I was right with you until the bit about Nintendo losing money. That's false, therefore I don't know what other parts of your comment are also false, and I'm simply too uninformed to know.

Umm, you've obviously not heard of the Alexander Litvinenko case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning in which an ex KGB agent living in London was mysteriously killed using Polonium-210 after writing two books indicating that the Russian secret service were involved in some nasty shenanigans.

Umm, you can run 10 gig ethernet over normal cat 6 cables up to 55 meters. Also the bandwidth requirement of HDMI 1.3 and HDMI 1.4 (the stuff of the future! not used now!) is 10.2 Gbps, just over what 10 gig ethernet gives you, so it's two wires max, The HDMI stuff you see now only needs 5 Gbps, easily obtainable from a single "cheap ethernet patch cable", so maybe not a cheap $1 cable, but a $2 or $3 cable could do it.

So really, it costs more only because of licensing, the funny connector, and because they can.

I too had gallstones, just a couple of years ago. Wasn't quite as an emergency as yourself though. I live in the UK and was treated under the NHS. I had the severe pain and went to the doctor (well after a couple of bouts of the pain).

He thought it might be an Ulcer and so made an appointment with the specialist at the hospital (4 weeks) and gave me anti-ulcer drugs, which really worked - so I thought I had an ulcer.

Got to the specialist, he felt around for a bit and thought that it was unlikely to be an ulcer (for whatever reason) and then made an appointment for me to have an ultrasound (2 weeks), and a follow up appointment (4 weeks)

At the ultrasound, it took the technician about 2 seconds to find the gallstones. She said "Yep, there they are" some quite big ones apparently.

So 2 weeks after that, back to the consultant. He recommends surgery. I'm a bit reluctant, because I wasn't actually in pain at that point. But I agree to the operation, knowing it'll be a couple of months and apparently you really don't want an emergency gall bladder operation.

So about six months after that I was admitted into hospital, and operated on. It was six months because I cancelled the first date because I was in the middle of a software release at the time. The operation didn't go smoothly and instead of being keyhole it's a massive scar.

The explanation for that was that my gallbladder was in pretty poor condition and they couldn't get it out via keyhole. To be honest, I believe them.

But, when all is said and done, the gallstones were diagnosed pretty quickly, and the operating was relatively timely. And all free at the point of use.

If only the nurses were a bit more "caring", but that's another issue.

But you don't live under the NHS. You live in Australia.

So you have a metal bar in your shinbone. Did you break you leg and get it pinned together? Did the NHS do it? Because if they didn't I can't see why you're bringing it up.

Which leads to, why did the NHS do it? You appear to be Australian - so if you broke your leg while over here, would you have preferred if the NHS didn't treat you because you think it's rubbish? Did you get charged?

Is the metal bar causing you pain? Does it affect your life? If it's not causing you pain and it's not affecting your life, then why bother removing it?

If it is causing you pain, and is affecting your life, then I call your bluff. You would NOT wait seven years. There are other factors that you are not mentioning.

Your signature implies that you're back in Australia - so tell me just why should the NHS take the metal bar out of your shinbone?

Yeah, I had my gall bladder removed a couple of years ago. I have to remember to be careful when I fart...

I disagree. "Games portray the gender and ethnicity of their consumers". You write what sells.

There are male "Mills and Boon" authors writing bodice ripper romances to pay the bills.

So question for you - were Americans upset when Crysis warhead had a British protagonist?

Help, Help, I'm being repressed!

Yeah, my wife keeps complaining about the use of huge breasts when advertisting games, so when I found the Fallout 3 Nude Mod with A cup breasts I couldn't wait to show her that not everyone was infatuated with huge breasts.

I don't know why, but she seemed even less impressed with me after I had shown her than before...

That would require some extreme gaming skill to win, and could prove to be a winner - have you patented it?

It's important to state that the people who care are predominantly USA consumers.

Let me generalize, Americans don't buy games that don't have Americans in them, preferably as the "hero" character. So, to maximise your sales, you make that kind of game.

I would love to see games with a Scottish hero, kicking alien ass, but it's not going to happen unless I write it.

So, Eminem hasn't influenced young white kids? Agreed he's not a criminal, but not entirely a role model either.

I've known a couple of physics phd students. One of them instantly springs to mind. He was an OK sort of chap, likable, but a bit depressed. I found out what he did his phd on, apparently he spent 3 years bombarding a sample with relatively high energy particles (Don't know what the sample was, nor what the radiation was - he didn't say).

The total result of his experiments were that it did bugger all to the sample. Nothing. No change. He got his phd, and I got my answer to why he was so depressed all the time :-)