Yeah, I found this question to be too confusing to answer. I've been paid a decent salary for being a grad student for 3 years now - is that conventional enough to count? What about the tuition reimbursement I got for being an RA during my master's? What about the hourly paid research positions I held as an undergrad (some of which I'd do for pay one semester and for credit the next semester)?

The whole cost doesn't have to be bundled into the hardware - the purpose of the wireless access is so you can download games from their store. Charge a few extra bucks per game and you probably more than balance out the cost of transmitting it, especially for smaller old-school games, while keeping the cost well below buying a cartridge in a store.

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.

You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.

Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.

Whatever happened to Prodigy? That was my first internet service. I remember my excitement at finding their ST:TNG message board... and chagrin at discovering that it was mostly full of middle-aged women having fantasies about Brent Spiner. I mean, I had a crush on Data and all, but at 14 I was definitely not interested in a 45-year-old actor in the same way these ladies were.

I assume you mean environmentally-caused or genetic? Because "developmental" and "genetic" are in no way whatsoever opposites of each other or mutually exclusive in the least. Even if you do mean environmental, it's a false dichotomy. Very little is entirely one or the other. It's completely possible that certain genes give you an increased proclivity towards autism, but environmental factors (which can include those before you're born) decide whether or not you really make it onto the spectrum, and how far.

Disclaimer: I know very little about autism, but have read enough about nature vs nurture in general to know that the odds of it being entirely one or the other are very, very low.

I dunno, I've downloaded a couple of those myself and they're even more trouble.

First there's the TCO. Keeping them virus-free is a couple hundred a year, plus if you let your subscription to the Kibble service lapse your Pet will stop functioning completely.

They all come preloaded with Poop.app, which can't be removed but needs constant maintenance. And in my models, at least, this sometimes will randomly upgrade itself to Poop 2.0 (code named Diarrhea) - that's a mess to clean up from your desktop, believe me.

And mine always seem to be blocking my access to the Furniture suite of utilities - there are workarounds, sure, but it's just one more thing to keep in mind.

Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of features that make them very worthwhile, but they're not for everyone!

Eight-year-olds are apparently less picky about their online freedoms than you are. Which is unsurprising, given that if their parents are smart they have pretty limited "freedom" to begin with.

I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born..

Aw, that's cute. We'll see what he says when he's forty and he gives his kid an iPod to play with.

I think you're using the term "third world country" when you really mean "industrialized country that's just not quite as globally powerful as the US." If you really, truly mean third world in all of the places you say it, then you are incredibly ignorant. Believe me, not being able to afford to own a house within a few miles of your job, or having kids ten years LATER than you would have liked, are the least of the worries of anyone living in the third world. Try not being able to afford electricity in the one-room shack that houses five people, or having kids far before you were economically or emotionally ready to because you have zero access to birth control or any kind of sex ed (abstinence or otherwise) - or better yet, because you were forced into it, and that's perfectly legal in your country.

I find myself in the oddest of paradoxes: I can afford whatever electronic toys I wish, yet cannot afford the basic necessities of family life.

I think this is also known as "UR Doin it Rong." If you can't afford the basic necessities, then NO, by definition, you CANNOT afford the electronics.

Same here - but my birthday's not for a few more months, so I'm still waiting... Maybe they'll give it the boost when they do their iPod-centric show (with new & improved Jobs?) in September.

Fixed that for you.

Question their motives? So what if their motive is that they want to draw fictional naked children? As long as no real children are portrayed or in any way harmed in the making of those drawings, why should anyone care? The original point of child porn laws was to protect the children in the pornography. In this case, there are none.