You don't NEED it, you just want it. It's a "nice to have", not a necessity.

If I could only have 1 drive in a system, I'd pick capacity over speed as well. Of the top of my head, I can only think of 4 games that really annoyed me for loading times, 3 of them being the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, and the other being Torchlight.

If you think about it from Valve's point of view, they'd rather you not have to download the same game over and over again.

The government would love it if the taxes were built into the price as it shields them from view.

You mean like on booze, smokes, and gasoline?

I picked up a Synology DS1812+ earlier this year. It's expensive (~$1000 without drives), but I couldn't build anything in as small a form factor as they could. It's got an Intel Atom CPU, so it uses very little power. It's been reliable so far and the GUI is excellent.

It's just a Linux-based system that uses mdRAID/ext4 under the hood, but I got tired of maintaining so many systems and just wanted something simple that was small and worked. If you'd rather roll your own, you can obtain the same functionality and reliablity as any of the commercial offerings. Form factor, simplicity, and GUI are really what they are providing.

Google's working on it.

Great, another reason not to switch to Win8. I disabled hibernation on my Win7 laptop because it was faster to do a straight boot than to recover from hibernation file (8GB RAM and SSD).

Do those SandForce SF-2281 based drives still have that BSOD issue? I've heard from some sources that a firmware update fixed the problem, and I've heard from others that it's reduced in frequency, but not entirely fixed.

Between awkward-ass hardware the console companies shove at them, publishers with unrealistic deadlines and working hours, and the whiny, ignorant, arrogant, overly-demanding bitches that the gaming community is chock full of, I'm surprised there's any developers left at all. I'd have to be starving before I'd even consider working in that industry.

Hats off to you devs who haven't haven't jumped off a bridge or drank yourselves to death yet. You've certainly got more patience than I.

You won't even need a desk! We're one step closer to the Johnny Mnemonic user interface:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_8Ugp9zI4

No. That actually makes the competition look a lot more attractive.

Because they Think Different.

The only thing manufacturers are worried about is their gravy train ending.

If by "fix" you mean watch the company outsource the whole center to India and China, you're right.

You're free to not work for the government if you don't like the rules.

Public unions should not be permitted because these guys are sitting on both sides of the bargaining table. They have massive clout and can influence local elections. This means they'll get a sympathetic ear elected, and when it comes time for contract negotiations, it's them and the guy they basically put in charge.

You can see how this turns out. Public unions reaping all sorts of benefits that aren't found in the private sector, cities literally bankrupt yet still being coerced into giving public employees raises.

Who represents the taxpayer in all this? Nobody, that's who. The main entity that funds all of this doesn't get say, and that's why it should be prohibited for public employees to collectively bargain.

Does Uncharted 3 have to keep track of thousands of inventory items and their locations? Hundreds of NPCs, their items, locations, attitudes towards the player and other NPCs? Does the state of the world change and need to be kept track of?