DRM might be a bit bad, but in general we have so many choices today that I truly feel that even if I have two lives I wouldn't be able to consume everything that is out there. Sure there were a lot of gems back then, but don't be too nostalgic and try to enjoy what you have today as well. And today you have stuff like Bioshock Infinite, Civ V, Anno 2070, racing games like Grid 2 or any NFS, and don't even forget about things like World of Warcraft, Battlefield et al. I mean, Doom was fun but that doesn't even compare to the rush you can feel when you use a freaking aircraft then eject, use your parachute and try to land in a hard to reach spot, and then use your sniper rifle to take down targets at extremely long distances.

And this is without even mentioning true gems like Journey on the PS3, Super Mario Galaxy, and Halo 4. So I'm really happy how things are today actually :)

You forget that the true smash hit was Warcraft II. But to say that Warcraft was like Dune 2 is totally forgetting what the two main rivals represented, and by rivals I mean Westwood Studios and Blizzard. So with Dune/Command and Conquer you had the nameless unit, weak soldiers but strong vehicles. In Warcraft, you had badass units that sometimes only the sight of an enemy mage or catapults near a bridge crossing would make you stop.

And the thing about Diablo is that it was a combination of the fantastic music (I still listen to Tristram from time to time), amazing graphics, one of the first Windows 95 games, top-notch story (I mean the hero sacrifices himself in the end, wow) that made it feel so immersive that you can still play today and have fun with it.

And even today that bar is being raised all the time. Multiplayer games in Battlefield are something to behold, World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 are a thing of beauty, Bioshock Infinite has got to be the best violent and artsy game ever. Plus you get indie stuff like The Cave, Don't Starve and you suddenly realize that it is really cool to live in this time and age, especially for not having to deal with autoexec.bat and himem/memmaker stuff just to play your goddamned X-Wing.

It's not even the marketing that bugs me, more of an issue with DRM taking down whole games like Anno 2070 for instance. One hell of a game but so screwed up by DRM that in my case there was a gamesave file corruption that wouldn't go away even if I reinstalled the whole PC, since it was in their cloud tied to my account. And for some strange reason they would even refuse to reset my account back to normal.

I use usabox.com and after living in the US, I have lived in two different countries in different continents and this guy not only deliver fast using DHL, they take pictures of the incoming stuff, so you get an e-mail like interface for your packages. Plus the truly neat thing is that they have a re-packing option where if you allow them, they will open your stuff and repackage it to make it more efficient (especially useful with stuff like MicroSDs).

Setting up the service though was a bit of a hassle so make sure you do that before you go to Australia, since it involves going to a public notary to have a third-party open your mail and stuff like that.

I doubt that people in other countries buying online from China will be buying brands like Apple, Samsung and whatnot. China is actually very cheap once you get out of your comfort zone and stop using the local City Shop (foreigner's supermarket). I'm talking about things like buying Xiaomi, Meizu, or even some stuff from Huawei like the Ascend line, and if you want to get even cheaper stuff while sacrificing performance in tablets for instance, you can always buy brands like Teclast, Pipo, Ramos among others. All of them have good quality so they are not cheap knockoffs. As for computers, Hasee is a terrific value, especially with gaming laptops. Same deal with TVs with brands like Haier, Skyworth, Changhong, etc.

But really, if you want to come to China and buy things you destined for the US and expect them to be at the same price, just forget it.

I didn't see anything particularly special about US drivers. The law-abiding part is more of a real fear of getting a ticket than anything else. Hell you see people doing 8-9 mph over the limit all the time, and even more, especially when they are in a pack, that is until they spot a police car and everybody is scared to death.

Plus if you want to say that the only responsible drivers are in the US you should really stop comparing first world countries with third worlds hellholes. Go to France or Canada and let me know if you feel any different.

As for multi-lingual, just go to Western Europe. Switzerland might look to you like out of this world based on what you said.

Lol, those zero dollars is more like it is included in the price. Check whatever you bought in those stores that say "free shipping" and then find the same article in Taobao or even JD.com or Tmall.com. After that please don't hate me for letting you know how much they are ripping you off.

They make good PCs and are kind of like the only profitable PC vendor. We used their workstations at work and they were the exact same thing as Dell back in the day as far as we were concerned.

That issue can be solved easily by using a regional system. So apart from locale, you can just follow national standards for things as defined borders, etc. For instance, in Google Maps in Argentina, you could see the Falklands labeled as Malvinas, while in the UK version you could see the Malvinas labeled Falklands. Same deal for the rest of places in dispute. No more controversy.

Tell that to the government in Beijing. The only thing that has prevented mainland China from taking over Taiwan is direct confrontation with the US. So in a way, Taiwan is a "country" that exists because of the US, very much like South Ossetia exists because of Russia, but in fact it is still part of Georgia.

This is the major reason why I always choose Mac laptops. I have been through three of their laptops, starting with the white iBook and they all worked flawlessly. It never ceases to amaze me to this day that only until recently is that I have found some Windows laptops that are able to behave like the Macs in this regard. Then again when you see the kind of crap Apple pulled with the video cards of the new MacBook Pros it becomes hard to recommend Apple nowadays.

And you are forgetting that it is almost a disgrace for a Japanese family to have one of their women married to a foreigner. It is in their culture and they are not even shy about it.

Shouldn't they be pleased? That's exactly what the Japanese ended up doing to a lot of folk. So in a weird sense of justice, it is only fair that they had to endure that. The atomic bombs were too much, even for a nation full of unrepentant war criminals.

Just because somebody is poor does not make them trash. Even if you want to be an elitist there are less offensive ways to state the same thing without paiting yourself like an asshole.

Actually what Amazon is doing amounts to driving out the competition and there are several anti-dumping laws in place to deal with those issues. Just because it is a well known brand as opposed to some nameless Chinese factory does not make it right. Monopolies are not good.