I don't know if they're sending emails at all, I didn't get one. This information was shown in a popup after you close a game, inside Steam's software. That's where I got to know about it.

I don't know how things work in other countries but all banks in Portugal allow you to link your account to a service called MBNet, which allows you to create a virtual CC number with the balance that you need to make a purchase and it expires in 2 days or after it's used.

Ever since I got to know about it, I don't use anything else and I don't know why someone would. You don't even need a CC, it's linked to your bank account.

So every time you need to make a purchase, you create a CC number on the fly, with the spending limit of the purchase you want to make and this CC information will be useless after you complete the purchase.

That's all hackers will ever get from me, a bunch of useless CC numbers.

Maybe they should decide on the form factor before deciding on the manufacturer. It's like saying, "Hey, our staff could use some Toyota Yaris! It would cut down the time they spend using the bus!"

Are there any good reasons to have a 7-day week anyway? I'm asking from pure ignorance because there may be, specially after everything in our lives that got adapted to that. But if we ignore everything we built on top of it, is there a good reason to choose that system over any other?

I'm asking because I always felt this is something that should be rethought. Is it really beneficial for human beings, to work 5 consecutive days and have 2 days off (in most cases). Is there any research on that?

I partially agree with this move, not because of budgets, but because I feel that working 5 consecutive days decreases your productivity as opposed to, let's say, working 3 days in a row and having 1 day off. A 4-day week system that wouldn't decrease productivity in the long run since you increase the working days and decrease the consecutive working days. Maybe a better system would be a 2/1 ratio on working vs weekend days. Who knows? All I'm saying is that this should be rethought and studies should be made.

I know I went on a tangent here, feel free to mod me down for being off-topic, this is just something I feel should be talked about but for other reasons than what these schools presented.

I'd refuse your request and mod you up if I could because that really needs to be said. As an atheist myself, the monopoly atheists in these sort of discussions think they have on reason just shows a lack of understanding of the other side.

I had less than 100 but I added a few more so now I can vote on this poll.

I'm going to delete them now.

In related news, cancer has been found to cure HIV.

This doesn't really bother me too much but I don't buy any of those excuses to require the internet all the time.

Protecting the game's economy? That does not require this feature. Diablo 2 already did that. Basically it separated players in two worlds, one where they guarantee fairness but you need to be connected all the time, and another where everything goes and you could use those characters offline. This seems like a reasonable position that has the best of both worlds with no negative consequences so taking away the offline part is not an improvement in any perspective you could use. This is obviously a downgrade that can only be explained by lack of time (or willingness to make an extra effort for those who used that feature) or it's about piracy, which is ok but I'd rather if they'd just admit it instead of saying that they're doing it because it's "the way things are going" and making it sound like an improvement.

I said this didn't bother me because I ended up playing single player connected to Battle.Net all the time so that I could do fair PvP or trading. However, this is a limitation that I have put myself into because I understood the advantages and even though I almost didn't use much offline single player, I appreciate the choice.

Taking into account that it's for kids in a charity, I'd go with Ubuntu. I already set up Ubuntu machines for kids and excluding one or two bumps along the way (which Windows XP isn't imune to) it works just fine.

These are my reasons:

1) Windows XP at this point is too vulnerable to malware. I've seen networks in businesses based on XP that were basically breeding grounds for all sorts of viruses, even with paid AV software up to date, and I assume you'll have only free AV protection in them. Also note that you can't use the latest browser from MS so to be up to date on that you should use another one. If I had to bet, I'd say those computers in the hands of kids will be full of malware in a very short time.

2) Ubuntu is easy to use. I'd go as far as to say that it's more intuitive than Windows. Of course, this won't apply to people that lived their whole lives using Windows but since we're talking about kids here, I don't think that should be much of a problem. I'd stick with Ubuntu classic desktop instead of Unity though, since it's just easier to understand.

3) With a centralized repository of software, kids can install new games and other apps without looking in the wild west of the internet and dealing with installers and potentially harmful stuff.

4) In terms of content and applications, a new installation of Ubuntu is much superior than a new installation of Windows. Of course, this is not a problem if you intend to put some work setting up your Windows with more software before donating, like an office suite, etc.

5) No licensing issues whatsoever, no matter how many people use it, how they use it, how they access it, etc. This may not be a problem in your case.