of course, we do things upside down here in Australia, where it is the big tobacco companies that are pushing the government to legalize e-cigarettes in order to protect their business... from the governments anti smoking laws (plain packaging, ever increasing taxes, limits on where people can smoke...).

P.S. the vaping units themselves are legal, but it is illegal to sell the nicotine juice.

Some of you might remember previous slashdot articles featuring the CSIRO sueing tech companies over patents.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/04/22/1545238/csiro-settles-with-tech-giants-over-wifi-patent-spat
http://slashdot.org/story/12/04/05/2131233/the-story-behind-australias-csiro-wi-fi-claims
Well...this is the kind of thing the cash from those patents is paying for :)

I, for one, welcome our new CSIRO nerd overlords.

as mentioned in the article, and has been mentioned elsewhere, the money HBO gets from the cable companies for GoT is significantly more than they'd get from selling globally to individuals.

it is the cable companies that have dictated the limited availability of GoT, not HBO.

Other VR systems have come and gone, most without even registering on the radar.
For the more recent ones, its not because the systems themselves have been lacking. Rather it is the lack of software that utilizes the systems. Developers want people to buy their creations, so they work with what people already have in the way of hardware.

This latest attempt is focusing on getting game developers on board first, and seems to be pulling in some pretty big guns in the industry. If the plan works out, we'll see big name games that players want to play supporting this VR system. If that happens, many gamers will buy the headset.

My only critisism is that for it to be a trully gaming focused system, it needs headphones and microphone too.

SW:ToR had great potential during the betas. what it has now is lost subscriptions.
Bioware did not understand MMOs when it made this game. It was made like a single player RPG. Once you reached the level cap, there is nothing to keep the player interested. Even the recent legacy system showed this by encouraging players to level new characters, giving rewards for leveling every class of every race of both factions.

When i canceled my sub, there was the ussual questionaire asking for feedback. After this is done, it suggests leveling alts as the solution to whatever the players problems are. I didnt unsub alone, those who unsubbed with me all recieved the same suggestion, regardless of feedback provided.

After playing a few MMOs and watching all of them slowly die, i would offer this advice to any future MMO developers: Have as much endgame content as possible BEFORE launching. Dont wait for 3/6/9 months down the track to add the endgame content as "expansions". Also, dont ignore PvP. MMOs are about PLAYERS interacting with OTHER PLAYERS. The content is the means of that interaction. One of the most popular ways players like to interact with eachother is by attacking and killing eachother. If your PvP is poor, your game is doomed.

GW2 is kinda appealing, as filler until something else comes along.
But i'm more looking forward to the Neverwinter MMO later this year that features a toolset for players to create their own content.

what hasnt been seen until now is that these termites are using a toxic bomb that mixes two seperate ingredients.
while the wiki link you provided does cite older references, they are only for the single ingredient toxic bombs.
the most recent references it contains are dated today, and show the dual ingredient bomb carrying termites.

the other interesting thing about these termites is that the secondary ingredient is a crystiline copper chemical that is accumulated over the workers life, resulting in older workers becoming the more deadly defenders

i've played since beta and continue to play to this day. hacks were never as prevelant as people thought. not saying there wasnt some, but much of what was called hacks was players not understanding other classes. example - speed hack: i often run my blackguard with the shielding anger + endless pursuit tactic. in larger fights this combination of tactics means i move 35% faster and never run out of action points until the last enemy has fallen or i am myself killed. shaman players in particular are often accused of speed hacking, while 99% of the time its due to the run away tactic the class gets. GCD exploiting is more a matter of bad system + lag. having said that, hacking is simply not an issue in the current game, it just doesnt happen often enough. all the hackers have long since been banned

the author of the paper and his conclusions have already been called into question

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/australians-say-uss-oldest-fossil-claims-dont-hold-water/story-e6frg6nf-1225907040826

from TFA

Moreover, Dr Gehling said better, older fossils had been found three years ago by University of Melbourne geologist Malcolm Wallace and his team. Dr Gehling suggested that competitive pressure might have been the reason Dr Wallace's group has been unable to publish their results.

The Australian understands that one of the co-authors of the contentious paper is a reviewer for the journal Science, to which Dr Wallace's group has submitted a paper. It is not clear whether the reviewer has read the paper but Dr Wallace acknowledged that "we've had difficulties getting our results published". He preferred not to discuss Dr Gehling's suspicions. He did affirm that his group's finds were roughly 20 million years older than those reported by the Princeton team, headed by paleontologist Adam Maloof.

A few of the Aussies here have mentioned their disappointment with Rudd and greater dislike of the opposition, and have expressed their intention to vote dreen or independant.

If you wish to keep legislation such as this from passing its important to understand how the Australian government works.
firstly there is the Upper House: parliament. Here you find the Prime minister, Ministers and back benchers. Voting for anyone other than either of the two major parties here is basicly a wasted vote. In most cases the winning party will always have enough seats here to propose anything they like and see it pass. I suggest voting for the major party you find least objectionable.

The Lower House: The Senate, is where the postions of minor parties/independents are most powerfull. It is here that legislation such as the internet filter stand the best chance of being stopped. Many years ago the Australian Democrats held a significant proportion of seats here. Never aiming for the upper house, they focused on the senate with the tag line of 'keeping the bastards honest'. Today that power is held by the Greens and the Family First party, each equaly scary depending upon your own personal views (damn hippies vs Christian nutjobs). If you are disillusioned with Labor, and intend to vote Green, doing so in the senate will have the greatest impact.