Thus destroying the sales and other business opportunities.

... Except running these kinds of cyber attacks are actually specified in particular as being against the law in most modern countries like the United States and the UK. UK in particular has had DDoS attacks as being against the law as of 2006.

It really, truly does make them criminals. GP wasn't just saying it to make a point.

Sure, some games are sequels. Doesn't mean they didn't include fresh new ideas. Take, for example, Team Fortress 2, you mentioned. The game is absolutely nothing like the original game series with the exception of the classes. The entire atmosphere of the game is different. Likewise, Fallout 3 is not too much like the original franchise (to the disgust of several Fallout 1/2 fans). Just because it is a sequel, doesn't mean it can't have fresh ideas to offer.

Bring it on, Intel!!! I can take you!!!

Says the Anonymous Coward.

Worth pointing out that he said regulations _encouraged_ sub-prime mortgages. He never said that sub-prime mortgages were _required_ by regulation.

Yeah. Flying spiny got me when I first encountered him. My one of my most hated enemy from Mario games... WITH WINGS.

Didn't help that the little bastard started right next to me either. :(

How the heck is garbage like this modded up? Well, I suppose the posting is "interesting" in the sense that it is interesting that another human being actually believes stuff like this.

Nearly every evil "capitalist" also happens to own or is part of another's charitable foundation of some kind that is actively fighting against AIDs, among the many other problems that plague society. I've heard plenty of weird socialist rants before on Slashdot but, Jesus Christ, you have taken it to a whole new level by suggesting they actually enjoy watching people die to AIDs. Your entire posting is horseshit.

Not really. Sure there are a lot of super easy achievements in games, such as playing through the basic story. While you can get them, they are really only designed to create encouragement to get through. Some achievements are supposed to have low value in order to elevate the value of those that are more difficult and not something you get just through a basic playthrough. I have somewhere near 1500 hours in Team Fortress 2, and I am yet to get all the achievements. (In my defense, I don't farm achievements on achievement servers. :P)

First off: Woosh! I was intentionally playing into the stereotype that all news organizations other than Fox are evil lefties that have no viewers.

Secondly, just because liberals view those organizations as pandering to the right, it suddenly makes it so? Looks like YOU typecasted YOURSELF.

Pft. If that's the case, then MSNBC, ABC and CBS so popu... Oh.

Yeah, carry on.

This is a poor comparison though.

For starters, the phone industry is growing faster each day, expecting more speed, more features, more apps to run. One of the key selling points behind the iPhone, as well as Droid and other Android phones, among other things, is that it is fairly easy for ANYONE, including the consumers, to develop apps for, creating a large market of apps for the phone. Phones are pretty similar, in this regard, and no phone is able to dominate over the others overwhelmingly due to this fact, unless, should one decide to make it very difficult for amateur games to be developed on the device, decreasing the number of games and other apps significantly. Smart phones were the product of a lively and constantly growing industry.

Compare that to the dead home console industry NES was born in. There are tons of marketing advantages Nintendo had due to lack of real competition. Commodore 64 barely even counts as competition to the business model Nintendo released in. Nintendo ran almost unopposed. If Nintendo did something bad to their buisness model, such as make it more restrictive some how, they are still the de-facto game console. Studios, that wished to survive, would have to just put up with the restrictions.

In addition, the restrictions Nintendo put in place was ALWAYS the policy for the console, not one they did later as was being suggested Apple may do. Later, during the late SNES era and N64 era, their restrictiveness actually DID cost them their market share, because it only got worse, and unlike before there WERE other consoles to develop games on, with arguably better hardware as well. Gamecube attempted to fix a lot of those issues, and their policies fit more in line with other console developers, including as far as how much assistance they get with Gamecube's development environments and etc. Even today with Wii, they have not fully recovered from the SNES and N64 era damages they caused with third parties, though they are in much better shape at least.

iOS has certain freedoms, such as ease of app development, which is seen as a feature to the consumers, and such a move would be seen as a removal of existing freedoms and features. In Nintendo's case, they were making more restrictions against studios. They are free to restrict studios' freedoms all they want, so long as it is way out of the consumer's eyes, they could care less. How easy it is to develop on the NES at the time didn't seem like a feature to consumers the way it is advertised for smart phones today. In Apple's case, they would be restricting groups closer to the consumers, the amateurs that develop the little game app they love so much. Consumers would see that, and would also see that app on the Android and not the iPhone. Apple-fanboy/girl effects aside, they will lose a lot of their phone market. iPhone just won't have the same features and apps as Android phones. Simple as that.

I strongly doubt that. One of the main selling points of iPhone is how easy it is to develop for (though in comparison to Andriod, it lacks. Regardless, when the Apple app store was first released, it was the one of the first of its kind and scale). Making the SDK even more exclusive, by having these kinds of requirements in addition to the restrictions that already apply to iPhone apps, would kill iPhone pretty quickly.

My mom connects all sorts of stuff to the computer. All the time actually. Sometimes even without my direct turn-by-turn instructions. She even figured out how to convert old family video tapes into DVDs using some Roxio studio thing more or less on her own. And that one was reasonably complex, involving connecting a VCR to a little USB cable thing, which then connects to the computer.

Look, I do have 2 parents that are not so tech-savy myself, but I also think people grossly underestimate the average PC user. From my experience with not so tech-savy people nowadays, they are more likely to think something can be connected to the computer that actually can't, than as you suggested, think something can't be connected at all. They just don't quite understand how such a connection would work all the time until they have the will to actually play with it in various configurations to try and get it working. That is, they tend to over-estimate technology, not underestimate it. All it took for her to realize she can attach a camera to her PC is to notice the "cable that connects stuff to the PC", or in other words, the USB cable, in the camera's packaging. That and, usually, the box says it as plain as day...

Likewise, we also have one of those SD card printers, but we only bought it because it also had the regular functions of a printer. Never once as the SD card slot been used. Much more difficult to use than just connecting the camera to the PC using an oh-so familiar cable that seems to magically connect whatever device it came with to the front ports on the PC, finding the photo after Windows shows you all the contents of the camera, and clicking print, maybe after toying around with paper trays if she is trying to get it to print on the photo paper.

Once they know what a USB cable is, it is usually smooth sailing from there. They can connect all sorts of stuff you would not assume the average Joe PC user to own but actually do and are able to figure out and use. And the USB cable is usually shown in a little n step picture in the camera's packaging.

Um... What? This is considered cheating? And this was modded 5 Insightful too.

So is buying a better graphics card than someone else cheating too? After all, by buying a better graphics card than everyone you are playing a game with, you are getting a better FPS than the other players, and thus the computer will draw threats on your screen faster and smoother than it draws threats on your opponent's screen. You put extra money down for a game advantage for that graphics card than your opponent did. Using a high-speed internet service like cable internet or DSL, which also costs more than Dial-up, puts me at a major advantage over Dial-up gamers. Should I be forced to switch over to my old AOL 56k to avoid "cheating" those players? How about if no money is involved? Can we use aimbots if no money is paid? After all, everyone could just go and download the same aimbot for free.

Money has absolutely nothing at all to do with cheating. Whatsoever.

As for the network neutrality issue: Where does this whole "The suggestion that what we have now works is as laughable as it is wrong." thing come from? As far as I have known, we have only been worried about the potential for ISPs to "hold people hostage" and none have done so yet. Even if some have and I'm seemingly unaware of this, as I don't obsessively read about the issue very much, it is likely far from being so broken as to be described as "laughable" as, again, there would be a lot more reports on people being held hostage by their ISPs. On the other hand, actual good intentions and business models run the risk of being harmed from network neutrality, such as this company. Debateably at least, depending on how the legislation is written.

Where did you get the idea most American games require credit cards? Very few games actually REQUIRE credit card payments. Customers just tend to use them out of convenience. You can pay for X-Box Live accounts in-store, which more or less throws the "Most American online games" out the window on its own considering how large the X-Box Live userbase is. You can pay with cash in the store. Valve games such as Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead (2) all can be bought in-store without a credit card as well. Most games offered on Steam have retail versions which often can be bought without credit cards.

World of Warcraft can be done this way too, I think, but I've only seen cards up to 60 days. Others may exist if you really wanted to do it that way though. And that's basically the other half of American online games. I've seen cards like this for other MMORPG games as well, but sure, not all of them offer these cards.

There probably are some that fit your description, but it's likely due to the company not seeing much point to releasing cards like those as their userbases are much smaller than WoW's userbase, not because they have some potentially malicious conspiracy to use the information obtained by card purchase. China's reasoning for including real names, on the other hand, is pretty obvious and they'd probably even be fine with telling you they intend to use it to violate people's privacy (just worded in that special kinda China way). American online games that perhaps have access to that information have it not because it was intended, rather, it was easier for the customer to provide it because they wanted to buy the game from their computer desk rather than in a retail store (We're lazy).