The NSA is under the Department of Defense, which makes it close enough.

Your impression is seriously misinformed. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 6 mbar. Humans cannot survive below about 62 mbar without a pressure suit.

Yes. In fact, exactly a decade ago the exchange rate was $1 CDN = $0.64 USD. The late 90's to early 00's were a great time for Americans to visit Canada.

You only need to submit it if no one else on the web links to you. Otherwise Google will find it eventually when it crawls. Submitting your site to Google just makes them aware of it faster and gets your site showing up faster.

False. The checksumming method used with credit cards is called the Luhn algorithm, the last digit is the checksum. The first six are the issuer and the rest, save the last, are the account number.

Digital Convergence did.

It's not possible if the game publishers don't allow it, and they have no incentive to.

GameStop is hardly the only retailer of new video games. Someone who wants a game on release day can just stop in at any big box store and pick it up.

There's no physical market for a great many of the titles Steam puts on sale. Especially the indie titles.

Yes.

When was the last time you played D&D? This hasn't been true since the early days of second edition, back in the late 80's or so. At the very least with Skills & Powers and Combat & Tactics in the mid 90's.

You've got these two backwards. When Wizards bought TSR they decided to do a third edition as a way to modernize the rules and put their own mark on it. However, when Hasbro purchased Wizards in 1999 it put them under a great deal of pressure to get the new edition out ASAP. This led to the great concept and poor execution of third edition, as the development cycle was artificially accelerated. 3.5 was the result of having time to actually finish up the development cycle of what should have been third edition.

"This spell generates wholesome, drinkable water, just like clean rain water." I guess if it rains holy water in your world, she would have an argument.

Fourth edition was a (relative) failure. Wizards saw their flagship game (no not Magic, the other one) beaten in sales by an iterated version of its very own previous edition (Paizo's Pathfinder). Paizo stole the crown from Wizards as King of the RPG. They improved the parts that fans wanted improved, left the rest alone and put it all in a professional and well designed world. The best developers fled from Wizards en masse, some working for Paizo, many starting their own operations publishing compatible material under the Open Game License (gaming's version of the GPL).

D&D Next is a lot more like third edition than it is like fourth. Wizards wants their crown back. Time will tell if they're just going to be a pale imitator in their own field or if they'll actually pull an innovative iteration of D&D out of this.

AD&D has been gone for over a dozen years now. Third edition did away with the "advanced" moniker after Wizards of the Coast did away with the red-headed stepchild of the "original" or "basic" D&D line.

Also, I don't know what version of AD&D you played, but I've been playing since about 1980 and no version of AD&D I've ever played did anything close to "simulate realism". The d20 system (refined through 3.0, 3.5 and now Paizo's Pathfinder) does more to "get out of the way of playing the game" than the original first and second editions ever did. They are far more consistent, streamlined and straightforward than the old system.