The reason I love Gmail is simply due to the conversation grouping. I totally agree regard the interface. When it first started, it took be a few seconds to figure out where the send button is. It still is pretty strange, but the way they group conversation is genius and I'm yet to find an email app that does the same. Is there some patent issue on that?

It's amazing that it's taken this long for this very simple fact to be realised.

Engage your customer base, don't prosecute them...

Make good products, the customers will come... Simples...

Tut tut, you missed out "SECRET"...
You should prepare those carefully prepared memos more carefully...

Sure you can. You can separate them physically and chemically. But, if you wanted plutonium, you wouldn't use a commercial PWR to do it, but it is very possible.

Not true. Light water reactors can make plutonium and infact, all light water reactors DO make plutonium. They also burn plutonium later on in their operating cycle (usually 18 months to 2 years). The reason you don't get plutonium from light water reactors is because it's all gone by the time you refuel. It's created from neutron capture of U238 but gets burned up and helps produce power. If they take this plant offline within months of being at power, then we need to think a little more about it. However, Russia will be watching and also the IAEA will have cameras watching the fuel route. If you want plutonium, you don't do it with commercial light water reactors.

Yup, a little excessive but I have eight discs in my rig at the moment, five of which are in those removable caddies and form a 2.5TB array, RAID 6 so two redundant drives. Call me paranoid but I know that one drive will die during the period i'm replacing an already duff drive...

And I even used Google to check the spelling!

What worries me isn't his opinion, or what he thinks is coming. What worries me is his lack of resistance to it and his acceptance of "oh well, that's how it's going, that's what we'll do".

This seeming blazay attitude, coupled with his comments a while back where he said something like "People only need privacy when they're doing something they shouldn't be" really worries me, since he commands a lot of power and sway online. Eric, imagine if someone posted a video of you taking a dump and posted it on youtube, your views on privacy and "I have nothing to hide" might change...

He's probably right in that every government will want online identity, of course they would. But it's up to us to battle for "what is right" and we always hoped Google would help us. If he just rolls over and accepts it, that's terrible for us.

True, but many of those players probably would never have bought it anyway. Therefore it's not costing valve anything. Customers gets something for free, feel happy, Valve gives something away at negligable consumable cost to them, and doesn't loose revenue from lost sales as they wouldn't have been sales in the first place. Genius.

This is the sort of customer service we should expect, not congratulate, but well done Valve, makes me happy :-)

hear hear again!

hear hear

Indeed, if he could make a board that you just plug into your router, that would certainly be an appealing product. Better still, wifi it's ass. You really don't need a projector, you only need to know that "a" piece has moved from x to y. You don't need to know what piece it is, as that data is already stored on the server. All you need to know is where the piece has moved from and to. As a previous poster said, magnetism would do it with reed switches, or I'm sure some solid state electronics could achieve the same thing. hmmmm, i'll stop typing here and get typing into my patent portfolio!