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See US appeals court rules prosecutors can demand Twitter account information and people encounter many more problems using twitter.

Sony just confirmed that they are on target to get 6 million units out by March

Last I heard (on October 20th), Sony announced that they may not make their PS3 Shipment targets of 2 Million units Worldwide by January 2007 (which in itself had been a reduction of the 4 Million worldwide for January 2007 that they claimed at E3).

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/20/ 1743240

Nintendo's launch partner is Toys R Us, and just today (Sunday Oct 29th 2006), most Toys R Us announced that they will only be taking 20 or so Wii pre-orders. GameStop and EB games actually took around the same number of Wii pre-orders as PS3's. So it looks like Nintendo "may" be having some manufacturing issues. If they were not having any issues, companies like Toys R Us should have around 50 to 100 pre-orders of Wii's.

Well, Gamespot recently (October 6th) claimed that Wii manufacturing had been going better than expected and Nintendo may be able to ship 7 Million to 9 Million Wii by January 2007; Nintendo has only claimed they would sell 4 Million worldwide by January 1st 2007 and will likely make it.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/06/ 1959256

The reason why so many retailers have been limiting their Wii preorders is because they don't want a repeat of the XBox 360 disaster (where people who pre-purchased their XBox 360 didn't get one) so they have been waiting on Nintendo to give them exact numbers on how many units they will recieve; Nintendo has not been willing to give any exact numbers until the units are about to be shipped so retailers that are doing pre-orders are being very conservative. I know for a fact that Futureshop isn't doing pre-orders in Canada because they were told (by both Sony and Nintendo) they would not be given any exact numbers on shipments until 2 weeks before the systems were launched.

So what is the largest issue that prevents most people from wanting a PS3. The price, and Sony has shown that they will lower that when needed (Japan PS3 price is ~$430). It isn't inconceivable that Sony won't offer some "Gold" pack with a game in the summer of 2007 for the same price as the current PS3's now and then lower the price by next Christmas for a basic console.

Price is a major issue with the PS3 both for consumers and for developers; it is a problem for consumers because it will be (at least) 2 years (probably closer to 3) before any model of the PS3 is under $300 (a typical price for the majority of gamers to buy a system); it is a problem for developers because generating game assets for a PS3 game is expensive and thus game development cost have skyrocketed. Certainly both development cost and the purchase price of the PS3 may be reduced over time, but at the current point in time they are beyond the means of most consumers and developers.

Now there is the whole BlueRay, HD-DVD thing. There isn't even 50k units of HD-DVD players out on the market and it looks like the manufacturing of BluRay will be helped out considerably by 6 million units being produced, not to mention that there will be 6 million BlueRay players out there. If you were a content provider which one would you produce for? It is also not a mistake that Sony is going to include a BlueRay movie with the first 500k PS3's. They want people to try it as a movie player.

You bring up this 6 Million number, which may or may not happen in the near future (it's taken the XBox 11 months to break 6 Million units sold). Beyond that consumers as a whole have been staying away from High Definition Movie formats:

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachon line/business/15652938.htm

Everything else in your post is just incoherent gibberish ...

• Changing a study under pressure from a funding source
  • In studies such as this one, you can see that the study was aimed to please Microsoft.
• Dropping data from analysis
  • I find it humourous when companies show off that they can handle millions of transactions per second with their Windows servers, but go down once or twice a week do to patches and virii. Amount of downtime needs to be included in the result dataset.
• Overlooking others' use of flawed or questionably interpreted data
  • If Windows Server 2003's Samba is faster than samba.org's, than why is Windows not questioning samba.org's previous performance tests?
• Withholding details of methodology or results
  • After may hours of searching, I still have not seen a "Materials", "Methods", "Results", "Discussion" sections. Could someone please give me a URL?
• Circumventing minor rules protecting human subjects
  • Cases in point: millions of virii out there, yet hardly any for linux and bsd systems.
• Failing to present data that contradicts one's own previous research
  • Looking at the data given from the above URL, I see that Microsoft never repeated the experiment, nor any of the other trials. I have repeated it, and I have got much different results. So this leads me to believe that some of their data must be getting ignored, although they need to give out more information before I can point out exact reasons why the linux box in their case was unusally slow. (Hint to people repeating this study: when installing samba.org, try using the -O2 or better when compiling!)
• Unauthorized use of confidential information
  • MSN has a privacy legal notice that is quite long, and I believe selling my email addresses is no where in there. However, my msn_spam_target mailbox on my server is my biggest mailbox.
• Using another's ideas without permission or giving credit
  • They used BSD code for Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 3.1 & 4.0 without obeying the "If you advertise your product, you must mention that you used BSD code." part in the BSD licence. (Note: BSD removed this clause because no one was obeying it anyways).
• Questionable relationships with students, subjects, or clients
  • They have that questionable relationship with Thailand
• Not properly disclosing involvement with firms whose products are based on one's own research
  • Case in point: the last ad campaign
• Ignoring major rules protecting human subjects
  • Case in point: Slammer virus
• Falsifying reseach data
  • I would state that Microsoft has manipulated data, but they only seem to copy their government

It's not to hard to find. Just check out Google news US Section...

Then you getthis.

You should stop listening to stories about them 'eating babies' and actually read the news that explains what they actually are doing. It's patriotic to know what your government is doing, to question them about what they are doing and to hold them accountable for what they do, in regards to government and ruling the people matters.

Who cares about size?

Apparently, you've never heard of the Law of Geek Chic:

The goal of all electronic devices is to eventually become a choking hazard.

How else are you going to watch TV on your cell phone?

why exactly is a Jewish guy getting pissed over Pearl Harbor

See: Jews fought at Pearl Harbor

Pvt. Lewis Schleifer at Hickam Field fired his weapon at a Japanese plane coming straight on until he fell mortally wounded. Lee Goldfarb, a radioman on the USS Oglala, was at his battle station when his ship was struck by a torpedo and sank.

why exactly is a Chinese guy getting pissed over the Titanic?

See Chinese Sailors on the Titanic:

Eight men, all Sailors from Hong Kong, boarded the Titanic together at Southampton with third class ticket #1601 at a cost of £56 9s 11d.

Six of the men: Lee Bing, Chang Chip, Choong Foo, Ling Hee, Ali Lam and Fang Lang survived the sinking. Very little is known about them and there is disagreement over which boats they escaped in. Four of the men are thought to have escaped in Collapsible C, one possibly in lifeboat 13 and the sixth was picked up from the water by the sailors in lifeboat 14.

"We're functioning in a - with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon."

-- sworn testimony of Secy. Rumsfeld

Exhibit B - handbills relegated to unseen areas

Exhibit C - cavity searches for journalists on World Press Freedom Day

Exhibit D - arguments in favor of squelching 527s

Some current and former members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, privately, have viewed Kerry as a ruthlessly ambitious pol light on personal conviction ? a bit of a phony, in other words.
Kerry has always been an elusive figure, a complex man who rarely opens up to anyone outside a small circle of close advisers, family and friends.
One senior adviser once told me he loved working for Kerry because he would do anything ? whatever it took ? to win.

Too much is at stake to play by Dukakis' rules and lose again. That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.

Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up?

After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment.

What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?

Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard.

Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.

But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.

Articles on one insurer in the US doing this in the US include:

Insurer Eyes Driving Habits

Insurers offer discounts to customers who allow their driving to be tracked by electronic monitors

Progressive to Use Data-Logging Device To Help Drivers Save Money On Auto Insurance

In the current US trials, reporting the driving information is voluntary. Of course, if/when more consumers participate, I'd expect base rates to go up as the folks most likely to qualify for discouts increase their participation.

Fortunately (or unfortunately for me, since I develop auto insurance rates at another company) the rating algorithm is patented by one company, so I wouldn't expect to see widespread adoption of this technology in the US anytime soon.

RUMSFELD: Senator, the facts are somewhat different than that. The story was broken by the Central Command, by the United States Department of Defense, in Baghdad. General Kimmitt stood up in January and announced that there were allegations of abuses and that they were being investigated. He then briefed reporters. And I think it was March 20 - there's a timeline up here. By March 20, he went back out again and said that these had been filed.

The idea that this is a story that was broken by the media is simply not the fact. This was presented by the Central Command to the world so that they would be aware of the fact that these have been filed.

What was not known is that a classified report with photographs would be given to the press before it arrived in the Pentagon. ---

RUMSFELD: Senator, the facts are somewhat different than that. The story was broken by the Central Command, by the United States Department of Defense, in Baghdad. General Kimmitt stood up in January and announced that there were allegations of abuses and that they were being investigated. He then briefed reporters. And I think it was March 20 - there's a timeline up here. By March 20, he went back out again and said that these had been filed.

The idea that this is a story that was broken by the media is simply not the fact. This was presented by the Central Command to the world so that they would be aware of the fact that these have been filed.

Yeah, that was the real problem in that prison: the cameras! If it weren't for those pesky cameras, there would be no crimes, right?

Actually, Rumsfeld said something to this effect. They asked him how such a thing could happen, and his characteristically evasive answer was that the the security precautions need an update when everyone has digital cameras and phones and 21st century stuff. So that's the lesson for the Pentagon: we need to make new rules about cameras in the vicinity of sanctioned torture and rape.

You think I'm being cynical? Look at Rumsfeld's own words from yesterday:

We're functioning in a - with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.

This article from a South Carolina newspaper sums up what infuriates me about the entire situation. Here we have Federal and state programs such as food stamps being outsourced overseas. One wonders how many unemployed Americans actually having to use the food stamps might be qualified to work on the help desks--not to mention the other projects described in the article. The politician who rants about "using tax dollars to erode the tax base" makes a valid point.

Then there was this article not long ago on Slashdot, describing a Pakistani medical transcriptionist who decided to cash in on the Great American Dollar Giveaway by blackmailing a patient from a California medical center. At least a US transcriber could've been tracked down and legal sanctions brought to bear.

I think there are some fundamental issues that transcend coding. How much are we willing to give up in the legendary new "race to the bottom?"

"Iraq continually violated those resolutions and was as uncooperative with the inspectors as it felt it could get away with without provoking another war."

Here are a few sources that contradict that claim:

Annan Calls Iraqi Cooperation 'Good'

Head of Atomic Energy Agency Will Tell Security Council
Saddam Has Done `Quite Satisfactory' Job in Cooperating

Iraq's cooperation active: Blix

I'm afraid that it is clear in retrospect that there was nothing that Iraq could have done that would have prevented the US from invading. I hope that you will understand that this is not an anti-american statement, but merely an observation of fact.

On the mold issue, I'm not at concerned about the health issue (although there must be some) as much as the damage issue. There was an expose in the local newpaper (Minneapolis) a while back about $500k houses that needed to be bulldozed because it wasn't worth repairing them.

Moisture built up in the walls, trapped by the housewrap. Usually there had been a small error in application around a window or some other opening. The wood was literally rotting away behind the siding (a lot of wafer board disintigrates in water).

Link to similar article

That's the kind of thing that worries me about a newer house. I'm not a construction expert by any means, and it seems that this should never occur when all materials are applied correctly. As you noted, there are problems with even "good" builders, and there's often no way to tell what has been done wrong because it's all covered with Sheetrock and siding.