Katamari. Lots of Katamari.

Why oh why did I comment in this thread before giving you mod-points?

Somewhere your math went horribly, horribly wrong.

$3B / $200k = 15k officers. You're telling me that you found statistics saying that 15,000 officers can only handle 20 rape cases a year and nothing else?

I don't have a whole lot of confidence in our law enforcement industry, but I do have more than that.

Well, it's not free, but it is cheap. AirMouse is an iPhone/iPT app that does the mouse thing over wifi. It's not perfect, but it works.

This is very true. Street fighter would be impossible. But you actually gain a lot by being able to make any of the screen a button. So I see this more as a trade-off than a direct disadvantage. Certainly you could never comfortably play civ on the PSP, and pinball is much more intuitive with the right half/left half buttons than I ever found it with control pad controls.

The iPhone is turning into one of the foremost portable gaming platforms. Even the nice Nokia phones can't claim that. They've put Civilization on it now, FPSs, RTSs. The screen size:total size ratio is probably the highest yet of a gaming device. What's not to like?

I'm not saying this accounts for all the sales, but this is Japan we're talking about.

No, HMOs don't actually do anything. They are just the insurance companies, approving or disapproving your claims.

As another data point, I'm in the same situation & got my invite a couple of hours ago.

Because in Congress, lewdness always exists.

For the most part, phone companies want customers who think that. People are lazy and easily swayed, and the telcoms figure they can get more profit off the ones who end up keeping it (like, I may add, the story writer decided) than the restocking costs them. They don't offer the 30-day deal because they have to.

Except you forget: ice on sidewalks means someone is going to slip and fall. And then sue them. Which apparently they don't have enough of these days.

Ahh, but compare the decline in advertising by the gaining appeal of gaming. And advertising still pays for thousands of television channels and radio stations quite successfully. In my childhood, video games were extremely nitch. In my kids', it will be difficult to find kids who don't play some form of interactive electronic game at least monthly. As video games continue to get more diverse, this trend will only continue. And the nitch of people who are crazy serious about gaming will only increase as well. These are people with disposable income that work very well for advertisers. It's just a matter of when.

Or a small message telling you that the Princess is in another castle?

Yeah, that'll work.