There is also that good old "fact:" Gaming is bigger than Hollywood. Sadly, journalists aren't the only ones who mangle sources and misstate quotes. I've recently found two academic papers with "quotes" from articles which don't say anything like that at all. In one instance I seemed to track it down to someone paraphrasing an article, then someone using that paraphrase as a quote and then a third scholar paraphrasing that "quote" and thus rendering it quite unlike what the original author wrote.

Regarding using the silverlight player with dual monitors. I've been using the silverlight player in Opera for a few months (you have to go into Opera's settings and tell it to identify as firefox or IE but it works just fine) And in Opera you can zoom in the video so that it is basically full screen. I don't know if you can do that in Firefox or not (because for some reason Silverlight won't install on that computer's version of Firefox) and it is a bit of a kludge but it works.

I'm at 1195 and I also rarely get suggestions. Here's hoping the contest winner is implemented soon and it does in fact improve their suggestions.

The experience of only allowing yourself to die once and it is game over is interesting and reminds me of some of the stuff people used to do with the original Thief game back in the day http://www.thief-thecircle.com/guides/unusual/#AlternatePlayingStyles I've posted about this before on my blog http://popularculturegaming.com/?p=325 and basically I'm of the opinion that the question of emotion in games is framed incorrectly. I'm of the opinion that games are already emotional. They just aren't emotional in the same way that films are. People get mad over games all the time. They also cry over them. What child hasn't cried over losing a board game? Who doesn't feel excited after beating the boss or hearing "dominating" in Unreal Tournament? These emotions are of a different kind and caused in a very different way than in films but that doesn't make them any less real or any less valid.

I didn't know you were from Indiana. As another lifelong Hoosier I was also pretty amazed to see Indiana go Democrat. I think it says a lot more about the failings of the Republican party than it does the appeal of the Democratic party though since Mitch Daniels got reelected by a landslide.