I changed my ISP within the last month. However, my previous ISP provided service for nine years, and I was happy with them. The reason for me to change was a reduction in cost, and so far the quality has been the same (100/100mbit fiber)

You're very naive. Yes, it's fair to believe it's the manufacturers responsibility to test this, but in reality they either just don't care or lack the resources to properly test such a complicated device across all hardware/software-configurations possible - or any combination of the above reasons or other reasons I haven't mentioned.

The sad reality is that Joe Average demands the latest shiny crap, and he demands it immediately. Companies making technology today need to push out the latest and greatest with only minimal testing, or they will have their lunch eaten by the competitor who launched a similar product earlier but with even less testing and product development.

I assure you, the days when companies actually cared about their product beyond launch or enough to avoid a class-action lawsuit because of a crappy product are long gone, my friend.

Minecraft.

"Slightly british"? I read it with freakin' David Attenboroughs voice in my head.

I work as a computer service technician, among others I do warranty work for HP and Lenovo, as well as regular old Joe Average "Mah computah is kinda funneh" walk-in service. On any given day I work on at least 12-16 computers. About half of these are laptops with their own keyboard, the other half is stationary computers for which I provide my own keyboard. The three keyboards I keep on my workbench have literally been plugged into hundreds of computers just the last few months.

... have I (as a PC gamer) encountered crappy console conversions. Three examples off the top of my head:

Mirrors Edge: Yes, you could configure the controls, but in-game they were still referred to by their Xbox 360 identifiers. I.e. you could set jump to space, but in the tutorial it kept referring to non-existant buttons. Made the game virtually impossible to play since you'd get confused by the bad labeling.

Blur: Insane keyboard controls and completely unconfigurable. You had two keyboard layouts to choose from, both pre-defined and written in stone. Or you could use a 360-controller. Completely retarded. Various references all through the game telling you not to turn off your "console" while saving.

Assassins Creed: Completely un-intuitive console controls. Impossible to change.

Feel free to provide more examples.

Back in Y2K sometime, one of my friends mom wanted to get a hotmail-account. She asked if it was difficult, we said no, you just go to the site and sign up.

So a while later she asked me and friend about it, and said something to the effect of "I can't find where to sign up for email among all the naked guys" which made us a little confused.

Turns out she'd mistaken the domainname and gone to hotmale.com instead of hotmail.com - the former being a gay porn site, the latter being the webmail we all love and hate.

Oops.

Don't forget the recent Portal 2, which is quite pretty to look at, as well as an amazing story and immersive game, and it's running on a somewhat hot-rodded version of the Source engine, which is a bit over six years old now.

So by your logic, every time you find a snail in your garden you nuke the entire planet?

I mean, you can never be sure so basically every morning when you sit down in front of your computer you flash bios and reinstall operating system from scratch? I guess you don't get much done in a day since every day you have to spend 8-9 hours shuffling your data around and reinstalling.

Reminds me of that quote by C-3PO:

"Oh my goodness! Shut me down. Machines building machines. How perverse."

I would also like to add a positive comment to give you support.

One of my closest friends came out as transexual not too long ago, and he was incredibly nervous at first. Currently only about three people know, but I try to be as supportive as possible. As of now I don't understand how his process worked or how he came to the conclusion that he probably was a she instead, but as a friend I try to show support and understadning.

I say that if your parents don't understand, if your friends don't understand - then that's their goddamn problem and their loss. I know it hurts having to lose people in your life just because you want to be who you are, but if they can't adapt or throw tired clichés at you, then you should mourn their loss and move on. Find new friends, find new extended family.

Take care, and be strong!

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!

There, ya happy now?

Seemingly, neither did the producers of it.

"It's a trick. Get an axe."

Many years ago, a good friend of mine dropped his Nokia 3110 in the snow outside his parents house. We lived way up in the arctic then, and we couldn't find it.

So we basically assumed it was gone forever.

Later we found out that it had gotten frozen in the snow, and covered with a huge snowpile. His dad found the phone when he ran over it with his snowblower. It got sucked into the snowblower, blown maybe 20 yards away and landed in anoter pile of snow. His dad wondered what the clunk was and found the phone.

We thawed it out, plugged it in the charger and it lit up just as new. It had been frozen in ice/snow for maybe four months, gone through a snowblower and then thawed out and the only visible damage to it was a small chunk taken out of the plastic casing by one of the snowblowers blades.

Same phone was later the following summer accidentally dropped into shallow water in a lake. He dove down after it, let it dry in the sun and it started up just as new again. Only effect of a dip in the lake was that the numberpad squeaked for a few days afterwards.

The thing that almost killed it was a three-story drop onto concrete. The phone survived with some superficial damage to the casing and a distorted frame, but you could still use it. However the display got smashed in the fall and that made it quite useless so he retired it.