The only time I really ever have cash is when someone puts it in a holiday card, or on rare occasions where my son needs it for something that's "cash only" at his school. I definitely never "miss" it, but I'm also 100% positive I don't understand the gestalt.

I was an avid NES / SNES player back when they were originally released, but my general opinion is that these are mostly old games I don't want to play anymore. I'm not really interested in buying a NES or SNES mini that would pretty quickly find their way to my tech junk box and start collecting dust. Just doesn't appeal to me.

I did buy Final Fantasy 3/6 in the Android store. I had never played it originally, and heard so many good things I thought I'd give it a try. I think it was $14 if memory serves. Was it worth it? I don't think so. I got bored pretty quickly and never finished it. There was nothing wrong with it, I actually prefer the touch screen controls to a controller. I just didn't find it all that fun. I will probably re-visit and try to finish it some other time. Not a total waste, but too much money for what I received in my opinion. I think as much as $10 of the price was due to nostalgia, and $4 was actual value.

My son has a New 2DSXL, and I'll probably see if I can buy WarioLand 4, Advance Wars, and maybe a few others if I can get them for $5 each. If they are too expensive, or not available, I guess I won't buy them. This does not anger me more or make me sad.

As far as legality vs. "right or wrong" / grey area, I feel like on one hand Nintendo has the legal right to their own IP, but they have also benefited from ROM sites keeping their games popular over the years while they figured out a way to mass market them again.

It kind of feels like the end result of this is that Nintendo will keep selling overpriced "mini" products, people will keep buying them, and most of these old games will just be bundled in with more popular titles and never played anyway.

I think the real question is "Is owning the moon worth fighting a war over". Doubtless this is where any such claim would immediately lead.

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.rsa.com

Hosting History
Netblock Owner IP address OS Web Server Last changed
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 5-Sep-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 25-Jul-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 31-May-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 21-Apr-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 20-Mar-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 unknown Microsoft-IIS/6.0 19-Mar-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 18-Mar-2011
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 4-Sep-2010
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 23-Mar-2010
RSA Security Inc. 174 Middlesex Turnpike Bedford MA US 01730 216.162.240.32 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 21-Mar-2010

I'll just disregard the less interesting story, and respond to the sensationalist title then. :)

YOU BUY IT, IT BELONGS TO YOU RIGHT????? Just joking.

It's really too bad Oracle became the owner of Java and MySQL. Don't trust them, period!

I really struggle with these broad, "America is crazy" type ideas, and all the resulting "It's because of TV!!" type responses. It reminds me of Tom Cruise declaring mental illness a hoax. I can tell you right now that it is not. My father was a severe paranoid schizophrenic, and let me tell you that it is some scary, terrifying shit that cannot be faked, and it's not caused by watching too much television. Until you've looked into the eyes of someone you love and see no recognition, see a complete stranger who's not even aware of their own identity (or you have a disorder yourself), you have no insight into mental illness. Then seeing that person waste away and die in a care home... This is no trivial thing to be diagnosed by armchair doctors, and dumbass actors who worship aliens.

One thing I would be curious to see is how many kids on psych drugs come from broken homes. I come from a broken home (and no I'm not looking for boo hoo hoo's, it's relevant to what I'm saying), and were it not for my dear Grandparents raising me, I would have probably wound up with some kind of psych disorder too. Looking back, before I moved in with my Grandparents, I remember myself on a really bad path. Antisocial behavior, skipping school, smoking dope... After moving in with my Grandparents who actually cared about me and spent time with me, things seemed to be infinitely better in retrospect. So yeah, based on my experience, I could see the 50%ish divorce rate could be part of the problem with the number of people with psych disorders. I've heard "It takes a village to raise a child", and one person is not enough to get the job done right. In my past, I really tie what I think of as early stage psych disorders directly to being in a single parent, single income home. Maybe this isn't the case for everyone, but I can sure see how being a kid on your own could facilitate psych disorders, lead you down a path of crime, etc.

I have a son now, and I can tell you that the memories of my Grandparents have made me a dedicated parent. Without a good parenting role model to look back on, who knows what kind of parent I'd be? So not only is divorce a devastating thing for kids, in my opinion it can be cyclical.

Is there an off the cuff "Dr. Phil" type solution to all this? Hell no. Maybe there is no solution at all. Do I think a lower divorce rate would lower the number of kids on psych drugs? Yes 100%. Obviously a lower divorce rate does not guarantee a healthy upbringing. There are abusers, molesters, and just bad parents even in 2 parent homes. I do honestly believe that if the divorce rate were to somehow drop (like I said, maybe there is no solution here), percentage wise there would be enough of an increase in good home lives to reduce the number of kids on psych drugs.

Unfortunately, what do you do with the existing "damaged goods"? Our government seems to think budget cuts to mental health programs is the right idea ( http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/01/state-budget-cuts-slash-mental-health-funding.html ). After witnessing the level of care my father received, I can't imagine this will help anyone. This is an "off the cuff" remark, but I really pisses me off that we can hand over 2 trillion in tax cuts to the richest people in the country, and pay for several wars, but we can't find a few pennies for people who are legitimately in need of care.

So what is my answer to "why is America crazy?" Priorities. We are completely fucking upside down in how we see the world. Money is everything, and anything that does not generate income is viewed as expendable. Family oriented social programs, care of old people, sick people, injured vets... It all takes a back seat to our corrupt politicians and the trillions in bribe money we pay to their campaign contributors, and bailouts to criminal bankers. Am I bitter? Yeah. I'm bitter. Watching your dad wither and die in a care home, while my tax money pays for war and lobbyist bribes will do that to a person.

My sentiments exactly. Good job Russia!

Mountains of technical data can sometimes not answer the obvious question. Does the distro work for you? Is it responsive? Is the UI comfortable an intuitive? My personal experience with Natty is that I love it. But then again, I'm an Ubuntu head, so that's probably biased. Would XFCE run faster? Sure. Would I like it as well? Probably not, although I don't dislike XFCE at all. Like some of the other testers mentioned, the test seems to be a bit "apples to oranges", and ignores the fact that if you don't like Unity, or even Ubuntu for that matter, you can just use something else. I really understand why some people wouldn't like Unity. Heck, I was skeptical too, having really enjoyed the old default Ubuntu interface. Do I really care that the Unity bar can't be moved around? No. There are some minor glitchy annoyances with the way Unity opens and closes, but on the whole it's been a positive experience for me. I'd say try it and make your own conclusions.

Customers are also "quite free" to go drink overpriced coffee somewhere else. Personally, the ONLY reason I ever go pay $4 for coffee is so I can sit and read a book, or read news feeds on my phone. Before I had a phone capable of reading news feeds, I took a laptop. Maybe I'm missing the point completely here, but reading and web surfing, in my experience, has become a permanent part of American cafe culture. Maybe even more so than non-electronic socializing.

I'd say these cafe's took the stupid, reactionary way out rather than sitting down and thinking about the problem. "They're sitting here too long, NO MORE READERS / LAPTOPS!!". Instead of ruling with an iron fist and pissing people off, why not figure a way to make money and keep people happy? One thing that comes to mind are "booth meters". When you sit down at the booth, the first hour or so is on the house, if you're going to park there all afternoon they charge you x amount of money per hour. Sounds reasonable to me. The cafe's can't be expected to let everyone take up their booths all afternoon, and some people really like doing that (myself included). I'd pay ten bucks for three hours of booth and a grande latte.

I had the same thing happen to me on cnn.com. I posted a comment in reply to an article on ACTA. Basically I just recited some information I had heard on NPR earlier in the day. No profanity, flaming, trolling or anything of the sort.

The next day when I attempted to post I get a message "you have been banned from posting in forums". I finally found an e-mail address that was supposed to provide help with forums issue, but received no reply. My account was never locked out, as I can still log in, but still no posting in forums.

My opinion is that we're seeing a trend of websites banning people from forums to suit their own needs. Which is disturbing because what? We are supposed to only make comments that agree with the web site staff? That doesn't seem right.

I supose it's possible this was some type of technical error, and IT does not read the "help" inbox. Not that CNN actually cares, but I have dropped their feed, and now read Reuters for world news.

Not sure what your budget is, but you might look into Pano zero clients as a solution for general purpose business workstations. Basically you put up an esxi / vcenter server, and P to V your workstations from the hardware to the esxi server using VMWare Converter. Very easy process.

Then you deploy Pano "zero clients", which are little black boxes with no moving parts. You then fire up the Pano server VM. Pano distributes their server software in VM format. You simply use VMWare converter to add it to your esxi box. Then you run a simple web based setup on the Pano server. Finally you go into the Pano server and associate the Pano device with an AD account. Walla. That user logs into the Pano device assigned to them, and they get the correct workstation. If they want to go work at another desk, just assign them a different Pano device. Instant roaming profiles without all the hassle.

Pano also offers a dual monitor attachment. I have not tested this, so I can't say how well it works, but there is one available.

Some other benefits are that if the building power blips (assuming you do not have a backup generator for your entire building), the Pano devices connect right back up to esxi, and no work is lost (assuming you have adequate backup power in your server room). DR is also fairly easy. You just use VCDR or VCB (being phased out) to restore your workstations.

There is some minor power savings as well. The Pano uses only 2.5 watts, whild a Dell Optiplex GX520 uses 250 Watts. You have to factor in the power use of the server as well, so in some cases you might actually use more power in the zero client scenario, depending on how many VM Workstations you can cram onto your esxi boxes.

I worked on one of these Pano boxes at my desk for over a month with zero problems, but the sell to management failed mainly due to the cost of VCenter.

I buy used paperbacks at the local book store for $3.00 - $5.00. An e-book reader costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.00, and the Kindle books run $5 - $10.00 (or more) on Amazon. In my opinion, adding this much expense to reading is a perfect example of price gouging. I put price gougers in the same category as pirates.

I would also ask Mr. Frisch how he feels about libraries, used book stores, and people who give read books to family and freinds? My opinion is that all three of these practices are perfectly legal, and socially acceptable, yet no royalties are passed on to the author. Authors have never, and will never receive a royalty for each copy of their work. I would also guess that since digital books cannot be resold in used book stores, checked out from the library, or given to friends after reading (I'm assuming DRM attempts to prevent this), that authors would receive a higher percentage of royalties on digital books.

Based on the people I know who read, books are less of a target for piracy. I do not know one single person who reads on a regular basis, and also has the skill set or desire to pirate e-books.

Even if e-books are being pirated, shouldn't the blame rest squarely on the DRM? It's common knowledge that many types of encryption have been cracked, so only a fool would put trust in such a faulty mechanism, right? The commonly known reality is that any copyrighted electronic work stands a very high chance of being pirated, encryption or no, so why aren't the E-Book vendors held accountable for distributing copyrighted material with faulty copy protection?

I would have to agree with your post 100%. Microsoft and Google use their free products / services to generate advertising revenue, and consumer interest.

You've figured out what entertainment consumers in 2009 want.

"....people 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it..."

People want to easily and quickly download or stream entertainment without a bunch of licensing and proprietary format hassles.

Now get your lazy ass out of the $3,500.00 leather executive chair and go figure out some products that people want to buy.