At least it is not going to be the Adventures of Young Luke Skywalker.
There's that at least. But if Young Indiana Jones is anything to go by, you can virtually guarantee that every episode will see the plot tangentially involve some recognizable character from the movies. An episode set on Tatooine is bound to see the main character "bump into" Shmi / Luke / Uncle Owen / Jabba or whoever. depending on the timeline.
Rinse and repeat for every damned episode until you get sick of it.
Young Indiana Jones used horrible contrivances to get Indy to meet various famous historical figures. Expect any Star Wars TV series to do the same with characters from the movies. Oh and lots of phony CGI.
It's a shame it's not true for EVERY religion. I would prefer a secular society where you can practice whatever silly beliefs you like in your own home under laws that protect your right to do so. But all public education, government, law, civic amenities and broadcasting should be absolutely free of religion. That means no chapels in public hospitals, no religious dress in schools or public office, no "chastity rings" by students, no preaching by public officials, no tax breaks for religions, no pandering to religion in any way shape or form. In short, religious should be able practice what they like but to not expect any special perks or rights from the state.
Europe does have evangelicals but fortunately most people have the good sense to ignore them entirely. Whereas the US, not only does government and the mainstream listen to their often ludicrous and bigotted views but panders to them too.
To bring the thread somewhat on topic, it demonstrates that the "wisdom of crowds" requires a fundamental assumption - that the crowds are not ignorant with their own agenda that they will promote no matter what reality says to the contrary.
Sony did bungle the original price and sent so terribly confusing mixed messages from their various world groups. But they do seem to be more focussed, so hopefully that is a good thing. Certainly they appear to be using their official blog to communicate news in a coherent way.
Concerning the way Sony is behaving with pricing... most companies want you to buy what's in store right now rather than wait for a price drop or a new model. Otherwise the stuff in the store isn't going to sell as fast. Therefore it's no surprise at all that they don't say upfront what their future plans are. But it was obvious that the 80Gb would step in at the same or a lower price. And with the 40Gb, there's even a lower price yet again.
We'll see this repeat over and over. Sony appear to be a lot more aggressive rolling out new models than the last gen. Look at the current situation with the 40Gb model at $399 and the 80Gb at $499. Sony haven't announced what happens once the 80Gb sells out, but it seems likely that they'll produce a top-end model probably using the new hardware but with more HDD capacity and bundled with rumble and a game. Or something similar.
The reason they don't say much about their future plans is because they want people to buy what's there, not hanging on indefinitely waiting for the next deal to roll around. There is a well known precedent describing what they're trying to avoid.
The XBox 360 system comes with demos only not fully enabled versions of those games. It's also worth bearing in mind that with a paltry 256mb memory card instead of a HDD, that this system will be increasingly irrelevant. It can't be long before Microsoft throw back the doors and allow any game to insist they only play on HDD enabled machines. I'm sure they have motivation to do this if for no other reason than to drive sales of their HDD expansions.
It was quite obvious back then that Sony were going to drop the 80Gb when the 60Gb sold out. It was also quite obvious why they wouldn't wish to say this either since it might impact sales of 80Gb models.
I really don't understand why anyone would think Sony were dropping the price temporarily and then going to hike it back up.
Yep, people still use AOL for the same reasons that people still use Windows, they'd terrified of change, for these poor souls their entire experience of the Internet is just what AOL and it's massively bloated software suite has presented them with. Hopefully these users will feel suitably alienated and outraged by change in upcoming versions of the AOL software that they'll consider a move to something less proprietary and start to experience the internet the same way everyone else does.
That or they don't see value in changing. Either because there is none (for them), or because the effort involved does not justify the value in moving.
As for Windows users... I expect a great many people use Windows is because they want to do stuff and Windows provides a reasonably painless way to do lots of things. If Linux wants to gain converts, the way is not by telling people "[they're] terrified of change", but by offering a compelling alternative. What is so compelling about Linux and how do you persuade people to undergo the trauma of switching? Most Linux distributions are not compelling and most can be a pain in the ass to use if you are not an expert. Ubuntu Linux shows Linux can be simple and they're making great strides, but that is no reason to arrogantly assume people don't switch Windows because they're afraid. If you want them to test the waters, it would be more sensible to advocate trying OpenOffice, Firefox or whatever and benefit from open source apps even if they want to stick with Windows. It means the next time they consider an OS and see the same apps run on Linux as they've been using on Windows they mightn't be so scared of changing.
Of course you might have been referring to OS X which IMO has its own issues such as requiring someone not only to switch operating systems but also buy proprietary and comparatively expensive hardware to run it on. OS X isn't particularly easier that Vista either.
Because it's one of the most popular servers in existence. And Thunderbird already supports most other servers via IMAP or POP3. In theory Exchange can support IMAP too, but the reality is most businesses do not enable IMAP and besides that's only a part of what people use Exchange for.
It would be a huge boost for OpenOffice and open source in general for there to be open and cross-platform Exchange compatible clients. Thunderbird and Sunbird would be ideal candidates to add that support. Evolution is another candidate if only the Win32 port was in anyway half decent. Would it be better if people didn't use proprietary protocols? Of course it would. But the reality is that they do, and that's the reality open source has to reach out to. OpenOffice might prefer open document formats but it still has excellent support for MS formats. Without that support, it's doubtful we would even be talking about it. That's where Thunderbird should be - giving excellent support to whatever protocol you choose.
That's like saying. Heck I have a car that drives on Hydrogen, but the problem is that there are no Hydrogen gas stations anywhere. Gee, that sort of defeats the purpose no?
No it isn't. Not even slightly. I don't even understand your point.
That's like saying. Heck a hydrogen car is not a problem, you just need to create some tanking stations anywhere you drive so that you don't run out of hydrogen. Again sort of defeats the purpose no?
Your analogies really suck.
That's like saying. Heck there are gas stations and they could be used to sell hydrogen. All we need to do is provide the equipment.
Gee at the end of the day, even though it's worse, its simpler to drive a gas guzzling vehicle. Sad yes, but that's reality...
They continue to suck...
For your information Thunderbird is a modular and well designed piece of code that uses abstraction and other techniques to enable it support NNTP, SMTP, IMAP & POP3. Each protocol lies behind abstracted XPCOM interfaces and the core is mostly agnostic to whatever is being used. Since code already exists in Evolution's connector I see no reason whatsoever that Thunderbird cannot make use of it. The same applies for Sunbird.
Bad analogies aside I get the sense that you think it's a waste of time to make Thunderbird / Sunbird support one of the most popular mail servers in existence. Supporting Exchange makes OpenOffice a far more attractive proposition to business. It might even allow many businesses to seriously consider dumping MS Office entirely.
we have exchange at work. i am a fan of MS office. it works great and OO.o isn't anywhere near as great as MS office. thunderbird is a great email client, but it is most definitely NOT an outlook replacement. it is anything but that. it supports email and the address book, but it doesn't have a calendar, to-do list, and i'm not sure if it did, it would support all the stuff that exchange can do. as someone above said, just tossing in different programs as alternatives to the various MS office pieces isn't enough. they need to integrate with each other seamlessly. outlook syncs perfectly with exchange, allowing me to see all my calendar entries, to-do lists, task lists, mail, folders, contacts, etc. on outlooks web access from any computer connected to the internet.
Thunderbird & Sunbird combined have almost everything Exchange offers. They just don't connect to Exchange servers. Thankfully the code is modular (e.g. it already has handlers for nntp, imap, pop3) so it should be quite possible to write the code. Especially seeing as code already exists in the Evolution plugin that could be utilised.
It just needs to support MS Exchange. Easier said than done but there is a plugin already for Evolution which presumably could be used. I expect Sunbird would also have to come into it somewhere for the calendaring support.
I use Firefox all day, every day sometimes with 20 tabs open. I won't say it never crashes but it manages to last a hell of a lot longer than 3 hours on average. I don't have issues with the memory either considering the number of tabs, session history, cache and so on.
If memory really bothers people they should turn their settings down and modify their browsing behaviour since Firefox takes the sensible default approach of using whatever memory you have to optimize the user experience.
Well if you ever do get a PS3, you should find comfort with Super Stardust HD. IMO it's better than Geometry Wars and I've played both. There are also Blast Factor and Nucleus, but neither of those compares to SSHD.
Then again, removing information, by pixellating for example, would be best.
I doubt it is. I recall an article some time ago that showed you could guess words that had been pixellated by statistically analysing what the result looked like. While the same may not be strictly true of a human face, I would not be surprised if they could work out your general features, hair colour, eye colour, and facial features. Enough to produce an artists impression.
It seems if you really want to hide what you look like you need to blank out your head entirely as well as any possibly incriminating marks on the rest of your body.
Anyway, this asshole deserves to be caught and I hope they do catch him.
Sorry but that's not being realistic. We could apply the same argument to Samba and claim that why bother with SMB / CIFS when we should be using kerberos, NFS / AFS or whatever. You only have to look at the massive success of Samba in the enterprise to realise what a foolish path that would have been. Samba means that Linux, Unix and even Macs can cohabit with Windows machines on the same network where before they were screwed.
The same holds true of Thunderbird / Evolution and Exchange. Whereas before you HAD to have MS Outlook to connect with Exchange (except in the remote likelihood that the server enabled IMAP), and you HAD to have Windows to run it on, now you can connect from any OS from a free client. Furthermore, if Outlook is no longer required, perhaps companies can reevaluate why they need anything from MS Office. Further down the line they might question why they even need Exchange, but that's a question that must wait until companies can operate a nice heterogeneous environment. Getting alternatives to Outlook are vital to the open source movement. I don't understand why more effort hasn't gone into making Thunderbird & Sunbird support Exchange.
The guy behind the counter at GameStop might tell me this is one of the ones that would play PS2 games, but do I know that for sure?
I don't see what the problem is. The new model is visually distinct from the old model. The new model has 2 USB ports, the old models don't. The new model has 40Gb, the old models are 60Gb and 80Gb respectively. The box of the new model also says in big letters on the box that it does not support BC.
Buy a 60Gb or 80Gb model now if you want to be assured of BC or just keep your PS2. I don't know that there is much point at all going with a Wii since it isn't a "next-gen" console under the hood, but rather an overclocked Gamecube. If you're looking for better graphics, sound, network play or whatever you'd better off with a 360 or PS3.
PSP gamers want the open platform to be able to extend it. They want a ported version of Opera or some DECENT browser (which would be easy enough to program, and the memory wouldn't be an issue if you used the memory stick as swap space). And they want decent games.
Seriously now. You appear to be projecting what YOU WANT as if the entire public wants. I doubt the public (as in the large majority of PSP owners) gives a toss about an open platform, or Opera, or people who want to use the PSP to play PS1 and PSP titles from the memory stick. Unless they want to play pirate games in which case you might be right. But if that's your point, what is your point? Are you surprised and angry that Sony want to prevent people copying and pirating games?
What does Sony do? Constantly push "updates" that break compatibility and try to fuck over the homebrewers who are making the killer apps, and try to push "sales" of PSX titles that require buying a fucking $600 access-box (PS3) to even get to.
Hahah, "homebrewers". You make me laugh. You know, I know and Sony knows that the vast majority of people using "homebrew" software are pirates. Yet you appear shocked that they might attempt to shutdown pirates.
Personally I'd love to be able to run Linux on a PSP but I know that I'm barely a blip on their radar. I'd love to be able to run Opera but to be honest the Netfront browser and renders most sites exceedingly well save for the Flash support. Why don't you lobby Opera to sell a commercial version for the PSP.
It is also strange that you're bitching about the PSP when you don't appear to be bitching about the DS, or the Wii, or the 360 for being locked down. And you don't appear to be praising the PS3 for allowing you to run Linux and become a legitimate homebrewer without the stigma of pirates hanging around your neck.
As for the PS3, we'll address your points:
Compare the shitty "Sony Online Store" to the ease-of-use in Wii or Xbox Live. It's not the easiest to use but neither is it very hard. The number of clicks that go from Add to Basket to final checkout are the biggest issue. But again it's not like it prevents you using the store.
Compare the crappy "games" (if you can call them that) offered by Sony to the games available on the other two consoles. Eh? The PS3 has some excellent online titles, for example Super Stardust HD, Warhawk, Calling All Cars, LocoRoco, Super Puzzle Fighter. Plus all the PS1 titles which they're growing by region. Japan has the most but they're coming to EU and US as well. Tell me what online games the Wii has except for SNES titles. Is that innovation? You'd have a better point perhaps with XBL, but then it has been around longer, and also suffers its own issues such as download limitations, the use of points, lack of game sharing and so forth. Why aren't you complaining that XBL doesn't let you share your games with up to 5 friends?
Look at the half-assed "motion sensing" they threw in at the last minute to try to compete with the Wii. The motion sensing performs exactly the same as the Wii's. The form factor means it cannot be employed in the same way. Games have managed to use it properly (e.g. LocoRoco) and others haven't. The gratuitous use of gestures sucks whatever the form factor, and many Wii games have been ruined by overly complex gestures.
From your bitching you sound like you don't own a PS3 and you're just parroting a bunch of lies that justify whatever console you do own. Grow up.
Thunderbird would be a hell of a lot more popular if it supported Exchange - private & public folders, address book, resources. Sunbird would have to be part of the solution for tasks and appointments. There is already code to connect available in Evolution, so why not make use of it in Thunderbird? I know in theory that you could configure IMAP on MS Exchange, but I'm talking or proper support.
The advantage of Thunderbird over Evolution is that it runs on all major platforms. Evolution does have a port for Windows, but it's pretty poor. I expect that a lot of companies would be interested in a Thunderbird client (and paying support for it) if it would support the mail server they use.
Perhaps Thunderbird / Sunbird should even move to the OpenOffice project. After all, an Outlook app must be the major the missing component in the OpenOffice suite, and here is one ready for adoption.
I think every one and their uncle was screaming for lower prices. The new model will probably mean the PS3 will catch up and surpass it in the next 12 months. I expect the new price plus all the games coming out to seriously spur adoption rates.
For your specific issues.
1080i issue. Sony are very unlikely to ever fix this issue. Basically it sucks for HD early adopters but Sony are not going to spend $$$ to support a very small and diminishing % of users. Buy a new set or live with mostly 480p games. All modern TVs support 480p/720p/1080i.
Home Beta out ASAP.I expect there will be an open beta before year end and a proper roll-out in March.
Little Big Planet out ASAP. There was supposed to be an open beta for this too, but who knows any more. The game client seems very complete but the infrastructure build out (for rankings, ratings, in-game store etc.) is probably the major thing that governs release dates.
Better development tools. I haven't seen any substantiated complaints that there is anything wrong with them. Although Sony could more to help developers by providing working code samples that show how to use SPUs. And that's what they're doing with EDGE and other initiatives.
More exclusives if at all possible. It already has a lot of exclusives, but exclusives are a double edged sword. Go too far and you alienate 3rd parties entirely. Look what happened to the Gamecube which must have been 50-70% exclusive and still trailed in last gen. But in a sense the PS3 is getting a lot of "shared" exclusives - games that are coming to the 360/PS3/PC but leave the Wii out to dry. That might matter as much in the long term as games that are solely exclusive to the PS3.
I fire up PCSX2 from time to time. It's amazing that it works at all but the fps are generally terrible.
Anyway I don't think the problem is rendering stuff but rendering it in a timely fashion. Remember that any software emulation would have to be doing 30fps with next to no latency. It might just be impossible to do it in software. Or perhaps Sony have an ace up their sleeves and firmware 2.x will enable full software BC. But I'm not counting on it. It certainly seems a bit dumb for them to shut out the possibility of selling PS2 downloadable content, so perhaps they do have something in mind, even if only for targeted titles.
I have no idea where they got the GS. The EE+GS was CPU and GPU combined into one. Some beancounter probably decided that they could cut the EE (CPU) part out and leave the GS (GPU) and save money. You'd have to go back into the PS2 history to see if they designed the GS from scratch or not. Perhaps the EE & GS were separate to begin with so they were able reuse the original GS design. Equally likely was the six month delay between US & EU launches allowed them to complete the design and implementation of the new chip.
The PS3 uses a 2.5" SATA drive. Realistically that means you're unlikely to see them install anything more than 120Gb any time soon. I expect once the existing 60Gb drives are cleared out that there will be an 80 or 120Gb drive to replace it on the upper end model. Why they've chosen to go 40Gb in this new model probably has something to do with giving people one more reason to buy the more expensive one.
You can also replace the drive for yourself. Unlike the 360, the drive is not housed in some proprietary shell for 2x the markup. A 2.5" SATA 160Gb drive can be had from NewEgg.com for $90.
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There's that at least. But if Young Indiana Jones is anything to go by, you can virtually guarantee that every episode will see the plot tangentially involve some recognizable character from the movies. An episode set on Tatooine is bound to see the main character "bump into" Shmi / Luke / Uncle Owen / Jabba or whoever. depending on the timeline.
Rinse and repeat for every damned episode until you get sick of it.
Young Indiana Jones used horrible contrivances to get Indy to meet various famous historical figures. Expect any Star Wars TV series to do the same with characters from the movies. Oh and lots of phony CGI.
It's a shame it's not true for EVERY religion. I would prefer a secular society where you can practice whatever silly beliefs you like in your own home under laws that protect your right to do so. But all public education, government, law, civic amenities and broadcasting should be absolutely free of religion. That means no chapels in public hospitals, no religious dress in schools or public office, no "chastity rings" by students, no preaching by public officials, no tax breaks for religions, no pandering to religion in any way shape or form. In short, religious should be able practice what they like but to not expect any special perks or rights from the state.
To bring the thread somewhat on topic, it demonstrates that the "wisdom of crowds" requires a fundamental assumption - that the crowds are not ignorant with their own agenda that they will promote no matter what reality says to the contrary.
Concerning the way Sony is behaving with pricing... most companies want you to buy what's in store right now rather than wait for a price drop or a new model. Otherwise the stuff in the store isn't going to sell as fast. Therefore it's no surprise at all that they don't say upfront what their future plans are. But it was obvious that the 80Gb would step in at the same or a lower price. And with the 40Gb, there's even a lower price yet again.
We'll see this repeat over and over. Sony appear to be a lot more aggressive rolling out new models than the last gen. Look at the current situation with the 40Gb model at $399 and the 80Gb at $499. Sony haven't announced what happens once the 80Gb sells out, but it seems likely that they'll produce a top-end model probably using the new hardware but with more HDD capacity and bundled with rumble and a game. Or something similar.
The reason they don't say much about their future plans is because they want people to buy what's there, not hanging on indefinitely waiting for the next deal to roll around. There is a well known precedent describing what they're trying to avoid.
The XBox 360 system comes with demos only not fully enabled versions of those games. It's also worth bearing in mind that with a paltry 256mb memory card instead of a HDD, that this system will be increasingly irrelevant. It can't be long before Microsoft throw back the doors and allow any game to insist they only play on HDD enabled machines. I'm sure they have motivation to do this if for no other reason than to drive sales of their HDD expansions.
I really don't understand why anyone would think Sony were dropping the price temporarily and then going to hike it back up.
That or they don't see value in changing. Either because there is none (for them), or because the effort involved does not justify the value in moving.
As for Windows users... I expect a great many people use Windows is because they want to do stuff and Windows provides a reasonably painless way to do lots of things. If Linux wants to gain converts, the way is not by telling people "[they're] terrified of change", but by offering a compelling alternative. What is so compelling about Linux and how do you persuade people to undergo the trauma of switching? Most Linux distributions are not compelling and most can be a pain in the ass to use if you are not an expert. Ubuntu Linux shows Linux can be simple and they're making great strides, but that is no reason to arrogantly assume people don't switch Windows because they're afraid. If you want them to test the waters, it would be more sensible to advocate trying OpenOffice, Firefox or whatever and benefit from open source apps even if they want to stick with Windows. It means the next time they consider an OS and see the same apps run on Linux as they've been using on Windows they mightn't be so scared of changing.
Of course you might have been referring to OS X which IMO has its own issues such as requiring someone not only to switch operating systems but also buy proprietary and comparatively expensive hardware to run it on. OS X isn't particularly easier that Vista either.
It would be a huge boost for OpenOffice and open source in general for there to be open and cross-platform Exchange compatible clients. Thunderbird and Sunbird would be ideal candidates to add that support. Evolution is another candidate if only the Win32 port was in anyway half decent. Would it be better if people didn't use proprietary protocols? Of course it would. But the reality is that they do, and that's the reality open source has to reach out to. OpenOffice might prefer open document formats but it still has excellent support for MS formats. Without that support, it's doubtful we would even be talking about it. That's where Thunderbird should be - giving excellent support to whatever protocol you choose.
No it isn't. Not even slightly. I don't even understand your point.
That's like saying. Heck a hydrogen car is not a problem, you just need to create some tanking stations anywhere you drive so that you don't run out of hydrogen. Again sort of defeats the purpose no?
Your analogies really suck.
That's like saying. Heck there are gas stations and they could be used to sell hydrogen. All we need to do is provide the equipment.
Gee at the end of the day, even though it's worse, its simpler to drive a gas guzzling vehicle. Sad yes, but that's reality...
They continue to suck...
For your information Thunderbird is a modular and well designed piece of code that uses abstraction and other techniques to enable it support NNTP, SMTP, IMAP & POP3. Each protocol lies behind abstracted XPCOM interfaces and the core is mostly agnostic to whatever is being used. Since code already exists in Evolution's connector I see no reason whatsoever that Thunderbird cannot make use of it. The same applies for Sunbird.
Bad analogies aside I get the sense that you think it's a waste of time to make Thunderbird / Sunbird support one of the most popular mail servers in existence. Supporting Exchange makes OpenOffice a far more attractive proposition to business. It might even allow many businesses to seriously consider dumping MS Office entirely.
Thunderbird & Sunbird combined have almost everything Exchange offers. They just don't connect to Exchange servers. Thankfully the code is modular (e.g. it already has handlers for nntp, imap, pop3) so it should be quite possible to write the code. Especially seeing as code already exists in the Evolution plugin that could be utilised.
It just needs to support MS Exchange. Easier said than done but there is a plugin already for Evolution which presumably could be used. I expect Sunbird would also have to come into it somewhere for the calendaring support.
Perhaps you should type "about:cache?device=memory" into your address bar and you might see what most of that memory is being used for.
If memory really bothers people they should turn their settings down and modify their browsing behaviour since Firefox takes the sensible default approach of using whatever memory you have to optimize the user experience.
Well if you ever do get a PS3, you should find comfort with Super Stardust HD. IMO it's better than Geometry Wars and I've played both. There are also Blast Factor and Nucleus, but neither of those compares to SSHD.
I doubt it is. I recall an article some time ago that showed you could guess words that had been pixellated by statistically analysing what the result looked like. While the same may not be strictly true of a human face, I would not be surprised if they could work out your general features, hair colour, eye colour, and facial features. Enough to produce an artists impression.
It seems if you really want to hide what you look like you need to blank out your head entirely as well as any possibly incriminating marks on the rest of your body.
Anyway, this asshole deserves to be caught and I hope they do catch him.
The same holds true of Thunderbird / Evolution and Exchange. Whereas before you HAD to have MS Outlook to connect with Exchange (except in the remote likelihood that the server enabled IMAP), and you HAD to have Windows to run it on, now you can connect from any OS from a free client. Furthermore, if Outlook is no longer required, perhaps companies can reevaluate why they need anything from MS Office. Further down the line they might question why they even need Exchange, but that's a question that must wait until companies can operate a nice heterogeneous environment. Getting alternatives to Outlook are vital to the open source movement. I don't understand why more effort hasn't gone into making Thunderbird & Sunbird support Exchange.
I don't see what the problem is. The new model is visually distinct from the old model. The new model has 2 USB ports, the old models don't. The new model has 40Gb, the old models are 60Gb and 80Gb respectively. The box of the new model also says in big letters on the box that it does not support BC.
Buy a 60Gb or 80Gb model now if you want to be assured of BC or just keep your PS2. I don't know that there is much point at all going with a Wii since it isn't a "next-gen" console under the hood, but rather an overclocked Gamecube. If you're looking for better graphics, sound, network play or whatever you'd better off with a 360 or PS3.
Seriously now. You appear to be projecting what YOU WANT as if the entire public wants. I doubt the public (as in the large majority of PSP owners) gives a toss about an open platform, or Opera, or people who want to use the PSP to play PS1 and PSP titles from the memory stick. Unless they want to play pirate games in which case you might be right. But if that's your point, what is your point? Are you surprised and angry that Sony want to prevent people copying and pirating games?
What does Sony do? Constantly push "updates" that break compatibility and try to fuck over the homebrewers who are making the killer apps, and try to push "sales" of PSX titles that require buying a fucking $600 access-box (PS3) to even get to.
Hahah, "homebrewers". You make me laugh. You know, I know and Sony knows that the vast majority of people using "homebrew" software are pirates. Yet you appear shocked that they might attempt to shutdown pirates.
Personally I'd love to be able to run Linux on a PSP but I know that I'm barely a blip on their radar. I'd love to be able to run Opera but to be honest the Netfront browser and renders most sites exceedingly well save for the Flash support. Why don't you lobby Opera to sell a commercial version for the PSP.
It is also strange that you're bitching about the PSP when you don't appear to be bitching about the DS, or the Wii, or the 360 for being locked down. And you don't appear to be praising the PS3 for allowing you to run Linux and become a legitimate homebrewer without the stigma of pirates hanging around your neck.
As for the PS3, we'll address your points:
From your bitching you sound like you don't own a PS3 and you're just parroting a bunch of lies that justify whatever console you do own. Grow up.
The advantage of Thunderbird over Evolution is that it runs on all major platforms. Evolution does have a port for Windows, but it's pretty poor. I expect that a lot of companies would be interested in a Thunderbird client (and paying support for it) if it would support the mail server they use.
Perhaps Thunderbird / Sunbird should even move to the OpenOffice project. After all, an Outlook app must be the major the missing component in the OpenOffice suite, and here is one ready for adoption.
Doh, my typing sucks today. "The new model will probably mean the PS3 will catch up and surpass 360 sales in the next 12 months.".
For your specific issues.
Anyway I don't think the problem is rendering stuff but rendering it in a timely fashion. Remember that any software emulation would have to be doing 30fps with next to no latency. It might just be impossible to do it in software. Or perhaps Sony have an ace up their sleeves and firmware 2.x will enable full software BC. But I'm not counting on it. It certainly seems a bit dumb for them to shut out the possibility of selling PS2 downloadable content, so perhaps they do have something in mind, even if only for targeted titles.
I have no idea where they got the GS. The EE+GS was CPU and GPU combined into one. Some beancounter probably decided that they could cut the EE (CPU) part out and leave the GS (GPU) and save money. You'd have to go back into the PS2 history to see if they designed the GS from scratch or not. Perhaps the EE & GS were separate to begin with so they were able reuse the original GS design. Equally likely was the six month delay between US & EU launches allowed them to complete the design and implementation of the new chip.
You can also replace the drive for yourself. Unlike the 360, the drive is not housed in some proprietary shell for 2x the markup. A 2.5" SATA 160Gb drive can be had from NewEgg.com for $90.