You, a single person, possible a collection of a hundred or so similar people, are

1. Asking dozens of giant corporations to provide legal licenses to use their software on your system, in a way they haven't accounted for.
2. Expecting them to take the time out of their busy schedule to write over a license agreement, a copy of the software (which they don't have, unless they have copied the ROM themselves), and expect you to use the software in accordance with the license agreement (which if you ever sell or give away the arcade machine, would be in violation of the software license)

Understand that aside from the possible liabilities of releasing such software to parties which may not have the best interest of the companies at heart, what can the companies expect in return? You're looking a few hundred dollars for a few lawyers to come up with the agreement for each game, and then another few hundred for the software development time to make sure these "legal" roms aren't bundled in with all the other illegal software currently floating around the internet.

"More trouble than its worth" applies to serving a niche market just as well as it applies to serving a lawsuit against someone emulating.

Yes, all the security of a MMO without any of the monthly new content that paying $15 a month provides. Instead I get the luxury of an Auction house that uses real money and a PVP system that relies on Gear bought with real money.

If Diablo 3 was "Guild Wars" in the Diablo universe, I might reconsider. They have no incentive or responsibility to update or provide new content. And rest assured, even if they do go out of their way to update or provide content, they will not do so indefinitely. We can expect the authentication to be indefinite, however.

Personally, I don't think you should be worried about all the people who aren't going to buy it. The crackers of the world are quite adept at adapting to these petty game design choices, and just about anyone can run a private WOW server to play their game on. Diablo 3 wont stand a chance against pirates. Never would, really.

The problem with books is that if the parent is a religious fundamentalist type, you end up donating to the local circular file.

Oh come on, there's a link on Slashdot right now to become a fan on facebook!

Goddammit to hell.

1. Wireless Keyboards and mice don't reach very far, despite what the name suggests. If you're looking to sit more than 10 feet away from your TV, you'll need a booster or a Blue tooth Mouse/Keyboard combo.

  2. Blue tooth combos suck, they constantly lose connection, aren't very responsive, and the mouse can occasionally flip out while trying to use it. In essence, it sucks.

  3. No TV box will do everything your browser,hard-drive, ram, video-card,keyboard,mouse, and dvd-rom will do. Make some compromises, or be prepared to spend thousands of dollars.

Its a tough business. If I were to go to a gamestop right now look at the used game section, besides the multitude of last years sports games, I see tons of games that tried to "take a chance" and fail. Of course, I only want the ones that were the best of the system.The ones made by companies who know their stuff are hard to find, and when you finally do, they cost 60-80% of a new game.

A company can do a re-issue of older titles for a used price and make a killing. They all do it, and it works well.

Money. Lots and lots of money. More so, than what they can aquire in their current state.

It reminds me of the World of Warcraft localization in China. Blizzard had to change a large portion of its content and put a timer on time spent playing it for the Chinese government to ok it. Blizzard changed its Chinese version, satisfied the government, and raked in a huge segment of players willing to fork over money.

I'm sure any amount of "regulation and taxation" would be outpaced by the huge revenue from the millions of new people looking to gamble online.

Jimmy Doolittle would also be an excellent name for a toilet. Just sayin.

So does Vista, in my experience. One of the platforms I've been running the RCs on is a tablet PC. Sleeps, Hibernates, and wakes up without any issues whatsoever.