The complaint was mostly on the scale of the transactions (i.e. anything but "micro"). But it was also fairly offtopic. And so is this, I guess.

I have absolutely no problem with a console that just plays games. Indeed, I say "good for them" in this decision, especially if it actually lowers end cost to consumers.

The problem with the Wii was never that it didn't play DVDs. The problem was that its catalog of games was lousy. Seriously, look at which games are still selling at full price, and which dropped like a rock two weeks after release. Hint: Twilight Princess is still one of the top-selling Wii games... and it was a GameCube game. They won't get anywhere without developer support.

Okay, I will admit, they rewrote the book on hype and mass-marketing, this generation. That, combined with actually making a profit on hardware sales, put them solidly in the black. I'm not sure the "Nintendo iPad" will manage the same feat, though. That controller is going to cost a pretty penny.

West USA... go to Nevada?

The speed-picking "delta" robots are a very specialized application. The same would be very difficult - or impossible - to apply to jobs like plumbing where the action is highly dependent on context.

The problem is that the intimidation tactics are working. It's getting more difficult to find a copy of the hack. Out of curiosity (I don't even own a PS3), I started looking for a copy of the file. It took me a good 10 minutes to locate a link to a good download. Now, you can say I suck at searching, and that may have some truth, but it means that Sony has made strides in preventing Average Joe Luser from jailbreaking his or her console.

It occurs to me after the fact that I should have probably been searching torrents instead of looking for a download from a website. Indeed, that search takes all of five seconds to bear fruit.

Did you play the DS re-release of Chrono Trigger? They added some new sidequests to it. Compare the production quality side-by-side, of the old content to the new in the same game, and it's shocking to see how low-quality and slipshod the modern content is. Square-Enix has simply lost the ability to make quality game content.

It's saddening that after 15 hours of XIII, I found myself missing X-2. Then I went back and played XII and reminded myself what real characters and storyline-depth were. Pity about that faux-victorian speech impediment they all seemed to have.

I'm assuming that AC up there missed the memo.

The problem is, Locke2005 wasn't talking about random games that you can find a dozen copies of with a simple torrent search. "As an engineer" he said. We're talking about the $1500-per-copy specialized software that nobody ever bothers to crack, so there's no recourse if the licensing servers go down, other than to look for some other company to shell out more money to.

Admittedly, half the time, with the company gone, you'll be looking for another vendor anyway, because you rely on the company's support line too regularly to continue using the software without them anyway.

"False Advertising" doesn't even begin to cover it. The parallel that any smart plaintiff should be making in court is this:

"Imagine if you just bought a brand new Toyota Prius. Now, you're buying it because it's a hybrid car; that's its primary function. However, it also has things like "stereo" and "air conditioning" which factored into your decision to purchase it. Now imagine that a year or so after you purchase your car, it's summer, and you're quite happy that you have air conditioning, and in fact have come to rely on this to make your long hot commutes livable. All of a sudden, a Toyota representative comes by your house, uses the special skeleton key that lets him get into any Prius they've manufactured, and pulls out your AC unit. You tell him to stop, but he shows you that the contract you signed when "purchasing" the car states that you don't actually own it, and that Toyota can still do whatever they want with it. He also tells you that if you'd known about it ahead of time, you could have changed your locks, but that would've voided your car's lifetime warranty and also stopped you from driving on the highway.