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I suggest you read this article and maybe look at the Baxter video that proves that no human could possibly alter the results (so someone trained a monkey to do it).

You don't seem to have registered that the rot is already pretty much at the root of the US system, and that the whole freedom, liberty and democracy idea has been pretty much neutralised by The Almighty Buck.
 
Who are you going to vote for? Well, both sides need to spend an insane amount of $$ to get their candidate in the running, and any amount of $$ wants payback. So bye bye impartial, democratic process. Nice knowing you.

Oh, before I forget - this also influences the quality of 'democracy' that is exported by means of trade embargoes, wars, data sharing 'agreements' (like SWIFT - play or we won't talk to you).
 
And then people wonder why the terrorist problem gets bigger.

Ars Technica has a story about XP turning 5 as well.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061026-8088 .html

Ars Technica ran an interesting piece on this, named You pull, Wii push. They pretty much stated that the Wii has a profit margin per cost significantly higher than the other two consoles, so they help retailers will advertise the Wii more prominently and give it better placement---it's more worth their effort to sell $5000 worth of Wii units than $5000 of the other two consoles. Microsoft and Sony are taking the opposite approach, driving up demand via consumers with direct advertising, but giving lower margins to retailers.

Copy and paste text to your liking (check my spelling)

Mr./Ms. Representative,

I would like to bring to your attention the greatest threat to America and the American way of life: election fraud.

In this article, there are instructions and information detailing the exploitation of our current voting system THAT DID NOT EXIST IN OUR OLD SYSTEM.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s

The voting machines are not secure and their results should not be trusted.

Thank you for your time

-NAME HERE

Because of the extraordinary variability of voting technologies and procedures from state to state, the entire country presents a morass of special cases to the writer who would lay out a generally applicable scenario of electronic election theft.

It is even harder for the would-be perp, who not only has to describe such a scenario in theory (to herself and co-conspirators), but also implement it in practice...

As particular models (such as the writer-picked Diebold AccuVote TS) get more popular, the diversity diminishes, though.

For once, I find myself against standartization.

I recently came across "How to Steal an Election" at http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s which lays out in rather devastating detail how flawed the current system of electronic voting is. I am concerned that our election process has effectively been privatized by a small number of companies, some of which are overtly partisan in their politics, and none held accountable for the numerous and easily-exploitable security flaws in their equipment. One of the equipment companies in particular has taken to smear campaigns and litigation against its critics in an attempt to silence them.

I understand that voting should and must be accessible to the disabled, but this can be done without compromising the security and integrity of our elections. Slot machines in Nevada are subjected to extremely rigorous design standards for security, while voting machines have no such standards at all. This situation cannot go on -- I urge you to secure our elections with appropriate legislation.

[signature stuff removed]

I recently came across "How to Steal an Election" at http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s which lays out in rather devastating detail how flawed the current system of electronic voting is. I am concerned that our election process has effectively been privatized by a small number of companies, some of which are overtly partisan in their politics, and none held accountable for the numerous and easily-exploitable security flaws in their equipment. One of the equipment companies in particular has taken to smear campaigns and litigation against its critics in an attempt to silence them.

I understand that voting should and must be accessible to the disabled, but this can be done without compromising the security and integrity of our elections. Slot machines in Nevada are subjected to extremely rigorous design standards for security, while voting machines have no such standards at all. This situation cannot go on -- I urge you to secure our elections with appropriate legislation.

[signature stuff removed]

These are really only temporary shortages. Annoying to you or me, certainly, but from the very long view -- and that's the one I think we need to be taking -- very little information is at stake of being lost forever as a result of Disney's market-manipulation. (Unless some political-correctness Nazi goes after the Song of the South masters, but I doubt this.) There is a big difference between something that's inaccessible but preserved, and something that's inaccessible because it has been permanently lost. It's the difference between imprisonment and execution; one is temporary, the other is forever.

Before we start in on the Songs of the South and others of their ilk -- tucked safely away, but held back from distribution by someone's conscious desire -- we need to acquire and copy all the content that's not being preserved. There is a TON of primary-source material from some of the most significant events in the 20th century -- some which unquestionably have significance to all of humanity -- which is not being preserved due to copyright problems, or simple mismanagement. (And this is only going to get worse in the future, as more of our history is recorded in mediums that aren't traditionally archived, unless we make an effort to do something. Read the Ars article about the problems one guy had just trying to get video clips from a few years ago.)

Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit may be locked away in the Disney Vault, but their situation is significantly less dire than that of the thousands of hours of other material which is not being looked after by billionaire benefactors.

Please keep calling me a fanboy.
Please exaggerate me saying the PS3 is magic.

I'm speculating, you're speculating. We both are at fault of sorts. My only point is, as I have said, we've seen this before. The Emotion Engine wasn't completely up to the hype but it beat the PC for a while. Was it original design? Yes. Is the PS3 like a PC? No. The GPU may be related but it's also a function of the cell SPE's vs the "let's just do stuff" nature of the PC CPU.

Ars covered this before. It might sound ridiculous now, but the PS2 fight was this same deal. I guess I'll just wait for all the blog posts "omg the ps3 is sick". But that's where my fanboyism comes in I guess, regardless if all the hardware is there and everyone on the planet knows that the 360 beats most PCs and the PS3 is poised to be better than the 360. 7 cores, even if the cores aren't that fast. We'll just have to wait for real-world tests I guess.

This fight has been done. PCs are designed for general purpose, consoles are designed for massive parallel operation which is what entertainment loves. Saying "I think Sony put in a Nvidia GPU in the PS3, they are the same" is just lazy analysis. But I suppose I'm speculating. At least skim the PS2 vs PC article I linked from 2000. It's been different for a while.

Good catch.

Also, for pretty graphs, see ArsTechnica.

Personally I don't care which of those two are on top. I'd much rather go with a Lenovo or Toshiba than an HP or Dell, any day of the week. Just because they're on top in terms of sales does not mean they're on top in terms of quality.

He's the Ars Technica article: Yellow Dog Linux for PS3 Announced

If we get YDL for PS3, does this not mean we can write homebrew software for it? It just seems to change the equation a bit. A $600 game console is expensive, but a $600 multicore Linux PC that can do HD, Bluray and a bunch of other interesting tricks is a lot more interesting...

you may wish to check out http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/10/ 9/5556 for a very cool (pardon the pun) solution to your macbook heat woes.

basically- the macbook wants to spin the fans as little as possible, to avoid ambient noise. by increasing the fan spin speed, you can get a MARKED decrese in heat (as much as TEN DEGREES CELCIUS) with a very simple script.

i'm hoping, personally, that a newer SMC update from apple itself will include a similar feature, but in the meantime, check it out=)

I'd say that they only quit because someone put pressure on them, not because they want to stop making money on those transactions

Seems that you were right. The music industry pressured Visa to cut allofmp3

Perhaps the big media corporations are moving on to other countries because they're failing here in the US. It is becoming more evident that the RIAA lawsuit targeting tactics (tracking IP addresses, subpoenaing, etc) do not provide sufficient evidence for a lawsuit. Considering they've never allowed a case to go to trial, you have to wonder how much confidence they have in their methods. Of course, they have managed to extort money from all kinds of people in the US for a number of years.

So why not go somewhere else, rinse, and repeat? Or at least spread out, and file as many lawsuits as possible before there is an actual judgment that may invalidate the rest of them?

I mean, what's the other option? Give up and join the P2P users?

Perhaps the big media corporations are moving on to other countries because they're failing here in the US. It is becoming more evident that the RIAA lawsuit targeting tactics (tracking IP addresses, subpoenaing, etc) do not provide sufficient evidence for a lawsuit. Considering they've never allowed a case to go to trial, you have to wonder how much confidence they have in their methods. Of course, they have managed to extort money from all kinds of people in the US for a number of years.

So why not go somewhere else, rinse, and repeat? Or at least spread out, and file as many lawsuits as possible before there is an actual judgment that may invalidate the rest of them?

I mean, what's the other option? Give up and join the P2P users?

Firefox is accepting feature submissions for Firefox 3.0. You might want to post your suggestion directly to them: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061013-7986 .html

"After the court session concluded, Jack Thompson told Ars Technica that the proceedings were a travesty. He characterized the judge's viewing of footage as nothing more than a couple of "Take Two operatives" showing the judge everything in the game they wanted him to see. "I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine. But there's such a thing as due process," said Thompson. "And I was denied due process in court today."

Judge Ronald Friedman has decided to allow Bully to be sold freely in Florida after the game's release on October 17.

Read the Article:
... After the court session concluded, Jack Thompson told Ars Technica that the proceedings were a travesty. He characterized the judge's viewing of footage as nothing more than a couple of "Take Two operatives" showing the judge everything in the game they wanted him to see. "I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine. But there's such a thing as due process," said Thompson. "And I was denied due process in court today."

I've never used Xbox Live, so I have a question concerning it: Are less popular or older games ever removed from the service, rendering them unplayable online thereafter? EA likes to remove online support for the PlayStation versions of older (as in two years old) sports titles in order to force players to purchase a newer version. Does this occur with the titles that are playable on Xbox Live, by chance?

No more online play for EA's back catalogue

Really? Resistance would appear to be the exception.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/9/ 15/5301
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/25/sony-still-hasnt -delivered-online-specs-to-ps3-developers/

Here, just read the Wikipedia article on Hans Reiser and check the sources listed there. They give a fairly good run-down of the case against Hans Reiser. Another good source is Arstechnica's synoposis.

It's still not clear how solid a case it is, but it's solid enough to say it's the most probable. Not "beyond a reasonable doubt" probable, but more probable than Hans not having murdered his wife.

1. Where did you get the $50M from? $50 down on 1M units? My understanding is that Gamestop has 3200 stores, which, if each sells 30 pre-orders is roughly 100k units. That knocks your estimate down by an order of magnitude. So $40k. Is that really meaningful to a company as large as Gamestop? I can't imagine it would take a dude an hour to deal with all the pre-order crap, but that's still only ~$6/store. Personally, I think the reason they preorder is that it keeps you from buying at someplace else; if no one else is offering preorders, you secure all of the enthusiasts.
2. I don't think most of the people running in there for preorders are shopping around, but I also don't think either of us has surveyed the folks so there isn't much to talk about.
3. They'd get the information anyway from the sell (most of the time, anyway; I suppose you could tell them "No!" when they ask for your phone number, but I don't imagine that happens often).

OK, I can sorta see your point. The way you made it was a bit harsh. Maybe you didn't realize that you were telling a bunch of developers that the uncountable manhours (many contributed for free, as a labor of love) they've put into something were all a waste, and they didn't know what they were doing, because it doesn't work exactly like something that they may very well detest.

As a mechanic, tools are professionally vital to you, right? You need to know how to use them, and take care of them. Realizing that power tools require a bit more knowledge than hand tools is second nature to you. Well, at the end of the day, a computer is just an extremely flexible (and complex) power tool.

Making that power available to a wider audience than the relatively small group of people who were willing to work by typing at a command line drove the creation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), which are actually a large part of the complexity, in terms of the sheer number of lines of code required. That's unavoidable. A Crescent wrench serves only three purposes (adjustable wrench, adjustable hammer, and prybar), only one of which is intended. So the interface is simple: the grip, and a thumbwheel. But even that interface isn't absolutely defined, i.e. grips may or may not be vinyl coated. Vinyl coated grips may or may not be the optimal design for someone who operates their Crescent wrench in prybar mode, as you get less slippage, but more wear.

General purpose computers serve a multitude of purposes, not all of which can be envisioned when the design is created (prybar mode, and Slashdotters may well supply a few more), and creating *any* workable interface which allows for them all is horribly complex. So complex, in fact, that CS, usability, etc., people are still learning how to do it, about thirty years[1] later. Even if we did have The One True GUI design, things would probably still be complicated because:

a) Somebody would immediately patent the thing so no one else could use it.
b) The marketting departments of whatever companies didn't hold the patent would still campaign against it.
c) There will always be a groups that will want to do things differently, due to either special circumstances (GUIs may be of limited use to the visually challenged without extremely flexible icon sets, fonts, etc., if they're even usable *at all*), or simply because human beings are by nature very contrary beasts.
d) Hardware is a moving target.

So far, the result has been several subtly different[2] user interfaces. I obviously don't see those remaining differences dissappearing anytime soon. But you actually have it pretty good. A user of one GUI can sit down in front of a another, mess around for a few minutes, and begin to accomplish things. It might not be perfect for you (and people can obviously be very passionate about this stuff), but you can get things done.

[1] There's a history of the GUI at http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/1. It's a great read, has screenshots, etc.
[2] I say 'subtly different', because, well, they are. When the command line was the only interface, each operating system's UI was wildly different. Differences in GUIs are extremely minor in comparison.

"I'm going to f---ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again ... I'm going to f---ing kill Google."

This makes me wonder why they didn't put a link to info about his arrest in the article. Not everyone knew this, and it is just sloppy of the editors to NOT include a link to give a bit of context about the arrest.

I found info here, here, and here

...Intel claims that orders have been received from Mexico, Nigeria, India, and Brazil. It is worth noting that India evaluated the OLPC 2B1 laptop and decided not to purchase any.

Intel's offering is beefier and costs ~$100 more. Also note that Intel doesn't have a minimum order of 1,000,000 units unlike the OLPC project.

Giving him attention is letting him win.

The problem with that is there are people that will blindly accept his vitriolic opinion as truth and fact when there is a lack of an alternate viewpoint. If the mature, logical gamers don't "give him attention" by responding, the other side of the debate won't even be heard, and it will just be the hardcore gamers making stupid comments and generally making a bad impression on the so-called "normal people". Jack Thompson's rhetoric sounds reasonable if someone isn't familiar with the subject he's attacking, or isn't informed.

Although, reading this preview account of it, I can't think that the judge, if he is at all fair, will see what's all that bad about it. Jack Thompson may have tried to select the particular judge to his own liking, though.

Some Background
Thompson's rambling initial letter.
The Suit, from Jack's Perspective.
Ars Technica's take on what happened today.
A little bit about Jack (including favorite classics like "claims Janet Reno is a homosexual. Repeatedly." and "tries to get Florida bar ruled unconstitutional.")

Sooo... Take 2 has deep into Thursday to file an appeal. Thompson will likely retort on Friday, and a ruling made on Monday. 24 hours after this Take 2 will deliver a copy... on the release day.

As the site is currently down, does anyone know what the legal grounds are for this ruling? How can there be "more copycat violence" if the game hasn't been released in the first place?

For that matter, I'd like to demand a pre-release copy of Halo 3 to ensure that there isn't graphic violence and amazing multiplayer action.

Congrats, you fell into Thompson's trap. Now why don't you have a read of what the game is really about (as linked in an earlier comment).

I also wonder if there's more going on. Right around the same time that Google buys YouTube, this quote comes out of Disney:

So we understand piracy now as a business model. It exists to serve a need in the marketplace specifically for consumers who want TV content on demand and it competes for consumers the same way we do, through high-quality, price and availability and we don't like the model. But we realize it's effective enough to make piracy a key competitor going forward. And we've created a strategy to address this threat with attractive, easy to use ways to for viewers to get the content they want from us legally; in other words, keeping honest people honest.

Could it be that "rights holders" are starting to change their perspective on these things? Might Google have been in contact with some of these people, enough to know that they'll be working on ways to make the YouTube content legal? Warner has already struck a deal with YouTube. Maybe there are more deals in the works?

Yes, Core Duo is done in Israel. However its still based on the P6 design (Pentium III, Pentium-M, etc). Of course they did improve the design.

Ahem... Pentium-M was done in Israel, too:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/pentium -m.ars

Actually, there is quite a lot of hi-tech development concentrated in Israel.

Funny that you mention that, since actually Microsoft is helping Firefox developers with Vista.

1. Google paid 1.5% of the company in stock to purchase YouTube. Google stock jumped 5% on the news. Purchasing YouTube resulted in a profit for Google.

Someone else called that "bubble math", and they're right. Google's profit hasn't changed. Their value has. If they could sell themselves completely at that price right this minute, that'd be profit.

2. Television as we know it is dieing, and quickly

Rubbish. TV's nowhere near dead. The easy and convenience of picking a channel when you're bored compared to the slog of finding material on the web. Even after bringing back commercials pay TV is thriving. How many people recently told you they were exhausted and were going to just go home and collapse in front of the webcast (vs the tele) ?

3. Media providers were already signing up in ones and twos with YouTube. They will now fall all over themselves to sign up with the web's largest advertising company. ...Or fall over themselves getting in line to sue Google and their competition into oblivion given half a chance. Personally I don't know who's bought which dirty politician so I can't tell you which way it'll go, but if pressed I'd say at least some will try to go the route of sueing.

4. You can't be sued for hosting copyrighted content unless you have been properly notified of your infringement by the copyright holder and ignored it. No legal risk unless you bungle it.

Oh, you mean like this:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060718-7285 .html

5. With media providers signing up with YouTube to host their copyrighted content, there will be more copyrighted content available, at higher quality. You will have to sit through adds, but not as many as when you watch TV, and you can do it at your own schedule.

You really think that copyright material is going to be ad supported only?

Google will be the largest media company in the world within 10 years. You heard it here first.

Your crystal ball is defective, and your ego is inflated. Ever consider becoming a phone psychic?

Those political views created open source, without which the OLPC project could not achieve its goals.

check this out

Intel's Classmate PC is beefier than the OLPC - faster processor (900MHz), 1GB of flash (double the current iteration of half a gig), twice the RAM, XP embedded SP2, and costs about $100 more due to the larger processor and memory.

AND you don't have to buy them a million at a time like the OLPC.

Initial prototypes have generated a great deal of interest, and Intel claims that orders have been received from Mexico, Nigeria, India, and Brazil. It is worth noting that India evaluated the OLPC 2B1 laptop and decided not to purchase any. Source.

As I understand it, one of the key legal arguments is that SpamHaus does not block any emails, but simply provides a list which MTA owners can use to block if they choose. In the ArsTechnica article (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061009-793 8.html), though, Steve Linford is quoted as saying, "Spamhaus.org blocks 50 billion spam messages per day." Seems like he should have chosen his words with more caution.

Spamhaus founder Steve Linford is pretty confident that ICANN won't do anything.

You bet:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/3

Apparently, all those features are there in OS4.

Check Ars' preview here: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/amiga.ars/1

One can only dream they got it right...

ET phone home.

Not specifi to your question but:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060705-7188 .html

As a game developer, there is actually a staggering amount of stuff which is unreleased. It's estimated that 3 out of 4 games that are seriously developed never get released. Most of these at least make it to the demo stage, while others get canceled very, very late in the project.

A lot of this stuff simply is so rare that it's undiscovered. Or the game isn't a big name, so nobody cares. For an example of rare stuff on a shipping game, the E3 version of Eyetoy: Antigrav used colored gloves to track hand motions. By the time the game shipped, we had switched over to gloveless hand tracking. So we gave the stock of E3 gloves away as keepsakes to testers, making them ultra-rare. But while the game was well recieved, it didn't exactly set the world on fire. Thus it doesn't have that many hardcore fans, and the value of those gloves must be whatever some raver would pay to have a nifty glowing spandex accessory.

There was this little unreleased Guitar Hero gem. When we get liquidated in 20 years, someone might just find those disks for the rarest version of Guitar Hero ever. Of course, it would come on a burnt DVD, which seems to have zero collectible value to most people.

There are a lot of super rare, secret games people worked on which didn't ship. Unfortunately I can't divulge any titles, but I can say that the estimation of 3/4ths projects getting canned sounds about right. Some I've heard of include esoteric banana-bouncing simulations to unreleased kart games with major licensed characters to full on RPG set in modern times, etc. Some of these have real properties behind them that people would kill for, if they knew that a 1-level demo for the unfinished game actually existed somewhere. Capcom-developed Street Fighter 2 Hurricane, anyone?

I'm glad people collect this stuff. There is a lot more out there than you can imagine.

I'll bite. I don't blame India, just our government. I don't think the US government is bad, just in bed with business. It disappoints me to watch the government go after allofmp3.com in Russia, a legal company - in an effort to close it down because of RIAA cronies. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061005-7915 .html It's ok that the RIAA and the MPAA can outsource labor to these countries. That simply make America more competitive (WTF that suppose to mean). However, that same goverment does not give a DAMN if your private data is thrown all over the world (Yes India that does include you and China). Do those same countries have strong IP laws for protection? This basically has been discussed before. Our Law enforcement can't reach overseas to India, but it sure can try to have Russian law changed. No protections for me or you on individual rights but certainly protections for the corporate world. I write this as a coward because I know the kind of response I'll receive.

If the only cost difference between a DVD drive and a Blu Ray drive was $20, the Blu Ray players on the market would not be $800-1000. They would be much closer to standard DVD prices. There are a lot of components, including the blue lasers which according to many news stories have really low yields. Plus R&D recouping, of course.

From a video entertainment perspective, Sony's strategy is bold. The Blu-ray drive alone is responsible for the majority of the price gap between the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Wolfgang Schlichting, an analyst with IDC, believes that the cost of the PS3's Blu-ray drive is around US$200-300 per unit, while Merrill Lynch put the cost at US$350. My own contacts in manufacturing believe that the Lynch estimate is too high, but no one believes that the entire Blu-ray drive mechanism can be had for less than US$200 right now. - ars technica story

I would guess that these paid analysts, while probably just in the right ballpark, probably have better sources than a random slashdot poster.

Windows XP Professional will have security updates until 2013 - 2016. I.e. another 7-10 years.

from
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060103-5891 .html
Mainstream and Extended support are virtually identical, with both carrying security updates, service packs, online support, and the availability of paid support. However, the transition to the Extended Support phase means that hotfixes that are not security related will be made available by a (paid) commercial contract, warranty claims can no longer be made, and Microsoft will not entertain adding any new features or design elements to the OS.

Based on the current timeline and our own expectations for the launch of Windows Vista, we estimate Windows XP Professional Mainstream Support ending in late December 2008, with Extended Support ending in December of 2013. It could stretch out longer, but we don't expect the window to be more than two to three additional years. After the Extended Support phase is finished, online support (knowledge base, FAQ, etc.) will continue for 10 years.

I reckon Windows 2000 will get security updates for a fair while yet, since virtually all big companies seem to still use it. Of course, if you run behind a firewall with antivirus software and Internet Explorer locked down with Group Policy and users running with no admin privileges the way most big companies do, security updates are less of an issue.

So that leaves us with four choices for their school nights. We can drug them into a stupor. We can have them sit quietly in a corner for the entire night. We can nuke them from orbit. Or we can STOP IT WITH THIS OVERPROTECTIVE BULLSHIT AND LET THEM BE KIDS, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!

-Eric

how important is gears of war? here is the correct link http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/10 /3/5485

Somebody on Ars pointed out a post here on Slashdot that is, IMO, the most clear and succinct argument against life-plus copyright that I have ever seen, saying (in part):

I think the reason people don't see infringement as immoral is because they don't understand the social contract that underlies copyright law. And that's because the social contract has been trashed so thoroughly by the media industry that it's effectively invisible. Joe Average isn't stupid, but he's not an IP lawyer and given that he has never seen any copyrights expire during his lifetime, and may never see it, the notion that copyright is a tradeoff of short-term disadvantage for long-term advantage never occurs to him, because as far as he knows it's just a permanent restriction. Ask Joe who owns the copyright to Shakespeare's works and he's likely to think it's a reasonable question.

(Emphasis mine.)

"Outsourcing is usually (always?) undertaken as a cost-saving exercise. "

Is it? How about because of deficiencies in the current US system?

I wonder if the author is one of the unlucky Vonage customer who were offered stocks in Vonages IPO.
I think they were offered at $16, and now they are $6.

Accrding to http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060922-7806 .html "Some VoIP services surpass traditional phones". Only cable providers have better quality than regular landlines. Vonage does not.

BTW: Who the hell wants to use Vonage anyway? Broadvoice and a bunch of others allow unlimited international calling, and BYOD (Bring your own device) and asterisk.

Baseline Privacy Plus (BPI+) provides cable modem users with data privacy across the cable network. It does this by encrypting traffic flows between CM and CMTS.

Your comment is spot on. I think you missed my second-to-last paragraph (**rethinking here**) where I mentioned the weight of the container (aka: cargo ship container, which incidentally becomes your intermodal semi trailer) vs. the weight of the contents. I think the specific sentence you neglected to read is: "If the weight of a container's worth of nano boxes is insignificant in comparison to the weight of the actual container, then perhaps my previous argument is incorrect since the additional container weight will be saved." This sentence sums up your entire counter to my argument. Next time, RTWFCBR (Read The Whole Freakin Comment Before Replying).

Furthermore and lastly, the amount of fossil fuel required to source, produce, and deliver (to the assembly facility) said reduced packaging is greater than the fossil fuel required to deliver the finished nano to your door. Thus, a more significant reduction of weight would save a greater amount of fossil fuel before the nano even got put inside the box. (Since you're likely to be a software engineer, you should be familiar with the idea of applying the most optimization effort to the code that gets executed the most.) Steve's short-sighted view of how reducing the packaging volume will reduce his bottom line shows that this is less of a green-motivated action and more of a move to save himself a few $$.

Ok, I lied. This is the last paragraph. It appears that the new box the nano ships in (seen here is plastic, whereas the original box (here) was completely paper. Sure, it costs less to ship them now, but it costs so much more (in fossil fuel volume) to produce that plastic box! This isn't a green-motivated move at all! Heck, it probably weighs more than the original! That's why he used the bogus volume statistic!