YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you. You can't really expect the government to stop doing these things when so many people support it.

See: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/

The internet can be like an echo chamber, especially in places like Slashdot where a lot of like-minded people come together. With all the outrage that you see, it's easy to be blind to the reality of the situation.

You need to work on changing the minds of the public, then maybe you'll see changes in the government.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to actually verify that:

Safeway's net margin was 1.19% last quarter: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:SWY

Kroger's was 1.94%: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AKR

The theory is not that you'll perform better. The theory is that you'll be far less inclined to take bribes, steal from the company, etc. because you're in a good place financially and you don't NEED the extra money to break even. Hiring someone with perfect credit is a lot less risky than hiring someone who is swimming in debt. ... which kind of sucks, because the people swimming in debt are in most need of a job.

Going for gameplay? The Wii had the following:

1) The same old Nintendo standbys that they rehash every generation, except now with tacked-on motion controls that everyone hated.
2) A ridiculous amount of gimmicky terrible games that companies pumped out to appeal to the loads of casual gamers who bought the console.
3) EXTREMELY few and far between good titles which took advantage of the Wiimote in a non-gimmicky way, like Boom Blox.
4) Games which didn't use motion controls at all and could have been done on any console, but were gimped and put out on the Wii because of the huge install base.

You're making the classic mistake of assuming that power = graphics, as well. Power lets you do better AI, it lets you have more objects on screen, it lets you do better physics, etc. etc. For a great example of how a game had to be made far worse to allow the Wii to run it, look at all the problems with Dead Rising.

Every gamer I know who has a Wii played Wii Sports to death, maybe played a couple other games on there, and then has let it collect dust. Every non-gamer I know who bought one only uses it as a Netflix box. The Wii may have been a financial success for Nintendo, but it was a dud of a console as far as entertainment value goes.

I'm sorry, spreading lies and FUD? This is a direct quote from a Microsoft VP. Read it again, he's explicitly saying that if you try to give your friend your game disc, they'll have to pay for it again at full price.

In an interview with Kotaku, Phil Harrison, a MS VP, stated the following:

Yes, that's right, you can't sell your used games because they'll end up costing the person you sell it to full price anyway. Want to lend a game to a friend? Sorry, full price. Want to bring it over to their house to play? Sorry, full price.

Disgusting.

Many dishes are cooked with alcohol in them, and contrary to popular belief all of the alcohol doesn't cook out of it. Going out and eating some French food then driving home could lead to you having a .005 BAC and getting arrested, which isn't exactly warranted.

Why would it necessarily be worse? The DMCA, for instance, has a lot of valid criticism but the safe harbor provision was essential protection for many websites.

The fact that he says "Even the Copyright Office itself faces challenges in meeting the growing needs of its customers - the American public" is promising.

Those terms are only on the test, development devices. It's ridiculously unlikely that they will be on the retail version.

They're probably thinking "wow, this response is much faster and the downtime much shorter than when we ran our own services".

Nobody has ever sold cloud services with a guarantee of 100% uptime. It is, however, almost certain to be better than the vast majority of companies' homegrown solutions.

The backing of the US government, and the ability to trade it for something everywhere in the US and many places outside of it. A currency is ONLY good as a currency if you can actually buy things with it.

Now, what exactly is the value of a bitcoin which has no backing whatsoever and nearly no ways to trade it for anything?

I find it very amusing that many of the same people who advocate for a return to a gold-backed currency are the same ones who push this pseudo-currency which has no backing at all.

Android is ridiculously successful and headed towards 1 billion devices, yes, but only a small percentage of those users play games at all, and only a small percentage of those gamers want anything other than small time wasters like Angry Birds or Draw Something. There is very, very little demand for anything as epic or immersive as Skyrim, Portal, etc.

Those games are almost all either terrible or not up to par compared to big console releases, though - even the bad console games are better than nearly all mobile games. Then when someone invests heavily into making a console-quality mobile game (and prices it accordingly), they get tons of shit for the price point. (see: Final Fantasy Dimensions which drew universal scorn for its pricing, which was HALF what it would have been on a portable console)

Face it, you can't have great, immersive, polished, professional-quality games for $2.99. Instead, you get what you see now: extremely amateur RPGs, puzzle games that are good for 10 minute stretches but get boring if you play them for more than that in one sitting, etc.

It's very telling that the only reasons I've heard people say they want an Ouya are 1) XBMC and 2) emulation of old console games.