That would be a factoid, rather than trivia, because it is false. The Pacific Ocean has both typhoons and hurricanes. The cyclones that hit Hawaii are usually hurricanes.

You can't give him a tax cut, he already doesn't pay taxes. He doesn't exercise his options, because that would be a taxable event, he just borrows money against them, which isn't taxable income. But if you claim that the rich aren't on a level playing field, then you're engaging class warfare.

If you're going to throw around some vague accusations of a plot to sell expensive equipment and raise ticket prices, then you ought to have at least a scrap of evidence that Peter Jackson, or the production company or the Move Studio in charge of distribution is tied to or is somehow making money from projection equipment bought by cinemas. Just saying "I wonder if..." isn't a good excuse to besmirch filmmakers.

Pffft. This is a Chinese tourist destination, not a way of life. It is one step away from a theme park. Saying they are discarding their own culture by making/visiting a fake Austrian town is like saying that I'm discarding my Anglo heritage if I go to a Greek restaurant to drink Ouzo, watch belly dancers and break plates. Playing like they are in Europe for the day doesn't degrade their Chinese-ness.

Pfft, everyone knows what is really going to happen if, because of [FICTION] End of discussion.

You probably think "Paranormal Expert" is an oxymoron.

I love the way the big snag is barely mentioned near the end of the article. They need about 10V to power up. That makes them rather unsuitable for Terahertz computing.

But the thing that Xbox Live has over Wii or PS3, or even the PC for that matter, is the built-in voice communication, separate and compatible with the games and apps, so you can join up in a Party, then fire up Netflix together or go into a game together and have the chat continue to work through the loading screens and not interfere with the application sound. Playing with people you know, even if you only know them from Xbox Live, is so much better. It works so much better that I know some people who wanted to play Killzone together on their PS3s, and they fired up their Xboxen just to provide the communication.

I agree that it is an interesting coincidence that Portland City had declined to joint the Joint Terrorism Taskforce and so the mayor was just as surprised as anyone when the FBI announced the arrest. But I think your characterization of the 19 year old "boy" is a bit off. The article you linked to describes someone who had been interested in joining jihad since he was 15 and had tried to go to Yemen and join the cause the previous year. He was only mad at his family because they had notified law enforcement that he was trying to join jihad. Bombing the Christmas tree lighting ceremony was his idea, he wasn't steered towards it by some informant. He hadn't done anything yet, but not for lack of trying, and he seemed pretty determined. I don't think it is fair to pretend that the FBI manufactured this threat.

Okay, so you can argue that guy wouldn't have done anything on his own. But what about the guy who thought he was blowing up the van full of explosives in the middle of the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Portland? He thought up the plot and sought out the informants. I've heard the tape where the agent asks the guy "Are you sure you want to do this, you know there will be women and children in the crowd." and he is adamant. That seems like a pretty valuable use of agency resources.

You're confusing legal and ethical. Anyone who isn't Catholic may not have any say in the matter and there may be no legal authority to stop it, but it would still be wrong if some of the Vatican administrators are using their authority to award supplier contracts to their cousins and pay double. That still doesn't make it a slashdot story, but the parallels to the wikileaks affair, and punishing the whistleblowers does.

The thing that got my attention is that one of the leaked letters discusses "the likely date of Benedict's death." Could that possibly be true? Or is the original article writer just trolling to get a rise out of conspiracy theorists? It is so bizarre, it just might be true.

In what way is the current system "fundamentally broken" ? They sold 609 million units last year just in games for the Wii, PS3, Xbox360, DS and 3DS. That's a lot of money for the industry. At the same time, I have tremendous choice as a consumer. Even just on the 360 there are a lot more good games than I have time to play. Add to that everything available for phones, pads, and the PC both in retail and electronic distribution and it is a great time to be a gamer. If there are developers and publishers that are losing money because they spent a bunch of money on a crappy game, that isn't the fault of the used game market. People have been predicting for decades that the tremendous and rising cost of producing and promoting blockbuster movies was too high and that studios would fail and fewer movies would be made, but I see no evidence that there are fewer movies available. If console makers go through with their plan to kill the used market, it might make them more money, or it might convince consumers to spend that $15-30 they would have spent on a used console game on some other platform. Or they may not be as willing to pay the $60 for the new game if they know they can't sell it for $30 when they are done with it, so, again, they may choose to buy a $5 app. that keeps them entertained for a week. It is a huge decision for console makers, with big effects, but let us not pretend they are fixing anything.