Some online merchants are actually very very accommodating, if you just ask. One merchant I perused didn't have any overseas shipping options so I just emailed and asked if they could ship overseas. I got a very nice lady who organised everything for me personally and I got what I wanted.

Its easy to become jaded with all the bad customer service we receive, but sometimes if you persevere you are rewarded.

Exactly. Just read a bunch of reviews from different sources and it pretty easy to work out the real from the fake. I did get an A and Dux in media an marketing at school but don't hold that against me.

When looking at eBay buyers I don't spend much time on the positive reviews, I spend most of my time looking at the negative ones to get a better idea about the seller, mostly about how they handle dissatisfied customers. Oh and by not buying from the Asia region. Yeah yeah, its just that there are high levels of fraud there so I don't bother myself to mess around with it.

Actually we appointed them for our searches. I can just as easily change a few options in my browsers to make Google go away.

If requirements et all aren't locked down, then frankly don't start a massive scale project. Instead, start small get something delivered and work to build it up over time when they have a better understanding of what they actually need. A bit of discipline in the programming side can work wonders in making small things big. I've done it, it isn't impossible in the least.

Besides, its been a while since consoles have been about just playing games. They are working to stay relevant by offering more. When I bought my PS3 i bought it to continue playing the God of War series that I so love and as a Blu-ray player. Now I use it as a HD TV recorder, download and watch movies, music videos, stream content from my computer and still play games.

As handheld devices do more so will consoles to keep themselves in the game. It would just be nice if they didn't keep hurting themselves with all this regionalisation crap they still want to heap onto us.

I saw a news report just the other day about an Australian battery solution for wind power generation output storage and normalisation back to the grid that they have started selling to Germany, China and Japan. It can be easily retrofitted to existing installations and no doubt easily integrated into new ones. Can't remember the name of it to save my live.

I was in the "other" software industry too and at one point was working ridiculous hours when I was on 3 simultaneous projects. Eventually I just became a contractor and haven't worked unreasonable hours since. If a few extra hours are needed, then I damn well get paid for them.

And if I look at the stories that got filtered out from me there it is. Oh well lolz.

Well we can add EA / Bioware to the list according to my latest email from them. Setting up an anonymous email account to register my games with seems to be working out for the better.

I'm sure there will be a Slashdot story about this soon enough.

And lets not forget that CC numbers follow a specific formula that allows the CC number to be identified as a potentially valid number, which will greatly reduce the burden on the hacker to generate potentially valid CC numbers to hack with.

One of the random TV news stories I saw, mentioned that the breach spread to Westpac too. Since it was a merchant that had the breach, I would expect most CC providers to be affected to some degree.

I use the chrome URL/Search bar, and the Home Page in place of bookmarks and I like that very very much. Bookmarks are fine, except that I'm lazy and they just get into a big mess where I can't find anything. Most places I visit have an easy to remember URL and if something I visit often is hard to get to via the URL bar (I'm talking about you IBM!) I just bookmark it or plain old wait for it to turn up on the Home Page and pin it. I'm fine for change if it can improve things, but right now I enjoy having fast access to the things I want with just a bit of speed typing in a dialog box rather than scanning through lists of bookmarks.

Yes I made the same mistake with Snow Crash. Read it years after it came out and it just didn't age well at all. If you want to read a good book that focus's on language having power read Spellwright http://www.amazon.com/Spellwright-Blake-Charlton/dp/0765317273

Oh you must live in the US, from my point of view Amazon is cheap and convenient, and not because I live in Australia, its because I have an iPad and a now a operable Apple Bookstore. Apple Bookstore books are expensive. They have been regionalised to AUS prices. Since we have been getting ripped off for decades due to government regulation (which is now biting Australian publishers big time, which frankly they deserve) the Apple Bookstore is comparatively expensive compared to Amazon. Oh the Apple eBooks are cheaper than the Australian paper books (when you ignore the discounts you can get at Target and KMart if they happen to stock it) but they are expensive compared to Amazon.

Its like international distributors are living in some sort of punish the Australian consumer vortex. We have a strong dollar so imports should be cheaper but they basically gouge us on prices and expect us to pay up. But I don't pay up, I just get the overseas item at a cheaper rate and save up big. I got an iPad as an eReader just so I didn't have to get locked into a regionalised market on eBooks, or locked into any one store either.

Yeah I went HD recorder shopping with my dad and had a salesperson trying to fob off a $150 AUS cable as the better choice because it would offer better 'quality' and less degradation in sound ans picture. So I point blank told him that was patently ridiculous, and I very loudly explained to my dad how it was complete crap, since the cable wasn't being run down the back of a microwave oven or any other sources of major radiation, how the $10 cable from Tandy's would be just fine. The salesman didn't look happy but he deserved it, for lying to our faces.