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What? My second-to-last reply directly addressed what Yoshi had to say. Big, carrier-based navy is unnecessary for both global power projection, and asymmetric warfare. You don't need carriers to deliver either drones, or cruise missiles. You do need them if your goal is to blind the enemy with...

On no, what will Argentina do without foreign investment from Spain, especially now that the latter is flush with money?! lulz. This isn't the 20th century anymore. Pretty soon it will be countries like Spain courting countries like Argentina for investment, as they desperately scramble to...

Millenium Challenge 2002? That should have been a wake-up call for the US military establishment. Instead, it somehow set them even more firmly in their old and stupid ways. How is all this relevant to economics? Well, for one, the argument that the navy is somehow the key for the US to...

But that's my point - the navy is only "useful" in asymmetric wars, i.e. for posturing and browbeating third world thugs. Pit it against any enemy that possesses post-1970s tech, and suddenly those gleaming, mighty carriers are in mortal danger. And I'm not even talking about China - you could...

I'm reading the writing on the wall. It's been there for a while now, and it says clearly and unambiguously: the navy is dead. Any country that relies on the navy in a symmetric war is dead, only it doesn't know it yet. And therein lies the danger. How likely do you really think it is that a...

I don't know, but for their sake I hope it's to use it as a red herring and trick the US into sinking trillions of dollars into obsolete aircraft carriers, while directing the bulk of its own spending into missile technology, the real key to military dominance in the 21st century. In a...

That doesn't actually have anything to do with your argument. Warren is just advising against getting into credit card debt, not against using credit cards as such. I use credit cards and debit cards because they are convenient, and because alternative methods of payment - cash and checks -...

4too a version of Prosper? Hah! When I joined in 2003, 4too was already a well-established legend of these forums for his incisive arguments and extravagant writing style. Prosper is just an annoying troll that showed up two years ago and won't go away.

Interesting you should make this thread. Recently I started watching the whole Star Trek: TNG series on Netflix, and now I feel like playing a Star Trek space combat game. Which one would you say has aged the best? Fun fact about Away Team: Reflexive used its engine to develop Lionheart...

Ultrabooks aren't that expensive. The whole idea behind Intel's ultrabook initiative was to come up with a PC equivalent of Macbook Air - an ultra-portable, solidly performing notebook with a reasonable pricetag. And that's exactly what they've accomplished; you can get a Zenbook for $1000...

Someone should inform DammitBoy that navies are obsolete. A salvo of Exocets can turn a carrier battle group into scrap within minutes, and that missile is three decades old. The stuff world powers have today would decimate the entire US fleet in the Pacific within hours of a hypothetical war...

That's the most benign explanation, and also the most likely one. I have had a similarly "suspicious" transaction to an account in Luxembourg. Turned it was just my Skype subscription; for some reason, all Skype online payments go through a Luxembourg-based intermediary.

For your wife I stand by the Satellite recommendation, though anything in that range should be fine. I would also recommend looking into a Lenovo Thinkpad, if you don't mind paying a bit more for a homely, but otherwise outstanding laptop. I have had terrible experiences with HP notebooks...

This. I came to that realization after owning three "gaming" laptops, and realizing that a gaming laptop is merely an unsatisfactory compromise between two irreconcilable ends - portability and graphical performance. At that point, I resolved to own, at all times, two machines - a gaming...

You can't go wrong with a Toshiba Satellite. I remember getting one in 2006. So often I wanted to hate on the old thing, for its shitty battery, ugly-ass plastic frame, overheating GPU, and unfailing tendency to suck in every piece of dust in the room through those big, horrendously ugly grills...

Has it really been twenty years? Wow... I'm starting to feel old, here. They don't have to be rich. They don't even have to be well-off. They just need to have some goodwill. $15-20 worth of goodwill, more specifically. A tiny driblet, really, about the same amount it takes to order from that...

Unsurprisingly, Herve remains as clueless about the desires and sensibilities of PC gamers as he was in 2003. With this latest display of his ignorance, we can elevate the following notion to a fundamental axiom of the gaming industry: that any venture involving Herve Caen will without exception...

So you want to expel Europe's fastest growing economy and keep a country that'll probably go the way of Greece, that is, unless it first collapses unto itself due to rampant corruption? Hell, why not? It would be very much in keeping with the kind of sober decision-making we've come to expect...

Man, that story is so overblown. The articles out there make it sound like Egypt has cut Israel's gas supply because it wants to see the evil zionist state wiped off the face of the Earth or something. Yet the fact of the matter is much simpler - money. As in, Egypt wants more of it. Which is...

Ridiculously low, maybe. For a full-length, fully-voiced game with professional art and animation, half a million is *nothing*. In any kind of software development, software cost is negligible compared to cost of labor. "Free" is a relative term. I assure you the opportunity costs to these...