Offer two kinds of flights.

1. Passengers are babied all to hell: no sharp objects, no guns, nothing remotely close to looking like an explosive. Stick an air marshall or two on board to keep the peace or prevent some kung fu Al Qeada guy from stealing the plane.

2. F-all: let the passengers carry on board their guns, toothpaste, and laptops. Inform them ahead of time that the airplane will be equiped with a fail safe that can be remote detonated if the plane becomes hijacked and on board personel are unable to regain control.

2+: Get 20 Al Qeada cells to simultaneously hijack the same plane, and be sure to youtube it before detonating the device in 2.

1980s: Damnit people, stop fucking. We have too many damn people!
2009: Damnit people, stop whacking off. We need more people!

Make up your damn mind, China.

I think the scare is that, upon seeing enough tests or real notifications of emergencies, a child may be more likely to perceive an in-game alert/scenario as real.

This will only be compounded by the fact that video game makers somehow insist on the doctrine of realism, so once we get a standardized alert message/sound/format you bet your ass they'll copy it as close as legally possible for in game alerts.

Is it any wonder why people can steal, deny profits, violate copyrights, or whatever else you want to call it: and people just don't care?

I have to agree: its fair. By the time the casino has determined you're counting cards, you've already gone home with some of their money.

It'd be no different than if you were really good at those crane operator games, and after 10 or 15 animals the vendor came over and asked you to give it a rest. The costs to play are balanced against not everyone winning: if he has to account for you winning everytime then he's got to charge people at least the cost of the prize for each play, or go out of business.

Similarly, for casinos to allow card counting and maintain blackjack as a profitable game, they would have to find some other way to create profit: start only playing 90% of winnings, give the dealer more leeway on choosing to hit/stand, etc. Casino's don't want to do that and penalize the people there to play for fun, they'd rather just remove the small portion of the crowd that could feasibly and predictably milk money off them.

I know in Virginia laws were passed recently making this illegal as well, though I'm not sure the same stiff penalties are put into place. But the point's the same: if you can't be bothered to keep your hands on the wheel while driving a car, you don't deserve to drive; further if you hurt someone through such reckless irresponsibility, the consequences should be no different than recklessly shooting a gun in a public area.

I'd say that's a perfect example. 50+ % failure should be unacceptible. Its why back in the days of choosing between a SNES and a Sega Genesis, I went with the genesis: years of NES cartiges and units that would perpetually fail turned me off to their entire franchise all the way to the Wii.

And even now, they are SELLING an attachment that attempts to fix the crap motion sensor in the WiiMote.

And it's why I'll not buy a Ford or a Dodge product anytime soon.

Ten points if your tell them your address is

445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20554

And get them to actually send correspondence there.
(That's the office of the FCC, and my first choice anytime a spammer would like my mailing address.)

Are you sure there are no patents on this "string" technology? It's not immediately obvious where you'd tie it to. Perhaps we could emulate this by just leaving the thing connected to its wall charger, which kind of anchors it to the wall. But that never stops my kids from finding it.

While I agree that part of DRM should include such provisions to be fair to its users, in reality we see DVDs and game code released to pirates/torrent sites even before the release of the retail product. I cannot image Blizzard successfully developing such a code and it not immediately becoming available to anyone with a torrent stream, at which point you hit the brick wall of "The pirates get a better game than the customers".

What we learn from this I think is that although the DO NOT CALL registry is a nice gesture, it's completely lacking in teeth. It should not take two years to catch up to these guys, not in an age where we pretty much get to put up with the NSA spying on anyone they want. An 11,000 dollar fine is not a deterent to a group that believes they are going to take the money and flee the country or otherwise evade prosecution.

Alright, lemme get this straight:

The structure is supported by blowing air through it, and extends all the way into space?

Won't the aliens swoop by years from now laughing that our planet self annihilated not through proliferation of nuclear weapons, but because some idiot blew all the air out a straw?

Unfortunately, this isn't always true with package deals. For example, Valve had a promo running for 9.99 for the complete orange box, but it contained the caveat that only the HL2 elements could be regifted. I would have paid it just for portal, but on principle think they're just being cheap bastards at that point. Would have liked to be able to regift the TF2 piece since I already own that.

I'm disappointed with their decision to launch into l4d 2 so quickly - the original game is a blast, but with only 4 campaigns I would have assumed a 50 dollar title (now 40) would have enjoyed more expansion similar to TF2. Now it's pretty obvious with the sequel less than a year away that original l4d players have been flagshipped - sold a product on the promise of expasion, then left in the dust once the corporation has their money.

This makes no sense. Why not pay the 20 bucks for an instant find, instead of what was clearly more than 20 bucks for several police officers to meandor about trying to find him?

Not sure how I feel about Verizon on this one - it's no less reasonable to expect police to pay for an account to turn it on than if the police had come in and requested a phone for themselves. But the police themselves in this case were idiots.

This is true, and they remain blameless up until the point they either

1. Pay lobbyists andor Congress to advocate laws creating those tax loopholes, or
2. Write open letters to Congress QQing that they no longer get to enjoy a 2.3% tax rate while the rest of us donate a third or more to uncle sam.

In my opinion, companies sending jobs overseas (that includes military and reconstruction ventures) are the root cause of the US economy being in the shitter. The housing bubble is just speculation and good marketing managing to hide the ugly truth for a couple years. If you circulate all you money within your own economy, someone still has dollars to spend and the cycle continues. When we send it all overseas, the country piggy bank dries up. I therefore have no pity for companies that claim they won't be able to make it if we levy on them the same taxes every US based company currently operates under. They can adapt, or get the **ck out - there's plenty of other companies that would love to take the market share.