Maybe because it's been around so long?

Isn't there an inherent sample bias in asking only EverQuest players?

Playing time increases with age? - EverQuest is an old game, and it's players tend to drift towards the hardcore. Anyone still playing it must be really into it. Younger players will probably be turned off - either by the older graphics or the fact they could be playing WoW instead.

As for the differences between genders, we have to remember that we're not polling the general population. Women gamers who are still playing EverQuest are slightly more hardcore than male players. This might tell us nothing at all about women in general. In fact, I'd bet these stats aren't exactly representative of normal people, or even necessarily "normal" hardcore gamers.

I'm sure I could go on, but there must be some stats nerds who can go to town on this sort of headline...

I'm on "four fifths" (i.e. 4 days a week), but blocked together into 5-day a week slots. This gives me 2.5 months off a year above my usual paid leave.

I quite like it.

These domain names are usually used because they're easier to *say* than shorthand versions.

I used to think exactly the same way as you, but then I worked at a radio station for a year. Some of those short names can be quite easily misunderstood - letters are notoriously confusable. That's why there's a radio phonetic alphabet.

Don't feed the trolls, I know... but I feel I should clarify.

I was referring to the "800% of GDP" comment made by the grandparent, which is true of Iceland which has debt of "eight times GDP", and not Ireland, which doesn't have great debt but not to anything near the levels the poster argued.

And since I'm British, I'm not really sure what your comment about Americans is supposed to mean...

I don't disagree with what you're saying in principle, but I think perhaps you mean Iceland not Ireland.

See Wikipedia: "By 2008 the nation's currency (the krÃna) was defunct and the national debt had soared to over eight times GDP."

Although Ireland is not doing great ("Ireland was stripped of it`s AAA credit ranking and downgraded to AA+ by Standard & Poor's ratings agency, due to Ireland`s bleak financial outlook and heavy government debt burden." - Wikipedia), it's still AA+, compared to Iceland which has pretty much collapsed.

Exactly. I work on security for a major retailer, and people try to screw the system with gift cards all the time. It doesn't work.

Those cards get activated (i.e. added to a database of purchased cards) by software on the POS system, they're totally useless.

Try it - walk into a shop and these gift cards will be unprotected on the shelf. Copy the number from the back of a card and punch it into iTunes. Their value will add up to thousands of dollars in one shop alone - what sort of a company would sell cards with what would effectively be cash value without that sort of protection?

People steal these cards from retail stores all the time. The joke is that they just risked prosecution to steal a worthless piece of plastic.

Also, I think that's why big stores abandoned gift vouchers. They were stealable and copyable, but a gift card is database checked when you use it, so much much harder to fool a checkout operator with.

I'm working as a part-time Security Guard/CCTV operator while I'm at University. Most of my colleagues work a 44 hour week (4x9, 1x8), not including overtime.

And they're the lucky ones - outside contractors (usually migrant workers) work 12 hour shifts with only 2 half-hour breaks (the legal maximum number of hours work combined with the legal minimum break time).

I guess it depends upon what you're used to.