Ok, we get it - it's best practice to have a backup solution. They DID - they paid for it. Blaming the victim (and they were victims - they paid for a service and did not receive it) only gets you so far.

I don't think that unimportant elements really exist, what with being the constituents of matter and all. I, at least, am perfectly comfortable with deleting articles on worthless pop culture wherein creepy internet nerds write ten thousand words on the symbolic significance of blastoise as compared to the savior-figure in Babylonian creation myths. Actually, that might be interesting. Just take out the Pokemon parts and move it to an article on Babylonian creation myths. It pains some to hear it, but Wikipedia does not need a plot analysis of every Dragon Ball Z episode. However, it really should list all the elements. Chess is a historically relevant game, which additionally present a computationally interesting problem, and is the basis for several other interesting mathematical problems. No one over the age of twelve cares about Pokemons. When they build supercomputers to play Pokemon professionals, maybe it'll be noteworthy.

Yeah, I'd say so. Largely because the NFL/NBA/MLBPA/FIFA will want their cut. But $60 every year is completely reasonable to keep playing the updated games.

Why all the hate for Madden and so on? It makes perfect sense to me that if you like e.g. football, you'll want to play as your team with its current roster of players. I know I wouldn't want to play a sports games with made-up players - I want to play with MY team.

Braid, Plain Sight, Portal (as you said), Mass Effect series, Red Dead series, World of Goo. Those are just off the top of my head, and those are just games that I have played. I don't really follow video game news, and just wait for recommendations from friends, so I am sure that there are tons of other great games out there. Stop whining and look for them. The whole "All American games are Madden or Halo" bit is stupid, false, and tired.

Yes, but generally speaking those people who get bent out of shape because Nintendo or the XBox is stealing the gaming spotlight are not the type of people to have friends. This is because, well, they are the type of person who gets upset when someone's favorite video game isn't their own favorite video game.

Sick to your stomach? Over a video game company? Get some perspective, man, you have first world problems.

That's clearly an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. It brings a tear to the eye - Marvin finally got it to market.

I hope you're right, and you're lucky. Because if you're wrong, you likely wouldn't know it. You'd just spew out whatever infection vector the virus uses (and perhaps have some banking passwords stolen, as well).

That's actually not near enough these days - you're far behind the times ;) These days all you have to do is see an infected add that slipped through, open a malicious PDF, put in an infected flash drive, etc. It's really sad to see Slashdot users - people who are supposed to be the cream of the nerd crop - spouting this decade old stuff as if Conficker never existed. If you run Windows and do not run an antivirus solution, you are bad at computer security, full stop.