Also...
Still with the gaming theme, the novels Daemon and Halting State, by Daniel Suarez and Charles Stross respectively, are uber-cool and good reads.
On El Reg's recommendation, I went to the PopCap site and checked out the trailer to Plants vs. Zombies, and was very impressed. I proceeded to download the game for my Macintosh, running OS X 10.6.2. I followed the ridiculously simple installation instructions (drag icon to Applications folder, make sure you are connected to the Internet to register the game), and... nothing.
The game seemed to be running, for I had a lighted icon in my Dock and a "Plants vs. Zombies" menu bar on top; yet no window at all. The "About" screen seemed to work from the menu bar, but nothing else showed up. Attempting to quit the game prompted me with an overlay dialog offering to "Quit" or "Play". Aha! I though, a chance to actually play. But, alas, choosing "Play" just brought an error screen which crashed the whole application. On the other hand, choosing "Quit" actually closed the application properly, so there's that.
I'm sure it's a nice game, it looks very good; but I can't play it. I guess I'll be saving $19.95 USD, then.
-dZ.