I've played both Usurper and Exitilus. My friends and I still talk about Exitilius and how we would like to play it again. I remember coming home from school and putting in some serious work on that game. It wasn't until one of them found a glitch and starting destroying everyone that the game became less fun.

I read the article. Does it use the Office365 servers or something else?

Alternatively we could spend money on mental health and outreach programs for troubled children. But spending all the money on a reactive system is probably better than a proactive approach...

I'm looking forward to sitcom television. Maybe I can finally see who the people are that make up the laugh track every time a lame joke is made.

A few dollars per unit adds up quick when you ship 23 million units in a quarter.

I was surprised when the tornado warning alert went off on my phone last week here in Ohio. It was the second week that I have had the phone, a Galaxy S4. My Galaxy Nexus was more of a vibrate when one of the amber alerts or weather warnings went off. When the S4 fired, it was like a portable tornado siren. I kid you not, it rivaled the testing of the emergency broadcast system on televisions.

Don't you sort of already have to do this for everything above, minus "attend a sporting event" or "log on to the internet"?

Here's the thing, they haven't released any details on the $299 version. If it is the exact same machine as the $499 version, you would be better off to buy it and get locked into the 2 years of Xbox Live at $10 per month. Why? simple math:

$499 + 2 * $55 per year for Xbox Live = $609 2 year cost of ownership
vs
$299 + 2 * $120 per year for Xbox Live = $539 2 year cost of ownership

I imagine the discounted one won't come with a Hard Drive, or a Kinect Sensor, or controller or something else to offset it. But all things being equal... it's a cheaper route to go.

They have to start somewhere. This does sort of support small business, which is one of the GOP's mainstays. It definitely leaves me confused.

Does this actual patent serve a purpose though? I have a few different Android products and my wife has an iPhone and I honestly couldn't tell you how their page turning animations differ, I just know they have one. I don't think anyone is going to confuse an Apple product with its competition based on the page turning animation. Patenting the icons and even the swipe to unlock thing (which most definitely had prior art anyway) could hold some legitimacy, but this patent just seems like something to bog down the approval system. Am I missing something?

You'll still need an internet connection though...

Sorry, missed this part of the article - "The Times obtained a draft of the report, which has yet to be publicly released."

This is from the DHS website: Link

I'm all for jumping down the government's throat for wasteful spending, but let's keep things in perspective. I also didn't see a link to the GAO report in the sensational article at the top . Here's a link to a GAO report: GAO Report I'm not sure if if is the one being described in the article, but this one came out in January.

I guess I'm oblivious to what I'm paying for then. I just thought those were perks to the online gaming. Here's the official list

I don't see it mentioned, but do Silver Accounts get the 500mb "cloud backup" too?

I'm not trying to be rude, but do people actually buy an Xbox and not have a Gold membership? It equates to something like $5 per month for access to demos, weekly arcade games, an indie game market, promo videos, media streaming, a stable staging environment for multiplayer gaming across games, etc.

Not to burst your bubble, but you'll probably need a Gold membership to use the IE browser anyways. Hopefully they launch Skype soon. That's my only real complaint.