AT&T DSL can't deliver better than 768 kb/s to my house (nor can they deliver anything to most of my neighbors). If I could sustain that 24×7 for 30 days, (and if I've done the arithmetic correctly) it would amount to roughly 200 GB. Thus 150 GB monthly cap for me has no real effect. But if I had a real plan, I'd be pretty peeved.

Supposedly AT&T U*verse can deliver more modern rates in my neighborhood, but, despite sending me about 10 advertisements a week and occasionally sending a sales droid to my door, they refuse to sell it to me. Really. I've tried to sign up twice.

I switched to Comcast for 2.5× the price of DSL. They manage to deliver decent bandwidth whenever the service is actually up. Streaming an entire Netflix movie without significant stalls is still a pie-in-the-sky dream.

Competition? Yes, please. I live in Silicon Valley. Please send me some competition. Cell phone coverage would be nice as well.

This debate has raged for a while.

Typing and typesetting are different things. I believe you should type two spaces into source material to avoid throwing away valuable information. Your formatting software should adjust the amount of space depending on your reading preference.

Actually, IMAX 3D uses circular polarization.

Perhaps it depends on the theatre. I saw Avatar in 3D in a traditional IMAX theatre (not IMAX digital), and they were definitely using linear polarization--the glasses were compatible with my own linearly-polarized 3D glasses. I have seen other 3D movies in that same IMAX theatre that used LCD shutter glasses, so it wouldn't surprise me if they also show some 3D movies using circular polarization.

All of the 3D movies I've seen in commercial theatres with digital projection have used circular polarization.

And that link was the follow-up article. Matt Pietrek's first column on this topic was in MSJ in 1996.

I'm pretty sure that "recording device" is not the same thing as "timeshifter". A timeshifter allows you to view a stream of data at a point in time other than what it is also simultaneously chronicling.

It's true that what a DVR does is different than what you could do with a VCR, but what you can do with a VCR is properly called time shifting. In fact, that term became popular during the Betamax case. It was determined that "time shifting" was a legal use of VCRs, and since VCRs had legal uses, they couldn't be banned as copyright infringement devices.

Of course it's the store that's shady. What's insightful about that? Neither the summary nor the article put the blame on Microsoft.

You could speculate that the XBox numbers don't overcome the PS3 numbers, or you could RTFA and find out the actual results of the survey.

Assuming that there's negligible overlap:

Blu-ray (7%) + PS3 (9%) = 16%

HD-DVD (11%) + XBox 360 (13%) = 24%

So, according to the referenced survey, HD-DVD has more U.S. household penetration than Blu-ray whether you count the game consoles or not.

The request was for drafts and proposals for treaties. This doesn't keep any existing treaty, law, or regulation secret.

Interestingly, the letter references Executive order 12958, which Clinton issued to loosen up documents under the FOIA. Bush issued EO 13292, which made it easier to classify documents (and gave the VP more power to do so). Since the denial references the older Clinton order, I assume that means Obama has rolled back the standards to the Clinton-era.

here in CA, only talking on the phone is illegal. Texting is perfectly ok

Only until next month when enforcement of the no-texting law kicks in.

Actually, hands-free or not, most cell phones are illegal in the front seat of the car anyway, as they have video screens. A couple years ago, California outlawed video screens placed anywhere in front of the back of the driver's seat, unless the screen is part of a system that's 100% dedicated to navigation and vehicle status--which technically means even some GPS systems are illegal if they can also play games, control the radio, etc.