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Provided you're willing to work and contribute to taxes, etc, I don't think anyone has more rights to live in a particular country than anybody else. Diversity is by no means a bad thing.

The three people I work closest with at work are an Indian, a Sri Lankan and a Romanian. All are well educated and skilled and do their jobs as well as any English person could. The reason they got these jobs is because they were the best candidates to apply for the positions, regardless of nationality or race. Which is exactly how it should be.

To that, an unreserved aye. Location of birth, the amount of melanin in the outer layer of skin and so on are incredibly stupid things to judge people by.

[EDIT: Now with a little more grammar.]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=37851.msg497490#msg497490

Appaling as this may be, I believe it'll be temporary. It's the old "easy answers to complicated questions" fallacy ("Immigrants stole my job! I behave the way I do because I have self-diagnosed Asperger's!" ) and especially if the established parties are (or look) unable to properly adress a given situation, people seem to be likely to fall for it. Let's give the established party leaders some time to stop being nitwits and listen to the PR guys, and the BNP will hopefully fall back into obscurity (although it won't vanish, some people are just idiots).

The tutorial should cover this nicely.

I thought we had a top quality tuxedo'd man with velvet rope guarding the entrance to this place.

We did, but it got too expensive. Nowadays we use a "no kidz aloud" sign and some toilet paper draped on the ground in the general vicinity of the entrance door.

Well, you could enable eight-direction movement and simply make the diagonal walk loops the same as the up/down ones.

NEXT: To everyone's surprise, he turned out to be right.

FUN FACT: Around 2035, non-digital wristwatches see another surge in popularity, for retro reasons. However, the knowledge about how to manufacture anything that doesn't function via microprocessors was lost in 2012! 

Well, part of the point isn't that they're making some big website for everyone to use - they are making this an open protocol which developers can go and make their own wave-like systems (not just embedding from the "official" google wave system).  Plus, most of google's systems (including translating, filtering etc) work by statistics, so a large number of people using their service means a large amount of data which means further refined systems.  I think they might have a chance against spam - unless, heaven forbid, spam bots become coherent - then we're all screwed.

That's certainly true, but more people using their service and the additional data generated ALSO mean more incentive to spy and/or spam the hell out of said people. We'll see who comes out on top. And yeah, if spambots ever manage to get beyond "G€T cH€@p vi4gr4 todey!!!!", it'll be the end of the human race.

Yeah small text adverts annoy the crap out of me too.

Heh. Yeah, I should've probably clarified this... they're already collecting and using data about people, and running most of your communications over Google would drastically increase the ways they could collect data about you, which was my main qualm about this. This may or may not be related to my "get off my lawn / private data files" complex.

Hiring promising employees, going for a market share? Its almost like its a business!

I know! It must be a conspiracy!! GET TO THE FALLOUT SHELTERS!!!

Seriously, though. What I was trying to point out was that I think people are being way too optimistic about Google, the quality of their products and their security measures / the exploitability of the collected data right now. Good track record nonwithstanding, they've got precisely zero experience with something like this. It's not a question about whether there will be bugs and security breaches in there - the question is how bad they'll be.

Actually I see it as the perfect way to get rid of spam.

This isn't an upgrade to email.  It's an entirely new electronic communication medium and if there is one thing Google knows how to do it's prevent spam.  In the many years I've been using Gmail I can count on one (maybe two) hands the number of Spam emails that have actually made it into my inbox.  This is the next [r]evolution.  I am no longer wondering why Gmail never came out of BETA.

I envy your boundless optimism. If this really becomes the Next Big Thing (TM) and manages to reach its lofty goal - eclipsing all other means of communication, basically - do you really think Google can keep outsmarting spammers? If there's money involved, and if the system has been stated to be "absolutely immune to attacks", somebody will find a way to circumvent it - just look at captchas. Right now, we're not seeing too much spam because there's too many different systems that each require their own spamming methods, security measure cirumventions etc. Wave would change that, were it to become common enough. Google has some good programmers, but I doubt they'll manage to stay ahead of the spammers for long.

Plus, don't forget that Google "spams" ads, too. That's how they earn their money.

As I said, maybe I'm just a grumpy old war veteran already (at age 18 no less ), but I don't think this is the Second Coming it's made out to be.

/EDIT: Plus, I find it pretty funny how Google is starting to resemble early Microsoft. Pretty much total hegemony over an important market, to the point that the product is becoming synonymous with the product category? Check. Hiring young talent, especially programmers? Check. Privacy concerns don't even make the priority list? Check. Ambitions to revolutionise entire markets, even outside the "core"? Check. Attacking established companies with similar-but-slightly-changed products? Check. Seriously, outside of PR (and, well, products), they're hardly different.

How can you move 23 characters (including ref) at the same time and make them operate with intelligence?

Divide and Conquer, probably. Ever taken a look at that anthill simulation? I suppose this would be similar, with different "classes" of players, a bunch of attributes that vary from player to player, and so on... basically, the assumption is that if you have a bunch of individuals that act sort of smart, the whole will act sort of smart as well. Of course, without advanced methods, the result will be really rudimentary, but it should be workable (assuming vaguely reality-related formulas, preferably of the "ten thousand parameters" kind  ).

Moving and controlling them can probably be taken care of via the good old CCS plugin.

Meh. I didn't get to watch the video yet (curse you, crappy university PCs!), but from the descriptions on that website, it sounds like a super-glorified crossover of blog and the ICQ chat client. Sort of neat, I suppose, if they can get it working properly. I don't think I'll be needing and/or using it, though.

(Plus...  if you really use it as your only "internet communication tool", there's quite a lot of data about you there... and a (black) market for personal information isn't unheard of, just as quite a few people good with circumventing security measures and data mining... clustering that much of your personal data together just sort of strikes me as making things unneccesarily easy for these guys. Then again, it's probably just paranoia, or sor of phobia of all things Google, and the biggest threat from that thing is better focused advertising.)

Definitly Hidden Agenda. It's one of the best, most contemplative games I've ever seen, and certainly the best "politicial simulator" to date. For some perspective, it was made two years before my birth.

Also, The Spirit Engine and it's sequel (which is largely unrelated, except for parts of the combat system) are pretty good and quite underrated, as are Yggdra Union and Rebel Star.

This could be interesting... one thing, though: You should really re-think that choice of font color, it's a little... less than readable.

It's by no means old, but The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello is pretty damn great, with a capital GREAT.

Now I'm alone 

I'm using StudiVZ, which is pretty much a Facebook clone, just with slightly better privacy and only available in German (AFAIK).

You're welcome. 

Ah, Akatosh came first..

Whoops.  Sorry, that doesn't usually happen...

http://www.mags-competition.tk/

In my experience, Berlin cab and bus drivers are every bit as bad as their reputation. One minute into the ride, you start worrying about their anger issues. Five minutes, you start praying they won't kill anyone. Ten minutes, and your biggest hope is that your family will be able to find enough of your mangled corpse for a burial.