Thursday Next

I disagree. She's getting free money, my money as it happens. She's boohooing about having to stack shelves at Poundland for two weeks or she can't have any more free money. Well fuck her and the horse she rode in on. I worked at Sainsbury's for a month after I had completed my law degree because I would rather do any job than claim benefits, after that I got another slightly less crap job, and after that I started on my career in the games industry and about 3 years after that I finally got a role in legal. If I had been "jobseeking" that entire time I would have had no chance at being in the position I'm in now. As for "unpaid labour", what a load of shit. If I'm living at my parent's for free and my mum asks me to take the bins out I don't bleat about my human rights or not being paid for my work. I do the job and remain grateful for having a roof over my head and food on my plate.

I have a US keyboard plugged into my UK laptop. I just set the keyboard language to US English and all the symbols match up. It's a bit annoying that the US layout has no provision for £ and € but there you go.

It depends on what you mean by "the internet". The flow of information should not be restricted by the government, but that doesn't apply on an individual level. I don't think access to the internet should be a human right. If itwere, then a teacher confiscating the mobile phone of a student could easily be argued as a breach of human rights law for taking away their access to the internet. I think human rights should be limited to what people actually need to be people. So, life, food, freedom, accommodation, education should all be human rights. These have been needed by humanity in one form or another since people were people. There are too many people who don't even have these without adding to the list "access to the internet".

Scotland only think they can support themselves (and their free university places and free prescriptions and such) because they believe that if they fully devolved they would get the oil and gas in the north sea. If you look at table 7 on: http://www.oxfordeconomics.com/Free/pdfs/regcont.pdf and http://www.oxfordeconomics.com/Free/pdfs/ukmpubfinfeat(jul).pdf you'll see that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all take out more than they put in. In fact, the East, South East and Greater London are the only areas of the country that actually turn a profit. It would be (financially) flipping brilliant if we could tell everyone North of the Watford Gap and West of Oxford to fend for themselves.

It would be a problem, not because the leader doesn't believe what I believe, but because, the leader is willing to disregard every single credible scientist of this generation and the mountain of mutually supporting evidence that something does in fact exist and will instead base his decision on what has been written in a book over 2000 years ago that has no supporting evidence and instead says that we should just believe it unquestionably. If you take that attitude and apply it to whether or not we should go to war with a country or if we need to take steps to stop global warming then it is quite worrying that a leader will ignore stacks of evidence and instead will instead go with what some person tells him for no reason other than that he knows the guy quite well and trusts him unquestioningly.

Hehe. I downgraded to a wifi only model, if that helps reduce my whoreishness. The only thing that gives me pause for thought is that the wifi only one has no gps in it, (God knows why) so I'll miss out on location based easter eggs.

@Ethan, you've turned the cynicism up to 11 today. Good show.

Finished Arkham City (story). Need to crack on with the last couple of sidequests and riddly diddly trophies.

So basically, everyone I ever disliked at Kotaku has left? MIght even consider making a reappearance there... Unlikely though.

To get the new thing when it is at its newest. That's why I pre-order anything.

Prudish version of "arse over tit" perhaps? Like saying "sugar" instead of "shit".

Ahhh! I see. It was the lack of rotor blades that put you off. I'll be much happier suspending my disbelief when I see it using directional thrust to take off in a harrier style. (As massively inefficient as such a system must be).

That's what it is isn't it? It certainly doesn't have a traditional Bernoulli style airfoil. I assumed it was a jump-jet sort of craft.

Because, if you recall, the original point was to have an equivalent to Nathan Drake. Not only a protagonist but one that 'men want to be'. Sort of a Jack Harkness of video games?

I'm pretty sure it's EA's fault.

Guessing it was the "ass grass" bit. (I have a weird memory).

Have we done this yet? http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/

Same here. I'll do an hour's drive and realise that I'm coming up on my destination without really having been "aware" of the last 45 minutes.

Really torn between 3G version and WiFI version... I can hotspot my phone, so really, what do I want the 3G for? But then, I want the most gadgety of the gadgets...

How'd you go about boycotting a product that isn't sold though? I mean boycott in the sense that you abstain from using. Rather than abstain from buying.

Sorry to lower the tone but... Made me lol. On topic. I agree with Dean to a large extent. Since games (in broad strokes) either (1) tell a crappy story with flat characters, or (2) tell no story at all and leave the main character as a blank that you fill, I don't think games (in general) are (1) ready or (2) needing more gays. As someone else stated, an indie developer will probably do something amazing with this that will change the story telling landscape in games for the better. Until then the driver in Forza 4 can be gay if you like.

I agree with you (P4) and Dean in that yes, pretty much the developers are leaving themselves an entire region whose only option is to not play the game, move country or pirate. I'm just pointing out that the solution from so many people is "If I can't get it through legitimate means, then I will get it through illegitimate means." rather than, "If I can't get it through legitimate means, then I will do without." My moral compass leads me to boycott products I can't purchase in a way I want to at a price I want to, rather than the quick fix of nicking it because I can, it's easy and it's free. It's what I did with Demon's Souls and eventually I got the EU release I deserve. (I know I could have legitimately imported it, but I didn't want to).

But why is the response to pirate rather than to not play it at all?

Sherlock Game of Shadows was brilliant, surpassed the first imho. Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol was ok, more of the same with too much BMW and Apple product placement.