The essence of vast majority of arguments against teaching cursive... Admit it, this is the real reason why cursive is "irrelevant" - students won't have the discipline to learn it, and teachers won't be able to enforce it.

Let's get rid of art and other "useless" subjects that only a small minority will need directly while we're at it, too (or did we already?)

Japanese cell phone market is way too complicated, but an actual "prepaid" phone certainly doesn't seem to be a good deal for any circumstances I can think of.

I'm not sure you absolutely have to register with the city hall - I believe sometimes other documents like an IDP (or even credit card) will be recognized. Either way, "confirming identity" is a common bureaucratic procedure for service...

Minimum service is a little less than 1000 yen/month right now, and includes a little more than 1000 yen call time in some situations (i.e. 2-year contract with cancellation fees). Considering that the phone is often free, and there's a crapload of extra features/services, it's really not as bad of a deal as it seems at first.

Actually... I'm not sure if there's a place where most of that isn't true. Japan, in particular, fits all of the above quite nicely (difference, of course, being the service quality).

Anyway, there is, in fact, a fairly decent prepaid provider in Canada - Speakout, branded by 7-11, and also Petrocanada, running on Rogers' network. The price per minute is high, but you can keep the credit for a year (depending on the amount, actually), and with frequent promotions you might even get a simple phone for free/cheap with around $50-100 credit.

Also, don't have much experience with Rogers directly (and even that is mostly negative), but I was able to get a Fido prepaid SIM card from a store without any issues or extra questions. The numerous billing/voicemail/etc. issues made me give up after two months, though...

Just what I thought when reading the summary. Who cares if some blogger out there doesn't like the graphics? IMHO, at this point, graphics look "real enough" to stop noticing them after a few minutes anyway (and have been that way for a few years).

RTCW had plenty of (again, IMHO) undeserved criticism, but to me, it was just about perfect (well, except near the end). If they can keep about the same level of variety in the story/missions (supernatural, covert ops, plain shoot-em-up, etc.) throughout this one, I'll gladly play it.

(Oh, and a Linux port. Not going to bother otherwise.)

Don't be so quick to call someone an idiot. Look at the last link in the summary.

If I understand correctly from a quick scan of the explanation, the list you see there is what they have supposedly seen as fake "From:" addresses (which they happen to know to be undeliverable).

So while it's not quite as bad as what GP thought, it's (IMHO) dangerously close.

I do believe OP missed one more, namely:

But really,

sums up the failure quite nicely.

I was waiting too long for this comment. m(_)m

Someone smart could say something about a Mousse impersonation.