This is probably the most brilliant "Sim" game I've heard of since SimCity! I would buy this in a second, it is really a brilliant idea! And it would be GREAT education for kids!

Gamers--the people who really fuel the gaming industry (as opposed to the casual gamer) are a very unique market segment. They are, for the most part, people who actually *think*. A religious game targeted at this group would make no sense, as many of the responses to this story have demonstrated. Not only would I say the majority of the "gamer" market is probably atheist, but even the ones who do believe in something are much more likely to be independent in their thinking and what they believe, and not likely to take their religion from a third party source such as a video game.

Now, certainly some religious mythology could be used to make some good games. And this is the sad part, I find. Game manufacturers are too afraid of offending the right-wing religious nutjobs who are out there monitoring everything. Even though these people in no way represent their market, they end up controlling so much and can even have a negative impact on sales. (Of course, as with GTA, it can also have the opposite effect.) I would like to see a Jesus vs .Mohammed-style deathmatch game. Of course then the Muslims would totally freak out for allowing their precious messenger to appear in a game.

I could also easily see a MMORPG set in the middle ages with a heavy religious theme, which would be great--so long as it's accurate. Using religion to control your subjects just as it was used in real life.

It's also too bad that it would be illegal to insert religion into "America's Army," because those people would be the perfect audience to receive it!

This is exactly right. And it's not only wifi, they charge extra for pool/health club access, no free breakfast, parking like you already mentioned, sometimes they even charge for airport shuttles! It really is insane. I always try to avoid those hotels if I can... Sure, they might have fluffy beds and fancy marble showers, but the rest of the service is just terrible...

You have an interesting definition of "better." Sure Starbucks only has cakes and muffins, but at least it's real food that isn't going to rot you from the inside-out! I'm not saying I never eat at McDonald's, but I certainly regret it when I do... No person who cares about their body should be eating there, pretty much ever...

I've been using this Adblock+ extension in Chromium for a while and it works well and even supports (Firefox) Adblock Plus subscriptions. However, Chromium doesn't yet support content filtering so all this extension does is *hide* ads, it does not stop them from loading...

I have no mod points, but this is exactly what I was going to suggest... Get the best of both worlds.

That's a good point, I thought pretty much all phones released these days were quad-band. This is yet another area where the lack of standardization (of frequencies) is extremely frustrating. I also got my phone in the UK which I use on T-Mobile here since what they offer is such junk...

Do you have some source to show that Verizon's CDMA network covers an area "much larger than all of Europe"? It's true that Europe might only be 85% the size of the U.S., but it is much more densely populated, and mobile coverage is much better overall. There are huge unpopulated areas of the U.S. with little or no mobile coverage at all, and these need to be taken into account. I question very much whether Verizon covers a greater area than the GSM networks in Europe. If I had to guess, they are probably about the same. And this does not account for the entire rest of the world that is also using GSM!

Also, it is extremely wasteful to buy a second "throwaway" phone, when you simply need a new sim card. You are right that most Americans never leave this country, which is extremely pathetic but that is a separate issue.

Open standards and interoperability are important when it comes to everything else here on Slashdot, there's no reason mobile phones should be an exception. A while ago, "no one" would care that some websites didn't render correctly in Mozilla because it's irrelevant to "almost everyone" who used IE, with all of its standards-breaking bugs... Those of us who actually *know* need to lead the ignorant masses who don't, and who will never care.

Illustrating how Verizon's proprietary CDMA garbage is only available in the USA and very few limited countries, while the GSM that AT&T uses is available around the entire world. That would put Verizon in their place.

I can't tell if this is a typo or an actual term someone might use. I suppose shuttering the operation would simply mean concealing it from the public?

This whole notion of releasing these tiny, little crap software programs for money and profit is absurd. This is why I can't stand the Apple commercials advertising their thousands of "apps" for this and that...they never mention the fact that said apps are being released by greedy developers who insist upon selling them. And it seems Apple doesn't even want developers to release the source code of their apps either. We have to accept the fact that Apple is actually trying to fuel the proprietary software "industry" on their iPhone platform, and that it is in their best interests for people to sell their apps, and dupe users into thinking they should have to pay for such software. What a waste of talent when so many talented developers are writing useless iPhone apps in an attempt to make money instead of contributing to decent open source software for everyone to enjoy...

Thank god my N900 will be able to run whatever open source apps I chose, free of piracy...

This can only be a good thing... Seriously, people who use this kind of proprietary software *deserve* to get screwed over by their corporate software masters. For too long people have lived under the false assumption that they have rights, but the fact is these software developers can do whatever the hell they want, and there is nothing people can do about it so long as they keep purchasing their proprietary software! Maybe this will help a few more people get a clue and move to open source.

One more comment... To all the people who are criticizing touch-typing and bragging about how they can type 40-60 WPM without it--get a clue! That's really bad! Now, don't get me wrong--I certainly don't think everyone needs to type at 100 WPM for most jobs, but come on... Anything less is simply not outstanding. I believe that there are probably other, better ways to learn to type, but this one does work well for most people. The point is the end result, not the method... Students should be able to type at a decent rate (75 WPM average?), without looking at the keyboard. The method they choose to employ to do this is entirely arbitrary. I don't know how you can possibly transcribe something quickly when you have to look at the keys, and that is an important skill.

I think a much more important comment is that too many kids get to school already having developed poor typing habits that are difficult to overcome. We really need to teach typing at a very early age, in pre-school.

We had basic first aid in our required health class in high school, but I agree it's ridiculous that more practical skills aren't taught, since a hell of a lot of parents aren't teaching them in this country, assuming they know them at all...which is very often not the case when it comes to personal finance! Everyone knows U.S. schools are always reaching toward the lowest common denominator in order to ensure their funding... We should easily be able to teach kids twice as much as we are now, but that would require us to actually expect something out of them!