List of Infant Mortality Rates

United States: 6.3 deaths per 100,000 live births

United Kingdom: 4.8 deaths per 100,000 live births

Oh I'm sorry, do the facts get in the way of your opinion? How rude of me.

Did you read your own link? That article lists clones, yes, but it hardly proves that the industry was "based off of clones." The only seminal game mentioned that was itself an absolute, blatant copy of another is Pong, and they paid out a $700k settlement to Magnavox for their duplication. The rest are either off-brand copyright theft or examples that clearly fall under "inspiration." No major work comes close to Zynga's bald-faced appropriations.

"Installing AMD dual core optimizer" (from the game installation)

Uh, game, I know you can't see that "Intel Inside" sticker, but still, I can save you some time...

I generally like Steam, but I really miss the option of a custom install from pre-Steam games. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to sit and watch DirectX and the Microsoft redistributable unpack their entire installation, run, and of course immediately quit, discovering their target already up to date. And doesn't automatically downloading a brand new copy of these with every game installation really defeat - or at least marginalize - their purpose?

Waaaait a minute. A six foot tall liquid-fueled rocket? On the ground at your farm, sure, that's safe. But it's a ROCKET. You obviously don't intend for it to STAY on the ground. And you don't own the airspace above a certain level.

My sympathy for your desire to experiment or engage in your hobby ends when you begin threatening to fire explosive devices into commercial airspace.

Questlove. Musician, drummer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon house band. Relevant here because he appeared in a commercial for the Kin.

Occasionally, Netflix has newer stuff via special deals with the distributors (Whitest Kids You Know did this for their newest season, for example). Mostly, though, no: it's best used for older titles, as it's rare to find an instant watch show or movie not also out on DVD.

So yes, I supplement Netflix with Hulu to watch new stuff. But that's the thing, here: Hulu Plus doesn't affect new shows, based on their press release. It's just to watch the older stuff. Hell, two of their own examples - Buffy and the X-Files - are already on Netflix instant watch, with the other one being available on DVD. So for a dollar more per month, you get roughly the same content as Netflix, plus ads, without the DVD rental part. I can't fathom how they intend to compete.

I can imagine you getting a papercut and going to the emergency room, screaming "it's the beginning of the end!"

So, what's your proposed solution to this grand miscarriage of justice?

a) Only agree to settle out of court for a higher amount
b) Insist every case go to court, no mediation accepted

OF COURSE they offer to accept lower damages if they don't have to go to court. That's not extortion; that's common sense. Who would settle for less than their court payments?

If the individuals being sued had simply downloaded the file from an FTP site or something, I'd agree. Stealing the movie from a store cost them whatever lost sales it represents (and yes, I agree that this is a smaller than 100% percentage) plus the physical cost of the disc, whereas downloading it was merely the not-quite-one-copy lost sale. However, and this is important, they uploaded the movie to others. If you insist on using increasingly outdated brick-and-mortar analogies, it's like stealing the movie, making a hundred copies, and then getting all your friends together to stand on every street corner and hand out free copies.

The people who argued "it's not thievery, it's copyright infringement" throughout the RIAA's antics were right, but doesn't always work in your favor: a bitTorrent download is many times more damaging than a stolen copy.

*sigh* So when they went after file sharing sites, people whined that they were just facilitators, not themselves guilty of anything. Fair enough. "Punish the actual infringers!" slashdot cried.

Then they went after the programs and tools themselves, and people whined that they were just tools, and had perfectly legitimate uses. Very reasonable. "Punish the actual infringers!" slashdot cried.

Now they're flat-out targeting people who actively infringe copyrights. These people are BREAKING THE LAW, and more importantly, doing something immoral: they are taking someone else's work and not merely using it without due compensation, but helping others to do the same.

I'm sorry, I'm out of excuses; I'm out of pity. We won the important war. BitTorrent thrives as a legitimate tool, and merely linking to something bad is usually not itself cause for litigation. My moral outrage stops at those caught red-handed, hands thoroughly lodged in the cookie jar (and no, "someone else could have being using their personal IP or broke into their house and used their computer" is a flimsy argument at best.)

After years of reading what passes for writing on blogs and forums, I'm not at all surprised to discover that the public actually finds punctuation offensive.

I had a similar but more frustrating experience about a month ago when a storm took our connection down for about a day. After the loooong timeout period, I was given a dialogue box option to "retry" or "go offline." I selected, of course, "go offline," but after another long delay, I was told the action "could not be completed without a network connection" and for more information, I was to "visit the following webpage" (HA!).

Complaining about this issue brought a lot of fanboy cries of it not "working as intended" and "to be fixed in a patch," but some searching revealed it's also not an unusual or new problem. Indeed, I can find bug reports of this exact issue so old that the pessimist in me wonders if this "flaw" is purposeful. They've got the best of both worlds: their fans reply to all complaints about the service with "you can always use offline mode," and meanwhile, there IS no functioning offline mode due to a "bug." Anyone who tests it to "prove" you're wrong will have it work because they actually have a working network connection.

Short story shorter: despite Valve's claims to the contrary, if your connection dies, Steam may very well flat-out refuse to start.

You are presented with evidence of a possible global catastrophe in a few hours. You can do one of two things:

1) Quit what you're doing, go eat a pizza or something for your last hours alive. Maybe spend it with your loved ones.
2) Take advantage of the panic to make a profit.

Now, there are two possibilities here, resulting in four outcomes: a) the world ends, b) the world doesn't end.

1a) You're dead. Who cares?
2a) You're dead. Who cares?
1b) You had some pizza, kissed your kids, but hope they don't want to go to college 'cause you're broke.
2b) I'M RICH, BITCH!

So option 1 has outcome of x% dead, y% poor. Option 2 has outcome of x% dead, y% rich. Clearly, option 2 is the better solution.

(Yes, I know many will opt for option 1 anyway, particularly the "spend time with family" part. These people don't work on Wall Street.)

^^^ People who responded to my above post saying that this would never happen, behold: the mindset of a parent. THIS is the kind of thought process that would, given half a chance and with the best of intentions, vote the Internet into a bland, filtered, kid-friendly paste.

I'd much sooner accept that, though of course it opens up a bit of a can of worms with the "who filters," "who pays for the people filtering," "what criteria do they use," etc. After all, a whitelist is the only really effective form of filtering (aside from, of course, a parent in the room).