Zinegata

I work for a telco, and we now have more telephone lines that have a bundled DSL than telephone lines without any bundled Internet; with the former requiring a telephone line before getting DSL. And this is from a Third World country. So yes, the growth in Internet is pretty explosive.

Actually, you might want to read this article: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-07-10-time-study-boys-think-women-are-over-sexualised-in-games Given that the supposed driving force behind the AAA "soulless marketing" is that these games are supposed to target teenage boys primarily.

But not all Japanese multinationals are as inaccessible as Nintendo, which was the point. Sony has been able to make the transition, at least image-wise, as an international multinational whereas Nintendo is still the traditional Japanese company despite having multinational reach. And the comment on women was not about having women spokespersons, but how the AAA games industry is male-centric. AAA is still dominated by testosterone-laden games like Call of Duty. Part of the reason this is the case is because game develop Having more women spokespeople while pumping out another Space Marine/Special Operations/Thinly Veiled Male Power Fantasy would in fact just be window-dressing for the much deeper problem that most AAA games have become boring precisely because they're getting stuck in a loop of producing only games for half the population. That's why I mentioned the decline of the CoD crowd and consoles in favor of the indies and the casuals - it's the latter that's tapping into the female gamer marker which again has grown significantly to the point that "games are played mainly by guys" thing of the early 2000s no longer applies in the present.

Sony at least tries to make a show that it's more of a multinational company even though there's a hard glass ceiling for any non-Japanese employees. Nintendo doesn't even try and they're very hard to talk to if you're a foreign company. Oh, and given that 45% of gamers were women circa 2012, and it was a growing proportion, criticizing the AAA industry for still being male-centric is not really out of line. They're being left behind by the casual game crowd, which is the current growth segment of the gaming industry while the market for CoD-stye games on the Xbox or PS is shrinking (albeit still the most lucrative).

I have my New York. Having six gun turrets is so liberating. And then I proceeded to completely misuse my new battleship by joining a full-scale charge up the middle of Two Brothers. As in every battleship went up the slot. The enemy team (who had a carrier for scouting), staring unbelieving at the spectacle of 7 battleships and a couple of cruisers and destroyers charging up the slot, actually bothered to message us if we were seriously about to commit mass suicide. We charged anyway. And died one by one gloriously. A few managed to sink an enemy battleship before going down. One sank an enemy and then proceeded to ram another before going down. My Captain's last words, in between my giggling, was "It's a trap!" Clearly, it's time to bring out young Christian Bale singing: As a final comedic touch, the only person in my team to argue against the mad charge - a Cleveland driver - then proceeded to flank the enemy fleet and sank four ships solo before going down. Apparently, the enemy was laughing so hard that they had trouble hitting him while he mumbled "Idiots" over and over under his breath.

What is this heresy of citadel hitting when you can simply drown the enemy under so much HE (I'm being deliberately obtuse here).

One thing I've always liked about the BMP over the Bradley is that they have an actual fire support variant - the BMP-1 with the 76mm and the BMP-3 with the 100mm gun - that can do direct-fire HE as opposed to the Bradley being stuck with plinking with the autocannon.

I have seen the light. The St Louis is the Messiah arisen.

What is the squad-level doctrine and how does it relate to army-level doctrine? Or is that up to the poster? (in which case, this poster needs a specific mission profile with which to select the appropriate doctrine - e.g. "This WW2 army will have to do a major amphibious landing and then engage an opponent with a proportion of tank and motorized infantry elements capable of engaging in mechanized warfare")

If you're going to do a straight-up comparison of an infantry platoon without IFVs and one with IFVs, then obviously the one with IFVs is going to win. What complicates the issue is the cost factor - how many non-IFV platoons can you field compared to an IFV-equipped one? How much more effective is the IFV equipped one? Is the effectiveness to cost ratio reasonable? And will you still have enough boots to fulfill all the requirements in your operating theater? All of these don't really have answers yet. That said one issue I've also never really seen resolved is how an IFV-equipped unit deals with losses. What happens when an infantry squad is mostly intact but their IFV is destroyed? Do you just look for another IFV and assign them to it? What if the IFV-with-a-dead-infantry-squad is part of another company, who gets transferred to whom? And what if there is an imbalance in losses - e.g. lots of IFVs blown up but the infantry survived. How does the unit operate then? Does it limp along at foot speed, or do they jettison the infantry entirely and accept a smaller unit size that remains fully mechanized?

Since someone revived this thread over in TGD thought I would share it: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55089

Indian food is foreign to me because the Philippines for some reason managed to get cuisine from pretty much everyone except the Indians. Seriously, it took a trip to Singapore for me to discover Indians actually have some sweet dishes.

The cast iron skillet is Alton Brown's first choice for "stuck in a desert island" cookware for a reason.

I plan to but the PC is just borderline capable so I'm holding off upgrading the PC until I have multiple games that need it. Besides, I only recently started playing Witcher 2 (never got past Chapter 1 before) and managed to buy Witcher 1 dirt cheap.

The thing is I'm not entirely sure if there really will be a big enough market for multiple GPU makers within a few years in the first place. AAA gaming is pretty much the main driver of GPU development, but that's also an industry beginning to show cracks. The resurgence of PC gaming for instance was in large part driven not by AAA titles like Call of Duty, but by indie and smaller developers who don't need the latest and greatest hardware to run. In the current ongoing Steam Sale for instance the only "AAA" title I'm really considering is Witcher 3; everything else is indies (e.g. Darkest Dungeon), old games (e.g. Commandos), or mid-range titles that are filling the niches ignored by AAA (e.g. Cities Skyline). Which is why I still don't have a dedicated GPU - relying instead on the built-in GPU included with my AMD processor. It has crazy heating issues, but spending on a more heavy-duty heat sink to resolve this cost only $20 as opposed to spending $200 for a GPU that I would only really need for one game.

1) Use an induction cooker. Induction cookers are extremely clean-up friendly because all you really need to do is to wipe the glass clean after spraying some water+detergent mix on it. They're also more power-efficient than older electric stoves. 2) Use primarily stainless steel cookware unless it's for eggs and cheese. This may seem counter-intuitive, but stainless steel is actually easier to clean because you can scrub a stainless steel piece of cookware properly; whereas scrubbing a non-stick plan will cause the coating to peel off and ruin it (plus potentially poison you). Think of stainless steel as the tough dog that doesn't mind taking a bath no matter how hard you scrub him, while non-stick is the poodle that fusses when you're bathing him. In case of "stuck" food on your stainless steel... Employ the deglazing method. Just remove everything except the "stuck" bits, heat the pan, then add water when the pan is hot. Use a wooden spatula to scrape off the food as the water sizziles. The sticky bits come off easily, and in fact some pretty good meals rely on deglazing to make good sauces. I deglaze as much as possible as part of cooking because it's also just cool, and even something like commercial apple juice can suddenly become a nice sauce for say pork chops by using it as a deglazing liquid and adding some butter and seasoning. I originally made the mistake of relying primarily on non-stick cookware, but once I was taught how to use stainless steel properly I never looked back. Always buy heavy pans - they distribute heat better and last longer. A good induction cooker will also tend to treat a thin pan with contempt. 3) Use non-stick pans for eggs, cheese, and pancakes. Always use only a paper or cloth towel to wipe the stuff off the non-stick pan. Avoid cooking at high heat on a non-stick pan - it will peel eventually if you do this even with a good pan. Instead, cook the high-heat portions in a stainless steel pan, then finish in the non-stick pan with cheese and other sticky ingredients at low heat. 4) Albeit needing a bit more maintenance, it pays to invest in a cast-iron frying pan. Lodge makes some very good ones for cheap, and by default they are heavy and durable. Use cast iron for cooking that requires super high heat, like steaks that need searing. When cleaning, wipe off the oil with a paper towel, and then rinse with warm water. If there are stuck bits (which is uncommon since cast-iron comes "treated" to be somewhat non-stick), pour rock salt on the pan, put a paper towel on top of the salt, then scrub. You should this anyway regularly to keep the pan treated. Once the pan is clean, heat it up, then rub some Canola oil on it. Always do this as it keeps the pan relatively non-stick and it prevents rusting. 5) A good toaster oven is superior to a microwave, and are very easy to maintain and clean. Buy a toaster oven that can hit 250 degrees and fit a chicken (allowing it to cook anything), along with a baking pan. A lot of stuff can be cooked on a baking pan without sticking. Try this for instance - put white fish fillets (e.g. cream dory) in the pan, season and add oil. Then mix parmesan, mayo, and parsley, then spread on top of the fish. Top off with aluminum foil (covering the pan helps keep the parmesan from burning), then cook for 15-20 minutes on 180 degrees. If you're a little nervous that the fish may come out undercooked, then bake the fish first for 5 minutes before adding the parmsan mix, albeit do it without covering the pan so you can see by eye when the parmesan is nicely brown and good for eating. As an alternative or supplement to a baking pan, if you can find a supply of cheap ones, get a cazuela or some other clay cooking vessel. Those also work VERY well for ovens and are also easy to clean up. I have a local supplier that sells one for only $2-3 dollars and they are great for making soups and other dishes in the oven. They will break eventually though so do get them cheap. Make sure to "treat" them before using as well - meaning you should use the vessel to boil water (half-full) before using for any cooking. I've also heard very good things about using a cast-iron Dutch oven for this purpose; particularly enameled ones. They're much more expensive though. 6) Work on an easy-to clean surface, like stainless steel. Have a spray with water+detergent mix and always spray and wipe at the end of cooking. 7) Always buy a pan only just big enough for your needs. If you're cooking for one, always buy the smallest pan possible. While folks may think it's better to buy a big pan, the reality is that you increase the amount of surface area you have to heat and clean every meal. I initially started with some big pans and some small pans, and in the end I realized I was always just using the small pans because they were easier to clean. === Oh, and if you like cheese and are starting out cooking, the best cuisine to start out with is Italian. Not American Italian, but Italian that focuses on having only 2-3 main ingredients per dish. It's hard to mess up, tastes good, and gives you confidence to try out more complicated things.

Local reports say that at least two "armored artillery vehicles" were spotted on some of the islands; which would more likely be a self-propelled anti-air vehicle rather than an SPG piece because putting SPGs on artificial islands don't really make sense. So in that sense they are probably capable of shooting down any aircraft that approaches the island if they really wanted to.

Thought so. I can contact the owners of the images though and see if I can get the clearances. I will not use any pictures without clearances. For the PH government they've actually released several official reports with a good number of pictures and maps describing the entire clash. Do you have a target word count?

Would an article on a very recent topic such as the Mamasapano clash last January 25, 2015 fit the theme? Or could it be "too soon"? From a technological point of view, Mamasapano was actually interesting in that the Philippine SAF ended up using so many "off-the-shelf" items for their navigation (Google Maps) and command & control (cellphone); and that the advances in telecommunications meant that the entirety of the battle was fought in an area with cellphone coverage where both sides were using it. It also reveals a general failure of strategy, and colossal misunderstandings of human nature, which resulted in what should have been a relatively simple capture/assassination mission turning into a day-long battle that nearly re-ignited a relatively dormant insurgency and threatened a peace process; in large part due to the chaotic dissemination of information through social media in the aftermath. Also, by pictures I assume you can't just use pictures from public documents or newspaper articles yes?

Google has a history of rolling out stuff that they (or at least their PR department) claim will kill off a traditional industry, but in reality falls far short of the claims and will take at least several more decades and a lot more investment to achieve its lofty ambitions. Take for instance Google Fiber. The US telcos (or rather, the top management, many of whom are clearly divorced from technical realities) were all panicking over Google promising to be an Internet Service Provider that's better, cheaper, and faster than any of the other telcos when it launched five years ago. Fast-forward to today and Google Fiber only has around 30,000 subscribers and is a pretty insignificant player on the US market. The problem, which was pretty clear to the rational telco people back in 2010, is that Google Fiber doesn't actually introduce any really new technology. Fibr-to-the-Home has been around since the early 2000s, and the reason why it hasn't reached widespread adoption is that the technology is frankly ridiculous overkill. Not every home needs a 1 Gigabit connection. Japan spent huge money on subsidizing these kinds of connections and found that the only people they really made happy where the torrent seeders. Most websites can't even take advantage of that size of pipe. This is why the most common implementation had been to use Fiber as the backbone, with the "to the home" portion being handled by DSL or cable, which can support a more reasonable 100 Mbps speed but doesn't require drilling new holes in your house. It has gotten to the point that the younger folks in the Telco business are increasingly convinced that most of Google's seemingly hare-brained schemes are actually just red herrings to get the US and other telcos to speed up their rollout of broadband Internet; through which Google derives most of its revenues anyway. In this regard Google's actually a pretty useful addition to the landscape, because overall broadband penetration worldwide is in fact pretty low and the panic they caused did stimulate some expansion. As for the Google Car - it's probably another project that's designed more to get the industry to act rather than a concrete "Google Enslaves Half the World" scheme. Google Maps has pretty bad navigation softwae for instance because it just looks at the shortest route based on distance and not any other factors, but Waze is pretty decent because it has a fairly extensive realtime crowd-source feedback mechanism (e.g. real time traffic reports) and it has cut my trip times by around a fifth since I started using it. This was inconceivable when folks started looking at navigation software back in 2004 (we had trouble plotting routes even with full-powered PCs. Now you can do it on a cellphone app), especially on the streets of Metro Manila, where the city planners have no idea what a "road grid" is (they insanely prefer circular roads) and the traffic is only behind Calcutta or Bombay in sheer awfulness . The auto-drive thing is also pretty revolutionary and would be a pretty big boon in traffic-heavy streets even for private cars, because now I can nap/do other things while the car drives through the grind of heavy traffic. Put the two together and it's not hard to envision a new model of self-driving cars that can be both privately or publically owned that would have actual concrete benefits for the end user. Of course not everyone will want to own a robo-car, and in my country I'm sure there will be lobbies by driver's groups against this (our taxi drivers are already up in arms over Uber, because Uber provides better service than most of our shitty taxi drivers), but having a robo-car as a viable option is in fact something that could be a thing once they work out the technology and figure out the legal liabilities in case of accidents.

I don't think people are really fully aware of the context of this issue, so here's a quick background. The Spratleys are basically a bunch of unclaimed islands and reefs in the middle of the South China Sea, which may contain some oil deposits. By virtue of being unclaimed and possibly having resources it was subject to a tug-of-war by the region, with China having the biggest share of the pie because they had the biggest stick. The Philippines is the second best claimant because the Spratleys are closest to the Philippines. The status quo for a long time was that each claimant had control of some of them (with China and the PH having the most), and that nobody would start any development unless it has the approval of all the claimants. The problem is that China radically changed its position around 2010, when some frankly crazy people in the military or Politburo decided to change the definition of "Chinese territorial waters". Rather than the usual 12 nautical mile limit, China decided they were extra special and claimed their territorial waters extended to over 200 nautical miles. If the Spratleys were considered to be Chinese territory (albeit the Spratleys, being contested reefs for the most part, don't even count as "land territory" from which territorial waters can be extended - a distinction that becomes important later), this essentially means the entire South China Sea becomes Chinese territorial waters. This may not seem like a big deal, but very many major sea routes go through the Souh China Sea, which feeds all of the major ports in the South East Asia region - particularly Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, and basically every port in Vietnam. By turning the South China Sea into territorial waters, China is basically saying they have the right to instantly blockade any South East Asian nation. Unfortunately Southeast Asia isn't in any real position to do anything about it. Malaysia and Indonesia are only superficially involved and are busy with their own internal problems. Thailand is technically still in the middle of a coup. Singapore is a city-state and, while having a very advanced military, has to park most of its weapons in America because Changi Naval Station can't fit everything. Vietnam to its credit continued its grand tradition of fighting China in spite of hopeless odds, and got a patrol vessel sunk for its trouble by ramming after it challenged the construction of a Chinese oil rig. That, much to the groan and dismay of the region, means it's up to the Philippines to contest the claim. And given our first action was to rename the "South China Sea" to the "West Philippine Sea" in all of our maps, which was an utterly useless symbolic gesture that only succeeded in getting all of China's Internet trolls to focus their efforts against us, you can see why the region is in utter despair. That said, our governement has somehow managed to be more competent and decided on the pretty smart move of taking the case to the International Tribunal for the Laws of the Sea, which is all but guaranteed to rule against China's 200 nm territorial water claim, and is a potential source of embarassment for a China still styling itself as a benovelent big brother instead of a bully. The thing is, rather than back down from this legal challenge, China very recently decided to double down on their initial mistake and to defy geography in order to avoid admitting it was wrong regarding claiming the whole South China Sea. Since the first problem with their claim is that the Spratleys are still considered reefs and not islands which can exert territorial influence, China decided to spend a whole lot of money to turn those reefs into actual islands. Since they now have actual "islands" in the area which can theoretically exert territorial control, they can then claim that the other claimants are in fact merely squatters claiming reefs and can therefore be evicted. After which China reasserts its 200 nautical mile territorial water claim and turns the South China Sea into their lake. Hence the recent US interventions. One of the Philippine's side-tactics in the Spratleys game since the early 2010s had been to troll the hell out of the Chinese Navy, which could not really respond to our provocations because they fear it will cause the activation of the Mutual Defense Treaty between the PH and the United States (this is why the only casualties so far in our trolling match were in fact Taiwanese fishermen shot by mistake by the Philippine Navy); and the US for the most part was in fact horrified by this potential flashpoint because they thought the court case would already settle it. The man-made Chinese islands changed all that. The US military (and I hope Obama) are well aware of how this changes the game and can potentially render irrelevant our previous play of taking the case to an international court. That's why they're stepping up the patrols and they're playing tag. They want China to know they're not happy about what they're doing.

Individual mines may be cheap but minefields are not. The initial outlay of hundreds if not thousands of mines is just part of the cost, because the sea is very unforgiving and you need to keep replacing mines as they breakdown due to saltwater and the waves. Moreover, you need to keep updating mines, because if the enemy is able to get a working copy they are much more able to deploy counter-measures against them. For instance the German magnetic mine was very effective in the early days of World War 2, but as soon as the Brits captured a working one they figured out that its trigerring mechanism could be countered by installing cheap degaussing gear on their ships. An immediate drop in mine-related losses soon followed. And in any case minefields in the modern world tend to be mostly small, deployed very quickly in advance of a known operation using aircraft and small craft; because the navies that really use them know for a fact that they stand no chance in an open battle and the best they can hope for is that they can delay the USN. And really, that has always been the problem with a passive defense system like the mine - they may increase the cost of accomplishing a mission (albeit a mine sinking an enemy ship is really a chance occurance), and they may slow down the attackers, but they do not stop a determined navy from accomplishing its mission. That has been the case since Farragut said "damn the torpedoes" (which were actually mines in that era).

My general sense regarding the British tank losses is that it was a doctrinal and tactical issue at the battalion/brigade level, rather than at Monty's level. The British Army was already suffering heavy tank losses even before Monty took over, particularly at Gazala, and the particular problem seemed to be the tendency of most British armor divisions to engage the enemy without real infantry support. I do have some speculative evidence that Monty didn't really like most of his Armored Division commanders in the first place. Monty was a member of the Royal Tank Regiment - it's the badge on his famous beret - and they had famously feuded with the rest of the army over the future of the Army's tanks. They ultimately lost this fight and the Royal Armored Corps ended up being controlled primarily by cavalry units that had converted to armor... and frankly very many of their ideas were rather questionable. Monty not caring about tank casualties may just be him not wanting to suffer the foolishness of the other non-RTR tank units.

Worker quality is definitely a factor, but that is dependent on having an institution that can pass down skills from generation to generation which, critically, must also survive the eventual depletion of the ores in the locality. In a discussion between Frankish steel vs Roman metallurgy, one of the key things of note was how the Romans had real factory structures that could import metals from all over the empire and could keep operating even after the mines ran out - which is also why they managed to keep making bronze pieces as bronze was better than iron or steel for some purposes (particularly armor). By contrast the Franks didn't really have an extensive trading network for moving ore around, so they basically let localities smelt their own ores to make their own swords. .

Your Leyte Gulf game and its command integration/disintegration aspect sounds a bit like how modern lighter games do co-operative games with personal objectives, such as Battlestar Galactica or Dead of Winter. But yes, a very large problem is that very many players have pre-conceived expectations of game results, which actually makes a lot of scenarios "unplayable" unless you handicap one side. An example is Chancellorsville - unless you give the Union some command breakdown handicaps the best that Lee can hope for is to escape with his army.