Slashdot Mirror

A news report warns consumers that some local TV news videos may actually be propaganda platforms of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). According to this article, the following tip-offs may indicate that a news report may be from the RIAA are:

* Shockingly Bad Video

* Poorly Paced

* "Fly In" Bullet Points done in Microsoft Movie Maker

* Shown in Unusal Places on Your Local Newscast.

* Trust your eye. If it looks like schlock, it's probably from the RIAA.

Finally, if the video says that Christmas-themed cellphone ringtones are one of several "cool, innovative" ways of buying music, you may be looking at an RIAA-produced video.

You can find articles about the use of x86 in embedded devices at arstechnica, from Jon Stokes:

Return of the Son of Pentium in 2008? Intel's new ultramobile processors

Intel's low-cost "Diamondville" CPU to power OLPC/Eee PC mobile category

And a very interesting article why processor makers want to extend their architecture to other realms: Beyond the BlackBerry crowd: life in a post-32nm world

You can find articles about the use of x86 in embedded devices at arstechnica, from Jon Stokes:

Return of the Son of Pentium in 2008? Intel's new ultramobile processors

Intel's low-cost "Diamondville" CPU to power OLPC/Eee PC mobile category

And a very interesting article why processor makers want to extend their architecture to other realms: Beyond the BlackBerry crowd: life in a post-32nm world

You can find articles about the use of x86 in embedded devices at arstechnica, from Jon Stokes:

Return of the Son of Pentium in 2008? Intel's new ultramobile processors

Intel's low-cost "Diamondville" CPU to power OLPC/Eee PC mobile category

And a very interesting article why processor makers want to extend their architecture to other realms: Beyond the BlackBerry crowd: life in a post-32nm world

Actually, a lot of MS Research ends up in MS products. For example, the IPv6 stack in Vista was originally a MS Research project. Vista's voice recognition system is another.

The problem with all fields of research (as opposed to Development) is that most often, the results are published in journals and papers years before the technology makes it into a product, then when it finally becomes "productized" everyone yawns because "that's so old", when in reality in terms of finished products it's not.

As a good example, Microsoft is spending a ton of research on parallel processing. There are even some benefits leaking out into the real world like the Parellel Extensions to .NET.

Another good example was Microsoft Photosynth, also a Microsoft Research project that became a real-world technology.

Frankly, if you can't see any innovation coming from Microsoft, you're simply either biased, falling for the propoganda, or just not looking.

The hardware is actually surprisingly attractive. The body itself has a nice brushed metal feel to it now, not unlike a MacBook Pro. Buttons were a silver plastic I believe. The device is also really thin, which was a nice change over the first Reader I saw, as that one was a little on the chunky side.

This being a store demo unit, I did not get to try out the Sony Connect store. This being Sony though, I'm not surprised if the experience had a tendency to suck. The Sony Connect music store's already been shut down, if you were curious how that effort was going in general.

Read the Ars review if you want a more real-life experience though. Personally, I'd like the Sony Reader hardware and exterior combined with the Amazon software and EVDO connection as an ideal ebook reader.

The premise is simple: instead of streaming your TV across the 'net to PCs (as with the SlingBox), the SlingCatcher does the opposite by streaming your PC's videos to the TV. The SlingCatcher is expected to retail for under $200 some time in the middle of 2007; it will come with HDMI and component connectors and will feature both WiFi and Ethernet for connectivity.

Some information on this band can be found here:
http://gigaom.com/2007/03/14/700mhz-explained/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/700_Mhz_wireless_spectrum_auction
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070815-700mhz-auction-whats-really-up-for-grabs-and-why-it-wont-be-monopolized.html

For instance the GSM 750 band (has been in the GSM standards for at least 7 years) is a part of the spectrum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands

According to an article on ars technica over 18 months ago, a member of their game group managed to cobble together most of the game into playable fashion, and wrote a review of the game.

I couldn't find a confirmation in TFA as to which companies really had machines decertified. Our local (Boulder) paper reported this morning that of the four companies involved, only Premier/Diebold had *no* certification revoked. So that's rather at odds with the summary. Seeing that I couldn't see any confirmation of the summary's statement in TFA, I suspect that the local paper got it right.

Looks like your local paper got it right - according to this News Release from the Colorado Secretary of State, the results were:

Premier (formally known as Diebold) All voting equipment submitted for recertification passed.

Sequoia The optical scan devices, Insight and 400-C, used to count paper ballots both passed, but the electronic voting machines, the Edge II and the Edge II Plus, both failed due to a variety of security risk factors, including that the system is not password protected, has exposed controls potentially giving voters unauthorized access, and lacks an audit trail to detect security violations.

Hart The optical scan devices, eScan and BallotNow, both failed because test results showed that they could not accurately count ballots. The electronic voting machine, eSlate, passed.

ES&S The optical scan devices (M 100 and the M650) both failed because of an inability to determine if the devices work correctly and an inability to complete the testing threshold of 10,000 ballots due to vendor programming errors. The electronic voting machine (iVotronic) failed because it is easily disabled by voters activating the device interface, and the system lacks an audit trail to detect security violations.

Maybe the Colorado Sec of State should go read yesterday's 1,000 pages of bad news: Ohio e-voting report released article over on Ars Technica, then chat with the Ohio Sec of State about the EVEREST Testing Reports, which document high-risk issues with equipment from all the vendors that were tested (including Premier/Diebold).

Bring On The Exaflood!
...
By Bruce Mehlman and Larry Irving

Why would anyone expect that a more complicated and considerably more secure operating system would be faster?

Requiring his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can watch a live feed on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. He will ensure that these proceedings are archived for all Americans to review, discuss and respond. He will require his appointees to employ all the technological tools available to allow citizens not just to observe, but also to participate and be heard in these meetings.

Mmmm, difficult to take any side at the moment but this is yet another format war. I guess that it is urgent to make the two proposal converge otherwise we might get a waste of energy in dulicate standard maintenance and implementation.

Just a simple question: this post on ars technica describes a pretty cool example of web page uing HTML5. Can XHTML gurus tell us how this would be done using XHTML 1.1?

Those standards exist in EVERY franchised market in the country. You are speaking of a common occurrence that amounts to telephony "rush hour" -- everyone gets home at the same time, and either has an issue with their bill, has an issue with their service, wants to set up new service, or cancel/transfer existing service.

P.S. Get ready to go digital -- the FCC-mandated change is scheduled to take place in January 2009.

And if you are using a TV tuner card, you do realize that the coax you are using to connect that card comes from -- gasp! -- the CABLE company?? Signal issues at that level are 99% of the time due to USER ERROR....

Mr. Gates: 'Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.'

Big news, given that the concept of 'customer satisfaction' has been embraced since decades, even by not exceptionally innovative companies (e.g. GM). Microsoft fails both in IT and 'customer satisfaction' (a related comment: Microsoft falls below the average in customer satisfaction survey).

CC.

Then Firewire 3200 was announced and santify was restored.

USB2 is slow and cheap.
"Firewire-3200" is fast and costs more.

Except that USB 3.0 has already been announced as well:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070918-intel-announces-demonstrates-usb-3-0.html

The USB 3.0 target speed is 5 GBps, which would still make it one and a half times faster than the new Firewire 3200 standard... While retaining USB 2.0 backwards compatibility, which is a pretty big deal as well.

Nothing you said makes this any less disgusting. And do you really need the time to show up that big? Or Icons and apps on the task bar that take up that much space?

Too bad it doesn't look good. Seriously, KDE 4 looks like the retard offspring of Vista and OS X. Look at this and tell me I'm wrong. I could not even imagine using KDE4 at the default appearances. Not even the search box has a nice appearance and why is the battery "widget" so large?

Too bad it doesn't look good. Seriously, KDE 4 looks like the retard offspring of Vista and OS X. Look at this and tell me I'm wrong. I could not even imagine using KDE4 at the default appearances. Not even the search box has a nice appearance and why is the battery "widget" so large?

Too bad it doesn't look good. Seriously, KDE 4 looks like the retard offspring of Vista and OS X. Look at this and tell me I'm wrong. I could not even imagine using KDE4 at the default appearances. Not even the search box has a nice appearance and why is the battery "widget" so large?

Actually, it's not necessarily that much of a lull.

Just as a followup, as others have posted about online, I just bought a cheap I/O Magic SATA enclosure (at CompUSA's going out of business sale -- the end of an era for me, I wish the staff luck), and the old drive itself apparently works in the new enclosure. It took half an hour or more to pry the case apart (and some pinched fingers). These directions were helpful in the end (see the Nov 05, 2007 11:39 post),
    http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/24609792/m/783007917831
but the case is very scratched up in the process. I managed incorrectly to get a screwdriver between the metal enclosure and a plastic backing with the clips, which made everything harder until I realized that. Not that I would use the case again for anything anyway if it is what burned out. Anyway, I said I'd never trust the drive, but we'll see (maybe I'll find a good use for it where reliability is not an big issue). Hard to imagine twenty years ago talking about conservatively junking half a terabyte of storage. :-) Anyway, sounds like Seagate may still make good drives, but their FreeAgent Pro enclosures are problematical.

Thanks for all the replies suggesting encryption as a matter of course. I can see now that is an especially good idea if you ever intend to take advantage of hard drive warranties.

if you total all the versions of Guitar Hero 3 together the game sold over 1 million units--and many of those were the more expensive bundle with guitar--in only a week. So says Ars Technica

Also, note that the latest version of Madden NFL is in the same ballpark for number of units sold as Halo if you count all versions of Madden.

Sorry, there was supposed to be a link in that sentence.

I know that Fark is trademarking NSFW, but you should put some kind of warning on those links :(

Unless you *want* to explain to your boss why you were reading a Yahoo answer about necrophilia...

Actually if anything it'll have the opposite effect on content monitoring and filtering. The SAFE act doesn't require ISPs to monitor everything on their network and get fined if they don't report somebody. Instead it says *IF* they detect somebody looking at illegal images or something else covered in the act, and they fail to report it, then they can be fined. This means that the more monitoring an ISP does of the traffic, the more likely it is that they'll technically see something that should have been reported, and fail to do so, opening themselves up for legal problems. On the other hand, if they don't monitor and filter traffic then they won't be at risk, since they'll almost never "catch" anybody that needs to be reported under the SAFE act. Granted, the SAFE act is still a horrible idea, but it's not something that will cause ISPs to do more monitoring.

You have the option to use an ISP like Copowi who guarantees network neutrality.

Spread the word. Even if you don't use Copowi, get in the habit of asking potential ISPs if they guarantee (or offer) network neutrality. (If they start to weasel out, say "guaranteed network neutrality, yes or no?".)

This should be a front-burner issue for ISPs. We should be making every Joe Schmoe in the country asking their ISP "do you have that network neutrality thing, or will you be messin' with my internets?". We're lucky that we have a catchy, positive-sounding name for it, and there's no catchy positive name for its opposite. Use that!

Recently the MPAA widely pirated some software written by commercial software developer Matthew Garrett. Verizon recently has publicly and repeatedly violated the copyrights of many software developers working on a widely-used product called Busybox.

If this bill passes, wouled we see Verizon's and the MPAA's Internet infrastructure and all the developer machines used to build and distribute those illegal warez confiscated and auctioned off?

(Note to trolls: Matthew Garrett is a commercial software developer in the sense that he gets paid to code. That he gets paid is orthogonal to the licensing, if any, attached by his employer to the code he writes.)

Market share is a big part of the drive.

Piracy does help them to a certain extent, it pushes their products into markets where people cannot afford them, or just flat out don't want to pay for it, which still ultimatley counts towards their market share.

The real wake up call was not the fact that a few copies sold that would have otherwise been pirated. The wake up call was that the kill switch was a reliablity issue for many who avoided using it purchased or not and using something else more reliable.

They had a problem. On the one hand you have piracy.. It eats into sales. On the other hand you have competition. A buggy product (Activation issues) kills sales.. Now it boils down to how to keep market share and reduce piracy. It's a tough balancing act. It was better when they were the monopoly. For those not locked into Windows, the sales figures are up. So is the distribution of free alternatives.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/13/october-leopard-sales-outpace-windows-in-japan
"Though Apple has only seen a "modest" increase in Mac shipments to Japan lately, sales of Mac OS X Leopard has reportedly leapfrogged past Windows in the country. It now claims 53.9 percent of Japan's OS-only market in October, according to Japan's Business Computer News. Mac OS X sales increased from 15.5 to 60.5 percent year-over-year, while Windows suffered a sudden drop from 75.3 to 28.7 percent over the same period. "

http://seekingalpha.com/article/53450-first-weekend-leopard-sales-on-par-with-initial-vista-sales
"Apple (AAPL) Thursday announced that it sold two million copies or about a million a day of Mac OS X Leopard in the first weekend. I tried to find similar statistics for the Microsoft (MSFT) Vista launch, but the best I could come up with was that Vista sold 20 million copies in the first month (February), resulting in an average sales rate of 714,000 a day. Both numbers reflect pre-orders and machine installs, not just upgrades. So at least for now, Leopard is running neck and neck with the Windows Vista install rate."

http://robitaille.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/ubuntu-now-has-over-8-millions-users/
"Q: What about growth in adoption rates, any kind of numbers that you can give me?

A: We know now that there are probably at least 8 million [Ubuntu] users."

Ars has a good writeup of the article in nature, for those who want to read more, but don't want to bother w/ the journal article.

I think the US imperialistic tendencies are seeping out.
Like Britain(India, Ireland), they are convinced that they know better then the rest of the world.
The US is happy legislating its morality. As long as you have the US as the only super power, it truly is the west against everyone else. In the US they arrested and jailed the owners of a 3 day old online-poker law.
The US decided that even Credit Card companies that are making payments to these 'scum of the earth' would be held liable. Even after the WTO slapped them for it. They even tarried the crap out of our softwood lumber, aing that it was somehow federally subsidized. They took billions. WTO agreed with us.. but that still didn't matter. Good luck getting them to do what is right. But we MUST bow to the almighty walmart.

Even in the recent past couple of years Canada has been playing catchup. With its own set. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050325-4734.html/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2016/275/

those people show themselves to be irrelevant to the younger audience (in perception). Also, they are not engaging the students in a meaningful way and don't overcome the myth that the "old school" methods are all outdated and worthless.

I often think wikipedia is an excellent source in itself and for deeper knowledge, a reasonable starting point. Too often, the oft-heard admonishment "dig deeper!" does not always apply to students using wikipedia as their single source for a report, but also by the teachers criticizing wikipedia - usually they scan the surface of one edit of one article to look for those errors - while wholly ignoring the revealing and complete log of wikipedias discussions and history behind that single article. Behind that one surface, you get most of the interesting parts of a subject -- the common misunderstandings, misperceptions, and myths. The genuine points of contention and controversy and the gray areas where the truth is not wholly understood or available.

Instead, teachers indulge of what they criticize in their students - intellectual lethargy. Personally, I like what this professor is doing with wikipedia:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071030-prof-replaces-term-papers-with-wikipedia-contributions.html

It's about the smartest embrace of wikipedia I have seen so far.

According to ABC News and several other news outlets, authorities have tracked the hacker attacks back to China.

This is not too surprising, since several recent high profile hacker attacks have originated from china targeting various countries around the world. It's nothing new that China is continuing to hack into our top secret and sensitive installations.

In the coming days, you can expect China to adamantly deny any involvment, just as they have when earlier this year the German, UK, Australian and US governments have accused them of hacking into top secret installations.

Tell me, what does "obtains actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph" mean in a court of law? Is it "obtains" as in "reads them"? As in"stored them on a computer"? As in "stored in memory"? I don't profess to be a lawyer, so I don't really know the answer to this. However, I've seen enough legal decisions in the past where a perfectly common sense sentence targeted on hardcore criminals was twisted to include consensual sex, basic computer operations and daily life. I don't trust lawyers, judges or juries to always come to the right decision, and I suspect there'll be plenty of cases where this law will be abused. If you can't imagine the scenarios.... I hope they'll never happen to you.

The Mozilla team is already taking care of supporting multiple script languages inside Firefox with Tamarin.
IMHO that their solution is much better than Microsoft's APIs:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/07/27/firefox-to-support-scripting-with-ironpython-and-ironruby

It seems silly to speculate that Toshiba is subsidising HD-DVD and the Bluray group are not, particularly as Sony was selling PS3s at a loss for so long which was attributed to Bluray and Cell.

In terms of backwards compatibility I refer to the fact that HD-DVDs can use a layer of the disc for DVD such that you can buy HD-DVDs now and use them in your existing DVD player and have them play standard def. then when you do make the switch to HD-DVD you've already got a library of HD films meaning you don't have to rebuy your entire DVD collection in HD if you don't wish to. See here for more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#DVD_.2F_HD_DVD_hybrid_discs

I'm not sure why you suggest Bluray DRM isn't more problematic, whilst the underlying AACS layer agreeably isn't, there have been notable issues with BD+ - an extra layer of DRM which HD DVD doesn't use, see here as an example of the issues:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071007-new-blu-ray-discs-with-bd-drm-failing-to-play-on-some-devices.html

Region coding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray#Region_codes

vs.

"There is no Region Coding in the existing HD DVD specification, which means that titles from any country can be played in players in any other country."
From the DRM section of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
Which has no region coding section as Bluray does.

DVD/HD hybrid discs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray#DVD_.2F_Blu-Ray_hybrid_discs (The section is empty)

vs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#DVD_.2F_HD_DVD_hybrid_discs

DRM problems:
Nothing about DRM issues on Wikipedia for either format, however as has been reported, the extra layer of DRM I refer to has caused it's fair share of problems:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071007-new-blu-ray-discs-with-bd-drm-failing-to-play-on-some-devices.html

Which facts were you suggesting Wikipedia could correct me on?

If you RTFA, you'll find that the DOJ is siding with the RIAA because the defendant agreed to the terms put forth to the jury. She acknowledged and went along with the instructions, which included precisely how much she could be liable for if found guilty. In so doing she effectively waived her right to make this claim.

I'm one of the last people who would take something the DOJ says seriously these days, but their reasoning on this issue is sound.

More on this at Ars Technica.

Apple licensed 1-click in 2000 so they could launch iTunes unfettered. Judging that they turned that into the #3 music retailer online or offline (and with less overhead than their offline counterparts), I'd say their licensing of the Amazon patent turned out to be a smart idea. Hindsight 20-20 and all.

Two weeks ago Apple turned a $60m Burst.com lawsuit jackpot into chump change, and they get access to Burst's patent portfolio for what amounts to $5m. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just sayin'.

I appreciated Gabe's argument that reviewers don't play games the same way many of us do, and that the review process is poorly suited for sandbox games. Reviewers play with a deadline, whereas in a sandbox game the point is to take your time, explore, and find cool stuff.

• The ugly:
  • Those currently racing through the game who are missing the point

From that March 2006 article:

• The company plans on using the next few months to go into detail about what will be required of a very Vista-capable PC, but for now it has released a document that covers what constitutes a Windows Vista Capable computer. But don't get too excited because "Windows Vista Capable" only means two things: the PC can definitely run Home Basic Edition, and it gets to sport a pretty logo.

  The Windows Vista Capable program is intended to be used as a way to entice customers into performing an early upgrade to Vista. If a customer sees the "Designed for Windows XP--Windows Vista Capable" logo, then he knows that he can purchase that PC and safely upgrade to some version of Vista in the future. But what exactly are the minimum requirements for a capable computer anyway?

  PCs must meet these requirements in order to display a Windows Vista Capable logo:

  • Be able to competently run Windows XP
  • A modern CPU
  • A minimum of 512MB of RAM
  • A DirectX 9 class graphics processor
  • Optionally support Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) to take advantage of Vista's improved graphics

  Still, the requirements just mentioned are required for "good" performance. Nobody is happy just being "good." People want only the best, right? Here's what that's going to take:

  • DirectX 9 class graphics hardware that supports WDDM and Pixel Shader 2.0
  • A minimum of 32 bits per pixel
  • Appropriate graphics memory for specified monitor resolutions expressed as total pixels (X dimension multiplied by Y dimension)
  • Graphics memory bandwidth, as assessed by Windows Vistas built in system assessment tool WinSAT.EXE, of at least 1,800MB/s at 1,310,720 pixels on a desktop and at the native resolution on a mobile PC

  With those features in hand, Microsoft says that you should be able to run Aero. According to a Microsoft spokesman, even if the hardware is able to run Aero, that still doesn't necessarily mean that it can run any version of Windows Vista.

  • "The Windows Vista Capable program does not represent minimum hardware requirements for the different versions of Windows Vista we look forward to providing additional information regarding minimum hardware requirements for Windows Vista and the Windows Vista logo program in the coming months."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you live in the US, it's likely that logs of all your web activity are being sold to clickstream companies. The data logs being sold by the ISPs seem to use the exact same sort of inadequate anonymity practices as were used by AOL.

The problem is that no matter how well the data is cloaked, a users browser habits can easily make the anonymity worthless. As has been seen in the case of NetFlix and AOL, it's easy to figure out whom a person is by simply looking at anonymized logs. A single visit to a social networking site is often enough to make a good guess. But when a specific anomized IP address visits the same page of social networking sites, or edits social their profile at a social networking site, or reviews an item at a vendor site, the real identity of that "anonymized" IP address is completely confirmed.

Simply cloaking an IP address will never provide anonymity. But the companies that purchase your web surfing logs would have no use for logs that weren't attached to a single user. Unless the ISPs were to keep track of and filter out every single vendor site which revealed a user's real name, there would seem to be no safe way to anonymize user logs. Since there are countless numbers of web forums, vendors, and social networking sites, it would seem technically impossible to truly provide any safe level of anonymity for user logs. Selling these logs is just a bad practice that needs to be stopped.

I can only wonder why the EFF and other organizations haven't made a bigger deal about this. These ISPs are selling all of their user's web logs. I cannot imagine any effective way the ISP's could ever anonymize this data. More info: http://wanderingstan.com/2007-03-19/is_comcast_selling_your_clickstream_audio_transcript http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070315-your-isp-may-be-selling-your-web-clicks.html

Ars Technica has rather exhaustive coverage of the auction. You can start here and work your way back, they've gone over everything you've asked about in previous articles.

"You always have plausible deniability"

Yeah, that worked splendidly in the Jammie Thomas case.

"Nothing can protect you from having to deal with the police or the FBI."

Well, not completely, but I would say not allowing people to commit crimes on your network would do something to dissuade that a little bit. And this headline couldn't more clearly refute your claim - "Child porn case shows that an open WiFi network is no defense". From TFA -
The merits of leaving your wireless access point (WAP) open have been discussed and debated at length, especially when it comes to law enforcement. There is a growing belief that file sharers can protect themselves against lawsuits by keeping their wireless access points open. The problem is, it won't necessarily.
A Texas man who was convicted of possessing child pornography tried to use his open WiFi network as a defense, saying that someone else could have used the same network to traffic in pornographic images. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit didn't buy his argument and upheld the conviction.

So while I do admire your spirit, you are obviously NAL and should stop dispensing questionable legal advice. I mean who should I believe - you or the US Supreme Court when it comes to legal questions about WiFi?

Just an FYI: Ars Technica has done exactly that with all of its reviews. No more numbers. (I believe they got some ridicule for assigning an infamous "7" to most reviews) I think it's definitely a move for the better.

That being said, I've seen several people bitch about the lack of a rating number on the forums. So you can't please everyone...


--LordPixie

The problem isn't a nonsensical sentence.

The problem is that you're using a faulty definition of "privacy".

The correct definition of privacy is "You divulge all the details of your life to the government, and the government protects it for you. From everyone. Except itself, of course. But you have nothing to fear from your government. After all, we're here to help you."

I don't see why people think that the PS3 is expensive. Think of how much you would pay for each feature of the system separately.

PS3:
- Blu Ray player: $250++ (on the low end)
- Games: $100++ (PS2 is like $100ish, and the ps3 has much much much better graphics + potential awesomeness due to blu ray capacity)
- Internet Gameplay: $50 (Its 50 a year for XBL, for the PS3 its "free" (in the cost of the games and system))

Congrats, now your at $400. Now think of all the other things you can do with it.

- Upscale DVD's
- Play PS1 + PS2 games upscaled (if you have the right one =/)
- Browse the web (and thus "mod" games.
- "Hack the matrix"
- Home (the "Second Life"-like game/thing)
- and More! (firmware updates)

And yes, it even runs Linux!

Seriously though, for all the things you get, I think the PS3 is by far the best value per dollar of the three next gen consoles.

> for the purpose of using AMD processors and running Linux

This article seems to totally contradict your comment (except for the running Linux part, but if not Linux, what operating system would you suggest? It's obviously much better to supply a standard OS if possible, no?)

> and they were talking about replacing it with a foot peddle

My understanding is that the current solution is a pull-string generator; hopefully it has a hefty enough flywheel to enable a single individual to both power the generator and work on the OLPC, but if not, the OLPC has NiMH batteries which will store charge to enable work with the distraction of power generation. I have the feeling that people will also figure out how to pull the strings with their legs even if it's not the way the generator designers planned they would use it.

> I suspect at best, it will be much like computers in the US. A few nerds will play with them because the think they are neat,
> and most people will not think they are worth the effort.

Now it's time for me to turn the tables on you. In the US, only a few nerds think it's worthwhile using computers? Don't tell me you've fallen into the same confusion as the guy I originally flamed, in thinking that the point of the OLPC is to advance computer science education. My understanding is that in addition to any pedagogical software, the OLPC is supposed to be supplied with a varied range of applications including music composition, drawing, camera + photo editing, etc., which will interest at least some of the children. Not to mention that the children in question have fewer alternatives for entertainment (e.g., no widely available television, if I am not mistaken).

FTFA:

"Exposure to violent electronic media has a larger effect than all but one other well known threat to public health. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer" (emphasis mine)

You can chalk it up to semantics, but it sure sounds like these guys went into the study assuming that violent media was already a threat. They set out to measure the "how much," completely bypassing "if" as though it were a moot point.

Ars Technica has a great article on this here.