No it doesn't. I had various login troubles whilst playing DAO but even when I was not logged in, it still knew what DLC my account had and I could still play. Whilst trying to log in though, I could not start my game, so I guess it does check if you are online or transitioning to online.

The game market includes consoles.

The PC market is not (last I heard) shrinking, its growth may be outpaced by individual consoles, and certainly is if you add all of the consoles together.

Note also that the PC market is increasingly shifting into the digital distribution space, making retail numbers unreliable, and of course that the entire world is not reflected in NPD sales, most sales charts pretty much show numbers for the US, UK and maybe Japan.

Oh totally.

Just like game retailers and distributors in Australia seem to have decided that 1AUD = 0.5USD.

Says you, games here cost $90-110 AU new at retail (thanks EA for deciding that new PC games should cost the same as console games).

They cost US retail prices in most cases on Steam, so I can save myself a good $40+ on a game purchase. Unless the publisher on Steam is being a terrible company and raising the AU price. Which some do, such as THQ and Southpeak for example.

I don't know, I've never actually played Monopoly with the full rules as written. That is to say I've never played with the rule which requires that a property goes up for auction if not purchased.

It seems to me that that would speed up the game and greatly increase the amount of strategy available to a player (Do you think you can let it go for auction and get the property at a lower price, do you think you can drive up the bidding to increase the amount of money your opponents use, do you want to bid on that property someone else let slip).

Quite frankly I didn't find out that that rule even existed until a couple of years ago, and I haven't played monopoly in about 6 or 7 years.

It becomes less useful when these apps default to the wrong dictionary. I'm sorry Colloquy and Chrome I am not going to start spelling colour incorrectly just because you keep highlighting it.

Except that you can locally host and run a Left 4 Dead server on a LAN, you can even run your own dedicated L4D server at a LAN.

Can I say whomever decided to not put numerals for the values on US coins is almost as much of a git as the guy who decided that your 10c pieces should just say dime.

I found it surprisingly unhelpful because coming from a country that doesn't nickname it's coins and being used to size order of value in the sub $1 coins, I had problems initially sorting out my change. I had difficulty remembering whether it was a dime or a nickel which was 5 or 10 cents and my initial hunch was of course dead wrong since the 5c coin is larger than the 10c coin which doesn't show a value.

Made me pretty happy with my own Aussie coins which have large numbers prominently displayed on the tails side.

Where did you get that $29 price for the 10.5 upgrade?

It cost you $129 to go from 10.4 to 10.5, or the price of a new apple machine.

Well, I admit this isn't the newest test, but Win 7 was already beating XP in build 7000, heck it is worth noting that Vista vs XP comparison is not particularly bad either.

Are region free DVD players really that rare in your area? Here (in Australia) any DVD player you get your hands on is either region free or trivial to unlock with a quick google. As a result my DVDs are a mix of region 4 and region 1 discs. Sadly this does not apply to DVD drives and consoles.

The bus system works for my commute rather well. No trains, but I actually work near the closest train station to me, but I can walk for 10 minutes at a relaxed pace to the a main bus stop, get a bus to within reasonable walking distance from work. If I time things right I can even get one that stops just one block from work.

The buses are also typically reasonably close to the timetable too, within a few minutes on most days.

Sure there are cities with better transport, and it certainly requires a fair amount of work on fidxing and updating everything especially in terms of prices, but it is not as bad as you are making out.

When I had one PC, I just used my nickname on it. After I had multiple I started using a very simple naming scheme. The prefix Ran, and any subsequent ones get numbers. Along with a title if I feel sufficiently motivated.

So I have RanPC 2 - Revenge of the PC, RanMac 2 - The Quickening (Macbook Pro, been a little less reliable than I would like), RanPod 2 - The Listening, RanShuffle, RanCar, RanPhone, Ran360, RanDS...

It's a very flexible naming system.

Really? The few speed comparisons I have seen don't seem to indicate that. Admittedly the main one I remember was this one from a few weeks ago on Slashdot.

You sort them randomly! Every time the OS is installed it fires up the good old phase of the moon generator and sorts em randomly.

Irritating for support yes, but it avoids the who is at the top problem.