I believe the issue is that it's still a major driver for sales of their hardware. Removing the need for their hardware would kill sales even more. Also, using someone else's name to get yourself into search results for someone else's brand is kind of problematic, since it dilutes their brand. Not that Mario isn't an instantly-recognizable brand, but you see the point. Just put a different skin on it. Don't call it Mario. Don't rip it exactly. Make your own platformer that doesn't suck. Great Giana Sisters anyone? The new one on Steam is pretty fantastic.

YMMV. I get hit really hard with them, so a flu shot is totally worth it to me.

One day of feeling like crap is totally worth not getting a 2-3 week flu with the weeks of coughing afterwards.

TWC = Time Warner Cable. They provide cable Internet, cable television, and VOIP phone service. I only have their Internet service. I do not have cable television, satellite or even an antenna, so we're in the same situation for watching a TV show. If you go to CBS.com from a computer hooked up to Time Warner's Internet service, you get a different experience than anyone else coming from any other ISP. CBS.com simply won't let you watch certain shows based solely upon your ISP, all because the CBS TV network has a dispute with Time Warner Cable TV. It's probably an IP-based block. There is no login, just cbs.com the same way anyone else would use it.

You know what REALLY sucks is the way CBS is handling it. I don't really feel like buying cable TV at all. CBS is selectively blocking TWC Internet customers from being able to access some shows on their video-on-demand website, replacing them with a large 'slam page' and that's all you get to see.

Yes. That feature dates back to the window manager they introduced in Vista. Basically it does the same thing as the MacOS maximize button. Double-click the top/bottom border for Mac-style maximize. Double-click the actual titlebar for a Windows-style maximize, the same way it's always been.

Just don't be probing anyone and you should be good.

To play the other side for a moment... Most developers will not be motivated (or have the resources) to create a used-games 'hub' market for their game. Why would they really want to spend all that R&D money just to allow people to take a slice of their potential revenue stream? I don't see it happening. It's not profitable. It would have to be Microsoft's job to make a loan-and-resell system either way and it didn't look like they were planning to do that. What happens if the developer goes out of business or gets bought and dissolved? Whoops, no more used game trading or loaning? These companies don't usually last forever. New games could be cheaper? Sure, but why would they actually sell them cheaper when people are already used to paying so much? More speculation about what a kind-hearted CEO might decide to do out of good will and unicorn farts. I can buy a boxed game and a downloadable game for the same price either way from lots of vendors, so I don't see this happening much. In fact, I recently paid $60 for a download-only game that could have included a box and physical media and little fliers and stuff for the same price. What you'll probably see is the A-list games at normal price, and the crappy junk will be cheap, like on all the app stores today. I'd like to see the opposite happen though. Steam is far from the only way PC gamers want to play games. Reference Minecraft, for one great stand-out example, which is not available through Steam. The article also mentioned Blizzard games, which don't go through Steam. WoW, Starcraft, Diablo, etc. didn't need Steam. Guild Wars 2, another giant example. League of Legends, where the community sucks and your points don't matter, also not through Steam. What we want is a minimum of HASSLE when we want to play, or need help with something that broke in the inevitably buggy DRM gatekeeper software. If I can just install it, or download it from a store, that's just great with me. Who cares what software runs it, as long as it stays out of the way and doesn't do anything untoward? Steam is an additional layer of cruft I have to wade through to get to my game and I really don't care about all the achievements or sales or who-plays-what or the screenshots of look at my horse it's totally amazing. It's not thrilling that random online acquaintances can judge your game playing ability by the achievements or hours-played, but whatever. Let's also remember the horrible thing that was/is Origin: These markets don't always work out. Definitely would have been coo

I see you are strongly in favor of capitalism too!

I bet you could get some ideas from "VST bridge" software. This has been a long-time issue in the audio recording industry, where 64-bit host applications have to host a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit plugins. It's a big enough problem that a bunch of different people have made bridge software.

That's what capitalists do, they capitalize things.

Wasting my time? Two can play at that game. Done.

Mendor81 wrote:

why your country is one of the countries with the most deaths caused by firearms then the rest of the relatively peaceful countries in the EU.

You should probably break that down to a per-capita rate, since the USA is larger than any single country in the EU. It's really hard to say that the absolute numbers mean anything. But at the same time, you should also realize who you're talking to, and that he's very well prepared for the argument. Is it worth it?

gl hf ds

The nice thing about it is that you have so many different standard implementations of SQL to choose from, too!

Oh. I see it now. It looked like part of your sig to these tired eyes. I can't brain today, I have the dumb.

I seem to recall it involving a saw (wordplay about the mirror), but I forget. How does he get out?

Hey, my grandfather used to tell us that in the form of a riddle. Q: "A man in a boat had cigarettes but no matches. How did he smoke?" A: "He threw one overboard, making the boat a cigarette lighter."

They have those at a pub near my office. Excellent with a bit of mustard. :thumbsup:

We had nice cafeterias in college, too. The problem was that we couldn't afford to go off-campus for anything. I don't see much of a difference between working for Foxconn and the living-on-campus college experience, except maybe that the work never changes, there is no hope of ever leaving, no hope of a better paycheck someday, and you can't choose your bosses. That would make it tremendously depressing. The whole experience sounds really bad to me.