How is this possible? Every time I use many websites I have to click on a crosswalk, bus, car, motorcycle (seriously, that's a scooter, not a motorcycle), put a puzzle piece in the puzzle.... Waited for a page to verify me as human...

Why not a Bluetooth dongle that syncs to my heartbeat and had a wire wrapped around my little finger to prove I'm human. Microsoft couldn't possibly screw that.... Wait nvm

Except there are phones being sold now by cricket and maybe others that have developer mode turned off for 6 months of paid subscription.

I live in KC, KS also. While you have a couple of valid points, could you also wrap your head around the fact that maybe this would be a GOOD THING for KCK, and propel it past KCMO / JoCo as far as business developments?

You're fricking stoned. No, Americans who are dumb enough to get cornered by the marketers / pollsters fear it because big media is telling them to be afraid of it, are saying they are.

Just as much as I could go on the news and tell them that there are zombies out there that will eat their brains.

Nuclear power can be safe, however sometimes the older reactors are not as safe as the newer technologies are.

I'm tired of invasive DRM. Steam handles DRM quite nicely. I'm not totally against DRM if it's not invasive.

You don't want any DRM? Ok, so take a look at Crysis - probably (arguably) the most pirated PC exclusive FPS made. And let me tell you, that game was pretty damn good! Now, because of piracy, Crytek (the makers of Crysis) are never going to do a PC exclusive game. Meaning longer dev times, and maybe a lesser experience for PC's (since they can't just focus on one platform). At least they didn't give us all the middle finger and go out of business. Now, if it'd been offered in Steam and the DRM (which you cry so hard about) keeps the piracy numbers way down -- ultimately the company makes money and piracy is much lower.

Also, Steam makes updates almost painless for the end user. Dev pushes a patch, game is patched. No waiting for Fileshack / etc to be able to get a download at 75k/sec.

Forgetting something?

AMD Quad + 2g ram for $269. +$25 for power supply, $50 for the HD, $25 for the optical drive, $20 keyboard, $20 mouse (not a cheapo no-name, logitech or MS), $35 for case. Then you gotta spend 30m-1.5 hour per machine assembling, troubleshooting, since you went with bottom of the line crap. Even if you think your time is zero, it's not (unless you're a volunteer).

And you haven't even thought of licensing (unless you're buying your Windows licenses on the Select program). So, add $200 for a MS OS. Plus monitor.

$800-$1000 isn't actually that unreasonable. And if you're not using select licensing (you'd be surprised), and buy your office from Dell then it IS $1k.

It only lists a few stats, but if your state/county/city government allows you to purchase as long as someone holds a GSA contract (WSCA) then you should be able to use the contract too.

I'm not going to pay ANYTHING to skip the commercials. I use my DVR to record programs, then watch them "later" (at least 30 minutes later) so that I can fast forward past the commercials.

Being *forced* to sit through advertising (I'm looking at the websites that MAKE you watch a video before you see content -- especially Discovery.com -- where you get a 1-2 minute clip then a 30 second commercial) makes me not want the product being advertised. They actually cause me to NOT buy or use the service..

Every provider keeps that kind of data on you. It's just that someone found the API on the Pre.

You can make the updates not happen on the Pre. You just make the updater not executable on the filesystem.

And it is free -- no matter how you use the quotes.