Almost all correct, however I will chip in that WoW has short circuited the gearing cycle in an interesting (and I thing is a good) way.
They are giving away better tokens via heroics with each release of new content, at this point you get Ulduar (Tier 2) tokens from doing heroics, which means you can get ready to raid Ulduar with out having to run Naxx (a good thing as no one WANTS to run anything but the new stuff), and with running a bit of Ulduar you can run Trial of the Crusader (T3). With the release of the next patch (3.3.0) Ice Crown Citadel (T4) will come out, and heroics will start offering ToC tokens for heroics.

Obviously this peeves off some of the 'hardcore' raiders. however most people see it for what it is, a way of letting new players see actual content, with out getting boosted through older stuff by a guild tryign to gear them up.

Also, next xpac will be 5 levels, not 10, it lets them get in 4 more xpacs till 100 (their stated level cap), instead of 2.

As for the OP who thinks microtransactions ruin games, they haven't actually looked at DDO.

DDO Is offering these things via MTs:
1) Cosmetic items (not actually out yet, but hair dye and such)
2) XP Boosters (also not out yet), simply letting you get to level cap faster, this doesn't make you any better.
3) Nice to have items: Ammunition, wands, potions. These are really for the players that went DOH! I forgot to stock up before leaving town! It is an instant purchase from what I understand, and you are good to go.
4) Real buffs: resurrection cakes, skeleton keys (no need for a rogue), loot gems (upgrade the rewards in a chest), character slots.
Some people are kinda iffy about these, but I honestly think they are not that bad, and most can actually be obtained in game.
5) Content.

Number 5 is the big one I think, they let you unlock:
Races:
Drow (This can be done in game on a server by server basis, or purchased with real $$ so can use it on all servers)
Warforged (can only be purchased with $$)
Classes:
Favored Soul (same as Drow)
Monk (same as Warforged)
Dungeons/quest lines.

Every thing else is really just 'nice to have', even the race/class unlocks are nice to haves, however the actual content is where I suspect they will be making money.

What I think they did that was great is that you can still subscribe for the normal $15 a month and get access to everything (Drow and Favored Soul must be unlocked in game though), but you also get 500 points a month (I think 500 points is about $6, haven't actually bought any yet).

So all in all:
everything (baring content) can be obtained in game. Nothing makes you 'better', some thing make it a bit easier, but top gear and all that jazz has to be quested for.

Facebook doesn't look professional. Facebook has an informal, and often negative face, where as email doesn't have any specific associations to most people.

It is the same reason I always laugh when companies try to set up in 2nd life. 2nd life has a very strong inappropriate image when compared to facebook, but you get the idea.

No shit.

However if you check the links and they are from eeeeeeeeeebay.kr, you don't have to even bother logging into the website (obviously from bookmark, or manually entering the web page) to check things out further, you know it's a scam.

I would suspect you are right. I don't really know what Robert Mueller's background is (quick look at wiki says marines and law), but I suspect that he wasn't directly involved in cybercrime of any sort. Sure, he gets to make the ultimate decisions, but with lots of advisers/what not who (hopefully) know their stuff.

And hey, at least he didn't ACTUALLY fall for it.

Random note:
The emails you do get from various online institutions don't look all that more legit than the ones from the scamers. I have received 2 notices that an account of mine had been compromised, and I was prompted to login (via a link) and reset my password. One of these was my EBay account I hadn't touched in years. I nearly just binned the email with out even opening it, but curiosity got the better of me and I read through it, checked the links, etc etc, and everything seemed legit, despite looking like a classic phishing attempt.

Of course, if we ignored him, he'd probably go away only to be replaced by an anti-gaming figurehead that wasn't batshit fucking insane, so maybe it's best for everyone to just keep him around for the amusement factor.

I am still not actually convinced that he isn't in the pay of the ESA. I mean, he provides great publicity (I bet Bully wouldn't have sold nearly as well if he hadn't protested it, the game was half arsed), and any one who tries to ban video games (or anything related to that) ends up being tared with the same brush!

There is no good reason for the Characters to copyrighted. In fact, I don't think you CAN copyright a character (you can copyright a specific instance of one, like a comic book, a still, etc).

You trademark characters, and trademarks don't expire so long as you actively defend them.

As horrible as this sounds to our standard knee jerk reaction on slashdot, this IS a good thing as far as I care. This is what makes it so that a company/person can create a character, make them famous, and continue to profit from their current work on the character, despite having made it ages ago.

I sincerely doubt that Amazon is involved in a black helicopter conspiracy to keep anyone from reading any public domain work they damned well please on their Kindle, for the very simple reason that there is no benefit to Amazon for doing so.
Thank you. That line in the summary really bothered me.

And they also have a vested interest in making sure that people can find a single, well-formatted, vetted version of each book. If I search for (as the example states) "Pride and Prejudice" and I find dozens of copies of it, I'm going to think that the Amazon bookstore is a jumbled confused mess. Especially if I have to download a dozen of them to find one that is in acceptably readable format for the Kindle.
This is my assumption as well.

However one thing that I was pondering, and haven't seen anyone mention:
Don't returns damage a retailer? Sure, there aren't the physical problems here, but aren't there credit card transaction fees they have to deal with? On a small scale to a company like Amazon, it is probably a non issue. But if I have to buy and return 5 books to find the one I want, that might start to get at Amazon's bottom line a bit.

Tinfoil Hat:
Amazon is working on publishing public domain works themselves.

pffft.

All the need are more silly jokes and more puzzles. The games don't need originality, they are seriously golden as is. One of the few games that I go back and play with some regularity.

Warcraft Adventure iirc.

I am still waiting on my damn Lost Vikings 3.

And if their policy is "no partial returns, if you don't like the package we sold you then return it (yes, all of it)." then everything seems legally fine and dandy to me. They accept that you do not want what they sold you and will now take the product back in exchange for some/all of your money back.

Out of curiosity:

Why do people need to know more science?
Sure, I can understand why you would think that people should know about reproduction works as a good percentage of people will eventually practice it, and understanding wth the doctor is saying is important.
However:
Why is it important that people know about refraction causing a rainbow?
Why should people know about Rayleigh scattering (had to look up the name)?

None of these will likely ever have anything to do with most people's lives. Sure, it is interesting to some people, and knowledge is a good thing in general, but much of science is basically trivia to the average human. So why should we 'know more science'?

I could understand an argument for people understanding the workings of things that affect our lives, however science in general is not really useful.

Ok, that is the end of my ramblings, if any one has a good answer I would love to see it though.

Sorry, but the summation of "He's an idiot on their frequency, thereby endangering the passengers." is 100% accurate. He attempted to give directions to train operators that could have ended with crashes. He is a stupid little punk that deserves jail time.

Actually that doesn't really work. In fact it is completely wrong.

There is nothing that actually pegs gold to a specific value. We (that is society) think that gold is worth something, and are thus willing to pay it.

If, in the future, we no longer value gold as much, it will no longer have the purchasing power it once had.

Gold, like all commodities, is priced loosely on supply and demand (yes, lots of other factors go into it, but I am being simple here). Even if there is a small supply, if there is no demand (because people are more worried about food then anything else), it isn't worth anything.

Wow, I seriously never thought of that.

However, the next question:
Does removing that subset actually significantly decrease the time that it takes to brute force/dictionary attack a password?

Sorry, but as much as I love hating humanity, I am SURE that a nuke would bring the internet to it's knees (ignoring any possible actual interruption from the nuke itself). Some one pointed out the effect that 9/11 had on the news web pages, I am fairly sure that even more people will actually care (aka, be scared silly) if a nuke finally does fly. I don't care if it is 2 countries that 'we' don't care about, we have the 'fact' drilled into our heads that the only think to come of nukes is MAD.