There's something about this I find interesting and, well, pretty.

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I have the actual physical board game of Carcassonne. It's interesting, we play it now and then; the way it works is different enough from everything else (well, except this apparently) that I find it hard to figure out what represents good play/tactics past a very basic level. Although I usually win so I guess my basic level is still a titch higher than the rest of the family's basic level. :D

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Quoting: Dunc

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat's an odd "we", now that I think about it. I'm Canadian, and we never had the capacity, only the Americans did

Hey, don't talk yourselves down [External Link], eh?

Thanks for the shoutout! Oh, yeah, the whole Avro Arrow thing. Man I was pissed off with James Diefenbaker when I learned about that. We had the best damn fighter plane in the world, would have spun off to lots of Canadian high tech industry, and he canned it.

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Quoting: chancho_zombieOn the other hand it looks like the Russians didn't have much success with their computers their Argon System weighted 92 kg (202 lb) (the Apollo weigthed 30 kg, or 70 lb) and it was developed on 1969 http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/argon1.htm [External Link]
The RAM capacity was 512 words. The soviets were always playing catch up.

Considering Russia had always been considered a really backward country by everyone in Europe, they didn't do that bad. And they stayed serious about space far longer than the Americans did; even when their economy imploded in the 90s they still did their best to limp along (which is why the US ended up having to hitch rides with them for years until Spacex got off the ground). I think the Russians still have a place in their heart for old fashioned manned space exploration that runs a lot deeper than the North American equivalent.
Meanwhile I suspect the Chinese don't really care--they're just doing it so they can say "We're a leading country now, we've got space capabilities like the big boys, so there!"

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Quoting: F.UltraThe Russians landed a rocket (Luna 2) on the Moon in 1959.

With people in it?

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One of my first memories is sitting in a pleasantly dim living room watching a little black and white TV set showing men in spacesuits walking and jumping on the moon for the first time.
Odd to realize that we couldn't do it today. Well, we could, but we'd have to first spend years and billions of dollars to develop and build new Saturn V equivalents. There is a capacity we had in 1969 that doesn't currently exist because we let it lapse.
(Edited to add: That's an odd "we", now that I think about it. I'm Canadian, and we never had the capacity, only the Americans did; while if I go worldwide, I don't know if the Russians might still have some rockets hanging around they could strap together and send to the moon--they never actually did that, but I wouldn't be surprised if an Energia booster could have done it. But perhaps the main spacefaring country had the capacity and lost it)

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Sounds like there's at any rate a bit more effort at . . . coherence? Plausibility? Some sort of ecosystem? Than in your typical dungeon crawl.

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Not surprised. Lots of people really love dinosaurs.

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It's interesting that Three Kingdoms is selling so well compared to, say, Warhammer. Asian market picking it up? In which case, I wonder if Linux sales are comparatively low just because very few Asians currently use Linux.

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Quoting: johndoeThe best we can do is to convince more people/companies to support linux, be patient and polite.

I could talk about the specifics of why you have one view of Sweeney and EGS and I have a different view, but that doesn't really get to the core issue here, of universal civility to public figures.
It is unwise to be universally patient and polite. It is not generally an effective strategy; game theory makes this pretty clear. It is better to differentiate between how you treat those you have reason to be positive about and those you have reason to distrust--in "prisoner's dilemma" terms, those you should expect to co-operate and those you should expect to default.
Further, if you are in a community with common interests, it is wise to warn the rest of the community about those one has reason to distrust, lest they be suckered. Whether as individuals or a community, it is better to co-operate with those who will co-operate back, better to refuse co-operation with those who will not co-operate back but treat it as a one way street. But if you're dealing with a community, before the community overall can refuse co-operation, the word has to be spread. That requires speaking ill of the person to be warned against.

So from my perspective, Sweeney is an untrustworthy person who is likely to try to sucker us. And you are a sucker, which is OK that's your right. But what is a problem is that you are telling people they should NOT warn the community about him because warning communities is bad. You are, in the name of civility, trying to enforce bad tactics on everyone because you are under the impression they are good tactics.

You are wrong. In my considered opinion, your universal civility is a bad tactic. Certainly you will disagree--but at least consider that there is room for disagreement on this subject, that your perspective on it is not the only plausible one, and so it may not be justifiable to hector people for using a different approach as if they were naive fools. From other perspectives it is you who are the naive one.

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