When I read this it made me very happy to live in Texas, the TSA's power has been greatly decreased here and this is why http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/06/28/137474796/texas-legislature-approves-anti-pat-down-bill

I completely dislike SPF... I had to enable them when completely legitimate emails, from the company I work for, were blocked by SPAM Haus. The emails we were attempting to send were ALL properly solicited emails to customers that were using Yahoo and MSN / hotmail / live accounts. These email / webmail providers chose to use SPAM Haus Spam filtering and would bounce every email back. It took me almost 25 Hours to identify the problem and present a solution to my boss, who had to approve the change before I could add it to our mail servers. Also, I have to say that Microsoft surprisingly was very helpful and was able to assist me in identifying the problem ( well, after I was placed on hold for 3 of the 25 hours ) . So long story short I was quite mad about having a boss breathing down my neck to fix our mail systems while I was on a much earned and deserved vacation, since then SPF is still the bane of my existence and I would never have chosen to use it if I hadn't be made to.

This was true before the current console generation, but not now. Thanks to the addition of large storage devices, new consoles like the PS3 and Xbox360 can use updates to fix bugs, among other things. I still prefer my PC for gaming though.

Update is mandatory to use the PSN or the store. Games still work fine, you just can't sign into services.

That still doesn't excuse the fact that their update bricked the hardware... nor is it the first time. I seem to remember a story a few months ago where new updates were bricking the older, PSX/PS2 reverse-compatible models (I have one and avoided it.)

IIRC, MS also extended that 3 year warranty for the E74 (I think that's the error code) problem as well... though I'll give you that all other problems (including the cloudy ring) are still only covered under 1 year.

The problem was two-fold... the heat was first, but there was also a problem with the heatsink. There was a pressure / support crossbar below the motherboard to hold the heatsink, which bent the board. Once the GPU heated up and the solder melted, it would separate from the board. I've always heard that the heatsink support was the main problem, and to me it makes pretty good sense since the solder melting wouldn't really do anything as it would solidify and re-bond with the pads upon cooling.

That would probably depend on where you're located. Here in Dallas I'm sure the grid would be fine, but I know that other US cities have dire problems with their power grids now. I've heard of rolling brownouts in Cali. Can't imagine the extra load of thousands of charging EVs would do much to help the situation. Disclaimer - I can't speak for European countries or any where else for that matter, though I've not personally heard of them having any power problems.

Thank you AC! That was what I was trying to explain, but your explanation was much more understandable.

That used to work, but either with some update that Blizzard did or some update to Windows, the option disappeared. When I started playing again I looked for solutions and that was the first one I tried. Even attempting to add the key manually had no effect.

There's not only that.

In it's current incarnation, Battle.net requires you (like most online services faced with connecting through a firewall) to open or forward ports to the machine running the game. Normally this is no problem, for example XBox Live works the same way. Unfortunately, Battle.net wasn't forward-thinking enough to use multiple ports! As only a single port is used for communication between the server and the client, only one client may communicate with the server through the firewall or router.

This should have been fixed back in the day through an update, but alas it's still true. A couple months ago my friends and I decided to pick the old game up and try playing it. I was surprised at how everything worked well after setting up the firewall. Unfortunately the minute I had a few other friends over and we all tried playing over my cable service, a realization quickly dawned. I could host fine, everyone could connect... but there was an inorinate amount of lag once the game started. This lag was only alleviated when the people physically there weren't in the hosted game, or the remote players were sitting it out. Any mix of the two resulted in the game being outright unplayable.

And I'll echo your point. I'm house-sitting for a close friend now and there is no internet at his place. He said having the rest of the guys over for LANs or Rock Band or whatever be it would be fine. If StarCraft 2 were out, it would (have) probably be(en) the game we'd play the most. I don't like this one bit.

Double post, but what the hell... I left out some info about DC++

It also supports download resuming for when the connection drops, and you are required to tell the client what files to hash (and therefore which files on the client machine are shared) so data that shouldn't be shared generally isn't.

IIRC, end-to-end encryption support in BitTorrent depends on the client being used. I've used Azureus before and currently use uTorrent, and I know both of them support transmission encryption. But yes, I'll third BitTorrent. Don't think I've ever had a corrupt file come down the line that wasn't corrupt at the time of the torrent's creation.

Another option might be setting up a DC++ hub and running the client on the rest of the machines. DC++ hashes all files and supports the ability to search any client attached to the Hub for like hashes and aggregate them during download. I've attended many a con that used a DC++ hub to facilitate file sharing, and the only limit I ever hit was the one imposed by my disk write speed and/or bus capacity. Course I'm not sure it supports encryption since I only use it a few times a year.

Seconded. I went PC with Fallout 3 because a mouse felt more natural. Well having a mouse didn't help when GFWL decided not to allow me to download DLC that I had already paid for. I unblocked ports, drowned in forums, and all other manners of searching for a solution to no avail. In the end, TPB delivered a perfectly functional copy - naturally DRM free, the way it should be. I went ahead and purchased the other two DLCs as well, still having that problem with GFWL, and still finding that TPB is there for the rescue. Here I note that I'll never buy another GFWL game that is available for a console. It's just too much trouble when you decide to wrap more than one DRM system around it. I haven't had my game locked out yet, but I now dread my attempts to log on and meeting with that friendly message.

That was Counter-Strike. The stand-alone was a spin-off named "Condition Zero" that, IIRC, attempted to give the game a storyline of sorts.

I've got one, and it's ALMOST ambidextrous. The side forward/back buttons are actually to the left of the mouse, beside what would traditionally be the left-click. If you don't mind using your middle finger for those, it should fit a lefty fairly well.

Barring that, I'll vouch for the Nano as well. I'm an enthusiast gamer, and have used tons of mice. BT/RF/Corded, trackball/ball/IR/laser... The Nano bests them all for everything I've thrown at it. That includes daily use at work, as I've found I just can't live without it!