It's not a parent on the form, though they are saying it's their intellectual property. Specifically, they're asserting it's trade dress, that consumers use that specific form factor to identify their product in the market. It's true that they might have acquired the "secondary meaning" in the market for that form factor, but given that they were hardly the first to release a product in that form factor I think it's ridiculous that they should be able to claim trade dress for it.

You're right. It's not the home screen at all, it's the applications list screen in grid mode. On the home screen, there's a button to the application list where the home button appears in that picture.

From the rumblings I've been hearing, rather than adding a new R18+ rating about the MA15+ rating, what they may be intending to do is simply to change the current MA15+ rating into an R18+ rating. All the games currently ending up as refused classification because they go beyond what's allowed for the MA15+ rating would still be refused classification. Such a change would be fairly dangerous for our marketplace, I'd think. With the way the general public treats R ratings for film and TV, an R18+ sticker would be a death sentence to games that would have gotten an MA15+ before, where they would have expected good sales to teens. Under that kind of situation, we could potentially see games even more dramatically cut here in Australia, so they could scrape in with an M or even a PG rating.

The actual court order is over on Chilling Effects http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=2160 It expressly says that Google is to remove the links "from all their sites". So...yeah, the publishers got what they wished for, they just didn't realise what that would really imply.

Which does raise some interesting questions about how Google works on the backend. I wonder if it's actually possible for a news site to appear on one and not the other with how Google's search database is setup. If you do a regular Google search, one of the ways you can narrow things down in the left sidebar is news. I'm getting the idea that for a website to be correctly indexed so that it appears when you narrow down the search to news, it would also appear in Google News aggregated feeds. So technically it should therefore be possible to index the site without it appearing on Google News, however it'd also mean that Google can't actually then filter them properly on their search results.

Sounds to me like that court order pretty much required Google to do what they did. I assume the newspapers simply didn't realise exactly what it was they were really asking for when they made that attack, and I'm sure their competitors are loving them for it right now.

Nope, it's theistic evolution. Both viewpoints essentially say that "god created the universe", however intelligent design goes a step further in claiming that "life was created (by god but we won't use that word) and hasn't changed". while theistic evolution is more "god designed the laws that govern life, the universe and everything, and thus the process of evolution is part of his/her/its unknowable grand plan, with god having set off in some way the chain of events which led to the eventual creation of life".

Considering that the standard placebo is a sugar pill, it's certainly something that should be investigated.

I do have to wonder, what would give anyone the impression that HDTV capability wouldn't be included? In 2005, HDTV's were still rare, and the components were expensive. Now, they're a lot more common, most new TV's are HDTV compatible, and the components to throw it in a console would be cheap, easily allowing them to include it without impacting on the profit margins of the console. There's no business reason for Nintendo to exclude it, and plenty to include it, so why is there this impression amongst some that they wouldn't? A vestige of the old "Nintendo is for kiddies" crowd, not believing Nintendo could ever put something in a console that would appeal to (supposed) "grown-ups"?

As this generation has shown, I think it's fair to say that while it may be profitable over a longer term, there's less lifetime of product profits to be had from it. In the case of Sony, I'd imagine they would have been willing to eat any less of potential profits on the gaming side in exchange for synergies with their movie business. Getting more of their Blu-ray drives out there helped them to win that format war and gave them a revenue stream that they wouldn't have had previously, so even as losers in the gaming race, they're still coming out well ahead as a company overall. Nintendo doesn't have those same external business concerns to worry about however.

And it's these kind of posts which just reinforce my feeling that the attitudes against the Wiimote for FPS are based on a faulty understanding of exactly how to use the controller. I will admit, Nintendo did shoot themselves in the foot with their advertisements depicting people holding their arm up perfectly straight and pointed at the screen. It looks awesome in an ad, but no one would find the Wiimote comfortable if they had to do that. However, that's simply not how anyone who's really sat down and played with these for extended periods would use it. Best way to understand it is to think of staring down your arm and the Wiimote to aim as equivalent of you zooming while using a sniper rifle. You don't go walking around doing that every single instant of playing an FPS game, I'm sure. Most of the time, you're really going to be shooting from the hip, as it were, relying on your targeting reticule to aim. We do the exact same thing with the Wiimote. Most of the time, you would keep your hand either on an arm rest or in your lap (exactly the same posture you use for a traditional controller is perfectly fine, and perhaps even optimal), moving more with your wrist than anything else. You certainly shouldn't be getting any shoulder strain, because your shoulder shouldn't even be in use there. Nor would you need to stand up. When you relax and play like this, the pointer effectively becomes the same as a mouse cursor, and it doesn't take long to get used to the range of movements you'll need to make to move that cursor around.

They may not be swear words, but I never said they were. I would imagine however that you do consider their use fairly crude, and not something acceptable in polite, professional company. Over here....no one would give a damn.

Yes, and it's that install base that counts. The Wii is essentially in the same position (or better) that the PS2 was in at the end of last generation. If PS3 is currently the top seller, it's because the Wii has already reached saturation point. In other words, many of those PS3 owners already own a Wii, and probably bought it years ago at that.

Not the expectations of "gamers", because "gamers" is a much much broader demographic than it was even 5 years ago. "Self-described hardcore gamers" maybe, but even there you'll find that there's not a universal demand for photorealistic graphics. There's plenty of game genres out there which simply do not require them. When it comes down to it, what gamers really are looking for are games that are *fun*, not eye candy. Pretty graphics are nice, but it's only really when poor graphics actually hampers gameplay and the fun factor that they would really factor into the decision making processes of most gamers.