I hated it. I don't remember the hype at all, but I *do* remember sitting in the theatre, writhing in pain at the terrible script. The scene where the girl brags about what a great guy Costner's character is was pure agony, and then the film somehow managed to get even worse.. ;p Independence Day at least had the saving grace of being funny bad, but Waterworld was just plain bad. IMO, of course.

I prefer the mouse and keyboard for first-person shooters (PS2-controller... ugh), but the tablet (Wacom etc) is far better for point-and-click type games, such as Diablo, Myth, and Plants vs Zombies. It's much faster than the mouse for that kind of game and it's far better for your wrist and hand. Still need the keyboard, of course.

I was going to make a snarky comment about how most games have really lame stories, but then I remembered that that also goes for most movies.

I haven't even used floppies in the last 15 years. I never understood the complaints about the floppy-less iMac. To me it was like complaining about new cars not having hand-cranks. What did I use instead of floppies? Email.

As others have already noted, movies *do* have free demos; they're known as "trailers." However, I never buy games unless I've played the demo first, and only if the demo runs well on my HW and it leaves me wanting more. No demo for me, no buy game from you. Sturgeon's Law applies to game just like anything else, and I'm not going to *pay* to find out whether a specific game is for me or not. The gaming bigwigs want to charge for demos? Fine. I'm sure the smaller developers will stay with the free demos, and I'll play their games instead. That's where the original stuff is anyway (yes, Sturgeon's Law still applies).

Don't worry about natural selection; it's still killing us. While it's true that we're no longer being eaten by giant bears and saber-tooth tigers, we have a bunch of new things that can kill us, like traffic, drug addiction, and modern warfare. Also, the old killers like disease and famine never went away. Modern society probably puts different selective pressures on us, but we still have to adapt to our surroundings.

They have needs too, you know...

... the teabagger movement? I'm not sure whether they count as "terrorists" (whatever that means these days), but afaik they are talking about the US needing a new revolution. "Take our country back" etc. Sounds like subversion to me.

... a fundamental part of science? It might not be apparent when science classes are nothing but a series of dusty chalkboards though. IMO kids should be taught to tell the difference between science and not-science.