While I agree that having battle.net still online is great and all, it's anything but cheat free.

If you want to play Starcraft (mostly non-UMS) cheat free you still need to install the iCCup launcher and play there. People still try to cheat but at least there are mods there who handle these things, as opposed to no control and no consequences whatsoever like on battle.net (minus blacklist programs run by hosts).

As for other old Blizzard games I don't know so much about the prevalence of cheating.

I don't necessarily agree with this. I think that the number of people already on facebook is definitely an obstacle, but just look at its own history. You just need to create momentum, which is difficult to do but not impossible. When I first joined facebook, hardly anyone I knew outside of one specific circle of friends were on it. But I would tell my other friends about it, and eventually they'd try it out, and presumably do the same to others. I don't doubt it would change, but I doubt it would change like facebook did, at least in regards to privacy. The set-up alone would make that seem like a non-starter. All facebook needed to do was change its TOS. That doesn't seem like it'd work here. What I think their biggest challenge is going to be is to make it as easy to use/join as the more centralized social networks. Anything that starts out by saying "allows you to set up your own node" is going to turn off a vast majority of people.

I fail to understand your question. What could not be fun about a fully realistic simulation of the inner workings of the reproductive system of the Liturgusidae?

You know, Dr. Evil, a million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. Virtucon alone makes over nine billion dollars a year!

The drilling is taking place in deeper and deeper water. Deep waters have high pressure and the low temperature. Both of these make formation of methane clathrates more likely. The high pressures a mile beneath the ocean surface also make it easier to dissolve gas in the oil. Avoiding pipeline blockages and explosive decompressions is not trivial. To the extent the industry is pushing the limits of what has been done before (and they are pushing limits of depth) they can be surprised by details that they haven't encountered before.

Face it, the iPhone has fallen behind it's competitors.

So does that mean we now have a another clear leader in the smart phone market? Or are people including yourself going to continue to measure other smart phones to the iPhone?

To me as long as everyone is comparing their wares to the iPhone, the iPhone is still the one to beat...

Apple will start worrying when people no longer feel the need to measure up to the iPhone or better yet when iPhone versus some other phone no longer generate large number of web traffic.

Others have pointed out that the Hubble deep fields don't include galaxy clusters. I'll add that the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey doesn't go quite as deep as Hubble (Hubble goes to around magnitude 29, SXDS only to magnitude 28)... but it covers an area of sky 1,000 times larger than Hubble's deep field.

I own a work BB Curve and a personal Android phone. I'm also a BES admin. The only thing I can see that Blackberry's have going for them is decent admin control on the BES (remote wipe etc) and good reliable email push, most of which you can get on other devices pretty well with a few apps. By any other measure the Android phone and iPhones totally outclass them. Android has many more apps, BB apps tend to be more expensive and very dully business orientated (financial tickers etc).

The newer BB next gen devices aren't very exciting and the Storm 2 is especially poor. I'd say the BB is a (very) good business email device and that's about it. They were very late to the 3G show, they still sell curves etc without 3G which to me looks very penny pinching and crappy now.

So who's making RIM number one, it surely can't be all just business sales. I wouldn't thank you for one as a personal device, but you do see it. Do people just like the full keyboards for social networking or something?

Or will this RIM advantage disappear as the market for smartphone grows overall and dwarfs the business sales that have put RIM where they are?

Considering that supposedly "low-grade" edutainment was also demonstrated to be effective in improving learning outcomes, it seems strange to dismiss it just to bolster some industry's claims to novelty. See, for example, Lepper & Malone's 1987 paper, "Intrinsic motivation and instructional effectiveness in computer-based education".

Haven't we learned anything from The Matrix? Darkening our skies will only result in human beings used as power sources....

Perhaps they should seed clouds with Brawndo - The Thirst Mutilator

"Brawndo's got electrolytes. And that's what plants crave. They crave electrolytes. Which is what Brawndo has. And that's why plants crave Brawno. Not water, like from the toilet."

My bad for spreading misinformation again.

Yes, RDP on the iPhone has saved my ass a number of times.

Not required for nomination to the Supreme Court.

From the article: "You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter". I think he hits it right on the head. Politicians on both sides disseminate blatant lies as facts, and the news media just picks it up and reports it as truths. That's the problem. It's very difficult for the average joe to filter out the lies from facts, and that hurts democracy. Today's news media is a propaganda machine the Soviets only could have dreamed of.

Yeah that I agree with. That will be a big fat NO DEAL with the conservatives if they do that. The pressue is going to be building, and the only potentially stable goverment is some sort of conservative/Lib Dem deal. If Labour and the LD had got a few more seats (enough so they had a majority between them), then life would be a lot more intersteing. A good grass roots campaign on electoral reform is good, it gives the Lib Dems the oportunity to walk away if they have to, and do a deal with Labour. There is pressure building the other way, wiht "get a deal done by wednesday or the markets will tank" vibe being put out.