I can't hear dissenting opinions!

How is this different from not being able to buy tickets to an R rated movie? I never understood why game and movie sales aren't regulated in retail like movies are in the theaters. I'm all for anything that forces parents to pay more attention to what their kids are doing for entertainment.

Just goes to show you that no matter how annoying you can claim Microsoft to be, their user base can be equally so with their instance that decade-old software be their ONLY solution.

You gotta upgrade sometime, people.

I hate the Beatles, so I just wish he had done it sooner.

This is absolutely correct. Without Facebook's market of bored teens (and now adults), there would be no way this takes off. Browser games are literally a dime a dozen and from what I see, there's nothing in Farmville that separates it from the pack. Ironically, I think the original user base of Facebook (college students) are the least likely to pick up these games. Thanks for bringing all these wonderful new users and "features," Mark.

Totally disagree. For one, Civ takes way more thought and strategy. You are competing against something and must better your methods in order to win. For two, I know that in my own RTS playing time, I have to constantly and quickly calculate resources, allocate said resources, evaluate probabilities, problem solve for difficult defenses/offenses from my opponent, calculate build times and optimize efficiency of both production and damage output. I'll be the first to admit that nothing in this game makes me a mathematical/logical/tactical genius, but having to think about these things help to keep my mind sharp in such areas. There's a positive benefit to playing the game besides entertainment.

Now certainly, to each his own, regarding entertainment. To equate those two games though, is silly at best. It's like saying Chess and Candy Land are the same. Are they both games? Sure. Do they have comparable skill requirements or similar side-benefits bestowed to the player? Absolutely not. Does it make me an elitist for thinking that a game should have some challenge to overcome to be worth my time and mental capacity? Maybe.

Now if your wife pointed out that farmville and say...watching football were similar, I'd have to begrudgingly agree with her. I'll still insist that even watching a sporting event requires more thought than Farmville, but she'd be a lot closer than the comparison in the OP.

Not a shocking statement from a man justifying breaking up the most successful band in history to get high with Yoko Ono.

I never said it was much better in the past. I'm saying for all the advances in graphics, AI has taken a back seat, which has made games, in general, boring.

It seems the way to make AI these days is to make it really stupid and easy for the player to beat, unless the player turns it on hard mode, in which case, they see you from 5 miles away and one-hit you before you were aware the map had finished loading.

Studios are under a lot of pressure to churn out games as fast as possible these days and AI is suffering. The solution to making games challenging is to make them either never miss and insta-kill the player or to just give them tons of health and attack power, but keep them stupid. Neither strategy is entertaining and it would be nice to have actual care put into building intelligent, challenging AI instead.

Exposure to other parties is minimal. The two major parties spent hundreds of millions of dollars every election year getting re-elected and third parties just get lost in the crossfire. In my opinion, our political process would be much improved by giving everyone a state sponsored stipend they are allowed to use for campaigning and forbidding further spending...that and term limits for congressman.

I won't lie though, a lot of it is stupidity as well.

Most universities? Having just been in college and known many students across the country who attend very large schools (myself going to ASU), I can say that very few books are available for "checkout" and only a few copies, if any, are available at a time in any of the libraries.

This is just a step towards the DRM bullshit that currently resides in the music and gaming industry to be forced onto college students. Texts will be locked down and there will be no way to transfer them, which brings me to my main point.

The reason publishers want this move to eliminate the second hand book buying market. They will make their eText's expire after one semester and continue to sell them at ridiculous markups to every new wave of students. The days of selling your books back to the store or to other students will not survive long under such an "electronic only" environment and new "editions" will only come out faster without the process of actually printing them getting in the way of how fast they churn them out. The irony will be when it creates a p2p movement akin to the way music and movies are shared now and the publishers will, of course, cry foul while wallowing in piles of student's money.

This really reads like something out of fiction. I did not think I'd see the day of such a government, but here I am at 22 years old and already, a modern, 1st world country is to the point where it feels the need and justification to monitor every action of it's populace. The precedent here is staggering, terrifying and morally bankrupt. The possibility for abuse here is strong to the point of certainty. I pray this never makes it to a country I call home.

It's a media device. What else does it do that a laptop cannot? The interface is garbage for any sort of typing input and it lacks processing power to do any real calculations, so it's not a tool for anything in depth.

I am shocked that this product is doing this well, but I'm not shocked that there are people out there who think that simple popularity is indicative of quality. I take it you also credit Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga with being two of the best musicians of all time thanks to their record sales?

And if I'm missing the point of the iPad, you failed to show it to me. I eagerly await your reply that includes actual examples of useful things you can do beyond media.

Do people buy it? Absolutely. Does that mean it's worth anything close to it's price? Absolutely not.

This is pretty much exactly the case. The iPad is for media...but how much media can you download/stream in 1GB?

Also, I'm going to take this opportunity to once again state how much of a rip off a 64GB media player is for $830. I can buy a very capable laptop with 3G capability for less than that and it will be useful for more than just browsing pictures and watching youtube. Honestly, my Samsung Epic is just as capable as the iPad for most purposes and costs much less while being a useful phone at the same time.

Because 1) CEOs proposed it and everyone knows they're all evil 2) The outcry of lobbyists in the industries that depend on the government wastefulness to pad their bottom line will put out the message that this is "killing private business and costing citizens their jobs."