I don't buy a lot of dedicated phone apps, however I have bought subscriptions to netflix, spotify, lastpass and todoist in part because of mobile functionality that provides. I've also bought a couple of android humble bundles, plex, beyondpod and a couple of apps to make getting info on and off memory cards via cable easier.

Whenever I hear people saying they've never seen an app worth paying for it just strikes me as lack of imagination.

So I'm supposed to take seriously a critical submission about the French from someone ignorant enough not to know that la dolce vita is Italian? It doesn't even sound like it could be French, and there is even a French equivalent "la bonne vie" expression.

time they have been nationally mandated to spend on whatever the French call la dolce vita.

I've...played Freemium and Pay-to-win. I'm not interested in paying as much as I would for a full game to enjoy said benefits for one or two months. I also hate how it feels not being able to compete because I'm unwilling to pay a bunch of money. If I find the story or mechanics engaging, I'll check it out...but I leave my wallet at home.

To be fair, the have to spend a lot to compete model wasn't invented by p2w games. MMOs and plenty of other games often have a model that requires you to spend ungodly amounts of time grinding for equipment, upgrades, skills etc if you want to play at the top levels and have a chance.

Personally I don't see the difference between a game requiring you to spend $20 to have the best stuff and a game requiring you to spend 400 hours to have the best stuff. In both cases you're leaving a large chunk of players unable to do it.

We've all either encountered or heard about a game company using shady business practices to squeeze every cent from their users through in-app purchases (a.k.a. microtransations, a.k.a. cash shops), or a simple pay-to-win format. But these stories don't represent all games — by a long shot. It's something endemic to shady developers and publishers, not the business model.

It is something fundamentally wrong with the business model. Name a recent popular f2p game where the pay element isn't an issue?

f2p is fundamentally flawed because of how people use it. The majority of people who download a f2p game are parasites with no intention of paying, the game company doesn't want these users to stay longer than it takes for them to casually enjoy it, maybe recommend it and possibly change into one of the minority of paying customers. Because most customers will never pay, the few that will have to be taken to the cleaners to make enough revenue to cover for this. For those of us who are happy to spend a moderate amount on games this is a shitty model because instead of paying $5 upfront for a good experience, we need to pay tens of dollars to get an experience that is cheapened by the purchase mechanic.

If you want to be precise about it, the Earth does not rotate around the Sun.

Except he said we orbit the sun, which makes the point we rotate around irrelevant to his statement.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I became an atheist.

As opposed to: When I was a child, the bible talked for me, the bible thought for me, the bible reasoned for me. When I became a man, I remained indoctrinated.

Because there isn't some magically right or wrong answer. Clearly there's something wrong with contacting them if we don't do a better job of controlling whatever disease and/or other factors is wiping them out though.

Either you don't understand Slashdot's native language, or you don't understand English. In any case, the Enlish "nor" is short for "neither", which is true as long as both inputs are false, exactly like a NOR gate.

Odd how you'd accuse him of not understanding English when you yourself then misdefine the same word. As someone who is still trying to break the habit of using it in conversation and baffling southerners I can assure you that it isn't limited to use as a short form of neither, and nor should it be.

Pretty much my opinion. I've been using Win 8 on my home pc since release and to be honest the minor irritations would seem irrelevant if Win 7 hadn't been a very well designed OS. If I'd gone straight from XP/Vista to Win 8 then I'd have seen it as a definite improvement.

Possibly true (certainly true in all examples I can think of), however inconvenience doesn't automatically mean security. An informed user can likely run a secure Win7/8 enviroment with considerably less inconvenience than running an equally secure Win XP enviroment especially once MS drop security updates.

Not turning the box on would protect 100% of users but that doesn't make it a viable solution. He thinks his setup is preferable even without MS updates, in fact he doesn't want windows updates. I don't agree with him but it's irrelevant because his situation isn't one that supports ongoing support from MS or upgrading because of the lack of it.

And your the kind of person that thinks tourist taxes are robbery...

I do not think it means, what you think it means.

Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear.

buy a cheap kayak for 800$, carry it to the canal (how?),

No problem. You buy a pickup from the store down the road, load the Kayak in the back and then once your done you sell the vehicle as well.

Then buy them and sell them back when you're done. If you want the convenience of not putting a lot of money down up front and not having to find someone to buy them off you later

Why, when I'm perfectly happy with the current arrangement of lots of other people owning things and offering them to me on a rental basis. I don't want to have to buy a house with all the paperwork, expenses and headaches that come with it and then sell it again if I only want to be in an area for a year or so.

Property in SF and many other cities costs a lot because more people want to live there than the city has capacity for. Banning renting isn't going to magically fix that, rich people will be able to buy and poor people won't. So in your example the poor sod who is spending all their money on rent now would be stuck living outside the city in somewhere they could afford the deposit and mortgage on.

Why assume that tax based on income, profit or sales are completely rational and to be expected but taxes on 'hotels' are somehow weird? Tax is going to be raised. A lot of places tax hotels as a way to get money off tourists and other visitors rather than residents. Criminalising short term rentals is a response to the fact that people would use 'short term rentals' as a get around to avoid the taxes otherwise.

There are far, far, better things to be disturbed about than this.