was busy gaming on my Apple II back then, and my non-computer pals were playing / trading vast amounts of Atari 2600 games by that point. Who was going to go down to the local arcade and spend a ton of quarters?

PC gaming stayed above and rose from the ashes of that "crash".

nin wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 09:20:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCUpiI1MSA

ZeroCougar wrote on Apr 25, 2013, 08:48:
Ohh yeah cause the other guy who nearly made it into office was of a higher caliber of morality that he would never allow this. Don't throw that Obama is the cause of this, BS on anybody but your own self. With the recent school shooting and with the Boston bombing, Which would happen under any president btw... This kind of spying is going to make it through. Scared government, does scary things to its own people, in an attempt to protect the people. Its how it goes.

If DOMA goes away I'll vote for Obama again. I want to be with my wife, more then worry about this privacy-policy bull. I admit that much bias.

Cutter wrote on Apr 24, 2013, 22:07:

Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.

The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

"The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained over 1,000 pages of internal government documents and provided them to CNET this week. "Alarm bells should be going off."

Those documents show the National Security Agency and the Defense Department were deeply involved in pressing for the secret legal authorization, with NSA director Keith Alexander participating in some of the discussions personally. Despite initial reservations, including from industry participants, Justice Department attorneys eventually signed off on the project.

Hope and change, my ass.

Cutter wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 12:50:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 12:21:
To be fair I haven't looked into who put this bill forward. But I'm willing to bet it was democrats. Gotta have some more tax dollars to spend.

Wrong again - as usual.

Cutter wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 21:51:
The review for "Star Trek" was merely a two word review which simply read....

TurdFergasun wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 16:13:

Flatline wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 13:59:



I'll agree DOW2 wasn't an RTS. It was more of a Real Time Tactical game. They "fixed" this somewhat with the second expansion but I didn't particularly feel like it needed to be fixed. On it's own the game was fine. Tagging it Dawn of War 2 was the biggest mistake. I can clearly see the evolution though of DoW2 though, since Company of Heroes had almost no base building at all and focused on the units and combat, it was a natural extension to more or less ditch bases altogether.

It's funny, my memory of DOW1 was incredibly plain and unremarkable. I just didn't enjoy it much. Whereas DOW2 left a far stronger, more memorable experience. I played the shit out of it through Dark Crusade, but it always felt dry and bland. I played it because I didn't have a comparable RTS to play instead. And I love me some 40k.

coh1 had quite a bit of base building, are you sure you even played it? what it didn't have was traditional resource gathering, but if you played for US or Germany you had nearly as many buildings to build as you would have in starcraft or command and conquer games. They should have made a different game altogether for people as yourself who don't even seen to want a real RTS in the first place. Tactical RPG's shouldn't be replacing proper RTS games to appease to the shortest possible attention span with a penchant for shiny objects and bright colour palletes.

BitWraith wrote on Apr 23, 2013, 08:50:
There's a reason why educated people tend to be liberal. It's because they're educated.

Cutter wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 20:06:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 18:47:
That you continue to pretend democrats don't get their share of lobbying is comical.

Guess you missed the part where it said....

"Exxon’s federal campaign contributions totaled $2.77 million for the 2012 cycle, sending 89 percent to Republicans."

That's entirely indicative of ALL lobbying by the elites. It's all right there in black and white and you're still not grasping it, huh? Wow. Just boggles the mind.

Cutter wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 20:06:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 18:47:
That you continue to pretend democrats don't get their share of lobbying is comical.

Cutter wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 18:26:
Here's what the GOP does for the elites versus the working stiffs....

Exxon/Chevron's record profits

While 2012 might not be a banner year for Big Oil profits, it wasn’t a bad one either. With just BP left to announce 2012 earnings, Big Oil earned well over $100 billion in profits last year, while the companies benefit from continued taxpayer subsidies. Average gas prices also hit a record high last year, showing how a drilling boom may help oil companies’ profit margins, but not consumers’ wallets.

ExxonMobil — now the most valuable company in the world, passing Apple — earned $45 billion profit in 2012, a 9 percent jump over 2011. Meanwhile, Chevron earned $26.2 billion for the year. In the final three months of the year, the companies earned $9.95 billion and $7.2 billion respectively.

Here are the highlights of how Exxon and Chevron spend their earnings:

ExxonMobil

Exxon received $600 million annual tax breaks. In 2011, Exxon paid just 13 percent in taxes. The company paid no taxes to the U.S. federal government in 2009, despite 45.2 billion record profits. It paid $15 billion in taxes, but none in federal income tax.

Exxon’s oil production was down 6 percent from 2011.

In fourth quarter, Exxon bought back $5.3 billion of its stock, which enriches the largest shareholders and executives of the company.

Exxon’s federal campaign contributions totaled $2.77 million for the 2012 cycle, sending 89 percent to Republicans.

The company spent $12.97 million lobbying in 2012 to protect low tax rates and block pollution controls and safeguards for public health.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson received $24.7 million total compensation.

Exxon is moving ahead with a project to develop the tar sands in Canada.

Chevron:

In October, Chevron made the single-largest corporate donation in history. Chevron dropped $2.5 million with the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC to elect House Republicans.

The bulk of Chevron’s federal contributions came from the super PAC donation, for a total of $3.87 million for the 2012 cycle. 85 percent went to Republicans.

Chevron spent $9.55 million lobbying Congress in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Chevron paid 19 percent U.S. taxes last year (half of the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent), and received an estimated $700 million in annual tax breaks last year.

Chevron was fined $1 million for a refinery fire that sent 15,000 Richmond, California residents to the hospital. Though the company faces $10 million in medical expenses, Chevron earns it back in a couple of hours.

With Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips reporting $35 billion in combined profit in 2012, BP is the last company left to announce its profits for the year.

m00t wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 16:38:
Certainly cuts should be made, but they should be made not because of the debt or deficit, they should be made because they're just downright wasteful. Bloated military programs that continue for years or decades without any progress, for example. Subsidies to businesses that are reaping record profits (and have been for decades). But we need to spend more in other areas also in order to keep up growth long term. We have to improve our education system and that costs money no matter which way you look at it. Certainly lots of things we're doing now aren't effective, but they don't change by having less money available in the system as a whole. Likewise expanding infrastructure spending saves money and generates revenues in the long term. We need a high-speed transit system that is affordable and efficient. Maintaining the highways is extremely expensive and has a lot of secondary costs that go with it. (real) High speed rail with dedicated right-of-ways would benefit freight and personal transit. It doesn't have to be like Amtrak which is a dying relic. It can be faster, cheaper, and easier, but we have to invest now. And finally we need to fix our power infrastructure. Dependence on oil and coal is crippling us and will be the weight around our neck that sinks us. We need to stop funding them and make sure functional alternatives are in place. Solar (PV and thermal) is viable, even at current efficiencies. (Current technology) Nuclear is safer and ultimately cheaper as a provider for base-loads, but we have to get rid of the NIMBY attitude and approach it rationally, not as a favor to industry pals.

More and better health care reform would have a significant effect as the cost of it is far too high and the ACA doesn't actually deal with that in a meaningful way. The key problem is the insurance companies have every incentive for prices to go up and such make no effort at controlling them. This forces people into a Faustian bargain where they must take insurance to avoid paying the rate-sheet prices but are still being charged 10x - 100x more than the services actually cost to provide. On top of that the insurance industry adds a "moving money around, but mostly into our pocket" tax for facilitating the transaction. A single payer public system would be able to control prices and would cost *substantially* less than both what we're paying now in total as a society AND less than just what we pay into Medicare now. To cover everyone in the country. This means a lot more money to spend on real goods and services instead of invented schemes that add zero value. Providers would compete on service and people would have real, open choices as to who to visit for their care.

But a lot of this doesn't really mean much or have a chance of happening if wages aren't raised to match the increase in productivity over the last 30 - 40 years. For decades wage levels followed closely to productivity increases, and then in the 70's "magically" stopped. Productivity increased greatly but wages stagnated. If wages were closer to what they should be relative to productivity the tax base would increase immensely and we'd almost certainly have a surplus even at current tax and spending levels. But as it is now, the majority of people (in the "developed" world and the US) have less and less money to spend each year which means businesses have fewer customers and are more likely to go out of business. This ultimately shrinks the economy and puts on a path of ruin. When most people have no money to spend on anything but food and shelter, any business that doesn't go directly to that will be unsustainable. When most people start having to choose between food and shelter, I suspect we'll start seeing a lot more riots and violence which does good for no one.

/rant

Beamer wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 16:01:

RollinThundr wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 15:47:

m00t wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 14:55:
Certainly the debt is a concern, but it's not an immediate one. As in, it won't kill us tomorrow, or the next day, or even the next year. After WWII, we had a debt ratio of over 110% and paid it down over the course of 30 years, so the current level of ~75% is clearly not "life threatening", as it were. Now if we use the debt as an excuse to cut services and enact austerity measures, then yes, that's a problem as it will contract the economy significantly. The real issue that will cause significant long term damage is the vast inequality in the economy. People with significant sums of money simply spend less of it as a total percentage than people with more "middle" amounts. They tend to hoard it in various ways. The poor (but not utterly broke who obviously have *no* money) and middle classes have to spend a large % of their income or holdings to survive and spending goes up as their net worth and income go up (to a point) keeping money in the system and increasing fluidity, causing the economy to grow (and in the long run, reducing our debt / gdp ratio). Everyone benefits. Even the rich, it's just not as immediate or direct as they'd like. Think of it as a trickle-up economy... The current distribution will ultimately harm them, too.

We won't last another 30 years going the way we're going. We'll be lucky to last another 10 without it all collapsing on itself. The smarter move would be to start addressing the problem now before we pass the point of no return.

This isn't about rich vs poor like the democrats want you to believe. What we're doing is not sustainable and a total collapse is coming whether anyone likes it or not if we keep spending the way we are. Taxes isn't going to help as much as you think either. Tax the 1% 100% and you're still not even making a dent.

Actually, it would make a dent. The deficit in 2012 was approximately 1,100 billion.
According to the IRS, the top 1% earned 1,300 billion in 2009.

So, that's a dent. But also ludicrous. Obviously no one wants them paying 100%, and it ignores the fact that tax is paid on a marginal rate basis, something too many people discussing taxes don't understand, plus taxes are important for a health of spending power perspective and this is the stronger argument for a raised marginal tax rate.

m00t wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 14:55:
Certainly the debt is a concern, but it's not an immediate one. As in, it won't kill us tomorrow, or the next day, or even the next year. After WWII, we had a debt ratio of over 110% and paid it down over the course of 30 years, so the current level of ~75% is clearly not "life threatening", as it were. Now if we use the debt as an excuse to cut services and enact austerity measures, then yes, that's a problem as it will contract the economy significantly. The real issue that will cause significant long term damage is the vast inequality in the economy. People with significant sums of money simply spend less of it as a total percentage than people with more "middle" amounts. They tend to hoard it in various ways. The poor (but not utterly broke who obviously have *no* money) and middle classes have to spend a large % of their income or holdings to survive and spending goes up as their net worth and income go up (to a point) keeping money in the system and increasing fluidity, causing the economy to grow (and in the long run, reducing our debt / gdp ratio). Everyone benefits. Even the rich, it's just not as immediate or direct as they'd like. Think of it as a trickle-up economy... The current distribution will ultimately harm them, too.

nin wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 14:45:

m00t wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 14:39:
US Debt ~$16.8 trillion according to wikipedia

Depending on when you asked you might get slightly different numbers
$1.2 trillion (~8%) - US GovInfo.about.com
$1.1 trillion (~6.5%) - wikipedia
$~1 trillion (~7.5%) - Forbes

Which is also about as much as Japan holds.

China holds 26% of all *foreign held* debt. Not 26% of ALL US Debt.

So... all of their asses seem to be in the realm of 8% (or less, generally).

dunderdunderderpa!

m00t wrote on Apr 22, 2013, 14:39:
US Debt ~$16.8 trillion according to wikipedia

Depending on when you asked you might get slightly different numbers
$1.2 trillion (~8%) - US GovInfo.about.com
$1.1 trillion (~6.5%) - wikipedia
$~1 trillion (~7.5%) - Forbes

Which is also about as much as Japan holds.

China holds 26% of all *foreign held* debt. Not 26% of ALL US Debt.

So... all of their asses seem to be in the realm of 8% (or less, generally).