Dave

The problem is really obvious: They do not ask the users if they want to install it, they do not make it clear that it'll use your own bandwidth significantly for no gain of your own, and people don't know it's there until they see their whole internet slows to a crawl and investigate. I live in Canada where we have VERY strict bandwidth caps, and how Pando gets installed is completely and utterly unacceptable. This is why people are pissed off.

As for the guy you interviewed, OF COURSE this is bundled. The fact that you can uninstall it if you know exactly what you're looking for doesn't change that fact. Pando is crapware that gets installed on your system and runs all of the time when you install something completely unrelated. And it does so without EVER telling the user it exists, what it does, or how to turn it off.

And you know why? It's their business model. Very few people would say "hey, I'll sacrifice my internet speed and incur overage charges with my stingy ISP so a 14 year old kid in Kansas can get his LOTRO update 4-5 minutes faster".

Why should it be that surprising? STO uses the same engine as Champions Online. A LOT of the technical and infrastructure kinks have already been rolled out.

The beta for STO should be a far faster endeavor than Champions Online. The fundamental technology is proven and has already been tested by CO's 10-month beta test and launch.

Really looking forward to customizing my own ship and exploring the ST universe. I played Star Trek MUDs/MUSHes for many years and am really looking forward to a modern game implementation!

This is not true. I'm level 7 and I've not paid a dime. I even unlocked Drow (a "premium" race) by accruing in-game favor. You also get Turbine points for playing the game, which you can use to unlock additional content.

You can do virtually everything in the game without buying a thing. May take you longer, but that's not limiting. To unlock levelling, you use signets which are quest rewards. They're a random reward, but every character I've started got one before it even came close to the cap (4 is the first).

Sign me up please :)

The "rechargeable controllers" shtick isn't a good one. I've got both a 360 and PS3, both since launch. The built-in batteries on the PS3 controller actually really, really pisses me off. I normally play single-player games, but sometimes friends are over and we'll boot up multiplayer games (eg, LBP). Only the main controller has a charge, the other 3 controllers have since gone dead due to power drain and need a charge. But since the battery is built in, the only way to charge it is with a mini-USB cable..and the one that it comes with is what, 3 feet long? So a max of 2 people can play the PS3 unless I remembered to individually charge all of the controllers...on the 360 I can just put in some temporary AA batteries to replace the battery packs, and they're fine.

Yeah, if you actually want all of the accessories the PS3's a better deal. It has to be. Sony's losing the battle, they don't have the catalog of games the 360 has, its online service -- while free -- doesn't compare to Xbox Live (cross-game invites, cross-game voice, true party system, no annoying loading-screen delaying ads...). MS scored big with Xbox Live and they still charge $50 for it a year because they can. Millions of people happily pay it because the service is worth it. I can't stand playing on the PSN because the vast majority of people don't have a headset (it doesn't come with the console), and those that do have such varying quality and volume levels that it's hard to hear what people are saying.

Bottom line...PS3 offers more bang for the buck because they are desperate. MS is taking advantage of their dominant HD console position because they can. Frankly, I play about 90% of my games on the 360 because there's more of them, there's better exclusives, and most of the time multiplatform games are better on it...and then there's Live, which all my friends are on and which is a far better service than PSN.

I'm certain this affects more than the 8xxx series. My XPS M1710 has died twice -- the original after 11 month which Dell replaced, then that one died after 13 months later. Both with the exact symptoms they outline here. The original GPU was an GeForce Go 7800GTX, the 2nd as a GeForce Go 7950GTX. It is obvious to me the airflow was poor, the GPUs got too hot, and it began to damage the GPU memory. It's clear GPU memory corruption.

Dell replaced the laptop the first time, but as the warranty expired now they refused to do anything about it. They offered to sell me a new 7000-series GPU for $850, if I installed it myself. Get real.

I tossed the thing in the garbage, and I bought a MacBook Pro. They screw their customers with their ineptitude, then insult them on the phone. I talked to about 20 different Dell reps in 2.5 hours as they bounced me around everywhere before I finally got a supervisor who told me in a heavy accent that I was screwed.

Good call, Jes. It's almost as if Keenan didn't say Kiprusoff wasn't on top of his game for the first part of this season.

If you actually, you know, watched the Flames play recently you'll see quite clearly that his comment about them being better recently is actually true.

Keenan's comments were on the money. In the first part of the season, Kiprusoff AND the defense were bad -- Kiprusoff just wasn't on his game (as Keenan said), and to be honest wasn't until this month. The pairings were different every game as well, and a lot of them just plain didn't work. Coverage was terrible, Kipper was terrible, and GA was massive.

The fact that in the 2nd half of this season the Flames have more GF than GA (barely), Kipper is >.90 sv% now (from the .87 in October/November), is obviously a result of the team playing better recently...which is the point you're ignorantly contesting.

They've got points in what, the last 7 games or so. They also happen to be above the Canucks in the standings. Like it or not, the Flames are finding ways to win games.

Not to nitpick, but it wasn't a pair of enthusiasts who were killed...it was a husband and wife in their 40s on their wedding anniversary. Their car was hit by a street racer.