I think you're really narrowing down who would be considered a gamer. All of my close friends are gamers, but I'm the only one that can build my own gaming PC without help. None of them are Slashdotters, most of them really like Macs for their simplicity & stability (it's what I run when I'm not gaming, too), none of them give a damn about open software, and while a few of them are familiar with what Linux is, not one of them uses it. I'm not trying to say any one preference is better than another, but I think your perspective is terribly skewed. Fifteen or twenty years ago, sure, most gamers were self-proclaimed geeks and would have loved to build their own PC. But today, there are many more gamers, and the old stereotypes don't hold at all. Most gamers don't care about Windows vs OS X vs Linux, they want to be able to have fun and not spend a ton of time or money trying to get to that point. Now, I've used various Linux distros in the past and I don't hate it, but it really is far more work than the average user will ever want to endure just to get it and keep it working, much more so if you build your own rig. You can say it isn't much, but I'm sure most people here are not strangers to helping family/friends set up a computer and you know it's too much for them. I'd really like to see any open OS take off and overtake Windows as well as OS X so the world can adjust to using freely available software and let that become the way of things. But realistically, it's going to take much more than game availability to make Linux appeal to the masses. And before the Android comparisons come out, the cell phone market and PC market are not the least bit related, a popular OS on one is typically not so popular on the other (Windows, I'm looking at you) even when they are almost the same.

Going by the stories from back when the quake happened, the summary is more accurate than you think. What they said was that a series of tremors didn't mean there's an earthquake coming, not that there isn't going to be an earthquake. It may not sound like the biggest difference, but it really is. If earthquakes were easy to predict, I'd hesitate to defend them, but they aren't. The people who've decided they should've known are people who are not the least bit qualified to make that call, which is why geologists were hired in the first place.

Well, I'm going to steal from you every week for the next ten years, and within a year I'll tell you you can't get mad at me, because it's just what you should expect.... I don't understand why people think the fact that Facebook keeps doing this means it's alright, and we have no right to be mad about it. It's just crazy. We could have six breaches of PSN a year and nobody would ever come out and say "Well, after the first two you really should've stopped using PSN!" and expect it to be taken seriously. It's a service a lot of people want to use, and they should be able to hold them to their word, it's as simple as that.

They're not the only service you give your information to, they're just the ones that you don't use. I don't have a MasterCard, so if they release all of their customers' information I should think "They're stupid for using MasterCard!" You can argue that they're optional all you want, but so are credit cards, cable, and the internet you use to find said discussion forums. There's no reason to sit there and say it's the users' fault for using a service, that's completely ridiculous. Any time a service, even if it's optional, handles your personal information, they should be held to a certain standard. Calling it the regulation of online identities is a silly way of making it sound like the government would be controlling our online lives, when really all we need is for them to say if a service can't keep to it's word they pay a big-ass fine based on their revenue.

Personally, I'm not bitching, Facebook doesn't have anything of mine I need kept private. They have my name, and some pictures I wanted to share with family and friends, none of which even include any people. I keep it simple partly because I don't trust Facebook, mostly because I don't use it often and don't care to. Facebook is an optional service, sure, you don't need it at all, but as much as I used to hate on it, it does provide a number of benefits for people who want to use it. You can tell people they shouldn't share so much and that's all well and good, but you shouldn't have to avoid services like Facebook because you can't trust them, it should piss people off when things like this happen. Any time you use a service and it doesn't operate as they claim it should, you should be pissed off. Like I said above, you can avoid all of your computer-related woes by staying off the computer, but you really shouldn't have to.

The big problem with this logic is that you do need to give out your personal information to sign up for various services, and the truth is nobody else really gives a damn unless it's regulated, and at that point they only care about the regulations. I'm not saying you're altogether wrong, it's definitely a good idea to keep things you want to stay private off of services like Facebook (or Google+ or Myspace) but that doesn't make it in any way acceptable when they publish information they claimed would be kept private. You can solve all of your computer-related woes by avoiding computers, but you really shouldn't have to...

The phone book doesn't have my cell phone number, or most other peoples' cell phone numbers, but that is what Facebook has most of the time. The phone book doesn't have photos of me, my friends, and my family so as to positively identify me from anyone else in the world who might share my (relatively common) name. The phone book doesn't not allow me to find people by interest so I can find people to call and sell my products to. The phone book requires you to know pretty specifically who you are looking for in order to find them without using the trial and error method. Oh, and lastly, you know the phone book is going to list your number unless you do something about it, and many people choose not to have their number listed, Facebook was never supposed to list your number and so people gave it to them expecting it to remain private. So, while you might not care that Facebook decided to show your number, plenty of people would be bothered by it. It isn't the end of the world or anything, but to downplay it and equate it to having your number in the phone book is a just a bit crazy. Oh, and a point I nearly forgot, lots of teenagers have their cell phone numbers in their Facebook accounts, and without tackling why they shouldn't to begin with, those numbers should definitely not be available publicly.

Development, for starters. Apple's spent quite a bit of time developing both the hardware and software behind the iPhones, costs which naturally have to be covered, and free services like iCloud do cost money to maintain. Obviously Apple is making a boatload of money off the iPhone, and they should they are a business and their goal is to make money, but this is like saying Windows costs Microsoft a nickel to make because they just had to stamp a DVD.

It's a massive world with more options than you can count, as open as game play gets, you can dump hundreds of hours in without ever doing the same thing twice, of course it's buggy. Find me any game with a world that large and open that Bethesda didn't make with fewer bugs. Go for it. I don't think you'll have any luck, though. MMOs are often as big but they're far simpler worlds, much more linear game play, and all the ones I've played (which is a good number) have both been full of bugs and failed to hold my interest past a single end-game run. The closest single-player showing I can think of is Two Worlds, which had such potential to beat out Oblivion with mounted combat and two-player action, but never stood a chance with a crap story and more bugs than you can shake a stick at, definitely more buggy than any Bethesda game I've played. The truth is, most of us know exactly what we're in for with a Bethesda game, it's going to be somewhat buggy, but it's going to be a better game than anything else out there so we put up with it. If you don't want to, that's fine, but to call them incompetent is a bit absurd given the popularity of their games, obviously they're doing something right and most of us appreciate it.

Yes I believe that's true, but that's just one example, albeit an infamous one. When they're looking for a reason, that might matter. But what they're looking for is an excuse and any cyberattack is enough for that.

Even if it is just the excuse they're going to use in order to cut off a widely used means of communication, it's hard to argue against the reasoning. If they were going to stop at taking government facilities off the Internet and move them to a closed network, I'd even believe it really is about protecting themselves from foreign governments launching cyber attacks. I'm not saying this wouldn't have happened anyway, but they do have a great argument against people who see it for what it almost certainly is: a way to better control and monitor communications nationwide.

This is nonsense. I still remember when a half-dozen machines at the small business I did IT work for all went dead with a message claiming Windows was pirated. It had given warnings that users ignored so by the time I was aware of it the computers were all restarting ever fifteen minutes, making them useless for doing anything productive. Contacting Microsoft got me an apology, some new CD keys, and cost the company I work for a day of downtime while I reinstalled Windows (as MS told me going through the registry changing keys won't solve the problem) on most of our computers. Don't tell me MS is kind to pirates, the only two reasons pirated copies aren't fought hard by MS are 1. Pirates will win while legit consumers suffer and 2. Hardly anyone buys Windows unless it's with a new computer, MS knows this and so understands they're not losing a sale for ever pirated copy they're just keeping users.

I've never seen a prepaid plan that offers a discount for bringing your own phone. Not to mention if you actually use your phone frequently, I've never seen a prepaid plan that will save you money, especially if you want data. I'm not saying they don't exist, just wondering what service you're talking about?

Apparently it's been a while. If you want service from one of the major providers, T-Mobile is your only option for getting a discount for bringing your own phone. That's all. Having that option is nice for some people if you don't mind the poor coverage in many areas (like where I live) but it doesn't change the cost of the Nokia Lumia to the customer of AT&T, which is what the article is about. Now, you can definitely bring your own phone, but AT&T won't give you a discount on your monthly bill. So, again, the cost to the customer is actually..... $49.

I'm glad your cell providers aren't ripping you off quite as much over there, but it has nothing to do with the cost of the Nokia Lumia on AT&T which is what the article is about. While AT&T does offer SIM-Only plans, there's no discount for it and you still actually pay for a SIM card. I understand things work differently elsewhere, and that sounds like a far better deal, but it doesn't change anything here. There's only one cell provider out of the big ones that'll offer a discount for bringing your own phone, and they even put you on their prepay network which gives you worse coverage than the regular network. So as great as things are over in France, it doesn't change the cost of the Nokia Lumia to the customer here only being $49.