From the company that brought you Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and then 8.

Yes, that company.

I remember excellent four player gaming sessions on the couch with Warhawk ... I miss it sometimes.

Voice controls in Sing Star are quite smooth but still delayed a fraction of a second. I wouldn't put it past either company to have excellent voice control this generation. I still don't want people talking to the TV to change channels.

And hackable ... didn't Panasonic have trouble with their Skype TVs having the cameras hacked remotely?

Its called a loss leader ... its a common and very workable technique in marketing, and more so when you're a hardware company who knows how to whittle down production costs with time.

If you're a spy or diplomat or whatever, don't use Gmail. At the very least it is subject to the US government's laws. Get yourself a secured server somewhere else.

But with the newer stuff, their abilities are amped and their weaknesses are nerfed. Why not?

Exactly. You get eternal youth (at whatever age you "died") and all kinds of extras in exchange for a literal blood thirst. Which may or may not require you to kill a person (depending upon the writer) or animal.

So what effect would that have on society? And when did it start?

Are there "good" vampires and if so, why aren't they converting some of our best scientists? Why aren't they our space program? Stake them on Earth, send them to Mars and have a machine pull the stake. No need for food during the trip. Be the first vampire to see Saturn up close and then turn the ship back to Earth. How many astronauts on Earth would willingly "go vampiric" to do that?

Reading the above, I am *so* glad I live in a country with free healthcare for all.

Go ahead, rub it in.

I honestly can't see how anyone who can make a sane argument against that.

If you're the majority shareholder of a HMO organization that owns hundreds of hospitals and a US senator at the same time, you may still not be able to make a sane argument against it, but you're going to try like hell.

Nobody has shown that what Apple has done shouldn't be morally acceptable.

I know I'll regret responding to such an obvious troll, but...

1) When a company like Apple avoids/evades paying taxes, it hurts the free market by taking for themselves an advantage that other companies can or do not. Primarily, a company the size of Apple does this by using its tax advantage to press anti-competitive advantages by buying up other companies. If you or I wanted to buy a company that Apple also wanted to buy, and the company cost $1billion, Apple would basically be able to buy that company for $700million while we would have to pay the full $1billion. By using this advantage to destroy competition, there is greater consolidation and greater loss of competition. Pretty soon, it's not really a market at all, much less free.

If you believe a "free market" is a force for good, then what Apple is doing is bad.

2) By not contributing their share of taxes (the same share that other companies have to pay), Apple uses public assets without paying for them, forcing the shortfall onto the rest of us and their competitors. Bad for us, and bad for the free market.

3) Stealing is immoral. Even you would probably agree that taking something that you have not paid for is immoral. Apple uses a lot of common resources, from infrastructure to the legal system, at a much higher rate than most people (or companies) by not paying their share of the costs, those costs are shifted on to us. In the language of the American Right, Apple is "stealing from future generations".

4) Lying is immoral. Here's one of Apple's tax "avoidance" scams: They register a patent in the United States. This forces the United States government to use resources to protect Apple's patent rights. Then, Apple transfers the ownership of that patent to a company that does not exist in Ireland, which pays its fees to another company that does not exist in say, Holland (thus the famous "Dutch-Irish Sandwich"). Because the ownership of that patent is in the other country and removed further by paying license fees in the third country, Apple completely avoids any taxes at all. Yet, if an Apple patent is threatened, they sue in US court and the US government is called upon to protect Apple's patent. So, for the purposes of taxes, the patent is not American, but for the purposes of enforcement, the patent is American. I'm pretty sure you can see how this is immoral.

Further, I'm betting that Apple's claim that 2/3 of their profits come from outside the US and indeed outside the jurisdiction of any sovereign nation, Apple's lying. This is why they're going to settle this ASAP, because if the forensic accountants go to work on Apple's books, the penalties could be astronomical and Apple's already wounded share price would halve again.

5, 6 & 7: Corporations were given special status to protect investors and owners from direct liability, not to protect them from having to act in a moral way. You seem willing to absolve Apple from any moral responsibility for anything, yet you want them to be treated as a person for the purposes of political activities. So now the moral questions are directed at you, khallow.

Finally, if you believe that taxes are immoral on their face, I would remind you that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to achieve freedom from taxation, but rather from taxation without representation. You cannot make a persuasive argument that you are not represented. You may not like your representation, but that's the way our system was designed. If you don't like the American system, then we have a different discussion altogether.

Do you feel that we should stick more with the classic mythos? Or are you in favor with your own spin.

The problem would be FINDING the "classic" vampire. They've been changing ever since they were first invented. Mostly because the person telling the story needed a certain feature set for that story.

I'm not saying anything against Michael Reaves. But the main problem with most of the stories is that the reality created by the writer is inherently limited to the knowledge of the writer. So there are usually huge plot holes such as "if vampires are so cool then why wouldn't everyone want to be a vampire" or "if vampires are so powerful then why do they have to hide".

As a matter of fact I never directly used Bitcoin.

Because you're not goofy.

Personally, I do all of my transactions in Darknet Credits, which is the new monetary system based on reputation and righteous deeds. I can't actually buy anything, but I'm in on the ground floor.

You've obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.

You could accurately say that everyone has obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.

Yeah, but -current- batteries drain in a few hours of actual heavy use, and you definitely don't want to have to be cabled to be able to play a game for an hour.

Maybe I'm biased - I run. Having enough capacity to track by GPS and HR-sensor an entire run, while playing music or Zombies Run, *and* still have adequate battery-capacity that I feel reasonably sure I can make a call or two if something should happen is a MUST for me. I run up to half-marathons, so 3 hours of active use (though with the screen off) is an absolute must.

There are some similarities with religious debates, that's true. Unfortunately that similarity is mostly that one side is dominated by reasonably rational minds while the other is mostly stark raving mad.

No it is defiantly a consumer product

Really, now?