Citation for the facebook/company thing? The google-fu is not strong with me today...

Nice diagram of all Google's acquisitions for various reasons (revenue generation, revenue protection, technology, size, etc) http://www.scores.org/graphics/google/

You sir, win the prize for best definition of a cow I have ever heard :)

Er, Flash? I'd say websites that are Flash-based or contain fairly large amounts of Flash content are "common"...

Little bit off-topic but directly related to this, find the book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. It covers all the technology and industries that had to spring up in order to make and mass produce a simple pencil. Fascinating read.

I live in New Zealand, similar health system to Canada. I broke my pinky finger a few months ago, late-ish on a Saturday night - busy time for the drunks and so forth attending the emergency department. 45 minutes in and out, x-ray'd, splinted and with follow up appointment booked. A few weeks later I started seeing a hand therapist to make sure all the mobility came back, total of 6 visits.

No private health insurance, total cost to myself: $0

I travel to the states regularly for work (medical devices, so I see it from the inside as well) and carry a travel insurance card with at *all* times. I will not leave the hotel without it. The last thing I want is to fall down some stairs and break a leg, and then go through your healthcare system without insurance. The second to last thing is to go through your healthcare system at all - remember I see it from the inside as well. Not a great reputation for a country to have with it's visitors, really.

Just in case you haven't found it, try http://www.gog.com/

I'm currently reliving my childhood, to the detriment of my adulthood, but ah well, plenty of time to be old later. Also Steam has a large number of smaller indie titles as well as the time-consuming AAA titles, not least of which is the old LucasArts games, with more to come.

1. If autorun is running an arbitrary executable on removable media just because, then yes, I would consider it one of the more idiotic ideas that has come up. 2. If autorun is running a known application already installed on the PC when a recognised device type is connected, then no it's not the "dumbest idea ever". There's no technical reason that you need (1) active to support (2). Whether there is a way to separately disable them in Windows is another question. (anyone have an answer to that?)

Story submitter here (although apparently I'm known as anonymous these days):

I think that's one part of the problem, but I don't think that's *the* major problem (although I'm sure there will be plenty of false bans that will cause enough of a problem without the complications of linking the games/forums). I see more of a problem in the linking between games; Daddy buys two games, one for little Johnny and one for little Suzy, which he installs and registers via the same EA account. Little Johnny posts something stupid or does something in-game that results in a ban, and little Suzy loses her rights to play Barbie Dressup 2008 or whatever. That's not going to please Daddy, and the problem gets a lot more complicated if little Johnny sells his game to a friend who then gets banned.