Dear EA...

Please follow this example and do a refresh, please no remakes or re-imaginings, of the Wing Commander series.

I, and a few friends I know, would be more than willing to drop 50 - 100+ dollars into a Kickstarter project that would portray the original Wing Commander stories with modern updated graphics, sound, all new voice overs with the established series voice actors, and full HOTAS support.

I'll even drop an extra 50 bucks if you provide a Steam-Play version so I can play it natively on my Mac.

Thanks,
A Wing Commander Fan who want to give you money...

PS: Lets do this for System Shock and System Shock 2 as well okay?

If Valve turns off their servers, you lose all your games.

I used to think this way too, until I realized that just about every game eventually goes on sale for the amazingly cheap 75% - 90% off. I've never bought a game full price, most of my stuff is in the 10-15 dollar range, and I get a lot of hours of enjoyment out of it. At that cheap price its like a rental I never have to return, making it incredibly convenient.

Besides, its not like I can't go online and find cracked copies of the executable files that would let me play the game without Steam if I really wanted to.

I'm just not interested in a 'family car'.....which is anything with > 2 functional seats.

Then just buy a Smart ca, retrofit it with a Hyabusa engine, then go smoke a Ferrari. Not only would it be novel but it'd probably cost a lot less than a Corvette to boot. Then there's the fact with the Tridion Safety cell, instead of Fibreglass panels, you'll even have some decent crash protection** if you screw up doing donuts in the parking lot trying to impress people. :-)

As a 2005 Smart owner myself I've been giving some serious thought to swapping out the diesel engine, once it comes time to rebuild the engine, for something with a lot more guts; a 35 horsepower Turbo Diesel just don't cut it when you need to enter the highway from a short merge lane or pass someone going under the limit.

** : Yes, the video makes it look scary. If you pay attention at the end though it will tell you, and rightly so, that NO ONE would survive a 70 MPH instant stop into a solid wall regardless of what they're driving; the same goes for a tractor trailer -- unless you're driving a tank hitting a tractor trailer in any vehicle is usually a death sentence. What the test does show is that even at high speeds the Smart maintains most of its shape, if you extrapolate that logically what it means is if you hit another vehicle at the far lower speeds you're likely to be traveling at the damage to the car would be even less and increasing your chances of survival.

Like most other gadgets, the iPad can charge off of a USB port. That would be 5 Vdc.

Actually the iPad can't be charged off a USB port, it doesn't have the 10W of power required. Still, the Air Force could replace one of the overhead 50W cabin lights (note, I have no idea how much wattage the cabin lights take but any decent light coming off an old style incandescent is going to be at least 50W) with a 20W CFL, or other low power use light, and run a cable off the socket for charging the iPads. Hell, build a nice docking station right into the instrument panel so the pilot has access to the charts while its charging.

Seriously? Are there guys who actually want kids?

Yes. And to really mess with your head, one of my biggest dreams in life is to raise my children in a full time capacity by being the stay at home parent. In other words I want to be the home-maker while my wife is out working to bring home the bacon.

Unfortunately when women ask me about kids and they find out I not only want them but also want to be the stay at home parent, well lets just say they usually find another place to be very quickly. In fact in 38 years I've only ever met one woman who was actively looking for a man willing to stay at home with the kids while she focused on her career, and that was eight years ago.

As I've gotten older I've realized its increasingly unlikely I'll ever have kids, but never doubt that I do want them.

Did you even watch 24? Here, let me fix that for you.

Terrorist: Fred, Rewire the CI-Plot Device to blow up the eastern sea board or I'll tell Suzie you cheated on her! ...6 min later...

Fred: Jack! the terrorist just escaped via submarine helicopter!

Jack: Dammit Chloe, patch me through to the Deap Sea satellite imaging array! Dammit... DAMMIT!!!!

Did you watch the video from Apple, you don't need to do that anymore. Just highlight the parts you care about and read them all from the same highlights page. Hell, it'll even take the stuff you've highlighted and make flash cards to help you remember it.

I wish I had something like this in school, would have saved me a fortune in sticky notes for bookmarking all the pages I had to re-read, or refer to, because now kids will be able to get all that on the same page with a swipe of the finger.

The University / College library usually won't let you into them unless your a paying student and if they do let you in they definitely won't let you take anything out since paying students need those books. Which gets back to the basic problem, I'm not paying 200 bucks because I'm curious about something but I will pay 15.

That's fine if you just want to learn University Physics on your own, but in college the professor will usually assign homework from problems in the book, which a comparable book won't have.

While that is true I think you're missing the point of my argument. If I'm learning for the sake of learning I don't care whether the professor assigns an assignment out of one book or another. I, as a non-student, have an interest in a subject and I am now able to buy an equivalent High School, College, or University Textbook to learn from for 15 bucks. I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars, I can now spend fifteen, and if I decide I like it enough to attain formal education in the subject, I might even be able to take a placement exam that would give me credit for the self taught material I've already covered.

Also, for K-12, although the thought of being able to buy books for $15 sounds great I think the start-up/maint costs will be too much. Hardware will increase every year, and hardware requirements for software will increase to match that.

Its cheaper than you think, if you think it through. Think of the average Grade 9 student: Math, General Science, Chemistry, English, General Computing, General History, Geography.

They'll need text books for all those classes, sometimes more than one if multiple topics are covered during the year. Lets assume they only need one for each for a minimum of seven textbooks and estimate a hundred bucks a pop, now they're going to need to buy textbooks for each year that student is there. Lets assume the same number of textbooks each year for the student's four year run: 7 x 100 = 700 x 4 = $2,800.00 per student per four year period.

Most schools replace their textbooks every four - five years, so basically once a student graduates they replace their entire textbook roster for all classes all at once.

Or they can spend $599.00 on a 32 GB iPad, lets get the mid line model in case the textbook authors decide to go a bit crazy with the video, and give the student 28 redemption codes for their textbooks over the four years which tacks on an additional $420.00. All told the district would spend $1,019.00 per student per four year period. And we haven't even covered off on any education discounts Apple would include in selling them an iPad, which there probably would be since Apple usually does provide the hardware at education discounts.

With proper care the iPad would certainly last for four years and as an incentive to treat it well, and solve the updated hardware problem, we could let the student keep it when they graduate; what an incentive to the student, do well in school and keep your iPad for College / University. Sure it would cost a fair bit to get the program started but once its running the cost in new hardware would be limited to the freshman class size each year and you wouldn't have to worry about disposing of obsolete hardware since the student's would be taking it with them.

As for insurance premiums use some of the savings for Apple Care, that should cover most stuff, and then set aside a bit more for breakage. Most schools already do something similar with their paper textbooks anyway by purchasing a number of extra copies allowing them to replace excessively damaged ones as needed.

In relation to IT costs, its an iPad and not a general purpose computer. It therefore wouldn't need the same level of IT support as a general computer would, a bunch of Wi-Fi nodes and a copy of iCloud set up for the school to coordinate textbook and lesson plan distribution should cover that. Hell that sounds like it'd be fun to set something like that up, I wonder what it takes to become an Apple Certified Technician.

Of course, one thing you miss is that in the 1970s, most households had a single wage.

I didn't miss that, in fact I compared that directly on purpose because that was the whole point of the argument. A single wage earner in 1970 was more than capable of buying a home and supporting their family.

in theory a dual wage household will be better off as with an average comibined wage of 70,000 the house costs 3.3 times what a person made.

Take a look at what you wrote. Has it sunk in yet? TWO people are now needed to do the same job as ONE only 40 years ago.

While the average price of housing has risen 900+% over that period the average wage has only gone up 50%. We, as a society, have almost the same amount of money to spend but now have to pay a far higher cost in order to attain even the most basic of necessities. Wages aren't keeping up to match the global realities, in order for a single income family to exist the average wage needs to be increased to at least 58K+.

And its not just housing, its food too. Back in the 70's you could walk into the Grocery Store with a hundred bucks and walk out with enough food to feed a family of four for 4 - 6 weeks! Now, you're lucky if a hundred bucks gets you enough food for a week, and that's assuming you eat cheap processed crap because fresh stuff will set you back even more.

Everything is more expensive, not just luxuries, but the money we collectively earn hasn't kept pace with that reality.

That's the problem here. People shouldn't have to work two jobs, or have their kids raised by Day Care so both parents can work, or go into such crushing amounts of debt, just so they can afford basic necessities. Necessities are supposed to be cheap and luxuries are supposed to be for those who can afford a bit more, but now housing is priced like a luxury and due to unending corporate / shareholder greed the wages haven't been keeping pace.