The third world where the water piped in isn't potable.

As I've often said, the blind Randian believers need to go and live in a third world "libertarian paradise" for a few years where you can pay for absolutely anything and have to pay for absolutely everything. Want the police to help you, expect to shell out. Want the court to do anything, reach into those pockets. Need help from the government, dont expect it to come cheap.

Living in a place like this is great... when you earn western levels of money and a yearly income of $25,000 USD makes you part of the 1%... but not when you're a regular working pleb doing 12 hour days for $4000 USD a year... All Hail Rand.

The advantage of tape has always been it's nigh-indestructibility. Spinning drives in comparison are pretty vulnerable.

Tapes has a crapload of drawbacks, write speed, read speed, the fact it's sequential (random access is painful) but it remains popular because you can drop it, smash it, submerge and then freeze it and all you have to do is roll the tape into a new case. Disks have a bad tendency to fail over time where as tape is a lot more reliable.

If you want to back up a lot of data for a short time (sub six months) then disk is good, if you want to back up data for a long time (years) and know that it will be recoverable in 5 to 7 years, then use tape.

Actually it would be the opposite. The original terminator movie came out in 1984, the sequel came out in 1992. Someone born in 1984 is now 32 years old, you get a lot of people in their 20's who have never seen terminator. If we add a non-western culture into the mix (in Australia, a lot of these telemarketers/scammers have thick Indian accents) they will likely have never seen Terminator, let alone make the John Conor connection. Also, it's not an unusual name.

I thought Bioshock was bad when they made a game that you literally could not lose at. It was impossible to die or fail.

Now they want to make games essentially play themselves. What happens when the player produces input the software does not expect? can it backtrack, will it backtrack or just keep going with what it thinks the player should be doing.

The really sad part is I can see this succeeding. Few gamers want to play games any more, they just want instant gratification trophies. There's more focus in achievement trophies in modern games (especially AAA games) than there is on actual gameplay.

That is a very long and shakey bow to draw.

It's like saying this rock prevents tigers and there were no tigers there before the rock was moved. Chances are the tigers were coming anyway. It's entirely possible the ban in Nazi memorabilia was a response to growing anti-Semitism. The conditions that created the large up tick in anti-Semitism were likely present before the ban went into effect (things like extreme nationalism).

Basically this is a lesson in correlation does not equal causation. In all likelihood, these two events share a common cause.

She smiled suggestively at him as she gently stirred her drink with the tip of her nail.

Nowhere near effective. When someone buys you a drink, you dont usually follow them to the bar whilst they do it.

This pretty much means nothing has changed.

Singapore Airlines changed their safety video about 3 years ago to say that "all transmitting devices must be in flight mode and stowed for take off and landing". Ever since flight mode became commonplace (think old Nokia's, long before the time of Android and Iphones) it's been this way. It's only recently that the Hoi Polloi got a phone that has the capability to dick around off-line. For the business traveller, it's long since been a case of put it in flight mode and do some work.

Because there's no coverage up that high.

Plus it makes it easier to sell internet services. You simply put a cell on the plane and charge for the connection to the cell (easy enough with a captive portal). Same with voice calls and SMS's.

But for the moment, QANTAS and Virgin AU dont even offer in-flight internet.

It's an Americanism that no Australian would use.

We call them prawns, we also dont barbecue them.

LoL,

Apple products have pretty much become the Camry of their market. Anyone can get a whitegoods Camry.

Android is everything from an i10 to a WRX STI to a Lamborgini. The point is, you have a choice.

US telco's are amongst the most expensive in the western world and the shittiest in terms of service.

I'm with Australia's most expensive telco, I pay $30 a month for prepaid on a BYO device plan (month by month) with 400 MB data included. The cheapest AT US it would cost me AU$45 for half the amount of data and with Telstra, I can use the same $30 to get an additional 1GB of data. Even though every time I have to call Telstra (about twice a year) I'm connected through to Bangalore they at least have been able to sort my problem out (to be fair, their in store service was quite good. It was 2 minutes to get a SIM re-issued after losing my phone).

You lot can keep your free market faeries, I'm happy with our well regulated system here in Oz.

Came here for this, leaving satisfied.

An Italian wife with only three kids is considered frigid.

Stereotype much?

The average age of a gamer is 32 and getting older. This was also published a few years ago before Farmville even existed so it's probably around 35.

BTW, just because there is a market in serving facebook games does not mean the previous market of gamers has disappeared or even diminished. I'd bet its as strong as ever. Sure purely profit oriented entities may leave that market, companies like EA but as a gamer (also a 30-something) that is not a bad thing at all.