I use Chrome with Privoxy configured to stop ads. It works wonders. Once you use it you'll realise how slow Firefox and IE are.

Mine used to be full of porn. But porn isn't the valuable commodity it once was, so I have moved it to an internal hard drive.

If I lose it, these days I have the capability to download it again quickly and easily.

I doubt even Conroy himself believes it will be implemented. It's a policy under review - he's been told to investigate it and will do his job - but his jocular attitude to the whole thing tells me that he doesn't really see it going live.

Has anyone seen him in interviews, on tv, or his quotes? It seems like it is all a big joke to him. And truthfully, it is. I truly believe that the only reason that the government is ostensibly supporting this is to satisfy a conservative senator (Steve Fielding) who is one of the few independents holding the balance of power in the senate. Once the balance of power changes (hopefully via that senator losing his seat!) the blacklist/filtering will be dead and buried.

I'd have to agree. Very bad move on Blizzard's part.

Look at the recent problems with World of Warcraft and their PvP zone "Lake Wintergrasp". They promised epic battles with hundreds of players on each side fighting against each other. It was so popular that their servers couldn't handle the load, and the players experienced lag. To "fix" this, they took steps to make it less popular.

And now, what are they doing with SCII? They are forcing traffic towards the battle.net servers. Granted, the logistics are probably different (fewer players, many more battle instances, and I am not sure how much traffic is being sent so there is the possibility it will work ok) but why eliminate the option players previously had to use their own networks?

Why force traffic to a centralised server when you don't have to? Why not let the players decide themselves? And why are they ignoring the recent lessons they have learnt about placing too much load on a centralised server? This may be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

It will be marketed as a major feature of the next expansion (Blizzard are great at marketing stuff they have no idea how to implement). Blizzard testing will "prove" it works, but when it goes live there will be horror stories of people whose characters have disappeared. Blizzard will blame the user with something like "it didn't work because you didn't merge your account with battle.net" or some other excuse. After the frustration grows, someone at Blizzard will make an executive decision to revoke the service. Any players who had problems will be left in limbo. After several patch cycles, they will finally resolve the problems once and for all, but some players will find their characters have been bastardised without any forthcoming compensation.

Disgusting? For what? Are you suggesting we shouldn't have voted "Not a smidgeon" because its not a nice thing to do? I picked the option that exactly represented how I feel about his death. I don't hate the guy, but I don't idolise him one iota either. I'm not going to pretend my feelings are any different because it might offend people.

I have worked in places that have desperately needed changes to the corporate culture, but I have never seen actual change occur. Far too often I have seen: a) management blaming the people that have left b) the hr section of the company gathering data on why people leave which then gets locked away in a filing cabinet because they are too afraid to use the information c) opportunists looking to get promoted who introduce the new management philosophy of the month that will "fix" everything, but the end result being only a pretty powerpoint presentation with no follow-up d) reshuffling of positions and responsibilities to make it look like something has been done

You are forgetting the goombas. Poor little things constantly being flattened by Mario's hairy italian ass. At least the koopas had their shells to hide in. Won't someone please think of the goombas!

No one will want to come near a castle whose occupants have descended the slippery slope of unacceptable social/family structures.