It's just Bethesda copying and trying to one-up Valve when Valve added the radio puzzles to Portal. Those silly marketing droids will doing anything to get some viral marketing for the upcoming Fallout 3: Las Vegas expansion going.

And did you also notice that a lot of the people in the demo/model had western looks and clothing? I'm thinking that the demo/modeling software was a Western app, or that a Western design firm or Western advertising firm put it together.

You missed a step. Politicians start to define what companies must use a .xxx domain. In the US I can easily see some politician putting forth a bill requiring that gay dating sites, abortion information sites, and sex education sites must use the .xxx domain.

Soon followed by lawsuits against ISPs for not blocking the .xxx domain.

And just so they don't fall out of the spotlight, the RIAA/MPAA require that any site that sells music or movies is required to use a .validIP suffix. Any music or movies downloaded or made available on a non .validIP site will automatically be assumed to be willfully engaging in copyright violations.

It's pretty sad when it's easier to intentionally put bugs into software than it is to keep them out. What's worse is that no one is quite sure which is the better business model...

Poor NASA. Now they're going to lose even more funding as Republicans and pro-life Democrats lobby to prevent NASA from using federal funds to investigate such phenomenon in the future.

What fiasco? The Public Option was removed and a compromise was reached on the Abortion aspects. Sounds to me like the system worked as intended...

What exactly is going to be disclosed that isn't already being disclosed? Personally, I'm more interested in what Congress (and the lobbyists) are doing than I am in the President, since the Legislative is the branch that actually creates laws.

IME, word processors (such as Word) are the main impediment to the paperless office. The general problems are: they're based on the 8.5 x 11" paper paradigm, they contain unstructured data, and they're too difficult to share, search, and otherwise organize electronically. I use MS-Word at work, so my examples/complaints will be specific to Word. The issues I have with Word in how it impedes a paperless office are:

• My monitor isn't 8.5 x 11 in size. This is especially problematic on a 22" monitor, especially when monitors nowadays are much wider than they are tall.
• Scrolling through a document is painful. It unexpectedly jumps to the next page in page view mode. If you view the document in draft mode, which scrolls smoothly, picture objects aren't displayed.
• Margins in Word docs are painfully contrived. They artificially limit how much text can appear on each line. Margins are based on an 8.5" wide page, which leaves even more of my 22" monitor's real estate unused. By comparison, an html based doc (aka web sites) will easily expand/contract to match your browser's window size.
• Word docs are not Web pages. In our situation, any word doc available on a web server cannot be displayed in a web browser. Instead, you have to download the doc and then open it in Word. Needless to say this is extremely clumsy, slow, and bookmark unfriendly. Instead of being able to create a fast loading bookmark, folks tend to print out a paper copy of the document for convenience. Since folks rely on downloaded or printed copies, updates to the source document on the website are very slow to propagate (meaning that folks continue to use the out of date copy.)
• Word docs are slow and clumsy to version control and to diff.
• It's easier to email a document around than it is to peer review a Word document using the built in change tracking or to use peer review software. End result is several copies of a document floating around, and no good way to reconcile the copies.
• Word docs are databases. Unfortunately, the data in a Word doc is too unstructured and very difficult, if not impossible, to reliably enforce order on the data contained therein. This also makes it difficult to search across documents. This especially impacts engineering, requirements, and policy documents. That kind of data would be better off in a real database and not "managed" in Word docs.
• Word is bloated and slow to load. A website page can load in a couple of seconds. Word is slow to load to the point that it's often faster just to pick up the printout and read it instead.

IMO, the paperless office isn't going to happen until Someone(tm) manages to replace the word processor with a database that looks and acts like a word processor. Kind of like how everyone can use a fax machine (which acts like a telephone and copier) but those same folks balk at using a computer scanner and email over tcp/ip even though the fax machine is simply a low quality scanner that uses an inflexible, low speed modem instead of a tcp/ip network connection.

Ouch, modded as flamebait? Do those who moderated my post not see the huge potential abuse for a .xxx domain in the US? Both Federal and State legislatures could have a field day with who's required to use a .xxx domain.

My initial list of what organizations that would be required to use .xxx domains in the United States:

• abortion doctors
• anything gay related such as dating sites, gay marriage rights, etc.
• hate groups
• offensive TV shows, such as South Park or Family Guy
• offensive art (meaning nude is just as bad as naked)
• offensive literature- Lolita, Catcher in the Rye
• offensive music such as music that glorifies violence or uses the N-Word(tm)(c)(patent pending)
• fringe religions such as polygamists, etc.

and for the coup de grâce, anything that would be considered offensive by local community standards would be automatically redirected to a .xxx address (www.foo.com -> www.foo.com.xxx) by the local ISPs serving that community.

Finally, taking the .xxx idea to its logical conclusion, any adult oriented material can only be sold from .xxx domains. Books like Lolita or Catcher in the Rye, or "gansta" rap could only be sold from www.amazon.xxx or www.itunes.xxx. Information about shows like South Park or Family Guy would be under www.comedycentral.xxx or www.tvguide.xxx

Given the heavy environmental message in the movie, does anyone think that Cameron's Avatar will have a greater influence on the green movement than Al Gore? Think of all the kids/teens/pre-adults who saw the movie, were impressed by it, and how it will influence them as they grow up.

What the hell? The Microsoft Vista license states "Where allowed by your local laws, the manufacturer or installer and Microsoft exclude implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement."

If Microsoft cannot attest to the fitness of their own software, why do they think they can attest to my fitness!?!

1. "Everyone" "knows" that video games are unhealthy and are the reason why kids are fat nowadays.

2. Tell the politicians that you've developed a way for video games to help prevent kids from getting fat.

3. Tell the parents that you've developed a way for their computer/video games to *automatically" help prevent their kids from getting fat.

4. Get a "Save the children!" law passed requiring that this Anti-Fat-Kid-Rights-Management software be mandatory.

5. You have a patent on the Anti-Fat-Kids-Rights-Management idea.

6. Profit from the monopoly.

Except that high bandwidth is the future. 4G will essentially allow desktop like bandwidth to your cell phone. Telcos need to get everyone used to the idea of higher bandwidth fees and the telcos had better use those fees to upgrade their networks now to handle the eventual bandwidth crush.

Designing a phone interface that would actually allow you to make good use of all that proposed desktop bandwidth is left as an exercise to the reader.