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No, the real problem is that people think that equality is about everybody being exactly the same - which I personally think is a distortion manufactured for the purpose of disparaging all serious discussion about inequality.

Yup. Meet the manufacturer.

Amazon offers continued discounts on Blu-Ray media, and a number of times this year has had Blu-Ray 2-for-1 sales.

And of course, June 2-6 is "High Definition" week on Amazon's Gold Box.

Big Father's Day push for Blu-Ray at Wal-Mart. Best Buy is said to be matching the deal.

By definition, I cannot link to sunday circulars in my paper... as Father's Day draws closer we'll see more.

Just look around, at papers and others sources. Promotions continue, right now is the time when places are slowly ramping up promotions for Father's Day and so it's a little quieter right now than normal.

Amazon offers continued discounts on Blu-Ray media, and a number of times this year has had Blu-Ray 2-for-1 sales.

And of course, June 2-6 is "High Definition" week on Amazon's Gold Box.

Big Father's Day push for Blu-Ray at Wal-Mart. Best Buy is said to be matching the deal.

By definition, I cannot link to sunday circulars in my paper... as Father's Day draws closer we'll see more.

Just look around, at papers and others sources. Promotions continue, right now is the time when places are slowly ramping up promotions for Father's Day and so it's a little quieter right now than normal.

Blu-ray players have gotten more expensive. In some cases, a lot more expensive

The PS3 has not got any more expensive.

The Sony BDP-S300 is not any more expensive.

You try to deceive by including the introduction of very expensive high-end Blu-Ray players from companies uncommitted before HD-DVD folded.

Blu-ray sales, paradoxically, have collapsed

Only if you think disc sales being lower from Christmas to the start of the year as an odd thing. In reality, Blu-Ray disc sales are now week to week generally about 9% of standard DVD sales and climbing. In anticipation of your next argument, Blu-Ray disc sales also long ago eclipsed online movie sales and growing more rapidly than that segment.

High definition media gets almost no attention

From who? Consumers are buying HD-TV's in droves. PS3 sales are up, along with Blu-Ray media sales. You may not care, but you are simply sticking your head in the sand to absorb the tears from the loss of your dear HD-DVD.

Retailers that used to push both Blu-ray and HD-DVD now push....nothing. I find it hard even finding a single Blu-ray player for sale.

Unless you go into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. Now you are just a parody of yourself as anyone with even a sliver of shopping experience has seen Blu-Ray discs and players in big box stores.

Former HD-DVD supporters are so pathetically transparent...

I myself only got a Blu-Ray player at the beginning of the year, and have but a few discs - I have no great commitment to the format myself but can realize it's the next video format, just as it was easy to do before the war even started because of studio support.

However as marginal my own interest in the format may be, I cannot let complete fabrications by those who would damage the whole HD media market with outright slander and fabrications go unchecked. As a movie lover I would prefer the HD media market remain healthy so we get more good quality transfers. If you loved movies yourself you would abate your attacks which cause only harm, and for what - revenge on Sony? So not worth your time.

OODBMS allows polymorphic types in a dataset, those types can themself be in a type inheritance tree. This structure is extreemly difficult to model in an RDBMS system, where trees are not a supported organisation.

According to an article I read this weekend, after United Fruit Company started importing bananas to the U.S. around 1900, bananas were actually so popular that there was a real danger of stepping on one if you walked down the street. Urban legend, perhaps. The article was based mainly on two books: http://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/dp/1841958816/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212404832&sr=8-1 and http://www.amazon.com/Banana-Fate-Fruit-Changed-World/dp/1594630380/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212404832&sr=8-2

According to an article I read this weekend, after United Fruit Company started importing bananas to the U.S. around 1900, bananas were actually so popular that there was a real danger of stepping on one if you walked down the street. Urban legend, perhaps. The article was based mainly on two books: http://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/dp/1841958816/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212404832&sr=8-1 and http://www.amazon.com/Banana-Fate-Fruit-Changed-World/dp/1594630380/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212404832&sr=8-2

Don't forget The Dangerous Book for Boys".

I think that you meant http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Guide-Home-Chemistry-Experiments/dp/0596514921

You need the dp/0596514921 -- I think that it actually ignores the Illustrated-Guide-Home-Chemistry-Experiments part. That's just for search engine optimization purposes.

It also does a neat job of solving the problem of what to get one's mechanically inclined male relatives for Christmas, birthdays, Father's day, etc.

Here's a page from the author's "Journal" (he doesn't all it a "blog")

He's also working on a "Home Forensics Lab" book.

Get this book. It comes with a pre-filled order form for a complete chemistry lab kit and it has dozen of experiments. So it's basically a chemistry kit manual.

http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Guide-Home-Chemistry-Experiments/

And remember, a good experiment is an experiment that leaves a crater. A great experiment is an experiment that leaves a crater from which you can walk away.

Did find the Amazon's kindle source .. like you said they do use more than just the kernel: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200203720

Obama isn't a Baby Boomer. He's in the post-boomer generation variously called Generation-X, Generation-13, Post-Boomers, etc. Basically those born between 1961 and 1981 (read GENERATIONS by Howe & Strauss for a profile of American generations for the last three centuries).

Also, Obama is a reformist leader who has based his campaign on changing how American government works. He is literally the voice crying "STOP" for the two frustrated generations (Gen-X & Millenials) who follow the Boomers.

Clinton is a machine Democrat with 35 years invested in keeping Washington working the way it does now (aka lobbyist rule). So your "same side" argument lacks any basic understanding of current American presidential politics. As such, I have to devalue your criticisms of our system.

So you prefer your nastiness to go on behind closed doors? I guess tastes differ. I prefer openness even if it is messier. Sunlight and fresh air will kill lots of nasty things that live in the dark places.

What the hell are you talking about with my supposed "sit back until they die" approach? I said that we are in the initial stages of shoving the fractious Boomers out of power. We certainly aren't waiting for them to die. Heck, it may require copious amounts of holy water and wooden stakes through their hearts just to get them to back down.

As to the Boomer children being taught to act like their parents, the Millennials are a largely a civic and cooperative generation unlike the Boomers, who are individualistic and rhetorically idealistic. The Millenials do not show the narcissistic sense of "we're right, everyone else is wrong" ego that the Boomers enjoy. As a group the Millennials seem to be naturally cooperative and conscientious, if somewhat immature and naive. Like most civic generations, they were sheltered and cherished so it will take them a while to mature. But when they do, America will change as it has not since the last great civic generation: the G.I. (aka "The Greatest Generation").

In the interim it is the Gen-X folks that will be taking the reigns for a while. This is the truly galling part for the Boomers. They HATE the Gen-X generation (its a long story. read GENERATIONS). So the Boomers will renew their grip and force everyone to drive them out of power inch by bloody inch. Their entire generational ego is predicated on the notion that they know better than anyone else. They won't go easily. This fight is going to take years. The 2008 election is just the first battle in a long war.

Your logic on tying the War on Drugs to the campaign rhetoric is flawed. Certainly that is one of the many stupidities we have to address, it is NOT however one of the problems with the functioning of the primary campaign (your original point). It may be an issue not addressed by the campaigns, but it isn't an issue WITH the campaigns' operations. Nice try at a redirect, but a failed one.

Finally your statement that no one over here seems to be doing anything either is specious and insulting. Of course we are doing something about it. Why do you think so many people are actively working to elect their favored candidate? Its a fight. It is ugly and it will get uglier still. We who are actively engaged in that fight know this. We aren't disheartened that it is ugly. We know things will get better. That is what we are fighting for; not just to fix some of our problems but to fix the system so that it doesn't create these catastrophes in the first place. So bear with us while we try to sort this out.

Of course you wouldn't know what it is like to have to dig in and try to fix the basics of a broken govenment, since you rely on it all being nicely sorted out in a comfortable back room some where.

Check out the book "The Corporation" to see the history of companies owned/controlled by governments. (The author is very conservative, but the history is interesting.) http://www.amazon.com/Company-History-Revolutionary-Library-Chronicles/dp/0679642498

16GB thumb drives don't exist

Actually ADATA sells the MyFlash 16. It's a "double long" flash drive compared to most, and quality is very poor. (I've owned two, one was defective, and the other was unreliable, but WAS 16gb)

My current drive is a SanDisk FireFly 8, for it's small size (sub-single length) and reliable operation. I would LOVE to replace it with a 16, and I've been waiting what I consider a very long time for this jump to occur. Here's hoping by christmas I can have a FireFly 16. It's my service drive, and I don't "pack light", so right now I'm down to about 300mb free no matter how much fat I try to trim.

Considering the size of the firefly I have to assume it has four 16gbit nands, a stack of two on both sides of the board. If that's the case, the 32gbit nands will get me a 16 soon.

See The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power

See also The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen

I liked this book, but I'm only part way through the follow up, Broken Angels, and I'll probably have to restart it.

You can't protect your soul from bring stolen by the paparazzi, even in the deepest, darkest regions of the Amazon!

In the meanwhile, do you suppose Jeff Bezos has something to do with this logging stuff? (All those books have to be getting paper from somewhere...) Kinda gives new meaning to the Amazon.com name.

Agreed. check out the Kingmax Super Stick http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000H6J8B4/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0 that appears to be smaller, and a 4GB model is only $13! -Taylor

You should read this book http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321335724/

It is likely that they've already had contact with a number of pathogens brought over by the Old Worlders. While they do not have contact directly with "modern" people, they do have contact with other tribes who do. For instance, smallpox beat Cortes to the Yucatan because it had been introduced by Europeans elsewhere in the Americas prior to the Cortes' arrival. This was partially because of the virulence of the disease, but also because the Aztecs had quite a sophisticated transportation and communications network, even by European standards at the time.

In fact, Europeans had great difficulty using these roads, as not only were they paved, and thus hard on the hooves of their horses, but the Aztecs also utilized staircases. Instead of going around or through hills, the Aztecs went over them. Horses had difficulty with the stairs, but the beast of burden in the Americas, the llama, did not, and the Aztecs used this to their advantage militarily. Without European disease essentially wiping the indigenous people out there, it is unlikely that Cortes would have had such an impressive military victory with such a paltry force. For anyone whose interested, this is all discussed in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

No?
http://www.amazon.com/Screen-Intel-Celeron-Processor-Preloaded/dp/B001150JQ8/ref=pd_bbs_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1212167123&sr=8-5

Lowest-end EEE is $300

There is an interesting documentary that came out a few years ago about just this. An anthropologist went to study one of these tribes. Over a period of a few years he became integrated into their culture and actually fell in love and married one of the natives. When the time came to leave, he took his wife back with him to the states.

After a few years and seeing what our culture and life is like. She decided to get a divorce return home to her tribe. ...food for thought. I can't find a link to the movie. But I believe this is the book it is based on.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Original-Episode-Armageddon/dp/6300213277

? Ive seen them all, and remember the episode, but not sure if thats it.

Woudlnt say im a trekky/treker either, but the show was good, so was Next Generation, but dont like any of the others.

ok, i'll give you all of them except point 7. It is pure unadulterated CR4P. Sorry bud. Read http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895/ 'Dealers of Lightning' and get some real education on the whole point-and-click beginnings.

Apple was as much a thief as MS was, but they stole the interface earlier. Who knows, maybe Bill was busy filling in that "small" contract with IBM at that time, and did not have time to go down to Xerox PARC to snoop around the same way as a (barely employed)Steve Jobs did. Nevertheless, someone had to bring that amazing technology to the world, and it would have been unfair for Apple to patent it and be the only one.

Konami introduced a few kids games for the PS2 played using a control mat on the floor, to get the mat you had to buy the frogger game which has quite a few fun mini games for 2-5 year olds.
http://www.amazon.com/Konami-Kids-Playground-Frogger-Jumpin/dp/B000P297HK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1212078756&sr=8-1
THere are some other 'edutainment' titles which are supposed to help with letters, numbers, shapes and colours, but I've only got the frogger game for my kids.

My 3 year old is pretty good at most the games but has lost interest since I got Rock Band. Turns out she's doing a pretty good job as a vocalist.

Fortunately, someone else has pointed out that this is not at all about thinking machines, only a repository of word concepts.

However, the problem remains the same as that with most failed-and-doomed-to-failure AI research: the researchers have an excellent grasp of technology, but are usually operating on a fundamentally flawed model of how consciousness works.

Essentially, we think about abstract things by repurposing the connections used for understanding the physical world (see Philosophy in the Flesh and the works of Lakoff & Johnson generally). To accomplish human-like intelligence, we would need to replicate that.

I last typed on my of my dozen Model M keyboards over the weekend. Still as fast as ever. If you think it's slow, you probably never learned how to type correctly on an old-school keyboard, and I also have some words for you about my lawn.

I picked up one of the Unicomp keyboards a few years ago to compare. Not the same, a pale shadow of the original. Even the Model M went downhill in its later years. The "Manufactured for IBM by Lexmark" models I have from 93 and 94 are slightly off from the original design but are still quite nice. Their 95 and 96 models are obviously inferior and it's just been a downhill slide from there.

The bigger problem with the Model M isn't speed, I can still pound away as fast as ever on one. But I don't use them very much because my hands just aren't happy with typing using that much force anymore. Right now I've switched to the very lightweight touch of the Logitech diNovo Edge which has the least physically stressful design of any of the retail keyboards I've found. You'd have to get one of the multi-hundred dollar units from somebody like Kinesis to get any easier to type on.

Except all Blizzard do is add new content for the bloody endgamers.

I've made this comment before, recently, on Slashdot. There's a difference between content and progression for which my argument was (and is) that progression is more important than content, though they are both required and closely linked. What you're referring to is not content, but progression. You're pissed that even though Blizzard adds new things to the game, you cannot do them. So, you're not pissed at the "new stuff", you're pissed at the lack of progression or ability to DO the new stuff.

And I believe you're right. Although TBC was better than the "original" level 60 cap end-game for progression, Blizzard is still far too slow to add progression for the masses to keep them sustained. Lack of progression is what drives people towards other games. That includes running out of content, because if you run out of content you also have nothing else to progress too. However, (depending on your play style) there could also still be content you've not seen (40-man raids or other major end game dungeons) but if it's more-or-less impossible for you to do it, it's the same as if it wasn't there at all. However, it's clear Blizzard knows this as they've been moving away from this kind of progression brick wall to their content since TBC. WOTLK appears to be making another huge step in that it appears they're making all dungeons 10 or 25 man optional. That should make content more accessible to a lot more people.

NOTHING ever changes in the game. [...] ou'd think there wouldn't be any fucking gnomes left in Gnomeregan now, but oh no, those refugees still come running up that slope.

Now you're talking about something that's completely outside the realm of content or progression. I'll continue my habit of linking to what I believe to be one of the most interesting MMO books out there... Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle. This book talks about what you're referring too. There are many types of virtual worlds. They go from very dynamic (everything you do changes the world) to static (no matter what you do, little changes). Most MMORPG's on the market today are far closer to the static side of the spectrum. It sounds like the type of Virutal World you'd like is a more dynamic system. However, dynamic worlds are very hard to play in, to program, and to run. If everything you do changes the world, you might not like it that someone changes a part of the world you liked. I recommend checking out that book for more interesting reading about this aspect of Virtual Worlds. Yes, there use to be very dynamic text based MMO's (MUDs) back in the day. They typically didn't last long. The reason MMO's today are (more) static is partly due to the fact that it's also what 'sells'. Survival of the fittest.

By being popular, WOW is cursed

Popularity brings with it the people who hate popularity. I guess you could say this, but it's a short sighted and ignorant view of things.

Blizzard are so terrified of any major changes

This could easily be argued against by just looking at patch notes and expansion pack details. Class talent changes have dramatically changed over the years. The addition of Paladins and Shamans to both factions was a very major change to the game. The addition of a 3rd dimension with flying mounts was a major change.

The game outside of Outlands, aside from a few minor additions (Dustwallow quests for example), is identical to the one I started playing three years ago.

That's game design (see previous comment about static/dynamic worlds), not laziness of Blizzard or their curse of being popular. It's a technical issue. You'd have to know more about client/server architecture to know that it's pre

Yeah, but the US has higher rates of death by people killed by knives than most other countries. We have higher rates of assault (often with cars) than other countries. We are unfortunately, a pretty violent country, with or without guns.

If you look at the situation holistically, it's not clear that guns are a primary cause of the violence. Gun ownership rates are highest in the rural areas, while gun violence rates are highest in the urban areas. This book, has some very interesting, and fairly rigorous statistical analysis.

Many students of the situation note that the gun violence didn't rise in the US, until the war on drugs ramped up. A large amount of gun violence is directly related to drug commerce.

8) Not being brown like Ubuntu

A beautiful example of how spread and mixed the human cultures are, is:

It's not that people won't pay for music, most people would happily pay for high quality DRM free music, but they don't want to offer that. They'd rather come up with stupid schemes like this.

1998 called, it wants its rant back.

Want high quality DRM free music? Here you go. Non-DRMed MP3 files, VBR-encoded with LAME (average bit rate 256kpbs), for $0.89 each. They even fill out the ID3 tags for you (including album art, for pete's sake) so you can just drop it into your music player of choice and go.

I agree Lala sucks, but the days when you could claim some moral legitimacy for leeching music torrents are over. There's really no justification for "getting it for free" anymore when there are completely legal, easy, and geek-friendly ways to get the music that also puts some money in the artist's pocket.

Btw, have you tried using an expensive old g3 mac (your five year old example). Good luck finding software thats not purposely broken so that it wont run on your revision of the OS. Thats the most hilarious part. Even if the software would work fine, there are locks on most programs to tell you what os revision you can run them on. You know the odd program that complains when you run it on 2k, but doesnt on XP? thats par the course for mac

I'm a baby boomer and I respectfully disagree.

Firstly, you cant judge a "generation". (And yes, I've read this.) You can only judge the individuals in that generation. And while I can see differences between people my age and those younger (and older) I don't know that I see the kinds major differences that would justify the kinds of contempt and scorn for baby boomers that the posts here would indicate.

Yes, I protested the Vietnam war, spent quite a bit of time reading about the history of French Indochina, and took a perfectly legal student deferment until the draft lottery spun my way. Criticizing that while the Iraq fiasco is underway would be hypocritical (unless you're in the army now yourself).

I smoked some weed and while I don't indulge any more I fully support tossing the ridiculous war on drugs down the toilet - but don't blame the boomers for that - it predated us by quite a while and was further intensified by Nixon and his friends - and most boomers were not old enough to vote for them.

I've advocated environmental laws for years and most of the SUVs I see around here are driven by 30 somethings and younger.

As for the war on terrorism, that may well have been instituted by people in the baby boom generation, and if you like, I apologize for the idiots who happened to be born around the same time I was who pushed it on us. But the militaristic mentality that really produced it is much more a product of the folks who fought in the second world war and built up the massive defense industries that are a major problem in the US.

I could just as easily heap scorn on the generations I see following me, but I don't think it is particularly meaningful and I don't think it is helpful. You want to change things? Great! I'll do what I can to support you. You want to be a "nattering nabob of negativity"? Thats fine too - but it doesn't translate to anything more than blogriping.

It's also worth looking at customer satisfaction, as indicated by the customer reviews. Each of the Apple machines has a review average of 4.5/5 starts; the EEEPC has a review average of 5/5; the first Vista PC has a review average of 3/5. Not only are the non-Vista laptops selling very well, but the people who buy them are happier with what they get for their money - both at the high end and at the low end.

It's not designed to run Vista

Sorry for having to reply to myself. The previous link was to some reader's digest style annotation. This is the real deal:

http://www.amazon.com/1984-Signet-Classics-George-Orwell/dp/0451524934/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211860011&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Max-Notes-1984-George-Orwells/dp/0878919961/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211860011&sr=8-1

The government theoretically serves the people and realistically does to some degree. Private industry theoretically and realistically serves only the shareholders.

Theoretically a corporation serves the common good or public good. When the first corporations were granted corporate charters, their one purpose was to improve the common good. The first corporation to be chartered was the Dutch East India Company in 1602, and the second, Honourable East India Company. Both were shipping companies and shipping was a dangerous business to be in. A ship could be hit by a storm like a hurricane and sink. Or it could be attacked by pirates or another nation's navy, actually nations paid pirates to attack the ships of other nations. When the ship's cargo, or the ship itself, was lost the owner of the ship was liable for that loss. The owner of the cargo had to be compensated for the value of the cargo, and if any crew was lost the family of the crew had to be compensated as well. Not many investors were willing to risk everything they had on an investment in ships. So the British and Dutch crowns granted those who wanted to invest in a ship a limited liability. Investors could get together to form a corporation that owned one or more ships. Then if anything happened the most a stockholder could loose is what they invested.

The problem today is that governments have not held to the requirement that a corporation serve the common good. Instead, as Thomas Jefferson warned of, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations, which dare already challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country", corporations have gain control over people and government.

and all of them have access to it instead of the huge numbers of people in the US who are without access

Many of those in the US who do not have medical coverage do not want it. When did it become good to force those who don't want health insurance to pay for it? Or those who lead a healthy life style pay for those who don't exercise, do smoke, and have poor diets?

Little Greenies They're all just little greenies.

Have you read Ill Wind?

...just click the 'Deploy spade' button...

Ok, here goes...

The purpose of patents is to allow oligopolies to control markets.

The purported motivation of patents is to ensure that inventions are disclosed. However, this does not happen in practice, since the primary focus of patent law practice is to obfuscate patents to the greatest extent possible.

You bring up something I'd forgotten completely.

During WWII, Disney was commissioned to create a number of short films to aid/promote the war effort, along with several PSAs and the like.

A while back, a friend and I watched through a DVD of these shorts, and they were absolutely fascinating. While several of them would prove to be quite iconic, some were astonishingly offensive. I give enormous kudos to Disney for having the balls to have provided an essentially uncensored glimpse into the past. (I'm told that there are a number of pieces that didn't make the cut that would be extremely offensive to modern audiences)

I believe that this is the one we watched.

At the bequest of the US Government, Disney also produced a number of "educational" films to be sent to South America in order to help them build their economies into utopic democracies, and counteract any Nazi/Communist influences that were taking hold there. These were also fairly offensive against their target audience!

If you want a great view into the not-so-distant past of American history, I'd highly recommend watching these, especially given the great deal of historical relativism that seems to be going on these days concerning that era.

None of that stuff would fly today, showing just how difficult and risky it is to draw parallels between the present, and situations that occurred 50 years ago.

True, true SpzToid, the -only- problem I have with the N95 is leaving the thing on with the GPS going, or something. Sure battery death within 8 hours. If I just run the basic stuff, it's just like any other phone, battery lasts 2 or 3 days.

I'm using a third-party bluetooth keyboard that I got for around 50 bucks, it's fine.

This model, (iGo Stowaway)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CDHWQA/ref=dp_cp_ob_title_1

The sportstracker is way cool, although the GPS sometimes takes a while to get initialized.

You didn't say in what condition they're in. Mint/Near-mint? Good, Fair? Anyway, to give you an idea, a brand-new (presumably M/NM) copy of Masterpieces of Infocom can cost up to almost $300. I'm not sure how much the boxes alone would cost though. Would be nice if the original manuals, collectibles, floppies were included. (Floppies might still work.) Compilations like Ultimate Might and Magic, Ultima Collection (I have them) fetch $30-60. I don't plan on selling the boxes. Ah, the good old days.

Buy a Neo FreeRunner phone and use a folding bluetooth keyboard. I'm using the developer's pre-release version of the FreeRunner (Neo GTA01) and I use my bt kbd with it all the time. The iGo folding keyboard fits in my front pocket.

You can run QTopia, the Openmoko software stack, or even a couple of (nearly) all python software stacks for the phone (Zad/Underground or zhone). All are based on Linux, of course.

The hardware list for the FreeRunner is:
* GSM phone
* only GPRS mobile internet :-(
* WiFi
* GPS
* Full bluetooth (host & client)
* Full USB (host & client)
* micro SD slot
* 2 accelerometers
* 400 MHz cpu
* 128 MB sdram
* 256 MB flash (but of course you mostly use the 8GB microsd you put in it)
* 640x480 touchscreen (great resolution, but a little small at 2.8")