And after some time, who would stop this 3rd party "police" from buckling under pressure from governments/corporations and start scanning all email accounts for other "unfit", "inappropriate" and "potentially harmful" content and banning accounts on a whim? Thanks, but no thanks.

Apart from the obvious quality/crap ratio problem, there's also the MS points as currency conundrum. Why do some (mostly media) corporations insist on obfuscating prices with native point systems? It doesn' matter that they make odd bucks by uneven surplusses when people buy way way less by having to jump through extra hoops just to make a microtransaction? I buy 1/2/3/5-dollar apps all the time for iOS, and would probably do the same in Steam if I was a PC/Mac gamer, but on Xbox Live, when I have to buy big chunks of MS points at confusing rates and quantities? No thanks. And I'm sure that's a big part of the problem for XBLA/XBLIG. Just let people see the real price and buy with a single click (okay okay, thumbstick depress).

...but damn, tech stuff is cheap in the US compared to here in Europe. The 32GB model sells at the very least for $1107 here in Sweden .

I was in the exact same position two years ago with my daughter. We opted then for ScummVM and the fabulous point'n'click-games of yesteryear. Day of The Tentacle was her absolute favourite, and we sure had some excellent father-and-daughter quality time...

My gut feeling tells me to instinctively feel negative towards anything about Mr. Zuckerberg, but in this case I have to pay the man some respect.

I've been a vegetarian for 18 years now (yeah yeah, I'm old and all that), not because I am against meat-eating per se (we are after all omnivores as a species), but because I am firmly against the meat industry. Animals are just a little more than commodities IMHO, even if only so slightly. There's also the question of environmental impact... Vegetarianism was the only sensible route for me personally at that time, but I'd gladly go the way of the hunter if it was feasible.

What, did you think meat came prepacked from the factory? Now, get off my lawn!

I wouldn't be so sure about either of those statements. All OSes have some instability issues, it seems. Something gets patched, another thing gets botched... And Apple has flagged for significant changes in iOS 5, so widgets could very well make their way onto the iPad home/lock screen.

Put some pressure on your provider. After some haggling, I got a brand new iPad microSIM card tied in with my existing 10 GB/mo iPhone data plan for 4 bucks a month. I rarely go over 3GB/mo from both devices combined, so my provider is happy i chip in a few extra bucks a month, and I'm happy I don't have to have a new separate plan for te tablet. Win-win!

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. The ethicator, with the moral compromise spectral release phantasmatron. The transmogrifier. The time machine. The cerebral enhance-o-tron. The duplicator. The invisible cretinizer. Oh, and the bed-making robot (although that one did fail). Need I list more?

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

People are human, and react humanely when subjected to imagery consisting of people actually suffering.

NOW I understand why I always get a thorough a**-whooping whenever I try playing Battlefield Vietnam.

I got about the same deal on my contracts here in Sweden. One is 7 euros/mo, 500 MB cap, the other is an unlimited call/SMS/MMS plan with 10 GB data included for a grand total of 60 euros/mo (also including an iPhone 4). When I hit the cap in either plan, my telco imposes a 120kbit/sec limit, which still is sufficient for all but high bitrate video. I get what I pay for, and I never have to worry about being cut off completely. I'm a happy customer, and my telco makes money and gets to keep me as a customer. Win-win. The market works. Capitalism as it should be.

Apple DRM? Last I checked, iTunes Store didn't contain any DRM-crippled files anymore. Just plain AAC-encoded music. Or am I wrong? Does Apple ID3-tag the songs with some info about the buyer or implement some other nefarious scheme?

Which is, in any country with a civil law system, a pesky case to make if you don't simultaneously prosecute someone for the actual main crime (in this case infringement of intellectual property).

In this particular trial noone was actually prosecuted for infringement, so many legal experts believe the case won't hold up when it eventually gets to the Supreme Court. If there never was a proven main crime, how can one get sentenced for conspiracy to commit it / accessory in executing it?

Technicalities, sure, but we do have such precedents.

I'm Swedish, and trust me, the prison system here *is* mainly a Broadway show. If they ever get to serve time in actual jail (we have a pretty extensive electronic footlock-system here which makes you being able to serve your sentence at home), they'll probably go to a minimum-security facility with own apartment-style cells with own TV:s, Internet access, nearly unlimited external visitors, the right to wear their own clothes and so on... and most prisoners get paroled (if they showed good behaviour) at around two thirds of the actual time they were sentenced to.

As for the fine... That's a bit of a "so what?" here as well. The Swedish equivalent to the IRS will probably try to foreclose their possessions (real estate, cars, luxury articles and so on), find that they don't possess anything of value and just leave them be with a debt they'll never get to pay off until it is written off (normally after 10 years if the debt is to a private/commercial entity, shorter if you owe the government). Basically, they'll just need to move abroad for a few years (which Svartholm already has, allegedly), and the debt will be gone when (if) they move back.