Great story of the not-so-distant-future. While it's a lot lighter than most of the listings above, it's a glimpse of a possible future ruled by megacorporations and greed. Wait - isn't that now?

I'd love to know how they're working in things like echos in determining shot-location in a downtown core where sounds can reverberate off monolithic buildings. Out in 'the burbs' I can see it being a LOT more useful, but downtown in the concrete jungle I'd be shocked if it were as accurate as the "few yards" that they're claiming. Then again, spatter enough of these in an area and I guess it's just a matter of computation.

My major beef with your ?defense?commentary? of the game industry is that I hear it constantly and it becomes a self-serving bias for execs. The more we accept "Hollywood-model" games and buy the next "$380B in development Rock'emSock'em XVII", or whatever, the more industry types that didn't come from a game-dev background feel like they should not innovate and make new games, but rather pour good money after bad with blockbuster prequel/sequel games. I guess what I'm trying to say is that MBA's sniffing after money appear to have transitioned from the film business to the game business and I think that's REALLY bad for the future of gaming.

When they first came out I wanted to support them, but I'm in Canada - geoblocked. Strike 1. A year or two later I finally got a VPN, stopped my satellite subscription, modded my ATV2 and started watching. Shortly thereafter most of the content creators pulled their content from Hulu to try and create their own empires. Most of the shows I WOULD watch got pulled and placed onto their crappy services. Strike 2. In this digital age I want to watch what I want, when I want, and I don't want the limitation of having to try to remember to squeeze in that episode of X before the show expires on Hulu. I missed the season finale of Grimm by 3-4 days because of this expiration model for the show. Strike 3. Netflix, you get my money. Hulu/NBC etc... you don't, and I still watch the stuff that could have been on your site making you revenue, but I do it through other sources.

Not if Verison comes to Canada. I'm sure profit will completely fall away and they'll all just break even..... (inside Canadian joke, wait no - our telecom industry is the horrendously oligarchic joke).

Wasn't Digg that site I used to visit as often as ./ before they whored themselves to advertisers to allow funded content to overtly make it to the front page instead of ACTUAL user submitted content? BTW: yes - I'm aware lots of users were themselves industry shills, but at least it had the pretense of being a community-driven website.

Frankly, nothing China does surprises me anymore. Rather, I think the surprising thing is that people don't want to accept massive manipulation of product presence online by transnationals and major corporations that do exactly what China is being accused of here.

I understand your rationale, but with respect - that may work for some crappy ipod app game, but not something like an MMO*. I think it'd be naive to think any truly modern game could be developed w/out substantial investment. There's just way too much overhead in terms of time/effort spent on things that need to be paid for (hardware/graphic designers/audio engineers). Sure you could try taking your life's savings and do it that way, but costs would, I imagine, be so large you couldn't feasibly do that. Kickstarter's just making public the process of gaining VC that has existed since forever (think of the trip to the Americas from Europe as Spanish-funded VC when no other nation in Europe thought Columbus was sane). I think Kickstarter is a fabulous idea, it brings VC out of the hands of the privileged few and to the masses. In a way it democratizes VC making sure that ANY idea gets a chance to get off the ground, not just the ones that make it through the screeners at VC firms. *Minecraft is the only example I can think of....but then again, look at its graphics/sounds. *shudder*

I meant to link this in the above post: http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/201348-us-ban-on-bp-deals-worries-ns

They don't need to worry - they have juicy contracts set up in Canada now to search for, and drill, oil off the coast of one of the most active fisheries in the world (CDN/US Atlantic coast). What could go wrong?!

I flew out of Minneapolis a few weeks ago and while on the way down I didn't have to go through the scanner (in Canada we use millimeter wave and always have), they had the backscatter in the airport. I simply, and politely, asked to have my kids go through the metal detector along-side the backscatter instead since I didn't want them to get a blast of xrays. "No problem" said the TSA person (who BTW was incredibly nice and reasonable about the whole thing). In fact, the whole fam. got processed through the metal detector instead. They DID confiscate the ~3 oz. of my kids' toothpaste however. Security theater.

Sadly, until the major networks stop blocking GoogleTV access to their broadcasts/content who cares if Google TV can contextually search shows.

It's interesting you posted this. Back in the early 90's when my friend and I were in school we both took a pile of astrophysics courses (thank you The Next Generation for making me a space-whore for life). We created all the basics for a space combat game. Down to stats, movement rates etc... all based on 'real physics'. I completely agree with one of the posters above - it was too boring to ever code as such since it involved horrendous wait times, punctuated by sheer madness over the period of a minute or two, then a lot of death. Jack Campbell has written a FABULOUS set of books (the Lost Fleet), with a serious dose of reality (with the exception of FTL travel). Iirc, he's a former Navy Captain or some-such, so the feeling of combat is very real, more importantly, he's spent some time researching relativistics so there's a lot of that in the novels as well. Well worth the read. Space weapons are largely missiles and particle weapons, both of which we have in today's age - so it's only engines/travel that are slightly futuristic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Fleet