Master of Orion yes please, with one proviso. Anyone proposing the inclusion of space lanes will be fed to the Sarlacc.

Yes give us more commander Keen.

Most of the ten commandments are not enforceable by law though. Murder the theft are crimes. Bearing false witness is only a crime in some circumstances. More to the point it is against the law to enforce some of them, seeing as most western countries have some provisions for freedom of religion).

Laws do get removed and replaced over time. What tends to happen is that breaches of some particular law first start getting minimal sentences. Then cases invoking it start getting dismissed the public prosecutor stops bringing the charges forward.

After a while no one remembers the law and no one heeds it. Eventually someone will notice and it will get repealed. These days there are openly practicing Wiccans in most western countries. Go back far enough and you will find laws prohibiting the practice of witchcraft. It was once a crime but is no longer viewed as a crime.

If I was moved to install windows 7 (which I'm not) I would would be investigating how I could get a European Edition. So That I could install without IE

I believe the problem here is Intel GMA 500 Integrated Graphics. The driver only works with old kernels, add to this that we have an unusual screen resolution and we are done. For me that puts this one in the strict no go category.

Yes well. the obvious conclusion, If the police find said software on your system then you must be breaking the law. After all honest citizens have no need for software that bypasses the internet filters, seeing as we only filter out things that an honest law abiding citizen would not want to look at

This phenomenon is not resticted to the internet. It happens a lot with consumer products as well. I recall quite a number of times when I've seen some no name music system carry a logo which on a cursory glance looks like a Dolby logo.

Personally I've fallen for this once. Quit a number of years ago I bought my first DVD player. I was with my dad and we got one each. Both of us where positive we had bought a Panasonic. It wasn't until I got it home and showed my wife that she pointed out that the actual brand was Palsonic. the lettering and design on the box where intentionally as close to original as possible. And in this case I fell for it.

I'd never recommend use of google apps for a whole different set of reasons:

1. Your putting all your data on some one else's server without a contract.
2. Hence their is no uptime garantee
3. too many additional points of failure (now if ither google or your internet connection is down you can do nothing)
4. (from here) all your data ends up hosted in another country. Meaning the host is not bound by the same privacy laws as you are, which could cause you to be technically non compliant.

And why I personally don't use google apps:

1. Most of the time my laptop is not connected to the internet when I'm using
2. I run 64 bit Linux, for which there is no Google Gears.

All this recent talk of Google wanting to unseat Windows and yet so many of thier products currently require you to be using Windows in order to get full functionality.

As a parent I don't find this alarming in the slightest. If one of my sons developed an Addiction that I could not help him with I would also seek eternal help. And if the recomended course of action was to send him to such a program Then I would follow it.

One problem with the approach however is that the addict is taken out of their normal environment can lead to a sense of false progress. Often when someone comes back to their old environment, hangs out with friends who practically live online etc, environmental ques will bring back the old behavior.

This is a common thing seen with drug addiction. Its easy for a user to stay clean while they are in jail. But chances are that once they get out they'll go back to using.

Their seem two factors which contribute to the news value of this:

1. Its in China so it must have sinister ulterior motives (which I don't buy)
2. As heavy computer users we would all like to pretend that internet addition isn't possible.

I don't agree with either of the above. Personally I find American Jesus Camps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Camp much more alarming.

Err no, not necessarily they only said they would use a linux kernel and a custom windowing system just big enough to launch Chrome. No mention their of GNU tools at all.

I'm speculating here, but this might just be an OS with no terminal mode (under normal operation) at all. just the browser thanks, and if you need to do system operations, well there's a web page for that just point to localhost://settings or some such. As I recall the Linux kernel does have its own http server module. It doesn't get used normally but it could be.

Table top RPGs have the same divide. Take D&D and Gurps for example. The first started out as a purly class and level based system. the Latter started out as a purly skill based system. In practice they have tended towards eachother with D & D adding multiclassing and eventually a skill system to give more flexibility. While GURPS added a system of racial and career templates to give some consistency and make NPC creation easier.

Incidently I believe that class & level based systems came first. and Skill based system came later. Perhapse we will see the same thing with MMORPG's

In terms of rules on paper a class based system is harder as you need a lot of special case rules for different classes. Original D & D had a lot of mechanics. While Skill based system are easier and can get down to we have contested and uncontested skill checks. end of story.

When you move to writing software the class and level system is much simpler to implement. the ruels are fairly clear cut about what each caracter can do. And Individual character profiles are reletivly simple.

Skill based systems are harder as their is a lot more combinations of skills actions to take into account, and the abilities of particular caracters are more variable. At the table top heavy reliance is made on the players and game masters understanding of how skills can be used. Computers do not however possess common sense so every permutation needs to be coded.

I was misinformed then. A friend of mine told me his company could only source blackberries via Telstra.

Overclocking and installing third party software are not the same thing.

If I make hardware modifications and the thing shorts out then no I don't expect that to be covered by warrenty. But if software I install currupts things then yes I do expect warrenty to cover.

Its reasonable for the manufacture to say ok here you go, as good as new, and when I check I find that they have reset the device and all my data and third party programs are gone.

In general it is illegal to restrict third parties from making compatable products or addons. Looking at Australia I know that Independent machanics have managed to win a ruling thaT Automobile manufactures can't void your warranty for having your car services by someone who is not part of their dealer network.

Just because an international company does x, and claims some right in their contracts does not mean that they can leagally do so. It just means that no one has called their bluff on it yet. As an example a Desktop computer has user servicable parts, and I am allowed to install new expantion cards, drives etc. Doing this does not void my warranty (at least here in Australia) this however does not stop many manufacturers from putting "warranty void if removed" stickers on their desktops.

Some manufactures go as far as claiming that replacing the shipped OS will void your warrenty. Again this a false claim.

That was a random example. Used bacause one of the apps famously rejected by the Apple App store was for accessing project Gutenberg.

So that their is a way to do this after all is somewhat beside the point.

Note that here in Australia we probably have it better with I Phones as

1. No exclusive deals where allowed so that we have four competing carriers who have the iPhone. You can even move between carriers without changing your phone number. Ironically the same cannot be said fro blackberry, which is only available from Telstra.
2. Tethering is permitted, though one of the four carriers charges an extra $10AU per month if you enable this. THe other three carriers do not.

No. But I might want software that allows me to download and read from Project Gutenberg. Which was banned because a text only version of the Karma Sutra is available. Or I might just want a vm for the scripting language of my choice for no reason at all. I've installed python on every phone I've had that supported it. To date I've never done anything useful with it, but I might one of these days. If you want freedom then you must be doing something illegal sounds like the first step towards tyranny. (Yes I'm aware that its just a Phone, and no I don't plan to get one).