The DS is a long way from a PDA. For one thing, it has 4MB RAM and a 33MHz ARM CPU. I toyed with coding with the NDS a while back, and gave up simply because I didn't want to be watching every byte of memory usage, and optimizing my code to hell just to get responsive performance out of my apps. It's one of those platforms where, if you wanted to badly enough, you could make cool apps with it, but it's a long way from being an attractive development platform, which it must be if it's to make a name for itself as a PDA.
Crank that CPU up to 800MHz, and throw some 256MB of RAM in there, then we're looking at a real PDA. Of course, then we're looking at a $500+ device and not a $130 one.
After using an iPhone, IMHO all physical keypads are on the way out. The flexibility of a full, brilliantly-lit touchscreen cannot be understated, the only disadvantage being the lack of tactile feedback. Once we get past that I do not see physical QWERTY keyboards (or even numeric pads) on cell phones lasting much longer. We all wanted the LCARS interface we saw on Star Trek, and now we're so close to having it.
What are you talking about? PhysX does what it claims to do - offers physics acceleration.
Except the vast majority of the effects in the Cell Factor demo were artificially locked to machines with the card present, and once unlocked proved that the abilities of the PhysX card were FAR less than what was claimed in the company's marketing. This is misinformation and borderline fraud - by locking these features the company was in essence promising that these advanced effects would not be process-able on any machine without a PhysX card - and subsequent unlocks proved that not only were they possible, but they ran with fair performance! This is why, IMHO, PhysX is the product in my list that most resembles snake oil (but at least it somewhat works, liquid effects and all)
I do not mean to claim that ALL PC enthusiast hardware is a load of crock, but even you must admit that a LOT of it is. I am perfectly aware that there are many CPU fan kits out there that WILL outperform the stock fans by a wide margin. But at the same time there are also many who are liable to do worse. Or heck, thermal grease compounds - there are many well-marketed compounds that sell for many times the price of generics, and can't outperform them either.
I am also not discounting the usefulness of airflow analysis in extreme overclocking environments, I am more commenting on *manufacturer* claims. While I understand that marketing tends to exaggerate the benefits of certain technologies, a lot of these products have outright fabricated claims (much like the health food and cosmetic industries). Don't claim superior airflow when it's no better than a $40 generic, and don't claim you did the analysis unless you did.
I suppose this is a symptom that's demonstrated in any enthusiast field. There are products for people who actually know what they're buying, and then there's the crap for people with more dollars than sense.
Well, there's snake oil in the PC business also. Remember that expensive network card that was supposed to improve gaming network performance by leaps and bounds, using more buzzwords than Al Gore, and failed to do so? Or the bajillions of CPU fans out there that don't even perform better than the stock one Intel/AMD ships on the chip? Or dare I mention Ageia and their PhysX, whose marketing was founded upon misinformation and outright fabrication (especially the Cell Factor demo)?
As for cases... I've seen many a case that claimed some magical airflow design properties... It would not surprise in the least if the vast majority of them never had their airflow measured in any way.
Hmmm, in that case I'm out of ideas, besides taking it to a recycler so that it may hopefully continue on as useful matter to somebody, somewhere, in some alternate form. Like others have said, HDD magnets are cool toys, but there's nothing the average person can really do to make any of these objects USEFUL again...
Some dead stuff is fixable. That dead power supply, for example, may only require a few new capacitors, etc. Multiples of dead stuff can indeed a single working one make. Just be safe. Hard drives though, are probably not repairable...
Well... Yes and no. The problem is, of course, that 99% of the content people will end up "squirting" to each other will in fact be illegal. After all, like Apple has admitted themselves, the VAST VAST majority of a user's music library consists to ripped, downloaded or otherwise finangled music that are not downloaded off any online store. Sure, you could scan track names and try to guess at its copyright status, but that's neither foolproof nor a good solution.
So MS was staring at two options:
1 - Allow unlimited squirting for files with no copyright tag. Piracy explodes again, the magnitude we haven't seen since Napster. Zunes sell like hotcakes, and MS gets hit with lawsuits up the yang, and lose ALL of their media partnerships that they've been trying to build for their Xbox360 video service, IPTV, and a bunch of their Media Centre features.
2 - Limit squirting, product is still otherwise equal to competitors, making this feature a bullet point function at best. Market the hell out of it despite it being of no use to anyone, but MS's key partners stay happy and quiet.
Between a rock and a hard place, that's what it is.
What has Vista added, or the last release of Ubuntu?
Hmm... Aero for Vista, flashy graphics. Compiz for Ubuntu, flashy graphics too! Let's have some perspective shall we?
Not to mention a unification of all UI (something Windows hasn't done as of yet, and no Linux distro can ever get past their internal squabbling to get it right)... A brand new Finder, Quick Look, Stacks, all of which make the OS a lot more convenient and usable (note that I didn't say perfect, it's not). Confusing parts of the UI have been smoothed over. Not to mention new parental controls and the myriad of internal changes that make developers' lives that much easier, and puts Apple on a solid roadmap (resolution independence, anyone?). Having used Ubuntu, Vista, and Leopard extensively now, I can safely say that Leopard, while not revolutionary by any standard, is a bigger leap than XP/Vista, and IMHO edges out Gutsy Gibbon also.
But let's not argue semantics. I'm far more productive under Leopard than I was under Tiger, which is the direct opposite of Vista's effect on me vs. XP. Ubuntu I can't say, since I'm a relatively new member of the cult.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe firmly that Macs are gaining ground globally, but this particular statistic isn't very good proof of it. Better proof would be *new machine sales* over the last quarter or something. All it does is mean that Japanese Tiger users are salivating over Leopard, that's all. What I'd like to see is the change between quarterly numbers in Japan year-to-year, I believe we'll see a fairly dramatic uptick. After all, there's no demographic in the world as trend-obsessed in their technology as the Japanese.
It doesn't say much about the total number of Mac users in Japan.
Yes, because they all bought the OS so they can admire it on their bookshelf. No, no wait, I know! They all bought it so they can install it on their Dell boxes! No wait...
I think it's pretty safe to assume that each copy of the OS sold represents a single Mac user, barring the VERY, VERY few OSx86 hackers out there.
I do agree though, this says nothing about Apple's growth in Japan. It just means existing Mac users are excited about upgrading to Leopard (moreso than XP users to Vista, but that's a no-brainer), it doesn't mean that Macs are necessarily gaining ground.
I thought about that, but apparently the word "religionist" doesn't exist. You're right though, "racist" is not the correct word, just a (not-so-good) approximation thereof.
On second thought, you're not a racist, just a bigot.
but this was an ILLEGAL action in China and Yahoo China provided the legally required data under rules very similar to the USA PATRIOT Act here.
The level of abuse in China pales in comparison to even the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act. The comparison doesn't hold water. I'm no fan of some recent American legislation, but there are different shades of "bad", and China is very, very much further on the scale than even the most heinous of American laws.
Not to mention that "we were just following orders" was deemed a non-defense at the Nuremberg trials. Somebody writing a decree on a piece of paper does not absolve you of your personal responsibility to behave with due morality.
It cuts both ways in spite of how Congress wants to be all high-n-mighty about it
The parallel can be drawn, but they are not the same. The US has due process and the rule of law, both concepts do not exist in China. When a company is compelled to turn over information, a warrant is required (recent Bush shenanigans notwithstanding), official records exist that will be accessible after the conclusion of any investigations. The entire thing is (fairly) transparent and accessible to the people, including the accused. To do anything to the individual involved, even with this information, requires officially charging the individual with a crime (which has to be clearly defined in legislation, not just trumped up in some generic category like "treason"), and granting him a right to fair trial in a jury of his peers, selected through a rigorous process to ensure impartiality. Heck, undue influence of the jury can even result in a mistrial.
China? The process goes more like... Make trumped up charges based on vague, generic crimes not well defined in any sort of legislation. Compel companies to release confidential data with neither warrant nor proper, transparent procedure. Imprisonment without a fair trial - or use your control of the media to stage a laughable trial with jury members cherry-picked from party loyalists. Convicted "criminals" have no legal recourse, no access to a higher court of law, nor an appeals process.
While America has certainly taken a few steps backwards, one would be sorely mistaken to believe it's ANYWHERE near as bad as China in its current state.
It takes 1 full minute to record and count a ballot? I think we can reasonably triple your estimate there and still be erring on the side of caution.
So we reduce your estimate... some 3000-odd people working full-time for a month, plus support infrastructure and personnel. That's not unfeasible at all. Not to mention that this is the way we've been doing it, with fair success, for the last couple hundred years, and heck, the percentage of Americans who vote used to be HIGHER than it is today.
The mouse would likely still run. The point here is that it's advantageous for a lifeform to remain relatively simple by operation. If the mouse has no sense of smell, and sees a cat running at him, it will probably trigger the "ohnoes, something unknown coming at me!" reflex in the mouse, which is pretty universal regardless of the approaching object is a cat or a boot. This removes the necessity for complex recognition and other such cognitive functions.
The excuse for dropping the bomb was to force Japan's capitulation, in order to avoid a costly land invasion. This, while partially true, is mostly a matter of the victors writing the history books. Many modern historians do not believe in this interpretation, as Japan was already defeated by then. The oil fields of China were retaken, the islands of southeast Asia had been reconquered. Japan was back to its pre-war territorial borders, which contain precious few resources (they couldn't even produce enough high-quality steel to fuel their own war effort, which was the original reason for their invasion of China, to secure the necessary resources ), and certainly at that point wasn't a real danger to anyone.
No, the bombs were dropped for the Russians. The Soviets showed a large interest in taking over the recently-vacated Manchuria, which as an industrial heartland of China the US simply could not allow, not to mention access to an all-year east-Asia port. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were warning shots that began the Cold War, it's just that the Japanese had the unfortunate luck of being the most convenient and justifiable party to nuke, at that moment in time.
Olbermann is a twit, though I would say not as much as O'Reilly (at least he doesn't tell his interviewees to "shut up" constantly). But yes, I agree, Olbermann runs a very biased lefty program... but assuming this whistleblower is on the level, this is STILL very scary, regardless of which show he decided to appear on.
Safari on the iPhone works as well as Safari on a Mac.
Except without Flash. I have an iPhone and I love it, but that's one of those things I wish Apple would do something about. Yeah, I know, it's not really Apple's problem web designers are using the ass-backward thing known as Flash, but the whole point of mobile Safari was to allow you to seamlessly blend the mobile and desktop browsing experience.
The iPhone alone has made such a quick entrance into popular culture that I've already seen it on two TV shows (Mythbusters and The Colbert Report).
One of my favourite shows of this season is Journeyman (time travel ftw), and the main character wields an iPhone. It's quite entrenched in our culture given how little time it's been on the market.
Perhaps you're a rare one, but I don't buy the whole "wouldn't have bought it anyway". IMHO if you play more than 20 minutes into a game without throwing your burned disc out a window, you're being dishonest to yourself about your intentions. It's funny, but I haven't pirated a game in ages, and in fact I never feel the need to. I have found numerous trustworthy review sources that guide what I buy. I don't fall into the preorder frenzy, and I always wait for my trusted sources to give their reviews before I go get the game. The whole "games suck nowadays, piracy is just an extended demo" holds no water in my eyes - I haven't found myself regretting a game purchase in a long time.
I see I'm too late to beat our cynical Slashdotters to the punch. Instead of complaining about how evil EA is, and what kind of ulterior motives they may have, can we simply not recognize this as a net Good Thing? I know I learned a lot of planning for the future, fiscal management, and balancing multiple (sometimes conflicting) priorities while still achieving overall success, from that game as a child. Technical issues aside from making the game run, this will be a great gain for OLPC users.
IMHO home robotics is less about human replacement, but more about human enhancement. I for one want my thermostat to warm up the house before I get up each morning, have my coffee waiting, and have rice (I'm Asian, sue me) ready by the time I get home from work. I would also like my garage door to open when I start the car, and close behind me when I leave. For most people this is a "no duh, we can already do all those things very well", but that's just my point - robotics in the form of humanoid bipeds walking about talking like C3PO will not be popular in our lifetimes, I don't think. "Invisible" robots that manage our lives in the background, IMHO, are far more useful, as the market is proving.
I was just looking for a floor jack. I can get one made in China for $50, or the USA for $250. How could I justify the extra $200?
That's the entire problem with that train of thought that has brought us to this very issue. People assume they understand all there is to know about manufacturing, engineering, and design in general - and equate two similar looking products. Will the American jack last longer? Probably not by 5x. But that's not the only factor with regards to the quality of a product. The following isn't always true, but tends to be - the American jack will fail at some point, but the failure will not be catastrophic and send a stray bolt into your eye. The American jack will also be made of superior materials, and is probably rated to a higher specification. Even if the box reads the same specification, you can bet your ass that the American jack has left a lot more of a margin, and won't collapse when overloaded by 10%.
I've worked in manufacturing, I've seen this first hand. You *absolutely* get what you pay for. People repeat the mantra of TANSTAAFL but somehow everybody thinks they're exempt from it.
More difficult than it sounds, and it would all be SO much simpler if China actually had a justice system worth a damn. As it is right now a company has a VERY hard time getting sued - every judge gets bribed, and there's more loyalty from them towards domestic businesses than seemingly hostile foreign influences. Their whole judiciary is a gigantic joke, the concept of rule of law does not apply in that country, except when the ruling party wants to apply it towards their own ends.
Even if a company is successfully sued, the way their system works allows the same group of people to simply close up shop, move a few blocks down, and continue from where they left off. It's practically impossible for any PERSONAL responsibility to be exacted unless the situation erupts into a full-scale international debacle (like this one), where the government will actually step in.
And if you think we have it bad, imagine the Chinese consumer. They don't just get to deal with shady manufacturers, but shady designs in the first place! Few people fully realize the intricacy and importance of proper engineering until it bites them in the ass like this. Welcome America, to the Wal Mart future you created for yourself by being a bunch of damn cheap bastards who would rather buy cheap shit than pay for quality and durability.
If two astronauts from two different countries have an altercation in a completely different nations module, who's legal authority is applicable?
That one should be obvious - the owning nation's law. If an Aussie and a Brit get into a bar fight in an American bar, clearly American law prevails. Whatever exceptions to this case would clearly follow established precedent in terms of extradition and whatnot - this isn't the first time two non-citizens have broken the law on foreign soil (or deck plating, as it were).
That wouldn't work very well for code... One important thing in any working repo is that all commits don't break the build. This also means work-in-progress files need to stay very far away, and one of the major reasons to use Subversion in the first place (atomic commits). I save a lot while coding, a habit from my old days of hacking on old, crappy machines that would give out suddenly without warning (Win98 boxes, what can I say). I'd hate to have my code auto-commit every time I hit Ctrl+S.
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The DS is a long way from a PDA. For one thing, it has 4MB RAM and a 33MHz ARM CPU. I toyed with coding with the NDS a while back, and gave up simply because I didn't want to be watching every byte of memory usage, and optimizing my code to hell just to get responsive performance out of my apps. It's one of those platforms where, if you wanted to badly enough, you could make cool apps with it, but it's a long way from being an attractive development platform, which it must be if it's to make a name for itself as a PDA.
Crank that CPU up to 800MHz, and throw some 256MB of RAM in there, then we're looking at a real PDA. Of course, then we're looking at a $500+ device and not a $130 one.
After using an iPhone, IMHO all physical keypads are on the way out. The flexibility of a full, brilliantly-lit touchscreen cannot be understated, the only disadvantage being the lack of tactile feedback. Once we get past that I do not see physical QWERTY keyboards (or even numeric pads) on cell phones lasting much longer. We all wanted the LCARS interface we saw on Star Trek, and now we're so close to having it.
Except the vast majority of the effects in the Cell Factor demo were artificially locked to machines with the card present, and once unlocked proved that the abilities of the PhysX card were FAR less than what was claimed in the company's marketing. This is misinformation and borderline fraud - by locking these features the company was in essence promising that these advanced effects would not be process-able on any machine without a PhysX card - and subsequent unlocks proved that not only were they possible, but they ran with fair performance! This is why, IMHO, PhysX is the product in my list that most resembles snake oil (but at least it somewhat works, liquid effects and all)
I do not mean to claim that ALL PC enthusiast hardware is a load of crock, but even you must admit that a LOT of it is. I am perfectly aware that there are many CPU fan kits out there that WILL outperform the stock fans by a wide margin. But at the same time there are also many who are liable to do worse. Or heck, thermal grease compounds - there are many well-marketed compounds that sell for many times the price of generics, and can't outperform them either.
I am also not discounting the usefulness of airflow analysis in extreme overclocking environments, I am more commenting on *manufacturer* claims. While I understand that marketing tends to exaggerate the benefits of certain technologies, a lot of these products have outright fabricated claims (much like the health food and cosmetic industries). Don't claim superior airflow when it's no better than a $40 generic, and don't claim you did the analysis unless you did.
I suppose this is a symptom that's demonstrated in any enthusiast field. There are products for people who actually know what they're buying, and then there's the crap for people with more dollars than sense.
Well, there's snake oil in the PC business also. Remember that expensive network card that was supposed to improve gaming network performance by leaps and bounds, using more buzzwords than Al Gore, and failed to do so? Or the bajillions of CPU fans out there that don't even perform better than the stock one Intel/AMD ships on the chip? Or dare I mention Ageia and their PhysX, whose marketing was founded upon misinformation and outright fabrication (especially the Cell Factor demo)?
As for cases... I've seen many a case that claimed some magical airflow design properties... It would not surprise in the least if the vast majority of them never had their airflow measured in any way.
Hmmm, in that case I'm out of ideas, besides taking it to a recycler so that it may hopefully continue on as useful matter to somebody, somewhere, in some alternate form. Like others have said, HDD magnets are cool toys, but there's nothing the average person can really do to make any of these objects USEFUL again...
Some dead stuff is fixable. That dead power supply, for example, may only require a few new capacitors, etc. Multiples of dead stuff can indeed a single working one make. Just be safe. Hard drives though, are probably not repairable...
Well... Yes and no. The problem is, of course, that 99% of the content people will end up "squirting" to each other will in fact be illegal. After all, like Apple has admitted themselves, the VAST VAST majority of a user's music library consists to ripped, downloaded or otherwise finangled music that are not downloaded off any online store. Sure, you could scan track names and try to guess at its copyright status, but that's neither foolproof nor a good solution.
So MS was staring at two options:
1 - Allow unlimited squirting for files with no copyright tag. Piracy explodes again, the magnitude we haven't seen since Napster. Zunes sell like hotcakes, and MS gets hit with lawsuits up the yang, and lose ALL of their media partnerships that they've been trying to build for their Xbox360 video service, IPTV, and a bunch of their Media Centre features.
2 - Limit squirting, product is still otherwise equal to competitors, making this feature a bullet point function at best. Market the hell out of it despite it being of no use to anyone, but MS's key partners stay happy and quiet.
Between a rock and a hard place, that's what it is.
What has Vista added, or the last release of Ubuntu?
Hmm... Aero for Vista, flashy graphics. Compiz for Ubuntu, flashy graphics too! Let's have some perspective shall we?
Not to mention a unification of all UI (something Windows hasn't done as of yet, and no Linux distro can ever get past their internal squabbling to get it right)... A brand new Finder, Quick Look, Stacks, all of which make the OS a lot more convenient and usable (note that I didn't say perfect, it's not). Confusing parts of the UI have been smoothed over. Not to mention new parental controls and the myriad of internal changes that make developers' lives that much easier, and puts Apple on a solid roadmap (resolution independence, anyone?). Having used Ubuntu, Vista, and Leopard extensively now, I can safely say that Leopard, while not revolutionary by any standard, is a bigger leap than XP/Vista, and IMHO edges out Gutsy Gibbon also.
But let's not argue semantics. I'm far more productive under Leopard than I was under Tiger, which is the direct opposite of Vista's effect on me vs. XP. Ubuntu I can't say, since I'm a relatively new member of the cult.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe firmly that Macs are gaining ground globally, but this particular statistic isn't very good proof of it. Better proof would be *new machine sales* over the last quarter or something. All it does is mean that Japanese Tiger users are salivating over Leopard, that's all. What I'd like to see is the change between quarterly numbers in Japan year-to-year, I believe we'll see a fairly dramatic uptick. After all, there's no demographic in the world as trend-obsessed in their technology as the Japanese.
Yes, because they all bought the OS so they can admire it on their bookshelf. No, no wait, I know! They all bought it so they can install it on their Dell boxes! No wait...
I think it's pretty safe to assume that each copy of the OS sold represents a single Mac user, barring the VERY, VERY few OSx86 hackers out there.
I do agree though, this says nothing about Apple's growth in Japan. It just means existing Mac users are excited about upgrading to Leopard (moreso than XP users to Vista, but that's a no-brainer), it doesn't mean that Macs are necessarily gaining ground.
I thought about that, but apparently the word "religionist" doesn't exist. You're right though, "racist" is not the correct word, just a (not-so-good) approximation thereof.
On second thought, you're not a racist, just a bigot.
I hate crap like this. Fricken racists...
The level of abuse in China pales in comparison to even the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act. The comparison doesn't hold water. I'm no fan of some recent American legislation, but there are different shades of "bad", and China is very, very much further on the scale than even the most heinous of American laws.
Not to mention that "we were just following orders" was deemed a non-defense at the Nuremberg trials. Somebody writing a decree on a piece of paper does not absolve you of your personal responsibility to behave with due morality.
It cuts both ways in spite of how Congress wants to be all high-n-mighty about itThe parallel can be drawn, but they are not the same. The US has due process and the rule of law, both concepts do not exist in China. When a company is compelled to turn over information, a warrant is required (recent Bush shenanigans notwithstanding), official records exist that will be accessible after the conclusion of any investigations. The entire thing is (fairly) transparent and accessible to the people, including the accused. To do anything to the individual involved, even with this information, requires officially charging the individual with a crime (which has to be clearly defined in legislation, not just trumped up in some generic category like "treason"), and granting him a right to fair trial in a jury of his peers, selected through a rigorous process to ensure impartiality. Heck, undue influence of the jury can even result in a mistrial.
China? The process goes more like... Make trumped up charges based on vague, generic crimes not well defined in any sort of legislation. Compel companies to release confidential data with neither warrant nor proper, transparent procedure. Imprisonment without a fair trial - or use your control of the media to stage a laughable trial with jury members cherry-picked from party loyalists. Convicted "criminals" have no legal recourse, no access to a higher court of law, nor an appeals process.
While America has certainly taken a few steps backwards, one would be sorely mistaken to believe it's ANYWHERE near as bad as China in its current state.
It takes 1 full minute to record and count a ballot? I think we can reasonably triple your estimate there and still be erring on the side of caution.
So we reduce your estimate... some 3000-odd people working full-time for a month, plus support infrastructure and personnel. That's not unfeasible at all. Not to mention that this is the way we've been doing it, with fair success, for the last couple hundred years, and heck, the percentage of Americans who vote used to be HIGHER than it is today.
The mouse would likely still run. The point here is that it's advantageous for a lifeform to remain relatively simple by operation. If the mouse has no sense of smell, and sees a cat running at him, it will probably trigger the "ohnoes, something unknown coming at me!" reflex in the mouse, which is pretty universal regardless of the approaching object is a cat or a boot. This removes the necessity for complex recognition and other such cognitive functions.
The excuse for dropping the bomb was to force Japan's capitulation, in order to avoid a costly land invasion. This, while partially true, is mostly a matter of the victors writing the history books. Many modern historians do not believe in this interpretation, as Japan was already defeated by then. The oil fields of China were retaken, the islands of southeast Asia had been reconquered. Japan was back to its pre-war territorial borders, which contain precious few resources (they couldn't even produce enough high-quality steel to fuel their own war effort, which was the original reason for their invasion of China, to secure the necessary resources ), and certainly at that point wasn't a real danger to anyone.
No, the bombs were dropped for the Russians. The Soviets showed a large interest in taking over the recently-vacated Manchuria, which as an industrial heartland of China the US simply could not allow, not to mention access to an all-year east-Asia port. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were warning shots that began the Cold War, it's just that the Japanese had the unfortunate luck of being the most convenient and justifiable party to nuke, at that moment in time.
Olbermann is a twit, though I would say not as much as O'Reilly (at least he doesn't tell his interviewees to "shut up" constantly). But yes, I agree, Olbermann runs a very biased lefty program... but assuming this whistleblower is on the level, this is STILL very scary, regardless of which show he decided to appear on.
Except without Flash. I have an iPhone and I love it, but that's one of those things I wish Apple would do something about. Yeah, I know, it's not really Apple's problem web designers are using the ass-backward thing known as Flash, but the whole point of mobile Safari was to allow you to seamlessly blend the mobile and desktop browsing experience.
One of my favourite shows of this season is Journeyman (time travel ftw), and the main character wields an iPhone. It's quite entrenched in our culture given how little time it's been on the market.
Perhaps you're a rare one, but I don't buy the whole "wouldn't have bought it anyway". IMHO if you play more than 20 minutes into a game without throwing your burned disc out a window, you're being dishonest to yourself about your intentions. It's funny, but I haven't pirated a game in ages, and in fact I never feel the need to. I have found numerous trustworthy review sources that guide what I buy. I don't fall into the preorder frenzy, and I always wait for my trusted sources to give their reviews before I go get the game. The whole "games suck nowadays, piracy is just an extended demo" holds no water in my eyes - I haven't found myself regretting a game purchase in a long time.
I see I'm too late to beat our cynical Slashdotters to the punch. Instead of complaining about how evil EA is, and what kind of ulterior motives they may have, can we simply not recognize this as a net Good Thing? I know I learned a lot of planning for the future, fiscal management, and balancing multiple (sometimes conflicting) priorities while still achieving overall success, from that game as a child. Technical issues aside from making the game run, this will be a great gain for OLPC users.
IMHO home robotics is less about human replacement, but more about human enhancement. I for one want my thermostat to warm up the house before I get up each morning, have my coffee waiting, and have rice (I'm Asian, sue me) ready by the time I get home from work. I would also like my garage door to open when I start the car, and close behind me when I leave. For most people this is a "no duh, we can already do all those things very well", but that's just my point - robotics in the form of humanoid bipeds walking about talking like C3PO will not be popular in our lifetimes, I don't think. "Invisible" robots that manage our lives in the background, IMHO, are far more useful, as the market is proving.
That's the entire problem with that train of thought that has brought us to this very issue. People assume they understand all there is to know about manufacturing, engineering, and design in general - and equate two similar looking products. Will the American jack last longer? Probably not by 5x. But that's not the only factor with regards to the quality of a product. The following isn't always true, but tends to be - the American jack will fail at some point, but the failure will not be catastrophic and send a stray bolt into your eye. The American jack will also be made of superior materials, and is probably rated to a higher specification. Even if the box reads the same specification, you can bet your ass that the American jack has left a lot more of a margin, and won't collapse when overloaded by 10%.
I've worked in manufacturing, I've seen this first hand. You *absolutely* get what you pay for. People repeat the mantra of TANSTAAFL but somehow everybody thinks they're exempt from it.
More difficult than it sounds, and it would all be SO much simpler if China actually had a justice system worth a damn. As it is right now a company has a VERY hard time getting sued - every judge gets bribed, and there's more loyalty from them towards domestic businesses than seemingly hostile foreign influences. Their whole judiciary is a gigantic joke, the concept of rule of law does not apply in that country, except when the ruling party wants to apply it towards their own ends.
Even if a company is successfully sued, the way their system works allows the same group of people to simply close up shop, move a few blocks down, and continue from where they left off. It's practically impossible for any PERSONAL responsibility to be exacted unless the situation erupts into a full-scale international debacle (like this one), where the government will actually step in.
And if you think we have it bad, imagine the Chinese consumer. They don't just get to deal with shady manufacturers, but shady designs in the first place! Few people fully realize the intricacy and importance of proper engineering until it bites them in the ass like this. Welcome America, to the Wal Mart future you created for yourself by being a bunch of damn cheap bastards who would rather buy cheap shit than pay for quality and durability.
That one should be obvious - the owning nation's law. If an Aussie and a Brit get into a bar fight in an American bar, clearly American law prevails. Whatever exceptions to this case would clearly follow established precedent in terms of extradition and whatnot - this isn't the first time two non-citizens have broken the law on foreign soil (or deck plating, as it were).
That wouldn't work very well for code... One important thing in any working repo is that all commits don't break the build. This also means work-in-progress files need to stay very far away, and one of the major reasons to use Subversion in the first place (atomic commits). I save a lot while coding, a habit from my old days of hacking on old, crappy machines that would give out suddenly without warning (Win98 boxes, what can I say). I'd hate to have my code auto-commit every time I hit Ctrl+S.