Yeah. You've missed the point, man. Atheists have no big guy hovering over their head telling them right from wrong. They already know right from wrong. Religious sorts need to be threatened left and right or apparently they'll succumb to sin at the drop of a hat. It must be tough for religious people to only stay good through fear, and not through ethics. I guess one requires thought, empathy and understanding while the other only requires fear.

Is there some sort of charity I can give to that allows Christians to shed their fear and become naturally good people?

France? FRANCE? If anyone was defeated more and raped to buggery left and right it was Britain. How dare you suggest that France has been conquered more often. When we got our act together we also conquered more, had a bigger empire and, most importantly, embraced it better. France may have the banlieues but we would have no culture or food worth talking about without the gift of our adopted sons and daughters. For all the troubles we have with racism, it's still a small thing to address in comparison to the gift we have from a real multi-cultural society.

You've misunderstood. The problem isn't falling populations. Falling populations aren't a problem. We are, arguably, running out of resources. The problem is having an economy that demands constant growth, an entire philosophical need for it, in fact. The US almost always manages to post impressive growth figures year in, year out, to the extent that it's a disaster if growth isn't 3-4% even during a recession. Immigration tends to provide a large chunk of that growth.

I think we basically agree but you're reacting to something different to what I would.

The US is built on a fantasy, and that fantasy requires substantial, at least 3-5 per cent per year, growth or the market gets concerned. Immigration and population growth in general goes a long way to providing that growth. When the home team starts to slacken off it becomes a cause for concern.

None of this makes the US a worse or less desirable place to live. In fact, you wouldn't want to live in the US after a hundred years of 5-6% population growth per year. It's good that things calm down and expected that GDP will slow down also.

Short term this will mean that a bunch of US companies will have their chickens come home to roost and stock prices will fall in certain cases because illusionary projected profits will never happen.

If you replace the one dollar bill with a scorpion then it's going to shake up most high street transactions. How much is that? $8.99? Here's ten bucks and keep the change...

I think your perception of DRM is wrong. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will not run if you aren't logged in to you BN account. It's not just a case of the games being LINKED to a BattleNet account, you have to be logged in to BattleNet to play the games. That is precisely DRM.

Probably fair to say that in the case of the article PC enthusiast translates much the same way you'd say muscle car enthusiast vs car owner. Most car owners will care about the performance of their car to one degree or another, but muscle/performance car enthusiasts actually get their hands dirty swapping out parts and upgrading as money becomes available.

Yeah. A 1%er will be someone with 1% of a whole Bitcoin.

If the Bitcoin economy approaches anything like a fraction of the GDP of Somalia then we're in trouble. I don't think lack of Bitcoin is going to be a major headache in the grand scheme of things.

You're conflating economies and currencies there. Also, there's nothing stopping a "third party" Government ruling that bitcoin is illegal. It's largely off the legislative table the same way it's off most people's radar. Once it gets noticed it could easily get put up on the same shelf as file-sharing and hacking. Or if you prefer a historical example it could be made illegal the exact same way gold-hoarding has been declared illegal in the past. What? Who would do anything so tyrannical as forbid the possession of more than a small amount of gold? USA, baby

And this is not even considering how vulnerable to exchange rates an artificial currency is. Like banks which exist on collective goodwill, fairy dust and rainbows, an artificial currency has nothing backing it. Faith in a real currency is, to an extent, faith in the actual country backing that currency. Real currencies can collapse when the economic situation in the issuing country enters crisis, whereas an artificial currency is going to be an order of magnitude more vulnerable to rumours and sentiment. An actual effective hack of the peer to peer system will render Bitcoin valueless.

Some people's idea of fun is to look at art. You're making the mistake of assuming everyone is the same. You might like Psychonauts, say, a colourful platformer with a wacky story and some quite challenging puzzle jumping. I might enjoy the Walking Dead game which is little more that an interactive movie interspersed with some quick time style events. We both have fun from our game of choice, but may hate playing the other game. We have many points of similarity, but also many differences. Also, I am a basset hound.

I think you're doing a good job of showcasing that gameplay, like art, is in the eye of the beholder. From your point of view gameplay is missing compared to older games. From my point of view, and I say this as someone who died a million times playing Jet Set Willy, the gameplay was missing from the older games. I actually WANT easier games where I can stroll through them, see everything, collect everything and then move on having felt I got my money's worth. Basically I want a game that rewards perseverance without demanding skill. I skew older on the gamer age chart, but I'm trending towards the norm.

Super Mario World used about half a dozen buttons and was, to an extent, a skinner box that drummed patterns into your head. I appreciate that you have every right to think that it has better gameplay than, say, Darksiders 2, but I really can't share that opinion.

Also, lawyers charge by the hour.

Okay, Napoleon, calm down. Would I still have a job if I was sentenced to life in jail? No. I'm going with no here. I may still have a family, probably a guy from Brooklyn with a lot more chest hair than me who likes to cuddle.

If I set fire to your house and it cost a hundred grand to put right, but I was doing it because something something annoyed me, that'd be okay? You're making the mistake that hacking is a victimless crime, that costs nothing to put right. If I blow up a bank, kill a bunch of hostages and hi-jack a plane during my robbery, the fault isn't with the bank's security. I'm being a dick.

Unless the Culture War involve throwing Petri dishes at scientists, I have no interest in it.

There aren't two million murderers or rapists in US prisons. Most US citizens in clink are there for drug offences where there is no victim but the inmate.