In my area sales tax is down around 5%, but if I go into the city it jumps to something like 12% (at least for restaurants). Seeing $0.25 added onto your $5 taco bell purchase is one thing, seeing $0.60 added makes you stop and think about cross the city line to get those tacos.

Regarding online retailers though, as long as the selection is better and prices are 20% cheaper to begin with, not paying sales tax is just icing on the cake.

Neither Best Buy nor Amazon include sales tax in their advertised prices. Yet Amazon's (and Neweggs, and etc.) prices are typically discounted 20% or more compared to the brick and mortar stores. Even after accounting for shipping. I don't think lack of sales tax is why people pick Amazon and Newegg.

If laws are being broken, law enforcement will subpoena the user from Verizon based on IP at a particular time, and punish appropriately. How is it Verizon's responsibility to make judgement calls on content posted on arbitrary websites by their users?

Weren't these only "dress-up barbie" cosmetic items?

Or did they also include weapons and other "required-to-play" content that CAN be obtained for free in-game, but only through laborious grinding?

I know they said something like "all items can also be obtained in-game", but you put enough hours or a small enough droprate on those items and it's effectively for-pay only.

The way games work these days, there is a LOT to be said for waiting until a price drop (or several) before buying. By then the game is stable, more optimized, the design is often improved in important areas, and the DLC may even be included.

There are too many $20 (bought new) excellent games out there right now for me to justify buying brand new $50-60 broken games.

Where they get you is with the multiplayer that all your friends are playing when its $50, and sick of when its down to $20.

I bought Halo Reach at Gamestop, used. They charged $55 for it. I got it home, opened the case, and realized it REEKED of cigarette smoke. Returned it for a full refund, and went to Costco where I bought it new for $52.

For every older game I've looked for, the internet has become the only option at all. Games that are 3-year-old best-sellers have already been re-released in stores as $20 "platinum hits", sold out of stock, and been dropped from the stores altogether.

It's as if all brick and mortar stores have seen what happened to the video rental market and decided to follow suit by accelerating their own death.

Calling Steam evil for these reasons is a bit ignorant of the history and alternatives. Retail games were requiring internet registration before Steam (which in turn prevents resale), and banning users for cheating as well.

Your options here have never been "no DRM or Steam". Your options are "draconian DRM that constantly interferes with your gaming experience OR Steam that mostly doesn't".

But, I guess we should be thankful for Steam's success that we've gained so much ground that we can again call Steam "evil DRM" and try to push all the way back to "no DRM". Not that it's likely to ever happen, but more power to you for trying. Just be careful not to shoot down the good+realistic option and leave us with the bad+realistic draconian DRM option.

I'm rooting for Steam too, Valve has more than earned my trust. The killer for me is that Steam is somehow *incredibly* unresponsive. It also likes to churn disk while I'm playing games. So I sadly end up turning it off and losing the Friends list and other features unless I'm running a Steam game at that exact moment.

I recently got a 360, and the prices at Gamestop are truly amazing. Not in the good way. Their tagline should be

"Used games at New game prices!"

That's just compared to brick and mortar stores. Amazon has almost every used game they sell for cheaper new even after shipping cost.

The ONE exception I could find is games that are legitimately out of stock, ie: Beautiful Katamari for the 360. It was cheaper at Gamestop, but only if you can find a Gamestop that has it in stock. The game used to go for $20 new at Best Buy, but is now $30 used at Gamestop, and $35+ used on the internet. They have a bizarre habit of under-producing Katamari games. The same thing happened on the PS2.

1997 was fine, the problem was around 2004-2006 when people were buying (and building) houses as investment speculation, often with no down payment, interest-only loans, and sometimes with no job at all.

Those people are at fault primarily, but the banks are also largely at fault for giving loans to people who couldn't afford them and sometimes misleading people into thinking they COULD afford them.

This whole "Clinton caused the housing crisis because he wanted poor people to buy houses" angle I've only heard as a racist rant, never from any economist.

Keep in mind you can also play co-op against the computer. It may be cheesy, but it's still a lot of fun.

Movie theaters are like Wal-mart. I must be a bit forgetful, so once or twice a year I'll say "Hm, haven't been there for a while!" And every time I'm severely disappointed.

With movie theaters it's the ticket price, the snack prices, 30 minutes of ads, then people talking on cell phones or bringing in infants.

Forget the hipster protest stuff with Wal-mart -- every time I go I can not find what I'm looking for. A cooler, an electric griddle, a video game their website said they had in stock at that particular store, they're always out of stock. Sometimes you can find another section in the store that has the same item in stock, but usually all 2-3 places are empty. The parking lot and store layout (or mislayout as it may be) are just icing on the cake.

People didn't integrate Wave into their daily routine, but that hardly means the internet gave a "yeah, whatever". It was impressive tech without a clear purpose, nor enough bugfixes to make it usable full-time even if it DID have a full purpose.

I think any company would be smart to hire that guy or his whole team, especially if they were able to apply a little direction to their technical skills.

If only they had cross-linked every image of a floating spinning skull and under-construction worker, they could have gotten this down from 900gb to about 100mb!

(my own geocities site included)

Really? Can you show me how to watch Netflix Instant from Linux?

And how many versions behind is the Linux version of Silverlight again?