Unfortunately this problem isn't just limited to DOTA2 - This sort of attitude is prevalent in a LOT of games now - even games that have not necessarily been around for long...

Maybe they could learn how to weave hammocks out of cat5 cable and string them up between a couple of switches? :D

...is because it's been the ONLY friggin resolution available on laptops that are in any way affordable for Joe Public for the past 5 years or so.

I've recently been given a new laptop at work and despite having a 17" screen, as opposed to my previous (4 year old) laptop's 15" screen, the resolution is only 1600x900. This is compared with a 4 year old laptop that had a 1680x1050 screen...

Apparently a laptop with a resolution any higher than that would push the price up from about £500 to twice that.

THAT is the only reason this has happened, and it fucks me off no end, as monitor resolutions should be increasing along with all other related computer technology, but in the past 10 years it's taken a step backwards on laptops.

...were supposed to be composed of REAL words.

WTF is "SNOISSIWNOOW"??

Conversely, I have a friend who owned a PS3 and a 360, both of which for about the same amount of time, both of which get similar amounts of use. The PS3 died a year ago with a "yellow light of death". It had a rental blu-ray in it at the time, he had to take the ps3 apart to get it out, as it entirely refused to even spit out the disk. The 360 is still going strong...

I'm not going to dispute that the failure rate for the 360 is a lot higher than it should be, but PS3s have had their share of issues too, and I consider the fact that you are on your 6th 360 to be more of an extreme than the norm.

But I thought that we were supposed to assume that everyone is innocent until proven guilty? :)

Based on the comments I have already seen, I'm a minority. But allow me to explain my point of view.

I'm a PC gamer - I have a PC worth a significant amount of money. I love it. I also have an xbox 360.

I'm fed up of games being developed primarily for consoles, and then the PC receiving some crappy port that doesn't make anywhere NEAR enough use of the available extra horsepower that the PC has.

The only current game that has really pushed things forward in terms of what can be done is Battlefield 3. Had a few friends over recently, who all play it on the xbox. I fired it up on my PC to show them - it was like an entirely new game to them. BF3 is a VERY rare occurrence in that it was developed primarily for the PC, and to take advantage of the features that PC offers FIRST, before then being backported to the xbox 360/PS3. Based on the speculation I've seen already, the next-gen xbox, which isn't even due out till next year, is going to have a particularly mediocre graphics card even by TODAY's standards - in the period between now and when it actually gets released (likely about 18 months I reckon), that graphics card will fall even more behind what PC's can do RIGHT NOW.

Skyrim is an example of the opposite of this. It looks precisely the same on the xbox as it does on the PC (ignoring mods). In addition, the UI for PC is precisely the same as what is used for consoles - which, for a mouse/keyboard interface, is a load of crap. Hell, if I leave my xbox 360 pad plugged in to my PC, it picks this up, and DISABLES Mouse/keyboard interaction till I unplug the controller. WTF is that all about?

Optimizations and the like because your platform is always going to be the same can only get you so far when the hardware is so limited compared to what is available.

In addition, RAM is dirt cheap right now. Why are systems like this still being released with seemingly small amounts of RAM? I know there's a cost/performance ratio that needs to be met here, but seriously - I can go to any major PC seller's website and on any pre-built PC upgrade the amount of RAM installed by default from 4GB to 8GB for between £10 and £15 at the moment. Why are these consoles still going to be limited in such a way?

Stick a Thunderbolt port on it and you've got all the future expandability you require.

...then why don't they stop insisting on restricting it, and having custom firmwares/hardwares/whatever for THEIR version of the phone, and instead simply use unlocked, stock, "off the shelf" models. Costs might go down then...

(caveat: I'm from the UK, but i hear it's generally pretty crap across the pond with mobiles)

...and got a shock.

It looks like it's a trial run for Microsoft's Metro UI that's going to appear in Windows 8. (Not a good thing, in my opinion).

Six of one, half a dozen of the other though. Maybe somewhat Minority Report-ish, but what if he actually WAS planning on trying to make a bomb? Why should we wait until this person has actually killed potentially hundreds of people with a bomb or some similar device or act before acting against him?

I have no reason to doubt that the following, taken from the article:

"However, when it was examined it contained recipes on how to make explosive devices and poisons, anti-interrogation techniques and details on how to kill efficiently.

A further examination of the stick revealed a letter, addressed to an unknown recipient, in which the author - again anonymous but referring to himself as a 24-year-old man - seeks spiritual guidance and says he has prepared himself physically and financially for jihad."

is true, due to what the police have said. The article also quite clearly states that there is plenty of evidence that this person was planning on USING this information, not just "being curious."

This will likely get modded as flamebait and/or I'll be told I'm some sort of communist against free speech, but the simple fact is that if they were able to prove in a court of law that this person was actively looking for this information - you don't go actively looking for such information, and keep a shopping list of the sorts of things that you could use to commit such an act at hand unless you're either working in a particularly specialised field or actually looking to commit some sort of atrocity.

...But my triple monitor Eyefinity setup won't work when using HDMI.

So I'm assuming that over the next 5 years, while this is phased out, monitors will be replacing their VGA/DVI ports with DisplayPort ports, so I don't need a £30 adapter to convert a miniDP port to a DVI port... right?

Maybe I'm being somewhat pessimistic, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

This is rather disappointing - I received a Galaxy Tab as a bonus from my job earlier in the year, and I was expecting it to receive the ICS update - the fact that it's not going to I find rather strange...

...I mean seriously! The actors even look the same and they are using some of the same stuff!

(http://i.imgur.com/e9WwU.jpg)

With Windows 7 you very rarely need to reboot when updating things now. Hell I can now even update my Graphics drivers without requirig a reboot.

It's called Hibernation.

Start->Control Panel->Folder Options. Change "Click items as follows" to "Single-click to open an item (point to select)" - then select the sub-option for that mode of your choice.

You've got me on this one.

Sorry but if KDE was simpler than Windows then many more people would use it.

But then who will error correct and checksum the error correction and checksum of the error correction and checksum of the original data?