Gosh I really wish people would read for themselves. Whoever submitted this either had an agenda, or just didn't do their homework.
Its pretty obvious that there was a threat. Whether that threat justified war is another issue.
Further, saying someone "lied" means that they knew the truth and intentionally told a falsehood. If you read the CIA reports from 2002 yourself, you can draw your own (presumably, intelligent) conclusions on what we knew, rather than relying on headlines.
Could W have done better? Yeah. Did he obviously "lie"? Probably not, considering everyone that has the same intelligence he had agreed with him. This wasn't one man's misjudement, it was a lot of people making the same (mis?)judgement on information that may (or may not) have been true.
I personally think that there was a threat. I was deployed overseas to go fight the war, so I had some more intelligence than the Average Joe, but not enough to say anything definitivly. I just don't understand the timing or choice of country (Iraq) versus other threats of similar magnitude (from the terrorist/WMD perspective). Of course, I haven't read all the intelligence, but neither have most of W's critics.
Um, how is an Athlon64 not a "real" 64 bit chip? I run 64 bit Gentoo on mine.
On another note - kind of an odd claim by the manufacturers: UT 2004 was released for Linux with 64 bit binaries a while back. Don't know how they can claim to be the first 64 bit game in light of that, even less so without running on a OS that *has* 64 bit support. I assumed this meant a Linux version, silly me.
Out of curiosity, what distros did you use, and how long did you run them?
My experience using 7 distros over the past 6 years has been very mixed, to say the least, but that does not mean that there are not some extremelyy good desktop distros out there. My main powerhouse runs Gentoo and I love it. Very desktop ready. "9 year old's bicycle with training wheels" doesn't quite capture it, somehow.
So Gentoo on the high end (poweruser). I post this from my laptop running SuSe Professionsal 9.1. Again, very nice distro - clean, fast, quick, easy install, good looking. I like customization in my primary desktop, but I like ease of use and more "standard" desktop functionality on a laptop (which I take a bit less seriously).
BTW, I convinced my wife to switch from Windows and she's now using OS X, which I've configured to run with the Linux boxes on the network. To say one is a Harley and the other is a bike with training wheels simply doesn't do either justice. Perhaps with a less polished distro or less user friendly (Debian can be a real pain sometimes, as can dependency hell on Fedora) I can see you comment, but I'd reccommend shopping around a bit. Linux isn't a single thing, its a lot of very different things.
OK, I just got back from reading the entire ruling. The point you bring up is probably the most interesting part of the whole decision. The court concluded that right of first sale did not apply because Blizzard never sold the software - they sold a license to use it. Therefore, since there was no "sale", it canot apply.
This really pisses me off, but I'll try to stay cool. The problem is obvious: what the hell does right of first sale apply to if not copyrighted computer games?? This was the main point in the decision that didnt make sense to me - and I wonder how it got written in that way. In my book, if I pay $50 to play a game, that's a sale. The court is essentially saying I paid for the license, not the game, so therefore right of first sale only applies to the license itself, not the game.
It is quite interesting, because if right of first sale would then, using this *same, exact* logic prohibit the right of console game buyers to "sell back" or "trade in" games at a game store without the express consent of the game manufacturer. Most people may not know this (I didn't), but it is right of first sale that allows people to do what they want (more or less) with their copy of a work, like a CD, console game or PC game (like sell it back without having to get the consent of the game publisher). The fact that right of first sale specifically deals with this issue and the court said it was irrelevent seems a bit suspect to me.
If you care about this stuff, the finding is actually quite readable, and at 36 pages (double spaced) I read the whole thing in about 20 minutes.
This is not new. I used to game on a Kaypro PC back in the late 80's and I played a flight sim called "Jet". I was quite young (10-11) and I asked my dad (who *is* a lawyer) how much the game had cost (there was the main game plus add-on packs that added scenery). He replied with the amount and I think I said something like "Wow that's a lot of money just to own the game." He then sat me down and explained something:
"You're not buying the game. You're buying a license to use the game on this computer. So you don't own it, and you cannot do anything you want with it. You *do* own the disk that it's on, but you don't own that data. See what I mean?"
I understood at the time only somewhat, but my dad was good to explain, because I still remember that.
My position to this day is that while I do own the disk (cdrom, whatever), I *paid* for the license to use the software; the disc should essentially be free. So this ruling is not merely a "technicality" based on ownership. The judge understood the principle my dad had explained to me. This is not new - this principle has been at work at least since the mid 80's.
IIRC, I think my dad actualy pulled out the piece of paper that was the license and explained bits of it to me.
This of course does not address what the license *says* or whether it can take away certain fundamental rights like fair use.
Too bad bnetd asked for blizzard's help in implementing keychecking (since it would be a violation of DMCA to reverse engineer the system) and Blizzard said "no". Blizzard said no because they knew that they could get them with the DMCA whether or not they:
1) Reverse engineered the keys to prevent piracy (but therefore broke the DMCA)
2) *Didn't* reverse engineer the keys, but then created a tool used to break copyrigth protection.
A good move if you're Blizzard - too bad they were just being assholes.
I've been following this for some time, and was always kind of appalled by how unjust the case is.
Basically, for those that don't know, bnetd was a daemon (!) that ran under Linux (maybe windows, I forget) that emulated Blizzard's Battlenet server. Blizzard sent out a C&D and took them to court under DMCA. Really, this is a whole lot like DVD Jon in some ways, because Vivendi is contending that the existence of bnetd promotes piracy because it does not enforce CD key checking. In reality, the motive was never to circumvent CD key checking - it was a workaround to allow LAN games over TCP/IP (vice IPX, bleh). The only way to work this is to emulate a battlenet server that everyone can log into locally.
IIRC, the bnetd team actually asked for Blizzard's help in making CD key authentication work (since the point of the project wasn't piracy) and Blizzard told them to go away. This clearly demonstrates a horrible misuse of the DMCA - basically the circumvention of the copyright protection was unintentional and in fact, undesired.
Hell, since I'm on the fence about who to vote for, if one of the candidates for president would say "Hey, I'm going to fix the DMCA mess!" I'd vote for him. Too bad that'll never happen.
Yes, however a popular vote system suffers from the same problem. Rather than focusing on "swing states" though, it would focus on New York, California, and other urban population centers. The states like Alaska and North Dakota would be even more ignored than they are now, since their population is so small.
I know you didn't mention popular vote as an alternative, but grandparent did, and it sounded like you might be defending it. I just wanted to point out the same problem exists for both systems. That said, what's better than either of those? I need to read up on this stuff.
Vonage does support 911 - but you have to manually update your current address since the system cannot track your location. Instead, they look it up (automated, obviously) when the call comes through. If you do not update, then you'll have a problem, but otherwise, its transparent.
What really got my attention was the end of the/. blurb: Gartner's making a bold prediction that the number of machines sold as Linux desktops may eclipse the number of machines actually running Linux."
There are really three categories that are relevant to that number:
Sold as Windows machines, running Linux
Sold as Linux machines, running Windows
Sold as Linux machines, running Linux
Computers built/bought with no OS, running Linux
OK, so right now, in my anecdotal experience (on the desktop) most of the folks running Linux in fact bought a Windows computer and either dual boot or kicked the windows habit entirely. These should be all counted towards the "number of machines actually running Linux." They did not make it clear that they meant only Linux though, so I'll include dual booters (probably a very big number).
Next up, #2. So let me get this right: since #3 is going to be a wash (it adds to both machines sold as Linux and running Linux equally) they are saying that #2 is going to be > #1 + #4? Are they on crack? People switch to Linux, not from it. I mean, maybe worldwide there is some market where everything is pirated anyway, so this might be true in that market.
But I just cannot see it being true that #1 + #4 is less than #2. Ever. It doesn't make sense - I mean, this includes dual-booters, custom builders, and people who have simply swtiched.
When did they say this was supposed be true?
Re:They're not targetted at the same audience
on
PSP Pricing Announced
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Ah yes, well it *would* be something if it played DVDs and CDs, but it doesn't - it plays UMDs. Which means if I want to use it for those things, I have to purchase (AGAIN! Gah, I hate format changes) all the music and videos on UMD. And pay more for protable unit that can only play one movie at a go anyway. And it costs more than a mini-PS2, which DOES play CDs, DVDs, PS1 and PS2 games. Oh, and it costs half as much.
No, they screwed up on this one. $350 is a lot of money. Hell, desktops retail for about $500 at the low end...
Does this make the PSP the most expensive portable game unit ever? I don't recall the prices on Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket (or whatever it was called), Game Gear, etc.
Well, there was GNU before there was Linux. Maybe it wouldn't be as popular, but there would be OSS. Thank Richard Stallman for that.
Please, please, this post isn't meant to start a flamewar of Richard Stallman vs. Linus Torvalds, I'm just saying OSS would probably exist without Linus.
Maybe I should've seen this, as first post said, but wow. I've been quite excited about this for some time, fully intending to buy one, but at $350, I simply cannot justify it. I mean, that's $350 PLUS $40-$50 for each game. Hell, I could buy a decent PDA for that. I could buy TWO of the new, small PS2's for that as well.
Oh, and how good is the battery life again? I pass.
Mod parent up!
Ya know, people throw around US code blah blah and "Oh, its obviously illegal.", but honestly, I'm not stupid, I've worked quite a bit with the law in courtrooms, etc, and it not at ALL obvious to me that it is illegal.
In fact, I think its hazy enough that it may deserve some courtroom time, but certainly the section posted above would cast doubt on the conclusions of those who say it is as illegal as downloading from P2P services.
Don't forget, allofmp3 operates legally in Russia.
I guess I'll start this one by saying: I am not opposed to gay marriage. Not by a long shot.
But there is an issue I raised in a conversation about this that was interesting. Right now, it is very difficult to adopt a child if you're not "married". A lot of adoption agencies have restricted those who can adopt by using marriage as an indicator of a "committed, stable, relationship." In its absence, they have justification to reject gay couples in the adoption process for reasons other than "oh, you're gay..." which turns into "oh,you're not married...": much less offensive.
Why does this matter? Well, I think may have an significant impact on a young child to be raised in a home with gay parents. A lot of what we grow up with and learn about marriage would be significantly different - we learn gender roles from our parents (which is not always the same in all families, but it certainly sets our bearings as we grow up). We may eventually confront the issue of sex with our parents, and although most of us don't like to think of our parents as having sex, on another level, when we are first confronting the issue with them in our teens (probably), we have the tacit understanding that they are talking about the same kind of sex as I would be experiencing. This is not true in two cases: gay children with straight parents, and straight children with gay parents. Until now, we haven't had to consider the second option very often.
Anyway, there's the issue worth conidering: if gay marriage is allowed on a grand scale, how will it affect the validity of a gay couple's claims to adopt, and how will the subsequent increase in adoptions affect the children who are raised in a home with gay parents?
I don't have answers to this, but legalizing gay marriage will have more long term effects than simply "all the gays got married!" Marriage is many things, but it is certainly a *legal* institution. We must examine the legal ramifications of allowing it in ways we have not before.
There are other legal issues. Insurance companies do lots of research to determine premiums based on lifestyle. They have statistics that life expectancy is greater for people who are married. Whether these statistics are equally, greater, or less valid for married gay couples is probably undetermined.
I'm sure there are related issues, but I have to work now (!), I just thought I'd throw these few thoughts out as long as we were on the topic. I'm sure the issues can be worked out, and I support gay marriage, but the issue may not be as simple to implement as some might presume (leaving religion out of it).
"Hey, where did you get that flash-memory chip on a USB plug?"
"Oh, over at Newegg.com. They have a great flash-memory chip on a USB plug selection. I got this flash-memory chip on a USB plug because it has 512 MB or memory and was only $40. Pretty sweet, huh?"
Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll stick with "flash drive".
Err, I'm not sure where you go your defiention, but irony isn't usually a descriptor of word usage, rather, it is used to describe an actual situation. In that context it usually means something like:
"A turn of events contrary to what would be expected."
Usage: "Isn't it kind of ironic that that homeless guy is wearing more expensive clothes than I am, and I make $100,000 a year?"
Thats a pretty bad definition (I made it up just now), but all 3 of the definitions you listed are more appropriate at "sarcasm" rather than "irony".
I read a review of a whole series of flashdrives on Ars Technica before I bought my JetFlash 256 MB, and it has been amazing. Check out the review of 8 flash drives (all USB 2.0 High Speed compatible).
Assuming youre talking about the North American PS2 Linux: yeah, it may be warez, but they're not selling it anymore, so its not like they're losing money to people that are downloading it. I'm sorry, but even though something may be illegal, it doesn't make it wrong. This is one such case.
Laws != Morals
Get off your moral high-horse. Your post didn't even respond to his - he was *on-topic*, you weren't.
Just a word from my experience with PS2 Linux: the tricky part wasn't really the hard drive, it was getting a copy of the Linux DVDs needed to load Linux. You can't really load just any distro - there's basically the vanilla Sony ditro, and maybe one or two others that you can get to run with a little hacking. You need a disc for the loading in any case (unless you mod the PS2, I guess. I've never been into the mod scene, but I suppose it would work).
I think this whole PSTwo thing is incredibly cool, but I cannot actually bring myself to buy one because my wife would kill me. I have an OLD PS2 running Linux and taking care of a bunch of network services + extra storage space, and another PS2 for gaming.
Given that Sony stopped selling the Linux kits in North America, I don't think they have any plans to support it in the future. At this point, I paid as much for my Linux kit ($200) as PS2's were selling for at the time. Now, it would be even more than the PS2. I think Sony has left the consumer-level linux support by the wayside. Probably because it simply wasn't profitable (demand not high enough...)
I don't know how accurate your "caught the industry napping" statement is. One of the the good things about consoles (something that Sony realizes) is that they *aren't* so much of a moving target. Hell, if we were all going for 6 month product cycles, just stick to PC (hmm, actually, that's pretty much what Microsoft *did*).
Amazingly, I think it's a *good* thing that Sony is on 5 year product cycles; it allows developers time to get into the game even after the console is released, and it allows for cool things like PSTwo. I've never heard anyone else say this, but I really think PSTwo has something on XBOX: portability. The XBOX is just huge and clunky by comparison.
Anyway, because Sony has developers that take their time (and a LOT of them) they have a much bigger (and higher quality, IMHO) game base than XBOX does. 5 years is good. If I wanted a hyped up Windows box that I have to replace as often as I do major upgrades on my PC, I'll go buy an XBOX. For console gaming, I'll stick to PS2 and (I don't own one, but at least theoretically) Gamecube.
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh I really wish people would read for themselves. Whoever submitted this either had an agenda, or just didn't do their homework.
Its pretty obvious that there was a threat. Whether that threat justified war is another issue.
Further, saying someone "lied" means that they knew the truth and intentionally told a falsehood. If you read the CIA reports from 2002 yourself, you can draw your own (presumably, intelligent) conclusions on what we knew, rather than relying on headlines.Could W have done better? Yeah. Did he obviously "lie"? Probably not, considering everyone that has the same intelligence he had agreed with him. This wasn't one man's misjudement, it was a lot of people making the same (mis?)judgement on information that may (or may not) have been true.
I personally think that there was a threat. I was deployed overseas to go fight the war, so I had some more intelligence than the Average Joe, but not enough to say anything definitivly. I just don't understand the timing or choice of country (Iraq) versus other threats of similar magnitude (from the terrorist/WMD perspective). Of course, I haven't read all the intelligence, but neither have most of W's critics.
Um, how is an Athlon64 not a "real" 64 bit chip? I run 64 bit Gentoo on mine.
On another note - kind of an odd claim by the manufacturers: UT 2004 was released for Linux with 64 bit binaries a while back. Don't know how they can claim to be the first 64 bit game in light of that, even less so without running on a OS that *has* 64 bit support. I assumed this meant a Linux version, silly me.
Out of curiosity, what distros did you use, and how long did you run them?
My experience using 7 distros over the past 6 years has been very mixed, to say the least, but that does not mean that there are not some extremelyy good desktop distros out there. My main powerhouse runs Gentoo and I love it. Very desktop ready. "9 year old's bicycle with training wheels" doesn't quite capture it, somehow.
So Gentoo on the high end (poweruser). I post this from my laptop running SuSe Professionsal 9.1. Again, very nice distro - clean, fast, quick, easy install, good looking. I like customization in my primary desktop, but I like ease of use and more "standard" desktop functionality on a laptop (which I take a bit less seriously).
BTW, I convinced my wife to switch from Windows and she's now using OS X, which I've configured to run with the Linux boxes on the network. To say one is a Harley and the other is a bike with training wheels simply doesn't do either justice. Perhaps with a less polished distro or less user friendly (Debian can be a real pain sometimes, as can dependency hell on Fedora) I can see you comment, but I'd reccommend shopping around a bit. Linux isn't a single thing, its a lot of very different things.
OK, I just got back from reading the entire ruling. The point you bring up is probably the most interesting part of the whole decision. The court concluded that right of first sale did not apply because Blizzard never sold the software - they sold a license to use it. Therefore, since there was no "sale", it canot apply.
This really pisses me off, but I'll try to stay cool. The problem is obvious: what the hell does right of first sale apply to if not copyrighted computer games?? This was the main point in the decision that didnt make sense to me - and I wonder how it got written in that way. In my book, if I pay $50 to play a game, that's a sale. The court is essentially saying I paid for the license, not the game, so therefore right of first sale only applies to the license itself, not the game.
It is quite interesting, because if right of first sale would then, using this *same, exact* logic prohibit the right of console game buyers to "sell back" or "trade in" games at a game store without the express consent of the game manufacturer. Most people may not know this (I didn't), but it is right of first sale that allows people to do what they want (more or less) with their copy of a work, like a CD, console game or PC game (like sell it back without having to get the consent of the game publisher). The fact that right of first sale specifically deals with this issue and the court said it was irrelevent seems a bit suspect to me.
If you care about this stuff, the finding is actually quite readable, and at 36 pages (double spaced) I read the whole thing in about 20 minutes.
Sarcasm. Most /.'ers would know that a program ending in a "d" would be a daemon. inted, xinetd, httpd, dhcpcd, etc.
This is not new. I used to game on a Kaypro PC back in the late 80's and I played a flight sim called "Jet". I was quite young (10-11) and I asked my dad (who *is* a lawyer) how much the game had cost (there was the main game plus add-on packs that added scenery). He replied with the amount and I think I said something like "Wow that's a lot of money just to own the game." He then sat me down and explained something:
"You're not buying the game. You're buying a license to use the game on this computer. So you don't own it, and you cannot do anything you want with it. You *do* own the disk that it's on, but you don't own that data. See what I mean?"
I understood at the time only somewhat, but my dad was good to explain, because I still remember that.
My position to this day is that while I do own the disk (cdrom, whatever), I *paid* for the license to use the software; the disc should essentially be free. So this ruling is not merely a "technicality" based on ownership. The judge understood the principle my dad had explained to me. This is not new - this principle has been at work at least since the mid 80's.
IIRC, I think my dad actualy pulled out the piece of paper that was the license and explained bits of it to me.
This of course does not address what the license *says* or whether it can take away certain fundamental rights like fair use.
Too bad bnetd asked for blizzard's help in implementing keychecking (since it would be a violation of DMCA to reverse engineer the system) and Blizzard said "no". Blizzard said no because they knew that they could get them with the DMCA whether or not they:
1) Reverse engineered the keys to prevent piracy (but therefore broke the DMCA)
2) *Didn't* reverse engineer the keys, but then created a tool used to break copyrigth protection.
A good move if you're Blizzard - too bad they were just being assholes.
I've been following this for some time, and was always kind of appalled by how unjust the case is.
Basically, for those that don't know, bnetd was a daemon (!) that ran under Linux (maybe windows, I forget) that emulated Blizzard's Battlenet server. Blizzard sent out a C&D and took them to court under DMCA. Really, this is a whole lot like DVD Jon in some ways, because Vivendi is contending that the existence of bnetd promotes piracy because it does not enforce CD key checking. In reality, the motive was never to circumvent CD key checking - it was a workaround to allow LAN games over TCP/IP (vice IPX, bleh). The only way to work this is to emulate a battlenet server that everyone can log into locally.
IIRC, the bnetd team actually asked for Blizzard's help in making CD key authentication work (since the point of the project wasn't piracy) and Blizzard told them to go away. This clearly demonstrates a horrible misuse of the DMCA - basically the circumvention of the copyright protection was unintentional and in fact, undesired.
Hell, since I'm on the fence about who to vote for, if one of the candidates for president would say "Hey, I'm going to fix the DMCA mess!" I'd vote for him. Too bad that'll never happen.
Yes, however a popular vote system suffers from the same problem. Rather than focusing on "swing states" though, it would focus on New York, California, and other urban population centers. The states like Alaska and North Dakota would be even more ignored than they are now, since their population is so small.
I know you didn't mention popular vote as an alternative, but grandparent did, and it sounded like you might be defending it. I just wanted to point out the same problem exists for both systems. That said, what's better than either of those? I need to read up on this stuff.
Vonage does support 911 - but you have to manually update your current address since the system cannot track your location. Instead, they look it up (automated, obviously) when the call comes through. If you do not update, then you'll have a problem, but otherwise, its transparent.
What really got my attention was the end of the /. blurb:
Gartner's making a bold prediction that the number of machines sold as Linux desktops may eclipse the number of machines actually running Linux."
There are really three categories that are relevant to that number:
OK, so right now, in my anecdotal experience (on the desktop) most of the folks running Linux in fact bought a Windows computer and either dual boot or kicked the windows habit entirely. These should be all counted towards the "number of machines actually running Linux." They did not make it clear that they meant only Linux though, so I'll include dual booters (probably a very big number).
Next up, #2. So let me get this right: since #3 is going to be a wash (it adds to both machines sold as Linux and running Linux equally) they are saying that #2 is going to be > #1 + #4? Are they on crack? People switch to Linux, not from it. I mean, maybe worldwide there is some market where everything is pirated anyway, so this might be true in that market.
But I just cannot see it being true that #1 + #4 is less than #2. Ever. It doesn't make sense - I mean, this includes dual-booters, custom builders, and people who have simply swtiched.
When did they say this was supposed be true?
Ah yes, well it *would* be something if it played DVDs and CDs, but it doesn't - it plays UMDs. Which means if I want to use it for those things, I have to purchase (AGAIN! Gah, I hate format changes) all the music and videos on UMD. And pay more for protable unit that can only play one movie at a go anyway. And it costs more than a mini-PS2, which DOES play CDs, DVDs, PS1 and PS2 games. Oh, and it costs half as much.
No, they screwed up on this one. $350 is a lot of money. Hell, desktops retail for about $500 at the low end...
Does this make the PSP the most expensive portable game unit ever? I don't recall the prices on Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket (or whatever it was called), Game Gear, etc.
Well, there was GNU before there was Linux. Maybe it wouldn't be as popular, but there would be OSS. Thank Richard Stallman for that.
Please, please, this post isn't meant to start a flamewar of Richard Stallman vs. Linus Torvalds, I'm just saying OSS would probably exist without Linus.
Maybe I should've seen this, as first post said, but wow. I've been quite excited about this for some time, fully intending to buy one, but at $350, I simply cannot justify it. I mean, that's $350 PLUS $40-$50 for each game. Hell, I could buy a decent PDA for that. I could buy TWO of the new, small PS2's for that as well.
Oh, and how good is the battery life again? I pass.
I guess its time to go buy a GP32. =)
Mod parent up! Ya know, people throw around US code blah blah and "Oh, its obviously illegal.", but honestly, I'm not stupid, I've worked quite a bit with the law in courtrooms, etc, and it not at ALL obvious to me that it is illegal. In fact, I think its hazy enough that it may deserve some courtroom time, but certainly the section posted above would cast doubt on the conclusions of those who say it is as illegal as downloading from P2P services. Don't forget, allofmp3 operates legally in Russia.
Try: All of MP3 It's what I use.
I guess I'll start this one by saying: I am not opposed to gay marriage. Not by a long shot.
But there is an issue I raised in a conversation about this that was interesting. Right now, it is very difficult to adopt a child if you're not "married". A lot of adoption agencies have restricted those who can adopt by using marriage as an indicator of a "committed, stable, relationship." In its absence, they have justification to reject gay couples in the adoption process for reasons other than "oh, you're gay..." which turns into "oh,you're not married...": much less offensive.
Why does this matter? Well, I think may have an significant impact on a young child to be raised in a home with gay parents. A lot of what we grow up with and learn about marriage would be significantly different - we learn gender roles from our parents (which is not always the same in all families, but it certainly sets our bearings as we grow up). We may eventually confront the issue of sex with our parents, and although most of us don't like to think of our parents as having sex, on another level, when we are first confronting the issue with them in our teens (probably), we have the tacit understanding that they are talking about the same kind of sex as I would be experiencing. This is not true in two cases: gay children with straight parents, and straight children with gay parents. Until now, we haven't had to consider the second option very often.
Anyway, there's the issue worth conidering: if gay marriage is allowed on a grand scale, how will it affect the validity of a gay couple's claims to adopt, and how will the subsequent increase in adoptions affect the children who are raised in a home with gay parents?
I don't have answers to this, but legalizing gay marriage will have more long term effects than simply "all the gays got married!" Marriage is many things, but it is certainly a *legal* institution. We must examine the legal ramifications of allowing it in ways we have not before.
There are other legal issues. Insurance companies do lots of research to determine premiums based on lifestyle. They have statistics that life expectancy is greater for people who are married. Whether these statistics are equally, greater, or less valid for married gay couples is probably undetermined.
I'm sure there are related issues, but I have to work now (!), I just thought I'd throw these few thoughts out as long as we were on the topic. I'm sure the issues can be worked out, and I support gay marriage, but the issue may not be as simple to implement as some might presume (leaving religion out of it).
"Hey, where did you get that flash-memory chip on a USB plug?"
"Oh, over at Newegg.com. They have a great flash-memory chip on a USB plug selection. I got this flash-memory chip on a USB plug because it has 512 MB or memory and was only $40. Pretty sweet, huh?"
Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll stick with "flash drive".
Err, I'm not sure where you go your defiention, but irony isn't usually a descriptor of word usage, rather, it is used to describe an actual situation. In that context it usually means something like:
"A turn of events contrary to what would be expected."
Usage: "Isn't it kind of ironic that that homeless guy is wearing more expensive clothes than I am, and I make $100,000 a year?"
Thats a pretty bad definition (I made it up just now), but all 3 of the definitions you listed are more appropriate at "sarcasm" rather than "irony".
I read a review of a whole series of flashdrives on Ars Technica before I bought my JetFlash 256 MB, and it has been amazing. Check out the review of 8 flash drives (all USB 2.0 High Speed compatible).
Assuming youre talking about the North American PS2 Linux: yeah, it may be warez, but they're not selling it anymore, so its not like they're losing money to people that are downloading it. I'm sorry, but even though something may be illegal, it doesn't make it wrong. This is one such case.
Laws != Morals
Get off your moral high-horse. Your post didn't even respond to his - he was *on-topic*, you weren't.
Ah crap. Neither am I.
...upgrade from Unix to Windows? Wouldn't that constitute a downgrade?
Just a word from my experience with PS2 Linux: the tricky part wasn't really the hard drive, it was getting a copy of the Linux DVDs needed to load Linux. You can't really load just any distro - there's basically the vanilla Sony ditro, and maybe one or two others that you can get to run with a little hacking. You need a disc for the loading in any case (unless you mod the PS2, I guess. I've never been into the mod scene, but I suppose it would work).
I think this whole PSTwo thing is incredibly cool, but I cannot actually bring myself to buy one because my wife would kill me. I have an OLD PS2 running Linux and taking care of a bunch of network services + extra storage space, and another PS2 for gaming.
Given that Sony stopped selling the Linux kits in North America, I don't think they have any plans to support it in the future. At this point, I paid as much for my Linux kit ($200) as PS2's were selling for at the time. Now, it would be even more than the PS2. I think Sony has left the consumer-level linux support by the wayside. Probably because it simply wasn't profitable (demand not high enough...)
I don't know how accurate your "caught the industry napping" statement is. One of the the good things about consoles (something that Sony realizes) is that they *aren't* so much of a moving target. Hell, if we were all going for 6 month product cycles, just stick to PC (hmm, actually, that's pretty much what Microsoft *did*).
Amazingly, I think it's a *good* thing that Sony is on 5 year product cycles; it allows developers time to get into the game even after the console is released, and it allows for cool things like PSTwo. I've never heard anyone else say this, but I really think PSTwo has something on XBOX: portability. The XBOX is just huge and clunky by comparison.
Anyway, because Sony has developers that take their time (and a LOT of them) they have a much bigger (and higher quality, IMHO) game base than XBOX does. 5 years is good. If I wanted a hyped up Windows box that I have to replace as often as I do major upgrades on my PC, I'll go buy an XBOX. For console gaming, I'll stick to PS2 and (I don't own one, but at least theoretically) Gamecube.