I'm struggling here to think of a primitive tool with handed-ness built into it. Anyone?

Not exactly primitive but everything in ancient Roman and Greek culture was built around everyone being right handed. Even the language reflected the value of being right handed compared to being left handed. They would slap students' left hands, even the great Caesars, to get them to learn to be right hand dominant.

The Latin (Roman) word for 'right' was 'dexter'. It's where we get the words dexterity, dextrous, and ambidextrous from. So in English someone being 'ambidextrous' means that they have two right hands. And the Latin word for 'left' was 'sinistra'. Which is where we get the words sinister and ambisinister. So someone who is ambisinistrous is someone with two left hands is considered unskilled manually.

In primitive cultures you'd see hand dominance as well. It was innate and the culture was designed around right handed dominance. While technically the tools that they used could be done with either hand, the information how to use those tools were passed down by demonstration, and the demonstrations were usually done by a right handed person. So a human from thousands of years ago hunting with spears and rocks would always throw those weapons with his right hand, and show his son to do it with the right hand, and so on. Sure those rocks aren't designed to be thrown with a specific hand but our natural tendency to be right handed influenced our primitive ancestors to continually practice right hand dominance.

What truly shocked me about the PS3 was to find that attached controllers do not appear to charge unless the console is powered on.

That shocked you? Were you shocked when your I-Pod didn't charge when it was plugged into a powered off PC? Are you shocked when your car battery drains when the engine is off?

There's a reason why they sell charging stations for Wii-motes and PS3 controllers. And why they sell wall charging units for mp3 players and tablet PCs. And why you can purchase a battery maintenance device for your car as well.

Someone put six bullet holes, last night they shot up, a parked police car that was left near the scene of the shooting. The message being that violence against the police is coming if they don't arrest Zimmerman and charge him with murder. They shot up a cop car. As if that neighborhood didn't need a reason for a neighborhood watch now they have guys firing live rounds into police cars? That's a safe neighborhood?

The amount of media coverage. International press. 24/7 news cycle. The constant lies. "Zimmerman is white". Showing images of Trayvon Martin when he was only 12 and not 17 (and 6'3"). Editing the 911 call from Zimmerman to make him seem racist. The media wants a circus. A race riot. They want another OJ trial, or Rodney King riot, or Casey Anthony or Amanda Knox level ratings. Who cares if the guy is innocent or guilty or whatever. What's most important is getting ratings and possibly causing a race riot.

And now we have the political pressure. Elections. Press. Appealing to the base. Even Obama had to give his opinion. "If I had a son he'd look like Trayon". Please Mr. President throw more gasoline on the fire. This is before Obama knew of the facts of the case. Just like when Obama blurted out an opinion about the cop who arrested the Harvard professor and then ended up having to have beer at the White House with the both of them. Will Obama have a beer with George Zimmerman?

This event is exposing the worst of this country. A perfect storm of all that is wrong with where we are today. The media being anything but objective. The politics doing nothing but making everything racial and partisan. And the overwhelming majority of citizens ignoring the facts and rushing to judgement.

I'd like to see a Titanic themed ride at Universal or whatever. Throw in some 1910s decorations. Some classical music. And then have it like a roller coaster or tower of terror but in sub zero degrees at one of the drops to simulate the ship plunging into the ocean.

Will they remove the torrents of said artist's work?

Mistaken eyewitness identification is one of the leading causes of false arrests and convictions. The average civilian is absolutely terrible with memorizing and correctly identifying the actual guilty suspect.

Even worse is that most police lineups and photo arrays (or photo lineups) are presented as a "multiple choice" test. Where the victim or accuser feels like they must choose someone rather than admit that they don't recognize anyone or are unsure. They'll just pick the closest person that they think fits the person that they saw earlier. And earlier might be hours, days, or even weeks or longer. Academic studies have shown that if you give the average person a lineup of random innocent people that most people will finger one of them for the crime.

And of course we have police that coach someone going into a lineup. "Here we have suspects one, two, three *cough* FOUR, and five. Please identify which suspect you think robbed the convenience store". "Uh....it was person number four".

And lastly, one of my best friends is a cop,and he says as a joke that they put cops into lineups all of the time. Then they bet if the civilian will identify the cop as the shooter or rapist or whatever. I know one department even had a jackpot where if you went into a lineup and got chosen as the criminal you got a free golf club.

Maybe it's different in other countries but in the U.S. people barely seem to care about personal privacy. Between Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Myspace, and so on, people seem more than willing to put their private lives and information out on the internet. And if you look at the type of news that Americans read most often, it is celebrity gossip, tabloids and paparazzi that stalk famous people and report on their every movement.

We put our political beliefs on our t-shirts and bumper stickers. Wear our sports teams on our hats. And now we can share those things on Twitter and YouTube. I think I'm the only employee at my work that doesn't have a LinkedIn, Myspace, Facebook, or a Twitter.

Between Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow, Kim Kardashian, and the 15-minutes-of-fame type reality TV show people, we have an endless cycle of gossip news available online and on your television. And people seem to love it. The more invasive the questions are at a sports press conference with Tim Tebow the better. The more we can dig up on Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries the better. Whitney Houston having cocaine in her system was more reported than anything else in the last week on the mainstream news.

The Slashdot crowd is the exception not the rule. When most people are all about getting themselves more friends on Facebook and more followers on YouTube the "geeks" are holding onto their privacy. Personal privacy is simply not cool in America. When America stops everything because Tim Tebow is coming to the Jets (I hope everyone at /. has familiarized themselves with the Wildcat Offense) they are there for the spectacle and not for the actual sport.

Sure no one wants their credit card information online. But too many people in the U.S. seem to think that putting their email, phone number, personal likes and hobbies, thousands of pictures of themselves, and so on, all over the internet, is not only okay but it is preferred. It's fun for them.

I always laugh when a lawyer or judge or politician starts screaming about hitting a business with a financial loss to punish them for fraud or negligence or some other crime or scam. Where do they think that that money is going to come from? Do they think that the CEOs are going to pay it from their own pockets?

That money will come directly from consumers and subscribers. Most who will be completely unaware of this lawsuit. AT&T will up the rates or charge extra for other services or products and that will pay off whatever losses are from this lawsuit.

Basically only the consumers lose. The Nigerian scammers make their money. AT&T makes its money back eventually. The judges and lawyers make their money. And the consumers and taxpayers foot the bill for everything. It's a great system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70_nQpOQczM

Sonic Boom is a charge attack so maybe they are forgetting to charge.

I consider myself a hardcore gamer. Thousands of hours of gaming a year every year. But my backlog of games is enormous for this generation. I literally just stared Mass Effect 1 today and I've yet to begin Skyrim or Final Fantasy 13 as well. I've also got a pile of PS3 games, including Uncharted 1, that I've yet to open the box for.

But for the Nintendo Wii I've exhausted the top quality games for that system. And no one makes new games for that system anymore either. So it's perfect time for Nintendo to release another console.

But the 360 and the PS3? There are years left in those systems. We've only gotten one God of War game the PS3. And only one Metal Gear Solid as well. SONY and MS in their console Cold War arms race are going to cut off their noses to spite their faces by killing this generation of consoles early.

Do you really think that the US cares about false flag operations? Bin Laden and 16 of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and we decide to declare war on Afghanistan and the Taliban. The entire UN weapons inspection team claimed that Iraq didn't have WMDs but we ignored all evidence and invaded and overthrew Saddam with no hesitation.

If the U.S. wanted to they could declare war on Iran for an overdue library book. "We know that Iran has the book...it's overdue...we are mobilizing our infantry divisions and MOAB bomber crews as we speak". After the complete lack of WMDs in Iraq it seems obvious that the U.S. government just doesn't care what anyone thinks.

The U.S. military doesn't need any real reason to invade another country anymore. We could just say that Iran posses a large stash of radioactive kryptonite and that they must be stopped.

Nothing good is coming from any involvement between countries in the Greater Middle East and countries outside of it. Diplomacy is awful. The U.S. is waging war all over creating chaos. Humanitarian aid is handled disastrously. And any cultural exchange is met with hostility such as the BBC establishing a television channel.

Just let that part of the world be alone by itself and cut them off completely. Don't send them money. Don't send diplomats. Don't send businesses. Encourage your citizens from touring that area. And don't ever send soldiers and bombs.

All I hear about that part of the world when it comes to foreign relations are horror stories. The Middle East is backwards. They are regressing into even more oppressive religious states and I don't see outsiders feel like they need to be a military or cultural influence over there.

Credit card fraud is a huge illegal industry. It finances drug gangs and cartels, terrorists, small organized crime, major organized crime (mafia), and occasionally the rogue individual hacker. It's the new form of armed bank robbery. Instead of guns they use computers though.

Of course while $700K in fraud by a few people is nothing to ignore, it is a bit ridiculous that the FBI devotes so many resources to catching these scumbags, while virtually ignoring the guys who swindle billions of dollars through stocks, insider trading, and pyramid schemes.

So shutting off PSN access for millions of gamers is now considered hacktivism? Going after Sony's game division, which has almost nothing to do with Sony's corporate division, is now hacktivism?

I know that the Slashdot crowd is extremely anti-Sony but I fail to see how denying paying consumers the ability to play games is hacktivism. Or preventing dozens of new games from getting released on the PSN store, and allowing those companies and artists to sell their titles, is hacktivism.

Welcome to the New American Nanny State.

Right now, schools are under heavy pressure to reduce "bullying". The politicians and money groups have seized on an issue that is easy to win over the hearts of American voters and donors. That's why "bullying" is such a hot issue right now and gets tons of media coverage.

Kids talking about sex, something mentioned in the article as being another reason why the police and school went after this student, is another always hot issue especially with American "conservatives". We must avoid talking to children or exposing them to sex at all costs.

So we have a school where a kid is accused of bullying, and also talking about sex, on Facebook. The school knows if it does nothing they'll get blasted by moms, and the media, about how they failed to protect other children from bullies and perverts. They let a student make hate speech and promote sex talk amongst pre-teens or whatever. But if the school acts then they'll get blasted by people who think that the schools should mind their own business and let the parents handle things. And we know how well parents handle things in modern America.

Instead of finding a middle ground, the school feels the pressure from all sides and.....calls the cops. Huge overreaction in hindsight of course but they must have felt at the time that it was warranted.

But seriously? A kid can't say that they hate their teacher anymore? A kid can't talk about sex with another kid? When I was in school it didn't matter if a kid said he hated a hall monitor or a teacher. Most of the teachers had been around long enough to recognize which kids disliked them. And most of my teachers could tell which boys and girls had started puberty earlier than others because we behaved much differently around the opposite sex. Times have changed.

The school should have just called the student's mother or father and said "some kid tattled on your kid, it's not a big deal, but you should monitor your kid's facebook and just check to see if they are doing anything that is inappropriate". No cops. No teachers. No detention even. Let the parents do their jobs.