Huh. I don't think you're seeing a representative sample of the gaming community. I think the majority of gamers, even on the PC, are willing to fork over cash for DLC. (Slashdot is not a representative sample, and neither are the modding forums I frequent. Visit some Steam forums, or Fileshack, or pretty much any non-technical gaming forum, and you'll see that the overwhelming opinion is that people are willing to pay for DLC, as long as it's more elaborate than horse armor.

Oh, you'd probably like a source for this. Go here, click on top sellers. That's right, the best-selling game at the moment is the one where Activision charges suckers $15 for 5 maps. Factor in the cost of bandwidth, and that works out to be, oh, a pretty freaking good deal for Activision.

P.S. I wish you were right.

OK, TFA has absolutely no details, but I think all it's doing is recording information about the demographic that looks at the billboard, thus allowing the billboard owner to say: "57% of the people looking at this billboard are male, 18-35 years old" and then pick an appropriate ad for the space.

The issue with this, of course, is that if you have a billboard showing some iteration of rule 34, a certain demographic is going to look, and you'll get the impression that only this demographic looks at ads, and then show more ads targeted to this demographic (lolcats) when in fact (hypothetically) there is a much larger entire demographic (say, 65+ women) walking by that doesn't stare because they don't care about lolcats. Maybe they just have a blank wall to get a sense of whose walking by before they show any ad? Or maybe this is just to get a sense of how many people are actually seeing the ad?

I don't know, this seems like a case of over-engineering, privacy issues aside ("operators have promised they will save no recorded images" yeah right).

Can you provide a citation for any of that? Frankly, I'd be shocked if the government were able to do anything that competent. Besides the obvious constitutional violations, you'd almost need a strong AI to accomplish that type of deep packet inspection. Also, wouldn't simple encryption (that any terrorist group would probably be using) render a system like that worthless?

As someone with experience, right now (dial-up at home).

Ad-block plus is a must have, no-script is essential, I haven't even loaded a picture in months.

Once in a while, a site won't work without some stupid JavaScript, and I'm reduced to choosing between waiting 15-20 minutes to load the page, or looking for information elsewhere.

Email is fine if you just use POP3, but if you're trying to do more than read message boards online, it's impossible.

Patches for the OS, programs, and games are impossible except via sneakernet.

Anyone know how I go about getting a refund for the cash I contributed to the 200 billion the teclos got?

Riiight. I'll just leave this here (PDF).

(P.S. Things haven't gotten better since then.)

Ah, yes. The non-overlapping magisteria idea.

The fact is, science does provide truth, or near enough to it that the average person (and even every scientist I know) accepts solid findings as such.

The trick is knowing which findings are solid (gravity), which are sketchy (Lamarkism), and how to determine whether the finding you're looking at is the former or the latter. That's what we need to teach kids. Yes, teach ID in schools. Then, have the kids explain for themselves how it isn't science. Don't fail the ones that think it is (at least a first); help every single one of them see the inherent issues with reaching a conclusion based on an a priori decision.

When science is able to create life from non-living components, to create matter from electromagnetism, and to create human-level consciousness in a computer, it is unlikely that the average school child will be able to distinguish these things from the magic proposed by religion (hello there, Mister Clarke!). But even well-educated children should be able to figure out the processes that lead to these - and understand the difference between someone starting with a conclusion and gathering evidence in support of it, and building a complex process by understanding its constituents.

Exactly. If you cared about the writing and characters in the original Fallout games, you will be sorely disappointed with FO3. However, combat was better in FO3, the world was neat to explore, and it felt just right - until you started talking with the NPCs.

You've got a lot of replies talking about gravity, CO2, magnetospheric issues, etc.

These problems drop away when you consider a floating city (our atmosphere: 70% N2 / 20% O2 is a lifting gas on Venus). Besides the awesome sci-fi factor, we have the technology, almost literally right now, to put something like this together. Can anyone tell me why it wouldn't work? (apart from funding problems).

It sounds like the EEE would do everything you're asking for. My brother owns a 1005 HE and it has Flash, a camera (mediocre picture quality, but sufficient for video conferencing), Bluetooth, WiFi, and enough hard drive space to store a hundred ripped movies (speakers are mediocre quality, use headphones when watching movies on it). Ubuntu Netbook Remix was easy to install, and provides simple games (follow this exactly. Battery life is great. 8 hours web surfing in real world usage (the 10.5 hour claim on the package is, of course, crap).

The only downsides I know of are the tiny keyboard and the small screen. I could not stand to write more than a couple of pages on the keyboard, and the screen is, well, small. If you can try using a friends to get a feel for the keyboard and screen, and you think you could live with them, it's certainly worth it. IMHO, a tablet is just asking to get broken, and you're better off spending $350 on a netbook than twice that on a first generation novelty device. The EEE is stable, mature, and, most importantly, not locked into a proprietary OS.

These are my sentiments exactly, but remember that you and I are not the target audience here. Apple sells fashion accessories, not electronics. People will buy one of these (the most expensive one no doubt), just to impress their friends. Yes, there may be some people who genuinely need the features offered by this (although I cannot think what features these are off the top of my head), but the majority will be buying just for the sake of owning the latest and greatest.

P.S. If you ever build a time machine and happen to run into me circa 2001 deciding not to buy Apple stock because the iPod is an overpriced, locked down piece of crap that no one will ever buy, slap me. Hard.