An ipad is not a vital piece of equipment, a computer hardly is in this situation. Why does this article even exist?

All part of one ongoing line of jokes.

...that can't watch youtube videos or make phone calls.

Of course it was caused by a mutation, do we really need an article for this? A virus that is allowed to remain in its host populace long enough will in fact mutate, and even to harmful levels. Although I wouldn't consider this a "successful" virus in the sense that it can kill its host.

And let's not forget about the subscription based mmo market, as well as the mostly korean freetoplay mmo market, both of these markets being mostly pirate proof, and coincidentally massive.

WHAT?! FREE SHIPPING?!

And why did people spend money on studying this? We have known this about addictive substances for almost as long as we have even known about addictive substances.

You don't, programming is a boring and tedious task, too many people glorify it as some sort of end all nerdskill, but its just as useful as knowing anything else really. Why not teach your kid how to use Maya or Blender, sometimes people that aren't into technical things are into creative things. The only real compelling notion of programming is video game programming, and because it is so complicated and difficult to do successfully, many people never even venture to that level.

Oh, and don't forget Sony is planning to bring PSN into a tiered payment system soon. It seems being able to play online games online these days is quickly deteriorating into a privilege, not a right.

Its not like Cable TV has any real programming, its all advertisements.

Or I can just set up my psp/droid phone/netbook to my sound system and stream 128k+ shoutcast stations for free

That allows indigent and sentient life forms from all corners of the universe to come spewing out, enslaving the human race in the process, and making us rely on a bearded MIT graduate with a crowbar to save us.

Or is it just going to be one of those copy and paste deals where they reuse the engine that IW coded and just reskin the game? I think the latter is more likely.

And to think I'm playing TF2 on a single core, i guess i should step it up, thank amd for the am3 socket :D