You left out disruptive.

I was always under the impression that Roddenberry went out of his way to make sure there was an exception for "Tricorder" so that it wasn't trademark incumbered (hoping that the term would gain traction); though you can't violate the "look & feel" of Paramount's IP. I could be wrong though.

This post was brought to you by the FBI.

This, the DS was probably the worst offender. How am I supposed to use the control pad and write at the same time? It was easier to lay the thing on the table, direct the D-pad with my pinkie and write with the same hand. Definitely a design flaw.

Other than that, guns and guitars are the only things that give me problems, keyboards and mice, not so much. Actually I think southpaws may come out a little ahead. Few people draw with a mouse, so it leave you with an advantage when picking out keys and navigating.

Though I entirely agree with the sentiment and it was the first thing I thought (would love to see 2K get the rights to System Shock and let Irrational do a SS title whenever they felt like it), I'm not sure if that is even possible.

EA only owns the trademark "System Shock", but they don't own the rights, that belongs to the Meadowbrook Insurance Group, Inc.. No idea how this works, but it has prevented there being another System Shock game.

Nah, Ubi has a special level of disdain for their customers.

EA, thinks you are a stupid mouth hole who will eat anything, but they also think of themselves as professional mouth hole feeders.

Ubi thinks you are a stupid mouth hole, but they also resent you for being fat.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. They can pull in billions and still fail at their mission. All of that money would just flow back into Congress (whether this is right or wrong is another debate entirely).

You can't have a product to sell unless you have sane means of effectively generating that product.

If I'm running a lemonade stand and my only investor demands that I buy their hydroponic lemons from Alaska and I can only use beet sugar from North Dakota my business is going to have some serious issues. This is the real problem, not licensing on mattresses.

IRL the stereotypical Rubyista can be a little annoying, but you have to remind yourself that you were probably that guy/girl at some point, bolting frameworks down to the depths of Hell and carrying your cargo code with pride.

The big problem is that old hands are intimidated by the hipster trappings and aren't around to remind them that they made a lot of the same mistakes in their past.

Had one of the live streams and solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes/ running the simulation. Gotta say, even if it was all fluff PR, it was the best piece of PR I've seen in decades. Just perfect.

And that is how Obamney is leading in the polls.

It is a cycle really.

It started with the minstrel show (chances are Daniel Decatur Emmett didn't write Dixie, but he got to be the first "sell face" in American pop music), but Tin Pan Alley turned it an industry and they were in it 100% for the copyright.

Every time the music industry takes good music and turns it into cynical, cookie cutter, garbage, some listener-turned-musician turns it into something else. Then the cycle starts over again. So maybe we shouldn't think of it as cookie cutter garbage, perhaps it is just fertilizer.

Since when was knowing how to pick a lock not a part of a young nerd's rite of passage?

It is like taking clocks apart or building "spy gadgets".

That isn't so much a NASA problem as it is a Congress problem. Everything takes 15 years and costs 3 times what it should because Congress wants it that way. That is what happens when you have to please 535 politicians.

In the end that is why I've always rejected stuff like Windows Market Place or Apple's App Store or EA's Origin. I want to go through a 3rd party and not buy directly from the publisher or OS vendor (yes, I'm sure someone will point out that I'm a hypocrite who needs to burn in a fire because Valve release their own titles via Steam, whatever), In the end I don't want the 1st party or the publisher as the sole arbiter of every term and condition.

There is a reason I don't buy my health insurance directly from Pfizer or the nearest Hospital, because both would love to have me over that barrel. This is the same reason I buy from GOG or Greenman or Steam. I want a collective bargaining power.

Unfortunately, I think I'm in the extreme minority on this one.