If it gets rid of all the scammy stores that don't actually let you buy the product at the listed price, I'm all for it. Google is pretty good at keeping that stuff out of regular search results, but they can't seem to get it out of product search.

Think of the calories you'll burn walking to the counter! Those pounds will just melt away!

You're seeing cloud gaming as a replacement for PC gaming, which it really isn't. It's more of a replacement for console gaming, which just happens to take place on a computer - or, in some cases, on a smartphone. This is awesome because it lets someone play the new games without the initial costs: they don't have to buy a fancy graphics card or a PS3. Sure, it doesn't have a lot of the upsides of PC gaming, but it's not trying to.

Turn your monitor sideways?

I'm sure that Microsoft will be generous and actually pass on these savings to the consumer, right? I mean, they wouldn't just cut out a feature to save some money and then keep that money for themselves, would they?

Actually, if you read more than the last chart of TFA, you see that Opera uses the most power when rendering about:blank. The last chart is pretty misleading if you're making an across-the-board comparison on anything other than the total runtime.

IE wins 3/4 of the tests, with Firefox typically running a close second. It does not win on about:blank, but is about a tenth of a percent off from Chrome there.

SSDs affect other things besides just speed. I put one in my netbook and battery life went from six hours to eight - and it boots in fifteen seconds and starts programs almost instantly. The difference in power consumption matters less in a bigger laptop, but it would still help. I also don't see why you're talking about an SSD and a 2TB drive as a binary choice. The "average user" doesn't need 2TB; they already have enough space with the ~500GB that came with their Dell. They could get an SSD, keep the hard drive they already have, get someone to move the Windows install, and have the best of both worlds.

The mistake would lie with the bank, but if they were to give a loan in your name to anyone with that information, you would indeed have a problem.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/OMB_Wiki_memo.pdf

I know I don't register at any websites.

I have found a solution.

1. Quit your job.
2. Become a private eye who tracks down workers playing hooky.
3. Get paid to go to the same bowling alley you were going to before.
4. Profit!

Didn't even need the ???

Not quite. A great idea that is hacked together will almost certainly be "borrowed" and better implemented by someone else, making them a fortune. The world still gets changed, I suppose.

According to a few different places, Sony started making a profit on PS3s in April this year. Only took them about four years to get there...

Can we stop pushing the idea that consoles are sold at a loss? The Wii has been sold for a profit since launch (source). The Xbox 360 has been sold for a profit for four years (source). The PS3 has taken the longest to get there, but it is now sold for a profit as well (source). New consoles are often initially sold at a loss, but they do not stay at that price.

The problem with the five-year lag is that the consoles are decreasing the lag the consumer sees. Crytek's CEO claims that the current generation of consoles was holding back developers. There are some games that are PC-only, but those only appeal to a fraction of the potential market, so most developers have to go for multiple platforms and accept the limitations that the old hardware has. The consumer mostly sees cross-platform games, so it doesn't look like a five-year lag at all. If there were a hardcore PC developer pushing the envelope, it might be different, but now that Crytek has developed CryEngine 3 for all platforms, I don't think anyone could do it.

I wonder how much of this is Nintendo's fault - MS and Sony look over and see their competitor beating them with half the graphics and a bit of a lower price, and they realize that graphics have hit a point that most games won't benefit that much from nicer hardware. Of course, then they think that the magic is all in the motion controls and that they need to have something that imitates that...it's like watching iphone imitators.