I thought this was standard operating procedure for any game these days.

Here are two pages full of examples, many for games most people never heard about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games

http://comicbookdb.com/user_list.php?ID=466&user=

That being said; EVE Online has done amazing things through their willingness to listen and work with fans and players. I wish more games were like that.

Could you do something with vibration in the floor/chair? Someone tapping the beat on the rungs of the chair or floor.

Yes, you are responsible for doing the research on what you buy. If you do not like that, move back in with mom and dad.

tl/dr; version

The company behavior is ultimately driven by the people. If the company can make more profit selling $300 plans with more than people need vs. a simple $40 plan with just what you need they generally will and must. The fact that they just hide these plans (legally) is immaterial as they are not hard to find (I asked how to get barebone service and they told me.) You are also free to shop around and choose the best value/fit for you. The fact that they have been offering such expensive plans for so long underscore the public acceptance of it.

You can get comparable prices in the US for similar service (except we can't seem to break 25megs down.) They are just not advertised and you need to specifically ask and work with a customer service person to get your bill down that low. The problem in the US is the public, not the businesses. Most people are content to pay the huge prices to the telecom companies because they generally do not know any better or different. Many people in the US also have been duped into think they "need" more than 30 TV channels. We prefer several hundred channels of nothing to watch to 30.

I'm sorry, but I don't get the drama around Microsoft not getting it. Microsoft has been nothing but fail recently. It's the world we live in. #dealwithit

Windows phone
Surface Tablets
Always on DRM
Charging $$$ to watch your paid for Netflix account on XBox
Windows 8

I wonder what they will add this year to the fail list

Don't let past Oracle execs run your company. Oracle has single handedly destroyed Java by their indifference/incompetence.

Leave things as they are. What you suggests costs money and provides substandard results. The current system works very well and for many things other than mpg.

1. Go to internet and do some research on product (mpg of cars for example).
2. Compare internet findings to what manufacturer says. If there is a big gap, manufacturer may not be someone you want to give money to.

is Plutonium still considered an atom?

This can be solved by a simple test.

Put several plants and some animals in a closed garage and ride your bike all day long. Take note of any sick or dead plants/animals afterwards.

After this if you are still convinced bikes are bad for the environment, do the same test using your car instead of the bike.

I don't think you understand how Valve or other companies like this work. They work because they have ZERO people like this. Not one or two, or the occasional one... ZERO. If you don't hire those kind of people, then you don't need people who's primary function is to manage (read babysit.) This takes an extremely high level of resolve and willingness to work understaffed as these kinds of people are very rare. It also means you need to be willing to get rid of a bad hire at the drop of a hat and accept the cost.
With only exceptional people, the other stuff follows. An excellent developer produces many times the output of a poor one and every manager is an additional non producer so an organization of all producers will have much higher profitability per employee. It will also function well in stressful times since that is what independent, motivated, competent people do.

This is why you do not understand. I would bet my salary that every developer at Valve given his "druthers" would be home coding all day.

If you can not figure out how to arrange two monitors by yourself, you probably should stick with just one and it should not be used to edit code.

Video games have been shown that they can improve the brains ability to distinguish objects in low contrast and to track multiple objects simultaneously in other pilot studies. ( http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video_games.html ) I suspect the game time contributed significantly to the positive results, but as the TED talk explains, we still are trying to understand which game aspects are the good and which are the bad.

btw... how does one get involved in a study to play video games? and can I get paid for it?

Funny that the USA is so quick to attack China about state sponsored cyber warfare while we are holding the Struxnet smoking gun. I think the US just needs to deny better.

Being a good software engineer is not something you can teach so please stop trying and wasting money producing a ton of mediocre coders that will flood the low end dev markets. Being a good engineer is mainly dependent natural ability and requires that ability be developed by years of practical experience. Professional sports figured out a long time ago how to farm this kind of genetic talent; it's simple you start our with programs targeting kids as they enter grade school then progressively weed out kids as the years go on in increasingly competitive groups.