Way to bail out of an argument...

Dude! I think you are greatly exaggerating the geek stereotype here. Specs like that are for some very intensive stuff, like a rendering machine or something. The fact that you conveniently forgot to tell us what you are doing with this machine makes me believe that *you* are the supposed geek that just like to brag about their computer penis size^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspecs.

I'm a long time gentoo user and even I don't see the need to upgrade to a quad core, despite having to compile stuff all the time. It could go faster, but right now I think it's fast enough and so not worth the money to upgrade the mobo+RAM+CPU. I even do a bit of video compression and run some virtual machines. You know what? I'm still on a *single* core cpu! OMG I'm so un-l33t or whatever...

And 9TB of drive space? What are you storing anyway? I have quite few video and music and I'm still below 2TB, backups included.

I think you just made those up just to prove a point, dude. Laptops are just fine, save for the small screen and even then you can always hook your laptop to another one when at home.

And please stop using the term gay in a derogative way, it's just so very immature.

The parent said "making good playable games is less profitable than making lousy games with pretty graphics", I don't think he meant pitching old games from the 90s against what you find in the current generation.

World of Goo was an awesome game and its gameplay didn't seem dated, nor was there some feature you feel was missing. It still feels like a modern game, despite not being a polygon powerhouse.

Currently there is an obsession with triple A games in the industry that go way beyond my comprehension. Everything is hype with graphics, most of the time to the detriment of gameplay, scenario and (the biggest blunder of all) art direction. Because everything now as to be REALISTISTIC!

So back to the original point, no, I don't think it's piracy that prevent good game from seeing the light of the day. It just doesn't sell as much and therefore is too risky. And the gaming industry has severe allergy problem with risk.

No wonder you're surprised, everybody was when they first got a favourable ruling from the ontario court to shut down the operation of the very useful allo-stop (http://www.allostop.com/) service. It still exist in other part of canada, especially in Quebec. You just give them a phone call and say where you want to go. If they have someone going there, they hook you up the the driver. You paid a fee to allo-stop, and another to the driver. A Montreal-Quebec trip will only set you back 17$ last I recalled instead of 35$+ if you take the bus. I can't believed they can get away with 'unfair competition'. FUCK THEM!