I prefer games with off-line/stand-alone play as my internet isn't reliable during the summer, when I have the time to play.

You don't need to be online to play games you bought on Steam, unless they are online games, in which case, guess what? you need to be online to play anyway.

Because the game bought in Wal-Mart includes features such as "Access to community updates" and "play with your friends".

The Steam version has exactly the same features. And you don't have to support Wal-Mart.

The people who are being shut out of Steam Workshop are not people who are buying games at Wal-Mart, and if you don't want to use Steam, then why would you complain about not being able to access Steam Workshop?

I want to hear from one single person who is being legitimately put out because of this $5 purchase requirement.

I would say some people may get annoyed due to following limitations:

So wait for a sale, buy a game for $5 that was $49 a year ago, and then you're good to go in Steam Workshop.

And why should Steam give you credit for buying games at Wal-Mart?

Also to spend money you have to hand over your personal information such as your full home address.

Not to Steam, you don't. I buy games on Steam using PayPal.

If you've only spent $4.50 on games, what they hell are you doing trying to get involved in mod discussions. The last thing those discussion forums need is more spammers.

If you set the threshold that high, new users will probably be turned off by the price of entry.

It doesn't prevent them from playing their games, it just prevents them from hassling other users.

If you want to spend $4.25 on a game on Steam, you can play that game to your heart's content. You just can't start spamming other users.

So no, new users will NOT be probably turned off by the price of entry into the community, even if the threshold is $50. Personally, I think the threshold should be $25 and three months of use.

I'll start asking what I can do for my country instead of what it can do for me when government and industry lead as examples. I'm not your fucking Boxer.

The main difference I'd see is that it's much harder if not impossible to spoof an IP address in a TCP connection, considering that it takes a completed handshake before any meaningful traffic (read: lots of bits) can take place. I could for example see this making upstream filtering of DDoS attacks more difficult.

However, not having FM support on my cell phone does significantly decrease my chances of hearing lite rock and smooth jazz.

Hmm... can the phones only receive or also send?

Ok, you are not aware of the "if the headline asks a question, the answer is invariably 'no'" meme.

Then Germany and parts of Poland would now be a smoldering crater of a nuclear death zone with little chance to ever clean it up in this or any of the next generations.

By no later than 1944, the German Luftwaffe was in no position to conduct any offensive action anymore. The air superiority of the allied was total. Including Germany. So even if he had the bomb, he certainly would not have any means to deliver it anywhere beyond the areas that Germany still occupied.

Given his "strategy" (I'll use that term loosely here) of scorched earth, it's likely that he would have had it used to increase the destruction on the retreat, to decrease the useful materials the approaching allies could use (as he did) but also to create a zone of denial that they would either have to avoid (and thus lengthen the supply lines) or cross while accepting the losses (something the Soviets would probably even have done).

In short, Germany having the bomb after 1944 would maybe have lengthened the war (though this is unlikely due to the Allies having it in Summer 1945 and Berlin having actually been the original main target, Germany was just lucky that it surrendered before the bomb was ready for shipment). It would certainly have meant more suffering for Germany due to self inflicted nuclear destruction (Hitler himself considered the Germans "unworthy" at the end of the war because they have "proven to be the weaker people and not worthy of continued existence". Together with his fantasy of a "Götterdämmerung", an epic apocalypse that has to happen to "his" Germany if he himself fails, it's likely that he would have called for the destruction of large cities before they fall into enemy hands. What would have been interesting is to see how many people would actually have been fanatical enough to do it).

Even excerpts of a diary would probably not be covered by "reporting". But hell, just wait. He died on May 1st 1945. Copyright in Europe is, if memory serves me right, life of author + 70 years.

In about 2 weeks it's 70 years that Goebbels died.

Even if Dr. Oz is a dunce advocating quackery, isn't that enough to boot him from the department without adding this?

I don't care about Dr Oz. He's a TV goofball and I couldn't pick him out of a lineup.