Switch back to Phoenix to download WMP 7.1 (I'm not going to use Internet Exploder more than I absolutely have to)
Reboot again to complete the WMP 7.1 install.
Go and get a cup of coffee.
Come back, acknowledge that Win 2K Pro just plain forgot to complete the reboot, reboot again, nursemaid it until it actually starts the reboot.
Navigate back to the site and read a 4,000 word T&C and 2,600 word privacy policy (did you? Did you notice "Linking to other sites is an integral part of the functionality of the Internet, including our Website" and "c. Restrictions. You may not: (i) frame or link to the Website except as expressly permitted in writing by Movielink")
Reject Flash 6 every time I refresh a page.
Download the Movielink Manager (Windows only).
Read and agree to another 1,800 word EULA.
Go back to the web site and look in vain for anything like a "search" feature.
Navigate laboriously through the tiny library.
Pick "True Grit". Yeee haw.
Proceed to checkout.
Register as Mr Fake Name
Realise that my CC billing address isn't in the USA, and decide not to have my credit card stopped by entering the number.
Uninstall the Movielink Manager
Go through the registry and actually remove all references to it.
Reboot back to linux and go back to leeching from gnutella or (gasp!) paying-per-view through my cable.
Yes, gasp on that last one. I do actually pay-per-view right now, when there's something showing that I want to see. Look, actual currency, waiting to go into your bloated pockets! I'm not a habitual collector of free content. I'll only leech if there's no easier way to view the content (like, you refuse to make it available to me to maintain your artificial market segmentation).
But this is asking too much, offering too little, and it's hostile as all hell. It looks as though it's pretty much set up to fail, which might be the point.
Sure, because Yugo's were the lowest bidders in the mid sized executive auto class, Big Top the lowest bidders in the "tastes like Kellogs cereal" class, and eMachines the lower bidders in the "computer that plays Quake 3 at 30fps" class.
Sorry, clearly I needed to spell out that "lowest bidder" means "lowest bidder actually tendering the desired goods". If you want to class eMachines and P4's in the same category, we'd currently all be trying to play Doom 3 on pockets calculators. Or slide rules, for that matter.
I do take your point though, especially in the 2nd case. Let's make an exception for those people who keep advertising weasels in a job.
Don't worry, our grandkids can clean it up. Luckily, they'll have plenty of oil wealth to help them do it.
No, wait...
</sarcasm> aside, this just goes to show that capitalism means cutting off your nose to pay for your facelift.
Oh, sorry, my <sarcasm> must have been nested, along with a <mixed metaphore>. But really, why is this a suprise to anyone? Our entire economy is based on the premise that the lowest bidder is always the best one. Without artificial (read: gubmint) controls (which we're not going to get under undisputed reign of George II), using the cheapest process without regard for the consequences is inevitable. It's actually the fiduciary duty of the execs in these industries to do this! If they were to switch to using a cleaner (but more expensive) process, they'd be sacked at best, and quite probably sued by their shareholders.
What's the mechanism that enforces all open source licenses? It's copyright. It's the principle - and the legal fact - that when you produce something, you have the time limited right to control how it is copied. Note that you get this right regardless of whether you register it at the Library of Congress or even if you slap a (C) Bob Jones at the end of it. That just makes it easier to enforce your rights not to have it copied without your permission.
Now, what have opensource.org just done here? They've taken content produced and therefore copyrighted by Microsoft (regardless of whether there was a (C) at the end of it), claimed it as their own property (by putting their (C) copyright on the end!) and distributed it.
Pop quiz. If Microsoft took a bunch of your GPL'd code, removed the (C) Bob Jones, replaced it with (C) Bill Gates, and started distributing it, how would you feel?
So why do we apply a different standard to Microsoft? If open source advocates don't respect copyright, why should we expect them to?
No? Look at the aggressive line that they're taking. "These are RedBook CD's and the problem is in your player". You can bet your life that they'll pass this position on to retaillers and make it 100% clear that they won't be accepting "bad media" returns on these disks.
So try taking one of these crippled music disks back to MonstroMart and claiming that it doesn't play in your CD player. Last month they'd have taken it back (maybe), and that cost Bertelsmann money. This month, they'll trot out the "the fault is in your player" line like the loyal little appendages that they are and stonewall you, because of two things. One, they know that it's not like you've got a choice in how you obtain music in the future, because every store will be carrying crippled disks, and two, if it turns out that your daddy is a lawyer, they can always point the finger at Bertelsmann and claim that ze vere only obeying orders.
Those people predicting a drop in sales that will scare off other music behemoths need to take a clue pill. Mandy Music Buyer doesn't read The Register or Slashdot, and she won't know about these crippled disks until she buys one. She'll buy the disk, then find out that it's crippled. Sure, she'll be pissed off if she can't play it in her mom's SUV's CD player (Mandy Music Buyer is 12-18, remember), but what's she going to do? Stop buying music disks? Friends, if she's still buying them today, she's not going to switch to kazaa or gnutella tomorrow. She's going to keep buying them and whine at her mommy that the man at the music store said the SUV's CD player was broken.
And heck, let's say I'm wrong, and sales do take a noticable dip. What are BMG going to blame it on? Their own greed and stupidity? Hahahaha! I'll give you short odds on "global economy" or (more likely) that this proves that people are thieves and criminals, and that we need Fritz chips right now to preserve Truth, Justice and the American Way. It's win-win for them, and all our outraged ranting won't make it otherwise.
Now, all we need to do is to find an enemy to use it against.
If we don't know where the shells are coming from, what's the chances that this system will be able to realistically identify a genuine incoming round, activate (from idle) and reliably shoot it down in time? We're not getting the first couple of rounds, and after that, our existing counterbattery systems will be silencing the enemy artillery.
If we do know where they're coming from (and we damn well should, given what we spend on reccetech), then why aren't we pasting them with our existing overwhelming air superiority and artillery?
So what's the theatre? Where are these systems going to be deployed?
One in the White House, one in the Pentagon... where else? Whatever we build on the WTC site? But do we reckon that any grunts are going to get the benefit of it? Hmmm.
It's neato technology, but it seems like a solution to a problem that the US has spent trillions to ensure that it doesn't have any more.
An admirable strategy, but there's one flaw. Your carefully researched vote counts for exactly as much as the one by the guy that voted Republican because his daddy whupped the tar of out him for asking why Democrats weren't better. Or as much as the women that voted Democrat because she believes they'll give her more money for her tribe of little miracles (Destiny Savanah, Connor Storm, Shoshwana Madonna, Keanu Misisssipi [sic])...), or the guy that was drunk, or the woman that couldn't remember which one favoured taxing her SUV less...
The problem with democracy is that it relies on the average person, and Slashdotters (with a few exceptions) are above average. For every one of us bulging brains, there's a herd of sub-100 IQ goobers, each and every one of whom has a vote that counts just as much as ours.
If you want to know why we've got a system that returns the second worst candidate, as yourself who exactly it is that's shouting advice at the tiny people on WWF, Jerry Springer and Oprah. Registered voters, that's who.
Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.
on
Microsoft takes on PDF
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Ouch. Has that got worse since Word '97 then? I get this for a one line file, first in Word '97:
<HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97"> <TITLE>The quick brown fox leapt over the lazy dog</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY>
<FO NT SIZE=2><P>The quick brown fox leapt over the lazy dog.</P></FONT></BODY> </HTML& g t;
Then in Open Office 1.0.1:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <TITLE></TITLE> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 (Win32)"> <META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20021105;13015155"> <META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="20021105;13030129"> <STYLE> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } --> </STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY LANG="en-US"> <P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">The quick brown fox leapt over the lazy dog.</FONT></P> </BODY> </HTML&g t;
The slight mangling by the Slashdot <ecode> interpreter aside, I'm frankly not exactly enamoured with either of them. HTML is an appaling format for a WYSIWYG document. The native zipped XML produced by OpenOffice is better, but (unzipped) weighs in at 15,172 bytes for 43 characters of content. I think the only reasonable conclusion is that word processer formats are the epitome of a good compromise; they leave everybody unhappy.
Leaving aside the politics (!) one big issue about developing a fresh new original PC game is that there's a very small sweet spot for games developers. They have to be experienced enough that they don't burn all their time learning how to develop a game, but still young and dumb enough to dedicate their life - utterly - to developing the Next Big Thing.
I'd put that sweet spot at maybe two years for an average games developer, out of a career of forty plus years. Some people peak early, some late, but the basic problem is this: if you don't know how to develop a commercial game, you'll fail the first time you try. If you do know how to develop a commercial game, you're probably old enough to have a mortgage and a family and a life outside of games, and that pretty much precludes you giving over the necessary 70+ hours a week and working for a pittance and the glory of getting your name on a box.
Make no mistake about it, games developers are uber geeks, and I don't mean that in a good way. You have to be very lucky indeed to be able to find and hold together a team of such people for long enough to get an engine done, and in time to get it to your content team while you still have a budget left. Sometimes I'm amazed that any revolutionary games ever get made.
Contrast that with console games, which are evolutionary, not revolutionary. They rarely start over, but build on a previous engine instead. It's low risk, but not lower reward, because people keep buying the games. How many versions of soccer and car racing games are out there now? We're seeing that development technique bleed into PC games now. For all the sound and fury about Doom 3, the engine is just Quake 3 with a new renderer. Big whoop.
I'd pay a private investigator to find out how much Judge CKK and her friends and family spend over the next couple of years and where that money came from.
If you think I'm joking, ask yourself this: why do we pay more to more senior judges? Hint: the answer isn't "shucks, because they plum deserve it". It's to reduce the incentive to take bribes. No? Then why exactly do we pay them more?
I'm not saying she took a bribe. I am saying that it would explain the verdict, and that judges are, when all's said and done, only human. They have to put their kids through college and pay off mortgages just like anybody else. And if you're going to take one bribe in an otherwise spotless career, you'd best make it a big one.
After all, every time Slashdot faithfully reports another 5% increase in CPU speed, don't we ask "What does Suzy Homemaker or Karl Cube need all that processing power for? 500Mhz (750Mhz/1Ghz/whatever) is more than adequate for 90% of computer users. Only Rodney Research actually needs more speed." ?
Well, here's the answer. Suzy and Karl never need to upgrade again (after Palladium anyway, spit, spit). Rodney types up his research applications on his 1Ghz PC, then when he wants to fold proteins or discover a cure for belly lint, he rents two minutes on a Terahertz cluster. Heck, if it's made accessible and cheap enough, me and thee might even consider paying fifty cents to get a five second kernel compile.
The only losers are the chip manufacturers, because their business models are based on selling us more processor power than we need 90% of the time. That's OK though, because based on past experience, Gary Gamer will always pay premium dollar to go 5% faster than his friends.
If they put it in the public domain, what's to stop me or thee from fleecing the clueless hordes by bundling, marketing and selling the content? One of the (actual, original) uses of copyright is to stop this from happening. It's not just a mechanism for making money, but for controlling the uses of content that you've chosen to make available. Copyright - unlike bloodthirsty cannibalistic desert god cults - is not inherently evil
Ah, the most All American of our costumed heroes
on
Superhero Smackdown
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
By which I mean Batman, not Superman. See this kuro5hin article for why.
This will totally change my life! It's the announcement that I'd been waiting for! I must rush out and purchase ten thousand of these immediately, if not sooner! And so on!
</sarcasm>, wouldn't it be simpler for Slashdot to just link to every product announcement from a major hardware manufacturer rather than go through the farce of picking one of the dozens of frenzied (and typo'd) submissions from the "f1rz7 5Ubm1z10n, 5uX0rz!" brigade?
Because as we all know, fastidious dress codes and absolute compliance with corporate etiquette really helped the Japanese economy not take a massive nose dive over the past couple of years.
Corporate fashion is the same as any other. The people that control it just need to keep changing it to justify their existance, so that it looks like they're doing something. Then, if they get lucky and some venture capitalist's greed overtakes their fear, profits go up and Mr Middle Managers claim it's all because of they forced their peons to wear ties. And if profits go down, they blame it on an adverse world market - which gets us back to Japan...
You're right, but what's your point? It'll never reach court. They'll just extort money from teeny companies with the threat of court action. It's cheaper to pay the extortion money than to hire a lawyer to even begin to prepare to fight it in court! If anyone does actually stand up to them, they'll just drop the suit against them and move on to another victim. There's plenty out there.
And once they've dropped the suit, who is going to spend money to sue them for barratry? It's like spam; if they write threatening letters to a million dot coms, and get even one cheque back, they come out ahead of the game.
This is about the clearest example I've seen in a long while that Uncle Sam needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility for bitchslapping people who make clear abuse of the PTO. If they don't, they're putting a Federal seal of approval on extortion, plain and simple.
This is nearly as good as my Thrustmaster Firestorm Wireless gamepad... except that the Firestorm has an extra four axes and nine buttons (or nineteen with shift-button mapping). Probably cheaper too, and I can't see myself playing GTA3 with just a mouse.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
GNU/GNU/Darwin
In the long term, customers are valuable to Microsoft.
That's what he said, after all. If you choose to interpret that as meaning that Microsoft aims to bring value to customers, that's your choice.
GNU/EFF?
Yes, gasp on that last one. I do actually pay-per-view right now, when there's something showing that I want to see. Look, actual currency, waiting to go into your bloated pockets! I'm not a habitual collector of free content. I'll only leech if there's no easier way to view the content (like, you refuse to make it available to me to maintain your artificial market segmentation).
But this is asking too much, offering too little, and it's hostile as all hell. It looks as though it's pretty much set up to fail, which might be the point.
If I worked for Eolas, I'd be taking different routes to work every day, and having my wife and kids stay in a hotel under false names for a while.
Sure, because Yugo's were the lowest bidders in the mid sized executive auto class, Big Top the lowest bidders in the "tastes like Kellogs cereal" class, and eMachines the lower bidders in the "computer that plays Quake 3 at 30fps" class.
Sorry, clearly I needed to spell out that "lowest bidder" means "lowest bidder actually tendering the desired goods". If you want to class eMachines and P4's in the same category, we'd currently all be trying to play Doom 3 on pockets calculators. Or slide rules, for that matter.
I do take your point though, especially in the 2nd case. Let's make an exception for those people who keep advertising weasels in a job.
Don't worry, our grandkids can clean it up. Luckily, they'll have plenty of oil wealth to help them do it.
No, wait...
</sarcasm> aside, this just goes to show that capitalism means cutting off your nose to pay for your facelift.
Oh, sorry, my <sarcasm> must have been nested, along with a <mixed metaphore>. But really, why is this a suprise to anyone? Our entire economy is based on the premise that the lowest bidder is always the best one. Without artificial (read: gubmint) controls (which we're not going to get under undisputed reign of George II), using the cheapest process without regard for the consequences is inevitable. It's actually the fiduciary duty of the execs in these industries to do this! If they were to switch to using a cleaner (but more expensive) process, they'd be sacked at best, and quite probably sued by their shareholders.
What's the mechanism that enforces all open source licenses? It's copyright. It's the principle - and the legal fact - that when you produce something, you have the time limited right to control how it is copied. Note that you get this right regardless of whether you register it at the Library of Congress or even if you slap a (C) Bob Jones at the end of it. That just makes it easier to enforce your rights not to have it copied without your permission.
Now, what have opensource.org just done here? They've taken content produced and therefore copyrighted by Microsoft (regardless of whether there was a (C) at the end of it), claimed it as their own property (by putting their (C) copyright on the end!) and distributed it.
Pop quiz. If Microsoft took a bunch of your GPL'd code, removed the (C) Bob Jones, replaced it with (C) Bill Gates, and started distributing it, how would you feel?
So why do we apply a different standard to Microsoft? If open source advocates don't respect copyright, why should we expect them to?
No? Look at the aggressive line that they're taking. "These are RedBook CD's and the problem is in your player". You can bet your life that they'll pass this position on to retaillers and make it 100% clear that they won't be accepting "bad media" returns on these disks.
So try taking one of these crippled music disks back to MonstroMart and claiming that it doesn't play in your CD player. Last month they'd have taken it back (maybe), and that cost Bertelsmann money. This month, they'll trot out the "the fault is in your player" line like the loyal little appendages that they are and stonewall you, because of two things. One, they know that it's not like you've got a choice in how you obtain music in the future, because every store will be carrying crippled disks, and two, if it turns out that your daddy is a lawyer, they can always point the finger at Bertelsmann and claim that ze vere only obeying orders.
Those people predicting a drop in sales that will scare off other music behemoths need to take a clue pill. Mandy Music Buyer doesn't read The Register or Slashdot, and she won't know about these crippled disks until she buys one. She'll buy the disk, then find out that it's crippled. Sure, she'll be pissed off if she can't play it in her mom's SUV's CD player (Mandy Music Buyer is 12-18, remember), but what's she going to do? Stop buying music disks? Friends, if she's still buying them today, she's not going to switch to kazaa or gnutella tomorrow. She's going to keep buying them and whine at her mommy that the man at the music store said the SUV's CD player was broken.
And heck, let's say I'm wrong, and sales do take a noticable dip. What are BMG going to blame it on? Their own greed and stupidity? Hahahaha! I'll give you short odds on "global economy" or (more likely) that this proves that people are thieves and criminals, and that we need Fritz chips right now to preserve Truth, Justice and the American Way. It's win-win for them, and all our outraged ranting won't make it otherwise.
Now, all we need to do is to find an enemy to use it against.
If we don't know where the shells are coming from, what's the chances that this system will be able to realistically identify a genuine incoming round, activate (from idle) and reliably shoot it down in time? We're not getting the first couple of rounds, and after that, our existing counterbattery systems will be silencing the enemy artillery.
If we do know where they're coming from (and we damn well should, given what we spend on reccetech), then why aren't we pasting them with our existing overwhelming air superiority and artillery?
So what's the theatre? Where are these systems going to be deployed?
One in the White House, one in the Pentagon... where else? Whatever we build on the WTC site? But do we reckon that any grunts are going to get the benefit of it? Hmmm.
It's neato technology, but it seems like a solution to a problem that the US has spent trillions to ensure that it doesn't have any more.
An admirable strategy, but there's one flaw. Your carefully researched vote counts for exactly as much as the one by the guy that voted Republican because his daddy whupped the tar of out him for asking why Democrats weren't better. Or as much as the women that voted Democrat because she believes they'll give her more money for her tribe of little miracles (Destiny Savanah, Connor Storm, Shoshwana Madonna, Keanu Misisssipi [sic])...), or the guy that was drunk, or the woman that couldn't remember which one favoured taxing her SUV less...
The problem with democracy is that it relies on the average person, and Slashdotters (with a few exceptions) are above average. For every one of us bulging brains, there's a herd of sub-100 IQ goobers, each and every one of whom has a vote that counts just as much as ours.
If you want to know why we've got a system that returns the second worst candidate, as yourself who exactly it is that's shouting advice at the tiny people on WWF, Jerry Springer and Oprah. Registered voters, that's who.
Then in Open Office 1.0.1:
The slight mangling by the Slashdot <ecode> interpreter aside, I'm frankly not exactly enamoured with either of them. HTML is an appaling format for a WYSIWYG document. The native zipped XML produced by OpenOffice is better, but (unzipped) weighs in at 15,172 bytes for 43 characters of content. I think the only reasonable conclusion is that word processer formats are the epitome of a good compromise; they leave everybody unhappy.
Leaving aside the politics (!) one big issue about developing a fresh new original PC game is that there's a very small sweet spot for games developers. They have to be experienced enough that they don't burn all their time learning how to develop a game, but still young and dumb enough to dedicate their life - utterly - to developing the Next Big Thing.
I'd put that sweet spot at maybe two years for an average games developer, out of a career of forty plus years. Some people peak early, some late, but the basic problem is this: if you don't know how to develop a commercial game, you'll fail the first time you try. If you do know how to develop a commercial game, you're probably old enough to have a mortgage and a family and a life outside of games, and that pretty much precludes you giving over the necessary 70+ hours a week and working for a pittance and the glory of getting your name on a box.
Make no mistake about it, games developers are uber geeks, and I don't mean that in a good way. You have to be very lucky indeed to be able to find and hold together a team of such people for long enough to get an engine done, and in time to get it to your content team while you still have a budget left. Sometimes I'm amazed that any revolutionary games ever get made.
Contrast that with console games, which are evolutionary, not revolutionary. They rarely start over, but build on a previous engine instead. It's low risk, but not lower reward, because people keep buying the games. How many versions of soccer and car racing games are out there now? We're seeing that development technique bleed into PC games now. For all the sound and fury about Doom 3, the engine is just Quake 3 with a new renderer. Big whoop.
I'd pay a private investigator to find out how much Judge CKK and her friends and family spend over the next couple of years and where that money came from.
If you think I'm joking, ask yourself this: why do we pay more to more senior judges? Hint: the answer isn't "shucks, because they plum deserve it". It's to reduce the incentive to take bribes. No? Then why exactly do we pay them more?
I'm not saying she took a bribe. I am saying that it would explain the verdict, and that judges are, when all's said and done, only human. They have to put their kids through college and pay off mortgages just like anybody else. And if you're going to take one bribe in an otherwise spotless career, you'd best make it a big one.
After all, every time Slashdot faithfully reports another 5% increase in CPU speed, don't we ask "What does Suzy Homemaker or Karl Cube need all that processing power for? 500Mhz (750Mhz/1Ghz/whatever) is more than adequate for 90% of computer users. Only Rodney Research actually needs more speed." ?
Well, here's the answer. Suzy and Karl never need to upgrade again (after Palladium anyway, spit, spit). Rodney types up his research applications on his 1Ghz PC, then when he wants to fold proteins or discover a cure for belly lint, he rents two minutes on a Terahertz cluster. Heck, if it's made accessible and cheap enough, me and thee might even consider paying fifty cents to get a five second kernel compile.
The only losers are the chip manufacturers, because their business models are based on selling us more processor power than we need 90% of the time. That's OK though, because based on past experience, Gary Gamer will always pay premium dollar to go 5% faster than his friends.
I'm convinced - there is no need for more than 5 computers, worldwide. (Thomas J. Watson, Chairman IBM, 1943)
I mean, I know IBM believes in low risk, but sticking to a 60 year old business plan is really pushing the issue. ;-)
If they put it in the public domain, what's to stop me or thee from fleecing the clueless hordes by bundling, marketing and selling the content? One of the (actual, original) uses of copyright is to stop this from happening. It's not just a mechanism for making money, but for controlling the uses of content that you've chosen to make available. Copyright - unlike bloodthirsty cannibalistic desert god cults - is not inherently evil
By which I mean Batman, not Superman. See this kuro5hin article for why.
This will totally change my life! It's the announcement that I'd been waiting for! I must rush out and purchase ten thousand of these immediately, if not sooner! And so on!
</sarcasm>, wouldn't it be simpler for Slashdot to just link to every product announcement from a major hardware manufacturer rather than go through the farce of picking one of the dozens of frenzied (and typo'd) submissions from the "f1rz7 5Ubm1z10n, 5uX0rz!" brigade?
Because as we all know, fastidious dress codes and absolute compliance with corporate etiquette really helped the Japanese economy not take a massive nose dive over the past couple of years.
Corporate fashion is the same as any other. The people that control it just need to keep changing it to justify their existance, so that it looks like they're doing something. Then, if they get lucky and some venture capitalist's greed overtakes their fear, profits go up and Mr Middle Managers claim it's all because of they forced their peons to wear ties. And if profits go down, they blame it on an adverse world market - which gets us back to Japan...
Hmm, I wonder if they follow RFC's and read postmaster@ebay.com and webmaster@ebay.com?
Barratry?
You're right, but what's your point? It'll never reach court. They'll just extort money from teeny companies with the threat of court action. It's cheaper to pay the extortion money than to hire a lawyer to even begin to prepare to fight it in court! If anyone does actually stand up to them, they'll just drop the suit against them and move on to another victim. There's plenty out there.
And once they've dropped the suit, who is going to spend money to sue them for barratry? It's like spam; if they write threatening letters to a million dot coms, and get even one cheque back, they come out ahead of the game.
This is about the clearest example I've seen in a long while that Uncle Sam needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility for bitchslapping people who make clear abuse of the PTO. If they don't, they're putting a Federal seal of approval on extortion, plain and simple.
This is nearly as good as my Thrustmaster Firestorm Wireless gamepad... except that the Firestorm has an extra four axes and nine buttons (or nineteen with shift-button mapping). Probably cheaper too, and I can't see myself playing GTA3 with just a mouse. ;-)
If you'll settle for CD, VCD, and mp3-on-CD, try the Napa DAV310. Hideous colour scheme, ropey interface, but, hey it's a portable VCD player.