Battle.net accounts are NOT as secure as they ought to be. Yes, two-factor authentication is good, but not everyone has access to it, and actual passwords are not case sensitive.

To a mild degree, I don't think the school's idea is a bad one. The problem is that it doesn't account for the difference between a student who fails to turn in 20% of assignments and a student who fails to turn in 80% of assignments. When I was in middle school, my home life was fucked by several deaths in the family and parental separation and divorce, and I frequently was completely unable to concentrate on school work. Prior, I had only ever gotten one grade that wasn't at least an A-.

It strongly affected my grades in a negative way. There were grade average requirements to participate in nearly anything, forcing the school to pull me out of extra-curricular activities that were actually keeping me sane because they got me away from the hell that was my home life. It was a death-spiral for my academic situation, and it led me to hating school, thus killing my motivation even further. I plummeted, the only classes I regularly did better than a C on were music classes -- things I could absorb myself in. My GPA averaged less than 1.5.

I never did get my shit together, and eventually dropped out of high school, getting a GED instead. There was certainly a lot of blame to be directed at myself, for my own inability to pull myself together and do the work -- but the effect of my home life, and the resultant attitudes and bad habits were a detriment to me for years. I believe that to some degree, they still affect me today.

Had my school had a policy like this in place -- even a limited one, allowing a pass on a percentage of work -- I think I'd be in a better place today.

The biggest problem with the IAS nerf (which, as you said, needed to happen) was the failure to compensate with a subsequent buff to on-hit effects. Especially Life on Hit. Like you, I was built for IAS and had spent tons of gold on IAS equipment, and when the nerf hit, the attack speed wasn't what killed me -- it was the approximately 40% reduction in Life over time from my old attack speed that did me in.

As another PoE beta-tester, I can assure you, the online-only component is the only strike against it. The only thing you can buy with micro-transactions that could theoretically give you an advantage is more stash space ... of which they are already VERY generous with in the first place. The things you can buy are purely cosmetic -- items that alter how your skills look so you can have a custom visual style, or items that cause enemies to explode with excessive amounts of gore.

That's because Tuesday is a label for a specific day, and Wednesday is not a label for the same day - it is an inaccurate label. The point is that it doesn't matter what we label something as long as we all know what is being discussed. And in such a situation, arguing semantics just makes you look like a tool.

Are you saying it should? That was one of the most ridiculous 'scandals'.

Wrong kind of buffer. He's referring to a buffer as in a safe-zone -- A buffer against performance hiccups. If your frame rate drops below 60 FPS even briefly, any system with VSYNC enabled instantly drops to 30 FPS to prevent screen-tearing until the FPS goes above 60 again.

A lot of people seem to ignore the fact that if the military were ordered to turn weapons on the civilians they are sworn to protect, the military would have to fight ITSELF before civilians even arrive on the scene.

Are you sure? Blizzard issued a public apology for Diablo 3's lack of content.

You forgot that each number must be between (and inclusive of) 1 through 9.

And that they all must be whole numbers.

I suppose you also bitched that Final Fantasy XI didn't have single player because all of the first ten games did.

The argument that D3 isn't a single-player game is sound. The previous iterations in the series are not relevant to the discussion. That I am aware of, at no point anywhere in the Diablo 3 interface or marketing is there ANY function, description or reference to a single-player mode.

My biggest issue with existing handhelds is the size. Sony's PSP and Nintendo's offerings have always been designed primarily for a Japanese market. As a result, my hamfisted hands can never hold one of these things comfortably, and even moderate duration play sessions cramp the hell out of my hands. With a larger overall size to the device, I'm hoping it will be significantly more comfortable.

... The fact that you lead this with a question about gender bothers me.

With Japanese doujinshi and hentai artwork, I know several females who are really into 'shotacon', which is essentially art depicting underaged males in sexual situations.

And yet I've never seen anyone criticize 'shotacon' anywhere near as heavily as 'lolicon' (underaged females).

It's just another case of strange double-standards.

That assumes the codec supports it. Before torrents, when P2P was largely sequential, I remember doing this.

It really depends a lot on the quality of the download. If I want just a standard DVD rip (~5 GB), my connection could have it downloaded in ~24 minutes (~3.5 MB/s). Decent HD rips really only double that.

Download speeds are rapidly becoming irrelevant to the argument, though. While some people might spontaneously decide to watch _x_ film RIGHT NOW, many people can just as easily decide what they want to watch in an hour, and do something else to kill time while it downloads.