Valve has to make the same choices regarding price and hardware tradeoffs.

Yes, but remember, the PC gaming market has already shown a willingness to pay more than twice the cost of a next-gen console for a really kick-ass gaming experience.

The key to Valve's success with its Steam Box, IMO, is to keep in mind that PC gamers are a very different market than console gamers. And, they have more money to spend. If they try to position Steam Box as nothing more than a direct competitor to consoles, they will fail.

I'm already putting together a Steam Box that's going to end up costing about 4 times what a next-gen console goes for. A few more bucks for a groundbreaking controller is not a big deal.

Having said all that, I'm not sure a touchscreen in a controller is a good idea. Maybe just a simple touchpad, but a full-blown touch display would make the controller too delicate for me. My controller takes a fair amount of abuse. And I don't want to have to look at the controller at any time.;

How do you think I get my weed?

Sailing is practically free transportation. The adjustment of the sails can be automated so a single human operator can run the whole ship.

And poor people, after the global economic collapse, are going to buy that automated sailing ship how again?

Most people don't see the flaw in thinking that they're going to weather the coming social breakdown because they have a high limit on their Visa card.

Your 3rd link gives a 403.

That's because you're one of those non-believing secular humanist atheists.

Wow. That's a load of bullshit.

Actually, that's quote from Moses, mumbling under his breath, as he was coming down from Mt Sinai.

I've never demanded anyone start a real war for Cersei's fictional c***.

That makes one of us.

"Listening to sermons and reading religious works like the Bible may also invoke a cognitive benefit. "You're exercising your higher cortical function, thinking about complex concepts that require some imagination,"

I've got a book by Isaac Newton called, "Optiks" that will give you all of that, without making you want to go out and kill non-believers.

Clearly, religion is the key to happiness:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-i...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/i...

http://media.dumpert.nl/foto/4...

It's also great if you have a mother-in-law on the other side of the world. The cost per-minute for calls from phone to phone (she just cannot seem to figure out Skype) is as good as any provider.

My wife talks for an hour and it's just a few cents. Or at least that's how it seems. Plus, we can do all kinds of other tricks with voice to text and other things.

I was about to get really pissed if this story was about Google pulling the Voice service.

Has to be their client :-(

I'm not smart enough for some of the XKCD strips...

Hell, I'm not smart enough for Garfield.

I hope you encrypt everything on those drives, just in case your bag is lost or stolen.

I didn't say I carry the bag around. I keep it locked in a massive safe buried underground.

It's not as convenient, but it sure is secure. Except from flooding, but that's a different story. I can't actually get to the data, but it's there. Secure. But not from floods. I'm going to have to think about sealing it in impenetrable waterproof material, but I can't afford that because the password to my online banking is on one of those SD cards, in the bag, in the safe, 20 feet underground.

You see how complicated my life is.

I restored something like 350GB in smaller files, and that all went smoothly. It seems that it generally DOES support resuming. But for some reason, the 50GB file just keeps restarting in the middle. My guess is actually something weird about the FS interaction or the output buffers they're using, but who knows for sure. It's taken about 2 weeks of back and forth on a support ticket to get them to even _mention_ that they might eventually need to hand this off to Tier 2 support. Everything else about the service has been pretty good, but this is a pretty big downer.

The transparent, libertarian way is to have your money stolen in front of you.

So, the 700,000 bitcoins that disappeared under Mt Gox were stolen "in front of" the people who owned them?

Maybe we need to define "in front of".

Neoliberals? I'm under the impression that Libertarians with the minds of teenagers are the ones so in love with Bitcoin

Neoliberals = libertarians. They mean about the same thing for the purposes of this conversation.