Where does ECT ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy ) fit into all of this? Or it's newer friend, TMS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation )?

While your point on developer effort is valid (I don't know the validity of your RE4 anecdote, but if true, shame on them), the whole tone of the post came off sounding to me like the guy in this comic. http://xkcd.com/359/

Basically, how does other people having fun in their own way diminish you having fun in your own way?

If nothing else, the intertubes should have taught us by now, that on almost any large scale, people are going to find entertaining things that others never even imagined.

I think the original post was trying to link letting a subscription lapse with having your assets deleted.

This is usually not the case, as the other poster pointed out.

I would think that neither microtransaction or subscription games would delete your characters, honestly. It would depend on the particular terms of the game, I suppose.

From Wikipedia:

So, no, not *that* much faster, but depending on the materials involved it might be the difference between "works fine" and "failed due to heat stress".

I'm sure someone with a background in fluid dynamics could explain it better then me. Anyone out there?

Oh case fans. Yes, certainly.

The AT class machines, more specifically, power supplies (think the kind with the 'big red switch', which would still be awesome to have, but I digress) usually had a fairly hefty fan on them.
That combined with case design probably provided for a decent amount of cooling on its own.

I thought that the space shuttle was low on the scale of acceleration compared with previous space vehicles.

Now, if someone can find me a motorcycle that can keep pace with an Atlas or Titan, fire me an email; That would be hilarious amounts of fun to play with :)

The 486 might be passive, but i've not seen a passive pentium before. Perhaps a later slot 1 type celeron or P2, maybe.

In fact, the original 5v pentium (think 60mhz) was one of the hottest running cpu's i've ever seen, before or since.

Thinking back on it, it probably seemed much hotter then it was on an absolute scale. The heatsyncs and fans used on those old things were tiny compared to ones on a modern cpu. But still, they ran quite hot in any case (the pentiums).

Except... Floppy drives. Which IIRC, had pin 1 on the opposite from the power.

All the rest though is sadly true. Bent pins, pin keys, etc. Most shops had a box or drawer stuffed full of ribbon cables of every shape and size.

Ctrl-F2.

If you hit Ctrl-F1, and wonder why it won't work anymore, Ctrl-F1 is a toggle to enable/disable the Ctrl-F2 functionality.