Wait, I thought Danger went to Microsoft, and were responsible for the Kin?

That's what killed the Sidekick/Hiptop. (I'm still pissed off about that. Sure, Android/Blackberry 10/iOS do far more than my Sidekick LX 2009 did, but what the Sidekick DID do, it did far better.)

Given that the 840 EVO only came out this summer, both those drives are still under warranty.

So why didn't you get them replaced?

Lots of people are using those drives without issue. It sucks that you got two bad ones, but it's hardly representative of the drives as a whole.

Or if you really don't want to deal with them, take them out of the 'garbage bin' and give 'em to someone who'll do the RMA themself for a free drive.

Usually these 'weird laws' turn out to be not so weird.

When you investigate them, generally the 'weird law' is an overly specific interpretation of a law that's perfectly sensible. For example, one list had a town in Montana where it's illegal to tie a whale to a fire hydrant. When you track down the law, it bans tying any animal to a fire hydrant - so yes, tying a whale to one WOULD be illegal, but the law wasn't written that way.

I'm willing to bet the Oklahoma issue is much the same - a ban on feeding animals alcohol. I bet it was done because of health issues with pigs being fed brewery leftovers, or something like that.

Take a pie plate. Cut it into an 'omega' shape. Strip the ends of a piece of coax, tape the wires to the plate. Plug the other end into the cable-in port on any vaguely modern TV.

Look! Rabbit ears!

The FCC didn't 'mandate a shift away from rabbit ears'. They just mandated that the rabbit ears be connected to a digital tuner rather than an analog one.

I get 35 channels this way (well okay, I used an aluminum roasting pan, not a pie plate) and about half of them are in HD.

Which is about 15 more than I was getting with an analog antenna here.

The Dreamcast didn't use a Windows kernel.

It could boot Windows CE from disc, if you really wanted to develop for a Windows environment, but it primarily used its own OS.

You could tell the games that used the Windows CE kernel; they ran like crap.

To be fair. even Sony's own PS2 emulator (the one used in 80 gig PS3s) can't handle Ratchet and Clank.

That always amazed me. It's a top-name first-party franchise, and the software-emulation PS3s couldn't handle it.

As for emulating the PS4/Xbox One, pfft.

People said the same thing about the original Xbox, and none of the emulators for that are worth a damn.

Believe it or not, one of the main things I run on my Android tablet that I wouldn't be able to on an iPad is an Apple Newton emulator.

I also use a PC emulator, both DOSbox and Bochs, to run the occasional program I don't have a good Android equivalent of.

The point of coin-lock cart systems isn't to stop thieves. If someone's going to steal them, the carts are worth far more than the coin used.

The point of that system is to get people to BRING THE DAMNED CARTS BACK.

Instead of leaving them all over the parking lot so you have to pay someone to go out there several times a day and round them up and bring them back for others to use.

This is exactly why ALDI does it. It's also part of why ALDI's prices are so much lower than other grocery stores in my area. They're ruthless about cutting costs.

It's also why ALDI charges for bags: They're not free to the store. If you don't want to bring your own, or take some empty boxes they have lying around, then buy some.

Their stores are also set up so that the shelves can be stocked with a minimum of labor, with product generally sitting in its shipping carton with a side removed. When the carton is empty, generally a customer takes it to put their shopping in, which both uncovers the next box of product and removes a box from the store, saving the company money on labor to clean it up and also saving on disposal.

I really wish more stores did things this way. It's not as pretty as Food City or Kroger, but I don't really give a damn about how pretty the shelves look.

Quite literally the only reason I have Chrome installed is to use one very specific plugin that certainly wasn't installed through their store.

Time to make sure I have the Chrome updater service disabled.

The DVD player is already under the TV. In most homes the PC is not near the TV, doesn't have a spot near the TV, and there isn't a good place to put it near the TV because computers are not considered TV accessories. They require desk-height furniture to put the keyboard and mouse on, a monitor, a chair, and the person USING THE COMPUTER doesn't necessarily want to be anywhere near the TV. Or the person watching the TV doesn't want to be listening to the sound from whatever video game the person using the computer is playing.

And before you say 'What's the difference between a DVD player under the TV and a home theater PC under the TV?', DVD players are cheap and simple to operate.

Running cables under the door, down the hall, and across the floor from the computer to the TV.

I have one of those $80 video-store tapes of 'It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown' I got when a local store closed.

My Arbor Day is saved!

Pretty much everyone uses Skype. I don't know anyone that uses anything else.

Well, there's one neckbeard around here who still has a SpeakFreely server, but that's about it.

The only 'alternatives' I know that get any use are TeamSpeak and similar services that people playing MMOs use. And even there, a lot of them have switched to Skype.

They do make automated HDMI switches, you know. You can get one for about ten bucks.

The HDMI inputs have priority levels; plug your console into a 'high' priority one and when you switch it on the TV will change from the media box to the console automagically.

ZP reviews are very entertaining. They're not terribly useful as reviews, unless you happen to have tastes very similar to Yahtzee's. He's not reviewing games so much as he is picking them apart for an amusing clip.

He loathes several entire genres of game, and no game in those genres is ever going to get a 'good' review from him. He freely admits this himself on the occasions when he DOES review them, but a lot of his fans miss that his reviews are incredibly personal-taste biased.