I would be happy to see them go. I was able to intercept the delivery of them this year and it was really hard to give them back to the delivery guy. He didn't want to take them back! I doubt they will ever get discontinued in Alberta. I have been hearing radio ads about advertising in the Yellow Pages.

Good question. I wanted to install a recipe application by a popular brand name company (although the idea of trust with said company might be a little shaky - their guacamole only contains 2% avocado or somesuch) but I didn't feel right because of the permissions required. This app is available for the iPhone, so I don't know if it comes with the same restrictions. I emailed them asking them why the app needs to know my phone's identity and contact data as well as location. They responded thinking that I had a problem installing and downloading the app. I re-explained what I wanted to know and haven't heard back from them. That was at least two months ago.

Love the link. I wonder how I missed that one on The Oatmeal! I have spent about $60 or so on Android apps for my lovely Nexus One and find the prices are often a pittance for all the usefulness they provide me. If there's a tip jar for free apps, I always donate a small amount. I guess it all boils down to how much a buyer values something (or not). Kind of like how people love dollar stores and then ask why a handmade piece of art or jewellery is priced more than $1.

Oh, Portal was absolutely incredible. One of the best games I've played in a long time.

Having played both... Halo is the superior game. Yes, blasphemy, I know, but really, is there a story to Half-Life? No. I was amazed when playing HL2 that people make it out to be such a big deal. Most of it was listen to a couple minutes of conversation that suggests that there may be a story somewhere, OMG, something happened, you're separated from Alyx, now go through 2 hours of story-less FPS gaming to meet her somewhere else. Then it happens again. Oh, and occasionally there are massively long and boring vehicle sections.

About 25% of HL2 was actually interesting and fun.

Halo, on the other hand, has solid story throughout. Sure, there's nothing as cool as the gravity gun in the play, but the tank-driving sections are far more fun than anything in HL2.

In fact, the section of Halo 3 where you destroy the scarab with the tank was more fun than the entirety of HL2.

Let me get this straight.

Because one title with proper ratings has a small portion of the game, something that's completely optional for end users to participate in, that's related to sexuality, then there can't be the policy decision to decide that topic's not allowable in a console feature that's in no way related to the game in question?

The fact that the majority of the use of terms related to sexual orientation of XBL are meant as pejoratives can't be allowed into policy decisions? So because Fable 2 has sexuality in it, XBL must allow sexual orientation and related terms in profiles, even if that means for every single GLBT person that puts it in their profile, 10-20 kids make gamertags like "FAGKILLER" and "STUPIDGAYS"?

Sure, you can just say that offensive ones are not allowed. But then what happens when someone's tag is "RichardIsGay" - is that offensive or not? Then the judgement calls get difficult, and eventually one is made incorrectly, then Consumerist gets more articles about how the people making the decisions at XBL aren't all perfect and therefore they're all a bunch of gay haters.

The game is ESRB rated, and a parent could choose to not buy it, and even set parental controls so a child couldn't play the game on the console even if they got a hold of it. (Assuming the parent actually PARENTS, instead of using the console as a babysitter.)

There was a previous instance of something similar happening. Stephen Toulouse, who heads up the team that handles enforcement, wrote up a blog entry about the policy choice.

Of course, for more up-to-date information peek at his Twitter feed for today.

Make life easier for us.