Blizzard did in fact try to take some measures a couple of years ago regarding South Africa and our fleet of Private Servers. Because of the high volume of "private servers" in SA (hosting all of Blizzards games [starcraft, d1,d2,War3, and WoW]) Blizzard threatened not to ship WoW - The Burning Crusade to South Africa. This fell through as the game was oddly enough available in Zimbabwe, and so suppliers were just importing the game. This being said, one of the main reasons PS exist in SA is because our pings to Blizzard servers(and everywhere else in the world) usually vary between 600-1200ms. It can be lowered to 350, but this requires a purchase of an unshaped account (which sells for over R125 per gig). So instead, SA gamers choose to rather enjoy a lag free game, rather than a full feature game. And with local bandwidth costing almost 10% of our "blended" bandwidth some players are almost forced into using PS. I'm not saying that this is a valid excuse to host PS, but sometimes when you are forced into a corner, you just have to make do with what you have.

The big advantage of DX 11 is Tesselation / Displacement, Realtime Meshdisplacement and making Normal maps into geometric detail. Here is dx 10 vs dx 11 : Dx 10 : http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/original/2009/10/Tesselation_aus.jpg Dx 11: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/original/2009/10/Tessellation_an.jpg Even with the screenshots of the car in the link mentioned in the article you can see how the water is more interactive to the forces applied to it. But yes, just like the early days of anti-aliasing, this is going to complete rape PC's for a while.

Strangely enough I've heard and experience the complete opposite. I've been burglarized twice in my life, and both were done by highly organised crime gangs. Sure your small time druggies are just looking for something to grab so that they can get another hit, but organised gangs will thrive on information like this, to see who is afk and who isn't. And in the end, it will be these guys who will drive away with your flat screen's and suitcases full of everything else thanks to AR. Or maybe the burglar's in South Africa are just smarter than those in Holldand

In the future bands will refer to this as the "old musicians retirement fund"

If they are going to go down that root surely the Pencil Test is faster and cheaper? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil_test

I can't agree more this post, even if I tried. Sure, cursive is no longer the most common form of writing, and it definitely should not be forced upon 10 year kids who probably struggle just to write their own name in print, and can't seem to understand why they can't just type it out on PC and print it. But their is something magical and personal about cursive, and with it reaching extinction ( as far as the general population goes ) it will definitely live on as an art form, which will continue to be used. If I was given the option of receiving a letter from a loved one either by Email or by letter written in cursive, I'd choose cursive every time (of course in a world where everything is instant, waiting 1day for the postal service to deliver the letter is just too damn much to ask). It boils down to culture, taste and appreciate for art. If you don't give two shites about art, culture or history you probably don't care about handwritings or anything vaguely outside of your own interest field, then this discussion is futile (unfortunately it seems the Arts and Culture movement is just not happening at /. ) because we working form two completely separate frameworks. We have those who believe that if it isn't modern, instant and easy it is pointless, useless and completely backwards and has no place in a society trying to "advance" (what ever the that means) who will work with a frameword formed by speed and efficiency, while others (like myself) who might take the stand of personalization, enjoyment of culture and that which is not necessarily advancing society but definitely adding riches to it will take it from a more personal view. One of personal enrichment, and the pleasures and luxuries of life that have no price value, but build up character, and stirs up the emotions. all in all, cursive will die out (but only to the general public) their will always be a remnant who hold on to a form of writing that definitely is more personalized than any email will ever be.

Just kill all the butterflies?