So what this chart is saying is, Apple has brought a product that is behind the majority of its competition at this time, and will be far behind in the year to come?

Well true, but the way I see it, if you can save $500, you can save $800 in a couple more months (if that). If you can't save that extra $300, then maybe you shouldn't be buying a game system in the first place...

So if all you need is to tap your card to the chip, would this spell the end for things like Google Wallet/Apple Passport/whatever Verizon came up with? If all I need to do is tap my card against the device that I'd normally tap my phone against, wouldn't it be inherently more secure to remove the phone altogether?

I'm thinking there'd be a one-off, one-way encryption of everything that the chip reads and transmits. Different encryption key for every "tap" so some enterprising hacker wouldn't be getting the same encrypted values for the same card.

STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES!

bro are you srs? you can take away the heart icon but hearting lives on forever.

There's a mass station-rename effort going on right now in the majority of low/null sec.

Cool! Always good to bring in an interested person, and especially bring an old fan back.

If you can afford the $500 it costs for a console (~$300 for the console itself, plus maybe an extra controller and/or a few games), you can save up another couple months for a cheap yet powerful gaming rig.

I stopped after the third one only because I got a set of the first three, so I just haven't gotten around to reading past it, but it always seems that the fourth in a series is where it takes a dive. Granted, this series is like 13 books long, so there's plenty of time to redeem itself.

Yeah, I had the mis/fortune of getting most of it before I got to the books, and once I read the books I realized how much was absent and/or misrepresented.

I remember liking it enough to trundle through it once (TV series, anyhow. I found the books much better). Couple years later, I went to re-watch it, coincidentally after watching GoT, and couldn't make it through the second episode.

Hmm, I would consider the Shannara series more on the level of The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind than the works of Tolkein/Martin. And not just because their names is/are (what goes here?) Terry...

I wouldn't be surprised to find ODST under $10 used, Reach probably still around $20 or $30.

That's fair. Just fyi, ODST was a huge difference in their campaign mode, since it was an almost-open world, instead of the linear path of previous iterations. Reach brought it back to linear, but added in the armor permutations for a slight variety.

I'm not giving him flak for it, I'm genuinely curious as to his thoughts.

Curious, do you feel that way with most sequels?

Duct Tape and Duck Tape are two interchangeable terms. Duct Tape was coined when a company (Melvin A. Anderson Company) decided that Duck Tape was particularly nifty for use on ventilation ducts (this was in the '60s). However, it is not recommended at all to use Duct/Duck tape on vents any more since it isn't built…

Its like saying you won't get STD's from masturbation: technically true, but you're missing out on so much more :D

Let me let you in on a little secret: most passionate developers don't like charging people more and more for their games. If they're serious developers, they want to get their work out, at a modest price, and have people enjoy it. Its really the publishers that are pushing this.